ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

140 The Hunt for Zero Point
deduced that it had to be Area 51 and that Pittman Station was the mail
drop.
Edwards, then, was the white world mirror image of Area 51, the
super-classified facility at Groom Lake.
Both the "pulser" and the aircraft tracked by the U.S. Government
Survey's seismic equipment (more than likely one and the same aircraft
type) were viewed on a heading that either led into or out of Groom Lake.
Twenty miles to the west, somewhere behind the palms surrounding
the Desert Inn's swimming pool, lay the "Tejon Ranch," Northrop's
RCS range, a remote facility buried in a gulley on the southern end of the
Tehachapi Mountains. People who found themselves in the vicinity of
this place in the dead of night had reported seeing orbs of light within the
confines of the range and, inevitably, stories that Northrop was testing
recovered alien spacecraft began to circulate among UFO buffs. Based on
Northrop's highly classified work applying electrostatics to the B-2, these
pieces of eyewitness testimony now perhaps had a more plausible
explanation.
UFO stories had grown up around the two other radar test ranges in
the area—Lockheed Martin's and McDonnell Douglas' (now Boeing's)—
a score of miles to the east. Closer still, was Plant 42, the site on the
airfield at Palmdale where the Skunk Works' huge manufacturing facility
was located. It was there that I was due to meet with and interview Jack
Gordon, bright and early after breakfast.
It was sometime in the dead hours that I heard the sound of scratching
coming from the lock. I turned toward the handle, no more than four
feet from the head of the bed, and saw it move, fractionally, but
perceptibly, in the thin sliver of light spilling from a crack in the
bathroom door. In my head, I knew exactly what was happening even
before the action started. Someone was about to hard-key the front door
lock and there was nothing I could do about it. As I braced for the bang
from the hammer that would drive the platinum tool into the barrel of
the lock and core it out in a split instant, it happened, but so fast, all I
could do was lie there, paralyzed, as the door flew in and the bolt cutters
took down the chain. Then, I saw them: three shapes silhouetted
momentarily in the doorway—black jumpsuits, body armor, kevlar
helmets and semiautomatic weapons. A glint of reflected moonlight on
the barrel of the gun as it moved and then it was hard against my
forehead, grinding against the thin skin between my eyebrows. More
pressure, killing pressure, as the snub-barreled Ml6 was pushed down