A Fall of MOON DUST

Thursday, November 13, 2003, 10:00 p.m. EST

Undisclosed Location, Atlanta, Georgia

MORGAN was busy studying The Goddess of the Black Fan. MAYA was relaxing in her home in New Orleans. MICHAEL, too, was relaxing in his home when someone knocked on his door. It was a Fed Ex delivery man with an urgent packet. The label was addressed to "N. Connelly" from a "Larry Green" with no return address. MICHAEL automatically recognized it as coming from LARRY, leader of L-Cell.

Inside the packet were two pieces of paper and a Post-it Note telling MICHAEL to contact LARRY as soon as he received the packet. The first page was a fax cover sheet. The fax was apparently sent to a Julia Winters. The sender was "A Friend". The comment on the cover sheet said that the accompanying document appeared to be authentic.

The second page was stamped "Top Secret" and "Contains Special Intelligence Material". The clearance level for the document is something called "Majic". Ms. Winters received the document that day at 5:33 p.m., while the document's date was that day at 11:23 Zulu Time (6:23 a.m. EST). The text of the message was as follows:

JMF TRANSMISSION 2301189
CLASSIFICATION TOP SECRET / MAJIC
CIRCULATION WITHIN RESTRICTED CHANNELS ONLY
DO NOT COPY
PAGE 1 OF 1
PRIORITY: IMMEDIATE

DTG RELEASE: 131123Z NOV 2003

PREPARED FOR: MJ-3 by MJ-5

SUMMARY:
Media containment required for current Operation BLUE FLY deployment, western Maine. Priority 1A.

BEGIN TEXT:
Request media containment procedure for Operation BLUE FLY mission within MJ-5 Project MOON DUST. Priority 1A (immediate).

BLUE FLY status has been raised to Condition YELLOW. Significant activity in the Oxford County area of Maine, coupled with meteorological disturbances over Canada, suggest a relatively high probability (>10%) that BLUE FLY will go operational. The ground contingent is currently deploying in Oxford County. The air contingent, if required, will stage out of Westover AFB.

BLUE FLY mission tasks are being performed by USAF BLUE TEAM personnel. Operational security is provided by NRO SECTION DELTA. Attached to BLUE FLY are personnel (approx. 200) from ARRS out of MacDill AFB. ARRS are not directly involved in BLUE FLY and may be used for cover.

BLUE TEAM will operate under Condition YELLOW in the vicinity of Whitecap and Glass Face Mountains. NRO DELTA will deploy as necessary.

It is not expected that BLUE FLY will operate for longer than six (6) days from this date.

(Click here to see an Adobe Acrobat version of the fax cover sheet and the document.)

MICHAEL contacted LARRY via a secure telephone connection. LARRY explained that Julia Winters is a Delta Green friendly FBI Special Agent working out of the Boston office. She had received anonymous tips like this before. A couple of them led to Delta Green investigating UFO phenonmena, but most of the tips were wild goose chases. None of the tips resulted in anything "definitive". This document was far more involved than most of the tips, and the timing suggested that something urgent was up. M-Cell was to investigate that "something". Due to past experience the mission was expected to be low risk.

It was up to M-Cell to come up with a cover story, but identities had already been established (once the cover story was invented, A-Cell would work to combine the story with the false identities). MICHAEL would go by the name Charles Lawrence, MORGAN was David Mitchell, and MAYA was Kelly Germaine. The next morning e-tickets and drivers licenses would arrive at the homes of the agents. The tickets were for a flight to Portland, Maine. The agents were to purchase extra equipment locally in Maine.

MICHAEL contacted MORGAN and MAYA. Through a secure conference call they discussed the mission. They would get to see the document the next day in Portland. The agents signed off for the night.

Friday, November 14, 2003, 8:00 a.m. EST

Undisclosed Locations, Atlanta, Georgia, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C.

The team received their identity packets. Inside MICHAEL's packet were three keys to lockers at the Portland airport. The agents arrived early in the afternoon. The lockers contained big duffle bags. In the bags were hunting camouflage jackets, pants, and hats, 9mm pistols, hunting rifles, binoculars and a map.

MORGAN and MAYA read the document for the first time. MICHAEL and MORGAN suspected — due to the "MJ-3", "MJ-5" and "Majic" references — that it involved a rumoured agency known as Majestic-12. Neither knew much about the agency other than the fact it was formed after the infamous Roswell UFO crash in 1947 to investigate and exploit alien technology. Whether or not there really were aliens to investigate was open to speculation.

The team debated the meaning of the document. It seemed that Operation BLUE FLY was something within Project MOON DUST. MJ-5 was, in MORGAN's words a "cell" within Majestic-12. MORGAN googled "ARRS" and found out that it was the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service, a branch of the Air Force used to rescue downed airmen and recover crashed aircraft. MORGAN speculated that BLUE FLY was some sort of craft invented by Majestic-12, and that if it crashed the ARRS cover story would be needed. Another googling found that Westover AFB was in Massachusetts. MICHAEL surmised that "NRO" stood for the National Reconnaissance Office, the people who ran the spy satellites.

After this discussion the agents went on a shopping spree. They were "buddies from college" who had gotten together for a hunting trip. First they rented a green H2 Hummer from a local car rental agency in MAYA's name. Then they bought a large amount of hunting and camping supplies, including night vision goggles, camping stove, food, casual but warm clothing, and extra fuel cans for the Hummer. MAYA suggested that they needed a tool box due to the Hummer's poor reliability statistics.

It was late in the afternoon when they got on the road. Part way to Oxford County they realized that they needed a camera and so they stopped off at a Wal-Mart to buy a cheap 35mm SLR. Rumford is the largest town in Oxford County with a "metropolitan" area of about 6000 people. It took just under an hour and a half to arrive in Rumford. Driving into the town they saw a lot of military vehicles — mostly trucks and Humvees — and military tents. They managed to get two ajoining rooms at the Red Roof Inn, and then piled back into the Hummer for a drive to East Andover. It was dark by the time they drove around Whitecap Mountain. MICHAEL and MORGAN used their night vision equipment to view the mountain while MAYA drove. They didn't spot anything.

East Andover is small, with about 200 inhabitants. As they approached the hamlet they saw the same collection of vehicles and tents. MAYA spotted something out of the corner of her eye. It looked like heavy vehicles disguised behind a camouflage net. They drove a little bit further and pulled off the road. MICHAEL and MAYA decided to sneak through the woods and check out the vehicles while MORGAN unscrewed the license plates from the Hummer.

MICHAEL and MAYA crept through the woods until they could get a look at the vehicles. One was some sort of personnel carrier, with six wheels and a periscope-like device on top. Two vehicles were large and tracked, with what looked like a crane on top. Two other vehicles were mobile cranes, though they had a military rather than a civilian look about them. The remaining four vehicles were standard M113 personnel carriers, but with Red Cross symbols painted on the side.

They crept back to MORGAN to tell them what they saw. MORGAN decided to creep up himself with the camera. In spite of the noise he made, MORGAN managed to get to the same vantage point apparently unseen. He took some pictures, but was unsure if they would turn out due to the darkness. MORGAN returned to the Hummer. They jumped in and proceeded towards Andover.

MAYA noticed that a military Humvee was following them. She drove casually until she came to a red light, then she floored it through the light, gaining precious seconds on the following Humvee. She came up to one of only two gas stations in East Andover. This one had a car wash. Turning quickly, she pulled into the car wash. Through the soapy windshield the agents saw the Humvee drive past them. They pulled out of the car wash and reattached the license plates. They headed back the way they came, on the assumption that it was the last thing their pursuers would expect. As they drove past the camouflaged vehicles they noticed that the camouflage netting was adjusted and that the vehicles could not be seen from the road.

The agents arrived back at their hotel in Rumford, apparently without being followed. They went to bed, the men in one room and MAYA in the other.