Free Dulce Base (The Dulce Files Book 1) by Greg Strandberg Page B

window and all Ronnie could see was a curtain of blood.
    Turn gritted his teeth. “C’mon!” he shouted, then took off, his cybernetic legs carrying him the hundred yards to the helicopter in just seconds.
    “Shit,’ Sammy said as he and the others began running, hoping to get there in twenty seconds, and before the Grays still alive in that crashed UFO could do the same to Ronnie as they’d just done to Frank.
    Turn reached the spot where Frank’s body lay, the head and face gone down almost to the neck. He narrowed his eyes and focused on the spot where the UFO had crashed.
    There! He saw it in his night vision, two forms moving–
    He couldn’t move, his limbs were stone and ice and locked in position. He felt a tingly sensation, then his feet left the ground. Guess that 20% finally caught up with me , he thought.
    “Not so fast!” Tommy shouted, picking up his pace and running as fast as he could.  It was fast enough, and when he was within ten feet and Turn was within inches of the rotors, the power of the alien’s telepathy attacks faded altogether.
    “Three!” Turn shouted, his voice now back, for he’d been trying to shout all the while that there was another alien, he was sure of it, for no Gray he’d ever heard of could use that much mental energy while rushing away as fast as those two he’d spotted had been.
    “Fire in the hole,” Charlie said matter-of-factly, then pulled the trigger on his grenade launcher twice in quick succession.  There were two ‘thwumps’ back to back, and then a moment later twin explosions in the trees where the two Grays Turn spotted had been running.
    “Where’s the other one?” Sammy yelled.
    “There,” Turn said, locking onto it, and raising his gun up to nearly point at the men that’d rushed up to save him.  They jumped out of the way and Turn fired three quick bursts from his machine gun, then looked where he’d fired to see a Gray’s head explode in a shower of ‘blood’ and brains near the cave entrance.
    Turn lowered his still-smoking gun and looked at his companions, many on the ground from jumping out of the way.
    “Fucker,” he spat, and the men began to laugh.
     
    14 – Debriefing
     
    “Well men – that nest of Grays is cleaned out!”
    There were only nods to Ellis’ words, for the men were tired and what’s more, the realization that they’d lost one of their own was finally beginning to sink in.
    All around them the teams from Blue Lake were moving about, more than two dozen men now.  There was Eddie and Stan helping with the crashed UFO, and Stu doing mop-up work inside the tunnel to see what technology and information could be gleaned.
    Fred and his team had come back just minutes after Turn had shot that third Gray from the UFO outside the tunnel entrance. They’d reported that there’d been no more Grays, but quite a bit of equipment, testing areas, and most surprisingly, a few vats.
    “Those were just supposed to be at Dulce,” Ellis had said upon first hearing the news shortly after his arrival and initial debriefing of the men.
    “There was supposed to be a lot of things,” Carl had replied to him, “but ’75 kind of changed all that.”
    Ellis didn’t like to hear that, but then he often didn’t like to hear the truth. He needed to hear it, though, and in this case the astronaut was right.
    “Listen,” Ellis said, a frown coming to his face, “you men have done a good job tonight, a rough job, but one that needed to be done. Now let’s get you back on that chopper and back to base.”
    The men nodded and were soon filing into the Puma a short distance away, a different one than had been drenched in Frank’s blood.
    “Well, what’dya think?” Carl said to Ellis when the men had gone and they were alone in small army of military personnel, scientific geniuses and quite a few crack – and crack-shot – researchers.
    Ellis took in a deep breath. “I think we need these men storming Dulce, and as soon as