Excalibur

CHAPTER 4: THE PRESENT

Turcotte opened the door to the med lab and jerked his thumb toward the hallway. “Leave,” he ordered the doctor.

“I don’t think you have the—”

Turcotte had his 9mm pistol out of the holster and pointed at the man in the white coat before he could finish the sentence.

“Leave,” Turcotte repeated, pulling the hammer back with his thumb as punctuation.

The doctor scuttled out of the room, the door swinging shut behind him.

Turcotte threw the file folder he’d been given by Major Quinn onto the examining table on which Lisa Duncan was sitting. “Read.”

She picked up the folder and opened it. She had barely begun to peruse it when she started shaking her head.

“What?” Turcotte demanded.

“This can’t be right.”

“Why would someone make it up?” Turcotte asked.

She looked at him. “Why have you been checking on me?” “I haven’t. Quinn has. And apparently he was right to.”

Duncan frowned. “But this”—she shook the folder—“isn’t correct. I am who I am.”

“When was the last time you saw your son?” Turcotte asked. The frown deepened as she tried to remember.

Turcotte didn’t give her much time to think. “Was it before you ordered me to go to Area 51? Before all this started?”

She slowly nodded. “Yes. We’ve been so busy since the discovery that—”

“You had time to see him if you had made the time,” Turcotte said. “When we were together at your house in the Rockies. I should have known something was strange. I was there but he wasn’t. You told me he was with his father, your ex- husband. But there is no father — and no son.”

Duncan’s pale face flushed red with anger. “I have a son.” “No, you don’t.”

“That can’t—”

Turcotte cut her off. “Why did you order me to go to Area 51?”

“There were reports of irregularities at Area 51,” Duncan said. “My son—” she began, but he cut her off once more.

“Quinn hasn’t found any of those reports. And he was part of Majestic’s support team. He knows how tight security was. And he knows there were no leaks.” Turcotte reached over and took the file from her hands. “And you were appointed as scientific adviser via paperwork — no one ever interviewed you. Hell, your entire background is a fraud. No one cared who the hell the national science adviser was. No one checked. In fact, it appears that someone used Majestic’s clearance to get you the slot, yet Quinn has found no record of Majestic doing that. What better way to get someone after Majestic than by using their own security clearance?”

“No.” Duncan was shaking her head. “No. I—” She fell silent, overwhelmed.

“Who are you?” Turcotte asked. The strain of the past several weeks, of combat, of seeing men die, of winning battles against the aliens and their minions but always seeming to be behind in the war, was too much for him. He stepped up next to the table, his face close to Duncan’s, his voice rising. “Who are you? Why have you done all this?” His hands were on her shoulders, shaking her. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t!”

Turcotte blinked, let go of her, and stepped back. Tears were streaming down Duncan’s face. He went backward until his legs hit a chair and he collapsed into it. He put his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees. His body began shaking. Abruptly he stood, sending the chair flying. He grabbed the door and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Yakov, Che Lu, and Mualama were in the hallway. The Russian stepped in front of him. “My friend—”

“I am not your friend,” Turcotte snapped. He poked a finger in the Russian’s chest when the man refused to move. “Your ‘friend’ Katyenka betrayed us in Moscow. You came back here with a bug on you. You shot her—” He jerked a thumb at the door behind him. “What do you know that you haven’t told me?” He spun toward Che Lu. “And you? Why did you suddenly decide to go into Qian-Ling? Convenient timing there. Right after Majestic was compromised.” Then he turned on Mualama. “And following Burton? Lying to us about being a Watcher. Telling us about his manuscript in bits and pieces and only the parts you want to.” He shoved Yakov out of the way. “I’m done with all of you.”

Turcotte made a beeline for the outer door and walked into the bright Nevada sunshine. He blinked, his eyes smarting. At first he thought it was the light, but when he put his sunglasses on they still hurt. He realized he was crying. Turcotte walked away from Area 51 toward the desert.

The Silk Road was the first connection between East and West in the ancient world. It stretched over four thousand miles from Xian in the northwest of China, across the north China Plain, through the Pamirs and the Karakoram Range to the walled city of Samarkand, across the great desert to Damascus and on to the Mediterranean ports of Alexandria and Antioch. From there ships could sail on to Greece and Rome and traders could travel the land routes inside those kingdoms.

It was the route that Marco Polo traveled for three years to become the first Westerner to see the Inner Kingdom of China, but that was long after the road had been established. The Silk Road was also the path that the Black Death had taken in the opposite direction hundreds of years later in the fourteenth century. Historians had traced the deadly track of the bubonic plague from China, along the Silk Road, to Mediterranean ports and on to the rest of Europe. In five years it killed over twenty-five million people, reducing the human population of the planet by one-third. Percentagewise it was the most devastating event ever to strike mankind, far eclipsing the devastation of the world wars centuries later.

And it had started right there in Qian-Ling — an attempt by Artad’s followers to strike at the Mission’s growing power in Europe and the Middle East and level the playing field. And the Mission had just recently tried the same thing in South America in an attempt to wipe out mankind and pave the way for Aspasia’s arrival from Mars — an attempt that was stopped at the last minute by Mike Turcotte.

When China was young, the balance of power was in the West, and Xian was the capital city. The first true ruler of China, the Yellow Emperor Shi Huangdi, held sway there during his reign. In reality, Shi Huangdi had been a Shadow of Artad. According to legend, when he died, he was buried in a massive tomb, larger than even the Great Pyramid of Giza. This tomb was called Qian-Ling. A man-made mountain, over three thousand feet high, Qian-Ling, like Area 51 and the Great Pyramid, was more than it appeared to be. In reality the Shadow had simply returned to the place where he had been “born,” and his memories absorbed.

Deep inside was an Airlia base, complete with a guardian computer. It was also the site where Artad, leader of one side of the Airlia, had gone into hibernation along with his followers. The outside of the mountain was now blackened soil, the foliage stripped bare by the Chinese government’s detonation of a nuclear weapon in a vain attempt to destroy the alien base. However, the same type of shield wall that protected Easter Island had limited the effect of the blast to the charring of the surface around the shield.

Inside the alien base, Lexina, the leader of the Ones Who Wait, had managed to gain entry to the lowest level of Qian-Ling and resurrect Artad and his followers. Now they were ignored as Artad accessed the guardian, assessing the situation in the outside world.

Artad was Airlia, standing almost seven feet tall and looking almost exactly like the Horus statue that had once guarded the entrance between the paws of the Great Sphinx. Red hair, red elongated eyes, six fingers, disproportional body — all indicated his alien heritage.

Artad rapidly processed information concerning the ten thousand years since he had gone into deep sleep, until he was current on the present situation: Aspasia’s Shadow was moving, using the power of the humans. He cloaked his forces with a shield that rendered them practically impervious to the weapons of the humans. Infecting those humans his forces contacted with a nanovirus to control them.

Artad did a search of the guardian’s database and frowned when he didn’t get the answer he was looking for. He stepped away from the guardian and went out of the chamber. His Kortad, Airlia who had come to Earth with him so long ago, were lined up, awaiting his orders.

“Excalibur?” he asked Ts’ang Chieh, the human court adviser from the days when his Shadow ruled as the Emperor Shi Huangdi, commander of all the known world. While he had been working the guardian, Ts’ang Chieh had been outside the chamber questioning Lexina.

“The key to the Master Guardian?” “Yes.”

“The humans — the Watchers, or those who had been Watchers — hid it long ago. So long ago that it is only a myth now.”

A strange look crossed Artad’s face, what in a human might have been considered a smile. “Foolish.” He crossed the chamber to a control panel. He waved his hands over it and a series of hexagons were backlit with runes written on them. Artad tapped out a code on the hexagons.

Near the top of the highest point on the planet three dead bodies lay on a narrow ledge in front of a frozen chamber that was little more than a four-foot- deep indentation at the top of an almost sheer cliff face. They were suddenly bathed in a red light as the sheath in which Excalibur’s blade was encased powered up. The glow was refracted by the ice around the crystal and pulsed out into the atmosphere.

A red hexagon in the upper right-hand corner of the panel came alive. Artad nodded ever so slightly, then tapped in a new code. The wall in front of him shimmered and went white. A circular image appeared, coming into focus until it was obvious it was the planet as if seen from space. Artad tapped the red hexagon and the planet quickly rotated, then froze in position with a red flashing dot on the surface. He tapped the red hexagon again and the image grew larger. The location was on the border between Nepal and Tibet, in the midst of the Himalayas.

Artad nodded — it made sense they would hide it there. While Excalibur was in the sheath no mechanical transportation could come within several miles of it, a safeguard built into the system so that he — or anyone else — couldn’t send a craft to swoop in and pick it up. The Watchers had placed it in the most inaccessible location on the face of the planet. There was only one way to retrieve the key. Artad turned to Ts’ang Chieh. “Where are the Ones Who Wait?”

“They are outside, my lord.”

“Bring them in.”

Lexina led her companions Elek and Coridan into the guardian chamber, bowing low, fearing to look up and meet the red eyes of the one they had waited to serve for millennia.

“Is there a way to communicate with those who now rule this land?” Artad asked. Lexina nodded, still keeping her head down. “Yes, my lord. We have radios. And their forces surround this area.”

“Good. I have a message I wish to send them.” His red eyes looked over the three Airlia-Human clones. “And I have a mission for you. Look up.”

They raised their heads. Artad pointed at the screen. “That is where you must go.” He reached to his side and drew out a sword. “And something like this is what you must recover. It is most important. I will prepare you as well as I can.”

Aspasia’s Shadow’s right arm ended abruptly at the wrist. Raw flesh and white bone marked where Turcotte’s shot had ripped the hand off. A tourniquet was tied around the middle of the forearm, cutting deep into the skin, but it had stopped the bleeding. His skin, pale to begin with, was ghostly white.

The bouncer he was aboard had just descended through the lake in the center of Rano Kao crater on Easter Island. The bouncer was a gold-colored disk about thirty feet in diameter. It moved through a tunnel at the bottom of the lake as easily as it passed through the air.

A half minute later it surfaced in a pool in a large cavern, went up into the air, and settled down on the dry rock, which made up the other half of the area. A half dozen US Marines awaited Aspasia’s Shadow. Their eyes were glazed over, as they were controlled by the guardian computer via a nanovirus coursing through their brains and blood. The nanovirus could send electrical impulses through the infected persons’ brains, controlling their actions, essentially making them part of the Easter Island guardian network. The chilling thing about persons infected by the nanovirus was that while it controlled and directed their nervous systems, a part of their minds was aware of this and unable to change it.

Three of the Marines, part of Task Force Seventy-nine, which had been captured by Aspasia’s Shadow’s forces, climbed onto the bouncer and opened the hatch. While two of them grabbed Aspasia’s Shadow and helped him out, the third picked up the Grail, which was covered by a thick white wrap.

Aspasia’s Shadow staggered as his feet touched the ground and the Marines held him up. He had lost more blood than he’d thought. The Marines helped him into a tunnel lit by lines in the ceiling. The tunnel sloped upward, then leveled and turned to the right. Aspasia’s Shadow and his escorts entered a cave. In the very center was a twenty-foot-high glowing, golden pyramid — the Easter Island guardian.

Aspasia’s Shadow frowned as he noted that plastered on one side of the pyramid was a shriveled mummy with various metal leads connecting the guardian to the body. Aspasia’s Shadow forgot about the figure as a Marine placed the shroud- covered Grail on a table to the right of the pyramid.

In his many reincarnations, Aspasia’s Shadow had known much pain. It felt as if his missing right hand were still attached but on fire. He forced himself to ignore the feeling and went to the Grail. He removed the shroud, revealing an hourglass-shaped golden object. The end that was up appeared solid.

Aspasia’s Shadow pulled a small wooden box from a deep pocket inside his cloak and opened it. Two stones were set inside — the thummin and urim of biblical note. They glowed as if from an inner fire. With difficulty, Aspasia’s Shadow took one of the stones. He held it over the edge of the Grail. The flat end irised open, revealing a small depression inside, the same size as the stone.

Aspasia’s Shadow paused. He knew his forces were moving and that much was happening around the world. He forced himself to put the stone back in the wooden box for the moment and go to the guardian. He leaned against the side, placing his only hand flat against the metal. A golden glow encompassed him as he connected with the alien device.

Acting with just a few commands from him when he had been headquartered at the Mission underneath Mount Sinai, the guardian had done an excellent job of preparing and initiating his plans. He was updated on his fleet moving toward Pearl Harbor; on what was going on above him on the surface of the island; he grinned when he saw the unanswered messages from the stranded Airlia on Mars spooled up and waiting for him — they could rot for all he cared, in retribution for the millennia he had suffered and fought here on Earth while they slept; his Guides were growing in power all over the world — all was going quite well. Centuries of battling, of maneuvering from the shadows in the halls of power, of seeing kingdoms and countries crumble, had made him suspicious of good news. There was always a weak link, a blind spot where disaster could strike from. Artad? Qian-Ling was shielded, the guardian informed him. While that might be an automatic defense reaction by the Qian-Ling guardian, it was just as likely that his ancient enemy had awakened. He knew the Ones Who Wait had been searching for the Qian-Ling lower level key.

He had to assume Artad was finally awake, or at the very least another Shadow of him had been imprinted. And if he were Artad or his Shadow? Aspasia’s Shadow had learned early in his many incarnations to think like his enemy in order to outmaneuver his nemesis.

The Master Guardian. It was the tool Artad needed to destroy him and rule supreme on Earth. Aspasia’s Shadow accessed the truncated line that had once been the link between that guardian and the Master Guardian. Nothing, which meant the Master was still powered down. He knew what was needed to free it, so he accessed the search program for Excalibur, the sword that was much more than a sword.

In the course of their long war against the Swarm the Airlia had had ships captured and worlds overrun. In the course of that, guardian computers, including system masters, had been lost to the Swarm. Because of bitter experience, the Airlia had learned to safeguard their computer systems with devices like Excalibur. While it did several things, it was primarily a microtransmitter that was on all the time. What it transmitted was the authorization code for the Master Guardian, which allowed it to power up and link and control its subordinate guardian computers. But the transmitter only worked when the sword was removed from the specially designed sheath, which was made of a material that blocked the transmission. Having such a device in such a compact form allowed one person to control all of the guardian computers. There was a destruct built into Excalibur that could be triggered, wiping out the memories of all the guardians and shutting them down in an instant. The way to initiate the destruct was something only the Airlia commander who wielded Excalibur knew. That way was one thing that had not been passed to Aspasia’s Shadow when he was first given Aspasia’s memories.

He knew the Watchers had hidden Excalibur long ago. The damn Watchers — Aspasia’s Shadow had killed many members of the meddlesome human cult over the centuries. And there had been times when some of them had not simply watched but tried to search him out and kill him — a most foolish endeavor, as many had learned just before they died.

He had tried to gain Excalibur during his incarnation as Mordred, only to be joined in mutual defeat by Artad’s Shadow masquerading as Arthur. And Merlin the Watcher? What had he done with the sword?

The guardian accessed scanners built into the slope of the volcano above and even reached out to Mars and the base at Cydonia where the few surviving Airlia who had followed Aspasia huddled in their underground caves.

They had picked up a signal from Earth’s surface. Aspasia’s Shadow knew immediately what it meant — the homing device on Excalibur had been activated. Since he hadn’t done it, there was no doubt who had. Artad was awake. And also looking for the sword.

And the location? When he saw the spot, Aspasia’s Shadow cursed. Damn Merlin.

On the other side of the guardian, the withered body twitched, indicating there was life somewhere deep inside. The eyes were crusted shut, the muscles atrophied and consumed as the body tried to keep its core alive, the skin dried and leathery.

Deep inside the mind, the essence of Kelly Reynolds felt the contact of Aspasia’s Shadow and the guardian like an electric shock, bringing her out of her almost-coma. She’d been there for weeks, ever since trying to link to the guardian when the island was occupied by the United Nations. She’d wanted to discover the truth about the aliens, to learn the advanced knowledge she had believed could be gained from the computer. Instead she had become trapped by the guardian, her mind scoured by the alien computer for information and then forgotten about.

During the intervening time she had slowly managed to regain some control of her mind although her body remained melded to the golden pyramid like an insect to flypaper. She’d even managed to tap into the massive flow of data that poured through the guardian. She’d slipped in the command for the nanovirus to leave her body and even managed to get a message out to her friends at Area 51.

She’d also learned some things about the Airlia. She’d “seen” the destruction of Atlantis — Aspasia’s initial base on Earth — as a historical record inside the guardian. She’d “seen” one of the Airlia mothership float over the island and pulse down rays of golden power into the island, smashing it into the sea.

She’d also learned that the various guardians had once been linked together under a Master Guardian computer, allowing all the Airlia outposts on Earth, and even on Mars, to be coordinated and controlled. But during the civil war among the Airlia, the network had been shut down and the Master Guardian taken off-line.

As she sensed Aspasia’s Shadow “work” the Easter Island guardian she saw that her minor efforts, which had taken so much of her willpower to do, were just drops of water on an ocean compared to the power that Aspasia’s Shadow could exert as he became one with the guardian. She “saw” him absorbing data at a phenomenal speed. Kelly kept her psyche still, afraid to attract his attention. As quickly as information was going into Aspasia’s Shadow’s essence, orders were being issued by him.

Kelly tried to keep track of what he was doing but it was like watching Niagara Falls and trying to discern each drop of water going over the edge. Still she did glean a few things. And then she waited, crouching, hiding inside the computer, until Aspasia’s Shadow broke free and his essence was gone. She had an idea of his plans, but more importantly, she had an idea of his priorities. Then she began to work on the message she would try to send.

Aspasia’s Shadow felt more confident as he disconnected from the guardian and went back to the Grail. Things were progressing well and he had a good idea what Artad had planned. He had instructed the guardian to implement a strategy to counter Artad’s efforts to acquire Excalibur, and to recover the Master Guardian itself. The latter was something he had begun planning many years ago. Aspasia’s Shadow had many potential plans in place.

He retrieved the stone and held it over the end of the Grail. The flat surface opened. Aspasia’s Shadow slid his hand inside, placing the stone into the slight depression. He gasped as the opening irised shut against his wrist, trapping his hand.

A tingling sensation began to tickle the skin of the hand. The tingling grew stronger, becoming pain. His hand felt as if it were on fire, yet Aspasia’s Shadow remained perfectly still. Rivulets of sweat coursed down his pale skin. Then the pain began to move up his arm toward his shoulder and, strangely, Aspasia’s Shadow smiled.

All of Easter Island was enclosed in a hemispheric shield, impervious to most forms of attack. Inside the shield, on the surface of Easter Island, Aspasia’s Shadow’s orders only confirmed what had begun days ago. Thousands of humans went about the tasks the nanovirus inside of them directed them to do. At the same time, nanotechs went about their business.

Nanotechnology was a science that human scientists had just begun to explore while the guardian had perfected it. The concept was basic. All things are made from atoms. The properties of those things are determined by the way those atoms are arranged. If atoms could be rearranged at the molecular level then the possibilities of what could be constructed was limitless. Not only that, but the normal waste produced in most manufacturing processes would be eliminated.

The other thing the guardian had perfected with nanotechnology was self-replication. Its nanotechs could manufacture more of themselves, just as the nanovirus it had invented to control humans could replicate and spread, much like a regular virus. The Guides and the followers who had come to Easter Island, along with all the military personnel who had come into contact with the nanovirus, were now all under the thrall of the guardian.

Two men who had once been Navy SEALs, “Popeye” McGraw and Frank Olivetti, were summoned by the guardian. The two had recently infiltrated the island to try to discover what was happening, but they had been captured and infected with the nanovirus, absorbed into the forces on the island. Under the influence of the nanovirus they walked down the tunnel from the surface to the guardian chamber. Aspasia’s Shadow was lying on the floor to one side of the golden triangle, a smile on his face, eyes closed. The two ignored him and Kelly Reynolds’s withered figure as they approached the guardian. The nanovirus was enough to control a person’s body, but for what these two would be tasked to do, more control and adaptation was needed.

They both leaned against the side of the pyramid, bodies touching the metal. They were encompassed in the golden glow, the alien computer working on their minds, transforming them into Guides who would do what they were programmed to without needing constant activity and updating by the nanovirus. In addition to the mission they were given, the skills necessary to accomplish this were also implanted in their minds.

Since they would be traveling far from Easter Island into a harsh environment, a few special measures were taken. While they were still in the thrall of the guardian, several micromachines skittered across the floor of the cavern, metallic spiders with various appendages poking from their frames. They crawled up the men’s bodies and performed several modifications to them in conjunction with specific nanoviruses for parts of their bodies.

A miniature satellite transmitter and receiver was inserted just behind their right ears, attached to the skull with bone screws. Skin was grafted over the device. The wire antenna for the satcom was slipped under the skin and looped around the skull. Variations of the nanovirus immediately went to work on healing the incisions. Also, a special form of nanovirus that the guardian had just designed was injected into each man’s lungs and went to work on those organs.

When the guardian was done with them, the golden glow faded. Marines scooped up the unconscious and recuperating bodies and carried them out of the chamber to the surface. Other Marines picked up equipment they had been instructed to bring from a supply depot. The SEALs and equipment were carried to an F-14 Tomcat. The Marines stowed the rucksacks full of gear inside the cramped cockpit, before sliding the two unconscious SEALs into the seats and strapping them in. The Marines stepped back and the canopy descended, locking in place. The engine started up and the plane taxied to the end of the runway under the control of its flight computer. A second plane was right behind it, an S-3 Lockheed Viking. The F-14 roared down the runway and into the air, turning hard as soon as it was airborne to stay inside the shield. The Viking was right behind it and with both airborne, the island shield was dropped for a moment and the two aircraft flew off to the west. The shield snapped back into place as soon as they were clear. McGraw and Olivetti were unconscious inside the F-14 as the flight plan programmed by the guardian flew the craft. Somewhere deep inside their infected and transformed minds their essences as independent human beings still existed. That their bodies and skills were to be used in the service of the aliens was a horror of which they were aware but powerless to fight. It was the worst possible thing that could be done to a Navy SEAL, a fate far worse than death.

Six hundred and ninety-five nautical miles northwest of Easter Island Captain Porter, commander of the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Norfolk was looking into the eyepiece of his periscope at the largest ship in the world, the Jahre Viking. It was cruising between two of the largest warships in the world, the supercarriers Washington and Stennis. Surrounding those three massive ships, each longer than the Empire State Building was tall, were the escort ships that had once been part of the US Navy’s Task Forces seventy-eight and seventy-nine. Porter had been briefed that the human hands that now ran those shops were directed by minds infected with an alien nanovirus and were not to be considered friendlies. Since departing Pearl Harbor he had been operating under radio silence, cut off from updates.

That was easier said than done, Porter knew as he zoomed in on the Washington, the closer of the Nimitz class carriers. He’d been on that ship for six months as part of his career training and knew quite a few officers assigned to it. His submarine was sitting still in the water, all systems reduced to bare minimum functioning. His sonarman had already informed him that the escort ships were actively searching the water for intruders — surface, subsurface, and air.

His boat was one of six subs rapidly dispatched from Pearl Harbor and set up in a loose semicircle between Hawaii and Easter Island to intercept the fleet.

Satellite imagery had tracked the fleet and Porter knew that the other five subs were closing on this location, much like the German wolf packs had gathered in the North Atlantic during World War II.

Porter turned the scope slightly, back to what appeared to be the flagship of the fleet. He knew from his recognition handbooks that the Viking was the largest man-made moving object on the planet. Even the supercarriers were dwarfed by the former oil tanker as it pounded its way through the waves. Porter’s mission was to slow the convoy down to allow the other five submarines time to get in place. With three major targets coming into range, there was no question which one he would fire on. Despite the orders and explanations from higher headquarters, he was loath to fire on a Navy ship.

The problem, as his executive officer/weapons specialist had pointed out to him, was that the Jahre Viking, besides being huge, was constructed in a manner that almost defied attack. Like all modern supertankers it was double-hulled to prevent oil spills, a feature that would also help defeat attack by torpedo. Additionally, its interior was composed of oiltight — which also meant watertight — holds. Even if he managed to breach the double hull, he would only be able to flood one compartment.

Porter had passed the problem on to his crew, letting them war-game possible courses of action as they steamed to their present location. His executive officer had come with a suggestion that Porter felt was worth the attempt. There was the additional issue of a report that the ships might have the same sort of shield generator that surrounded and protected Easter Island. Porter clicked on a small button on the periscope handle, zooming in on the large tanker. He’d seen photos of the opaque shield that surrounded Easter Island — obviously, if there was one here, it was clear. If there was one, Porter thought once more to himself.

“XO, are we ready?” “Yes, sir.”

“Sending targeting information,” Porter told him as he clicked another button and the top of the scope “lased” the Jahre Viking with a quick series of laser pulses that would give the targeting computer range, speed, and direction of the massive target. Porter knew missing was out of the question but the plan called for precise shooting.

“We’ve got it,” the XO reported. “Ready when you are, sir.”

Porter did a quick scan from side to side. To remain undetected, he had turned off sonar and the surface radar on the periscope. He wondered briefly how effectively the escort ships would react — he had conducted war game missions against his own Navy many times but had never thought he would be doing it for real. He knew the escort’s antisubmarine capability and it was enough to cause a small trickle of sweat to go down his back.

“Fire at will.”

Unlike the submarines of World War II, the tubes on the Norfolk were amidships and vertical. The reason — the MK-48 torpedoes they fired weren’t line of sight, but guided either by wire or preprogrammed targeting. In this case, the XO had preprogrammed every MK-48 on board, all twenty-four.

Four torpedoes rushed out of the tubes. As soon as they were gone, crewmen rushed to reload. As the MK-48s rushed toward the Jahre Viking, they moved on two tracks, two torpedoes each. The trail torpedo was two seconds behind the lead missile. The XO’s idea had been to blow a hole in the outer hull with the first one, then follow it two seconds later with another warhead to breach the inner hull. Right at a junction between two cells, flooding both. And subsequent volleys would do the same from stem to stern.

“Tracking,” the XO reported. “Twenty seconds.”

Porter looked through the periscope. He noted that the closest escort, a destroyer, was already turning toward their location. Through his shoes, Porter felt the deckplates shudder every so slightly as the next volley of torpedoes was fired.

“We’re being pinged,” the sonarman reported.

“Keep firing,” Porter ordered. He could see the destroyer closing. He turned the handles, putting the Jahre Viking dead center in the crosshairs.

“Ten seconds.”

Even without headphones he could hear the oncoming destroyer’s sonar fixing their location.

“Five seconds.”

Two geysers exploded out of the ocean. “Too soon,” Porter muttered. Another two geysers as the sound of the first explosions reached the sub. As the geysers settled back, he could see the Jahre Viking unscathed, continuing on course. Porter spun about to face his bridge crew. “Helm. Hard right rudder, flank speed. Crash dive.” As the Klaxon announcing the dive sounded, he took a couple of steps toward his communications officer. “Radio Pearl. Tell them the ships do have a shield. Warn off the other subs. There’s nothing we can do.”

Checking the instruments, Porter noted that they were descending quickly while accelerating away from the fleet.

“Range to destroyer?” he asked. “One thousand meters and closing.”

“Prepare countermeasures,” Porter ordered.

The captain had known when he committed to the firing that they wouldn’t be able to get clear without the escort attacking them. In simulations his crew had managed to beat an escort 50 percent of the time. Now he was going to find out how realistic those simulations were.

“MKs are in water,” his sonarman announced. “Tracking two. Range one thousand.”

The best weapon against a submarine was the same weapon Porter had just tried using — MK-48 ADCAP torpedoes.

“Launch decoy,” he ordered.

A small, but very “loud” submersible was fired out of one of the torpedo tubes and raced away, in the hope of drawing off the two incoming torpedoes. Porter realized he was gripping the edge of his command chair, his knuckles white, and he forced the muscles in his arm to relax.

“Range five hundred. Still closing.” “Prepare for impact,” Porter ordered.

“Three hundred.” The sonarman’s voice rose. “One is breaking off. Tracking the decoy!”

Fifty percent, Porter thought. “One hundred.”

Porter braced himself, his mind flashing to every submariner’s horror of implosion. He, along with everyone else on board, flinched as there was a loud thud from the direction of the bow. Porter blinked. But no explosion.

“A dud!” His executive officer was the first to say it.

“Helm, keep us moving out of here,” Porter ordered. “Damage control?”

The XO hit the intercom, contacting the forward compartments. “Any damage?” Porter recognized the voice of one of his chief petty officers. “Nothing we can see. It hit”—there was a burst of static—“bulkhead. There’s some”—another burst of static—“wrong with—” The intercom went dead.

“You have the conn,” Porter yelled at his XO as he dashed toward the forward hatch. He raced down the passageway, his movement slowed by having to open every hatch. As he reached the hatch just before the compartment they had been talking to, he stopped in shock as he noted a ripple effect in the metal. As he grabbed the round handle, he felt a sharp pain in his hands as if the metal were hot.

He pulled his hands away and stared at them. No burn marks. But the pain was still there. Moving up his arms. His eyes widened as he saw the veins bulging in his arms — and they were black.

Captain Porter screamed as the nanovirus reached his brain. A scream that was echoed along the length of the ship as the microscopic metallic virus invaded every crew member.

General Kashir commanded an army division headquartered in Tabriz in northwest Iran. It was a precarious post given the locale. To the north were Armenia and Azerbaijan. To the west Turkey, and below it Iraq. While the rest of the world had forgotten, no Iranian who had lived and fought through it could forget the brutal eleven-year war Iran and Iraq had waged against each other from 1979 through 1990. Almost two million had died during the fighting and neither side had gained more than a few kilometers of worthless desert despite countless offensives.

The illegal use of chemical weapons, children being forced to charge across minefields to “clear” them, and execution of prisoners were all practices engaged in by both sides. A cease-fire was agreed to in 1990 but no peace treaty had been signed. Add in the unrest in the former Soviet provinces to the north and east, and the ever-present revolt of the Kurdish people throughout the area, and the region was as unstable as it had always been. With the recent assassination of Hussein in Iraq, all the militaries in the region were on high alert. There were those preaching — as ever — for a jihad against Israel, but Kashir knew that blood spite between Arabs would always rate higher than enmity for the Jews.

There had been numerous “cleansings” of the officer ranks by the religious government and Kashir had not only survived them all over the years, he’d been promoted up the ranks to his present position. He owed everything to a secret alliance he had made early in his career.

His office was located on the top floor of the tallest building in the city, with a commanding view not only of the town, but the surrounding countryside. As he had done daily for the past several years, he turned on his computer and accessed a secure e-mail server.

Unlike every one of those days, today there was a message waiting from his secret benefactor.

At first Kashir simply stared at the screen in shock for several moments. The subject line was the proper code word: scimitar.

And there was only one person who had this address. Known for years as Al-Iblis to intelligence agencies around the world, he was now known as Aspasia’s Shadow. Kashir owed his rank and this position to Al-Iblis’s machinations over the years and now he knew that the marker was being called in.

Kashir clicked the mouse and the message appeared. When he was done reading it, his eyes were drawn to the wide windows on the northern side of his office. It was a clear day and far in the distance he could make out a white-covered peak on the horizon. The mountain was over 120 miles away, but high enough to be visible. It was also over the border in Turkey.

“Agri Dagi,” Kashir muttered as he stood and walked over to the window. It was the name the locals called the peak. To the rest of the world, it was better known as Mount Ararat. And his orders from Aspasia’s Shadow were to secure the mountain, even if it meant invading Turkey and causing a war.

General Kashir picked up his phone and ordered his aide-de-camp to assemble his staff.

From the base, the summit of Mons Olympus, despite being three times taller than Mount Everest, wasn’t visible, as it was far enough away to be over the horizon of Mars. It was the largest volcano in the Tharsis Bulge, a ring of high mountains around Mars that were so massive they had caused the axis of Mars to shift over the eons.

The dimensions of Mons Olympus were staggering. Over fifteen miles high. Over 340 miles in width at the base. The volcano was surrounded by an escarpment over four miles high. It was the highest and largest mountain in the solar system.

And on the southeast edge of the escarpment, the greatest engineering feat in the solar system was under way by an army of robots. Eight-legged mech-diggers were tearing into the escarpment, cutting a path through it, using the rubble to build up a ramp that extended over one hundred miles into the surrounding plain. Mech-scouts were ahead of the diggers, near the peak, scuttling about on six legs, setting beacons into the rocky soil in a grid pattern. The machines were being controlled by a guardian computer located underground at Cydonia, a location that had long stirred controversy on Earth because of images taken of the area by probes showing a “face” and other nonnatural shapes on the surface. They indeed turned out to be not natural — an Airlia base where Aspasia had been exiled after Atlantis was destroyed. He, his fleet, and most of his followers were killed when Turcotte booby-trapped the Area 51 mothership in space and exploded it as Aspasia and his followers tried to board.

The remaining handful of Airlia living at Cydonia were cut off not only from their home world but from Earth as Aspasia’s Shadow ignored them, retribution for millennia of being cut off from them and battling on Earth without their support as they slept.

In a long path from Cydonia to Mons Olympus, a line of mech-carriers was moving, their claws, gripping debris uncovered from the ruins of the “face.” The movement had been noticed on Earth and was being tracked by Larry Kincaid, a NASA specialist who was part of the Area 51 team. The purpose of the movement and what was planned on Mons Olympus, however, remained a mystery.

Simon Sherev nodded at the four guards behind the bullet- and blast-proof glass as he passed their station. The four men watched him with cold eyes, muzzles of their Uzis stuck through portals following him even though they knew who he was and around his neck was the proper access card. The men took their jobs very seriously for behind the large steel vault doors to their rear lay the true might of Israel: two dozen atomic warheads.

That vault, while it was the most important charge in Sherev’s command at Dimona, was not his destination. Instead he continued down the underground corridor until he came to a second vault. It held objects that had power of a different kind. Sherev showed his pass to the soldiers guarding this bunker, then pressed his face against a retinal scanner. The bulletproof clear door opened with a loud click.

Sherev stepped through, passed the guards, then repeated the process with the vault door. It slowly swung open, lights automatically going on inside. Sherev went inside and hit the control shutting the door behind him. The vault was about forty feet deep by twenty wide, with a high ceiling. Three rows of tables went from front to rear. On them were various artifacts, some human, some they had found to be Airlia.

His focus, however, was on the closest table and the most recent addition to the state of Israel’s secret archives. Taken from the Mission’s base under Mount Sinai, the Ark of the Covenant rested on a cloth-covered platform. Sherev stopped just short of the table, getting his first good look at the artifact.

The Ark was three feet high and wide and about four feet long. The surface was gold-plated. On the lid were two sphinxlike figures with ruby-red eyes. From the reports he’d received, Sherev knew that when the Ark had contained the Grail, the eyes had been an active security system, killing any who approached unless he wore a special garment that lay next to the Ark on the same table. It appeared that removing the Grail had deactivated the system.

Sherev ran a hand along the top of the Ark of the Covenant. Even he who had grown cynical during his decades fighting Israel’s covert wars was touched by actually being in the presence of something so essential to his country’s faith. Even though he knew it was an Airlia artifact, he could still envision it being carried across the desert by his ancestors.

Since recovering the Ark of the Covenant from the Mission, Sherev had spent much time reflecting on the faith his parents had raised him in. Sherev swallowed hard as the implications struck home with full force, here in the presence of the Ark. The Ark of the Covenant — but what covenant? Was Moses the man whom his countrymen believed in, or, as now appeared, someone very different? Had Moses been a Guide under the influence of an alien guardian, a pawn in the civil war between the factions? Or had he acted of his own free will? And even if he had, did it make any difference if the Ark was an Airlia artifact and his trip up Mount Sinai had not been to speak to God, but to speak with Aspasia’s Shadow?

Sherev had seen many of his countrymen die for their faith even as he had killed those of other countries who’d fought for their beliefs. If all were lies—

Sherev was startled as the phone on the wall near the door emitted an irritating buzz. Reluctantly he went over to it and lifted the receiver.

“Sherev,” he snapped.

“Sir.” He recognized the voice of his senior aide. “Intelligence reports that Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian forces are mobilizing.”

Sherev was not surprised. The Iraqis and Iranians had been on full wartime footing since the moment it was announced that Saddam Hussein had been assassinated.

“We have been ordered to prepare to go to stage three,” the aide continued. Sherev’s eyes went to the wall of the chamber, as if he could see into the next one, where the bombs rested. Stage three meant the warheads were to be moved to the surface in preparation for deployment to their various delivery platforms. In his years there they had never gone to stage three, not even during the Gulf War, when Saddam had fired Scuds at Israel. But again, Sherev was not surprised. Recent events were propelling the world into a path not seen since 1939.

“And, sir—” The aide hesitated; making Sherev wonder what could be worse than the news he had just received.

“Yes?”

“Hasher Lakur is here.”

Lakur was an influential member of Parliament and the one who had gotten the government to trade the thummin and urim to Al-Iblis — who they now knew was

Aspasia’s Shadow — in exchange for Saddam’s assassination. It had been a deal with the devil that Sherev had opposed.

“What does he want?” “The Ark.”

Sherev turned back to the table on which the artifact rested. He didn’t need to ask. He knew why Lakur wanted it — as a symbol to the country, to unite them in the coming war. But it was an empty symbol, Sherev knew, both literally and figuratively.

“He has authority from the Parliament to claim it,” the aide added.

Sherev hit the open button and the vault door slowly swung wide. He could see soldiers in the corridor, already moving to get the nukes. He almost laughed from the insanity. Nuclear warheads and the legendary Ark of the Covenant. An interesting combination for Armageddon.