At the same instant the zip ties binding our ankles to a ring in the floor were neatly severed, as though by an invisible sword, and just like that Tessa and I were surrounded by nothing but the vast night sky, as surely as if we had jumped from the plane, rather than it having been disassembled around us.
Gravity took hold immediately, and we began a free fall. I was too panicked even to scream. My heart was beating so fast I was sure it would burst out of my chest, but since my body was turning into a veritable icicle from the bitter, biting cold, and I was also suffocating, I could well be dead before that happened.
And these fates might be a blessing. If my freefall brought me to an altitude I could survive fast enough, I’d be warmed up and able to breathe just in time to slam into the ground at a hundred miles an hour like a glass meteorite, shattering every bone in my body.
I had thought I had experienced cold, and breathlessness, and terror, but nothing in my life had ever come close to this, and I felt myself blacking out.
Suddenly, everything changed. My fall was gently slowed as if by an invisible hand, as if by a Star Trek tractor beam, gripping me in some kind of benevolent force field and returning warmth and air to my immediate environment. I was still hanging high in the night sky, still near the altitude at the peak of Mount Everest, but was now quite comfortable. I could see through the field quite well, and picked out Tessa in a glowing force cocoon of her own, suspended in space not ten feet away.
The craft we had seen earlier was hanging above us. This time, however, another identical craft was just to the left of the first, and suspended beneath this second craft were our five fellow passengers, in various states of panic.
Then, as I looked on, the second ship and its dangling Chinese cargo vanished from sight. It seemed to me that Tessa and I were stationary, and I felt no acceleration of any kind, but I had the instinctive sense that we were moving at great speed.
Was I unconscious? Was I dreaming? How could this be real?
Then again, how could it be anything but?
As impossible as it seemed, I had spent seven months proving to myself that UFOs were real—and extraordinary. Still, that had been on an intellectual level. What was happening now was taking place on an emotional, visceral level. This increased the surreal factor of the experience by an order of about, well . . . infinity.
After no more than a minute or two the world exploded into sunlight. We had outraced the darkness and had come to a part of the Earth that was experiencing day. Now that my surroundings were illuminated, it was clear that we were traveling at a ridiculous speed, yet I didn’t feel any acceleration or wind of any kind. We were protected from such nuisances by the field surrounding us. Which was a very good thing. I was pretty sure that at the speed we were traveling, the force of the wind alone would have torn us to atoms.
Then, after just another few minutes, we were suddenly above a tropical island paradise. Tessa and I descended to the surface in a blink, and we were deposited next to each other in a seated position on a fine-sand beach, overlooking a magnificent blue ocean. The force field then disappeared from around us and our full weight returned.
The tic tac above us paused for a moment, dipped toward us a few times, as if tipping its hat, and then shot straight up, quickly vanishing into the heavens.
It was one thing to read and speak about forty-six thousand miles an hour—which was over twelve miles a second. It was quite another to experience it. To see a craft rocket upwards so quickly it seemed to blink out of existence.
I lifted myself up off the sand, putting my weight on my good right leg, and hopped the short distance to Tessa. She rose and we held each other, gazing out over the ocean with bewildered looks on our faces, totally speechless.
I heard something behind me and wheeled around as best I could, my guard up.
“Hello, Jason,” said a man ten feet away and closing. “Hello, Tessa. Glad you could make it.”
“Brad?” said Tessa in disbelief.
“In the flesh,” said the head of Schoenfeld-Allen Protection Services, who was casually dressed.
“You both look a little pale,” he added with the hint of a smile. “I hope you remembered to keep your arms and legs inside of the ride at all times.”
I blinked stupidly and didn’t reply.
“Welcome to the Tasman Sea,” said the colonel amiably, as if he were hosting a dinner party. “I’m guessing the two of you have a few questions.”
PART 3
13
Tessa and I sat in comfortable mesh chairs inside a spacious conference room. The room was luxuriously appointed, to be sure, but no more so than any number of such rooms found in the world’s wealthiest corporations. What set this one apart was location, location, location.
It was positioned on top of a thirty-foot cliff, and Tessa and I were facing a floor-to-ceiling window. Below us was a pristine white-sand beach that was being leisurely caressed by mild waves coming from an endless cobalt sea.
The view was absolutely spectacular.
We had built up quite an appetite and were making short work of the sandwiches and chips that our host had provided, along with an assortment of cold drinks kept in a full-sized refrigerator in the corner of the room. Other than food and drink, the expansive Cherrywood table held nothing but marble coasters and a stack of thick white napkins.
After greeting us upon our arrival, the colonel had asked which we preferred, to be briefed immediately? Or to wait until we’d showered, dined, re-dressed our many wounds, and gotten some rest?
And I thought I could ask dumb questions.
Did we want to get answers to the greatest secrets of all time, secrets we had nearly lost our lives to learn? Or did we want to wait so we could have a side salad with our meals and smell minty fresh?