Atlantis (12 page)

She staggered as if she'd been hit in the back of the head and a bolt of pain ripped across her consciousness. For a second she thought she'd been hit in the head, but when she turned there was no one there. She realized that the pain was inside her head.

“Let's get out of here,” she said.

Craight was moving forward toward where the front windshield had been, trying to see where they were. Ingram edged back toward her and the door.

“Craight!” Ariana snapped. He half-turned and all that did was allow Ariana to be able to see the expression on his face as a beam of golden light touched him in the back. The light expanded and covered his entire body. Craight's left hand was grasping the edge of the pilot's seat and the light touched the metal, backed up and snapped shut at his wrist, neatly severing his hand.

Craight screamed as blood gushed from the wound but Ariana could see that the blood was kept in by the field around Craight, bizarrely flowing up along his arm as if there were a transparent golden cap on the wound. Ariana focused on Craight's eyes, seeing the pain and shock that they expressed. The light rose up, lifting Craight with it so that he was suspended five feat above the plane's floor. Then he was swiftly withdrawn out of the cockpit into the mist. As he went, Ariana could see that his mouth was open, his throat working as if he were screaming, but there was no sound. Then he was gone. She looked back inside. The hand was still clutching the top of the pilot's chair.

Ingram staggered back toward her. She grabbed him and pulled as another beam of light narrowly missed him. They jumped into the commo area, the wind slamming the door shut behind them, but they didn't pause there, continuing through her office, stumbling into the console area where the others were gathered.

Everyone inside the cargo bay looked up as a loud noise grated through the interior. It sounded as if something impossibly large was sliding across the top of the plane.

“Where the hell are we?” Ingram whispered.

*****

Patricia Conners had a wonderful imagination, her husband had always kidded her about that, but she was also very conscientious. The blurs on the three pictures of Cambodia had been bothering her as she worked on other projects and taskings. Finally, her in-box empty, she decided to check everything one more time. Maybe she had missed something the first time around.

She ran a diagnostic on her own computer and printer. Everything worked fine. She went over the KH-12, both the imaging gear and the satellite's on-board computer. Both checked out.

Conners took a pad of paper and put it on her desk. She drew a circle at the bottom of the page and labeled it Cambodia. Then she put a smaller circle in the middle of the page and labeled it KH-12. She drew a line from the bottom one to the middle one. That was the imagery path. It was processed by the on-board computer
,
which had just checked out. She drew another small circle at the top of the page and labeled it “ME”. She drew a line from the middle circle to the top one. But she knew that that line was composed of several elements. She turned to her computer to find out exactly what they were.

“KH-12 bounced to MILSTARS 16,” she muttered, tracing the data's path. She checked an index binder. MILSTARS 16 was one of the numerous satellites put in geosynchronous orbit by the military to sustain their secure global communications network. This particular one stayed in place over the South China Sea. It covered all of Southeast Asia and the Philippines.

Conners was very aware of both the capabilities and specifications of MILSTARS satellites and the communications system they supported. They were designed to be extremely secure and interception/jam resistant. They could antenna-hop, frequency-hop and burst-transmit. They were also hardened against nuclear attack and electro-magnetic pulse (EMP).

She knew it was a long shot, but she decided to check MILSTARS 16 to make sure it had not garbled the data from the KH-12. She requested a self-diagnostic from the satellite's computer. Two minutes later, the data was displayed on her screen. She read it through, interpreting the numbers and codes as only one who had spent many years reading the mathematical codes of the machines of space could.

All was correct--Conners paused. She looked through once more. The data from the KH-12 had been relayed without disturbance, but there was something about the MILSTARS diagnostic that bothered her. She tried to find what it was, but it eluded her, just a nagging suspicion that something was wrong somewhere else in the system. After a half-hour trying to figure it out, she had to give up and take two of the Tylenol’s she carried in her purse to fight off a splitting headache.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lawrence Freed had so far refused to answer any of Dane's many questions. Dane was particularly interested in how Freed and Michelet Technologies knew about his escape from Cambodia thirty years ago. Freed also disclosed no further information about the plane that had crashed. Other than the lack of answers, Freed was a courteous, if distant, escort. Dane knew Freed had military somewhere in his background. There were too many of the little indicators in his demeanor for it to be otherwise.

On board the private jet, Dane had washed up and even given Chelsea a quick cleaning, her hair fouling up the drain in the small shower on board, but Dane figured whoever could afford such an aircraft could afford to get the shower unplugged. Freed had had fresh clothes ready for him that fit perfectly, a subdued look of khaki pants and black shirt. Already, if nothing else, Dane was impressed with the efficiency and wealth of Michelet Technologies, a company he'd never heard of, not that he kept track of such things.

The only conversation they had on the plane was initiated by Freed.

“I heard you were with Special Forces during Vietnam,” Freed said.

“Yes.” Since Freed wasn't exactly a fount of information, Dane felt no pressure to give anything away.

“MACV-SOG?” Freed asked.

“Yes.”

“Tough unit.”

Dane looked at the small black man. He finally noticed the ring on Freed's hand and the triangular symbol carved into the stone, indicating he had served with the Army's elite Delta Force, a symbol only someone in the know would recognize. “Very.”

And that was it. The rest of the ride was spent in silence, although Dane suspected he might have snored a bit as he slept most of the way, Chelsea at his feet, also napping. Dane woke up as the plane touched down at Los Angeles International. There was a limousine waiting for them on the runway.

As they rode through Los Angeles to the north, Dane pondered the unusual situation. He knew it wasn't the money that had brought him to Glendale, California. It was the desire for information. Freed and Paul Michelet knew things about him. Dane wanted to know how much they knew. With the mention of Cambodia, Freed had opened the lid on something that Dane had locked tight for three decades. His exhaustion from the search had kept his emotions from boiling over, but now he felt them all sliding about. He'd tried to forget about what had happened on that last mission over the fence and now it seemed it had remembered him.

The expensive shrink Dane has seen ten years ago had told him that one couldn't let go of the past until one faced it and dealt with it, but Dane had assumed he had been speaking metaphorically. Apparently not, Dane mused as he watched the freeway roll by until they exited in Glendale and pulled up to a large black and chrome building with the word MICHELET prominently displayed in front.

Freed escorted Dane and Chelsea through security checkpoints and into the executive elevator. They bypassed the first twenty floors and stopped at the top. The stainless steel doors silently slid open and they walked into an anteroom where three secretaries were manning desks. Freed led Dane past them and into a massive office, dominated by a large desk, one of the secretaries following.

A distinguished looking man turned from looking out over the city and strode forward. He extended a hand. “Mister Dane, I'm Paul Michelet.”

Dane took the hand, surprised at the strong grip. Michelet leaned over and patted Chelsea on the head. “And this must Chelsea.” He straightened and gestured toward a conference table on the left side of the room. Another man was already over there. “I'd like you to meet Professor Beasley.”

Dane shook the professor’s hand. He noted that Chelsea didn't seem to be alarmed by anyone present, which was a positive sign. He himself felt different waves of emotions coming off each man and it was hard to sort out who was feeling what.

Michelet had moved to the end of the table. “Let's sit down. Can I get you anything? Coffee, soda, a drink?” The secretary hovered, ready to fill the order.

“Coffee,” Dane said as he took a seat. He immediately noted the maps taped to the table top with acetate overlays covering them. All that green, the contour lines, the rivers, the language. Cambodia.

“Mister Michelet, I'd like to know what's going on,” Dane said. “Your man,” he indicated Freed who sat across from him, “hasn't told me much.”

“He was authorized to tell you as much as necessary to get you to come here, no more than that,” Michelet said. He waved a hand and the secretary left, closing the door firmly behind her.

“Perhaps I should have played harder to get then,” Dane said. “Maybe I'd know more.”

“Please,” Michelet looked tired. There were dark rings under his eyes. “I am sorry about the manner in which we are forced to operate, but there are lives and a great deal of money at stake.”

“Which is more important to you?” Dane asked.

“One of those lives is my daughter’s,” Michelet said.

“You didn't answer my question,” Dane said.

A red flush spread over Michelet face.

Freed leaned forward. “A specially modified 707 from our company carrying Mister Michelet's daughter and an imagery survey crew went down over Cambodia yesterday. Our last contact with it as it was going down put its position here,” he pulled a piece of acetate up from beside his seat and laid it over the map.

Dane checked the spot. As he had expected, it was in the area of his last mission.

“Do you have a transponder beacon?”

“We have nothing,” there was an edge to Michelet's voice. “No beacon, no radio contact, nothing.”

“Doesn't the airplane have an automatic transponder?”

“Yes, but we're not picking it up,” Michelet said.

Dane wasn't surprised. “How many people were on board?”

“My daughter, three in the flight crew and eight in the scientific crew.”

“How do you know they weren’t killed in the crash?”

“I don't know that, Mister Dane,” Michelet answered. “But while there is any possibility of someone being alive, I will pursue every option I have to rescue them.”

“What about the Cambodian government?” Dane asked. “With your money, you ought to be able to get them to launch some sort of rescue operation.”

Michelet's snort of derision preceded his reply. “What government?”

Freed was more explicit. “There is a lot of turmoil in the Cambodian government right now. Also, we did approach some of our contacts in the military and they flatly refuse to have anything to do with this particular area of their country.”

“I don't blame them.” Dane looked across the table at the old man. “You said that I was the last person to come out of there alive. How do you know that?”

Freed fielded that question. “We have it from good sources that you went on a covert mission in that area during the Vietnam War.”

Dane put his finger on the map. “I don't even know for sure if that's where I was. The CIA ran that mission and I presume they’re still in the secret business. How do you know that’s where I was?”

“I have extensive contacts throughout the government,” Michelet said.

Dane wasn’t buying that. “The CIA wouldn't give up that information without a reason.”

“I have supplied them with data from my surveys in the past,” Michelet said, “so it’s not unusual for them to supply me with information in return.”

“That was a very long time ago,” Dane said. “No one's been in there since 1968?”

“There have been reports that some people have gone in there,” Beasley spoke up. “There was even a report that a Khmer Rouge battalion fleeing government forces retreated into this area. The battalion disappeared to the last man.”

That comment earned Beasley a nasty look from Michelet.

Dane sat back in his seat. “I still don't get it. Why me? You've got so many contacts and so much money, even if the Cambodians won't cooperate, why don't you just charter a plane with a whole bunch of rescue guys and go there yourself?”

“As I told you,” Michelet said, “you’ve been there. I don't believe in going in blind.”

“It's jungle,” Dane said. “Mountains, rivers. There's plenty of people who've been in that kind of terrain.”

“But not that specific area,” Michelet repeated.

“No one's been in there since the war?” Dane asked again, believing it, but not wanting to.

“No one we know of who has come back other than you,” Freed said. “We've done an exhaustive inquiry.”

“What's so special about that specific area?” Dane asked, thinking of the nightmares that woke him drenched with sweat in the middle of the night.

“We don't know,” Michelet acknowledged Beasley. “Mister Beasley is an expert in ancient cultures, with an emphasis on Cambodia, its history, its geography, its people. He says that area might once have been part of an ancient kingdom that had its capital at a place called Angkor Kol Ker, somewhere in those mountains.”

“What does that have to do with a plane crashing?” Dane demanded, but the words echoed through his brain. He could see Castle lying on the jungle floor and he remembered the CIA man muttering those words with his dying breath. Dane had done some checking over the years but all he had learned was that Angkor Kol Ker was a legendary city that historians and archeologists gave little credence to.

Beasley ran his fingers through his beard. “This area of Cambodia is very unusual. Air Force aircraft overflying it during the war on missions between Thailand and North Vietnam experienced numerous instrument difficulties. So much so that the Air Force specified routes to the north or south and put the airspace off limits. This was after two B-52s and a SR-71 spy plane disappeared without a trace over the area.”