In that split second before the light went on, Herman saw what he thought were noise-cloaking panels on the belly. These "whisper panels" had been described to him when he'd filed a class action against the government on behalf of Tom Lawson and Gil Grant, two Marines who had gotten horribly sick from something they'd contracted at Area 51, the supersecret government airbase at Groom Lake, Nevada. It was Tom and Gil who had originally gotten him interested in Area 51. He had hoped his lawsuit would force the government to reveal what testing was really going on out there.

The helicopter hovered, blowing sand and dirt as it whispered silently above the field. Suddenly, men appeared on the ground all around them. They had either jumped from the low hovering helicopter or had been up here already waiting. They converged from all sides. Herman felt hands grabbing him as ten or twelve soldiers swarmed them. They were all dressed in camouflage jumpsuits with a strange, red Delta insignia sewn over the uniform's left breast pocket.

I was right! Herman thought, recognizing the Dulce Base insignia that had been drawn for him once by Tom Lawson.

Herman and Jack were quickly frisked. Jack's AMT Hardballer was yanked out of his holster. They were both cuffed while Paul Nichols was uncuffed, then they were hustled to a spot at the side of the field as the strangely-shaped black helicopter landed, throwing dirt and stones everywhere, stinging their skin and eyes.

Ten commandos dragged Herman and Jack toward the helicopter, but Paul Nichols yelled something at the soldiers who had a hold of Jack.

"Huh?" one of the commandos yelled back, over the windstorm coming from the idling futuristic chopper.

"Turn him around," Nichols demanded, pointing at Jack. They did as he instructed, then Paul stepped up and fired a right cross.

Jack's lip split and blood flowed. "That all you got?" Jack yelled at Nichols.

The commandos yanked Jack around, then continued pushing Herman and Jack toward the helicopter.

Canvas hoods were snapped over their heads as they were forced into the chopper. The roar inside was much louder than on the outside. Herman and Jack felt the helicopter shudder and rise. As they took off they were both pretty sure they would never be heard from again.

While be breathed his own hot breath inside the blackout hood Herman felt the annoying tickle in his throat. He felt sluggish and without energy and knew his heart had gone into another arrhythmia.

As he and Jack Wirta were whisked away into the night, Herman cursed his heart. He was almost certain the strange, futuristic helicopter taking them to God-knows-where was one of the new Aurora Hyper-aircraft that Tom and Gil had told him about.

An hour later the helicopter began to slow. Herman felt the vibration increasing as the pilot added power and pulled up on the collective, making the chopper hover.

"Dreamland Control, this is Psych Twenty-seven. We are downrange and entering The Box," the pilot reported.

Herman knew all about Dreamland.

It was the secret testing site at Groom Lake, Nevada. He also knew that "Psych" was the call sign for all experimental aircraft being tested at both Groom Lake and Papoose Lake, which was located ten miles to the north. It was hard for Herman to believe, but it now seemed that he and Jack were actually being taken to The Ranch, the nickname given to the ultrasecret test facility encompassing the two five-mile-long runways on the two dry lakebeds.

If that was true, they were about to land at the secret facility known as Area 51. Only people with top Pentagon security could work there.

Herman had spent two months out there in the late eighties, staying in a motel named the Little A-Lee-Inn. He had been taking sworn statements from government radiologists and toxic waste people at Area 51. He'd been refused entry to the base and was forced to take his depositions off-site. His sinuses were always plugged while there, because he was allergic to something that seemed to be perpetually blooming in the central Nevada desert. It was the only place he'd ever had sinus trouble.

Once, when he was still working the case full-time, he'd taken a rented, four-wheel-drive Jeep up to Bald Mountain, the highest peak in the Groom Mountain range. He'd squatted in the old, deserted silver mine with his tripod and long-lens camera pointed at the secret base almost four miles away. All the while he was afraid that he was being observed by the telescopes mounted on the top of the east-end Area 51 support buildings. Those roof scopes were always pointed toward the mountains, surveying the growing crowds of conspiracy addicts who were convinced that alien research was taking place on The Ranch. In the nineties the government had finally taken over the Groom Mountains, making them a part of Area 51. He'd heard stories about the CDF troops that sometimes raided these hills to keep snoopers out. Luckily, he'd gotten his photos before that had happened, snapping almost twenty rolls.

He blew them up and showed them to Tom Lawson and Gil Grant, who, at the time, were sick and dying from some strange toxic waste or radio-electric illness. They claimed they had gotten sick from working in S- 4, a secure area with test beds for the antigravity propulsion systems. These systems were later called pulse-detonation wave engines, or hydrogen-powered scramjets. When Herman had shown Gil and Tom the pictures he intended to use in court, the two men identified much of what he had caught on film.

They pointed out a restricted block of military airspace located in the center of Groom Lake. It was marked on all military and civilian air charts, as R-4808-E, but it was known as "The Box." The two men explained that a military Code 61 restricted all flights over The Box, from the ground to deep space. Even most military pilots stationed at Area 51 were forbidden to overfly this zone. At the center of this flight-restricted area was a small, insignificant building that looked to be only one story high, but according to Gil and Tom had six levels underground. This huge, subterranean facility housed the legendary Level Four, known as Nightmare Hall, where bizarre genetic experiments were supposedly taking place.

Nightmare Hall was officially labeled the Secure Dulce Biogenetics Lab. Tom said that he had worked there in the late eighties and had seen grotesque, bat-like creatures that were seven feet tall. He described lizard-like humans, gargoyles with scaly skin that he called drago-reptoids.

To be honest, Herman hadn't believed much of it because Gil and Tom were both very sick and toward the end had been hallucinating. Back then it was hard to believe that any of this was really going on. But Herman knew without a doubt that both men had contracted their strange illnesses at Area 51-sicknesses that none of their civilian doctors had ever seen before.

Herman attempted to compel the Air Force to identify the project the men had been working on so a cure might be devised. His secondary goal was the total exposure of the illegal science he suspected was taking place out there. He'd failed to even get his case to trial.

Through it all Herman learned that published reports of scientific discoveries often lagged many generations behind what was really going on, especially if the experiments were supersecret "black projects." As more and more reports surfaced on gene splicing and hybrid animal experimentation, along with the spectacular arrival of Dolly, the cloned sheep, Herman began to suspect that unimaginable horrors might really be lurking in Nightmare Hall.

Tom and Gil died of their illnesses in 1997, but Herman, working pro bono, was still trying to get a lawsuit for damages into court on behalf of their children. In the process he'd seen more redacted material than was in the Warren Report. Ultimately, the government did what it always did-claimed national security and withheld all of his subpoenaed information.