Department 19: Battle Lines by Will Hill Read Free Book Online

children.
    This weekend, though, was sacred.
    It was the anniversary of the strange, surreal day in 1997 when they had sold five per cent of their shares in the search engine they had helped found to a private investment group in San Francisco, and realised with genuine bemusement that they had both become millionaires. They had celebrated by taking Donny’s old van out to Joshua Tree, where they drank whisky and smoked grass and reminisced, and it was now traditional for them to head into the desert for two days every year.
    Donny wolfed his burger down in three bites. Walt ate slowly, savouring each mouthful, and was still finishing his first as his friend was attacking his third. They ate in companionable silence, their eyes fixed on the skies to the west, above the low hills that shielded Area 51 from unwelcome eyes. Their little clockwork radio sat on the desert floor between them; they had found a Las Vegas classic rock station at the edge of the dial and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Highway Patrolman’ was crackling softly out of the speakers.
    Donny finished the last of his burgers, felt his stomach rumble appreciatively, and settled himself in his chair. The two friends would stay like this until they fell asleep. Eventually, one of them would wake up and rouse the other, and they would stumble into their tent to see out the rest of the rapidly cooling night. It was a familiar routine, and one they enjoyed immensely.
    “What’s that?” asked Walt.
    Donny grinned. The first time they had come up here, almost a decade earlier, they had spent most of their first night claiming to see something in the distance, trying to make each other jump. But they had never seen anything in the famous Area 51 skies apart from regular military jets and helicopters, and Donny had no intention of falling for this old routine.
    “Nothing,” he said, without even turning his head. “Just like it was nothing last year, like it’s always been nothing. Don’t even try it, Walt.”
    “I’m serious.”
    Something in Walt’s voice made Donny look round. It wasn’t fear, or even unease; it sounded more like incredulity. He turned his head slowly and saw Walt pointing towards the northern horizon. He followed his friend’s finger and looked.
    In the distance, a tiny red light was moving smoothly through the night sky. It was perhaps half a mile away, little more than a pinprick in the darkness, but it was darting quickly through the air, seeming to change direction rapidly. Then Donny realised something else.
    It was moving in their direction.
    “What the hell is that?” he said.
    “No idea,” replied Walt, his gaze fixed on the approaching light. “It’s small, whatever it is.”
    “No sound either,” said Donny. “No engine. Listen.”
    The two friends fell silent. Out on the highway, a car rumbled quickly past. But from the north, the direction the glowing dot was coming from, there was no sound of any kind.
    The light swirled and swooped through the sky with dizzying speed. It accelerated in one direction for a second or two, appeared to stop dead and hover, then zoomed away in another direction entirely. It flickered, as though it was rapidly turning on and off, then shot towards the ground, so low that it seemed to scrape the desert floor, before rocketing back into the sky. And it was getting closer, second by second, to the two watching men.
    “Can’t be a plane,” said Donny. “Too quiet. Too quick.”
    “Maybe a drone?” said Walt. “Some new model?”
    “Maybe,” replied Donny, but he didn’t think so. The speed and the angles of the light’s movement were too fast, too sudden, for even the smallest remote aircraft. He stared at the dancing light, fascinated, then felt the breath catch in his throat as it accelerated directly towards them. It swooped low, and now, for the first time, Donny
could
hear something: the rattling of desert sand as whatever it was passed above it at incredible speed. He opened