Atlantis (25 page)

“We don’t know,” Sin Fen said.

“Who is we? Who do you work for?”

Dane started forward as he saw the image that flittered across Sin Fen’s consciousness, before a mental curtain came down over it. “Foreman!”

“What?” Freed yelled, barely audible above the plane noises. “What did you say?”

Dane broke contact with Sin Fen, earning an approving bark from Chelsea. “What?”

“You said something,” Freed yelled.

“Nothing,” Dane said.

“Time to rig for the jump.”

Dane looked over at Beasley who appeared to be less than enthusiastic at the moment. As he stood, he projected his thoughts toward Sin Fen:

I want to know the entire truth.
Sin Fen’s dark eyes met his.
I will you tell you all we know, but it is not much.

*****

“Where’s Mansor?” Ingram was holding Ariana’s arm, his fingers squeezing into her bicep. She knew he was afraid she was in shock, but she wasn’t ready yet to come back to reality. She
wanted
to be in shock, to forget what she had just witnessed.

They’d hauled her back using the co-ax cable, pulling her into the hatch. Ariana looked up. The hatch was still open above their heads. That brought her back like a slap in the face. “Shut it! Shut it!” she screamed at the others.

Lisa Carpenter jumped up on the desktop and pushed the hatch closed. She spun shut the locking latch.

“What happened to Mansor?” Ingram asked once more as she peeled his fingers out of her arm. “Is he out there? Should we get him?”

Ariana stared at him, choking back the insane laughter she felt welling up in her chest. She spread her hands indicating the blood she was covered in. “This is what happened to Mansor. This
is
Mansor.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Ingram muttered, sitting down in shock.

“What about the SATCOM?” Carpenter asked.

Ariana held up the cable, where it had gone to Mansor. The end was cleanly cut. She pulled the loose end through and undid the knot she had around her wrist. She could feel pain in skin where the cable had tightened down on her, but it was distant, not sharp. She threw the cable down and collapsed in a swivel chair.

She took stock of the situation, getting herself under control. There were only five of them left. Hudson was in a chair, his wounded legs propped in front of him. Herrin was huddled in the corner, his glazed eyes telling Ariana he was long gone and could not be counted on. Ingram seemed all right, but age was against him. Carpenter seemed ready, muscular black arms folded over her chest. But ready for what? Ariana wondered as she absently ran a hand across her face. It came away sticky and crusted with blood.

“Here,” Carpenter said, holding out a towel.

Ariana took it and wiped herself clean as best she could.

“What happened out there?” Ingram asked.

So Ariana told them. When she was done, silence reigned, until Carpenter spoke. “What do we do now?”

“Nothing,” Ariana said. “We do nothing. We wait and we pray but I don’t even know if that will do any good, because as far as I know, we may already be in hell.”

*****

Much as Foreman hated bureaucracy, there were times when he also appreciated it and the blind allegiance paid by those who filled the various nooks and crannies of the government.

Right now he had a live satellite feed to the National Reconnaissance Office representative at the Groom Lake Test Facility, more commonly known as Area 51 in the media and among UFO fanatics. He’d given the order twenty minutes ago and the NRO had reacted with its usual efficient speed.

“The SR-75 is ready to go,” the NRO rep informed Foreman.

“Go,” Foreman ordered.

Groom Lake had the distinction of being home to the longest runway in the world, built onto the dry lake bed. Over seven miles long, it had been the field from which such exotic planes as the Stealth Fighter and the B-2 bomber had first been tested.

But today, the plane that had just been rolled out of a massive hanger at Foreman’s order, made those earlier planes look like toys. Over a 250 feet long, almost the length of a football field, and a hundred feet wide at the tip of its v-wing shape, the SR-75 Penetrator was the most advanced airframe ever built by man. The plane was shaped like an elongated B-2 bomber. The crew of three consisted of a pilot, co-pilot and reconnaissance surveillance officer (RSO). Those three sat in a special compartment in the upper nose. A fourth man sat in the belly of the plane, waiting.

With Foreman’s final order, the pilot of the SR-75 rolled up throttle on the plane’s conventional turbo-jet engine and the large plane began accelerating down the runway. It took the plane over two and a half miles to gain sufficient speed so that the delta wings produced enough lift for the wheels to separate from the ground.

With the turbojet engine at max thrust, the pilot continued to gain altitude and speed.

*****

“I need you to stay on top of this and tell me immediately if there is any change.”

Patricia Conners rubbed a weary hand across her wrinkled forehead. “We’ll stay on top of it.” She glanced across her desk at Jimmy who nodded in agreement. There was a pause, then Foreman’s voice echoed through the office. “I appreciate this.”

“You’re welcome,” Conners said. “I’m just glad someone’s taking action.”

“Are you linked to the HMV?”

“I’m linked through the NRO,” Conners said. “I’ll take over control once the HMV is launched.”

“You’l only have one shot,” Foreman said.

“I know,” Conners replied.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Hook up!” Freed yelled, curling his forefingers and gesturing up and down.

Dane slipped his static line hook over the cable, snapped it in place, then ran the thin safety wire through the small hole, locking the hook in place. It had been thirty years since Dane had had a parachute on his back, but the routine and feelings that he had first experienced at Fort Benning during his basic airborne training came rushing back. He was getting ready to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Unlike that first training jump, Dane felt no apprehension about the jump itself. This time he feared the ground.

He was wearing protective gear, designed for rough terrain jumping: braces on his arms and legs, a helmet with a protective grill over his face, a thick, padded vest covering his torso. A 200 foot length of rope was tied off on the outside of his rucksack, to be used to lower himself to the ground if he got stuck in a tree. The M-16, mines, ammunition and other gear, were broken down inside the ruck.

In front of him, Beasley was fumbling with his snap hook. Dane took it out of his hands and hooked it up. Beasley didn’t thank him.

“Don’t sweat it,” Dane said.

Beasley just moaned.

Dane twisted his head. Chelsea was with Sin Fen, looking none too happy. He sent an image of Chelsea to the woman, curled up on her pillow at home

I’ll take care of her.
Sin Fin’s mental projection echoed in his brain.

Dane leaned over and yelled so that she could hear him above the noise inside the plane. “Foreman sent you to be the link, didn’t he?” Dane asked. “He thinks you and I can communicate once I go into this place.”

“Yes.”

“How far away can you communicate with me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Great.”

“Foreman also thinks you are capable of much more than just communicating with me,” Sin Fen added.

“A clue about that would be helpful.”

“It is for you to discover because it is beyond what we know.”

“Great,” Dane repeated. “Any idea what this place is?”

“You know more than we do, since you’ve been in there. But we must know if the MILSTARS satellite system is being used by the force inside the Angkor Gate.”

“Used for what?” Dane asked. He was surprised as an image of the entire planet came into his mind, overlaid with various colored lines. There were several glowing spots along those lines. He could also see a spy satellite directly over where they were going and Dane knew, without knowing how, that the satellite was blind; that nothing could see into the Gate.

“That’s the power being propagated by a source inside the Angkor Gate,” Sin Fen said. “The dots are MILSTARS satellites. The building force will rise to dangerous, lethal, levels in less than day. We have to stop it.”

“What does Foreman want me to do?”

“Find out what is causing this to happen. And stop it.”

“Sure. I’ll be back in time for lunch.”

“This is very dangerous, more dangerous than you know. These areas are expanding and they could destroy the world.”

“Thanks for letting me know that now.”

Dane tried penetrating her mind, to see if there was anything else she was hiding from him, but his psychic probe came up against a black wall that allowed him to go no further. He cursed inside his head and her voice echoed on top of the curse.

It takes practice. I have trained very hard to discipline my mind.

“
Then maybe you should be wearing this parachute,” Dane said out loud.

No. You are the one.

“One minute!” Freed yelled.

Dane thought about the place in Cambodia expanding. He reached down and made sure the straps to his rucksack were secure, then cinched his leg straps.

The back ramp began opening, the top half disappearing up into the tail well, the bottom half leveling out. Freed moved toward the platform.

Dane blinked as wind whipped his face. It was still dark, but he knew dawn was near. Freed was kneeling, holding onto the hydraulic arm that moved the platform. The four Canadians and Beasley, all outfitted in bulk gear, were between Dane and Freed, waiting.

Freed stood. “Stand by!” He scooted to the edge, giving a thumbs up to Paul Michelet.

“Go!” Freed stepped out into the darkness, the Canadians hustling behind him. Dane could see their chutes billow out behind the plane, the deployment bags still attached to the steel cable, twisting in the wind. Beasley paused at the edge, but Dane simply shoved him off.

Dane followed, shuffling his feet along the metal until there was no more floor. He felt the familiar sensation of freefalling as his static line paid out behind him, then the abrupt tug of his chute opening.

Dane looked up, checked to make sure he had a good canopy and grabbed his toggles, then he switched his gaze downward. He could barely make out the rapidly nearing dark green carpet of vegetation below. As he got closer, he could see that he was coming down on the side of a ridge covered in triple canopy jungle. He could also see the other chutes, a couple of which were already in the trees.

Dane wheeled his elbows across his face and tensed his body as he approached the top of the jungle. He hit leaves, then he was in, bouncing off a branch, breaking another, then suddenly he was still, hanging from his harness. Before Dane did anything else, he closed his eyes.

Sin Fen.

The voice in his head came back immediately.

I hear you.

*****

The SR-75 passed through Mach 2.5 over the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 60,000 feet. At this altitude, the radical nature of the aircraft’s design came into play as the conventional turbojet engines were now strained to the maximum, gulping for air at the extreme speed and altitude of their design specifications.

In the cockpit, the co-pilot lifted the cover on a series of four red switches. “Ready for PDWE ignition,” he informed the pilot.

“Ignite.”

The co-pilot flicked the switches from left to right. In the rear of the plane, nestled below the turbojet engine, the pulsed-detonation-wave-engine came to life. The PDWE was a rather simple device, consisting of a group of small chambers in which mini-explosions occurred in rhythm. These explosions caused supersonic shock waves to form and rush out into a larger combustion chamber. The shock waves compressed the fuel-air mixture and thus produced another larger shock wave that was channeled to the rear of the plane, providing propulsion at ranges never before produced by man.

Leaving behind a series of white puffs in the high atmosphere, the SR-75 pulsed its way even higher, as its speed raced through Mach-5 on the way to its maximum speed of Mach 7, or 5,000 miles an hour.

***

The C-123 was banking across the sky, ten kilometers from the drop zone. The ramp was still down. One of the crewmen was slowly unreeling a set of nylon straps that held the pallet the daisy-cutter bomb was attached to. The pallet was on rollers and the crewman let out slack in the nylon until the pallet was perched the very edge of the ramp. He pulled a large hook off the top of the parachute on top of the bomb and hooked it onto the static line cable.

He was listening to the pilot via a headset and when he got the word, and the green light went on, he cut the nylon with a razor sharp knife, allowing the pallet to fall off the ramp.

The bomb and pallet fell, then a large cargo parachute billowed open. The C-123 circled above as the bomb drifted down. It hit the jungle and crashed through the top layers. Just before touching the ground, it exploded in a flash of five thousand pounds of high explosive.

In the C-123 overhead, Paul Michelet saw the instant landing zone they had created. He pressed his intercom. “All right, let’s get back to Thailand.”

Michelet turned to Sin Fen, who had sat quietly with the dog throughout. “I want to know who you are and who you work for,” Michelet demanded, sitting down next to her.

Sin Fen’s eyes were unfocused and slowly she seemed to gain awareness of her immediate surroundings. She shifted slightly so she could look at the old man. “What you want is no longer important.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a small SATCOM radio. She began to punch into the handset when Michelet reached out and grabbed her wrist.

“Listen here,” Michelet hissed. “This is my plane, this is my--”