Fallen Star (Project Gauntlet Book 1) Read online

  FALLEN STAR

  A Project Gauntlet Mission

  by Richard Turner

  ©2017 by Richard Turner

  Published 2017 by Richard Turner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 1

  July 9th, 1947

  Northwest of Roswell, New Mexico

  Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Lloyd turned the wheel of his blue 1947 Chevrolet Aerosedan over in his callused hands and drove off the empty highway onto a dirt track. A brown-haired coyote running alongside the trail saw the car coming, and stopped to watch as it passed by. Lloyd rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand. The muscles were as tight as steel. He grimaced. If Lloyd didn’t get some good news, a full-blown tension headache was only minutes away. Lloyd looked out over the desolate landscape and wondered how everything had gotten out of hand so quickly. Since the end of the war things in his office had been relatively quiet, and that was just the way he liked it.

  Colonel Lloyd was a career soldier who had served as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force in the skies over Europe. Under a pair of dark sunglasses, his weary brown eyes were bloodshot. Lloyd’s chestnut hair was almost all gone from the top of his head. His round face was well-tanned, from having been outside under the hot New Mexico sun for the past couple of days. Lloyd wasn’t wearing his usual army uniform. Instead, he wore a pair of brown slacks and a tan-colored shirt.

  Just up ahead, he could see a farm. Lloyd slowed down and approached the front gate, where a couple of military policemen stood guard dressed as farm hands. Lloyd fished out his identification and flashed it to one of the MPs. The man quickly checked his ID and opened the gate. Lloyd drove toward an old, white-painted wooden house with three vehicles out front of it. He parked his car and got out. Right away, the dry, scorching, late-afternoon heat struck him. It was like walking into an oven.

  The front door to the house opened. A man in his early thirties with thick, blond hair waved at Lloyd. “Good afternoon, sir,” said the man. “How was the drive?”

  “Long and hot,” Lloyd replied gruffly. He had been on the road for close to eight hours, and was looking forward to a shower and a cool beer or two after he concluded his business at the farm. “Is the rest of the team here?”

  “Yes, sir. Major Gordon and Captain Thurman arrived a couple of hours ago.”

  Lloyd followed the man inside and smiled when he saw a full pitcher of iced lemonade sitting on the dining table.

  “Here, let me pour you a glass,” said the blond-haired man.

  Lloyd took the glass and drained it in one long drink. “Another one, please, Captain Jones.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Besides Lloyd and Jones, there were two other men sitting at a round table in the small kitchen. Although there was a fan in the corner running at full power, the temperature inside the house was stifling. Both were dressed in casual attire. Major Gordon had thinning, black hair, while Captain Thurman was bald and wore silver-rimmed glasses on his pudgy nose.

  “Okay, gents, fill me in on what we know,” said Lloyd, as he took a seat.

  Major Gordon spoke first. “Sir, as you are aware, yesterday, the public affairs officer at the Roswell Army Airfield issued a statement to the press indicating that a flying disc had been found and recovered by personnel from the base.”

  “Yes, the damn fool caused quite an unneeded panic in the Pentagon,” said Lloyd, wiping his sweat-covered brow with a red-and-white checkered handkerchief. “He’ll be lucky to find work as a janitor after that monumental screw-up. Wasn’t he aware of the Fallen Star Protocols?”

  “Apparently not. The orders were locked away in the base commander’s safe, and by the looks of things had yet to be read by anyone on the base.”

  “Goddammit. It’s a priority-one document. It should have been read the day it was received.” Lloyd shook his head. “When I get back home I’ll speak with the ops staff at the Army Air Corps Headquarters, and make sure the word gets out for everyone to read the protocols immediately, before we have another one of these incidents.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Captain Thurman. “A new statement was given by the base’s commanding officer to the press earlier today, refuting the initial claim of a flying disc being discovered.”

  “What was the new cover story?” asked Lloyd.

  “A weather balloon, sir.”

  Lloyd chuckled. “Inventive, yet highly plausible. Has this gone out on the newswire?”

  Thurman nodded.

  “Have they done anything to reinforce their story?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gordon. “An old weather balloon that crashed in the desert late last year was shown to the press. Afterward, it was loaded up into a C-54 transport plane and flown to Los Alamos for further examination. Once the crash team at Los Alamos sees the wreckage, they’ll issue another press release confirming the weather balloon narrative.”

  “Very good. This should put this incident to bed quite nicely.” Lloyd emptied his glass and wiped his parched lips with the back of his hand. He looked around the cluttered farmhouse. “Say, who owns this place?”

  “It belongs to a man called Fred Deckard,” replied Jones.

  “Is he trustworthy? I don’t want this all falling apart because someone couldn’t keep their damned lips shut.”

  “Sir, don’t worry, Mister Deckard is very reliable. He fought in the First World War with the Marines, and is a true patriot. When we asked him if we could rent the place for a week to test some equipment, he never batted an eye. He refused to take any money from me, and insisted it was his national duty to help us out.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In town with his only daughter and her three kids.”

  “Where’s her husband?”

  “He died during the war. At Okinawa, I think.”

  Lloyd turned his head away for a moment before standing up. He had lost a younge
r brother and two cousins in the war. He knew the pain of dealing with the loss of a loved one all too well. Lloyd looked at the men in the room with him. “Okay, let’s not drag this out any longer than we have to. Where is it?”

  “It’s in the barn behind the house,” explained Gordon.

  Together, the four men walked to the barn. A man with an army-issue M1 rifle stood guard outside. Thurman opened a side door and held it while everyone else walked inside.

  Lloyd had barely stepped inside when he stopped in his tracks. His eyes widened the second he saw the large, silver, metallic disc sitting on the back of a vehicle trailer. It was about twenty meters in circumference, with what looked like a cockpit for two pilots in the middle of the craft. The front of the ship was damaged, from where the disc had struck the ground. He walked toward the ship and placed his hand on the outer shell. It was smooth and cool to the touch.

  Lloyd shook his head. “Can you believe it? This is the third one of these to crash in as many months.”

  “Sir, when it gets dark we’re going to cover the craft with a tarp and drive it to Los Alamos where it will be flown to Wright-Patterson Air Base in Dayton,” explained Jones.

  “Will you three be accompanying it all the way to Ohio?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lloyd let out a tired sigh and ran a hand over his unshaven chin. “I suppose there’s only one thing left to do. Where are they being held?”

  “I can show you. If you’ll follow me, sir,” said Gordon, motioning back to the door.

  The two men walked out of the barn and to a silver trailer parked next to a decrepit-looking stable.

  Lloyd stopped at the door and looked at his colleague. “How are they doing?”

  “Fine, sir. They haven’t said a word, but seem to be in remarkably good health considering how hard the disc hit the ground when it crashed.”

  “Okay, wait outside while I talk to them.” Lloyd opened the door and stepped into the air-conditioned trailer. The instant he saw the two occupants sitting at a table, sipping water, he shook his head. “For the love of God, I should have known it would be you two!”

  One of the pilots flashed a pearly-white smile at Lloyd and said, “Guten tag, Herr Colonel.”

  Chapter 2

  Iraq – present day

  Coalition Special Forces

  Training Camp – North of Al Kut

  Captain David Grant walked out of his tent, heading to the showers, when something made him glance upward. With almost no local population located anywhere near the secret training establishment to create light pollution, it was easy to see the beauty of the night sky. Millions of stars twinkled overhead. He stood and watched as a shooting star streaked above the base before burning out. Grant had just come from the gym, where he and a friend had pumped iron for over an hour. With some reluctance, he turned back toward the showers. His recent weightlifting session had turned into an hour long bench-press competition with one of his friends. Now, he was tired and sore. And to rub salt in the wound, he’d lost by just one kilo.

  They’d have to see what happened in the rematch, scheduled later in the week.

  Grant pulled open the door to the shower tent and walked in. The place was deserted. He removed his sweat-stained clothes and hung them up, before stepping under a shower faucet. Grant turned the water on, lowered his head, and let the hot water massage his tired and aching shoulder muscles. After soaping and washing himself off, he reached over and turned off the taps. Grant ran a hand over his face to wipe away the water, before grabbing his towel and drying off his taut body.

  His mind drifted back to the last conversation he’d had with his father. Grant had just turned thirty, and was facing what his grandfather used to call ‘that inevitable fork in the road.’ Grant’s ailing father had once more asked him to leave the army and move back home to take over the family business. Grant had joined the army to get away from home in the first place. As far back as he could remember, he had always wanted to see the world and serve his country. He hoped to have at least a twenty-year career in the army, before moving back home to run his family’s vineyard. To further muddy the waters, Grant was waiting on word from his commanding officer to see if he was going to be promoted to major later in the year. The only thing Grant knew for certain was that he didn’t know what to tell his father the next time they spoke.

  After pulling on some clean shorts and a tan army T-shirt, Grant walked over to a row of sinks along the wall of the tent and stopped to look in a mirror. Although his hair was already cut short, Grant couldn’t decide if he should get a trim in the morning. What little hair he had on his head was a light-brown color, and his sharp eyes were a medium sky-blue. He stood just under two meters tall, and was, without a doubt in the best shape of his life. After one last look at himself, Grant grabbed his laundry, pushed open the door, and stepped outside into the cool night air.

  Camp Bayonet was a coalition Special Forces training establishment, where American, British, Canadian, and Australian soldiers taught Iraqi special operators how to be squad and platoon leaders. Normally, the camp would be home to over three hundred Iraqi soldiers and civilians, but now was almost empty. The last batch of recruits had graduated two days ago, and the next crew wouldn’t arrive for another week. The quiet time allowed the coalition staff to conduct a personnel rotation of their own. Half of the training staff assigned for the year would soon be replaced by fresh instructors.

  Grant welcomed the peace and quiet. It gave him a chance to catch up on the mountains of paperwork, which seemed to pile up on his desk on a daily basis. His job in the camp was that of a company mentor, who helped guide his Iraqi counterpart through the training of his new squad leaders. After ten months in theater, Grant was looking forward to rotating back home to the States. Where he was going to next was still up in the air, but he had asked to be posted back home to the 82nd Airborne Division. Grant walked back to his tent, dropped off his dirty clothes, put a pair of old runners on his feet, and then retrieved his M4 carbine which he slung over his back.

  Outside, the Muslim nighttime call to prayer came over the camp’s speakers. Grant had heard the pre-recorded calls five times a day for months, and was now mostly oblivious to them. He stepped out of his tent and watched as a handful of Iraqi security personnel accompanied by some of the camp’s civilian staff made their way to a small mosque built at the other end of the base. Grant was of two minds. He wanted to forget the last conversation he had with his dad and watch a movie on his computer, but a nagging voice in the back of his mind told him to do an hour of work at his desk before calling it a night.

  He was halfway between his quarters and his office when, without warning, the camp plunged into darkness. Grant stopped in his tracks and looked around. Every light in the camp was out. An uneasy feeling swept over him when he couldn’t hear the base’s power generators running. He brought his watch up to check the time. Like everything else, it had ceased to work. The only light came from the full moon high above the camp.

  “Hey, does anyone know what the hell is going on?” called out a man with a strong Australian accent.

  Grant turned toward a shadowed figure standing outside of a tent. He walked over and recognized Sergeant James Maclean from the Australian training team.

  Maclean held up a satellite phone. “I was chatting with my sister back home in Sydney when the bloody phone died on me.”

  “Odd, isn’t it?” said Grant. “Everything in the camp with an electrical circuit switched off all at once. Even my watch has stopped working.”

  Maclean checked his wristwatch and swore. “Mine’s not working, either.”

  Several more men walked out of their tents and looked around the darkened camp.

  “Someone must have forgotten to pay the bills,” called out a man in the night, eliciting a few nervous laughs.

  “I wonder how far this blackout extends?” said Grant to Maclean.

  “Only a small portion of the camp is on the Ir
aqi electrical grid,” explained Maclean. “Most of our power comes from our portable generators. Besides, what could have caused our watches to stop working?”

  “I once read that an electromagnetic pulse could cause everything using electricity to stop working. But it would take a fair bit of power to knock out all of the electrical circuits in the camp.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that, Captain. But what could have caused an EMP out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Grant shrugged. “Perhaps it was from a massive solar flare striking the atmosphere somewhere above us?”

  “Maybe, but I’m not sure that’s the answer. I’ve never read about something happening quite like this anyplace else in the world.”

  “There’s got to be a first time for everything, Sergeant. Come on, let’s climb the nearest tower and see if the local villages are affected, as well.”

  At the top of the tower, they found two Iraqi security guards, sitting on the floor, smoking cigarettes.

  “On your bloody feet,” said Maclean, grabbing one of the men by the collar and hauling him up.

  Grant looked out toward the horizon. It was the same everywhere he looked. The countryside was pitch black. “Whatever happened, it’s big. It knocked out everything around us for kilometers.”

  “Sir, we should let Colonel Rodriguez know what has happened, so he can organize some form of security with the local Iraqi police until the power comes back on,” suggested Maclean.