THE LIGHT WE LOST: a gripping thriller Page 10

  “Glory, I have to see you before you leave,” said Adam in a stern tone.

  “Meet me at the Mountain Gate Family Restaurant at 133 Frederick Road, Thurmont. Make sure that you come alone. See you in an hour.”

  The phone went dead as Adam ended the call.

  Glory sighed deeply. Time was ticking and if Adam had some information to share, she needed to make the trip to the restaurant. Her next challenge was how to get there without bringing some of the FBI agents with her.

  How safe was Camp David in the middle of the night? If she made it to the outer perimeter without alerting the FBI agents, was it safe to hitch a ride to Thurmont, or was she going to be raped or even murdered by a total stranger who would have thought that he had won the lottery by finding a drop-dead gorgeous brunette hitch-hiking at roadside. Again she sighed. What could she do? It was not like she had too many choices at her disposal.

  Glory Falcon pulled on a coat which covered her blouse and much of her slacks. She dropped her Tablet mobile device into her clutch handbag and headed out the door.

  A thick cloud cover had since built over Camp David and she could feel the moisture of a slight drizzle landing on her face as she made her way carefully out into the fresh air.

  The FBI agents were highly trained operators and it didn’t take long for their control room to be alerted of a young woman on the move in the woods a few hundred yards away from the main house.

  Would they stop her from leaving the property? Oh no! The FBI put a tracking team on to Glory Falcon. They suspected that she may link up with Adam Kennedy or the artefact or both.

  The FBI’s perimeter security personnel were ordered to allow Glory to escape and to follow her with caution. The brunette’s mind was in racing mode in an attempt to get to Adam at the Mountain Gate Family Restaurant. Had she had a few minutes to think things through properly, she would have realized that her escape from a Presidential safe house was just too good to be true.

  Using her GPS software on her Tablet mobile device, Glory Falcon quickly worked out the direction to the restaurant. As she stood next to the main road with rain dripping from her hair, she knew that it wouldn’t be long before someone noticed her; preferably a woman driver then at least she would feel a bit safer.

  The road was extremely quiet and at one point, Glory thought that she would spend the whole evening there without a car passing by. Eventually her luck changed and a black Land Rover slowed down and stopped at the curb where she was standing. The driver, who was the only passenger in the vehicle, opened the window next to the passenger seat.

  A scruffy looking man in his late fifties with a bald spot in the middle of his greying hair, stared at Glory.

  “Ma’am, I know that Camp David is just down the hill but it’s not safe to stand here on your own at this time of the day,” he said.

  Glory quickly worked out that the man was not from around the area due to his strong Texan accent.

  “Sir, I need to get to the Mountain Gate Family Restaurant in Thurmont, could you assist me with a lift?” asked Glory as she put on her best smile.

  “Yeah, hop in, Ma’am,” said the driver of the Land Rover.

  Glory didn’t need a second invitation and climbed inside, holding on to her clutch bag and Tablet device with her left hand. She could see that the distance from Camp David to Thurmont was no more than 3.4 miles so the driver could not take her on a joy ride.

  “Word is the President of the US is at Camp David,” said the driver, as he turned up the car radio, with Queen’s smash hit of the 1980s, I want to break free, playing on the channel.

  “How do you know that the President is here?” asked Glory.

  The driver laughed.

  “Everyone knows everyone else’s business here, Ma’am. It’s a small world. It’s not quiet Washington D.C. or New York City. News travels quickly around here.”

  “Here you go,” said the driver, as the Land Rover pulled up outside Mountain Gate Family Restaurant, in Frederick Road.

  Glory thanked the driver for the lift and wished him a pleasant evening. She noticed a few cars parked in and around the shops and restaurant which she was heading to but everything seemed to be in order.

  Once inside the restaurant, Glory made her way over to a table in the far corner and ordered a coffee.

  Come on, Adam, where are you, she thought.

  Seconds felt like minutes which felt like hours, before Adam Kennedy eventually arrived. He was pretty well disguised in dark glasses, a thick coat and a woollen beanie hat covering his head.

  He removed his glasses and Glory was immediately smitten by his handsome looks, just like she had been in the past.

  “Adam, what is going on?” she asked in a voice of panic.

  “What is the artefact that the US and Russians want to get their hands on? Where is it?”

  Adam replaced his dark glasses and kept glancing towards the door as if he suspected unwanted guests to enter at any moment.

  “Glory, the artefact is key to the whole space program and Planet X onslaught,” he began.

  “It is…”

  Adam stopped in mid-sentence and began to run towards the back door of the restaurant having noticed the FBI presence at the front door.

  “Glory, you tricked me,” he said.

  “Suddenly Glory saw the FBI agents too.

  “I never arrived with them, Adam! They must have followed me here!”

  Adam Kennedy made a bold bid to exit through the rear door of the restaurant but in so doing, ran straight into three FBI agents who had him face-down on the floor with his hands pinned behind his back in no time.

  A search of Adam’s clothing revealed that his pockets were empty.

  “Where is the artefact, Kennedy?” asked the senior FBI agent.

  “You got this all wrong, why are you arresting an innocent man?” replied Adam, as he lay on the ground with his hands still pinned behind his back by the brute force of one of the FBI men.

  “We will see about that,” said the senior FBI man.

  “Handcuff him and take him back to Camp David,” he said to the agent who had wrestled Adam to the ground.

  Glory tried to intervene.

  “Don’t hurt Adam,” she said.

  “You are a fine one to talk, Ms Falcon,” remarked the senior agent.

  “You thought that you could give the FBI the slip and meet with Kennedy on your own about the artefact? I thought that you were a bit smarter than that. Let’s go back to Camp David and see what our leaders have to say about all of this.”

  Under heavy guard, Glory and Adam were placed in a waiting police vehicle and taken to Camp David. Glory was led to her room which this time had a FBI agent stationed at her door and another one outside her window.

  She imagined that the same security set up would have applied to Adam.

  Glory Falcon felt as low as she had been during the days when Adam had been declared missing in action. She knew at least that Adam was safe this time, but her mind was racing as to how she would ever be able to look US President John Carmichael III in the eye. She had been the heroin at the meeting earlier in the day with her super idea of transferring all human life to the islands, and now she was being kept under tight security after the evening’s happenings.

  Despite her heroics to get the restaurant to meet with Adam, she was still none the wiser as to what the artefact was and how it fitted into the space program and Planet X onslaught on earth.

  Glory was absolutely sure that both she and Adam were going to be thrust into an emergency meeting with the US President and his advisors prior to departing for Angel Island.

  Adam would have to do the talking this time, she thought. He has the answers that the President wants.

  Suddenly another thought went through her mind. Where was her husband, Alan Falcon. He was key to the space program but not a word had been heard about him since she had been interrogated by the FBI agents at her Cocoa Beach home.

  Wha
t game was Alan playing? What game was Adam playing? Was she being used as the pawn in this intriguing game of chess?

  Glory Falcon fell asleep on the double bed in her room and it felt as if she had just closed her eyes when a FBI agent knocked aggressively on her room door.

  “Ms Falcon, you have five minutes to get dressed,” said the voice on the other side of the door.

  “The President is waiting to meet with you.”

  Glory wiped the sleep from her eyes. How she wishes that this was all nothing but a dream. It wasn’t. She needed to tread carefully with John Carmichael III, not only for her own sake, but the sake of all life forms on Planet Earth.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Silence is golden

  Glory Falcon felt like she was a part of a James Bond 007 film as the President’s Boeing 747-8, better known as Air Force One, made its way to Angel Island, accompanied by heavily armed bomber jets on either side of it.

  The mood in the cabin of the aircraft was a somber one. The meeting back at Camp David prior to departure had not gone too well. President John Carmichael III had scolded both Adam Kennedy and Glory for playing a ‘secret game’ that could endanger the lives of millions of people on earth.

  Space program advisor Shaun Kelly was Glory’s biggest opponent. He seemed against anything that she proposed. Glory was cautious of all of the President’s advisors. She wasn’t a politician herself, had read enough books and seen enough films to know that everyone wanted the US No 1 post and some would even sell their souls to the Russians to achieve this.

  Adam had still not told his story on the importance of the artifact and why he had to make the trip to the Amazon to find the artifact. In the study at Camp David, he had hardly a chance to get a word in and the mood was not right to make earth-shattering revelations.

  Something to drink, Ms Falcon?” offered a slim blonde flight attendant as Glory’s focus returned to reality.

  Glory stared at the flight attendant for a moment. Why couldn’t she be like this young lady and live a normal life? Why did she have to study planetology and get involved in something this close to Armageddon?

  “A lemonade drink will do just fine, thank you,” replied Glory with a smile.

  Smiling was becoming a problem to the 20-year-old brunette. Her facial muscles felt like they hadn’t been used in years. In these trying times there hadn’t been too much to smile about of late.

  Glory glanced around the cabin. Adam Kennedy was getting some shut eye in the far left corner, carefully watched over by two FBI agents. A third agent sat two yards away from Glory. Short of wearing handcuffs, it was as if Glory and Adam were being transported as potential criminals rather than persons who could make a great input into saving the planet.

  Colonel Mike Mills, the pilot for the flight, left the flying duties to his co-pilot Colonel Donovan Shaw and made his way out of the cockpit to the President.

  “Mr President, Sir, we cannot land this plane on Angel Island so we will put her down on the mainland and helicopter from there to the destination.”

  John Carmichael III nodded in agreement.

  He then looked across at Glory. What game was this girl playing? What was in it for her? Had the Russians done a side deal with her?

  At this stage, the President felt that he trusted his predecessor Donald Trump more than he trusted Glory and Adam, and that was saying a lot. John Carmichael III had once remarked at a meeting in the Oval Office: “I don’t know if Donald Trump trusts Donald Trump”.

  Eventually Air Force One landed at San Francisco International Airport and the passengers were transferred in military precision style into the waiting turbine tandem helicopters.

  A usual flight to the island was around 2 hours 20 minutes, but the powered helicopters were built for a purpose and the transportation arrived at the final destination at least twenty minutes ahead of schedule.

  Glory and Adam were ushered to their rooms inside the old forts. The accommodation was far from the luxury that they had enjoyed at Camp David. Some of the walls in the rooms had been patched up so much that they reminded one of having been a part of the action in Beirut warfare.

  It was clear that a major overnight repair job had taken place to prepare the old venue for the arrival of the US President and his team.

  An hour passed before Glory was summoned to a meeting with the US President and his advisors. She entered the office area and saw Adam Kennedy seated in a chair at the front of a desk.

  The furniture in the office was far from what the US President had been used too at his Oval Office in Washington D.C. but these were desperate times.

  “Trump just sent out a tweet in his personal capacity about the North Korean nuclear program again, Sir,” Chief of Security, Myles Jenkins.

  John Carmichael III shook his head. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate to worry about, the last thing that he needed was to handle a Trump Twitter campaign aimed at stirring up emotions in North Korea.

  Shaun Kelly piped up.

  The Presidential support team will be here in thirty minutes, Sir. I suggest that your PR team can make a call to former President Trump then and request him to calm down on the Twitter front?”

  “Good call, Shaun,” responded the President, who then turned to Adam Kennedy.

  “Mr Kennedy, please enlighten us on your trip to the Amazon and its importance as I believe that it ties in quite substantially with this global problem that we have on our hands.”

  Adam shifted uneasily in his chair.

  “Sir, I will gladly do that, but I need to complete the story without being interrupted,” said the archeologist, in passing a side glance the way of Shaun Kelly and Myles Jenkins.

  “We are all ears, Mr Kennedy, perhaps help yourself to a cup of tea or coffee first as I reckon that this chat could be a long one,” quipped the President.

  “I will settle for a glass of water, thank you, Sir,” replied Adam, who helped himself to a glass full of liquid from the jug which had been placed on the President’s desk.

  Adam looked at Glory and she nodded as if also to request a glass of water. Adam filled up a second glass and passed it to her.

  “Right, Sir, for the past two years I have been researching the space suit element, as I was fully aware that a situation like the one that we are facing, could happen sometime in the future,” Adam.

  “One material that was being developed at the space station before the budget was initially cut is hhydrogenated boron nitride nanotubes—known as hydrogenated BNNTs. These are tiny, nanotubes made of carbon, boron, and nitrogen, with hydrogen interspersed throughout the empty spaces left in between the tubes. Boron is also an excellent absorber secondary neutrons, making hydrogenated BNNTs an ideal shielding material.”

  Adam took in a sip of water but judging by the looks on the faces of the people in the room, he could see that he had everyone’s attention.

  “So how does that fit in with the Amazon?” asked Shaun Kelly.

  “Give me a chance to explain, we agreed that there would be no interruptions,” quipped back Adam.

  He continued.

  “I went to a city called Leticia in southern Colombia, which borders on the Amazon River and is pretty close to the boundaries of Brazil and Peru. Earlier I had made a trip to the Paranal Observatory in Chile and had an interesting chat with Professor Alejandro Goic.”

  Glory’s ears picked up as she had wanted to speak to the Professor too but hadn’t been quick enough. The authority on the solar system had been a slow driver but yet his car had disappeared over a cliff on the Paranal Mountains.

  “The Professor discovered that a bright light from outer space was deflecting off of the nanotubes,” went on Adam.

  “He also worked out that the deflection was coming from the Amazon River area near Leticia. I probably should have informed the US government first, but an insider in one of your departments suggested that I make the trip with as few people knowing about it as possible. Please understan
d that this was done in the interest of the US and its people.”

  The US President nodded in agreement but Shaun Kelly and Myles Jenkins did not react.

  “The nanotubes can survive radiation,” continued Adam.

  “If we can make enough space suits at a considerable pace, then many lives on earth can be saved and less finance needs to be used on transporting people to Strongholds.”

  Shaun Kelly couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

  “Mr President, Sir, we have investigated the nanotubes at various times in the past and it’s just too costly to generate space suits from them. That is why we closed down the program on this front.”

  John Carmichael III ignored the remark made by Shaun.

  “How much nanotube material can be brought back from the Amazon?” asked the US No 1.

  “How many space suits can be generated in a day if our people have the material?”

  Adam responded.

  “It will have to be done in phases, Sir. I cannot say how long it will take. I am not a specialist in the making of space suits. However, I have brought an artefact with me to give you an idea of the task at hand.”

  Adam Kennedy removed a square object from his coat pocket, which was grey in color. Initially, it looked like a piece of rock, but at closer inspection by all in the room, it seemed to be of a softer substance. Myles touched it and a powder format started to crumble from it.”

  “This object and many more like it at the Amazon River, seem to have been derived from the Aborigine tribe many centuries back,” he went on.

  Shaun snapped at Adam.

  “Are you saying that the space transportation program in-line with the creation of the Strongholds, should be cancelled and the focus should be put on creating space suits to continue life here on earth, should Planet X slam into our planet?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “Not at all, I am suggesting that the space suits be created as a measure of safety for all people whether they remain on earth or are transported to the Strongholds through the space program,” said the archeologist.