The plan was to travel to Winnipeg. How exactly to do that remained a mystery. He had no valid paperwork or ID and his Scout was heavily laden with a cache of "hardware" hidden inside the door panels. Two hours into this journey Mac decided to call for help. He stopped at a truck stop and made the call. Twenty minutes later he was back on the Interstate with a new destination, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. 800 miles later he was parked in an underground lot next to the main medical facility. He proceeded to the elevators and then room 311 as instructed where he introduced himself as "Mason Anthony". The receptionist smiled, told him he was expected, and led him to another area. Two men who didn't look like medical personnel, but who wore hospital ID badges walked him to another set of elevators then down to yet another garage. They got into an ambulance and pulled out of the hospital headed north. The attendants didn't speak so neither did he. Fifteen minutes later the ambulance pulled into a small air strip and he was told to proceed to the terminal and board medical flight 9535. No paperwork would be required.
Mac did as he was told.
The medical aircraft was a nicely apportioned Gulfstream G700 capable of carrying 18 passengers with a range of over 7,000 miles while cruising at 600mph. This particular jet was regularly used to transport doctors and human organs to transplant centers around North America when required. Today the jet had two pilots and one passenger, Mac Hodges. The co-pilot greeted Mac just before takeoff and told him they would be making the two-hour run to Winnipeg where he would find an automobile waiting for him with additional instructions.
He also explained with a wink there would be no in-flight service on this run.
Once they were in the air, Mac pulled a colorful brochure from the seat back pocket that explained the jet was owned and operated by a charitable foundation providing free travel for doctors and patients. What was more, the non-profit corporation operated a fleet of six similar planes scattered around the country, each capable of rapidly moving transplanted organs and medical staff anywhere in North America.
The non-profit foundation was underwritten by the Borealis Media Group.
On the ground at a private air field just east of Winnipeg, Mac quickly moved from the aircraft to a late model Ford Bronco and read the handwritten instructions that awaited him. He was to drive north to Gimli, near Lake Winnipeg, where he would park and board a private float plane that would deliver him to Kississing Lake Lodge, a five-star resort and fishing adventure destination for wealthy outdoor enthusiasts. He would dine this evening with Basil Mawbey before returning to Winnipeg tomorrow to meet with the ham radio operator whose observations kickstarted this entire investigation.
Driving north on the MB-8 Mac took note on the dashboard GPS that his ETA in Gimli was one hour. He recalled that long ago an Air Canada 767 making a routine run between Montreal and Edmonton ran out of fuel and "glided" some 45 miles before making a successful emergency landing at a former Royal Canadian Air Force base in Gimli, Manitoba. This aviation incident was famously named the "Gimli Glider" and was the only reason Mac had ever heard of the city.
A couple hours later, after the float plane delivered him to the lake lodge, he nearly collapsed while checking in as he hadn't slept in forty-eight hours and was exhausted. Basil probably assumed as much since he scheduled their dinner meeting for later that night. Mac would have a few hours to decompress and catch a shower. There were new clothes hanging in the closet in his room, though they weren't his.
Mawbey seemed to have thought of everything.
At 9pm local time the two were shaking hands and making small-talk about the mammoth twenty-six foot stone fireplace that was the centerpiece of the chalet-styled lodge. They would dine on perfectly prepared lake trout that had been recently taken, along with a medley of grilled vegetables. Probably due to his exhaustion, Mac hadn't immediately noticed they were the only guests in the restaurant until the sommelier began his exhaustive explanation for why Pinot Noir was the best pairing for lake trout, something about the light red wine complementing the fish's delicate flavors without overwhelming them. Basil asked for two bottles of their best Pinot.
"So, bring me up to date, what's going on?" Basil kicked off their meeting.
Mac spent the next fifteen minutes detailing what he had discovered to date, including the odd way his Uncle Fielding contacted him. This seemed of particular interest to Mawbey as he wondered if the Senator knew what he was working on, or maybe was even involved somehow in the mystery. Then Basil asked Mac to replay his history with the radio operator in Winnipeg.
"I made contact with him after eavesdropping on a discussion he was having with another ham. His story sounded interesting and more importantly, plausible. I did my due diligence, the guy is a professor at the local University and in follow-up discussions I didn't get any 'crazy' conspiracy vibes from him. One night during a camping trip in the United States, he witnessed what he called 'an incredible laser light show'. There were hundreds of drones, some of them larger than any he had ever seen. A few seemed to be disabled by the lasers. He hiked in for a closer look but stopped when he heard voices. Using the night vision gear he had with him, he could see a dozen or more men in what he said were uniforms, their faces masked with balaclavas. The next day he did some research to see if he could find out what was going on. The only clues he could find were a few public notices in the local newspapers about a large section of the Black Hills National Forest being closed to visitors due to some mineral discovery issues, and that was the area where he saw these activities" Mac explained.
"Something fishy is definitely going on," Mawbey allowed. When you first told me about this we did some digging using a few assets we have on orbit. An initial pass over this region turned up some interesting photos of what looked like maybe fifty men on some sort of training exercise. But the view angle wasn't great so we made a few adjustments for a better look. By the time we were ready for the next satellite pass, we saw nothing on the ground. Same for the next several passes. It's like they bugged out" Basil said.
"Moving a satellite around from its normal orbit probably didn't go unnoticed by the SeeSat folks" Mac exclaimed.
"The what?" Basil asked.
"There's a large group of highly talented amateur observers who keep a close watch on the skies overhead. There are a lot of them, scattered to the four corners and they share observation data with each other via their 'SeeSat' mailing list. Within 24 hours of any top secret launch, these folks know all about it. Governments around the world hate them for their proclivity to bust secrets but are powerless to stop them from peering into the night skies. My guess is you moved a satellite, they noticed it, and spread the word. Whoever is out in the field probably monitors that traffic and have adjusted their training schedule to be hidden when they know that satellite will be overhead. My suggestion, move it again and see what you can see - at least for one pass before the word gets out again" Mac said.
Basil was taking notes and scratching his head about what all this might mean. Foreign soldiers operating so deeply on US soil didn't seem likely. Yet he had probed his extensive list of paid informants inside the Pentagon and came up blank. Whatever was going on in the Black Hills wasn't sanctioned by any branch of the US military. But he couldn't be certain, and if Senator Hodges knew what his nephew was up to then he couldn't rule out this being a government operation. Whatever was going on, he was even more determined to get to the bottom of it.
Mac told him he was going to visit the professor in Winnipeg because he had some high resolution images that he wanted to pick up in person before heading back to the Black Hills for additional reconnoissance. Additional plans were discussed as they wrapped up their dinner meeting. The wheels were already in motion. A semi-truck was currently transporting Mac's Scout and Basil handed him additional instructions. He would drive through Canada to Regina where he would catch a medical helicopter that would drop him off in Billings, Montana where his vehicle would be waiting for him.
With that settled, Mac headed back to his room for some much needed sack time.
At 11:30pm Senator Hodges phone trilled. He noticed the caller ID and answered it with a question, "where is he?"
He didn't like the reply. The people he had keeping an eye on Mac were reluctant to tell him they lost him in Rochester, Minnesota. Highway toll and traffic cams easily tracked his progress from Denver to Rochester, but he seemed to drop off the planet at that point. They had local law enforcement issue BOLO's without any result. He hadn't turned up on any commercial flight manifests. Records indicated one medical flight departed Rochester that afternoon with a flight plan to Winnipeg though it never showed up there.
"Where did it land, he must have been on that plane" the Senator said.
"Private jets frequently change their destination without updating their flight plan. We visited the Mayo Clinic and asked where that flight ended up, they told us it landed at a private air strip just outside of Winnipeg. But it was already back in the hangar in Rochester by the time we got that information" he was told.
"What resources do we have on the ground around Winnipeg?" the Senator snapped.