81: Chapter 81 Entering the Cave and Clearing the Area, Leaving No One Alive

Langley, Virginia, 7th-floor conference room of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters.

When Richard Heinlein projected the encrypted intelligence sent by the insider at the Starship Base onto the big screen, everyone in the conference room had already seen it once.

But seeing it again still made everyone present instinctively pull their chairs closer to the table.

The intelligence not only confirmed the existence of a giant man-made cavity underground to the southeast of the Hoover Dam but also included raw data from Starlink's synthetic aperture radar imaging and a geological waveform inversion report.

The report from the Starship Base insider was extremely brief, but the details were sufficient:

Musk had personally confirmed it. The target, tentatively designated as "Warehouse 18," was located deep within the bedrock layer where the old spillway intersected with the ancient Colorado River path. It was abnormally large in volume with smooth walls, definitely not formed by natural geological movement.

Ali Wu, head of the Intelligence Analysis Division, used an infrared pointer to circle the suspiciously regular outline of the cavity on the radar map, her tone like she was reading a verdict that had already been written:

"The President only let us investigate the Limb Regeneration serum and strictly forbade us from investigating Aliens."

"But this base itself is physical evidence of Alien technology left on Lighthouse Country soil, and Musk is personally heading there to dig it up."

"An irreconcilable contradiction has arisen between the order and reality."

"Why would such a contradiction appear?"

"Either the President doesn't know about the existence of this base, but that's impossible, because even we know about it now, and The Pentagon has always had records of all geological data around the Hoover Dam."

"The President couldn't possibly not know."

"So only one explanation remains: The President knows, the President doesn't want anyone to go, and the forces behind the President... those who control him, the Deep State, they are intentionally letting this base be exposed."

Raj Patel, head of the Technology Division, pressed his finger on the edge of the void on the radar map and added, following her line of thought:

"They are leading everyone into the same underground space."

"Edward, Musk, those Federal Bureau of Investigation agents... and us."

Kevin Mosby leaned back in his chair, turned it half a circle, his tone low and tense:

"This is a cleanup operation."

"The Deep State doesn't want to silence people one by one anymore."

"It's too scattered, too inefficient, and every time they silence someone, it leaves new traces and new witnesses."

"They want to solve all problems at once."

"Let everyone go down, and then, using our hands, execute all the witnesses in the same pit."

Heinlein stood with his back to everyone, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, looking at the blurry outline of The Pentagon across the Potomac River.

He pieced all the fragments together in his mind:

In the Oval Office, the President's excitement upon hearing about Limb Regeneration, contrasted with the President's unusual determination regarding the Alien issue,

Walsh being sniped and then suffering a heart attack, the Hopkins Family clearing a hundred-mile radius around their estate, the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent shooting himself on the spot after watching the video,

And at this moment, the three parties converging on the same underground base coordinates from three distinct information channels.

Then he turned around, scanned the core staff in the conference room, his tone calm as usual, but the decision had been made:

"Since the Deep State wants us to complete the final cleanup for them, then let's bring our men and go down."

"Their order is to clean up all witnesses, so we will kill every witness who appears in that lair."

"Bring the most elite operational team, bring all weapons that can be advantageous in a confined underground space, and go bury all those guys who want to catch a glimpse of the Alien secret at the bottom of that warehouse."

...

San Antonio, the joint command center of the three major military industry giants, late at night.

Diana received this intelligence less than two hours after returning to Casablanca Manor.

The source of the intelligence was not at the Starship Base in Texas.

Ever since the Joshua intrusion incident, Musk had encrypted the internal communications protection of the Starship Base to an almost abnormal degree; any external electronic intrusion without internal top-level authorization would be instantly screened and reverse-traced.

But the Hopkins Family had never placed their biggest bet on intelligence gathering on Musk's side.

They had infiltration channels within the top levels of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency that had been maintained for over half a century.

Those undercover agents, carefully maintained by the Colt Association since their grandfather's generation, were still able to deliver the most critical information without the need for password keys or satellite relay traces, through purely manual intelligence transmission paths independent of any electronic systems.

Diana stood by the table and concisely stated the summary of this intelligence to Sterling and Augustus:

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation has already obtained the latest radar mapping and depth coordinates of the underground man-made structure at the Hoover Dam from their mole at the Starship Base."

"The Central Intelligence Agency has also ordered elite operational teams to concentrate at that location, preparing to execute everyone who knows the secret of the Aliens in the ruins beneath the dam."

"Musk and Edward will go down into the tunnel in the next few days."

Augustus lifted his chin and was silent for several seconds before opening his mouth, suppressing the excitement reflecting from deep within his chest, his tone hard as if squeezed out from the cracks of armor plating:

"The tenth batch of Behemoth Factor replicas has been fully packaged, enough to arm all forward assault platoons in the joint operation to the standard of skeletal breakthrough augmentation."

"Kill all the peripheral witnesses first, then block Musk and Edward at the very bottom of the base. We will withdraw with the eyeballs intact, leaving not a single corpse that could be dug up."

Sterling Remington slowly set the polished empty whiskey glass on the table, slightly raised his narrow, long eyes, his tone cold and precise:

"Leave the communication hub to my electronic interference company. The Lighthouse Country military personnel are responsible for taking down the Central Intelligence Agency's encrypted nodes and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's underground relays; they will become blind the moment they reach the entrance."

"The last step of the mission chain is the rebound; ensure not a single living person can walk out before going underground."

Diana raised her hand to pull up a holographic map on the desktop, zooming in to the maximum ratio on the bedrock cavity marked by red coordinates southeast of the Hoover Dam.

She looked at the geometric outline of the flat-walled gray cloth slowly rotating on the screen on the map, her tone without any emotional fluctuation:

"Clear the perimeter outside the entrance first, then kill all unrelated people along the edges."

"Musk and Edward stay at the very bottom, and our own people will go down to finish them off."

"Remember, except for our three families, anyone who goes down, leave no survivors."

...

Nevada, Lincoln County, seven miles south-southwest of Groom Lake, four hundred feet underground.

This place has no name.

It is not on The Pentagon's list of military facilities, it is not within the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex, and no corresponding entry can be found in any of the classified budget appropriation items of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Even the President does not know of this place's existence.

In the black-bound classified briefings that successive Presidents have received in the Oval Office, there has never been any mention of this desert, seven miles southwest of Groom Lake, burying a reverse-engineering laboratory that has been operating since the Cold War.

Its official file was shoved under a long-defunct Air Force logistics warehouse number, and this number itself was canceled in a document fire in 1973.

Since then, this facility has disappeared from all legal oversight systems of the Lighthouse Country.

Its entrance is hidden at the bottom of an abandoned Cold War surface-to-air missile silo.

The surface structure of the silo is a piece of abandoned concrete ruin surrounded by barbed wire.

Scattered around are the rusted wreckage of launchers and a few old military vehicles stripped down to their skeletons.

Any patrol passing by would think this is just an abandoned military junkyard that has been listed on the Environmental Protection Agency's soil remediation list.

But at the bottom of the wall of this missile silo, which has been dry for decades, there is a silver alloy elevator door hidden in the concrete interlayer.

There is no logo, no number, and no markings above the door frame.

At this moment, in the deepest part of the underground laboratory behind this silver elevator door, Solomon Crane stands in front of a transparent reinforced glass container about eight feet long.

He is eighty-five years old, but if you don't look at his eyes and only look at his posture, you would think he is at most in his early sixties.

His spine is held straight, not the stiffness tempered by discipline like a soldier, but a calm and upright posture naturally maintained after being nourished by power for too many years.

He is wearing a dark gray custom casual outfit without any logos, the fabric soft, the cut sharp, and the buttons on the cuffs are hand-polished obsidian.

His hair is completely white, but thick, neatly combed back, revealing a broad and clean forehead.

His face is gaunt, cheekbones prominent, the bridge of his nose straight like the back of a knife, his lips thin and tight, and the lines of his chin still maintain a clear contour like a young man even at over eighty years old.

His gaze falls into the transparent glass container in front of him.

At the bottom of that container, soaked in about half of the pale yellow low-temperature tissue preservation fluid, lies a corpse.

Not a human corpse.

It is an Alien corpse.

A real Alien.

It is about five feet six inches long, with a flat torso, dark brown in color, covered with a chitin-like shell on the surface.

It is not like human skin color, or even like the skin of any known mammal on Earth; it is more like an ancient shell stained by time, with a part of the shell shattered during the fall, revealing the soft tissue fibers inside that have long since lost activity but still show a dark green color.

Its head is flat triangular, compound eyes occupy the vast majority of the entire head, the eye surface is composed of thousands of tiny lenses, and under the cold light of the embedded lamp at the top of the container, it refracts a slightly metallic dark iridescent layer.

Mouthparts replaced the mandible, and the layered feeding appendages still maintain a slightly open structure.

It has four limbs, but each limb joint has two more joints than human limbs, and the ends are not fingers or claws, but wide, flat, and fibrous adhesive toe pads.

Behind it are two sets of incomplete wing membranes, thin enough to be almost transparent, supported by the preservation fluid and floating behind the corpse, as if maintaining the posture of the last flap before the crash after death.