Area 51: Excalibur-6 (19 page)

They all exited and looked at Turcotte, waiting for the next step.

Turcotte checked his watch, then nodded to himself as

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he heard the whop of helicopter blades approaching. He went out of the hangar onto the runway and looked to the east, in the direction of Fort Bragg. A Blackhawk helicopter painted flat black came in low over the trees, circled about, and landed forty feet away. The side door slid back and a quartet of heavily armed men in unmarked fatigues exited. While two took the flanks, two others ran up to Turcotte.

He held his hands up, empty palms forward. One of them started to pat Turcotte down, but a fifth man who had just gotten off the helicopter called out: "That's all right. Secure the perimeter."

Turcotte snapped a salute even though the fifth man wore no insignia. "Colonel."

The man returned the salute. "Major."

Turcotte turned to his fellow refugees from Area 51. "This is Colonel Mickell.

Delta Force commander."

Yakov nodded, remembering the assistance Mickell had given them during the mission taking down Devil's Island. Turcotte quickly introduced the others, then they moved inside the hangar.

"What do you need from me, Mike?" Mickell asked.

"First, no word of our existence."

Mickell nodded. "That's a given."

"Second, local security. We can trust no one."

"I'll leave the four I brought with me and send you a dozen more for outer perimeter. All men I trust."

"Third," Turcotte said, "we need one of your mobile command posts." He knew that Delta had perfected a two-van setup that was mobile and could link into the secure military communications system anywhere in the world. It wouldn't be as good as Area 51, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances.

"We're stretched pretty thin," Mickell said. "There's a lot of stuff going on around the world. Communication has been

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lost with Hawaii. North Korea has invaded the South with Chinese support. Taiwan and the mainland are going at it. The Middle East is going nuts, especially with Saddam dead."

"Do you have a mobile command post available?" Tur-cotte pressed.

"Why don't you clue me in?" Mickell asked in turn.

Turcotte figured that was a fair enough request given that the colonel was putting his military career, and most likely his life, on the line. "We think we have a way of stopping Aspasia's Shadow." He quickly briefed Mickell on the Master Guardian he suspected was hidden inside a mother-ship on Ararat and Excalibur being on Everest.

"All right," Mickell agreed, when Turcotte was done. "I'll have a command post out here as quickly as I can."

Turcotte walked out of the hangar and stood on the runway. He'd trained here at Camp Rowe many times in his army career, often preparing for real-world missions overseas. A slight breeze blew over the pitted concrete, making him shiver. He had a feeling this next mission was going to be harder than any he had ever been on before.

He pulled the collar of his battle dress uniform tighter around his neck.

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CHAPTER 1 1 : THE PRESENT

GULF OF MEXICO

"When you partook of the Grail," Dr. Garlin asked, "did anything else happen?"

"The minute I put my hand in," Duncan said, "it took over my body."

"What about before?"

"'Before'?"

"You were in the Hall of Records," Garlin said. "The Ark was there. You were wearing the robes and crown of a priest. The only things you didn't have were the stones. Did anything happen before Aspasia's Shadow gave you the one stone?"

Duncan frowned. 'There was a connection on the top of the Ark. Leads. That went to the crown I was wearing."

"And you made the connection?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"I saw something when I was connected to the Ark," she said. "Something strange."

Garlin leaned forward slightly. "And that was?"

"I saw a mothership," Duncan said. "I was inside it. There were bouncers in cradles."

"The main hold of a mothership," Garlin said. "Similar to what was found inside the one at Area 51."

"Yes."

"What else?"

"I saw the Ark." Duncan closed her eyes, replaying the 160

vision. "An Airlia was putting the Grail inside of it. They put it on board a bouncer. The large bay doors opened. We were about a mile up in the air. We were over water. I saw a talon fly by. The bouncers began flying out of the hold.

Going in different directions." She fell silent for a moment, her face tight as she drew up the memory.

"Perhaps that is how the Airlia arrived here," Garlin said, "and began—"

Duncan held up a hand. "No. It wasn't. It wasn't how they arrived here. Because when the talon passed by below the hold I saw its shadows."

Garlin frowned. "What?"

"Shadows," Duncan said. "Plural. There were two suns in the sky of this planet.

It wasn't Earth."

"It makes sense the Airlia would have traveled to other worlds," Garlin said.

"But taking a Grail and an Ark to other worlds?" Duncan asked.

"Interesting," Garlin said. 'Two suns. We're going to run a full-body MRI on you."

Duncan seemed resigned. "What do you hope to discover doing that?"

"We have Majestic's EDOM data. We want to see if you've been—" He paused, searching for the right word, but Duncan interrupted with a sharp laugh.

"Changed?"

"We know you've been changed by the Grail," Garlin said. "We want to find out what else has been done to you. Before the Grail."

PEARL HARBOR

If a nanovirus could be disappointed, the collective swarm that controlled the humans at Pearl Harbor would be expressing

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that emotion. The hope had been to catch the remaining American fleet in the Pacific in the harbor and absorb the ships and crews into the Alien Fleet that was still approaching. With that combined might, the next step would be a multipronged assault on the West Coast of the United States.

Instead, the harbor was empty, everything that could move having gone to sea. As per commands from Easter Island, scout planes were sent out searching while the nanovirus spread, taking over all shore personnel. Civilians were ignored for the time being as they had no useful skills and there was no present need for cannon fodder. The exception was any type of communications off the island. AH

radio, telephone, TV, and satellite transmitters were seized, the personnel running them absorbed via the nanovirus. Oahu was cut off from the rest of the world. The other islands in the Hawaiian chain held little interest for Aspasia's Shadow and were ignored.

In the hills above Pearl Harbor, members of a few Special Forces A-Teams and a couple of SEAL squads crouched in the jungle and observed, radioing reports back to both the fleet and the United States. The reports were intercepted by the alien forces, and squads of infected Marines began to spread out from Pearl Harbor, searching for the teams.

In the harbor itself, the nanovirus did find one ship of the line, albeit not in working order. That, however, was more of a challenge than a problem. The nanovirus began constructing nanomachines that went to work on the submerged ship.

KATHMANDU, NEPAL

McGraw and Olivetti arrived in the middle of the night, the F-14 Tomcat landing on the main runway at Tribhuvan International Airport exactly as programmed by the guardian. Their incisions were healed with the aid of the nanovirus and the adjustments that had been made to their bodies had been

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adapted to. As the plane came to a halt, the two SEALs saw the headlights of a vehicle approaching. They slid back the Canopy and stiffly climbed out of the aircraft.

McGraw had an MP-5 submachine gun and as a pickup truck pulled up the plane, he slid back the bolt, loading a round into the chamber. A man got out of the truck, yelling something in Nepalese, obviously not pleased with the middle-of-the-night arrival. McGraw shot him through the forehead.

The two SEALs pulled their gear out of the plane and threw it in the back of the pickup. There didn't appear to be any other activity at the airfield given the late hour. McGraw slipped on a set of night-vision goggles as he got behind the wheel of the truck. He turned the headlights off and the goggles on as Olivetti got in the passenger side.

McGraw scanned the airfield, then spotted what he was looking for: a pair of helicopters parked near a hangar. He drove the truck over to the choppers. One was a vintage Russian-made MI-17, a large cargo chopper. The other was more modern, a French-made Ecureuil AS350B.

The two men paused, looking at the two for a moment, then they loaded their gear in the back of the Ecuruil. McGraw went over to the hangar and broke in. He found an office in one corner. Searching the top of the desk, he found a list of phone numbers and names. He ran his finger down until he found the Nepalese word for pilot.

He dialed the number and when a confused voice answered, he simply said the Nepalese word for airport, then hung up.

Twenty minutes later, headlights cut through the night, approaching the hangar.

A door opened and an angry man stepped out, yelling in Nepalese and looking about in the darkness. Olivetti stepped up next to the man, shutting him 163

up by the succinct method of slamming the barrel of the MP-5 across the man's mouth, smashing teeth.

The pilot dropped to his knees, hands going to his mouth, blood gushing out.

Olivetti put the muzzle of the submachine gun next to the pilot's head, finger on the trigger. McGraw knelt in front of the pilot, spreading a map on the tarmac, shining a flashlight on it.

"Sagamartha," McGraw said, tapping a spot on the map.

The man looked up, confused.

"Sagamartha," McGraw repeated, then pointed at himself, Olivetti, then at the helicopter, and finally at the pilot. Then he pointed to the northeast.

The pilot shook his head, a movement that was cut short by Olivetti jabbing the muzzle sharply against the man's temple. The man said something in Nepalese.

When the pilot realized they didn't understand, he thought for a moment, then pointed at the helicopter, indicating he needed to get something.

McGraw gestured and Olivetti let the man get up. They walked over to the helicopter and the pilot opened the door, then pulled out a logbook. He flipped through until he came to a certain page. He shoved it in front of McGraw, his finger on a certain part. A number and letter: 6100M.

Then the pilot put his finger on the map, at the same point that McGraw had pointed to. "Sagamartha," the pilot said, and tapped the number: 8848M. He then waved one hand horizontally and shook his head.

McGraw's expression didn't change. He ran his finger along a road that ran east out of Kathmandu, then turned to the north, crossed the border into Tibet, then looped around again to the east. His finger came to a halt north of Everest.

The pilot frowned, started to say something, then realized the situation and his mouth snapped shut. McGraw pointed

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toward the helicopter, then jerked his thumb up. Olivetti added emphasis by jamming the muzzle of the MP-5 into the pilot's ribs hard enough to cause him to double over. Cursing, the pilot climbed into the pilot's seat and strapped himself in, as the two SEALs climbed in and shut the doors. The pilot started the engines.

PETHANG RINGMO, TIBET

A cold wind blew from the south across the stone veranda that faced the army barracks. It was always cold there and the air was thin at over a mile-and-a-half-high altitude. The barracks overlooked the small village of Pethang Ringmo, where less than a hundred hardy souls lived. The village was at the end of an often-washed-out track that could be negotiated in good weather by a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Despite centuries of self-rule, Tibet was occupied in 1950 as Communist China sought to expand its sphere of influence. For nine years an uneasy peace existed in the land as the Dalai Lama tried to rule in conjunction with the invaders.

That changed in 1959 when the country rose up against the interlopers. Thousands of Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama escaped, seeking asylum in India.

It's estimated that since that time, over a million Tibetans who were left behind have died as a result of the occupation and the attempts by China to make it a Chinese province. It is believed that these efforts at genocide and repopulation have succeeded to the point where there are a million more Chinese living inside Tibet than natives. Of the six thousand monasteries that existed prior to the occupation, only twelve remain, the rest destroyed, many as a result of target practice by Chinese artillery. Reports had filtered out that the Chinese were sterilizing Tibetan women and also dumping nuclear waste in the country.

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All those things meant little to a Chinese major who stood on the barracks'

stone balcony. He had been stationed in Tibet for another reason altogether. At the moment he was staring at the three people in front of him, then down at the orders he'd been faxed from Beijing. The fax was signed by the president himself, so there was no doubting whether he would comply. The people had arrived via helicopter less than ten minutes ago. The major, who only went by one name in the climbing community—Aksu—was a short wiry man with leathery skin.

He had summited Everest twice, once from the south and once from the more difficult northern approach, blazing a new trail in from the northeast, rather than the accepted northwest route. According to these orders, he was to take these people up the northern route.

Even here, far from the capital, word of the fighting in Korea and Taiwan had reached the major's ears. He wasn't certain how these strangers fit into all of that, and the fax explained nothing. It grated on the major that the three were obviously foreigners with their pale skin, red hair, and eyes hidden by sunglasses. Even more than that, though, what truly rankled him was the fact that he could tell they weren't climbers. And their leader was a woman.

"Everest is no place for amateurs," he brusquely informed them.

Lexina nodded. "I know."