James McKenna (4:34)
Okay, okay. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Can you tell I'm shaking? I've been on the road a couple days and I'm in, what, Boise or outside Boise? Near Boise. And if you're listening to this, that means either I got this out in time or I'm already dead. Preferably the former. And now I'm rambling. Anyway, it's just. The name is James McKenna. M C, K, E N N A big M, big K. Master Sergeant. Retired, Currently on the run from. Well, I'm not sure who exactly, if I'm being perfectly honest, but I'm running. And now I'm talking, too, because this will not end with me. I need you to understand that. They already got Phil Schneider. Now they're onto me. And there are countless others, too. I'm sure. It's been two weeks since Phil Schneider died. They said it was suicide, but that's a lie. And I know that because I know how Phil looked when he left that site in 1979. He didn't have the fingers to tie anything, let alone not a catheter hose around his neck. But Phil just wouldn't shut up. You know, he started giving lectures, showed off his scars, told the story of that mesa, the base and the battle, and now it's all public, or most of it is anyway. And, well, someone's cleaning house. Just heard another guy from my unit died. No explanation at all. That's four. Now, that's just what I know of. All because of Dulce. That's D U L C E base Dulce base in New Mexico, 1979. And if you didn't know that already, put this down and give it to someone who did, because I'm about to corroborate everything Phil said and more. So start taking notes. I wrote some of this down just to keep track of it all. But right. Summer of 79, I was a master sergeant with a Green Beret attachment at Fort Carson. We mostly handled security details for hush hush construction projects, so when the Dulcie assignment came in, it didn't raise any eyebrows. Now, Dulce wasn't really much of anything, just a tiny town surrounded by reservation land in the absolute middle of nowhere. But the order said they needed security for an underground construction project on the Archuleta mesa. Next morning we were driving down there in a convoy of a few trucks. It wasn't too long until we hit New Mexico and soon enough we were in Dulce proper. We stopped at the only gas station in town for some grub and the attendant looked us over, uniforms and all, and asked if we were there about the cows. I didn't know what he meant, but one of the guys asked what cows? And the man said that ranchers all over had been finding them butchered out in the field. Or not butchered, but mutilated. That's what he said. Mutilated, perfectly clean, like surgery. Then this woman, another local I'd guess, piped up and said maybe we were here for the lights. Weird ones apparently, moving through the sky like nothing they'd ever seen before. None of us asked for further explanation. We just figured we were already stepping in a big pile of something we weren't supposed to touch. So we just shut our mouths, got back in our trucks and rolled right out of there. A bit later we reached the construction site, way up on this dirt road so remote you'd never suspect anything was out there. There was fencing, guard towers, armed patrols, all of it. Clearly this was something above my pay grade. Inside there were civilians everywhere, I assumed engineers, but none of them wore badges and none of them gave us the time of day. And I'm not gonna lie, the whole place just had this feel. It just felt off. And as soon as we set up our tent, my CO told us our primary assignment was to protect one guy, just one engineer from the dozens we'd already seen. And, yeah, you guessed it, his name was Phil Schneider. No, I don't need notes for this. Cause Phil wasn't the kind of guy you forget easily. He was intense. He talked a mile a minute, always thinking, always working. But something had him nervous. You know, the job was behind schedule and his drills were hitting resistance that he just couldn't explain. Not rock, he said, but something else. After a few days, it reached the point where Schneider wanted to see it for himself. So I was told to accompany him on a trip down to inspect the blockage. Now, that's almost a thousand feet down. Just me and Schneider, plus my sidearm and a radio on this flimsy platform suspended by a crane. This is where. This is where things get a little crazy, okay? Because at about 900ft, we hit the bottom. And I quickly realized we weren't in that 10 foot shaft anymore, but some kind of cavern, a huge one, with impossibly smooth walls that shone like glass. Schneider seemed surprised, too, which surprised me. He ran his hand across the wall and said there was no way it was natural. I held my light for him as he took samples of this strange residue and just, you know, kept spouting off scientific jargon, geological terms that I'm not familiar with. That's fine, though, because my job wasn't to listen, but to keep him covered. And right then, that's when I saw a movement in the shadows. At first I thought it might be a trick of the light, but then it stepped forward and I realized it was some kind of thing. It was tall, too tall, with gray skin, a thin body, large head, and its eyes completely black. I guess you could say it kind of looked like an alien. Like the little gray men things, I guess. Only this was not little. It was huge and way more frightening. Especially because this one was holding some kind of weapon. And Phil saw it too. And he made this sound, not quite a scream, more like a gasp, like. And the thing advanced again, and I opened fire. Three shots. Two in the chest, one in the head. And the thing went down. And I wish I could say that was the end of it, but there were more of them who appeared behind it. They emerged from passages I hadn't even noticed. Two of them and three. And Phil was panicking, backing up toward the platform. And I Was trying to cover him, trying to process what I was seeing at the same time. Because even though I was hitting them, I'm a good shot. I know that for a fact. I was hitting them. They weren't falling the way they should have. Instead, they. They folded and then reassembled. And then one of them raised its weapon, and the chamber exploded in blue light. It was like a pulse or something, I still don't know what. And it hit Phil dead center. And he just crumpled, screaming, as the air filled with this ozone smell. And I tried to pull him back to the platform, but they just kept coming. And before I even knew what was happening, we were on the platform. And it was going up. As those things let us go, they disappeared back into the dark. But we weren't out of it yet. Phil, he was going into shock. And I looked down, and I saw most of the fingers on his left hand were gone. They weren't cut off, just gone, like they'd been vaporized. Part of his left foot, same thing. And I remember thinking to myself, well, at least he's not gonna bleed out. And I just tried to keep him talking, looking at me, until we breached the surface and were swarmed by medics and officers and everyone shouting things I could barely hear because my ears were still ringing from whatever just happened, whatever that pulse was. And someone grabbed me and pulled me aside, trying to ask questions. What did I see? How many of them were there? What kind of weapons, things like that. And I realized, clearly they knew something was down there and they'd sent us in blind. But I couldn't protest. I kept my mouth shut until I was sitting in a tent with the site commander, who looked entirely unsurprised by everything that happened. He told me Schneider was alive but critical, and that it was a mistake we were allowed to go down there at all. Because what those drills broke into, that was no natural cave. It was an existing structure. I asked what kind of structure, and he said it was above my clearance. But he did say I was to rejoin my unit at once, get some food, get some water. Because in six hours, I was going back down there. Because, as I'd soon find out, this was war. All right, I'm back. Same motel, new tape. So where was I? Right. Preparation for our second incursion into the cavern. Schneider has lost his fingers. Right? So I've got six hours to eat, rest, process what I'd just seen, which was impossible, of course, but orders were orders. Focus on the mission. Soon more trucks started rolling in. I recognized Delta Some seals, but there were others, too. Men in black uniforms, no name tags, no insignia at all. Everyone avoided looking at them, so I took the cue. And I avoided looking, too. Then we were all called into a briefing where they told us there was a structure beneath the mesa. Multiple levels, multiple hostiles, but zero explanation of who or what they were or what they'd done to Schneider. Just hammering home the mission. Secure the first level, contain the situation, and shoot anything that moved and wasn't human. We loaded out heavy M16s, grenades, one guy with an M60. I mean, we looked like we were about to invade a country, not explore a cavern. But everyone just kept their head down. Even as we started back down that drill shaft, I was among the first to hit the bottom. I don't know why, but the cavern felt colder than before. We all fanned out, weapons ready, but the place was empty. No sign of the creatures I'd seen before. No bodies, nothing. Just that smooth, glassy wall stretching into the dark. As we fanned out, things began to feel more wrong. I realized smaller passages branched off from the cavern, all at perfect angles. And as we kept going deeper and deeper, I realized this place wasn't just huge, it was built. We proceeded about a quarter mile in when we found the first room, if you could call it that. And in there was equipment, I suppose, or technology, but not like anything I'd ever seen. It was weird and curvy, like it was. Like it was organic almost. And all connected by these veins or cables, potentially. I couldn't tell which. And, yeah, here's where things got messy. I was just bending down to take a closer look at what this stuff was when someone shouted contact, and they came out of side passages that for some reason, we hadn't even seen. 5 of them then 10 of them. It was those same gray figures with black eyes and strange weapons. And the firefight erupted instantly. Instant chaos. And those blue pulse weapons they had, when they hit somebody, they didn't just die, they vaporized. And, I mean, we were losing guys fast, but we had numbers and we had firepower. And that M60 opened up and pushed back anything that moved. And these creatures, they tried to fall back in an organized way, but we were just pouring it on. And down another tunnel, we found more chambers. And if this whole thing wasn't already disturbing enough, that was when things got real bad. There were exam tables in there, containment units of some kind. Tissue samples or, I don't know, biological parts in containers. Stuff from cows and stuff from people. One guy bent over to vomit. And I wanted to tell him to pull it together, but I couldn't find the words because I was trying to hold it together myself. So we just kept on moving. We had to. There was no other choice. And we pushed our way through three more chambers, encountering light resistance, until we reached what looked like a dead end. Except it wasn't. There was a stairwell, but it was wrong. Like, the steps were too tall, the angle too steep. Now, one of the black uniformed guys I never did see his rank ordered us to seal it. Nothing comes up, and no one goes down. So we start planning charges. But one guy stops and he says he hears something. And then I feel it. This faint vibration, subtle at first, but slowly rising up through my boots. But then, before we could react, bam, they were on us. Just a swarm of them rushing up that insane stairwell. And we're suddenly in a melee. We're fighting point blank. I empty a magazine into one of them, and it still just keeps coming until someone hits it with a shotgun blast. But even more were coming, so I threw a satchel charge down the stairwell as hard as I could and then yelled for everyone to take cover. And the explosion is massive. Debris goes everywhere. And then the stairwell just collapsed in on itself. For a moment, there's just dust. Silence. Our ears are ringing. All of us are just catching our breath, checking for injuries. Then the radio crackles. All units fall back to the surface. Thank God we did not argue. We started making our way back through the tunnels, dragging our wounded, leaving our dead what little was left of them. Less than two dozen of us made it back to the surface. Out of more than 80 that went down. But as I looked around, I realized there was a whole new team prepping to head down there. Not combat troops, though. These guys had equipment, like construction gear, like they were planning to set up a permanent presence down there. So I found my CO and asked what was happening. And he just said, your part's done, soldier. Everything was under control. He said, as far as you're concerned, this never happened. They moved us out the next morning. No medals, no after action report, not even a word of acknowledgement. Just papers to sign and orders to new assignments. And for a while there, I tried to just carry on and just forget the whole thing. But there's no easy way of forgetting something like that. Especially after I heard that someone was out in public talking. And, yeah, you guessed it, that someone was Phil Schneider. Turns out he survived after all. And at first, I thought he'd lost his mind. I mean, the things he was saying underground bases all over the country, alien treaties, government conspiracies. It sounded crazy even to me after what I had seen down there. And I tracked down a video of one of his talks. I watch him stand up there and show his mangled hand to the audience, telling them about his encounter with those creatures. And, yeah, he was mixing in other stuff, stuff I didn't have a clue about and couldn't verify. But the core of it, the battle at Dulce that happened, I was there. Sometime after that, I came home and I had a message on my answering machine. It was Phil. And he sounded frantic. He said they were following him, that I was the only one who would understand. And he gave me a number to call, but I didn't. I was just too scared of getting pulled back into all of this. And then a few weeks later, I heard he was dead. Suicide, they said, but I knew better. And then I heard about others, men I'd served with. They were dying out there out of the blue, just in training. Accidents, car crashes, heart attacks. They were cleaning house the way they always do. I don't know what's happening at Dulcie Base now. I don't know if those things are still down there or if we drove them deeper or if some kind of arrangement was made. But I do know dozens of men died in those tunnels. And not for nothing, it seems, because we were protecting something or protecting everyone else from something. The question in my mind is what? And who decided it's worth keeping secret at the cost of even more lives?
