Moon Mask (30 page)

Because he wouldn’t listen to anyone else,
he told himself again.

“Look Nathan, we don’t have a lot of time,” he said, all business. He pulled a sheet of paper out of the manila folder he carried and handed it to Raine. He took it reluctantly.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“It’s a pardon, Nathan,” he replied, his voice severe. It was the only way he could hold back the raw emotion he felt. It had been a tough three years- first Raine’s court-martial, the escape, three months in a hospital recovering from the gunshot wound, more months fighting to prove his own innocence. And then Philippa.

He had thrown himself into his new work to bury the pain of it all. To make it feel like he was still making a difference.

“A full pardon,” he explained. “Signed by the President.”

Raine frowned, chuckled softly. “John Harper
is
still the president, isn’t he?”

“Two months into his second term.”

Raine laughed out loud. “I don’t know what the bigger joke is. That the American public actually re-elected him, or that he signed
this
.” He threw the paperwork on the bed.

“It’s no joke, Nathan.”

“There isn’t a chance on earth that Harper would-”

“We need your help,” he cut him off. “Your country needs your help.”

“There’re plenty of other-”

“Nadia Yashina explained to me about your seeming immunity to the effects of the tachyon radiation,” he said. He watched the other man intently. Despite trying to appear unconcerned and disinterested, Langley could tell that he was hanging on his every word.

He briefly outlined the main points of the Russian scientist’s findings.

In 2003, a Russian professor, working at Cleveland Bio labs, began work on a ‘cure’ for radiation sickness. Protein, produced in bacteria found in the intestine, showed signs of protecting cells from radiation.

Tests on two groups of mice proved positive. Both groups were subjected to lethal doses of radiation. Those mice implanted with the harvested protein survived while those that did not all died. Similar tests were then carried out on monkeys, with the same results.

Still waiting for FDA approval, the experimental medication, it was said, could have a dramatic impact on the modern world. Not only could cancer patients be subjected to higher doses of radiation, safely, but the face of warfare could be altered dramatically. The drug had the potential to alter the balance of power on the global stage and had therefore been kept secret until 2009.

Human tests were still awaited.

“It seems your intestine produces an unusually large amount of this protein,” Langley told Raine, “giving you an effective immunity to the effects of radiation . . . even tachyon radiation.”

“The same goes for Ben King, I guess?” Raine asked.

“That’s right. His immunity, Nadia guesses, has been passed down his genetic line from his Bouda ancestors. That’s why they were able to live in close proximity to the Moon Mask and their
Oni
or Great King was even able to touch it.”

“The Xibalbans didn’t have that immunity,” Raine realised, “and so the mask devastated their population.”

“As for your immunity?” Langley shrugged. “Maybe some of your ancestors also had it. Maybe it’s just a fluke.”

“I still don’t understand. Why does any of this matter?”

Langley explained to him about the U.N.-led operation that was being hastily put together.

“There is every possibility that the team will come under attack again. If not by the Chinese, then by the unidentified soldiers you encountered.”

Raine leaned his head back against the wall. His eyes flicked momentarily to the door and Langley could see that his mind was working on an escape plan. The moment he tried anything, the president’s deal would be off.

“We need you to accompany Doctor King to retrieve the other pieces of the mask when he finds them.”

“I still don’t get it. Benny and I may have an ‘immunity’ but Gibbs and his team have got NBCs-”

“NBC suits are useless against tachyon radiation, Nate,” Langley put his cards on the table.

That had been the problem which Nadia Yashina had explained to Langley, King and Sid in the suite at the U.N.

Both the bodies she had examined, those of Pryce and Kha’um, displayed abnormalities in the skull, indicating the possible presence of brain tumours in the region of the Parietal Lobe. Both men, she surmised, had the same immunity that Raine and King shared, though Pryce’s was to a lesser extent. While the immunity had protected them to a degree, the extended physical contact with the mask, or numerous pieces of the original mask, had eventually taken their toll on them both.

Tachyon radiation, it seemed, was even more dangerous than ionising, nuclear radiation. Running comparative tests on the bodies of some of the Chinese soldiers recovered from the site and the U.S. team, revealed that the tachyons had gone straight through their Nuclear, Biological and Chemical protective suits and attacked their bodies just like those of the scientists.

Prolonged contact with the tachyon emitting metal, or even proximity to a large stash of the metal, as King suspected they would find in Kha’um’s ‘treasure hoard,’ could be deadly.

Once they found the rest of the mask, the soldiers and anyone else not protected by their own quirky immunity would have to stay away.

Which meant that Benjamin King, an archaeologist, would have to retrieve the mask on his own, possibly fending off enemy attacks in potentially dangerous surroundings.

Tests had been hastily carried out on the members of the Special Forces team but none of them displayed the immunity. Nadia hypothesised that only one person in several thousand might harbour the high protein count needed to protect them. Use of the experimental drugs had been ruled out due to their lack of mass production and unknown side-effects on un-tested humans. And to vet all the personnel of United Nations soldiers would take days. The mission had already been delayed long enough, giving hostile forces time to mobilise.

They needed to move quickly, Langley had argued to the president. But Doctor King needed protection. And there was only one man in the world who it was known had both the immunity and the ability to do so.

Nathan Raine.

“So, if I help find the Moon Mask,” Raine said carefully, glancing at the document he had thrown on the bed, “I walk free?”

“That’s right, Nate. You’ll be a free man, let loose to start your life again. Here, at home in America rather than on the run, always looking over your shoulder, always wondering when the authorities are going to catch up with you.”

Raine considered this. “You say Gibbs will be the team leader?”

Laurence Gibbs, the commander of the CIA SOG team that had rescued the Sarisariñama Expedition had once been a member of Raine’s own team when he was team leader. He, along with Rudy O’Rourke, had been present on that fateful mission which had ended with the deaths of their colleagues at the hands of their commander. He knew that neither of the soldiers would take kindly to Raine’s inclusion on either the mission, or the presidential pardon he had been granted.

Langley nodded.

“He’s not gonna like it,” Raine said needlessly.

“It’s not going to be a walk in the park, Nate,” he agreed. “But, when’s that ever stopped you from doing something?”

Cautiously, as though it might turn around and bite him, Raine picked up the immunity deal and glanced through it. The presidential seal seemed to glare accusingly at him.

“How do I know Harper won’t just rip this up once I’m done?”

“You know how this works, Nate. Its all above board, signed and witnessed by the Attorney General. So long as you keep up your end of the bargain - you help the team, protect King and secure the mask - there is no going back on that agreement.”

Raine’s eyes darted back to the door, thinking, analysing, watching the movements of the guards, retracing his route through the prison to the cell.

If he tried to escape, Langley had little doubt that he would succeed. But then what? He would be a fugitive once more, and Benjamin King would be as good as dead. He might as well hand the Moon Mask over to an enemy state on a silver platter.

“What do you say, Nathan?” he asked, cutting into his thoughts, refocusing his attention. He held out a hand to his former student. “One last mission, then you can finally stop running.”

24:

Camaraderie

Sherman Army Airfield,

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,

U.S.A.,

Despite
being situated in the middle of one of their bases, an agreement between the City of Leavenworth and the U.S. Army meant that Sherman Airfield was open to civilian air traffic at all times. A mixture of commercial flights and DoD transports vied for the single runway and the services of the base’s refuelling teams, mechanics and aircraft accommodation.

Off to one side of the airfield, however, one of the normally unrestricted taxiways had been temporally shut off to corporate and private use. A string of armed soldiers patrolled the perimeter, idly watching light aircraft take off into the blue Kansas sky.

An open topped military jeep ploughed down the taxiway towards the hanger at the far end. Sat in the back of the vehicle, his ice-blue eyes hidden behind a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses, Nathan Raine watched the activity around him. He had missed it, he realised now. The adrenaline as he prepared for the next mission, the envious glances new recruits gave the enigmatic men who headed towards the black hanger that was beyond their security clearance. Most of all, he missed the camaraderie that could only be experienced by men and women who had fought alongside each other, that placed their lives in one another’s hands.

With a screech, the jeep pulled up outside the hanger and, thanking the driver, Raine slapped him on the shoulder and jumped out without opening the door, hoisted his duffle over his shoulder and walked in through the massive bay doors.

“Whoa,” he breathed to himself as he laid eyes on the monstrous machine filling most of the hanger’s space.

Over one hundred feet long and thirty feet high, the Sikorsky CH-53K was the newest member of the United States military’s ‘Super Stallion’ helicopters. While having flown both the 53
E
and the navy’s equivalent, the Sea Dragon, he was still taken aback by the sheer enormity of the military’s newest helicopter. He hadn’t even been aware that any of them had yet come off the assembly line, let alone were in active service.

With a speed of almost two hundred knots, the new and improved Super Stallion was powered by state-of-the-art GE38-1B engines and featured a composite rotor blade system. It had twice the lift capacity of its predecessor and was almost thirty knots faster. Unlike the endless array of analogue dials and gauges found in most cockpits, the 53K was outfitted with a state-of-the-art ‘glass’ cockpit. Essentially, the interior looked like something ripped off of the bridge of the
Starship Enterprise;
LCD screens and touch-screen plasma panels scrolled through pertinent information while a sophisticated flight management system simplified the operation and navigation of the craft, allowing the pilot to concentrate on the mission objectives.

As Raine watched, a black, unmarked Humvee roared up the helicopter’s rear loading ramp and vanished into its cavernous interior. Like flies buzzing around a cadaver, dozens of technicians swarmed over the aircraft, seeing to its every need. Refuelling had been completed but the technicians ran their final operational checks, ticking off a long list on durable tablet computers.

Raine had only been out of the game for three years, yet he felt like a dinosaur surrounded by the military’s modern gadgetry.

Whatever happened to a simple clipboard?
he wondered.

That was when the first soldier spotted him.

Laurence
Gibbs frowned as David Sykes cut off his report in mid-sentence. He was just about to reprimand him when his eyes drifted in the direction the other man was looking.

An immediate swell of anger churned in his gut.

Nathan Raine stood just inside the hanger, slowly removing his mirrored sunglasses and looking just as cool and relaxed as ever.

After everything that had happened in that cursed jungle four years ago, he looked for all the world like a man with a clean conscience. And, indeed, why should he appear any other way? He had gone rogue, sided with the enemy and killed members of his own team. He had betrayed the men under his command as well as the United States of America. And, for all his troubles, he had been handed a big-fat presidential pardon. His crimes had been swept beneath a rug, swatted out of existence just like the lives of the soldiers he had taken. So, Gibbs realised, why should he look like anything but the smug bastard that he was?

I have learned to hate all traitors,
he recited the words of the ancient Greek tragedian, Aeschylus,
and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery.

Almost like a domino effect, Sykes’ silence spilled over to Gibbs and in turn to the other six members of his special operations group. Even the technicians, busy readying the mammoth chopper, seemed to sense the icy awkwardness and glanced in Raine’s direction despite being oblivious of his actions.

The shock of seeing Raine in the middle of the Venezuelan jungle had quickly twisted to fury, followed by a sense of pride in bringing in the traitor for a second time. For it was himself and his second-in-command, Rudy O’Rourke, that had apprehended Raine when he’d gone rogue. Gibbs was happy to put a bullet in his head there and then but O’Rourke, filled with the naive idealism of youth, had insisted they bring him back to America to face justice. In Venezuela, witnessed by the civilian scientist and waving the nansy-pansy flag of the U.N., he’d been forced to follow procedure again and apprehend the bastard.

If only he’d followed his gut instinct, he growled inwardly, filled with loathing. Raine would have been a rotting corpse, being picked apart by the scavengers of the Amazon. Instead, he was now a free man.