The Mission

CHAPTER 9

The patrol looked like a party of ghouls as the sun revealed details. Most of the men were splattered with dried blood and all were covered in mud. They’d made good time in the darkness, following the pass down from the site of the ambush. The stream in the center of the ravine had grown larger as they went lower, until now it was almost a river.

Steam was rising off the surface of the water, mingling with the trees that hung over it. The foliage almost touched in the middle overhead, making the band of water a dark tunnel with splotches of light playing along the surface.

“All right. We’ll break here,” Toland called out. Daylight revealed him to be more than just a voice in the dark. He was a tall, thin man, his hair completely white — unusual for a man of thirty-six, but not for someone in his line of work.

Faulkener placed out flank security on either side and the rest of the men slumped to the ground, exhausted. Faulkener was the opposite of Toland in body type: short and stocky with heavily muscled arms and legs. He’d been the heavyweight boxing champion of the regiment before Toland.

“I suggest everyone take a bath and get cleaned up,” Toland said.

“Hell, we’re just going to get dirty again,” one of the new men replied, pulling his bush hat down over his eyes. Those who had served with Toland before were already beginning to strip down.

“Yes, but cleanliness is very important,” Toland replied, keeping his voice neutral.

“I’ll clean when I get out of this pigsty of a country,” the Australian joked.

Toland pulled the bolt back on his Sterling, the sound very loud in the morning air. “You’ll clean now.”

The Australian stared at him. “What the hell, mate? You queer or something?”

“I’m not your mate. I’m your commander. Take your clothes off, put them on the riverbank, then get in line.” He centered the muzzle of the submachine gun on the man. “Now strip.”

Soon there was a line of naked men standing waist deep in the water. The white ones had farmer’s tans, their torsos pale, their faces and forearms bronzed from the sun. Toland and Faulkener went through the men’s clothes and gear, very slowly and methodically.

Toland held up a plastic canteen and shook it. He turned it upside down. No water came out. He took his flashlight and peered in. “Ah, what do we have here?” Toland asked. He drew a knife and jabbed it into the canteen, splitting the side open. A plastic bag full of brownish powder fell out.

“Whose gear?”

The men all turned and looked at one of the Australians who had just joined them for this mission. The one who had complained about taking a bath. “Come here, mate,” Toland called out with a smile.

The man walked out of the water, his hands instinctively covering his groin. “I told you no drugs, didn’t I?” Toland asked.

“I didn’t—”

The first round caught the man in the stomach, and Toland casually raised his aim, stitching a pattern up the chest. The man flew backward into the river, arms splayed, blood swirling in the brown water.

The men redonned their clothes and gear. “Make sure you drink upstream from that,” Faulkener advised the men, pointing at the body of the Australian, which was slowly floating away downstream. “We’ll rest here for a few hours.”

Toland retired to the shade of a tree. Faulkener joined him there and handed him a sheet of paper. “The message Andrews received last night.”

Toland looked at it — a long list of letters that made no sense. “They encoded it. Must be getting worried about someone listening in.”

Faulkener didn’t reply. He took his knife out and began sharpening the already gleaming edge.

Toland retrieved a Ziploc bag from his breast pocket. Inside it was a small notepad. He turned to the eleventh page — equaling the day of the month they received the message on — and began matching the letters of the message with the letter on the page. Then, using a tri-graph, a standard page that had three letter groups on it, he began deciphering the message. It was slow work, made more difficult by the need to figure where one word ended and the next one began. After twenty minutes he had it done:

Toland pulled out his map and looked at the coordinates. About fifty kilometers north and east. He handed the message to Faulkener.

“Why don’t they just drop this party off at one of these dirt runways in-country?” Faulkener asked.

“The Americans have this area blanketed with radar. To track drug runners. Whatever The Mission is up to, they must want to keep it secret.”

Faulkener looked at the map. “It’s a long walk and not much time. What’s the rush?”

“We can do it.” Toland rubbed the stubble of his beard. “I wonder what they want us to do after we link up with this guy?”

Faulkener nodded toward the merks. “Some of these boys won’t want to go farther into the jungle.”

Toland laid a hand on the stubby barrel of his Sterling. “Anyone says anything, they can talk to my complaint department. We move out in fifteen minutes.”

“They are afraid.” Lo Fa lowered the binoculars. “But they are many. More than we have here.”

“Are you afraid?” Che Lu asked.

Lo Fa laughed. “Mother-Professor, I am not one of your stupid students to be manipulated so easily by your words.”

He pointed to the west, where the bulk of Qian-Ling was highlighted against the setting sun. It rose out of the countryside, over 3,000 feet high, so large it was hard to imagine that human hands had made the mountain. And it was not a mountain, but a tomb, a monument built before the birth of Christ to honor the Emperor Gao-zong and his empress, the only empress in the entire history of China.

Or at least that was what Che Lu had thought. Now she wondered why it was really built and who was behind the building. The man-made hill dwarfed even the Great Pyramid of Giza, making it the largest tomb in the world. The amount of labor needed to move that amount of dirt and rock was staggering to conceptualize. Trees and bushes had taken root on the mountain, and it looked almost natural except for the symmetrical shape. Around the tomb were various statues, particularly on the wide road leading up to it, where rows and rows of statues were lined, to symbolize all the people and officials who had come to honor the funeral procession of Gao-zong when he was buried in A.D. 18.

What Lo Fa was pointing to, though, was not the tomb or the statues, but the soldiers, tanks, and trucks surrounding the tomb.

“They fear to enter, but they will kill us to keep us from doing so,” Lo Fa said. “And your ridicule will not make me throw myself under the treads of one of their tanks. I have not gotten to be this old without a little bit of common sense.”

Che Lu shook Nabinger’s notebook in front of Lo Fa. “But we have to get in.”

Lo Fa squatted. His guerrilla band was spread out around in the grove of trees they were hiding in. They were five kilometers from the tomb, having force-marched here after recovering the notebook.

“I came here because you insisted,” Lo Fa said. He looked around to make sure none of his men were listening. “I came because I respect you, Che Lu. We made the Long March together.”

Che Lu looked at her comrade in surprise. In all their years he had never called her by name.

Lo Fa continued. “But if I am to go further, if I am to ask these men to go further, I must know why. I must know what is so important about this old tomb. What was so important for the Russians and the Americans to send men to die getting into and out of it? Why does the army flutter about like moths around a fire — attracted but scared of the flames?” He leaned close, his wrinkled face close to hers. “Tell me about Qian-Ling.”

Che Lu rested her back against the rough pack she had carried. She was not young anymore. Her body ached from the march. “You have a right to know, old friend. I will tell you as much as I know and as much as I can guess. But the truth is inside, and that is why we must get in.

“There is more in Qian-Ling than a tomb.” She proceeded to tell Lo Fa what she had discovered on her last trip inside — the hologram of the alien that warned in the strange tongue in the central corridor that led to the lowest chamber; the beam that had cut one of her students in half that guarded the way beyond the hologram; the large chamber full of containers that she suspected were Airlia machines and equipment; and through it the chamber holding a small guardian computer.

“But it is the lowest chamber, the one we were not able to get into, that is the key.” She held up the notebook once more. “Professor Nabinger could read the high runes. He made contact with the guardian computer inside Qian-Ling. In here he wrote some of what he knew before he died.”

Lo Fa waited, his dark eyes meeting hers.

“In the lowest chamber”—Che Lu’s voice quavered—“in the chamber, according to Nabinger’s writings, I believe there are aliens — more Airlia. Along with their leader Artad. Waiting to awaken.”

Lo Fa spit. “So?”

Che Lu was indignant. “So? So! What—”

Lo Fa hushed her. “Shh. Listen to me, old woman. Why would you want to go down there? Why would you want to waken these sleeping beings?” He pointed up. “I have not been ignorant. Others of these woke on Mars. They came here to destroy the planet. Their dead ships circle our world.”

Che Lu smiled. “Because these ones”—she pointed at the fading bulk of Qian-Ling—”these ones are the ones who saved us long ago. And maybe they can save us again.

“And there is more down there than just the aliens. According to what Nabinger was able to decipher, there is the power of the sun. Power, Lo Fa. Would you not agree our people need power now? Maybe they can give us the power we need to defeat the government and bring China back the glory it once was! Because if Artad and other Airlia are in Qian-Ling, does it not make sense that the Airlia were instrumental in making China the Middle Kingdom so many years ago?”

The twenty-foot-high pyramid that housed the guardian computer under Rano Kau was now the core of a bizarre structure of which Kelly Reynolds’s body was just one part. Metal arms reached out of the side of the pyramid, made out of parts cannibalized from the material UNAOC had left behind.

Microrobots scurried about the cavern. A line of them went up to the surface through the tunnel UNAOC had drilled. They carried small pieces of stone and returned on the opposite side, each one carrying something taken from the surface, like an army of ants returning from a feast. Most of them brought their scraps to a line of differently shaped microrobots that were aligned along the wall. Taking the raw material brought to them, these made more of their own kind, shaping the various material into bodies, computers, and energy packs.

There were several types of microrobots. The carriers, about three inches long, had six metal legs, and two arms for grasping and holding that could reach forward, then rotate back and hold whatever they picked up on their backs. The makers, six inches long, had four legs and four arms. The arms were different on each, depending on what function they served in the production line.

Another type of microrobots disappeared into a hole in the floor of the cavern — the diggers, with eight legs spaced evenly around a central core body that was two inches wide and eight long. At the very front each one had a set of small drills on very short arms. Those diggers coming out of the hole each carried a small piece of rock. They dumped it in front of the carriers, who picked up a piece and headed for the surface.

The hole was already four hundred feet deep — the goal, a plasma vent two miles down. The guardian needed more power, because this was only the beginning and the UNAOC generators had gone off-line, running out of fuel. The fusion plant that had been left by Aspasia to power the guardian was low on power and needed to be supplemented.

Some of the UNAOC computers were now hardwired into the guardian. Across the monitors information flashed, faster than a human eye could follow as the alien computer sorted through what it had learned from its foray into the human world via the Interlink/Internet. Already it was putting some of that information to use, but there was so much more.

And it maintained its link to Mars, to its sister computer deep under the surface and the alien hands that controlled that computer.

A metal probe came out of the golden pyramid. It hovered overhead, then approached Kelly. It halted an inch from the center of her back. A thin needle came out of the end of the probe. It punched through skin, into her spine. Wrapped in the golden glow, with wires and tubes spun around her body, Kelly Reynolds twitched, like a person experiencing a bad nightmare. The needle came back out, retracted into the probe, and was then pulled back inside the guardian.

Kelly shivered for several moments, then the body relaxed and became one with the guardian once more.

Turcotte knew Duncan was on the satellite radio, arranging for some assistance through her own private network. He had something else on his mind.

He found Yakov sprawled in a chair in the cabin that had been provided the Russian. A bottle of clear liquid rested on a table nearby.

“My friend!” Yakov said as Turcotte came into the cabin. “A toast to fallen comrades.”

Turcotte took the glass. He raised it to his lips and took a drink. The fiery liquid burned as it went down. “Where did you get this?” Turcotte asked when he could speak.

“Ah, I am a man of many resources,” Yakov said. “Your navy says it has no alcohol on its ships, but they are men too.”

Turcotte sat down across the Russian. “You say this group, The Mission — its Guides — have been around for a long time.”

“A very long time.” Yakov nodded.

“Then they’ve been active and not just watching throughout the course of human history.”

Yakov nodded once more. “It appears so.”

“You also said the Nazis were involved with The Mission.”

“Yes.”

“There’s someone who might know something about The Mission. Someone who had been to Dulce and knew Hemstadt.”

Yakov poured another drink. He tilted the bottle toward Turcotte, who shook his head. “Ah yes. Your Dr. Von Seeckt is still alive, is he not?”

“Is there anything you don’t know?” Turcotte asked.

“There is a terrifyingly large amount I do not know,” Yakov said. “What I don’t know wakes me in the middle of the night sweating with fear.”

“I’ve got Major Quinn setting up a video-conference link to Von Seeckt’s hospital room.”

Yakov lumbered to his feet. “Let us talk to your Nazi doctor, then.” They went to the conference room where Quinn was waiting.

“I’ve had one of my people from Area 51 go to the base hospital at Nellis Air Force Base,” Quinn said. “We’re all set. This is being relayed through Area 51 to us over a secure network.”

Turcotte and Yakov sat down in front of the laptop computer. A small camera was clipped on top of the screen pointing at them. The screen snapped alive with an image. An old man lying in a bed, his skin wrinkled and worn, the eyes half closed, peering straight ahead at the camera that must be near the foot of the bed. A microphone was clipped to the old man’s sheet, just below his chin. Turcotte could see the tubes running into the man’s arms, and he marveled that he was still alive.

“We’re all set,” Quinn said. “I talked to his doctor. He’s got quite a bit of medication in his system, so he might not be too coherent.”

“Dr. Von Seeckt,” Turcotte said. “This is Captain Turcotte.”

“Good day, Captain,” Von Seeckt replied in German, his voice just a whisper, amplified by the mike.

“I need some information,” Turcotte said in the same language.

Von Seeckt muttered something unintelligible.

“Dr. Von Seeckt!” Turcotte raised his voice, trying to reach the other man’s mind. A hand moved the small mike closer to the old man’s lips.

“Death,” Von Seeckt whispered. “The shatterer of worlds.”

Turcotte had heard the old German say those words before — the first time he met him, on a flight out of Area 51. It was a quote from Oppenheimer upon viewing the detonation of the first man-made atomic bomb at Trinity test site in New Mexico. Von Seeckt had been there, and his presence put an asterisk on the term “man-made” for that first explosion, because Von Seeckt had brought with him from Egypt an Airlia-made nuclear weapon.

The Nazis had interpreted enough of high rune symbols from a stone artifact under the water near Bimini — the apparent site of Atlantis, the Airlia main base — found by one of their submarines, that had pointed them to a secret lower chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Von Seeckt, a young scientist of the Third Reich, had been picked to accompany the military team that traveled to Egypt, even as war raged across the desert and the Desert Fox, Rommel, closed on the British forces.

Breaking through a wall in the pyramid, the Germans found a black box that they couldn’t open. They took it with them, but in their attempt to return to their own lines were ambushed by the British and Von Seeckt and his box captured. Eventually the radioactive box — along with Von Seeckt — ended up in America as part of the Manhattan Project, because when they finally opened it, they found a nuclear weapon that gave the American scientists great insight into what they were trying to do.

“Doctor, I need some information,” Turcotte repeated.

The old man’s eyes blinked, trying to find who was speaking. “I took a vow. An oath.”

Turcotte knew he had to get through to the old man.

“Why do you obey?” Turcotte snapped in German.

Von Seeckt’s voice firmed up. “From inner conviction, from my belief in Germany, the Fuhrer, the Movement, and the SS!”

Turcotte could sense Yakov stir next to him, uncomfortable with what he was hearing. While World War II was certainly significant in American history, Turcotte knew the Russians, with over 20 million dead and half their country devastated, held a far harsher memory of that war.

“Hitler is dead,” Turcotte hissed. The words Von Seeckt had spoken had been his vow, taken when he’d joined the SS over fifty years earlier. “He’s been dead over fifty years. You are in America now. You’ve been here since the middle of the war. And you must tell me what I need to know!”

Von Seeckt’s eyes were wide open now. They focused on the screen at the foot of his bed. “Captain?”

“Yes.”

“Orders. I had to follow orders.”

“I need you to think,” Turcotte said. “Back to when you were in Egypt in the war. After you left the Pyramid with the black box.”

“The desert,” Von Seeckt whispered. “It was cold at night. I was not ready for that. It surprised me. Very cold. Always in the desert. Why have I always been in the desert?”

“When you were ambushed in the desert,” Turcotte said, “was it just chance or did the British know?”

“Know?” Von Seeckt repeated, still speaking German. He blinked. “What have you discovered?” he said in English.

“You told Major Quinn that you had heard rumors of STAAR,” Turcotte said. “That you believed it might not be made up of humans. But you also told him that it did nothing. That it just existed until recently taking action. But I don’t think that’s so. I think STAAR or a group like it has been acting all along, manipulating things, and I think it might have had a hand in your patrol getting ambushed and the Airlia bomb going from German to Allied hands.”

Von Seeckt stared at the camera, then his head nodded ever so slightly. “I always thought it was strange. Such a coincidence. We thought we were betrayed by our Arab guides, but the British killed them also, which was rather brutal for those so-called gentlemen. And they were not regular soldiers. I — who had seen the SS stormtroopers — knew these British were special commandos. What were they doing at just the right spot in the desert at just the right time?”

“So it is possible that the British were tipped off?”

“It is possible,” Von Seeckt agreed. “But so many things are possible. Who knows what the truth is?”

“I think you know more than you have told us,” Turcotte said.

Von Seeckt didn’t say anything.

“How did General Gullick and Majestic learn of the dig in Temiltepec?” Turcotte knew that was the event that had suborned the members of Majestic-12 and, if Yakov was to be believed, turned them into Guides. When Majestic uncovered the guardian computer and brought it back to Dulce, it affected the minds of those in charge, particularly Gullick, and led to the attempt to launch the mothership that Turcotte and the others had narrowly averted.

“Intelligence,” Von Seeckt said. “Kennedy, our CIA representative, forwarded a report about Jorgenson’s dig there and the discovery of something strange.”

“Bullshit,” Turcotte snapped. “I’ve had Major Quinn check both the CIA and Majestic records. A lot of them have been destroyed, but what is there suggests the guardian pyramid wasn’t uncovered until after Majestic’s team got there. And they knew exactly where to dig. What isn’t in the records is how they got that information.”

“I do not know,” Von Seeckt said.

“Again, bullshit. You were part of Majestic. You’ve played this ‘I don’t know’ game long enough.” Turcotte wished he could reach through the screen and wrap his hands around the old man’s scrawny neck. He had to give the old man credit that he had helped them stop the flight of the mothership, but with Yakov’s new information, Turcotte wasn’t so sure that Von Seeckt had acted out of altruism.

Shortly after first meeting, Kelly Reynolds had told Turcotte how the place Von Seeckt had worked at — the V-l and V-2 rocket site at Peenumunde — prior to going on the mission to Egypt had used slave labor from the nearby concentration camp and how thousands had died in those factories and camps. But Von Seeckt had conveniently claimed ignorance of that also at first.

“And I’ve also received information that the guardian was not found at Temiltepec,” Turcotte threw out.

Von Seeckt shook his head. “I have told you all I know. I was told it was Temiltepec.”

“You’re lying.”

“What difference does all this make now?” Von Seeckt sounded very tired. “I understand the Airlia fleet was destroyed. Why are you delving into these things?”

“Because this group is still around somewhere and we need to know more about it. And I think this group had something do with Majestic recovering the guardian wherever they found it.” Turcotte saw no reason to divulge to Von Seeckt the information about the Guides or The Mission yet.

“No. I know nothing of such a thing.”

“Then tell me about Dulce,” Turcotte said.

“I told you already that I only went to Dulce once. That Dulce was the province of the others.”

“The other Nazi scientists brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip to work for our government,” Turcotte clarified. “But what exactly were they doing there? What was on that lowest level where the guardian computer was stored?”

“I do not know. I never—”

“What was there?” Turcotte cut the old man off. “You do know! Tell me!”

“All they told me was that they were doing experiments. It is what Nightscape picked up the people for.”

“No.” Turcotte shook his head. “Nightscape kidnapped people, but they were brainwashed on the level above, the level where we found Johnny Simmons.” “Yes, the abductees who were returned with their disinformation. Did you ever wonder what happened to the abductees who never came back?” Von Seeckt asked. “All those people who disappear every year and are never seen again?”

“They went to the bottom level at Dulce?”

“I am sure some did,” Von Seeckt said. “The Paperclip people who worked there, they were most ruthless. They had experience in the camps. Even in your great democracy such things go on.”

Turcotte ignored Von Seeckt’s barbs. “What was going on in the very bottom level? Where the vats holding those people were? I saw vats like that at Scorpion Base. It was how STAAR ‘grew’ their own agents. Agents who we now know were Airlia/human genetic combinations. What was going on at Dulce? Were they doing that? Or were they doing something else? Biological-warfare experiments?” “I don’t know.” Von Seeckt turned his head.

“What about General Hemstadt?” Turcotte asked.

“He had cold eyes,” Von Seeckt murmured. “No life in them.”

“Was he working on biological warfare?” Turcotte pressed.

Von Seeckt said nothing.

“The Black Death,” Yakov growled.

Von Seeckt turned back toward the camera. “Who are you?”

“The Black Death,” Yakov repeated. “Have you heard of it?”

“Rumors,” Von Seeckt whispered.

“Rumors of the Black Death?”

“Just rumors. A weapon.”

“The Mission.” Yakov spit the two words out.

Turcotte noted that that brought a reaction. Von Seeckt’s eyes widened.

“Tell me about The Mission,” Turcotte pressed.

“I don’t know—”

Yakov cut the old man off. “Do not lie to us! Hemstadt went there, didn’t he?”

Von Seeckt wearily nodded. “When I heard he left Dulce, I knew something was wrong. It was a month before General Gullick wanted to fly the mothership. I wonder now if they were connected. I also feared that Hemstadt wanted to use the bouncers. To spread whatever he had been working on in the lab at Dulce.”

Turcotte stared at the screen. Von Seeckt had slumped back on his pillow, his eyes closed.

Turcotte cut the connection. There was so much that wasn’t clear. If Majestic had been infiltrated by the Guides — or STAAR — then that put a whole new light on many things that had occurred. It also put a new light on the destruction of the Dulce facility by the foo fighter. Maybe the target of the foo fighter had been more than just the guardian? Maybe the foo fighter had taken out the Dulce facility to destroy whatever Hemstadt was working on? But the foo fighter had been controlled by the guardian. Had they taken out Dulce to cover the trail? To protect The Mission? The more Turcotte learned, the less he understood.