The Magdalene Cipher by Jim Hougan Page A

and let the smile flare .
    â€œAnyway, I was with them for . . . what? Musta been twelve years.”
    â€œStarting when?”
    â€œÂ â€™Sixty. Up through ’71, ’72, maybe. That’s when we got our name. The 143rd.”
    Dunphy nodded .
    â€œAintcha gonna write that down?”
    â€œSure,” Dunphy said, and made a note .
    â€œÂ â€™Cause that’s when the 143rd got started. Same year as Watergate. So it’s easy to remember.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œAnd, of course, you couldn’t run something like the 143rd out of Roswell—I mean, it’s a working town, for God’s sake. People live there!”
    Dunphy nodded in an understanding way. “So . . .”
    â€œThey set us up over in Dreamland.”
    Dunphy gave him a blank look .
    â€œYou don’t know Dreamland?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHunh! I thought everybody knew about Dreamland. I mean, it’s been on 60 Minutes! a”
    â€œYeah, well . . . I don’t watch a lot of television.”
    â€œBy now, I expect there’s books about it. Anyway, Dreamland’s in the Nellis Range, a hundred and twenty miles northwest of Vegas. Emigrant Valley. They got about a hundred thousand acres up there—”
    â€œThey?”
    â€œUncle Sam. Three or four hangars, half a dozen runways.”
    â€œYou lived there?”
    â€œNo one actually ‘lives’ there. All it is, really, is an antennae farm with rattlesnakes—and funny airplanes, of course. Most of us lived in Vegas and shuttled back and forth.”
    â€œThere’s a shuttle?”
    â€œYou had half a dozen flights a day out of McCarran Airport—still do, I guess. Takes about half an hour. The flights are run by a Lockheed subsidiary. I forget what it’s called. Anyway, they fly 767s, painted black with a red line down the fuselage.”
    â€œSo how many people were going up there every day?”
    â€œMaybe a thousand. Back and forth.”
    â€œAnd they’re all with the 143rd—”
    â€œNo, no, no. Nothing like it. When I was working, there were maybe ten of us—tops.”
    â€œAnd the others . . .”
    Brading gave a dismissive shrug. “Testin’, trainin’ . . . there’s an Aggressor Squadron, MiG-23s and Sukhoi Su-22s—they’re outa Groom Lake. And I guess they’ve come up with a replacement for the Blackbird—”
    â€œReally!”
    â€œOh, yeah! What I hear, it’s a Tier III reconnaissance jet that’ll do mach six with a radar profile the size of your hand.”
    â€œWow,” Dunphy said .
    â€œWow’s right. It was all very impressive, and it was actually good cover for what we were doing. Though, if you wanta know the truth, the choppers we had were more advanced than the planes.”
    Dunphy blinked, uncertain that he’d heard correctly. He wanted to ask Brading to repeat what he’d said, the part about cover. Instead, he asked, “What kind of helicopters?”
    Brading’s eyes lighted up. “MJ-12 Micro Pave Lows! Best in the world. We’re talking about a twin-turbo, tilt-rotor aircraft with the most advanced terrain-following/terrain-avoidance avionics anywhere. Totally Stealthed, low-light/no-light mission-capable with a twelve-hundred-mile range. I get all üggy inside, just thinkin’ about it. I mean, this is a machine that’s got four million lines of software in the computers, and an external cargo hook that can lift five thousand pounds. You could fly ’em low and slow, or tilt the rotors—wham, bam! you’re in a turboprop. Absolutely revolutionary! We cruised at three hundred knots, and—here’s the best part—here’s the revolutionary part—the only sound we made was collateral! The wind kicked up, and sometimes things got blown around.”
    Dunphy must have looked skeptical because Brading became even