Tesla, Jason Walker [reading cloud ebooks TXT] 📗

Melville Island, in Canada. It was going to be a mission that could take several weeks or possibly even longer and would require his skills of protecting people from harm while they were underground. It was an important mission and incredibly secretive.

First, though, he was given a smaller mission.

It was a test. Darren knew that. They needed to make sure that he was loyal to the organization. They needed to make sure that Darren would listen to and follow any orders. They also were checking on him to see if he would terminate assets if it looked like they were going to disclose any secrets that were of value to the Orange Corporation or the CIA.

He was flown to a secret base in Alaska and taken underground. After walking down a long corridor, he was eventually escorted to a very clean room, which had a chair in the centre of it. In the chair was a man with a black cover over his entire head. His hands were securely fastened to the arms of the chair, and his legs were tied to the base. Darren could see that the man was still breathing.

Darren’s orders were very simple. He had to shoot the man and kill him with no reasoning given—just an order to terminate with extreme prejudice. There was no information on who the man was or what he had done. He could have been a hardened criminal. He could have just as easily been a man that they picked up off the side of the road. He could have been a clone or perhaps even a cyborg that was half man and half machine, but he couldn’t tell.

Questions were strictly prohibited.

Darren was given a handgun that was already cocked but it had its safety engaged. He took it from the supervising CIA representative and shot the man in the head. Then he handed the gun back to the person that was in charge.

“Do I pass the test?” Darren asked as he looked the man in the eyes.

The CIA operator looked at the blood spatter on the white walls as he nodded his head. “Yes. Please exit the room and follow me. Your handler is waiting to give you a debriefing.”

When Darren met Anna, he was quite surprised because he had thought she would be in Australia working at Pine Gap. She was waiting for him and obviously had things she wanted to say. He smiled at her and sat down in the chair on the other side of the table.

“Are we being watched or is this conversation being recorded?” Darren asked.

She looked around the room and smiled back at him. “You never know who’s listening or watching, so watch what you say back to me in here, all right?”

Darren nodded.

Anna was happy to see Darren face to face again. She’d been busy with other assignments for several months and could only talk to him occasionally through a secure satellite phone. The CIA had their own satellites above the earth, which gave them a much broader reach over the world, she’d come to learn.

“It’s still good to see you, Darren,” she said as she reached beside her chair and pulled out a manila folder, which had the word “classified” on the side of it. Darren watched her open it. There was a paper inside it titled “Unit 81” and then a brief summary of what appeared below the heading.

Darren smiled at her and then looked down at the open folder. “What is unit 81, dare I ask?”

Anna looked at her cup of coffee and reached for it. She took a sip of it and then held it to warm her hand. “They’re a newly formed unit in Israel. Guess what they do?”

Darren raised his eyebrows and replied, “The same job that we do?”

It was obviously the right answer, as Anna smiled. “That’s right. They recover ancient technology too. But what’s concerning is the fact that they also back-engineer these things, just as we do. They’re our closest allies, and they want to be side by side with us as we work on certain things within the Middle East. I doubt that’s going to be approved, but it certainly would be if the jobs we did were in their country. What we let them know is highly selective, and it seems they feel the same way about sharing things with us. They have a lot of things buried underneath them, though, that the higher levels want us to be kept in the loop on.”

Darren looked at his handler and wanted to know where this was heading, and so he was direct with his next question. “So, am I being sent to Israel to do a trade?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not yet, but it’s something that should be on our radar. I wanted to tell you about them so you’re careful about what you say in front of scientists and researchers that are working under your supervision when you’re on assignments working with them. My own handler told me that we would have to go there in the near future—just so you’re aware. I wanted you to start thinking about how you interact with people you’re meeting for the first or second time.”

Darren appreciated the briefing and listened to her tell him the basics about the unit and how it was American money that basically helped them run their operation. It was confusing to him why Israel got so much financial support from the United States, but it wasn’t something that he had any control over.

When Darren’s handler finished her briefing about Unit 81, she went on to talk about his immediate assignment and why she was no longer in Australia.

“There’s another place that has been discovered, and it has a lot of interesting things that have been found below the surface—just like in Peru. It’s on an island in the northern part of Canada, and it’s covered in ice for most of the year,” she explained.

Darren’s interest was caught by what she was telling him. “And what’s below that island?”

“There are a lot of tunnels and glyphs on the walls, and some of the photographs that got back to us reveal advanced technology having been discovered. But I can’t show you those pictures because I don’t have any. I’m just relaying what I was told by my own handler. I need to send some people down there, so I need you to keep them from harm while they’re underground poking their heads around. We believe that some high-value items of significance are down there, and that’s why I’m here too. They want me to be in Canada supporting you in whatever capacity you need. So, this is pretty important to the CIA.”

Anna nodded and took another sip of her coffee, finishing it. She put the cup to the side of the table and spoke. “Yes, it’s got their interest that’s for sure.”

“Are the Canadians aware of what’s been found?”

Anna shook her head. “They have no idea. That’s why it’s important that we keep everyone quiet and we move in and out of there as quickly as possible. Remember that if we lose control of the information being released, we’ll need to terminate the asset leaking the information. That’s your protocol but I’m hoping that it won’t be necessary. I’m going to suggest you first use psychology to make people do what you want them to do before you terminate somebody in a foreign country.”

Darren nodded his head as though he understood. “So when do we leave Alaska?”

“In a couple of days. We still needed to do another job, but I can tell you about that later. Let’s get out of here and go to Anchorage,” she said as she pushed her chair back and stood up from the table. She was quite ready to leave the base and check out the countryside.

Northern Canada
May 12, 1992
Site Perimeter of Discovery X

A series of tunnels had been discovered in Northern Canada a year before Darren’s arrival. What Darren’s handler had told him would be an in-and-out job turned out to be something that required him to be there for many months instead. With his loyalty to the Orange Corporation proven, he was entrusted to maintain site security to ensure that the secrets waiting down there weren’t announced to the rest of the world. The drilling and the blasting had stopped that afternoon. Darren’s job was making sure that there were no aircraft flying above them as they attempted to clean up the debris all over the surface. By drilling out shafts, they could then get bigger electrical generators down into the caverns below so they could be lit up for longer periods of time.

When Darren felt that his security team was capable of handling things on the surface, he went below ground. As he walked down the tunnel that had been discovered quite by accident, he was amazed by the fact that so many cultures throughout time had wanted to leave a story behind for others to find. While he had a few moments by himself, he walked down a corridor carved out of solid granite and marvelled at what he saw on the walls.

Darren’s eyes were diverted when he heard the boots of someone coming toward him as he walked deeper into the tunnel system. He soon recognized the face of the head archaeologist. His name was Bill Jenkins, and he was also an underground structural engineer who worked closely with Dr Emily Aranda, an expert on ancient languages and anthropology, who was also assigned to this expedition.

Despite the fact that Darren was normally in and out on short jobs, this one was an exception because they’d discovered an ancient power source underground that needed investigation and further study. What made the task more challenging is that the device couldn’t be removed from its present location. What was concerning to the scientists was that the device was believed to actually be alive and that it had been made with sound. He didn’t fully understand what Bill and Dr Emily were talking about, but it sure sounded interesting.

The Orange Corporation decided, within the first month of his work there, that Darren would stay on site for almost the entire year. He spent most of his days with Bill and Emily, listening closely to everything they had to say.

When the chance arose, he snapped pictures when no one else was watching since he was the most senior security team member present. The first few times, he managed to do so without getting caught. In the end, though, he wasn’t quick enough.

When Bill caught him taking a picture of the small pyramid that was resting on a block of granite in one of the caverns, the man warned him, “That’s against all the rules, Darren. You know that.”

“I was taking these pictures so I could show my boss,” Darren replied. He gave his friend a sheepish smile. “I’ll pitch the camera when we get back to camp, yeah?”

Bill eyed him, clearly not fully believing Darren. Finally, though, he said, “You’re going to get yourself in a mess of trouble one of these days.”

“Funny. That’s what my boss keeps telling me, too,” said Darren. He stuck close behind Bill. They were in the largest cavern, and it was quite warm due to the thermal activity.

Bill chuckled. “That woman that came to see you a few weeks ago didn’t mince her words. Are the two of you getting along? She doesn’t work for Orange, does she?”

“No. She