Mercury's Wings

By Derek Hart

This is the fourth book in the Minerva’s Shield series. The action picks up right where Apollo’s Plague left off. The bunker suffers the loss of 10 of their members to the alien attack and worse than that, Bob Norton, their leader, is presumed dead as well. However, the community recovers quickly after Debra Vitale is elected their new president. Life inside the bunker improves dramatically and it seems that the Georgia survivors will do quite well.
Unfortunately, outside of the bunker’s new private mini-grid, the rest of area known as the Zone is suffering from an incredibly violent drought. Many forces come into play, all vying for control of the planet. Yet in far off Texas, it appears that Bob Norton did survive after all, but the grueling torture he is forced to endure changes him forever, both mentally and physically.
In the remaining 1⁄4 of earth still controlled by humans, the remaining countries still can’t let go of their past histories and politics embroil the free world in an ugly race for power. Russia, the only nation still almost entirely intact, goes on the offensive, invading former neighbors, while battling aliens and seizing vast resources for their own use.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Derek Hart
• Release date: Dec 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463861578

Derek Hart

Derek Hart is the prolific author of 28 action and adventure novels, known for their historical accuracy, while still maintaining a high level of entertainment. Romance is also a vital part of Derek Hart's trademark style and his novels generally appeal to men and women alike. Mr. Hart authored Secret of the Dragon's Eye, his first novel aimed at all age groups, which met with instant success and outstanding reviews. The author has since followed with Secret of the Dragon's Breath, Secret of the Dragon's Claw, Secret of the Dragon's Scales and Secret of the Dragon's Teeth. The final volume of the 6-episode series, Secret of the Dragon's Wings, will be available in November of 2018. He has since started a new series, post-apocalyptic in nature, with Minerva's Shield and Nike's Chariot. The third installment, Apollo's Plague came out in November 2017. Abandoned was published in March 2018 and Game Over premiered in June 2018. List of published books: Secret of the Dragon’s Eye Secret of the Dragon’s Breath Secret of the Dragon’s Claw Secret of the Dragon’s Scales Secret of the Dragon’s Teeth Secret of the Dragon’s Wings Claws of the Raven Danger Cruise Favor for FDR Crooked Cross Factor Tracks of the Predator For Love or Honor Bound Tales of the Yellow Silk Element of Surprise Seas Aflame Ice Flotilla High Altitude Low Opening Tangles of Truth Shadows in Replay Flag of Her Choosing Tidal Trap Dangerous (Poetry) Executive Firepower The CARLA Conspiracy The Wreckchasers Minerva's Shield Nike's Chariot Apollo's Plague Abandoned Game Over Mercury's Wings Before the Dead Walked Books coming soon: The Samuel Clemens Affair Pearl and Topaz By the Moon Darkly Broadmoor Manor Neptune's Trident Operation Sovereign Primary Weapon Saturn's Fire Tails of Thaddeus Enchanted Mesa Eagle Blue Last Guidon Excess Baggage Container Carta Codex Shipwreckers Romeo Tango The 5x5 Gang Desert Salvage

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Mercury’s Wings

by

Derek Hart

All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2018 Derek Hart

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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by Derek Hart at Smashwords

This book is a work of fiction.

While the names of some places are real, the characters or actions that appear within them are products of the author’s imagination.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

Cover designed by David M. Burke

The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.

Armado, scene II

Table of Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Survivors

Connect with Derek Hart

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to Luben Jelezarov.

Foreword

The Romans, whose culture was in many ways a derivative of the Greeks, borrowed the old stories and myths of the Greek god, Hermes, and laid them on top of their own similar god, Mercury. The process by which this was done is now shrouded by the mists of time, but suffice it to say that these two names came to be recognized as designating one and the same mythical being.

Mercury was one of the most popular of the ancient deities and was featured in many stories. On Zeus’ orders, he was supposed to have killed Argus by lulling him to sleep and then chopping off his head. He also assisted Odysseus in his travels as that wanderer returned from the siege of Troy. It is interesting to note that Mercury generally does not act on his own, but at the behest of some other god. He acts for his brother Apollo in saving the life of his child. Zeus often sends Mercury to deliver dreams or to travel with a mortal to help keep him or her safe. This keeps him in accord with his mythical function as messenger.

The way gods are handled in ancient myths does vary somewhat by storyteller and tale. However, the basic functions and personalities of gods treated in these stories remains relatively consistent. For example, in most myths, we find the gods interfering directly in the affairs of humans largely without disguise. In the Iliad, which is the Homeric story of the siege of Troy, we find the gods act in the guise of particular people, who are actually named. For example, in the famous scene where Priam goes to Achilles to beg for the return of the body of his slain son, Hector, the old king is guided by Mercury, but Mercury appears in the form of Polyctor, a soldier of Achilles. Hermes reveals himself, but he is also recognized by his kindness and an aura surrounding him that protects Priam as he rides through the Greek army in a chariot loaded with treasures.

The Iliad is replete with such interferences to Greek gods standing in the place of men. This way of giving the gods representation in the story might stem from the fact that the siege of Troy, though a heroic and ancient story, is based on factual occurrences. When the story was told and retold, there were people listening who had been at the battle or at least they had heard stories from ancestors who had been there. Homer had to trim his metaphorical sails a bit closer to the truth than the myth makers of a previous age, but still made allowances for circumstances that seemed fortuitous.

Mercury has influenced the name of many things in a variety of scientific fields, such as the planet Mercury, and the element mercury. The word mercurial is commonly used to refer to something or someone who is erratic, volatile or unstable, derived from Mercury’s swift flights from place to place. He is often depicted holding the caduceus in his left hand.

The messenger god is generally described as wearing the clothes of a shepherd. He has winged sandals and sometimes a winged hat. He generally carries the caduceus which is a staff entwined with two snakes.

Mercury was the son of Jupiter, the result of an illicit union with Maia, goddess of the clouds. His many adventures and his assignment as guide of the dead to Hades made him the patron god of travelers. His tricks, however, made him patron of thieves. The Romans also made him god of merchants and he lent his name to mercantilism. Wednesday was his day of the week.

Mercury is a chemical element with symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It was commonly known as quicksilver and was formerly named hydrargyrum.

Preface

The first man in space was a Russian. He was not only a Russian, but a Soviet! This had the effect of alarming the United States for many reasons. First, the United States was in the midst of a cold war with the Soviet Union. It was an ideological struggle that could determine freedom or slavery for all of human kind. A nation that could dominate space could also control spy satellites, communications, and even weapon systems. The United States felt compelled not merely to catch up with the Soviets, but ultimately, to surpass them.

Project Mercury was one of the first steps in American efforts in this direction. Project Mercury was a quickstep comprised of seven flights that would prove that man could go to space, orbit the Earth, and return safely. In performing this mission, the Mercury astronauts and engineers succeeded superbly.

The Mercury capsule was a fairly small concave structure holding only one man that sat atop a huge ballistic missile. For the manned space flights, the Redstone and Atlas missiles were used. Previously, these missiles had been used to carry military warheads filled with explosives. Early tests indicated that there could be malfunctions with the missiles that would completely obliterate the capsule seated at its apex. As a safety measure, separation boosters, parachutes and escape hatches were engineered into the capsule. The astronauts also insisted on a window and some control of the thrusters. The engineers on the project thought these two demands unnecessary, but finally acceded to the pilots.

There were six manned Mercury missions and seven astronauts. One astronaut, Deke Slayton, was unable to make his scheduled flight due to a last minute physical disability. The astronauts all named their own capsules and appended a 7 on the end of it. The number 7 represented the seven men, but undoubtedly was seen as a lucky number by more than a few. Perhaps it was lucky, because all of the flights were successful, with only a few minor glitches such as when the hatches on the Freedom 7 blew too early after a return to Earth. Space capsules at that time were landed in the ocean. When Gus Grissom’s hatch blew, he got out quickly, but the spacecraft sank like a stone to the bottom of the ocean.

The space flights created considerable publicity for NASA and the pilots themselves were famous. Friendship 7 pilot, John Glenn became a popular U.S. senator and even ran for president. The astronauts were selected from an elite pool of Navy, Air Force and Marine pilots. They underwent rigorous training.

The first Mercury flight launched the first American into space (Alan Shepard) in May of 1961. The final Mercury flight was Faith 7 piloted by Gordon Cooper. He remained in space for more than a day and was the first person to sleep in space, thereby going a long way to prove that sustained operations in space were possible.

When choosing the name Mercury for this space project, the designers obviously had certain images in mind. As they were not intending in any way to go to the planet Mercury and their project had nothing to do with the element, they must have been thinking of the image of the messenger god of ancient Rome. They undoubtedly saw America’s move into space as an almost ambassadorial mission between the planet and the rest of the universe. Then, too, Mercury was never meant to be anything more than a kind of technological bridge between the Earth and subsequent missions to the moon. Like the messenger god himself, the missions were quick, decisive, and informative.

Major Gordon Cooper was one of the original Mercury Astronauts and the last American to fly in space alone. On May 15, 1963 he shot into space in a Mercury capsule for a 22-orbit journey around the world. During the final orbit, Major Gordon Cooper told the tracking station at Muchea (near Perth Australia) that he could see a glowing, greenish object ahead of him quickly approaching his capsule. The UFO was real; it was picked up by Muchea’s tracking radar. Cooper’s sighting was reported by NBC, which was covering the flight step by step, but when Cooper landed, reporters were told that they would not be allowed to question him about the UFO sighting.

Major Cooper was a firm believer in UFOs. Ten years earlier, in 1951, he had sighted UFOs while piloting an F-86 Sabrejet over Western Germany. They were metallic, saucer-shaped discs at considerable altitude and could out-maneuver all American fighter planes. Major Cooper also testified before the United Nations, saying, I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews were visiting this planet from other planets. I did have occasion in 1951 to have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes, flying in fighter formation, generally from east to west over Europe.

According to a taped interview by J. L. Ferrando, Major Cooper said, For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. There are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is that we have to avoid panic by all means.

Cooper went on to say, I was furthermore a witness to an extraordinary phenomenon here on planet Earth. It happened in Florida. There I saw with my own eyes a defined area of ground being consumed by flames, with four indentions left by a flying object which had descended in the middle of a field. Beings had left the craft and there were other traces to prove this. They seemed to have studied topography, they had collected soil samples and, eventually, they returned to where they had come from, disappearing at enormous speed. I happen to know that authority did just about everything to keep this incident from the press and TV, in fear of a panicky reaction from the public.

Please note his use of the word authority.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to the seven brave men who made up NASA’s first class of space pioneers, dubbed The Mercury 7, including Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton. They each wrote their personal memoirs of these space flights, and the author read every one.

Thank you to Mike Bara and his great book –Hidden Agenda: NASA and the Secret Space Program

A big thank you goes out to James E. David, the curator in NASA’s Division of Space History. He is the critically acclaimed author of Spies and Shuttles: NASA’s Secret Relationships with the DOD and CIA. Mr. David provided some truly eye-opening answers to the author’s inquiries, some of which were simply mind-boggling and included in this novel. Believe them or not, but there is much evidence to support the many wild claims associated with the USA’s space exploration endeavors.

As always, thank you to David Burke, Luben Jelezarov, Anthony Schell, Ian Lenthart, Christi Nakajima, Tim Hopper, Keegan Ellington, Dimiter Kolev, Mark Collins, and Dave Renar, for their continued feedback, suggestions, and assistance in the writing of this novel.

Cover art by David M. Burke.

Introduction

Thoughts

If you’re anything like many people, you’ve developed a disturbing obsession with the world that comes after the inevitable meteor impact, incurable plague, zombie outbreak, nuclear holocaust, cataclysmic earthquake in Yellowstone, or the coming Ice Age. There’s no need to sit around twiddling your thumbs, while waiting to see what post-apocalyptic Earth might look like. Movies, books, video games and a myriad of other entertainment sources have provided a wide spectrum of visual possibilities.

The usual main contenders for potentially devastating effects on the human race are climate change, food or energy shortages, nuclear war, antibiotic resistance or a pandemic virus, a global computer shutdown, the ever popular alien invasion, or attacks from rogue AI machines. Don’t forget zombies, which, while unlikely to occur, have certainly captured many imaginations. Each of these end-of-time possibilities could happen and might even be plausible, but none is likely to wipe out the human race. By comparison, a collision with a large asteroid, although very unlikely in the timeframe of our history as a species, could easily lead to our eventual extinction.

Some humans would probably survive an event such as the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, but globally billions of people would perish. Life would become stone age-like, but some remnants of humanity would live on. Under some scenarios, the more humans that die, the easier it becomes for the remainder to exist, because food will become more plentiful, energy will become less scarce, there will be less strife and the rates of disease transmission will be lower. On the other hand, the pool of shared knowledge will dwindle as more humans perish and this will make it more difficult for the survivors to advance technologically.

All of this should bring you to ask the most important question of all: Do I really want to survive in such a landscape of devastation and hopelessness?

Bob Norton began the post-apocalyptic adventure in Minerva’s Shield when he was 62, the oldest member of the group of survivors. Would he help or be a burden to those around him? Unfortunately, being in this age group made him more vulnerable to sickness and injury. His natural defenses were decidedly less hearty than his younger counterparts. Would they end up spending precious resources to maintain his life? Was it worth it to save an aging old man at the expense of a child, or a potentially strong and healthy young adult, both of which had strong capabilities for strengthening the group dynamics? Did Bob want to live in a world where such choices must be made?

Obviously the answers evolved from discovering the facts surrounding their specific type of cataclysm. In this case, the factors leading to the world’s population loss were certainly dramatic, but lacking overall global destruction. Buildings were destroyed, but most cities were still intact, even when the alien attacks were both well-timed and strategically effective. Initially, billions of people survived the opening assault. However, once another section of the Grid failed, the end result was even more catastrophic, when an additional ¼ of Earth no longer had protection from whatever or whoever was out to destroy all life on this planet. Even with all our technology and military spending, chaos ruled supreme and the latest batch of survivors were more confused than before.

So, could you survive in a post-apocalyptic world?

Even if you were a well-organized prepper, the odds are stacked heavily against you, but in the end, it would depend on so many factors outside of your control. So don’t lose any sleep over this. When it happens, you probably won’t have much of an opportunity to do anything about it anyway.

Prologue

Roswell, New Mexico

July 7, 1947

It looked like the classic flying saucer from those old pulp magazines, all shiny metallic, and disk shaped, thicker in the center and tapering to the outside edges, with kind of a dome shape in the middle on both the top and bottom, the bottom dome shape smaller than the one on top. It kept the same altitude the whole time, while hovering and moving, but did not go up or down, just wavering, before it zipped north out of sight, then came back from the north and went south until it disappeared.

Southbound on a lone desert highway, state highway patrol officer, John Sorgel, was in pursuit of a speeding car outside the town of Socorro, New Mexico, when he was startled by a loud roar! Seconds later, he saw a large flame rise from the ground and pierce the sky above a remote patch of desert southwest of the highway. Fearing a nearby dynamite shack might explode, the officer let the speeding car go, turned right, and drove down a bumpy gravel road that ran alongside the shack.

Sorgel’s aged Pontiac cruiser clunked along the rocky road until he came upon a steep hill. Rising from behind the slope was a smokeless fire that glowed in a funnel of blue and orange tinted flames. The crag obscured the origin of the flames, so Sorgel attempted to drive up it. His cruiser’s tires slipped and swayed on the loose gravel, but after three attempts, Sorgel finally made it to the top.

A shiny object, the size of a small truck, sparkled in the late afternoon sunshine about 150-200 yards from where Sorgel was perched on the hilltop. At first glance, he thought it was a vehicle overturned in an arroyo, but when he drove closer, it appeared to be aluminum in color, not chrome, and oval-shaped like a football.

Sorgel drove toward the object, along the hill’s crest, for about fifty feet and then stopped the car. He radioed back to the sheriff’s office that he would be busy checking on a wreck in a dry creek bed and then he descended on foot down the slippery slope toward the object.

Roooaaarrr!

Sorgel was startled again by a very loud rumble, not exactly like a blast, but also not steady like a jet engine. It started at a low frequency, with the pitch slowly rising. The flame appeared to be coming from the underside of the object, glowing light blue on top and orange at the bottom. Sorgel panicked, afraid the object was about to blow up.

He ran to take cover, but turned back to look at the object as he fled. He noticed a red symbol on the side, shaped like a point that was about two inches high and two inches wide. The object was smooth, a shiny white aluminum, with no visible windows or doors. There appeared to be two metal legs, slanted outward, supporting it.

Officer Sorgel sprinted to his car, hit his leg on the fender, and crashed to the ground. He got up, ran another 25 feet or so, and when he looked back again, he saw the object begin to rise.

It rose to the level of the car, then higher, about 20 to 25 feet in the air.

Sorgel sprinted another fifty feet from his car, just over the edge of the hill, and ducked. Kneeling as close to the ground as he could, he covered his face with his arms for protection. Suddenly, the roar stopped. In the uneasy silence, Sorgel lifted his head and looked.

The object sped away from him, toward the southwest, appearing to go in a straight line at about 10-15 feet off the ground. It cleared the eight foot tall dynamite shack by about three feet and then continued in a southwesterly direction until it went over the high desert mountains and disappeared.

Two days later, Rancher Mack Brazel found debris from a crash as he and the son of Floyd and Loretta Proctor rode their horses out to check on sheep after a fierce thunderstorm the night before. As they rode along, Brazel began to notice unusual pieces of what seemed to be metal debris scattered over a large area. Upon further inspection, Mack saw a shallow trench several hundred feet long had been gouged into the ground.

Brazel was struck by the unusual properties of the debris and after dragging large pieces of it over to his storage shed, he then took some of them over to show the Proctors.

The Proctors told Brazel he might be holding wreckage from an alien spacecraft, because a number of UFO sightings had been reported in the United States that summer, or a government project, and that he should report the incident to Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox.

A day or two later, Brazel drove into Roswell, New Mexico, the county seat, and reported the incident to Sheriff Wilcox, who reported it to Major Jesse Marcel, intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Group, stationed at Roswell Army Air Field. Military radar had been tracking an unidentified flying object in the skies over southern New Mexico for four days. On the night of July 4, 1947, radar indicated the object had gone down about 30-40 miles northwest of Roswell.

Sheriff Wilcox returned to the debris field two days later. He was convinced something must have exploded above the ground and fell. Along with Major Marcel, they canvassed the crash area. The Army officer was able to determine which direction the object came from and which direction it was heading.

With his team on their hands-and-knees, the major and fifteen soldiers gathered every tiny little speck of metal. The pieces were strewn over a wide area, more than ¾ of a mile long and a few hundred feet wide. Scattered in the debris were small bits of metal that Major Marcel held a cigarette lighter to see if they would burn. They didn’t ignite.

Along with the scraps of metal, Marcel described weightless I-beam structures that were 3/8 inch by 1/4 inch, none of them very long, but neither would they bend or break. Some of these I-beams had indecipherable characters along the length, in two colors. Marcel soon discovered that the metal debris had the thickness of tinfoil, but was indestructible.

After gathering enough debris to fill his staff car, Marcel decided to stop by his home on the way back to the base, so he could show his family the unusual debris. He’d never seen anything quite like it.

He wasn’t sure what they were picking up. He didn’t know what it was. It couldn’t have been part of an aircraft and not part of any kind of weather balloon or experimental balloon. He’d seen rockets sent up from the White Sands Testing Grounds. It definitely was not part of a missile or rocket.

Later that night, the major awakened his son, who followed his father outside to help carry in a large box filled with debris. Once inside, they emptied the contents of the debris onto the kitchen floor.

Marcel Junior fiddled with the weird pieces of foil and I-beams. He looked at his father and asked, Where did this come from?

Don’t ask. his father said.

Jesse Marcel noted that the writing on the I-beams was purple. It was strange. He had never seen anything like it, with different geometric shapes, leaves and circles.

Meanwhile, Glenn Dennis, a young mortician working at Ballard Funeral Home, received some curious calls one afternoon from the RAAF morgue. The base’s mortuary officer was trying to get hold of some small, hermetically sealed coffins and also wanted to know how to preserve bodies that had been exposed to the elements for a few days and avoid contaminating the tissue.

Dennis later drove to the base hospital where he saw large pieces of wreckage with strange engravings on one of the pieces sticking out of the back of a military ambulance. He entered the hospital and was visiting with a nurse he knew, when suddenly he was threatened by military police and forced to leave.

The next day, Dennis met again with the same nurse, who told him about bodies discovered with the wreckage and drew pictures of them on a prescription pad. Within a few days she was transferred to England and her later whereabouts remained forever unknown.

On July 8, 1947, Lieutenant Walter Haut, RAAF public information officer, finished a press release he had been ordered to write, stating that the wreckage of a crashed disk had been recovered. He gave copies to the two radio stations and both of the local newspapers.

By 2:26 pm the same day, the story was on The Associated Press wire stating that the Army Air Forces announced a flying disk had been found.

As calls began to pour into the base from all over the world, Lt. Robert Shirkey watched as MPs loaded wreckage onto a C-54 from the First Transport Unit.

To get a better look, Shirkey stepped around Colonel Blanchard, who was irritated with all of the calls coming into the base. Blanchard decided to travel out to the debris field and left instructions that he’d gone on leave.

Blanchard had sent Major Marcel to Fort Worth Army Air Field and later Carswell Air Force Base, to report to Brigadier General Roger M. Ramey, commanding officer of the 8th Air Force. Marcel took some of the debris into Ramey’s office to show him what had been found. The material was displayed on Ramey’s desk for the general when he returned.

Upon his return, Ramey wanted to see the exact location of the debris field, so he and Marcel went to the map room down the hall, but when they returned, the wreckage that had been on the desk was gone and a weather balloon was spread out on the floor. Major Charles A. Cashon took the photo of Marcel with the weather balloon in Ramey’s office. It was then reported that Ramey recognized the remains as part of a weather balloon.

Major General Rockland Rawlings, the chief of staff of the 8th Air Force, later told his grandson, Kyle Rawlings, It was part of an elaborate and simple cover story. The whole balloon part of it was created as the major part of the story we were told to give to the public and news and that was it.

Later that afternoon, Haut’s original press release was rescinded and an officer from the base retrieved all of the copies from the radio stations and newspaper offices. The next day, July 9, a second press release was issued stating that the 509th Bomb Group had mistakenly identified a weather balloon as wreckage of a flying saucer.

On July 9, as reports went out that the crashed object was actually a weather balloon, cleanup crews were busily clearing the debris. Bud Payne, a rancher at Corona, was trying to round up a stray when he was spotted by the military and forced to leave the Foster ranch. Broadcaster Judd Roberts and Walt Whitmore were turned away as they approached the debris field.

As the wreckage was brought to the base, it was crated and stored in a hangar. Those crates were flown out on separate cargo