The Skywalkers: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 5) Read online

  A Rossler Foundation Mystery

  The Skywalkers

  A Thriller

  By JC Ryan

  This is the fifth book in the Rossler Foundation Mystery Series.

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  Copyright 2015 by J C Ryan

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved.

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  As a way of saying thanks for your purchase, I’m offering you a free eBook which you can download from my website at www.jcryanbooks.com

  MYSTERIES FROM THE ANCIENTS

  10 THOUGHT PROVOKING UNSOLVED ARCHAEOLOGICAL MYSTERIES

  This book is exclusive to my readers. You will not find this book anywhere else.

  We spend a lot of time researching and documenting our past, yet there are still many questions left unanswered. Our ancestors left a lot of traces for us, and it seems that not all of them were ever meant to be understood. Despite our best efforts, they remain mysteries to this day.

  Inside you will find some of the most fascinating and thought-provoking facts about archaeological discoveries which still have no clear explanation.

  Read all about The Great Pyramid at Giza, The Piri Reis Map, Doomsday, Giant Geoglyphs, The Great Flood, Ancient Science and Mathematics, Human Flight, Pyramids, Fertility Stones and the Tower of Babel, Mysterious Tunnels and The Mystery of The Anasazi

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - The Prophet

  Chapter 2 - Find me that flying machine

  Chapter 3 - The spider web

  Chapter 4 - There is no stopping this

  Chapter 5 - The preppers

  Chapter 6 - Found the Eighth Cycle

  Chapter 7 - A short secret expedition

  Chapter 8 - Tent, campfire cooking kit

  Chapter 9 - Eligo Rarus

  Chapter 10 - Spicy food and cheap tequila

  Chapter 11 - To the canyon

  Chapter 12 - I'm almost certain it is

  Chapter 13 - No intellectual curiosity

  Chapter 14 - Where do we fit into all this?

  Chapter 15 - Do you know how to pitch the tent?

  Chapter 16 - Is that an opening?

  Chapter 17 - I am surprised to see you here

  Chapter 18 - Open Sesame

  Chapter 19 - You're gonna love it

  Chapter 20 - Five important things

  Chapter 21 - Enigma

  Chapter 22 - Only one way to test it

  Chapter 23 - The moral issue

  Chapter 24 - Eight for an octave

  Chapter 25 - Good ear, Nicholas

  Chapter 26 - Our humanitarian cause

  Chapter 27 - Another short secret expedition

  Chapter 28 - He'd miss the old coot

  Chapter 29 - Down the rabbit hole

  Chapter 30 - It wasn't Utopia at all!

  Chapter 31 - Something wrong with Eighth Cycle

  Chapter 32 - We gave away our blood

  Chapter 33 - I pray you find it

  Chapter 34 - Our time has come

  Chapter 35 - Its 30 seconds to 12

  Chapter 36 - Find the instruction manual

  Chapter 37 - I am going

  Chapter 38 - Goodbye my friends

  Chapter 39 - The end games

  Chapter 40 - Looks just like a face

  Chapter 41 - The skywalkers

  Chapter 42 - Exodus

  Chapter 43 - The end game

  Chapter 44 - Utopia has arrived

  Chapter 45 - We will have to do it

  Chapter 1 - The Prophet

  In the aftermath of 9/11 Western governments and their security agencies were in turmoil. Congressional oversight committees, news media and conspiracy theorists all demanded to know - how did this happen? Why did we not see this coming? What could we have done to prevent it? What can we do now? Investigations were conducted; findings and recommendations were made and heads rolled. Whether in public or in secret, consequences were felt.

  To this day, only a select few people knew that the real findings of the investigations were dramatically different from the official conclusions reached by the government's 9/11 Commission.

  The “chance” discovery of suspicious Wall Street activity prior to the attack, by a young whiz kid, shocked the CIA and FBI to their foundation. It took a beautiful twenty something old college psychology graduate less than an hour to rub their noses in the information that was there right in front of their eyes for years.

  If they’d just bothered to look, she pointed out, they would have seen the escalation of the sale of American and United Airlines stocks over the months prior to Al-Qaeda operatives hijacking the planes that would crash into the Twin Towers and Pentagon. What she showed them was put under wraps in less than an hour and she was offered a job with the FBI on the spot.

  While he rattled the American military saber in public, eventually winning consent for his plan to root out terrorism, the president’s instructions in private were unambiguous. “Do whatever it takes make sure this never happens again.”

  Salome James, head of security at the Rossler Foundation for the past twelve months, top FBI profiler and analyst, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for her heroic actions during the Sword of Cyrus crisis two years ago, was sitting at her desk, looking at The Prophet dashboard on her computer screen.

  She was busy comparing month to month data on the “Calamity Indicator”, as the operatives called the part of the dashboard that indicated suspicious activities. Deeply engrossed in her thoughts, she murmured, unconscious that she spoke aloud, “That red line has moved two clicks higher since last month.” In the last six months it had been going in only one direction – up. At this rate it would trigger the alarm bell in another two months. What is causing this continuous uptick? I have to take a closer look.

  The Prophet, the most sophisticated, broad-ranging data collection and analysis software on the planet, had been developed as top priority and in ultimate secrecy in the months following the embarrassing revelations by that whiz kid.

  A smile played around Salome’s lips as she remembered the day that had changed her life. She would never know where she got the guts to do it. It must have been the forwardness of her youth. How could she ever forget what it felt like to walk into the FBI’s offices in New York City, into a room full of experienced and hardened FBI operatives and turned them on their heads. How their faces had turned red as she showed them in a fifteen-minute PowerPoint presentation that the financial markets actually “knew” about the eminent terrorist attacks for months before it happened. In hindsight, if they’d had The Prophet available to them before the attacks, the alarm bells would have gone off fourteen days before the attacks.

  Now the Prophet had been developed to help security agencies identify imminent threats to security from terrorists, rival nations, and from internal weaknesses lurking inside the global economy. It had proven itself on many occasions. It was responsible when, a few years after it was developed, the warning signs of an impending terrorist attack were picked up and again three days later in London, when
a plot to blow up ten US passenger jets was thwarted, leading to the arrest of twenty four Pakistani extremists.

  Salome had been part of the project team that developed The Prophet and was still a foremost expert user of the system. But, over the years, she had also realized that it had some shortcomings. She’d discussed her ideas with superiors at various occasions but by that time complacency was firmly in place yet again and her requests fell on deaf ears. With no serious terrorist attack on home soil in more than ten years, no one could see the urgency to enhance the system.

  Her point for enhancements should have been driven home when The Prophet failed to alert them of the looming Sword of Cyrus crisis. Had they made the enhancement she’d been campaigning for, they would have detected the threat months before it happened and not just forty days before D-day. But again, no one had wanted to see it as urgent.

  Since her permanent relocation to the Rossler Foundation a year ago, though, she’d found that she had more time to organize her thoughts about the enhancements to The Prophet. Fortunately, there was no one better than Raj Sankaran, the Rossler’s resident database and computer expert and paranoiac, to help her make those enhancements.

  Chapter 2 - Find me that flying machine

  "I'm telling you, the man's a crackpot."

  John Brideaux looked at his colleague in disgust. "So you say, but he's found some very interesting artifacts for me. I say we give him a shot."

  "Ancient flying machines on the moon? Ridiculous. If you want to spend your money chasing after myths and legends, fine. I'm out."

  Brideaux sat with his elbows on his writing desk, his hands tented and tapping on his chin as he considered what to do. He had no problem funding Dr. Matthew's research himself, but he did have a special group of friends and colleagues who would be disappointed at the very least if he didn't offer them the opportunity. On the other hand, if there really was such a thing as an ancient flying machine and an example could be found, he'd want to be the one to own it.

  He also didn't want to suffer being the laughingstock of his friends. If his recently-departed colleague was an example of the reception he'd get, then he'd just keep the idea to himself. Act boldly, keep his cards close to his vest. That was the way to handle this. Matthews' crazy little idea had better have some merit, though. Weighing his eagerness to own the rare and unusual against the potential loss, Brideaux came down firmly on the side of the rare and unusual. A small loss, for him, meant nothing at all. He had plenty of money - more than plenty if the truth were known.

  Brideaux sent for Dr. Stephen Matthews right away. The time to act was now.

  "Mr. Brideaux, thank you for seeing me." Matthews approached with his right hand out as Brideaux stood to receive him.

  "Of course, Stephen. You've brought me some unique pieces in the past. I'm happy to hear you out. Where'd you get this idea of ancient aircraft?"

  "It's simple, really. Recently, a closely-held secret from the US space exploration program was leaked. One of the moon rocks brought back by the Apollo 11 mission had a 10-inch statue of an angel embedded in it. It's been kept under wraps since 1969."

  "Extraordinary!"

  "Yes, I thought so. The statue bore a remarkable resemblance to a bronze angel guardian from a medieval cemetery near Rome, but the metal was quite out of the ordinary."

  "I meant that the government could keep a secret for that long."

  "Oh, quite. But, as I was saying, they couldn't determine what the metal was, until someone decided it was an iron compound, found only on the moon. Do you understand what this means?"

  Bemused by Matthews' enthusiasm, Brideaux shook his head, though he had a good idea what it meant. Someone had been on the moon long enough ago for the statue to have been completely encased in moon rock. But, let Matthews tell it--he was like a small child with a new toy to show off.

  "Don't you see? Someone was on the moon, thousands of years ago. How did they get there if ancient man didn't have aircraft? Specifically, spacecraft. And there's more."

  Brideaux sat forward. More?

  "Ancient Chinese texts, from perhaps 2000 BC, refer to space flight, specifically to the moon. Other accounts, long thought to be myth, are surprisingly accurate. The kicker is this. Just before landing, on the last reconnaissance pass, one of the Apollo astronauts said he had just seen what looked like a structure. His description sounded very much like a structure that the ancient Chinese texts described as having been built on the moon! Many people heard the statement clearly, but when the segment was rebroadcast, the statement was no longer there. Eleven minutes had been cut from the tapes, but too many people had heard it. NASA denies it to this day, but it's been floating around in conspiracy circles all this time."

  Brideaux waited until Matthews' breathless flood of words wound down. "What's your proposal, Dr. Matthews?"

  "Two-fold. If ancient China had aircraft, chances are that there are wrecked ones, or fragments of wrecked ones somewhere.

  "I'd like access to the Tenth Cycle library, to see if the technology was passed down from previous civilizations. Asian civilizations have always fascinated me. How they advanced so rapidly. Since the library was discovered, I've always wondered if they had a head start based on survivors from earlier cycles."

  "Interesting. Well, as it happens, I'm in a position to help you with both of those requests.

  "Thank you, sir! And as for the matter of my compensation..."

  "Let's start you with a grant of $50,000. That should be adequate for now. We'll revisit it if and when you need to mount an expedition."

  "Thank you, Mr. Brideaux. That's most generous, most generous indeed."

  "Dr. Matthews, find me that flying machine."

  Chapter 3 - The spider web

  Salome’s desire to improve the Prophet was rooted in several facts. First and most distressing had been its failure to predict the Sword of Cyrus crisis. It was during that crisis that she’d met her husband and the cadre of Rosslerites who were now dear friends and extended family.

  Second was her wish to protect her eccentric and brilliant husband, Roy, from the consequences of his tinkering with nanoscience gleaned from the Tenth Cycle library. Of course, what she thought of as tinkering had led to astounding advances in convenience and ease of the human condition. Roy’s inventions ran the gamut from a tiny battery pack that needed only a few minutes in the sun to charge it for up to a year to improvements in waste treatment plants that had all but wiped out previously ineradicable third-world dysentery and hundreds of improvements in between. However, it had also been responsible for the development on the back of his work of nano-nuclear weapons by the Sword of Cyrus.

  And finally, by extension and her own sense of duty, she felt responsible for the well-being of her employers and indeed everyone who worked in and for the Rossler Foundation. Before her employment, despite expert security in the form of Luke Clarke, Sarah Rossler’s uncle and former CIA agent, the Foundation had endured three major crises in the short time they’d been in operation. It was her mission to see to it they were prepared should another occur, and if possible, see to it that another didn’t occur.

  With that in mind, she first approached Roy with her idea to take matters into her own hands and have The Prophet enhanced. Brilliant as he was, though, Roy was no expert in data analysis, unless it had to do with his own research. As she’d anticipated, he suggested she approach Raj with the project, and offered to put in a good word for her with his friend.

  So it was that she found herself in her office one morning with Raj attending her introduction to her project intently.

  “Raj, before I tell you what I’d like to do and what I need your help with, I need to share with you some top secret information. I’ve received permission to do so, but you must swear never to reveal the information you’re about to hear.

  “All I can do is swear to stop you if you get into something I feel must be shared,” he replied. “Will that do?”

  Irritated
, she nevertheless answered, “For now.” Then she continued. “In my work, I’ve been using a tool that came out of my master’s thesis. It uses various databases, including financial market data, aggregated personal data from major banks, parsed internet searches and a few more items, to…”

  “Predict terrorist activity. You’re speaking of The Prophet.”

  Salome rocked back in her chair, stunned that Raj knew of it, even to the extent of knowing the top-secret code name.

  “Don’t be so surprised. You know of my contacts.”

  She did. They’d made use of his network of computer hackers and conspiracy enthusiasts during the Sword of Cyrus incident. What surprised her was the extent of their knowledge, though in hindsight perhaps she shouldn’t have been so taken aback. However, his next statement stunned her to the core.

  “We’re not the only ones who know about it, Salome. Why do you think there have been so many instances of terrorist attacks the Prophet didn’t warn of? ISIS, al Qaeda, HAMMAS, all know about it. They’ve learned how to evade its detection. It needs updating to fill the gaps they’re exploiting.”

  Shaken but undeterred, Salome took control again. “That’s why you’re here, Raj. I’ve been telling my FBI colleagues for several years this needs doing. “And if you’d said these things to Luke Clarke, my friend, it may have made a difference.” She didn’t share that thought with him. 20/20 hindsight didn’t make a bit of difference. What was done was done.

  She went on. “You may already know some of this, but please allow me to tell it as I see it. The Prophet doesn’t account for the actions of individuals with regard for company behavior. It doesn’t know who owns companies behind the scenes. That means that company XYZ, for example, which let’s say is a major gold producer, could be controlled by Company A owning 20% stock, Company B owning 25% and Company C owning 10%.

  There’s nothing to give us a red flag when the CEOs of these three companies get together for a cozy chat in Paris. By the same token, we don’t know if those same CEOs together own small but controlling stock in XYZ’s major competitor. Once they decide to take over, a handful of people could buy stock that’s just below the threshold for The Prophet to notice, and vote their shares as a block. No one even knows that the company has just endured a hostile takeover, not even the company itself.”