Race to Witch Mountain Read online

  Copyright © 2009 Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

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  First Edition

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  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number on file.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-5279-8

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  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  In 1947, numerous sightings of UFOs were reported across the western United States. The most famous occurred in Roswell, New Mexico, where initial news reports claimed a UFO had actually been captured by the U.S. Air Force.

  Although the Air Force denied these reports, the following year it began an ongoing investigation to study the possibility of UFOs. Known as Project Blue Book, this investigation lasted for decades and researched thousands of sightings.

  When Project Blue Book was officially terminated in 1970, the government maintained that there was no evidence suggesting aliens had visited Earth.

  Despite this claim, many UFO experts allege that the government continues to research alien activity to this day. Most believe the research is done at the ultra-top secret Area 51, a military installation located in the Nevada desert.

  In fact, the speculation about, and focus on, Area 51 has been so intense, that there has been virtually no notice or public mention of another government facility hidden just across the Nevada border in California.

  It is known as . . .Witch Mountain.

  CHAPTER 1

  High above the Nevada desert, a fireball blazed across the night sky, its orange-and-red flames trailing along the horizon. It did not go unnoticed. Inside NORAD—the North American Aerospace Defense Command—a group of highly trained specialists observed the fireball.

  Buried deep beneath Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, NORAD had top secret and state-of-the-art equipment designed to detect missiles launched by other countries. But this fireball had not come from another country. It had come from much, much, farther away. In fact, the scientists had been following its path on radar long before it even reached Earth’s atmosphere.

  Now they were trying to determine if it was just a random piece of space junk—such as an old satellite or a meteor—falling to earth or if it were something else.

  A senior analyst named Pleasence observed the steady stream of data flashing across his computer. He coolly relayed it to the group assembled behind him. “Object of unknown origin is at ninety K and descending fast,” Pleasence said.

  Ninety thousand feet was just over seventeen miles above the earth’s surface. At the speed it was traveling, it would only be a matter of seconds before it hit the ground.

  “Zero match with anything in our database,” Pleasence continued. Suddenly something else caught his attention. He paused, unsure if he should pass it along. Could he be reading the data right? “It’s . . . maneuvering.”

  The fact that it was maneuvering meant that it was definitely not a meteor or satellite falling toward Earth. Something, or someone, was steering the object.

  All eyes were on the wall of video monitors. They watched as the fireball streaked faster and faster across the sky. Then it slammed into the earth and plowed deep into the desert floor.

  Standing toward the back of the room, General Lawton observed the screens. He had risen to the rank of four-star general because he knew what to do in any situation—including this one. He turned to a young man sitting at the communication center.

  “Get me Henry Burke on the phone,” he ordered. “Now!”

  Henry Burke had a lean face with dark, secretive eyes. He rarely talked, and when he did, he revealed nothing of himself. There were only two things about him that his coworkers knew for absolute certainty: he was brilliant and he did not rest until a mission was completed.

  Within seconds of receiving the call from NORAD, Burke was taking long strides down the main corridor that ran through the heart of the Witch Mountain military base. In his hands, he clutched a top secret file. Two of his team members, Matheson and Pope, were practically running just to keep up with him.

  Their footsteps echoed through the corridor until they burst through a pair of doors into a hangar where a flight crew had just finished prepping three Black Hawk helicopters. A military wing commander named Carson was waiting.

  “Squad and equipment locked and loaded,” Carson informed Burke.“I’ve rerouted local law and media.”

  This was important. Even though the fireball had landed in a desolate part of the desert, someone may have seen it. The last thing the team needed was a small-town sheriff or an ambitious young news reporter in the way at the crash site. To control the situation, they would have to be the first ones on the scene.

  Once all the evidence of the impact had been cleared away, and Burke and his team determined just what had crashed, they could tell the press whatever they wanted. A slight smile crossed Burke’s face as he thought about what the cover story might be. Maybe they could say it was a research balloon, just as one of his predecessors had claimed at Roswell, New Mexico, more than sixty years earlier.

  In moments, the roar of three helicopters filled the hangar and the Black Hawks lifted off from Witch Mountain. They zoomed toward the crash site, flying just above the desert’s surface. At night, traveling with their lights off, they were practically invisible—which was exactly how Henry Burke liked it.

  Less than an hour after the crash landing, Burke and his team were on the scene. In case there was any radiation from the ship, they wore large protective hazmat suits and helmets. The silvery suits glistened in the moonlight and made the team look like aliens from a science-fiction movie.

  As they walked alongside the trench made by the impact, the team scanned the area with high-powered flashlights. The heat caused by the crash had been so intense, some of the sand had turned into tiny shards of glass. Suddenly, Carson’s flashlight reflected off something metallic buried in the sand.

  Quickly, the group moved closer.

  So focused on their mission, the group didn’t realize . . . they were being studied as well. About thirty yards away, a girl reached up her hand and gently moved some brush out of the way so she could watch Burke and his crew at work. Next to her, a boy did the same. From their hiding place, they examined the men in the strange clothes. They were careful to be quiet, but some leaves rustled and made just enough noise for Burke to hear them.

  He quickly spun around and shined his flashlight right in their direction. He scanned the area for a mome
nt but saw nothing. Still, Burke was not one to take chances.

  “Extend the perimeter,” he ordered. “No one gets in. Nothing gets out.”

  From their hiding place, two pairs of eyes took in Burke’s face and his stern expression.

  It was obvious this man would not be friendly.

  Suddenly, Burke signaled a soldier who set a pack of search dogs loose.

  There was not a moment to spare. Under cover of darkness, the pair slipped into the desert, the search dogs barking wildly right behind them.

  CHAPTER 2

  Las Vegas was like no other place in the world. filled with hotels and casinos shaped like massive pyramids and fairy-tale castles, it didn’t even look like a real city. That was especially true at night, when giant neon signs were turned on and filled the sky with an eerie mix of color and light that seemed otherworldly. This made Vegas the perfect location for UFO Space Expo ’09. What better place to talk about life in other worlds than in a city that looked like it came from one?

  Jack Bruno was definitely from this world. He made his living driving a taxi. Jack didn’t want to be a cabdriver, but he was good at it. Depending on the situation, he had the ability to be either friendly or menacing—a good trait for a cabbie. If he picked up a pair of newlyweds at the airport, his warm smile and easy sense of humor instantly made them feel welcome. But if some hard partyers climbed into his backseat—and Vegas had plenty of hard partyers— Jack was big enough and strong enough to keep them from getting out of hand.

  At this particular moment, Jack was shaking his head as he drove his cab down the main street, known as the Strip. Even for Las Vegas, things were pretty crazy. The sidewalks were overflowing with people who had come for the convention. Many of them were dressed like characters from their favorite science-fiction movies.

  At one corner, he saw three “people” cross the road together. One was dressed as a purple alien with six tentacles and another as a silvery robot with blinking lights on his chest. The third had hair and clothes like Elvis Presley—but his skin had been painted glow-in-the-dark green.

  Jack was rolling his eyes when two men dressed like storm troopers from Star Wars signaled him to stop. They had a hard time squeezing into the taxi because of their armor and toy laser blasters.

  “Imperial ’droid,” one said to Jack, trying his best to sound as menacing as possible. “Drive your Genosian Starfighter to Planet Hollywood,” he commanded.

  Jack sighed and started the meter. A fare was a fare. In the backseat, the “troopers” laughed and began to have a pretend battle, shooting their blasters at each other. Jack tried to ignore them, but then one of them almost hit him in the back of the head with his gun. With lightning speed, Jack ripped it out of his hand.

  “Hey!” yelped the trooper, his deep and scary voice suddenly replaced by a high-pitched whine. “That’s mine.”

  Jack pointed at a sign in the front seat that read: NO WEAPONS ALLOWED.

  “It’s just a toy,” the passenger complained.

  “Lighten up.”

  Jack shot them a withering scowl in the rearview. They quickly decided to end their battle and didn’t say another word the entire way to Planet Hollywood, where the UFO convention was headquartered.

  After he dropped them off, Jack left the Strip. He headed to the airport where he hoped he might find slightly more normal passengers. There were only so many aliens he could handle in a night.

  Outside the airport’s baggage claim, he was waved down by an attractive woman in her thirties. He relaxed and smiled the second he saw her. Not because she was pretty, but because she was dressed in a business suit and had no tentacles, face paint, or toy weapons.

  “Where to?” he asked with a friendly smile.

  “Planet Hollywood, please,” she said as she got into the backseat.

  Jack’s good mood deflated a little. He’d been hoping to avoid another miserable trip to that hotel. And he was a bit confused. Why was this woman heading straight into the heart of geekdom? Shrugging, he pulled away from the curb and turned on his radio. For a while, the only sound was the classic rock emanating from the speakers.

  The woman was wide-eyed as she looked out the window at the Vegas lights. “This place truly is like being on another planet,” she observed. “So much to do and see.”

  Just then, Jack was startled by a pair of aliens who staggered directly in front of his cab. They were so distracted by all the lights that they didn’t even notice the traffic. Luckily, Jack was an excellent driver, and he managed to swerve right around them.

  “Freaks,” he muttered not so quietly as he maneuvered the cab back into the flow of traffic. “Can’t wait for them to get in their spaceships and fly out of here.”

  A few moments later they reached Planet Hollywood, and Jack pulled the taxi up to the main entrance.

  “I understand your reaction,” the woman said as she pointed toward a group of ridiculously dressed convention-goers. “They certainly aren’t helping our cause.”

  “Our cause?” Jack repeated. She was one of them?

  “Educating the public about the possibility of life on other planets,” she explained.

  Jack was stunned. She was one of them.

  “As a matter of fact,” she continued, “I’m giving a lecture on astrophysical anomaly detection at the convention. Feel free to stop by. Closed-minded skeptics are always welcome.”

  She handed him a flyer advertising her lecture. It had all of the basic information about her talk as well as a very scholarly-looking picture of her. Underneath the picture it gave her name: Dr. Alex Friedman.

  CHAPTER 3

  The next morning, as the sun rose over a distant ridge, Henry Burke and his team were hard at work investigating the crash site. A cover story about a mysterious chlorine spill had done its job, and area roads were blocked off for miles in every direction. No civilians would disturb the scene of the accident. Burke was in total control.

  In the early-morning sunlight, they could see much more than the night before. One group scoured the long trench where the flying object had burrowed into the ground. They took photographs and used metal detectors to make sure there were no remnants of the craft left behind in the dirt. At the far end of the trench, there was a gaping hole where the object had been pulled from the sand before being transported back to Witch Mountain.

  Burke and his assistants, Pope and Matheson, were now searching the hillside where they thought they had heard something the night before. Pope, a fresh-faced scientist straight out of MIT, was just about to take a step, when Burke reached over and grabbed his leg in midair.

  Pope instantly realized his mistake. He moved back so as not to disturb anything, while Burke pulled out an ultraviolet light and waved it over the ground Pope had nearly stepped on. Under the light, they were able to make out footprints. From the looks of them, they had definitely not been made by any animal native to the desert.

  “Cast it,” Burke instructed Matheson as he moved the light forward and illuminated several more footprints. “Cast all of them.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Matheson was inside the mobile command center that had been set up at the crash site. The center was sleek and modern and filled with computers, monitors, and all sorts of electronic devices.

  Matheson had arranged the plaster casts he had taken along a table and was studying them with microscope goggles. Burke, Pope, and Carson all watched.

  “There’s a distinct pattern alternating between the depth of the impressions—a differing weight distribution,” Matheson explained, “suggesting not one, but two separate EBEs.” EBE stood for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity.

  Burke looked down at the casts and considered what the scientist was telling him.

  “They were moving fast. Bipedal,” Matheson continued. He looked up at the other members of the team and took a deep breath before adding, “Possibly . . . humanoid in form.”

  He locked eyes with Burke. This was by far the biggest dis
covery they had ever uncovered.

  The moment was interrupted by Pope. As usual, he was enthusiastic, to say the least. “How awesome is that?” he asked, his voice cracking. “I mean those little nanomicrobes that were found in that Mars rock were cool, but”—he paused—“nowhere near as cool as aliens—who run!”

  The three other men turned and stared at him, their expressions stern. Pope had said the A word. Gulping, he pretended to be fascinated by the footprint casts.

  Burke instantly began instructing the others. “Review every data-gathering entity within a fifty-mile radius, starting on impact.” He scanned their faces to make sure they understood exactly what they were looking for. “Hunt for the anomaly.”

  CHAPTER 4

  While Burke was starting his hunt, Jack was getting ready to begin another shift. Quickly, he walked into the taxi garage to where a line of cabs were parked. They had been fueled up and cleaned out and were ready to hit the streets. Although a sign declared that the area was for taxis only, a large black SUV was blocking Jack’s cab.

  The windows of the SUV were too dark for him to see through, but he had a pretty good idea of who was in there. Once he got close, a door opened and out stepped Frank, a large man whose suit was stretched to the limit trying to cover his massive body.

  “Jack,” Frank said, moving toward him, “you don’t return calls anymore.”

  Marty, another big man in a suit, stepped out from the other side of the SUV. “Mr. Wolfe thinks you’re being rude,” Marty said.

  Their boss was not a nice man. And right now, he was rather unhappy with Jack. Whenever Mr. Wolfe was upset with someone, it was Frank and Marty’s job to deliver threats and, when necessary, physical punishment. They terrified most people, but Jack could be just as intimidating. He stared Marty right in the eye.

  “Tell Wolfe that when I said the last time was the last time, I meant it was the last time.”

  Frank let out a menacing laugh. “Mr. Wolfe decides when it’s the last time. Not you, Jack.”