GENESIS (Projekt Saucer)

  The epic novel of the world’s most fearsome secret

  More than a gripping, enthralling novel of

  brain-searing excitement, Genesis is a

  reading experience you will never forget… In these pages you will enter a world of nightmarish global conspiracy and perverted super-science that will both horrify and fascinate you. You will see the hidden forces of technological evil massing to obliterate those who threaten to reveal their appalling existence. And, in the totally unexpected and chilling climax, you will witness one of the most powerful testaments to the strength of the human spirit in adversity ever to appear in a work of fiction…

  ‘A Herculean conspiracy epic… superbly written, crammed with food for thought.’

  -Los Angeles Times

  Also by W. A. Harbinson

  Fiction None But The Damned Knock

  Deadlines

  Revelation

  Inception

  Phoenix

  Millennium

  Resurrection

  The Crystal Skulls

  Into the World of Might Be

  Nonfiction

  Projekt UFO: The Case for Man-Made Flying Saucers

  Genesis

  W.A. Harbinson

  Custom Books Publishing

  Copyright © 1980, 1982 by W.A. Harbinson This edition published in 2010 by W. A. Harbinson

  www.waharbinson.eu.com

  ISBN -13: 978-1456479800 ISBN-10: 1456479806

  Copyright © 2010 by W. A. Harbinson The right of W.A. Harbinson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Designed in the Isle of Wight, Great Britain, by www.inkdigital.org For Ursula

  November 23, 1944

  It began when the B-25 had crossed the Rhine and was starting to make its bombing run over darkened Germany. The other aircraft had already made their first run when Lieutenant Tappman, twenty-one years of age and out of Denver, Colorado, studied the cross hairs of his bombsight, watched the last of the indices join, and prepared to trip away his load of five-hundred pounders.

  The first bombs were already exploding, tiny flames in the black void, the flat drifting far below, the tracer bullets like fireworks, when Tappman blinked and saw the pulsating red lights winking on and then vanishing. ‘What the hell – ?’ the pilot said. ‘Jesus Christ!’ a gunner added. The intercom crackled, voices rising and falling, then the Plexiglas nose was briefly filled with crimson light as three globes of spinning flame shot up vertically and vanished above.

  Tappman blinked and shook his head, heard the coughing of the engines, felt the aircraft shuddering strangely and levelling out and heading away from the target zone. A spasm of fear lanced through him, an instinctive dread of the unknown, and he promptly pressed the button on his throat mike and said, ‘What the hell’s happening there?’ The intercom crackled. ‘What was that?’ The copilot said. ‘I don’t know,’ the tailgunner replied. ‘I saw lights – three red lights.’ Tappman looked into his bombsight, saw the cross hairs over darkness, cursed softly when the engines malfunctioned and the plane shuddered again. ‘You’re going off course!’ he shouted. ‘What the hell are you up to? I can’t see a damned thing from here! Is it enemy aircraft?’ The plane shook and dropped again, climbed back up, levelled out, the intercom crackling, metallic voices colliding. ‘Red lights! Something burning! No, they’re climbing! Jesus Christ!’ And then Tappman was dazzled, the night filled with spinning flames, and the burning globes spread out around the plane and then started to pace it.

  The plane shuddered and rolled, went into a shrieking dive, barrelling down through streams of tracers and black mushrooms of flak, the blazing buildings of Germany far below, illuminating the darkness. ‘Pull her up!’ Tappman bawled his eyes blinded by purple flares. ‘What the hell’s going on? We’re cutting out! We’re down, you dumb bastards!’ The plane roared and shook violently, levelling out, its wings quivering, and Tappman saw his jack-plug dangling loose and jammed it back into the intercom. ‘They’re still with us!’ the pilot was shouting. ‘What are they?’ the gunner wailed. The nose shuddered and pointed upward, heading through the tiers of flak, the plane’s engines sounding healthy again as it started to climb.

  Tappman looked for the balls of fire, saw nothing, rubbed his eyes, felt isolated in the bombardier’s compartment at the end of the crawlway. ‘What are you doing?’ he bawled, seeing yellow fires below, the ugly black clouds of flak around him, hearing muffled explosions. ‘We cut out!’ he shouted. ‘We went dead! What’s going on out there?’

  The intercom crackled, the tailgunner’s voice wailing, fading in and out, back in again, sounding close to demented. ‘What are they?’ the gunner wailed. ‘They’re right beside me! I can’t hit them! I can’t make them out! They’re not conventional aircraft! What the hell are those things?’

  Tappman cursed and glanced around him, not believing what he had seen, wishing he could see them again, filled with dread and excitement. ‘What?’ the pilot bawled. ‘Spinning balls!’ the gunner wailed. ‘Balls of fire! I’m not sure! They look like balls of fire and they’re spinning! Oh, my God, now there’s more of them!’

  A sudden silence, then the static, then the roaring of the guns, someone screaming and then the plane rolling as if out of control. Tappman cursed and shook his head, glanced up to see the sky, the dark clouds and the smaller clouds of flak, the silvery web of the tracers. ‘Drop the bastards!’ the pilot bawled, wanting the bombs to be released, wanting his plane to be freed of its load and climb out of the chaos. ‘I can’t!’ Tappman whispered, working the controls to no avail, the fear racing back in to smash his senses when the engines cut out again. ‘We’re going down!’ someone screamed.

  The plane shuddered and went silent, started rolling, falling fast, Tappman trapped in the nose cone with the Earth far below him. He heard the static, someone wailing – the tailgunner or copilot – and looked below, following the line of the falling plane, to see the fires of the air raid. ‘What are they?’ the gunner cried. ‘The engines are dead!’ the pilot bawled. ‘They’re not planes!’ the gunner cried. ‘They’re balls of fire! Jesus Christ, now they’re climbing!’

  The engines roared back into life, as if controlled by the balls of fire, the plane levelling out and heading through the tracer bullets and the black clouds of flak. Tappman groaned and licked his lips, simply forgot to release his bombs, jerked his head around and saw a crimson light that fanned out across the dark sky. ‘What’s that?’ Tappman shrieked, not recognising his own voice, his heart pounding as he searched for the German fighters and saw only the crimson light. ‘I don’t know! the pilot bawled. ‘They’re right behind us!’ the gunner screamed. ‘They’re pacing us!’ the copilot joined in, his voice high and distorted. ‘They’re killing our engines!’

  Tappman glanced all around him, closed his eyes, looked again, saw the crimson glow spreading across the darkness at the side of the nose cone. Then the engines malfunctioned, started spluttering into
silence, coughed into life once again and made the plane jerk unnaturally. Tappman shrieked some mindless plea, hardly aware of his own voice, staring out through the glinting Perspex to see a strange ball of fire. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he whispered to no one, his eyes wide and disbelieving, seeing that spinning ball of fire, then another, then a third, suddenly recalling all the stories he had heard and never believed. ‘Foo fighters!’ the gunner screamed, his voice distorted by the intercom, reverberating in Tappman’s head and then fading away as the plane hurtled Earthward.

  ‘We’re going down! Pull her up!’ Tappman grabbed hold of himself, closed his eyes, embraced the nightmare, felt his body being pressed back into the chair as the plane kept on falling. The plane fell an endless mile, shuddering violently, spinning wildly, but it reached the ground eventually, plunging into it, exploding, Tappman hearing a crazed voice wailing ‘

  Foo! ’ which is where it all ended.

  Chapter One

  Shortly after noon on March 6, 1974, a battered, two-toned Pontiac passed through the gates of Winslow Air Base, Arizona, and headed directly for the Air Traffic Control Tower. The car moved leisurely but smoothly past the administration blocks and hangars, sunlight flashing off its windows, its wheels churning up red dust, the soft droning of its engine drowned out by the roaring of the aircraft either taking off or landing. There were white clouds in the blue sky, the planes glittered above the mountains, and the clouds were like banks of pure snow in a clear, azure lake.

  When the car eventually stopped at the glass-and-concrete control tower, the driver climbed out slowly, closed the door with some care, locked it, then glanced keenly around him. This man was short and broad, insignificant in his dark suit, his white hair dishevelled and his green tie hanging loose, the tanned fingers of his right hand reaching up to stroke a grey Vandyke beard. He was no longer run, was in fact just over sixty, and his face was a sunburnt webbed map of reflection and fatigue.

  After glancing briefly at the surrounding mountains, the man reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew a billfold, flipped it open and dangled it before the civilian guard. The guard was tall and impassive, dressed in black shirt and pants, and he studied the identity card, fingered the holster on his hip, distractedly stroked the peak cap on his head and then nodded assent. The old man smiled bleakly, returned his billfold to his pocket, winced when an airplane roared overhead, passed the guard, went inside.

  The stairs were made of concrete, uncovered, painted white, and they led up through silence and a dim half-light to the more pronounced semi-darkness of the Approach Control Room. The old man glanced at the elevator, considered it, rejected it, took a deep breath and climbed up the stairs, breathing fitfully, wearily. Finally reaching the top, facing a steel-plated door, he let his racing heart settle, tightened the knot in his tie, buttoned his jacket and then pushed the door open and closed it quietly behind him.

  The Approach Control Room was dimly lit, the numerous radarscopes flashing, the walls banked with computers and flight maps and schedule charts, the air traffic controllers bunched around the consoles, hair short, sleeves rolled up. The old man blinked and coughed, his hazel eyes scanning the gloom, then he raised one hand and distractedly stroked his beard, the noise and dim light confusing him. The air controllers all talked at once, telephones rang, radios crackled, and the colored lights of radarscopes and computers flashed on and off constantly.

  The old man coughed again, raised a hand and waved it languidly, watched his friend detaching himself from a group and coming toward him. His friend was young and flashy, his flowered shirt open-necked, the chain belt on his white trousers gleaming as he shook the old man’s hand. He did this and then stepped back, glanced around him, grinned and shrugged, then stepped forward again, took the old man by the shoulders and shook him affectionately.

  ‘You look good,’ he said. The old man smiled wearily, smoothed his thinning grey hair, looked around him, eyes squinting, bathed in muted orange light, stroked his beard and then loosened his tie and looked back at his younger friend.

  ‘I don’t feel as good as I look,’ he said. ‘Now what’s this emergency.’

  ‘I’m sorry I had to – ’

  A weathered hand waved. ‘It’s all right,’ the old man said. His accent was faintly European, his voice soft, almost hesitant. ‘Just tell me what’s happening.’

  The younger man was slow to answer, his fingers playing with the gleaming belt, He glanced uneasily around him and then reluctantly looked back at the older man.

  ‘We found Irving,’ he said.

  Something happened to the old man, something almost imperceptible, a spasm of shock, a fleeting fear or despair, before he blinked and automatically stroked his beard and then regained control again.

  ‘You found him?’

  ‘Yes, Frederick. He’s dead.’

  The old man looked at the floor, rubbed his eyes, glanced around him; he saw the glowing radarscopes, their orange light on men’s faces, the men casting long shadows on the floor, on the humming computers. He felt fear at that moment, the dry, familiar fear, a helpless dread that had enveloped his past and now mapped out his future. He looked back at his young friend, at the blond hair and blue eyes, saw the multicolored darkness all around him, making him unreal.

  ‘Suicide?’ the old man said.

  ‘So it seems, Frederick. They found him an hour ago, on U.S. 66 – in his car, just beyond Valentine, a gun in his hand.’

  ‘U.S. 66?’

  ‘That’s right. Apparently Mary never even saw him leaving. She’s staying in the house on Camelback Hill, and I just rang her and she didn’t sound well.’

  ‘No,’ the old man murmured. ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘Anyway,’ the young man said, ‘the usual. Mary says he hadn’t been sleeping well lately, that he’d been getting up in the middle of the morning and just wandering about the house, looking out the windows, looking up, obsessed by the whole thing. She thinks he must have done that this morning – got up when she was asleep – only this time he didn’t wander around: he took their car and drove off. The cops found him an hour ago. He’d shot himself in the mouth. I told them to hold off till we got there. We better go now.’

  The old man closed his eyes, shook his head from side to side, opened his eyes again and glanced around him, his face taut with grief.

  ‘Poor Mary,’ he whispered.

  The young man took his elbow, led him out of the control tower, down the stairs, through the door, past the guard, around the dusty old Pontiac. The noon sun blazed down upon them, upon the airstrip across the road, burned a monstrous white hole in the sky above the hazed, blue-ridged mountains.

  ‘We’ll leave your car here,’ the young man said. ‘We won’t be gone very long. We’ll just fly out there and find out what we can and then I’ll bring you right back.’

  The old man stroked the Pontiac, wiped the dust from his hand, glanced across the baked plain, eyes squinting against the sun, then dutifully followed the young man. The air base was busy, planes taking off and landing, a constant noise and movement above them as they crossed the hot tarmac. The old man was sweating, mopped his forehead, felt the wind – a fierce wind that emanated from a roaring and made his eyes narrow even more. His young friend was just ahead, ducking low, waving frantically, urging him on toward the red-andwhite 47G helicopter that had just burst into life on its landing pad.

  The rotor blades whirled, becoming a blur that whipped the dust up, turning the dust into a localized whirlwind that enveloped the old man. He almost stumbled, righted himself, covered his mouth and cursed softly, then his free hand held his jacket against his chest as he followed his friend.

  The helicopter roared and shuddered, its short steel ladder rattling, and the younger man, already inside, reached down with one hand. The old man was pulled up, slipped in behind the pilot, and promptly strapped himself into his seat as his friend closed the door. Then his friend sat down beside him, the helicopter shook and climbe
d, and the old man, visibly relieved, stared out through the Perspex.

  He felt grief and outrage, an uncoiling, chilling fear, looking down, Winslow shrinking below him, remembering other days, other deaths. Suicide, he thought. We all finally commit suicide. There is never a reason nor a motive, but it’s always a suicide. Of course he didn’t believe it, never had, never would. He looked down on the mountains, on the barren, rock-strewn earth, on the saguaros and ocotilla and barrel cacti, and felt the fear creeping over him.

  ‘How do you feel?’ the young man said.

  ‘About what you’d expect.’ The old man stroked his beard and rubbed his eyes. ‘I feel for Mary. How awful.’

  The helicopter dipped and climbed, sunlight flashing all around it, and the engine made a fierce, relentless roaring that drummed in their ears.#

  ‘We have a flap on,’ the young man said. ‘That’s why I’m out at the air base. There’s been sightings all over the goddamned place, and they’re keeping us busy.’

  The old man stared through the Perspex, saw the buttes and windcarved valleys. ‘There’s been a flap for the past fifteen months,’ he said, now looking sideways, smiling gently.

  ‘White Sands,’ his friend continued. ‘Los Alamos and Coolidge Dam. Visual sightings and radar reports, all unidentified returns solid.’ He shrugged his shoulders, ran his fingers through his blond hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It kinda makes me shiver. These things know where they’re going.’ He looked at the old man. His bearded friend did not respond. ‘Weird,’ he said. ‘So how did your year go? How are things at the institute?’

  The old man sighed. ‘Very busy,’ he said. ‘It’s been the biggest flap since 1967 and we haven’t had breathing space.’

  ‘Anything solid?’

  ‘Too many to discuss.’ The old man saw mountains far below, the desert stretching around them. ‘I just wish we could catch one.’