Area 51: Excalibur-6 (24 page)

The controls were getting sluggish, something Turcotte had experienced once before in a bouncer, but that had been when he had taken one as high as it would go, away from the surface of the planet, much higher than their present altitude. He saw no reason why it should be happening, so close to their goal.

They were just south of the West Ridge, flying parallel to it, a route suggested by Morris.

"We've got a problem," Turcotte announced as he pushed on the controls, edging them closer to the ridge.

"What's wrong?" Morris asked.

"We're losing power." Turcotte looked to the left, searching for a level spot.

"Buckle up," he advised the medic and Mualama.

With his free hand, Turcotte tightened down the straps holding him in the depression in the floor of the bouncer. "I'm open for suggestions where to put this down." All he could see was an extremely steep snow- and ice-covered slope leading up to the ridge above them. About two thousand feet below them was a wide glacier, but Turcotte didn't want to descend, knowing that however far he took the bouncer down, they'd have to make up for on foot.

"Can you put it on top of the ridge?" Morris was pointing up.

Turcotte pulled on the controls, but not only wouldn't the bouncer rise, he realized they were losing airspeed and descending. He knew he needed to do something before they completely lost power.

"Screw it," Turcotte said. He pushed over on the controls and headed for the slope. "Hold on!"

The edge of the bouncer hit hard, digging into the ice and snow, striking rock.

The alien metal gouged into the side of

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Mount Everest as Turcotte kept his hands on the controls. The bouncer came to a stop and he slowly let go of the controls. The bouncer was stuck into the side of the ridge, enough power in the craft to keep it in place. Turcotte looked up.

The top of the ridge was out of sight above them. Looking down, he could see that there was an almost vertical drop below.

"Let's gear up."

Morris checked his watch. "It's late. We'll have to camp on the mountain."

"Let's get as high as we can before dark," Turcotte said. He had some experience of cold-weather operations from his time in Special Forces, so he carefully put on the layers of clothing Morris had brought. First they all put on skintight underwear that would wick any perspiration away from their skins. Turcotte knew one of the great dangers of operating in the cold was sweating and then stopping and having the moisture freeze next to the skin. Next were several more layers of specially designed clothing, topped by a Gore-Tex outer shell.

Morris had laid out the three packs and filled them during the flight. Each contained several oxygen cylinders, a sleeping bag with waterproof shell, and a little food. Turcotte strapped his MP-5 submachine gun to the outside of the pack. He knew he had to keep it away from his body or else the gun might "sweat"

and then freeze up. A clanging clutter of climbing gear was also on the outside of each pack.

"Here." Morris held a canteen in each hand and a packet of pills. "Put the canteen in the inner front pocket of your parka. Anyplace else and the water will freeze. The pills are amphetamines. Take them only if you absolutely need a surge of power. They'll give you a couple of hours of energy, but coming down from the high will be bad."

Turcotte stowed the canteen and sealed the Velcro flap to

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the pocket. Then he took the harness Morris gave him and put in on over all the clothes, making sure it was tight. He stepped into crampons and cinched them to his boots. He put a lined helmet on, then attached the oxygen mask over it.

Morris adjusted the flow for both him and Mualama.

"Most people couldn't last more than a couple of minutes up here going from ground level to this altitude," Morris said, his voice muffled by his mask. "The acclimatizing that is done on a normal Everest climb is primarily to get the blood to change; after several weeks at altitude you develop twice the number of red blood cells that carry oxygen. The blood packing we did on the way here accomplished the same thing—the problem is that the doubling is artificially produced, not by your own body. So it isn't being renewed. We've got a forty-eight-hour window. Past that, your blood will start thinning and you'll be in big trouble."

"How much trouble?" Turcotte asked.

"You'll die."

MOUNT ARARAT

Yakov stumbled as the MC-130 banked hard right. The interior of the plane smelled of vomit and sweat. As experienced as the Delta men were in this type of low-level flight, this one had exceeded even the wildest they'd ever been on.

The pilots had surpassed the standard safety margins in effect during training and pushed their training and equipment to the limit, rarely climbing more than one hundred feet above the ground. Just a year previously such a flight would have been impossible, owing to the likelihood of either striking the ground, a tower, a building, or high-tension wires as they infiltrated Turkey. But a year earlier, NASA had launched an eleven-day operation called the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

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The mission had mapped over 80 percent of the planet's landmass using C- and X-band interferometric synthetic aperture radars to produce a digital map of the planet's surface. The accuracy of the results was far beyond anything done previously. Altitude data was within sixteen meters' absolute accuracy and horizontal data was within ten meters. This led to the MC-130's crew's ability to fly at double that possible error with no fear of striking anything. The pilots had a three-dimensional display of the terrain ahead on their monitors.

The aircraft's computer also had the data loaded and was constantly using a ground-positioning receiver, updated every half second, to monitor the route and warn of possible collisions.

There was the slightest of possibilities that something might have been constructed along the flight route since the shuttle mission, but it was a risk the crew would rather take to avoid being picked up on Turkish radar and having fighters scrambled to intercept.

Yakov reached inside his parka, pulled open the Velcro on an interior pocket, and pulled out a flask of vodka. He extended it to the Delta commando next to him, indicating he should partake. The man looked at him incredulously, the front of his own parka speckled with vomit. Yakov shrugged, unscrewed the cap, and took a deep swig. He extended it around to all the men close by, but all passed. Yakov put the top back on and slipped it back inside.

The man next to him slapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the rear. One of the Delta men was on his feet and yelling something, the sound lost in the roar of the engines. However, he also had both hands extended, fingers spread, so Yakov assumed they were ten minutes out from the drop. The interior of the plane was dimly lit with red lights. A violent cut to the right by the pilot slammed the jumpmaster against

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the side of the plane. The man regained his balance, wrapping both hands around the static line cable.

Yakov swallowed, tasting bile, but he smiled broadly as the man next to him passed the time warning. He tested the straps of his parachute once more, making sure they were snug. All he wanted was to get out of the plane. He didn't care if there was a division of Turkish soldiers on the drop zone. His stomach was pressed downward as the plane's nose

went up.

The jumpmaster was holding up six fingers. He then pantomimed more jump commands and Yakov simply did what the man next to him did, getting to his feet and hooking his static line to the cable. His knees buckled as the plane once more made a violent maneuver.

The roar inside increased as a sliver of daylight appeared in the rear of the plane. The rear ramp slowly went down until it was level, the upper half ascending into the tail of the plane. The nose of the plane was angled up about forty degrees and getting steeper as they ascended the side of Mount Ararat.

Looking out the rear, Yakov could see the mountainside less than three hundred feet below. Looking to the side, Yakov blinked in disbelief. They were going up a narrow gorge with the sides above the aircraft and less than ten feet from either wing. He trusted that the pilots knew what they were doing. He was slammed against the side of the aircraft as the MC-130 banked hard right, angling the wings so that they passed through a narrow spot in the gorge.

The man in front of Yakov slammed a fist into his chest to get his attention.

Yakov looked to the rear. The jumpmaster had a single finger extended. One minute. Yakov realized he was hyperventilating and fought to control his breathing. Both his large hands were wrapped around the static line, using it to keep his balance. The man in front of him moved and

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Yakov edged closer toward the rear of the plane. He glanced up, noting the red light above the ramp. It went out and a green light flashed on.

The jumpmaster was gone, stepping off the ramp. Yakov shuffled forward as the commandos went, and before he was ready was at the edge of the ramp. At that moment the plane banked hard and Yakov stumbled to his knees, then pitched forward off the ramp into the air. The static line unraveled on his back to its full length, then ripped the parachute out of its casing.

Yakov was knocked breathless as he went from a free fall to a controlled descent. He barely had time to take a couple of breaths before his feet hit the ground hard. He collapsed to his right, doing a parachute-landing fall as he'd been taught in the Russian army's airborne school so many years previously. The trip wasn't over, though, as he slid down a steep ice- and rock-strewn slope while scrambling with his feet to stop his descent. He came to an abrupt halt as he tumbled into a boulder, the wind getting knocked out of him for the second time.

Yakov lay still on the ground for several moments, savoring the experience of facing death and living. He tried to get his breath back, then slowly got to his feet and looked around. They had planned to drop right next to the location Che Lu had plotted. He was high up on the side of the mountain, the peak less than a half mile away to the southwest. He saw why the plane had made such an abrupt maneuver, as an almost vertical wall was less than a quarter mile away. The ground sloped steeply down in the opposite direction and he was flanked by two steep ridges. The surface nearby was a jumble of boulders, ice, snow, and rock face.

He could see parachutes scattered about the area as he unbuckled his harness. He untied the MP-5 submachine gun from above his reserve and pulled the bolt back, putting a

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round in the chamber. He threw his rucksack over his large shoulders and pulled out his ground-positioning receiver, checking his location and finding the assembly point. He was less than eighty meters from the spot they had designated for the team to rally.

Yakov carefully made his way to the point, at times having to use his hands to keep himself from falling. Sixteen of the eighteen Delta men were assembled when he arrived.

"Where are the other two?" he asked.

"We've got an injured man," one of the commandos replied, pointing to the right.

"Broken leg. One of our medics is working on him."

Yakov nodded, but his mind was already racing ahead. This was the place, but all he could see was rock, ice, and mountain. He realized he was breathing hard, his lungs straining for oxygen, as he was at about sixteen thousand feet in altitude. The coordinates that Che Lu had come up with were toward the peak, inside the vertical wall. The sun was low and darkness would descend soon.

Yakov pointed toward the wall. "Let's go and find our keyhole."

MOUNT EVEREST

Turcotte kicked the toe of his crampons into the ice wall and edged up another ten inches. Looking up, he could barely see Morris ten feet above him. It was getting dark and visibility was rapidly decreasing. The top of the ridge was still over a hundred and fifty feet above. Glancing down and following the rope he was hooked into, he could see Mualama's form. The bouncer had faded into the darkness although Turcotte knew they were less than a hundred and fifty feet above it.

Turcotte felt as if he had entered a surreal existence. His entire world seemed to consist of this ice wall. He could hear

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every breath he took as the regulator added oxygen with each intake. Morris had set the flow on what he said was the minimum they needed. Figuring they would have to spend the night on the mountain and each carried only three cylinders in his pack, he estimated they would have just enough to get to the site and return to the bouncer. Despite the additional oxygen and the blood packing, Turcotte felt as if he was suffocating, his lungs straining. He had a pounding headache, worse than any he had ever experienced.

Still he kept moving, one foot up, kicking in, putting his weight on it, then the other foot. Creeping up the side of Everest.

Just on the other side of the ridge Turcotte and his companions were climbing up, "Popeye" McGraw and Olivetti had stopped for the evening in a small divot along the ridgeline. They slid into their sleeping bags and immediately fell asleep, their modified lungs allowing them to breathe relatively easily without any additional oxygen.

Their sleep, though, was not so easy, as their sleeping minds were troubled with the battle between memories of self and the part of the mind subordinated to the nanovirus and guardian programming. Both men moaned and kicked in their sleep, but the nanovirus and guide programming remained firmly in control.

On the northeast ridge, Lexina collapsed to the ground as Aksu called a halt.

His men quickly set up tents and rigged stoves, brewing hot soup. She couldn't even drag up the energy to speak, gratefully accepting a steaming cup from Aksu.

Despite the additional lung capacity from being part Airlia and the beneficial effect of the half-Airlia blood, the climb had been a strain.

The climbing leader pointed in the darkness. "We must

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start climbing in six hours. Three o'clock. I will wake you and your companions prior to that so you will be ready. We must make your location just after dawn so we can be down before tomorrow evening. Do you understand?"