With a rumble, the black cover slid back. Che Lu moved to the side along with Elek to see what was revealed. Lo Fa came walking up, alerted by the strange noise.
“What is it?” the old man asked as the cover came to a halt. He blinked as he took in the form. “It is a metal dragon!”
A large, silvery device, ten meters long by four wide, rested on a cradle of black metal. It was indeed shaped like a dragon, with a high arced neck above a sleek body. The two eyes were dark red and glittered in the light coming down from the bright orb overhead. The mouth was open, revealing a row of black teeth. Two short, stubby wings poked out from the body, extending less than two meters on each side. It appeared to have been damaged at one time: A long black smear about a meter wide on the left side extended from just forward of the wing to the base of the tapered tail. At one point along the smear the silver skin had been breached, revealing wires and tubes inside.
“It is Chi Yu,” Che Lu said. “The Dragon Lord of the South who fought with Shi Huangdi!”
Giza Plateau, Egypt
D - 4 Hours
The moon highlighted the face of the Sphinx. Professor Mualama had watched the shadow of the night horizon creep down the face inch by inch over the last several hours, his attention caught between the marvel in front of him and searching the road leading to Cairo for Duncan to arrive.
He had located the block he thought needed to be removed. It was on the right paw, at the base. He’d knelt in the sand and cleared away the bottom of the stone with his bare hands. If he had had his own vehicle and equipment he would have tried to open it himself, but Hassar had left him standing between the paws after Mualama turned down his offer to return to Cairo. Duncan had gone with Hassar to try to contact UNAOC and get Sterling’s successor to put pressure on the Egyptians.
For the hundredth time, Mualama looked to the road, searching for his crew. He checked his watch. He walked between the paws once more, feeling the weight of the scepter in his backpack. He placed his hands on the stone and pressed his palms flat. He could feel the time, the millennia that had passed since the stone had been shaped.
He looked once more to the road.
What he didn’t notice was the figure standing on the temple wall that surrounded the body of the Sphinx. Wrapped in dull-gray robes, the figure had not moved once the entire evening, waiting as Mualama waited.
Vicinity Of Easter Island
D - 4 Hours
Captain Forster had walked through the entire ship, poking his head into every compartment where a member of his crew was, personally making sure they were all ready for the upcoming mission.
He could see it in his men’s eyes that they didn’t have much optimism that they would be able to escape. Hearing the Washington hit the island had been a rather devastating experience. If whatever was on the island could take down an aircraft carrier, what chance did they have? Plus, they had all been nearby when the Pasadena was destroyed by the foo fighters, hearing their sister ship go down into the depths, the sound like that of popcorn popping as bulkheads gave way.
After going on all decks, from the rear of the sonar sphere in the bow to the engine room adjacent to the reactor halfway back in the sub, he returned to the control room. Not long now.
Area 51
D - 3 Hours, 25 Minutes
Larry Kincaid studied the new imagery from the Hubble under a magnifying glass. The “Face” had definitely changed in the last forty-eight hours. He looked up at Forrester, who had just brought the photographs to the Cube conference room. “Well?”
“The black smear is an army of robots, average size about six feet long.”
“What are they doing?”
“Excavation,” Forrester said. He pointed. “These four piles are the rubble they’ve taken off the top of the ‘Face.’ A rather large amount. Estimates by imagery specialists put it on the order of—”
“What are they excavating?” Kincaid interrupted the scientist.
Forrester slid another photograph across. “This is the latest. They’ve reached whatever it is, but they haven’t fully cleared the surface area. You can see this small area in the top right quadrant. Appears they’ve reached some structure made of the same black metal as the mother-ship.”
Kincaid’s pulse doubled its pace. “Another ship?”
Forrester shook his head. “I don’t believe so. It’s something else.”
“What something else?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The possibilities that he could imagine raced through Kincaid’s mind, and then he realized it was the possibilities he couldn’t imagine that scared him the most.
Moscow
D - 3 Hours, 25 Minutes
The interior of the chamber was one large concrete vault, stretching over a hundred meters in each direction. Steel beams ran from floor to ceiling every ten meters. It was filled with crates, dimly lit by the glow of a half-dozen lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. The ladder they’d climbed down was in the exact center.
“Someone must come down here to change the lightbulbs,” Turcotte said. “So there has to be a way out.”
Yakov pointed toward the left. “There is a door over there. I would think maintenance of this room was Pasha’s job.”
“This is the Archives?”
“We best hope it is. I would prefer not to fall through any more pipes.” Yakov rubbed dust off the side of the nearest crate, exposing Cyrillic writing. “‘Recovered from German Aviation Ministry, 1945.’”
Turcotte looked around and spotted a rusty crowbar resting against one of the crates. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” He jammed the edge under one of the borders and pried it up. After several minutes’ work, he had the side off, revealing a thick glass surface, heavily covered in dust. The case was six feet high by four wide and deep. It looked as if it had not been touched in decades, as did most of the piles of boxes and files in the room.
Turcotte rubbed the sleeve of his shirt against the glass, leaving streaks, gradually clearing a few inches. He leaned forward.
“Oh, jeez!” he hissed, stepping back as he saw the dark black eye staring back at him out of the yellow-colored orb, the sphere floating in some liquid.
“Ah, Okpashnyi’s twin,” Yakov noted. “We are in the right place.”
Turcotte looked more closely. He could see the crude sutures where the sphere had been put back together after autopsy.
Turcotte checked the other crates nearby. There were several wood boxes with the Nazi eagle stenciled on them. He flipped open the lid on the closest one. It was full of files. He pulled the front file out. A drawing of Okpashnyi was the first piece of paper in there.
“You read German?” he asked Yakov.
“A little.”
“Can you tell which of these are important and which aren’t? Which one holds the Spear if it is here?” Turcotte asked.
“I will check.”
As Yakov moved about rubbing dust off crates, Turcotte pulled out his SATPhone. He knew it wouldn’t work this far underground, but it was a sign of the straits they were in that he flipped open the cover anyway and pressed the on button. As he had expected, nothing but static came out of the earpiece.
“This is strange.” Yakov’s voice floated through the room.
Turcotte walked over to where the Russian was prying open the top on a crate. “What do you have?”
“Files reference the Ark.” Yakov pulled a folder out of the crate and opened it. He quickly read the opening page. “An after-action report from an SS reconnaissance.”
“Where?”
“Turkey.” Yakov’s lips were moving as he read. “In 1942.” He turned a page and held out a photo. “Aerial recon.”
Turcotte took the black-and-white picture. It showed a snow-covered mountainside. “What am I looking at?”
“Mount Ararat.”
“Ararat.” Turcotte made the connection. “Noah’s Ark?” He shook his head. “Wrong ark.”
“W
hen you are not certain what you are looking for,” Yakov said, “you cannot afford to ignore anything.” He was looking at the photo. He tapped the corner with a thick finger. “What is that?”
A long object was embedded in the ice. Turcotte had some experience with overhead imagery, but the quality of this photography was poor. “Probably a spur of rock.”
“Or Noah’s Ark?” Yakov asked.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Turcotte asked, even as he threw the folder into Pasha’s satchel. “Let’s keep looking. We’ve got to find the Spear.”
CHAPTER 23
Nellis Air Force Base
D - 3 Hours
The hours just before dawn were von Seeckt’s favorite. He would lie in his bed, looking out the window at the desert, the darker mass of the mountains in the distance. Above the mountains were the stars, and he often thought about seeing those same stars as a child in the mountains of southern Germany. Sometimes he even thought he could see the mothership pass by overhead; the newscasts said one could occasionally see it with the naked eye when the tumbling ship reflected light.
He remembered the first time he saw the mothership, nestled in its crater inside the cavern now known as Hangar One at Area 51. World War II raged around the planet, but all he could do was stare at the long black, cigar-shaped alien craft and feel the impact of how puny man was, how insignificant in the true scale of the universe.
He was not surprised when the door to his room silently swung open, letting in light from the hallway. The door closed just as quickly, returning the room to its original dimness.
A dark figure moved across the tile floor and stood at the side of the bed, looking down on the old man.
“Do it quickly,” von Seeckt said.
The figure didn’t move. “What have you told them?”
“I have done as instructed. I told them nothing they didn’t already know or wouldn’t have found out soon. Just enough to get them going in the right directions. They have people looking in Moscow and at the Giza Plateau. They look for things we have searched for. Maybe they will have better luck.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” the figure said. “It is all about power and knowledge, and ours is growing.”
“If we were so brilliant, why did it come to this?” Von Seeckt looked out at the desert. “Spare me the speech.”
“Have they found the Spear of Destiny?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about the key we seek?”
“I don’t know.” A hint of a smile played across the old man’s lips. “You ask me many questions after boasting how your knowledge was growing.”
“I don’t have time for games. The Ark of the Covenant?”
“They seek that at Giza as many have sought it there in the past. There is no reason to believe they will have any more success.”
“I think you are wrong there.” The figure pulled out a small device, which it hurriedly whispered into, then returned to its resting place. “What else have they found?”
Von Seeckt was still looking out the window, but he waved a hand to take in his room. “Does it look like I’m in the information loop from the Cube?”
“Then you are no longer needed.”
“You had already decided that before you came in,” von Seeckt said.
“True—” The word reached von Seeckt’s ear at the same time as the black blade made of alien metal punched through the skull into the brain, killing him instantly.
Moscow
D - 2 Hours, 50 Minutes
They had been slowly descending in what Tolya suspected was a large spiral for quite a while now. He had no idea how deep they were, but he suspected that if a nuke did hit Moscow, they would not be immediately killed. They were circling the object, so he felt reasonably certain this would lead them to the target.
“Sir!” The commando backed up from the steel door he had just opened, his finger on the trigger.
Tolya edged around the man to see what had caused his reaction. It was the first door they had encountered in quite a while. It had taken two men to unscrew the latch that held it shut. Tolya doubted that Katyenka or those who had been with her were on the other side, but he saw no need to pass it by.
Tolya shone his light into the opening. A large chamber was revealed, the end of which was blocked by the numerous objects poking up from the floor. Tolya’s brain had to process what he was seeing for a few seconds before it accepted the reality—hundreds of mummified bodies impaled on stakes set into the floor.
Like a moth drawn to light, Tolya slowly walked into the chamber. Not only directly ahead, but left and right, the bodies stood like a forest of the dead. Tolya had served in the GRU and had been in Siberia, seen the secret gulags and the horrors perpetrated there, but even that didn’t compare to this.
His gaze came closer, able to make out details, and he saw a heavy wooden chair bolted to the floor. Leather straps were looped over the arms and legs. Tolya realized that someone had bolted people into that chair, left them there to stare at the dead. His gaze went up. Rails lined the ceiling, with chains dangling here and there. He realized that was the way each body had been conveyed to position over a stake and then lowered.
Tolya could sense the men behind him, peering in from the doorway. He knew he should give some orders, get moving back down the corridor, but he was unable to stir. He tried to see a far wall in any direction, but all that was visible were bodies. There could be thousands here. He looked at the closest one. The face was brown, stretched, mummified, tight against the bone underneath. The naked body was just as shriveled. Tolya could detect no sign of violence other than the wood stake the body was impaled on—more than enough to cause a slow, agonizing death that Tolya was loath to imagine too closely.
Then he noticed something else in the room: a large wooden cart with a metal device on it. He finally stirred, taking a few steps closer to the apparatus. There were large glass bottles on the lower level of the cart. Thin rubber hoses led from the bottles to the metal device on the top. Other hoses came out of the top of the device, with large-gauge needles on the end. There was writing in German on both the bottles and the metal device. A swastika was emblazoned on the side of the cart.
Tolya stared at it for almost a minute before he connected the setup with the state of the bodies and realized what the device was designed to do. Draw blood.
The bodies had been drained to just before the point of death, before being lowered and impaled.
Why was so much blood needed? The question reverberated in Tolya’s mind, and he took an involuntary step backward. He shook his head, turned on his heel, and marched to the door, shoving the commandos out of the way. He pulled it shut behind him. “We continue.”
Eyes looked back at him blankly. Tolya raised his voice. He jabbed the muzzle of his sub down the tunnel. “We continue!”
Airborne
D - 2 Hours, 25 Minutes
“Wild.” Sergeant Boltz was looking down between his feet at the surface of the Black Sea twenty-five feet below.
The bouncer was motionless after a rapid flight across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean, then across the middle of Turkey to their current position. The interior was packed with not only the twelve men of the A-team but their weapons, equipment, and ammunition.
Strapped tight against the side of the bouncer was the black coffin that had been recovered from Ngorongoro Crater. And carefully packaged inside the coffin was the atomic bomb that Quinn had procured for them at Turcotte’s request.
“All right.” Captain Billam was leaning over a large plastic case that contained demolitions. He spread out two map sheets. “Let’s pay attention.” The men gathered around, the inner circle kneeling, the outer peering over their shoulders.
“Let’s work some contingencies for going into Moscow and Cairo.”
Qian-Ling, China
D - 2 Hours, 25 Minutes
Elek had disappeared inside of Chi
Yu, the beast of Chinese legend, crawling through a panel just under the tail. Che Lu and Lo Fa were left standing outside, marveling at the detailed dragon the metal had been formed into.
Both were startled as the dragon lifted off the floor of the cavern several feet, hovering silently in the air. Che Lu could well imagine the fear such a beast would inspire among the peasants of ancient times.
The neck twisted, the dragon head going to and fro. Then the body slowly turned clockwise in a complete circle before the robot settled down on the floor once more.
The panel opened, and Elek exited.
“What good does that do if we are stuck in here?” Lo Fa demanded.
Elek looked down at the old Chinese man. “When the time comes, we will not be stuck in here.”
Moscow
D - 2 Hours, 25 Minutes
The tunnel finally ended. A steel door blocked the way ahead, and Tolya held up his fist, stopping the small group of commandos with him. They had slowly spiraled down for so long that he estimated they were over a mile below the city of Moscow. Whatever was behind that door had to be very important, of that he had no doubt. And the one he tracked was behind that door, the direction finder assured him.
Cairo, Egypt
D - 2 Hours, 15 Minutes
Hassar was startled out of a fitful sleep as the door to his bedroom was kicked open. He sat up, then froze as two small red dots centered on his chest. He could see the two men holding the submachine guns flanking a third shadow, a tall figure dressed in a black robe. That figure scared him much more than the men with the guns.
“I have done as instructed, Al-Iblis!” Hassar held his hands up in supplication, giving the figure a name that was whispered about throughout the Arab world. “I have not allowed them a permit.”
“It is far past permits now,” Al-Iblis said. His voice was low and barely above a whisper, yet it hissed as if a snake were speaking. “Why did you not tell me they had the key?”
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