Ben Mezrich - The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway

ALSO BY BEN MEZRICH

Once Upon a Time in Russia

Bringing Down the House

Ugly Americans

Busting Vega$

Rigged

The Accidental Billionaires

Sex on the Moon

Straight Flush

The X-Files: Skin

Fertile Ground

Threshold

Reaper

Bringing Down the Mouse

Seven Wonders

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Copyright 2016 by Ben Mezrich

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First Atria Books hardcover edition September 2016

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Interior design by Dana Sloan

Jacket design by Philip Pascuzzo

Author Photograph by Eric Levin

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mezrich, Ben, 1969 author.

Title: The 37th parallel : the secret truth behind Americas UFO highway / Ben Mezrich.

Other titles: Thirty-seventh parallel

Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016021639 (print) | LCCN 2016032716 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Unidentified flying objectsSouthwestern States. | ParapsychologySouthwestern States. | BISAC: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Unexplained Phenomena. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Science & Technology. | BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / UFOs & Extraterrestrials.

Classification: LCC TL789.5.S85 M49 2016 (print) | LCC TL789.5.S85 (ebook) | DDC 001.9420979dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021639

ISBN 978-1-5011-3552-1

ISBN 978-1-5011-3554-5 (ebook)

To Asher and Arya, who are young enough to believe in little green men.

And to Tonyaafter reading this youll see that they arent that little, and are probably gray.

A generation from now, people will look back at us the same way we look back at those who believed the Earth was flat; the evidence that weve been visited by extraterrestrials is so overwhelming, its actually a leap of faith to believe anything else.

Anonymous aerospace executive

Theres more physical evidence that UFOs exist than theres physical evidence that Jesus Christ existed.

Chuck Zukowski, to the Denver Post, July 22, 2007

S eptember 12, 2000. A stretch of interstate highway winding along the base of the Ute Mountain Range near the ColoradoNew Mexico border, a little after 4:00 p.m.

In a panoramic splash of pine trees and puffs of falling snow, flashes of brilliant sunlight reflected off the cap of Ute Peak, the Sleeping Mountain, high above. And then a beat-up RV lumbered into view. Over the rumble of the campers engines rose the off-key tenor of an all-American family sing-along.

Chuck Zukowski was at the wheel of the twenty-four-foot Winnebago Warrior Class A, both hands tapping out the rhythm of Sweet Home Alabama on the thick vinyl of the steering wheel cover. Early forties, sandy-haired, fit, Chuck was smiling as he navigated the camper down the serpentine asphalt. His three kids were in the back, one girl and two boys, and his wife, Tammy, a pretty brunette, was up front, joining Chuck in keeping the beat with her fingers against the dash. From the lines beneath Chucks blue eyes, it was obvious that theyd been driving for quite some time, but there was enough vivid scenery flashing by outside to keep even the youngest kid from getting bored. This sort of road trip was something the Zukowski clan enjoyed. In fact, when Chuck finally spotted the small ranch-style motel along the highway, coinciding with the notice from the dulcet tone of the RVs audio GPS, he was almost reluctant to pull in for the night.

After parking the RV in the empty motel lot, Chuck grabbed a pair of room keys from the lobby manager, and the Zukowski family settled into two adjoining rooms overlooking a tarp-covered pool. The kids went straight for the TV in their room, after a quick dinner, microwaved to perfection in the RV, but next door, Tammy headed for the bed and sank into it with a tattered paperback, exhausted from the long day in the camper.

A few hours later, the kids finally let the TV get some rest, and Chuck closed the door between the two rooms. The sun was long gone outside, the view of the shuttered pool replaced by an inky blackness, broken only by the occasional flare of neon from the vacancy sign hanging above the motel lobby. Tammy was still digging into the paperback, but Chuck could tell she was down for the night. He ran his fingers through her hair and then told her he was going out for a short walk. Barely looking up from the book, she asked him to get some ice from the machine on his way back.

He took the ice bucket from the mantel by the door and headed out to the parking lot. Opening the back of the RV, he leaned into a four-by-four storage compartment and reached toward a locked strongbox affixed to one wall. With a jangle of keys, he pried open the box and exchanged the ice bucketwhich he would fill when he returned to the Winnebagofor his equipment: a three-pound police flashlight, a video recorder, an EMF counter, and three rectangular batteries. Then he reached for the leather holster hanging from a hook at the back of the box and removed his .40 caliber Glock from it before checking the cartridges and strapping it to his waist.

By the time he exited the RV, snow had started to fall again, but even so he could see the headlights snaking toward him down the desolate highway.

Two hours later Chuck was breathing hard as he burst through the last line of thick pines into a clearing following his two companionsan athletic man, midthirties, sporting a pony tail and dressed in a thick hunting jacket with a machete slung over one shoulder, and a thin, slightly older woman struggling along in a bulky snowsuit and too many scarves. Tufts of low grass covered in snow punctuated the field of icy gravel. The three of them were now at least eight thousand feet up, high enough to feel the altitude; the other man, Joe Fex, part Native American, a rugged outdoorsman reared on the ranches that pockmarked this corner of the country, was barely sweating as he began setting up their makeshift campsite, raising a canvas tent to protect their equipment. But the woman was trembling from exhaustion and certainly fear. Chuck had no worries about Fex; the big man was an old friend and had accompanied Chuck on many similar excursions over the years. But the woman was a wild card; Chuck had met her over the Internet not two weeks earlier, and the drive over to the base of this hike was the longest time Chuck had spent with her in person. Chuck would have been much happier if they could have left her behindbut it was her information that had brought them to this spot.

According to her website, she was supposed to be some sort of psychic. Chuck wasnt the type to judge anyonefor all he knew she had a cemetery full of dead people on speed dial. More likely, she was batshit crazy, but it didnt really matter. As usual, Chuck had done his research. The psychic might have been the first to turn him on to this particular location, but now he had a case file an inch thick on this place.