“And the Airlia on Mars? The ones left behind there who control the guardian at Cydonia? Do they give their allegiance to you?” Duncan asked.
“Left behind?” Aspasia’s Shadow smiled once more without humor. “They know nothing of what it means to be left behind, almost powerless, for thousands of years. They slept while I struggled and fought here and died again and again only to be constantly reborn. Now they have no choice but to obey me.”
“There is always a choice,” Duncan argued.
“Free will?” Aspasia’s Shadow shook his head, indicating what he thought of that concept. “You are very ignorant and naive and know nothing of what you speak. You talking about free will is rather ironic if you are what I think you are.”
“What do you mean?”
Aspasia’s Shadow shook his head. “You will either discover what you are looking for or you won’t; it is not my concern. There are larger issues than the things you think you are concerned with.”
That made no sense to Duncan, and she wondered if he was trying to confuse her. “How did this all start?” she asked.
“How it started isn’t important,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “The end is all that counts. And that is coming very soon.”
“Why did the Airlia come here?”
“That is not important.”
“Why are you here? Why is the Grail so important?”
“You have no idea what you have,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “If you—”
“I know more than you think,” Duncan cut him off, tired of his threats and his declarations of her ignorance.
“You are not who you’ve pretended to be,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “I should have known of you, the one who uncovered Area 51, who stopped Majestic-12. Your Captain Turcotte killed Aspasia and stopped the fleet, but you were the one who started it all, who put Turcotte in place to do those things. Does he know he is being used? Does he know who you really are? Do you know who you really are?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There have been others like you before, those who upset the delicate balance and caused great grief and death. You’ve hidden well, Doctor Duncan, but you cannot hide anymore.”
“You babble,” Duncan said. “You are old and need to be put down like a mad dog.”
A cruel smile curled Aspasia’s Shadow’s thin lips. “You try to bait me. Very good. But I have lived a long time and met enemies much greater than you and defeated them all. I am still here and they have long ago turned to dust.”
Duncan crossed her arms on top of the essen. “So you think. But I’m where you want to be. Did you talk to those old enemies like you talk to me? Did they hold what you want?”
“But will it do you any good?” Aspasia’s Shadow asked. His eyes went up and down her, noting the garments. “Do you have everything you need?” Once more he didn’t wait for an answer. “When you find you don’t, we will talk again.”
Aspasia’s Shadow turned and disappeared into the tunnel that led out of the Ark chamber. Duncan went back inside the veil and looked at the Grail. Once more she put her hand over one end. It opened and the empty depression appeared. She knew that was what Aspasia’s Shadow had meant when he’d asked her if she had all she needed. The stones were needed for the Grail to work and the alien creature had known it. Did he have them? And if he did, how could she get them from him? Or were they hidden as so many other Airlia artifacts had been?
The chamber around her seemed smaller than before, the weight of the plateau above a palpable presence. She was safe for the moment, but she now knew she was also powerless.
Duncan stood by the veil, the four bodies her only company. She looked up to the top of the chamber, but her mind went further, through the rock, to the surface, into the sky. She knew Mike Turcotte would come for her. The thought did not give her as much comfort as it had a few days ago. She turned back toward the Grail, troubled by the words of Aspasia’s Shadow.
There was something lurking at the edge of her subconscious trying to come forward, but she couldn’t draw it out. Her eyes rested on the Grail, sensing in it a key to unlock whatever it was that was hidden in her mind.
CHAPTER 3
Area 51, Nevada
Flat brown desert floor, broken abruptly by steep, rock-strewn mountains, made for uninviting terrain in the southern center of Nevada. A hundred and twenty miles northwest of Las Vegas, nestled between seven-thousand-foot mountain ranges, lay Groom Lake. It might have once held water, but now the flat lakebed contained a seven-mile-long concrete runway, the longest in the world. Many had thought that Area 51 had been located at Groom Lake because of the remote and desolate nature of the surrounding countryside—a good place to hide things the government didn’t want prying eyes to see.
Actually, the opposite was true. In the early days of World War II, military reconnaissance teams found hidden in a massive cavern under Groom Mountain something so startling and foreign to the planet that the government immediately knew it had to keep the discovery secret. The alien object was so immense—over a mile long and a quarter mile at its widest—that there was no way to move the alien mothership, at least until the drive system for it was figured out.
As more alien artifacts were discovered, the greatest being the nine bouncers, the installation at Groom Lake grew in size and secrecy. The site was labeled on the Nellis Air Base reservation map as Area 51. Until the uncovering of Majestic-12, the ruling body at Area 51 since its founding, the United States government never admitted the base even existed, even though photos of the surface facilities were posted on the Internet. But today, as Mike Turcotte could see out of the side of the bouncer, secrecy seemed to be the last thing on anyone’s mind.
News vans were parked all around the edge of the Groom Lake runway. It was a far cry from the days when even climbing one of the mountains surrounding the Area 51 complex could land a person in jail or much worse if they were picked up by Landscape, the inner security force of Majestic-12. Despite the presence of the media at the previously highly classified facility, Mike Turcotte felt that they were as far from the “truth” as they had ever been.
The bouncer floated down the side of Groom Mountain, the large hangar doors sliding open. As soon as it touched down, Turcotte was first out of the hatch, followed by Yakov, Che Lu, and the rest of the A-Team. Mualama’s sight had slowly returned to him during the flight, and he followed the old Chinese woman off.
As Turcotte appeared, reporters and cameramen flowed through the open doors, surrounding the bouncer. Sliding down the side of the bouncer, Turcotte was met with a thicket of microphone booms. He knifed his way through, trying to reach Major Quinn, who was standing behind the reporters clamoring for information about what was going on with the Airlia, the Guides, The Ones Who Wait, The Mission, the nuclear explosion in China, and Lisa Duncan’s location.
“Get these people out of here!” Turcotte yelled to Quinn.
The Major raised his hands and pointed at the two military police officers who were trying to control twenty times their number. “That’s all I have.” Turcotte spun about. Captain Billam was exiting the bouncer with his team behind him. Master Sergeant Boltz, the team sergeant wounded in Moscow, was being hauled out on a stretcher. Che Lu was almost hidden among the hulking team members.
“Clear this hangar,” Turcotte ordered Billam.
Seeing the hesitation in Billam’s face, Turcotte pulled his 9mm pistol from its holster. That gained him a couple of feet of space as the closest reporters and cameramen pressed back away from him.
Turcotte fired twice into the air, aiming out of the hangar toward the desert. A moment of silence descended on the crowd, followed by the curses of the media representatives, threatening lawsuits. Turcotte lowered the pistol and aimed it at the closest reporter. “You have thirty seconds to get out of this hangar.”
The reporter opened her mouth to say something, then noted the look in Turcotte’s eyes and how steady his hand was. She turned and pushed her way out of the circle. The ot
hers followed. As soon as the last one was out of the hangar, the large doors slid shut.
“What the hell is going on?” Turcotte demanded of Quinn. “Where is security?”
The major hardly looked like a warrior. Slight of build, with thinning blond hair and large glasses perched on his nose, Quinn was what Turcotte called a screen watcher—someone who sat on their ass all day and looked at computer screens. But he had been helpful in the fight against the aliens and their followers and had been an ally in the transition from Majestic-12’s secret rule at Area 51 to the present regime.
“That is our security.” Quinn indicated the two Air Police.
Turcotte had first been assigned to Area 51 to be part of the elite security force that protected its secrets. The facility had been secured by top-of-the-line personnel and equipment. Even after Majestic-12 was deposed, security had remained tight, guarding against actions by either group of Airlia minions. The goal was to prevent Area 51 from suffering the same fate as the Russian Section IV base that had been destroyed at Novaya Zemlya.
“What’s going on?” Turcotte asked.
“I had all my air police, except those two, and all my special security personnel from Landscape and Nightscape who passed the review panel, pulled on orders from the Pentagon this morning. I’ve been trying to get through to somebody—anybody—to get the orders rescinded, but there’s a lot of confusion in Washington. I’m getting a major runaround. No one knows what’s going on. I’ve backended some requests and will have more people here soon, but in the meanwhile, we have to make do with what we have.”
“I see the long arm of The Guides acting here,” Yakov said. He shrugged his large shoulders. “Or The Ones Who Wait. Both groups undoubtedly have your higher echelons of government and military thoroughly infiltrated and compromised. They want Area 51 vulnerable. They destroyed my country’s Area 51; yours is next.” The Russian had the bag over his shoulder containing what they had managed to pilfer out of the Russian Archives on their raid, minus, of course, the Spear of Destiny, which they suspected acted as a key to the lowest level of Qian-Ling.
“What about Doctor Duncan?” Quinn asked.
“Mualama knows where she is,” Turcotte said. He wanted the bouncer inside the secure hangar before they off-loaded the team member’s body. “Let’s seal this place.”
Quinn gave the necessary orders and the bouncer floated in, the large doors sliding shut behind it. Then Quinn gestured for them to follow him toward the large freight elevator that led to the Cube—command and control central.
“We’ve been looking at Burton’s manuscript. It’s in a language no one can recognize.”
“Hakkadian,” Mualama said. The African archaeologist had spent most of his life following the path of Sir Richard Francis Burton around the world, finding clues here and there that led him further in pursuit of a “lost” manuscript of Burton’s. Mualama had told them that it detailed all that Burton had learned of the aliens and their minions on the planet.
“What exactly is Hakkadian?” Turcotte asked.
“A distant forerunner of Arabic,” Mualama answered. “Last spoken in ancient Babylon. Burton was an extremely amazing man. He spoke twenty-nine languages fluently.”
“The only things we could read were the foreword and a letter put on top of the manuscript by his wife,” Quinn said. “Pretty amazing stuff.”
“Where exactly in Giza is Duncan?” Turcotte pressed.
“Directly under the Great Sphinx.” Mualama quickly told them of the Black Sphinx and the chamber hidden inside.
The doors to the elevator opened and they walked toward the Cube. They paused as a red light suddenly began flashing.
“What’s that?” Turcotte asked.
“Security sensor,” Quinn said. “One of you is bugged.”
Turcotte’s first instinct was to look to Che Lu. She had been under the control of The Ones Who Wait at Qian-Ling, although he wasn’t certain why they would want to bug her. It wasn’t as if the location of Area 51 was a great secret anymore.
“Go through one at a time, please,” Quinn said.
Turcotte went through first and there was no alarm. Che Lu was second, and again,, nothing. Mualama followed and still no red light. Turcotte stared hard at the Russian—after all they’d been through to have this happen—but again he had the same question as with Che Lu: why? And when could this have happened?
Yakov stepped through and the red light began flashing. Quinn picked up a small handheld detector and ran it over the Russian’s body. He paused when he was at the back of Yakov’s neck. “It’s there.”
“How?” Turcotte asked.
“Whatever it is,” Yakov said, “it was not there last time we came through here. So it must have been placed on me since then.”
“Katyenka,” Turcotte said. It was hard to forget someone who had tried to kill him. She had been a GRU operative, Yakov’s former lover, but actually working for The Ones Who Wait who had ambushed them in Moscow.
Yakov nodded. “Yes. She had opportunity and reason.” He took his heavy coat off.
Turcotte shook his head and tried to make light of it. “I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?”
“It makes sense. It is how those soldiers found us in the Archives,” Yakov said. He ran his fingers through the thick lining near the collar, then paused before pulling out a small black object about a quarter inch long. “Here it is. Nothing very exotic. Standard GRU issue. Range about three miles, but very intense so they could track us through the tunnels under Moscow.” He tossed it on the floor and smashed it with his boot. “Shall we continue?”
Turcotte paused, considering the Russian. It was indeed most likely the bug had been planted by Katyenka, but there had been much deception and betrayal since he’d arrived at Area 51 and he could not be certain. For a moment, Yakov’s arguments to leave Egypt and come back here took a slightly different angle.
“Are you coming?” Yakov and the others were waiting.
Turcotte shook himself out of his suspicions and followed as they headed to the Cube. The main room of the Cube measured eighty feet by a hundred. Banks of computer screens gave it a similar appearance to mission control at NASA, but Turcotte noticed that three quarters of the chairs in front of those screens were empty.
“More ordered cuts in personnel,” Quinn said, noting his look. “Someone’s really trying to hamstring us. Again, I’m trying to backdoor requests.”
Turcotte knew Quinn was an expert at manipulating government and military bureaucracy. With the proper passwords, the right communication channels, and experience, he could get just about anything eventually. It was something he had done while working for Majestic-12—a valuable asset that both Duncan and Turcotte had thought necessary to keep at Area 51.
Turcotte turned his attention to the front wall where a twenty-foot-wide-by-ten-high screen displayed a plethora of information. “What’s hot?” Turcotte asked, trying to make sense of the various displays. Quinn sat down in the chair that used to belong to the head of Majestic, or MJ-12 as some called it. It was on a raised dais in the back of the room and oversaw everything that went on. There was the quiet hum of machinery along with the constant slight hiss of filtered air being blown into the room. The entire complex rested on huge shocks and was hung from large springs, allowing it to sustain a nuclear surface blast. Turcotte had just prevented such an incident by bargaining with The Ones Who Wait, giving them the Spear of Destiny.
“The NSA is tracking that flying dragon thing that holds The Ones Who Wait who took the key from you in Mongolia,” Quinn said.
“That ‘dragon thing’ is called Chi Yu,” Che Lu said. “It is part of the lore of my land. When the yellow emperor Shi Huangdi ruled the northern part of China, Chi Yu ruled in the south. They fought and Shi Huangdi subdued the beast and took it prisoner.”
“Which in reality—” Turcotte began, but Che Lu cut him off.
“I believe that Shi Huangdi was Artad, o
ne of the alien leaders. And Chi Yu must be a machine fashioned by the other side—The Guides—to fight and terrify so many years ago. Shi Huangdi captured it during their battles and it must have been inside Qian-Ling.”
“Is this machine back at Qian-Ling now?” Yakov asked.
“Negative.” Quinn typed into the keyboard and then pointed at the main board. A map of eastern Africa appeared. “See the red dot? It stopped at Ngorongoro Crater briefly and is now heading northeast on a track that will take it to Qian-Ling. It’s assumed the Chinese will pick it up on radar and try to intercept. ETA at Chinese border in eighteen minutes.”
“Why did it go to Ngorongoro Crater?” Yakov wondered.
“I found the scepter key there,” Mualama said. “And history records Burton spent quite a bit of time in East Africa exploring.”
“It will be interesting to see how my government reacts to these events,” Che Lu said, which earned her a hard look from Turcotte. On the international scene, China had always been an enigma, and with the advent of the discovery of the Airlia the country had cut itself off completely. Because of all the betrayals Turcotte had seen recently, a small part of him had to wonder if it was just coincidence that Che Lu had opened up Qian-Ling just after the Airlia had been discovered. And then Mualama had uncovered the key right after that. And Yakov had been wearing a bug when he arrived here.
“If The Ones Who Wait bring Artad up from the lowest level,” Turcotte said, “it will be interesting to see how everyone in the world reacts. We still don’t know the truth about what happened among the Airlia.” He turned to Quinn. “What else?”
The major hit another command. The map changed to show the southeast Pacific. “The shield is still protecting Easter Island. What remains of Task Force 78, with the addition of Task Force 79 and the aircraft carrier USS Stennis, has backed off to a range of three hundred kilometers north of the island. We’ve lost all contact with the submarine USS Springfield. It is assumed it has been taken inside the shield and is lost to us. Official policy now is to stand off and watch, which doesn’t please the Navy much.
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