After several minutes, the glow went away. The amber fluid drained out of the tube. Lexina opened it and removed the helmet from the body, cradling the new Coridan in her arms as she took him out and laid him on the floor.
Coridan gasped for air, the eyes flickering open.
“Welcome back, old friend,” Lexina greeted him.
Vicinity Of Easter Island
D - 6 Hours, 30 Minutes
The USS Anzio was a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser. It cost over one billion dollars to build, and its primary purpose was to be a carrier battle group’s primary defense against air attack. Its job was to defend the battle group’s aircraft carrier at all costs—a job that, it could be argued, it had failed in, given that the Washington was lost.
That fact did little to improve the morale or temper of the crew. That no one could have guessed the returning Global Hawk was the threat it had turned out to be did little to assuage that feeling. The presence on board of more than eight hundred survivors of the Washington not only crowded the ship, it added to the burning desire for revenge.
The Anzio had already earned a battle star in the war against the Airlia by dropping the nuclear weapon that had—they thought—destroyed the foo fighter base north of Easter Island.
When the message came in, via high-frequency radio from Pearl Harbor, for it to prepare a nuclear weapon to be fired against Easter Island, the initial feeling among the crew was one of anticipation. But when the fact that almost two thousand members of the crew of the Washington were missing behind the black shield they were now ordered to penetrate and destroy, sunk in, the mood became more somber.
As they had against the foo fighters’ base, the weapons specialists on board the ship opened up one of their BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles and began disabling the electronic guidance equipment.
The captain of the Anzio also sent a message to the long-suffering crew of the Springfield to prepare for action.
• • •
In response to the command she had slipped into the system, the microscopic machines that had thoroughly infiltrated Kelly Reynolds’s body began to leave, traveling through her bloodstream and out the needle that had been inserted in her neck by the guardian.
When the last one departed, the part that was still Kelly Reynolds was now larger and stronger than it had been since she’d come down into the chamber deep under Rano Kau. She still had the mental link via the golden tendril coming out of the guardian itself, but that was weaker than before, because the alien computer had relied on the nanovirus to a great extent after infecting her with it.
With her small degree of freedom, Kelly now tried something new.
CHAPTER 21
Moscow
D - 6 Hours
Not once had Turcotte or Yakov discussed the possibility that the blockage might extend farther than they could dig. In a strange way, that felt good to Turcotte, reminding him of his classmates at Ranger and Special Forces schools, where he’d worked with the other students on difficult tasks without having to chat about it or discuss the impossibility of the obstacles before them. In such situations talk was wasted energy and time.
Turcotte knew that they were getting closer to the deadline with each passing minute, but he had long before learned to focus his mind on the most immediate task at hand. He was doing everything he could right now. His training and his experience had taught him to avoid panic by taking things one step at a time.
His hands were bleeding from the concrete and stone he’d been lifting and carrying, the pain past the point of sharpness, into a numb, pounding ache. As he headed into the narrow opening they had excavated, Yakov slid out, tumbling large chunks of concrete with him. Turcotte slithered past, along the fifteen-foot-long dig. Several times concrete beneath him moved, which highlighted the possibility that blocks above might collapse. It was dark when he reached the end and he worked by feel, carefully discerning the size of a piece of rubble with his hands, then slowly pulling it out.
Turcotte knew his limits, and he had a very good idea how far past those limits he could push his body. He estimated being able to work about three more hours before having to rest. Then the next work segment would be more difficult to begin because of aching muscles and scabbed-over wounds. And shorter because of less energy. The largest concern he had was lack of water. Taking it one step past how long he estimated he could work, Turcotte figured he and Yakov had about two days of life if they didn’t break through.
Checking his watch, he realized that was about five or so hours more than everyone in the United States had if he did not find the key.
Cairo, Egypt
D - 5 Hours, 30 Minutes
Duncan and Mualama’s arrival in Cairo was not as inconspicuous as they would have liked. Thousands mobbed the edge of the airfield where the bouncer came in for its landing, eager to see the alien craft on its first visit to Cairo despite the early hour. Duncan would have preferred landing directly at the Sphinx site, but the Egyptians had refused them permission to do that and directed they arrive at the airfield.
Duncan had no idea how word of the visit had been leaked, but she had to assume that it had occurred somewhere in UNAOC. The two quickly disembarked, eager to move to the Giza Plateau. The head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) was waiting for them with a car, looking none too happy. Mualama had told her that he had met Dr. Hassar before, at archaeological seminars, but he had never really talked to the man. Hassar’s first words to them were not positive.
“Get in the car, quickly,” Hassar snapped, holding the door open and looking at the crowd anxiously.
Duncan and Mualama scooted in, followed by Hassar, who barked at the driver in Arabic to go. As the car headed for the airfield gates, Mualama stuck out his hand. “I am pleased to be here, Dr. Hassar.”
Hassar ignored the hand; his attention was focused outside the thick window. He rapped a knuckle against the glass. “Bulletproof. I had to call in a favor from a friend of mine in the Foreign Ministry to get this car.” Hassar pointed at the crowds. “They are not all here because of the bouncer. Word has slipped out that you want to attempt to go under the Sphinx. There are many who oppose doing that.”
Based on what Mualama had told her, Duncan had known they would be flying into a hornet’s nest. The SCA had long resisted all attempts by archaeologists to do any work around the Sphinx. Egypt also had a very bad reputation with regard to foreigners, women in particular. The Muslim fundamentalists believed so strongly in fighting the inroads of what they considered decadent Western culture that attacks on tourists were not uncommon.
Duncan decided to cut to the heart of the matter. “Do you oppose it?” she asked.
Hassar seemed surprised at the directness of the question and the source. “Yes, I do. But not because I believe it is sacrilegious or I despise foreigners, as the fundamentalists do.”
“Why, then?” Duncan asked.
“Because it is a waste of time.”
Mualama leaned forward in the seat. “There are open spaces under the Sphinx. That has been proven through various seismic readings.”
“Yes, I know,” Hassar conceded. “A Japanese team using ground-penetrating radar found a hollow to the south of the Sphinx. Not a large one, mind you. Readings indicated a space just a few meters across.”
“And they found a similar hollow on the north side of the Sphinx,” Mualama added. “Which indicated there might be a tunnel going completely under the entire structure.”
“Doubtful,” Hassar said.
“I am more interested in what lies near the paws,” Mualama said.
“The altar found between the paws was added later. By the Romans. You know that.”
“I believe the Hall of Records lies under the paws,” Mualama said.
Hassar sighed. “The Hall of Records? Cayce’s ‘visions’? The ramblings of a madman.”
“There may be more to his theories than scientists like us would like to admit,” Mualam
a said.
“Ahh!” Hassar slapped his forehead in disgust.
Mualama knew where the other man’s reactions came from, but his own wanderings and studies over the years had forced him to reevaluate many preconceived notions. The name Cayce had come up numerous times during Mualama’s studies, always quickly discredited by scholars and scientists. Edgar Cayce was an American, born in Kentucky in the late nineteenth century, who died in the last year of World War II. He was considered one of the world’s greatest psychics—that thought brought a smile to Mualama’s lips—if one believed in psychics.
“Cayce was a great believer in the myth of Atlantis,” Mualama said. “And now we know that Atlantis did exist.”
“There is not yet any empirical proof that Atlantis existed,” Hassar argued. “We have the word of Professor Nabinger,” Mualama said. “And the stones off Bimini. And the history of the Airlia.”
“Nabinger was corrupted by the guardian,” Hassar said firmly. “Why are you willing to believe Nabinger, yet UNAOC is putting the surviving members of Majestic on trial? Both were in contact with the guardian, were they not? Do you simply prefer what you heard from Nabinger?”
They had passed the outskirts of Cairo and the three great pyramids were in sight across the Nile, the Sphinx crouched in front between the pyramids and the river.
Mualama was incredulous. “How do you explain the mothership, then? The bouncers? The Airlia on Mars?”
“I don’t have to explain them, and I don’t have to believe that there was an island of Atlantis.” Hassar stabbed his finger into Mualama’s chest. “I have had those people pestering me for years to dig under the Sphinx.”
“What people?”
“An organization that honors Cayce and thinks he was a true—a true—” Hassar sputtered, searching for a word, then gave up. “I have responsibilities. This entire Plateau”—he waved his hand out the window as they passed the first pyramid on the right—“is in my care.
“Do you know how much damage pollution from Cairo causes on the stones? Do you know how many people come here with their crackpot ideas about the pyramids and the Sphinx? And want to run tests? I have people who want to hold religious—or what they call religious—services inside the Great Pyramid. I’ve had actual requests from people who want to commit suicide at the very top—they believe that they will pass on from there directly to a better life!”
He turned to Duncan. “Like your Heaven’s Gate people, there are many who believe they can transport themselves to a better life, and many think the pyramids or the Sphinx are their gateway. It has gotten much worse in the past month.”
Mualama spread his hands to calm the other man down. “But Cayce was right about some things that you now know are true. He was right about another room under the Great Pyramid. The one the Germans found in World War II with the bomb in it. And was rediscovered later by Edmunds. You’ve been in there! And Cayce told of that room long before the Germans found it.”
Hassar wasn’t willing to give away anything. “A good guess. There were others who speculated that there was more under the Great Pyramid than had been found. It was an easy prophecy to make. What about all the other prophecies of Cayce that have not come true?”
Mualama didn’t answer that question. “I believe there is more under the Sphinx than has been found.”
The car came to a halt. The Great Sphinx looked down on them, the aged and beaten face lit by spotlights.
They stepped out of the car. It was relatively quiet, the tourists long gone, the sound of the city a murmur. Duncan felt her inner soul stir under the gaze of the Sphinx as she thought of the generations of humans who had passed in front of it and as she tried to imagine who had built it and why, so many thousands of years ago.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” Hassar interrupted Duncan’s reverie. “I did not agree with my government’s initial decision to cooperate with UNAOC. I did not agree that you two should be allowed to come here.”
Duncan looked at this man who had been in charge of perhaps the world’s greatest archaeological sites for decades. Who had done nothing in all those years to further man’s understanding of his own past. She wondered what would have happened if Hassar had found evidence of the Airlia on the Plateau before the debacle at Area 51. She realized he would have most likely been ridiculed, branded a fool.
“Why do you not agree?” Mualama asked.
“Because it is dangerous,” Hassar said. “You know what happened at the Valley of the Kings several years ago to that tourist group. The fundamentalists here do much more than talk. They shoot.”
“Fear is never a good reason to not act,” Mualama said.
“You are a scientist first,” Hassar said. “You do not understand.”
“What do you mean?”
Hassar stared at the other man as if he were crazy. “This alien thing. The Airlia. It affects people. Each in their own way. You are excited because it brings the past to life and proves things you long believed. But very few people are archaeologists or anthropologists, and very few people care about the future or the past. They care about their lives in the here and now. The things that are important to them in their little world.
“And it is through that prism that they see the Airlia.” Hassar pointed up. “It is with that perception that they look at the mothership overhead. But there are many who won’t look. Who refuse to believe.”
Mualama and Duncan remained silent, listening to the Egyptian official.
“Religion.” Hassar drew the word out. “Do you know how the world’s various organized faiths have reacted to the events of the past month? To the proof that there is life—at least was life—on other planets? That our planet had an alien outpost on it over ten thousand years ago? That aliens were here on Earth before Christ, before Mohammed, before Buddha?”
Duncan had a good idea of what Hassar was talking about, but Mualama had not followed the news much on his travels around the world, nor had there been much opportunity once he was there to keep up on current events. “No, I don’t,” he said.
“It is not just the recognized organized religions,” Hassar said. “I mentioned Heaven’s Gate—those people killed themselves to get on a spaceship they believed was in the tail of a comet. Now we have real spaceships! Do you know how many people have committed suicide around the world in the last several weeks? There are so many new cults. Yesterday I was reading about one formed around the alien base on Mars that worships the ‘Face’ at the Cydonia site.
“And then there are those who are afraid. They fear the unknown. They fear retribution for the destruction of the Airlia fleet. Rome is in turmoil. The Pope issued a statement that said nothing with many words, as that office is prone to do. Do you know what this does to their center-out view of the universe? What of the Airlia? If God exists, then he had to have made them too. Did they have a Son of God visit them to spread the good word? Did they have a prophet like Mohammed to show them the true path? How does all that fit in? Where do we humans fit in, then? What happens to our relationship with God?
“There are some who believe the appearance of the Airlia to be the second coming of the Christian Godchild,” Hassar forced himself to calm down. “Rest assured, Dr. Duncan and Professor Mualama, that those people are not thrilled that UNAOC killed Aspasia. They are the driving force behind progressive groups in numerous countries.
“But Catholics are not a great concern here. Islam is the religion that rules in this part of the world.” Hassar reached out and put his hand on Mualama’s shoulder. He pulled him over to a stone just in front of one of the large paws and they sat down, Duncan following. “I will tell you how the Airlia fits in according to Islam.
“As the Catholics have their angels and demons, Islam, according to the Koran, has its own version of other-than-human creatures: Al-Malak and Al-Jinn. Al-Malak are the beings of light. Al-Jinn are those who were created before man. It is written in the Koran that Mohammed, Allah be praised,
was sent to be a messenger to both man and the Al-Jinn.”
Mualama stirred impatiently, the closeness of the Sphinx and the weight of the scepter in his pack pressing on him. “Every Holy Book has writings of other beings,” Mualama said. “Angels and demons and devils.”
“True,” Hassar acknowledged, “but Muslims are the true believers. Their religion comes first in all things. The word of the Koran is law. And either way, this does not bode well.”
“Either way?” Mualama knew that Hassar’s perception was slanted a certain way because he was a Muslim.
“If a Muslim chooses to interpret that Airlia are the Al-Malak, then they are angels and UNAOC has struck against the beings of God. If the Airlia are Al-Jinn, that means they are the devil—but the Koran says even the Al-Jinn can be saved. The leader of the Al-Jinn is named Al-Iblis, but he is also described in places as being an angel or a demon.”
“Dr. Hassar,” Duncan began, “perhaps if—”
“I have heard Professor Mualama speak,” Hassar cut her off. “At the Pan-African Conference last year. Your topic was the power of myths and legends. Don’t you understand? What is happening here in Egypt is happening everywhere in the world. Angels or demons. Progressive or isolationist.” Hassar slapped the ancient stone they were sitting on. “This is not some intellectual pursuit you are talking about. Ah!” Hassar threw his hands into the air. “What you see so clearly with your own perspective, others see very differently.”
“UNAOC has gotten approval from your government for us to look,” Duncan said. “UNAOC had permission,” Hassar corrected her. “Do you know that Sterling was killed in New York? Shot?”
Duncan nodded. She wondered on the flight here which alien group had been behind the killing or if it had been the work of human fanatics.
“There have been other killings around the world,” Hassar said. “This has made my government reconsider. Your request has been put in abeyance.”
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