The Milestone Protocol

by Ernest Dempsey

  Magnus grinned as he would at a child asking where babies come from. “That, Dr. Clark, is just the beginning of the mystery. Come with me.”

  The Swede marched across the smooth-cut rock floor, along a path marked by lights propped up on tripods every ten feet or so. Hundreds of other floodlights blazed from various points on the walls, casting their bright glow upon the mysterious megalith.

  Kevin noted an entrance in the center of the base where the light trail stopped. The two men turned left into the opening, where Magnus paused for a second. Long cords ran along the floor into the passage, delivering energy to bright lights radiating within.

  Magnus looked sternly at the archaeologist. The look dismantled Kevin, making him uncomfortable in a way he didn’t know he could feel. “What you are about to see will change everything you’ve ever believed about the ancients.”

  “Okay,” Kevin said. “I’m ready.”

  Magnus only offered a scoffing snort, then turned and strode into the tunnel.

  The passage slanted down at first, descending another fifty feet into the mountain before leveling off. Kevin looked around at the smooth stone walls and the ceiling overhead. They were lined with hieroglyphs unlike anything he’d ever seen. Images of ancient peoples in strange clothes and ceremonial outfits lined the surfaces on the left and right. Magnus was walking so fast that Kevin didn’t have time to carefully analyze any of them. He would have given anything for just an hour or two in the corridor, but he knew that soon he would have all the time in the world to research and learn how to interpret the new symbols and stories painted in intricate detail on the walls.

  The men passed two doors on either side, and Kevin slowed just enough to look inside. Golden treasures glimmered in the rays of tripod floodlights, casting shimmering yellow reflections onto the walls, walls that were also covered in myriad symbols and images portraying either stories or prayers or both.

  As the two men reached another downslope in the passage, a strange humming sound reached Kevin’s ears. It was low, almost undetectable at first, but as they proceeded deeper into the pyramid, the sound grew slightly louder.

  “What is that noise?” Kevin asked when they reached the next level below.

  “Power,” Magnus answered simply.

  “Power? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Magnus looked over his shoulder as he turned right at a bend in the corridor. “The pyramid wasn’t the only thing we discovered in this place. At its center, we discovered the largest sample of Quantium ever seen by mankind. One of our groups, the Ahnenerbe, found an extraordinary section of the stuff during World War Two, but they were unable to fully understand and harness its full potential. Here, everything was just as our ancient ancestors left it. This place remained untouched and unseen by humans for millennia.”

  They walked another forty feet down the corridor and then stopped at the next turn, where the path angled back to the left into the center of the pyramid.

  Kevin didn’t have an expression that accurately displayed the astonishment he felt at the sight through the next passage.

  The hieroglyphs along the walls were glowing, illuminating the entire corridor on their own and in vibrant colors.

  Magnus strolled through the hall of lighted images while Kevin spun around in circles as he shuffled his feet, trying to keep up.

  “How is this possible?” Kevin wondered.

  “These glyphs were painted with liquid Quantium mixed into the paint. We believe it wasn’t a functional decision by the ones who built this place, but we’re still studying that, along with why they didn’t use the same technique on the outer passages.”

  The path angled up at the end of the corridor and opened into an enormous chamber. Instead of angled walls, as one might suspect, the room was square, full of the same glowing hieroglyphs as in the previous tunnel.

  Kevin surveyed the massive space, scanning the walls first before directing his vision to the center of the room, where Magnus stood at the end of the ramp next to a massive, pulsing blue cube.

  “Come, Dr. Clark,” Magnus said. “It’s time.”

  47

  Svalbard

  Sean watched the two gunmen next to him with an aloof expression on his face. If they knew he was observing them, they would have reacted. He could have killed those two in half a breath, and probably taken the others out as well, but that move could have risked the lives of those on his side. Then there was the issue of getting onto the next elevator. It was easy to assume that ID cards would be used to get through the next security checkpoint, but if a code were required, that would stick Sean and his team at a barrier they could not pass.

  The elevator stopped at the next floor, and one of the guards opened the gate.

  Sean steered his loader off the lift and down a corridor toward a wide steel elevator door. He followed two guards while Tommy maneuvered his loader off the lift, bumping into the rails twice before getting it straightened out. For a second, he thought the guards heard a huff come from one of the boxes, but with all the sounds from the machines, they didn’t react.

  The two gunmen followed Tommy and the other two delivery guys off the platform, bringing up the rear as the procession headed toward the next elevator.

  Sean immediately noted that the access panel was a card reader only, with no retinal scanner or voice recognition, and no keypad either.

  Magnus may have thought of everything regarding the end of the world, but he’d slacked on a few things. And that security panel was one of them.

  Sean shrugged his right shoulder and felt his delivery uniform loose on that side just enough that he could slip his hand through the unzipped portion to grab the pistol on his right hip. He was about to rap on the box nearest him—the signal that would spring their team into action—when he stopped with his palm over the lid. Dak noticed the gesture, but Sean quickly returned his hand to the steering mechanism and continued guiding the loader down the passage until he reached the elevator doors.

  At the last second, Sean had noticed something different about the security panel. It was subtle, almost unnoticeable to anyone not paying attention.

  It was a red light inside a dark plastic panel, but he hadn’t seen anything like it before. He realized that it could be a laser fingerprint scanner or perhaps something else—possibly a biochip reader.

  Either way, Sean knew that to risk killing the men early would prove problematic. On top of that, he knew that the camera in the corner above the elevator door would bring their mission to an abrupt end. Magnus would have security monitoring everything going on in the compound, and those cameras were the lifeline to current information.

  Sean had a plan for those, just as soon as the guards were out of the way.

  The first guard who’d greeted the delivery crew stepped up to the panel and swiped his ID card. The light blinked green—casting away any wild theories Sean had come up with about the tech—and the elevator door slid open.

  The guard stepped to the side and urged Sean to enter first. There was something off about the way he made the gesture. An eager look in his eye, perhaps? Or maybe it was the way his lips twitched. Whatever it was, Sean realized immediately that they were about to be executed. He doubted Magnus knew they were there. Their masks and uniforms kept their identities safe, at least up until that moment. Sean could only come to one conclusion as to why they were about to be killed. Magnus was tying off loose ends. If Sean had to bet, his former friend was about to lock down the facility and start the machine.

  No sense in procrastinating when you can destroy civilization now, he thought.

  Sean detected the guard to his left adjusting his submachine gun, a weapon that—like the others—was equipped with a suppressor.

  He entered the elevator, questioning whether he should have sprung the trap sooner. With the camera just outside the lift, he knew that had he taken action sooner, someone would have seen it. Patience was the better end of caution, he reminded himself.
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br />   Tommy and the others followed him onto the elevator and waited for the guards to join them. Sean stepped to the side to make room for the second loader and watched the gunmen closely. If they weren’t going to do it in the corridor, they would do it in the elevator where there truly was nowhere to run.

  The cliché Fish in a barrel came to Sean’s mind.

  As Tommy positioned his machine, thoughts of elevator assassination scenes from movies flashed through Sean’s mind.

  Then, one of the guards stepped on and over to the panel, though he didn’t turn and face the short array of buttons.

  The other three also boarded the lift. The first pressed the button for the bottom floor and then faced the group again, shifting his submachine gun.

  Sean knew they were out of time. He palmed a metal disc he’d taken from his pocket and pressed it hard twice, depressing the center of the device. The object was no larger than a watch battery, but it packed a powerful strategic punch—a little gift from a buddy at DARPA. Thankfully, Sean’s contact had sent a case of them, mini flash-bang devices that had bailed him out of several tight situations.

  Sean looked around at the lights, wincing. “Is it bright in here or is it just me?” Then he leaned his head back and faked a sneeze, tossing the disk at the feet of the guards just as the elevator began its descent.

  Sean and the other members of his team closed their eyes and covered them with their hands a split second before the flash bang sent a terrible, blinding white light through the elevator. Even with his palms shielding his eyes, Sean could see the residual light through his eyelids. The instant the light vanished, he rapped on the box nearest him.

  The members of his team hiding in the crates popped up as the guards shouted and rubbed their eyes, blinded temporarily by the flash bang.

  Emily, Tara, June, Niki, Tabitha, and Adriana fired their silenced pistols. The elevator erupted in a series of muted pops and clicks as the assault team cut down the guards before they could reach the triggers of their guns.

  Three men slumped against the walls while one lay in a heap next to the loader.

  Sean stepped over one of the bodies. As he moved, gun smoke lingering in the air swirled around him like a graveyard fog. He pressed the second button from the bottom and hoped they hadn’t missed that level.

  Then he turned to Alex, who held a device about the size of a large cell phone. “You got access to the camera stream yet?”

  “Not yet, but almost.”

  “We could be at the next level soon,” Sean said. “I would hate to have to put on a show for the eye in the sky.”

  “I’m working on it,” Alex insisted.

  His fingers tapped over buttons as he tried to align a green wavelength on the screen with a blue one that represented the signal he was trying to send.

  The elevator continued its descent. The group watched the door with their weapons drawn.

  “Almost there,” Alex said. “Nearly got it.”

  The blue jagged line overlapped the green one with a perfect match, and Alex tapped an Enter key on the side of the screen. The image locked in place and he looked up. “Got it.”

  Just in time, Sean thought. The elevator slowed and within seconds eased to a stop.

  When the lift doors opened, Sean’s instincts were proved correct. A wide passage opened up in front of them, and a dozen armed guards loitered around crates and plastic tubs stacked up to the ceiling. Beyond the cluster of soldiers, the corridor extended out at least three hundred yards, with doors lining the wall all the way to the other end.

  Sean didn’t need a placard to tell him this was the storage facility for the coming cataclysm.

  The first guard looked over at the elevator from ten feet away. He didn’t even have time to appear surprised as Sean squeezed the trigger. Sean shot the man in the head, then systematically, and with lethal speed, fired again and again before the next two men could react.

  One guy was sipping a cup of coffee when he caught a bullet to the temple from Tommy as he exited the elevator. Dak and Adriana joined them, and within twenty seconds were surrounded by dead guards. There were no survivors.

  “Get those four off the elevator,” Sean said while Alex held the button to keep the door open.

  Tommy stuffed his pistol back into his holster and started dragging out one of the original four guards while June held the man’s feet.

  Dak and Tabitha watched the corridor as Sean and Adriana worked on another body. Tara and Niki joined in, dragging a third out.

  When the fourth guard was pulled from the lift, the team got back on, and Alex let the button go, allowing the door to close.

  Everyone checked their magazines. Sean and Tommy ejected theirs and replaced them with full ones.

  “I hope they didn’t see that,” Sean said to Alex, who continued to watch the screen on his device.

  “They didn’t,” Alex said, unhurt by the doubt. “I hijacked the signal. All they’re going to get is a continuous ten second loop of the camera angles from two minutes ago.”

  “Nice,” Sean said with a grim smile.

  The elevator slowed again, and the group readied their weapons.

  When the doors opened, Sean blinked several times as he took in the scene.

  The control room opened into a wide square. Computer workstations lined the walls and filled rows of tables in the center. Dozens of people worked frantically.

  Beyond them, through a huge glass window, Sean saw a portion of the pyramid rising up into the mountain within a hollowed-out chamber that could have held several tall buildings.

  A tall, skinny man in a white lab coat whirled around and saw the group standing inside. The occupants had only enough time to conceal their weapons behind their backs before the scientist saw them.

  “Delivery?” the wiry man asked, pushing his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose. “You’re on the wrong floor,” he said, giving no time for Sean to answer. “Next floor up.”

  Sean stepped out of the elevator and raised his pistol, aiming it at the man’s head as he stalked toward him.

  Stunned, the man in the lab coat staggered back a step toward a panel on the far left of a long table filled with computers.

  “What is the meaning of this? Who are you?”

  The rest of the team fanned out, spreading quickly through the room. The people working the computer stations looked around suddenly, their heads twisting back and forth. The element of surprise had worked, but Sean knew there would be some kind of security system here somewhere.

  The scientist in the white lab coat stumbled to the panel and felt around with his left hand underneath the table.

  “I don’t think so,” Sean said, pressing the muzzle to the man’s cheekbone. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” the man asked, trying to sound innocent. It was unconvincing, to say the least.

  Sean grabbed him by the collar and held him upright. “Where is he?”

  “Where is who?”

  Sean looked at the ID tag hanging from the man’s neck. “Klaus, is it? I’m going to be real clear, Klaus, even though I know you know who I mean. Where is Magnus, the one you call Odin?”

  “Oh. Him. Well, he’s—”

  “Two seconds, Klaus.”

  “You’re too late,” Klaus said with a false whiff of bravado. “The sequence has already begun. He and Dr. Clark are in the pyramid’s control center. Any second now, the—”

  Sean reared his hand back and smashed the pistol into the man’s nose. Klaus dropped the tablet and crumpled to the floor next to it, grabbing at his nose as blood oozed from his nostrils.

  “Which way to the pyramid?” Sean shouted, brandishing his pistol around the room until he settled on the closest person to him, aiming the gun at the young scientist’s head. Desperation filled his eyes, the kind that could scare even the most hardened warrior.

  The computer-station worker was of Asian descent. A combination of fear and vitriol stretched across his face,
but he raised a finger toward a corridor to the left.

  “Down the elevator. Go straight ahead after you exit it.”

  “Thank you,” Sean said. “You get to live. A little longer, anyway.” He glanced derisively at the tattoo on the man’s neck. “Em?” Sean said, rounding on his old partner. “Can you and Dak hold down the fort here with the others? I’m going after Sorenson.”

  “I think we can handle it.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Tommy said.

  “Me too,” Niki added.

  Adriana moved closer to him. “It is my duty to end this.”

  Sean rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. But not everyone gets dibs on Sorenson.” He looked to Alex and Tara, who stood ten feet apart. “You two, I need you to figure out how this thing is being powered. That guy said something about Quantium. Find out if you can reverse the flow of power. If you can, we may be able to shut this thing down—like pulling a plug.” He picked up a radio on the end of the table and tossed it to Alex, then jerked another from Klaus’ belt. “Call me on this if you find a solution.”

  Tara and Alex nodded.

  “You got it, chief,” Tara said with a playful glance at Tommy.

  Tommy shook his head but said nothing.

  “Start with this guy,” Sean said, pointing at the scientist who’d given him the directions. “He seems to know something.”

  The man turned his head slowly toward Alex and Tara and grimaced, as if expecting some kind of torture.

  “Gladly,” Alex said in his best tough-guy voice.

  A klaxon abruptly pierced the room. Everyone collectively winced at the invasive, brain-scrambling sound.

  Sean returned his weapon to the man he’d just referenced. “Who did that?”

  The scientists shook his head vigorously, the fear of death filling his eyes. “I don’t know. It wasn’t me.” He looked on his computer screen at a map of the facility. “It came from the next floor up.”

  Sean sighed. Someone found the bodies.

  “That didn’t take long.” He looked at Tommy, Adriana, and Niki. “Okay, gang. Let’s go save the world.”