Area 51: The Grail-5 (18 page)

"And the ring which helps find these doors and open them?" Graves asked.

Turcotte reached into his pocket and pulled out the Watcher key.

"And exfiltration?" Graves asked.

Turcotte had been expecting that. It was something every special-ops man asked when given an assignment, and something that was rarely given in the mission briefing as higher commands always were much more concerned about getting the men in, then getting them out.

"Helicopters from the peacekeeping force," Turcotte 150

said. "They can come in from South Camp and retrieve us. But we have to be in the river, ready to be picked up an hour before dawn. If we're later than that, forget about getting out by chopper, and it's a long walk." "Roger that," Graves said.

"And Easter Island?" Yakov asked. "Qian-Ling? What is going on there?"

"Let's go down to the conference room for that," Turcotte suggested. He slapped Graves on the shoulder. "Keep planning and get my suit ready to be rigged." He pulled one of the large-scale images of the Giza Plateau off the board. "Yes, sir."

Turcotte, Yakov, and Quinn headed for the elevator. "Uh, sir—" Quinn paused.

"Yes?"

"There's some interesting material in the folders you took from the Russian Archives." "Such as?"

Quinn opened a folder. "The file which held the photo of Mount Ararat... was the search for Noah's Ark. Hitler sent teams around the world looking for the place it supposedly came to rest. Naturally, Mount Ararat was one of those places." "Did they find it?" "It doesn't appear so."

"Why would they be looking for Noah's Ark?" Turcotte asked.

"Perhaps it is something else," Yakov said, "as all other legends have turned out to be."

"What else do you have?" Turcotte was studying the Nile imagery, committing it to memory. Quinn closed the folder. He had one more that he hadn't opened yet. Quinn hesitated, fingers running along the edge of the manila folder.

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"Well?" Turcotte pressed as they reached the elevator.

"I was checking CIA case files on the Watchers, seeing if I could find another ring. When I pulled what they have now, it was cross-referenced with some other files, um—" He paused.

"What other files?" Turcotte checked his watch.

"It's just a list," Quinn said, "of people the CIA thought needed watching; targeting people who they suspect had some sort of connection with The Watchers or The Mission or The Ones That Wait. You have to understand that they did this in a rush after the revelations of what was here."

"And?" Turcotte was surprised at Quinn's sudden reticence. The elevator doors opened and they got in.

"Doctor Duncan's name is on it."

"For suspicion of what?" Turcotte snapped.

"Just as requiring further investigation," Quinn said.

"Why?"

"I don't know." Turcotte took a step toward the smaller major.

Yakov put out an arm across Turcotte's chest. "Easy."

"It's bull," Turcotte said. "Clowns In Action—I worked with them before and they couldn't—" He caught himself. "We've got more important things to do."

As he walked out of the elevator toward the conference room, Quinn gave Yakov a questioning glance. The Russian merely shrugged his large shoulders.

EASTER ISLAND

Popeye McGraw stared down at the Easter Island International Airport as Olivetti recorded the scene on a digital recorder.

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"Damn," Popeye said.

The fact that Olivetti said nothing in response indicated the depth the effect of the scene below had on the larger SEAL.

A strange collection of people and equipment were all over the airfield and the surrounding area. Six-legged machines stalked about on their tasks, while people moved around as if in a stupor. Various aircraft from the Washington lined the runway in different stages of either assembly or disassembly, it was hard to tell.

"They ain't normal, those people," Olivetti muttered.

Popeye raked the area with the binoculars, checking everything. There were several clusters of people staked out next to the runway, heads all pointing inward as mechanical robots walked by, spraying something over them.

He could see the entrance to the tunnel that led to the guardian computer chamber. A squad of marines with M-16s stood there. Popeye twisted the focus.

The men had blank expressions, but their hands held the weapons tightly.

Popeye had often boasted in bars that a Navy SEAL could kick butt on a dozen marines. But that was in a bar. Automatic weapons were a great equalizer.

"What the hell is going on?" Popeye muttered. During the mission briefing, they'd read the report about the people who had come to Easter Island on the Progressive trawler who had been taken over by some sort of black cloud.

Popeye pulled the glasses away from his eyes and rubbed a hand across his forehead, smearing the camouflage paint.

Olivetti waited patiently.

"The crater," Popeye said.

Olivetti didn't even nod, but hoisted his pack

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containing various gear and his tanks onto his back. They turned away from the airfield and headed farther up the slope of Rapa Karu.

Kelly Reynolds twitched. Consciousness seeped into her brain. She had no idea how long she had been out. For just the slightest of moments she was home in Nashville, snug in her bed, buried under a down comforter.

That image was ripped asunder as the flow of data through the guardian cascaded over her. She knew where she was, she just didn't know what she was anymore. How long had she been here?

She paused her racing mind. What had woken her? The torrent of data was a river pouring past her, and it was like trying to find a slight disturbance in the flow.

She began searching.

Popeye McGraw and Olivetti went over the lip of the crater, their wet suits soaked with sweat, but their breathing almost normal. They'd done things in training that made the climb look like a weekend jaunt. Two hundred feet below, the surface of the lake filling the crater was totally smooth. They didn't even pause, but began clambering down.

Within a couple of minutes they reached the water. Packs were dropped and cached under some rocks, tanks were put back on, and they slid into the water.

Working off the information they had been given in their mission preparation, they searched for the tunnel entrance at the bottom and found it relatively quickly.

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They swam into it, navigating by feel through the darkness. Both men had been in dark water before, and they moved forward without fear.

Kelly Reynolds saw what the guardian had noted. A woman, one of the ones brought by the Southern Star, among the third wave infected by the nano-virus, had caught a glimpse of a light reflecting off glass high on the flanks of Rapa Karu. The woman, a former nurse from Australia, of course, had no idea of the import of what she had seen. She's simply continued on her task of dragging food supplies for other humans from the UNAOC supply depot.

But the guardian, capable of two billion calculations per second, had reacted differently. Within three seconds, the event had worked its way through various layers to the forefront of the computer's attention. None of the nanovirus slaves were on the slope. Neither were the mech-robots.

The conclusion—an unknown variable.

The guardian didn't know what it was, so Kelly didn't either. But the guardian began reacting.

The two SEALs headed toward a small dot of light. It grew brighter as they approached, and in a minute they surfaced inside a cavern. The light came from a glowing orb on the ceiling. They swam over to a lip of rock on one side and got out of the water. A tunnel was cut into the wall in front of them. They secured their weapons and headed into it. The ground sloped up slightly, then 155

turned to the right. It was lit by thin strips of glowing material set into the ceiling.

They entered a cave, about a hundred meters wide and long. The walls were of rock, except for the far one, made of black metal with control panels built into it. Their eyes were focused on what was in the forefront. The body of a woman was splayed against a twenty-foot-high golden pyramid. Near it, a hole was cut in the floor of the cavern into and out of which a steady streamof small robots flowed.

Slung over Olivetti's shoulder was a satchel containing explosives. He'd already prewired several different charges, and already mentally calculating what he would need to destroy this chamber and the pyramid.

Both men started, swinging the muzzles of their weapons about as something moved to their right. A young boy dressed in brown walked out of the shadows.

Kelly Reynolds saw the two SEALs through the guardian. She fought to open her eyes, to be able to control her lungs and mouth. To shout a warning.

"Are you all right?" Popeye McGraw asked the boy.

There was no answer as the boy came forward, now less than twenty feet away.

He was pale and thin, a ghostly stick figure in the chamber's glow.

"How did you get here?" Popeye asked, his finger still over the trigger, eyes shifting from the boy, to the pyramid/woman, to the unceasing line of robots.

"My parents," the boy said in a cracked voice.

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"Please help me." He held up his hands as he continued to walk toward them.

"Where are your parents?" Popeye asked.

"The machine," the boy whispered as if the pyramid could hear. He reached out a hand and Olivetti instinctively lowered his weapon and reached forward with his left hand to the boy.

Flesh met flesh and Olivetti cursed, trying to jerk his hand back from the sharp burning sensation searing his palm. But the boy's hand was like a vise as the nanovirus tore through the child's flesh and bore in the SEAL'S palm, infiltrating his veins, racing for the brain.

"Get him off me!" Olivetti had let go of his weapon and was trying to peel the boy's hand off with his free hand.

Popeye had the boy in his sights, his finger on the trigger.

"Get him off!" Olivetti spun about, the boy airborne but still keeping the grip.

The flesh in Olivetti's arm crawled as the nanovirus swarmed up it, underneath the skin. The boy let go and turned toward Popeye, dead eyes reflected in the glow of the orb.

McGraw pulled the trigger, the rounds smashing the boy onto the floor. Along with the blood, a black stain poured out of the wound and headed across the floor toward McGraw—the nanovirus seeking a new host. Olivetti dropped to his knees, hands pressed against his temples.

"Run!" The voice was barely audible.

McGraw turned, surprised. It came again—from the woman on the pyramid.

"Run!"

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Popeye turned and dashed back down the corridor he had come in.

QIAN-UNG

The huge doors were wide open, but the light from the chamber could not penetrate the blackness behind the doors. It was not solid, but rather as if the air itself had lost all ability to allow light to travel through it. A straight'wall of darkness.

"What is this?" Gergor asked.

Lexina was puzzled. "I don't know."

Gergor stepped forward and reached out with his hand toward the darkness.

"Don't do that!" Lexina ordered, but Gergor ignored her. His fingertips touched and he turned to look at her. "It's not solid. It's warm. There's—" A look of surprise passed over his face, which quickly changed to one of terror as the black around his arm turned bright red, spread down the arm, and enveloped him in less than a second. He screamed as skin disintegrated. .

Within another two seconds there was nothing left of Gergor but his clothes in a small pile just in front of the once more smooth black wall.

Carefully Lexina knelt and felt the cloth, searching. She found Gergor's ka.

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Equipment check was an integral part of any special forces isolation, and in this instance, it was essential due to the radical nature of the equipment being used. Turcotte and the members of Graves's team were in the isolation area. Turcotte was toweling off, having just finished his fitting for his TASC-suit.

The suits were in the back of the isolation area getting last-minute updates from the Space Command techs. Each was black, the external material a ceramic polymer that provided protection against small arms up to 7.62 mm. Under the armor, the suit was complex. Battery-powered strips of IPMCs—ionic polymer metal composites—added power, magnifying the wearer's own strength.

The inner layer was airtight, fitting against the wearer's clothing and skin. The suit was designed to be used in space. A backpack contained both the computer that operated the various systems and a sophisticated re-breather that could sustain oxygen for over twelve hours. If operating in a safe environment, a valve in the back of the helmet could be opened to allow outside air in.

The helmet was the most advanced part. It was solid, with no visor to the outside world. Flat screens on the inner front portrayed whatever the wearer directed. Numerous mini-cams were on the external armor, from the two where the eyes would be pointing forward to give a

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normal front view with depth, to ones pointing straight up, down, and back.

They were necessary because the helmet fit onto the body of the suit tightly, allowing no movement.

While Turcotte had his doubts about where some of the technology used in the TASC-suit came from, the Space Command people claimed the helmet and control system came out of two Air Force programs. DVI—Direct Voice Input—allowed the wearer to give commands verbally to the computer. This considerably streamlined any process and made use of the suit much easier. The second program was VCASS—visually coupled airborne systems simulator. The helmet screens not only relayed the picture from whichever external cameras were voice-activated, but could also relay information from the computer such as its occupant's location when in contact with ground positioning satellites.

"Scary, isn't it?" Graves asked.

The immersion in the black tank, then having foam pumped all around his body to get a mold, had been unnerving. The worst part was being unable to move for the period of time it took them to confirm the sizing.