Duncan put the scepter down. “We can sit here all day and chat about the Sphinx, but I think the best thing is we take a look. Professor Mualama and I will go to Egypt.”
“What about permission?” Mualama asked. “The Egyptian government has had most curious policies regarding investigating the Sphinx, particularly the network of tunnels that are supposed to be underneath it.”
“I’ll contact UNAOC and have them get in touch with the Egyptian government,” Duncan said.
“Egypt is slightly to the right of center,” Mualama said, “as far as the isolationist movement goes. The Muslim fundamentalists are very much against having anything to do with the Airlia.”
“I’ll emphasize to UNAOC that this has the highest priority,” Duncan said. “It’s all we can do.”
“There is something else,” Mualama said.
“What?”
Mualama pulled out an oilskin-wrapped package. “This manuscript. It is written in Akkadian, an ancient tongue.” He briefly gave Duncan the background of the papers and Sir Richard Francis Burton. “If we can translate this, it might be of use. I believe it will be important with regard to whatever is inside the Hall of Records. It might also talk of the key you seek.”
“Why did you hold the key and this manuscript back from us?” Duncan asked, although she already had a good idea what the answer would be.
Mualama confirmed her suspicions with one word. “Trust.”
“Major Quinn?” Duncan pointed at the manuscript. “Think you can find someone who reads Akkadian?”
“I can try.”
The door to the conference room opened and an enlisted man handed a file folder to Major Quinn. He opened it and checked the sheet of paper inside. “What is it?” Duncan asked.
“The results of the tests you requested the UNAOC doctors perform on von Seeckt and the results from the examination of the Airlia skeleton.” He pulled the paper out and handed it to Duncan.
She scanned the two pieces of paper. “Goddamn!” she exclaimed. She tapped Mualama on the arm. “Let’s go.”
Manhattan, New York
D — 15 Hours
The sniper had been in position for forty-eight hours. He sat in the room the way he had been trained, the muzzle of his weapon two feet from the window. Only amateurs would rest the barrel on the window and allow the end of the weapon to poke out. The room was dark, and he was invisible to anyone peering at the window from the outside.
He had a perfect angle of fire along First Avenue. The previous day he had counted the flags that lined the edge of the United Nations from Forty-second Street to Forty-eighth. One hundred and eighty-five, in alphabetical order, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, north to south. Even at the place that was supposed to help unite the world, each country had to fly its own flag.
The sniper had pulled the dresser over to just in front of the window, and the bipod for his weapon rested on it, the metal legs scratching the finish, but that was the least of his concerns. He had the butt plate swung up and resting on top of his shoulder, taking the rest of the weight of the M93.
The weapon, with ammunition, topped out at twenty-six pounds. He had broken it down into three parts… detachable stock, receiver with barrel, and magazine… to carry it to the room. Then he had carefully reassembled it. The scope was bolted to the top of the barrel, and he had zeroed it in the previous week at a farm in upstate New York. The barrel was made of match-grade chrome alloy with a matte black polymer finish. There was a large flute at the end to reduce some of the muzzle blast signature.
The gun was so big and heavy because it fired a .50-caliber round. A half inch in diameter and almost six inches long, it was the bullet that fighter planes in World War II had fired from their wing guns. Using that large a round gave the gun a range of over a mile, although the kill zone the sniper had delineated for his target was only six hundred meters away. The large caliber ensured that when the bullet hit, it would do devastating damage. In fact, the primary use of the M93 was not called sniping but strategic operations target interdiction… using the weapon to hit critical components in such systems as microwave relay towers or on jet fighters sitting on a runway.
But a bullet was a bullet, the sniper’s instructors had harped at him during his training.
He removed his eye from the scope and checked the watch lying flat on the desktop. The target window was open. He had been given a folder that said this was the earliest the subject left. The sniper used his right hand to pull up on the bolt and slide it back. The top bullet on the magazine of ten slid up, and as he pushed the bolt forward, it slid the round into the magazine well, seating it tightly in place.
He put his right hand on the pistol grip, curling three fingers and his thumb around it as his forefinger slid through the trigger guard and lightly touched the thin metal sliver.
He leaned forward and peered through the scope. He began to control his breathing, taking long, shallow breaths. He could maintain this position for hours if needed. He could feel the rhythm of his heart and let it become like a metronome inside his head.
For a moment that rhythm sped up. He pulled his head back and shook it, feeling a spike of pain bisect his brain. He looked about, as if surprised at his current situation, the gun, the muzzle pointing down First Avenue, the United Nations to the left, then the eyes glazed over, his face twitched in pain, and he leaned back into position. Slowly the twitching stopped, the tension went out of the face.
Below, Peter Sterling, the head of UNAOC… the United Nations Alien Oversight Committee… exited the main UN building and headed for his car waiting at the curb on First Avenue. His patrician face was lined with the stress of the past weeks, but he walked with a bounce, his mood lightened by recent inroads he’d made on the Security Council. He almost had them convinced that the UN should take a tougher stand on all interactions with the guardians, the Airlia on Mars, and all other factions involved with the aliens. While the isolationist movement was gaining ground in the General Assembly, Sterling hoped to sway the Security Council to pass a resolution to allow UN-sanctioned forces to try to track down The Mission, to completely isolate Easter Island, and to resume digging at the destroyed American research facility at Dulce, New Mexico to discover what had been down there.
The Remington trigger was set at 2.5 pounds pull. The sniper drew in a long, shallow breath and held it. The reticles were centered on target, leading very slightly to account for the target’s pace. His mind was in rhythm with his heartbeat, and in the space before the next beat, he smoothly pulled back on the trigger.
Sterling’s mind was focused on how to get the Russian on his committee, Boris Ivanoc, the number-two man, to be more enthusiastic in getting his Security Council member to vote for the resolution, when the .50-caliber bullet made that the last thought he would ever have.
The half-inch-wide bullet splintered through skull on the right side of Sterling’s head, plowed through the brain, and took the entire left side of the head with it as it exited, splattering the sidewalk beyond for twenty feet with blood, brain, and fragmented pieces of bone.
The sniper had no doubt the target was dead. But he wasn’t working on the rules he had been trained on. The fact that something overrode years of repetitive training echoed somewhere in the back of his brain, like a leaf blowing in the wind, but he couldn’t grab on to it.
He pulled the bolt back, placing another round in the chamber, and aimed. Two cops were moving tentatively toward the body, everyone else having scattered. The sniper centered the reticles on what remained of the target’s head. He didn’t bother to wait between heartbeats… the target was stationary and at a range where he would hit one hundred times out of one hundred. He pulled the trigger.
The bullet smashed into the remains of the head and effectively finished decapitating Sterling. The two cops dove for cover, screaming into their handheld radios for backup.
The sniper removed the butt plate from over his shoulder and put the rifle down on t
he desk almost reverently. He walked over to the window. People were pointing up, having a general idea of where the shots had originated from due to the loud report of the .50-caliber weapon. He climbed up onto the windowsill in clear view of those below and teetered there for a second.
He paused as a memory fought through the alien conditioning. He remembered visiting the United Nations as a child, on a school trip to New York City. He tried to pull up more of the memory, but a black curtain slid down over that part of his mind.
He stepped out into space. He felt no fear as he fell the fifteen stories. The impact of the pavement brought an instant of release from the conditioning, the horror of what he had done, of what had been done to him. Then he died.
CHAPTER 18
Outside The Kremlin, Moscow
D — 14 Hours
Turcotte had the MP-5 tucked inside of the long coat that Yakov had given him. He was pressed back in the shadows under the Moskvorestkiy Bridge, which spanned the Moskva River near the walls of the Kremlin. Katyenka was farther down Kremlevskaya Naberezhnaya, hiding in the vegetation on the slope that came down from the walls of the Kremlin to the river, while Yakov was in the open, waiting for Lyoncheka.
Turcotte had almost called in Billam’s team for support, but he knew doing that would take them away from being able to support Duncan, and he had just received word from her of the assassination of Sterling prior to leaving the hotel they were staying at. Until he absolutely needed the team, he wanted to leave it untasked.
At the appointed time, a figure appeared, down the walkway from the north, from the direction of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. Turcotte slipped the submachine gun’s safety off. He could hear intermittent traffic going across the bridge, but otherwise all was quiet.
Yakov turned to face the newcomer, arms out from his side.
“Good evening, comrade,” Yakov greeted Lyoncheka.
“Whoever you have covering you,” Lyoncheka said, “bring them into the open. Now.”
Yakov signaled for Turcotte to come out.
Lyoncheka turned, hand snaking inside his coat, only to have Yakov’s massive paw grab his arm. “Easy, comrade. He’s a friend.”
Lyoncheka shook his head. “There are no friends.” He peered as Turcotte came up to them. “And an American… you are the one who destroyed the alien fleet.”
It was a statement, not a question, so Turcotte remained silent.
“I will have to trust that since you did that,” Lyoncheka said, “you are not working for either of the alien groups or the Watchers.”
“That is good,” Yakov agreed. “What do you have for us?”
“Come with me.” Lyoncheka pointed to the west, where the walls of the Kremlin loomed. “I will show you what you want to see.”
They began walking along the river, the sounds of their boots echoing off the Kremlin walls.
Yakov paused. “There is someone else here. Another friend.”
“You have too many friends for the business you are in.” Lyoncheka’s voice revealed his anger and fear. “Where and who?”
Yakov signaled, and Katyenka appeared out of the darkness.
Lyoncheka shook his head as he recognized her. “She’s GRU! This is too much. I promised to help you”… he tapped Yakov on the chest… “not a committee.”
“We’re in this together.”
“No, I’m not,” Lyoncheka argued.
Turcotte curled his finger around the trigger of the MP-5, but he didn’t pull the gun out. He waited for Yakov to defuse the situation.
“Comrade, you have come this far,” Yakov said. “Sooner or later, you are going to have to take a stand against these aliens and their minions. Take one now. Stratzyda will be over the United States in less than twelve hours.”
Lyoncheka spit. “On your head be it. There is no time for games. Come.” He clambered up the slope toward the Kremlin. They reached the large wall that surrounded the compound and Lyoncheka turned west, the other three following.
When he reached a portal through the wall blocked by a steel gate, Lyoncheka pulled out a plastic card. “We have modernized from the locks and chains that used to secure the compound.” He slid the card into a small opening, then punched in a sequence of numbers on a numeric keypad.
The gate slid open and he led them in. A second steel gate blocked the way into the Kremlin proper, but Lyoncheka turned to the left where another keypad was located. He slid another card through that, entered a new code, and the stones rumbled back, revealing a descending stairway.
“Come, quickly,” Lyoncheka urged them.
They crowded down the stairs to a landing. The stones shut behind them. The only illumination came from a couple of flickering fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Turcotte tightened his grip on the gun, fearing an ambush in the confined space. The only other apparent exit was a solid steel door at the end of the landing.
Lyoncheka leaned over a new security device next to the door. Turcotte recognized it as a retinal scanner, the top of the line in identity checking. Lyoncheka waited as the laser scanned across his eyes, then the door opened, revealing a descending corridor. “Come.”
Lyoncheka led them into the corridor. The walls were painted a dull green, the floor gray. It went straight as far as they could see in the dim lighting. The steel door shut with a thud.
“During the Great Patriotic War,” Lyoncheka said as they walked, “Stalin had a very large bomb shelter built under the Kremlin. Then, during the Cold War, the various premiers continued building deeper and deeper shelters. The desire was to have a command-and-control center and living quarters that could survive a nuclear attack on the Kremlin itself. This was eventually expanded to have underground connections to various other government agencies.
“Billions and billions of rubles were spent. This network we’re in connects to many places under Moscow. There is even a secret underground rail line that goes over eighty kilometers outside of the city to the alternate national command post.”
Lyoncheka opened a heavy door. “This way. We are under the Great Kremlin Palace right now. About eighty feet below the surface.”
The tunnel was smaller and older. Cut right out of the rock, the walls were not finished and a thin sheen of moisture glistened in the faint glow of naked lightbulbs strung every twenty feet. Several of the lights were burned out.
They went about a hundred meters, then another door blocked their way. This one was wooden and very old, with iron bands across it. Turcotte noted a small electronic eye to the left and above the door, a strange thing given the apparent age of the tunnel and door.
Lyoncheka waved at the eye. With a hiss of hydraulics, the door swung open and they entered.
A sheet of thick, bullet- and blast-proof glass bisected the room and the top of a desk. A door made of the same thick glass was to the right.
A middle-aged woman, her hair gray, her body stout, looked up from a video screen on the desk. “Look what the wind has blown in,” she said. Her words carried to their side via a small speaker. Her hands were not visible.
“Pasha!” Lyoncheka greeted her.
The woman was all business. “Step forward, through the metal detectors.” Behind her, two large steel doors were closed.
Turcotte noticed the detectors on either side of the door. He stepped through, the alarm beeping and a red light going off. Each of the others did the same, with the same results.
“Your friends carry weapons. Tell them to slowly remove them and place them in the bin or they will be dead in five seconds.”
A panel on the front of the desk slid up, revealing two antipersonnel mines, pointed at them, and a metal bin.
“Nine.” Pasha’s voice was cold.
“Do as she says,” Lyoncheka advised.
Turcotte glanced at Yakov.
“Eight.”
The large Russian pulled his submachine gun from under his coat and placed it on the desk. Turcotte and Katyenka did the same. All weapons had b
een deposited by the time she got down to four.
“Back through the detector,” Pasha ordered.
Each stepped onto the elevator and back off. This time there was no alarm. “You vouch for these people?” Pasha asked Lyoncheka.
“I would not be here if I did not.” Lyoncheka pulled a Western cigarette out of a pack and placed it in the bin. The door slid shut. Pasha reached down, and her hands appeared for the first time, the cigarette in one, an AKSU folding-stock submachine gun in the other. She slipped the sling for the AKSU over her shoulder and picked up a lighter from the desktop, firing up the cigarette.
Turcotte recognized the weapon… top-of-the-line commando issue in Russia. A shortened version of the AK-74, an updated model of the venerable AK-47, but firing a smaller 5 .45 mm round, more in line with modern thinking that a smaller, faster bullet was more devastating in causing wounds than a slower, larger bullet. She picked up a large satchel, which she looped over her shoulder.
“You have not been here for months,” Pasha said. She took a deep drag, then eyed him through the smoke and thick glass.
Lyoncheka spread his arms. “Ah, Pasha, you know the life of the spy. We are always being ordered to go here and there and… ”
Turcotte was surprised at the change in the FSB man. He almost seemed human. “I checked on you,” Pasha said. “You have been in Moscow for the past three months.”
The glass door clicked open.
“Ah.” Lyoncheka walked through the door and around the desk, almost bumping his head on a low beam that cut across the ceiling. He placed his large hands on her equally large shoulders. “Pasha, Pasha, Pasha. I’ve thought of you. On those cold nights when… ”
“Oh, stop it.” She nodded at Yakov. “I know of him. He is Section Four. There are whispers of trouble at Stantsiya Chyort.”
“It was destroyed,” Lyoncheka confirmed. “Everyone killed.”
Pasha’s eyes immediately flickered toward the tunnel door and back. “They are getting closer.”
“‘They’?” Yakov asked.
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