The Roswell Conspiracy (23 page)

Once they were on the path, Jess could see that crude handholds had been notched in the cliff, making the descent relatively easy.

After two switchbacks, Tyler disappeared around an outcropping. When Jess came around it, she saw Tyler standing on a ledge large enough to fit three SUVs.

“Looks like this is the end of the line,” he said. “Other than the path back up, there’s no way off.”

While Jess guided Fay onto the ledge, Tyler inspected the cliff face, but there didn’t appear to be any passages leading into a cave.

He knelt in front of a large boulder that was lodged against the cliff face, running his fingers along its base.

“Jess, look at this.”

She bent over and focused a flashlight where he was pointing. The bottom of the boulder was scored with small divots chipped out of the stone.

Tyler looked at her. “Didn’t you say last night that one theory for how the natives moved the Moai was that they rocked the stones back and forth using ropes?”

“Right, but they stopped because they were chipping—” It suddenly dawned on Jess what Tyler was getting at.

“If they wanted to hide this cave entrance from someone paddling along the coast,” Tyler said, “they would block it with one of their stones. I think we’re going to need more muscle here. We’ll have to chance leaving the car alone for a little while.”

Polk called on his walkie-talkie for Harris to join them.

“You really think this is the way in?” Fay said.

“Only one way to find out.” Tyler began rigging two ropes around the top of the boulder, one to be pulled in each direction.

“How much do you think this weighs?” Jess said.

“Oh, probably a few tons. But if they were as good at this as you said they were, I’m guessing they made the boulder maneuverable.”

When Harris arrived, Tyler gave him and Polk one rope while he and Jess took the other. Then he explained the procedure that he thought would work best. By alternating pulls, they started a rocking motion in the stone, and while it was tipped in one direction, the two people on the other side would move out and tug it in the opposite direction.

Tyler was right. The stone was perfectly weighted. Even with only him and Jess pulling, they were able to budge the rock so that it tilted a fraction in their direction. As they let it return to center, Harris and Polk pulled, causing it to tilt farther in the other direction.

After eight more pulls, they had enough momentum to start walking it out. It only moved an inch at a time, but that was all they needed. In ten minutes Jess could see a space big enough for a person to slip through and darkness beyond.

“All right,” Tyler yelled. “I think we got it.”

They let the boulder wobble to a standstill and caught their breath. Tyler sent Harris back to the car. Jess agreed that the last thing they needed was a passing tourist following their path down to the ledge.

Tyler pointed his light at the side of the boulder that had been hidden until now. “I’d say we’ve found who’s been keeping an eye on the place.”

They crowded around and saw what he meant. The side that had been against the cavern opening had the prominent brow and wide nose of the Moai they’d passed on the way here.

“Imagine,” Fay said with reverence. “No one has seen this in over thirteen hundred years.”

“I can’t believe you were able to do this,” Jess said. “We never would have figured out how to get in there.”

Tyler shrugged at her. “I guess MIT wasn’t a total loss. Let’s take a look, shall we?”

Before Jess could respond, he was swallowed by the cave.

THIRTY-TWO

With midnight come and gone, Morgan still kept an eye on the intersection below, though she didn’t think there was much point. She had reviewed the dossier the CIA had on Vladimir Colchev. Given his history and how well he’d planned the attack on Pine Gap, she thought it was very possible he had another mole in the Killswitch project besides Kessler. If that were the case, he would know the theft attempt had failed, and Colchev and his men would be long gone from Sydney.

“They’re not coming,” Grant said.

“They could be giving Kessler some extra time to make it.”

“Not likely. I think it’s safe for me to take a leak.” He headed to the bathroom.

As the fan came on, Morgan’s cell rang. She frowned when she saw it was Vince.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” she said.

“The doohickey they have me hooked up to is beeping every five seconds, so I can’t sleep. The morphine’s great, though.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“She said I won’t be playing rugby any time soon.”

“How long until you’re back?”

“They’ll let me check out in a few days and fly back to the US. I’ll be a desk jockey for the six weeks I’m on crutches. Have you made contact yet?”

“The targets haven’t shown up. We’ll give it another hour, but they probably won’t take the bait.”

“Sorry I can’t be there.”

“Yeah, thanks for sticking me with Westfield for the duration.”

“Is he there?”

“In the john.”

“I thought you two got along really well.”

Morgan snorted in response. “It’s been a joy.”

“No sparkling conversation?”

“It’s actually not that bad. I’m getting used to him.”

“Wait a minute. Are you sweet on him?”

Morgan felt herself blush. “Don’t be ridiculous. Army grunts aren’t my type.”

“He didn’t seem dimwitted to me, especially for a former pro wrestler.”

The toilet flushed and Grant came out of the bathroom. Morgan looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, he’s not stupid,” she said. “Just annoying.”

Grant nodded happily and took his seat.

“Whoa,” Vince said with a moan.

“You okay?”

“Now all of a sudden I’m tired. Keep me posted. And stay safe.”

“Will do. I’ll see you back in the States.”

She hung up.

“Who was that? Your boyfriend?”

“My partner.”

“How is he?”

“Fine.”

“That the official prognosis?”

Morgan smirked. Annoying.

“So what’s the plan now?” he said.

“We wait here another hour.”

“Then when they still don’t show up?”

“Then we find out what the link to the Baja drug cartel is.”

“It sounds like Andrew Hull won’t be any help.”

Morgan couldn’t argue with that. The arms dealer had been shot by a sniper in front of his office building this morning. It wasn’t until the afternoon when the police were searching his files and found the reference to a truckload of “gravel” going to Alice Springs that they made the connection to the Pine Gap explosion. Colchev must have offed Hull to cover his tracks.

The problem for her was that it worked. Unless their liaison at the Drug Enforcement Agency could find a lead, they were at a dead end.

“You really think Colchev wants to smuggle a Killswitch back into the US?” Grant said.

“That’s the only reason I can come up with for why he would want to seek out a drug gang. They’re the best smugglers out there. It’d be much easier to fly it into Mexico and drive it across the border than land in the US and try to get it through customs.”

“Seems like a lot of effort when the weapon was already in America a couple of days ago.”

“Until it got to Australia, the Killswitch was on an Air Force base the entire time. Trying to steal it there would have been suicidal. And they needed the xenobium from Pine Gap to make it operational.”

“Well, we know they ain’t suicidal,” Grant said. “That’s why they needed the robotic truck. None of his men were fanatical enough to blow themselves up.”

Either that or they were saving themselves for a suicide attack on American soil. But where?

“You’re an expert on explosives and electronics,” Morgan said. “What would be the likeliest target?”

Grant considered that for a moment. She was impressed that he didn’t just blurt out an answer.

“I’ve been wondering about that. Nadia Bedova mentioned Wisconsin Avenue. How many are there in the US?”

Morgan brought up the data on her cell phone. “Ten. Six in Wisconsin, two in Illinois, one in Iowa, and one in DC.”

“I don’t think this guy wants to take out corn farmers, so I’m betting DC is the target.”

“It could also be Chicago. One of the Illinois locations is in a suburb.”

“We know that if Colchev gets a large enough sample of xenobium, it could take out the entire city’s grid. I’d still say Washington, unless Air Force One is visiting Chicago any time soon.”

Morgan nodded. “We’ll check on that. But if a terror attack is his plan, then taking out either Washington or Chicago would meet that goal.”

Grant rubbed his head. “That’s the part about Wisconsin Avenue that I don’t get.”

“Why?”

“Well, we know the Killswitch’s effective range goes up the higher it is when it detonates. So why set it off at ground level? I spoke to Collins before we left Pine Gap just to get a sense for what this thing could do. If Colchev had the same amount of xenobium that was at Pine Gap, he could have flown the Killswitch to 35,000 feet and taken out a huge swath of territory.”

“How huge?”

“In the right location it could take out everything from Washington to New York.”

Morgan went silent for a moment as she realized the enormity of the situation.

Grant put on his night-vision goggles and swept the street.

“Colchev could be selling it on the black market to a terrorist network. Maybe the buy is going to happen somewhere on Wisconsin Avenue in DC.”

She shook her head. “If he were in this for the money, he could have found a hundred easier ways to make it.”

“And why specifically on July twenty-fifth? Why is the date so important to Colchev? Is that when he’s planning to set off a Killswitch or is that when he’s going to acquire another component he needs for his scheme?”

“I don’t know. There’s something we’re missing.”

“Then we need to find out what it is. Let’s hope I’m wrong about his men not showing up.” After two more sweeps, Grant said, “I wonder if we have any kung pao chicken left.”

Without taking the goggles off, he stood and turned, then abruptly halted. He cocked his head up, slowly moving it down as if he were watching something drip from the ceiling.

“What are you doing?” Morgan asked.

“You need to put your goggles on.”

For a second she thought he was joking, but she realized his voice was deadly serious for the first time today.

She whipped the goggles off her lap and fitted them over her eyes. When she saw why Grant had told her to put them on, she whispered, “Damn it.”

She could see red ID dust crosshairs descending, superimposed over the bedroom wall like ghostly apparitions.

Right where the hotel’s elevator shaft was located.

She could have kicked herself for making such a boneheaded oversight.

Morgan’s targets had been watching for Kessler from the hotel the entire time, several stories directly above her. And because the scientist hadn’t shown up, her only links to the Killswitch were about to get away.

THIRTY-THREE

The light piercing the narrow crack they’d opened in front of the cave entrance did little to penetrate the gloom. Except for the thin beam of his flashlight reflecting off the basalt walls of the lava tube, Tyler could see nothing.

Although the Moai protecting the cave had done an admirable job of concealing the entrance, apparently the seal had not been tight enough to prevent moisture from entering. The cave surface felt damp to Tyler’s touch, and the air reeked of fungal decay. If mold had grown unchecked in here, whatever they were meant to find might have been destroyed centuries ago.

Jess guided Fay into the tight confines of the cave. Tyler instructed Polk to guard the entrance outside, but it was as much to keep him from seeing the results of their search as it was for protection. Not that he didn’t trust the guy. After all, Polk was the one with the gun. But Tyler saw the wisdom in following Morgan’s need-to-know rationale.

“Be careful,” Tyler said, his voice reverberating into the distance. “The floor’s slippery.”

“You watch your head,” Jess said. “Without hard hats, you could get a nasty bump.”

“It sounds like you have some caving experience.”

“Nana introduced me to it in New Zealand.”

Fay took a deep breath. “Do you smell that? It’s the aroma of history.”

She removed a state-of-the-art video camera from her knapsack and turned on its powerful floodlight. It provided as much illumination as the two flashlights put together.

When she saw Tyler’s appreciative look, she said, “I use this to record all my trips.”

“
Paratus et validus
,” Tyler said.

“What does that mean?”

“Ready and able. It was my Army unit’s motto.” He showed Fay the Gordian camera he’d had delivered to the C-17 during the Sydney stopover. The equipment was only slightly more advanced than hers. “You would have fit in well. Especially with the way you handled that shotgun.”

Fay grinned. “Flatterer. Come on. I want to see what’s in here.”

She led the way into the darkness. No fear at all. Tyler was even more impressed.

Ten yards in, the path turned, and the echo effect increased. Tyler was shocked that he could now see light coming from the far end of the tunnel.

He exchanged glances with Jess. She was as surprised as he was. They continued on until they emerged into a massive chamber, its thirty-foot-high ceiling domed like a planetarium. Sunlight streamed through a one-foot-diameter hole in the ceiling, providing a weak supplement to the illumination cast by their flashlights. The tall grass must have hidden the hole from view when they were topside.

They all stopped, slack-jawed, as they laid eyes on what the Rapa Nui people had been hiding for more than a thousand years.

The ceiling was covered with images that were exact copies of the Nazca lines. Tyler took out his smart phone and brought up the map of the lines that he’d stored on it. Not only were the symbols identical to the geoglyphs on the Peruvian plain, but they were arranged in exactly the same locations and orientations. Each of the symbols was stippled with dots that didn’t appear on the Nazca plain. Straight lines connecting the symbols matched straight lines in Peru, but there were far fewer of them on the ceiling.