The Mission

CHAPTER 4

Yakov was seated on a stone block, his flashlight wedged between his large feet, pointing straight ahead. He had a camera in his hands and he shot several pictures of the flat stone set into the wall in front of him. Satisfied, he put the camera away. Then he pulled out a notebook and a pad of paper.

The notebook held copies of high rune symbols — the language of the Airlia — and the translation of those symbols, at least those Section IV had been able to make over the last fifty years, which was to say less than 25 percent of those they had found.

Slowly and carefully, Yakov began translating the runes on the stone. It was frustrating work and would have been impossible, except that Yakov had a very good idea of what he was looking at.

It was a record of history. Or, more appropriately, the end of a history for a people. Tiahuanaco had been founded in 1700 B.C. Historians agreed on that. But when the Incans began expanding their empire and came across the city in the thirteenth century, they found an empty place, devoid of human life. Sometime around A.D. 1200 this teeming city, home to several hundred thousand souls, and the empire it commanded for over 2,500 years, running along the Andes, down to the Pacific Coast in the west and deep into the Amazon rain forest in the east, had simply disappeared.

What had happened to the people? It was a question no one had the answer to.

Except now, translating the stone as best he could, Yakov had that answer, and it was one he had feared to find. There were two symbols that he had seen before, at other places on the planet’s surface, that he recognized all too well. It gave the reason:

The Black Death.

Rain lashed the enormous flight deck of the aircraft carrier, battering it with sheets of water so thick that visibility was less than a hundred feet. Despite not being able to see the forward end of the ship, Lisa Duncan was staring straight ahead through the thick windows of the USS George Washington’s bridge as if she could actually see the volcanic peaks of Easter Island. She knew that they were twenty miles from the island and even if the weather were clear, the land would be over the horizon. In the water around the flagship Washington were the other warships of Task Force 78.

A carrier task force was the most powerful military force the world knew. Centered around the Nimitz-class Washington were two guided-missile cruisers, three destroyers, two frigates, and two supply ships; under the waves, two Los Angeles-class attack submarines prowled the depths, while overhead planes in the CAP, covering air patrol, guarded the sky. One of those subs was going to make the attempt to get close to the island underwater and launch a probe.

The Washington itself carried the task force’s most powerful punch in the form of its flight wing: one squadron (12) of Grumman F-14 Tomcats, three squadrons (36) of McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18 Hornets, 4 Grumman EA-2C Hawkeye surveillance aircraft, 10 Lockheed S-3B Vikings, 6 Sikorsky SH-60B Seahawk helicopters, and 6 EA-6B Prowlers. But at the present moment, Duncan knew this powerful force was impotent.

“Kelly?” she whispered under her breath toward the dark gray sky as if that person could hear her. The events of the past several weeks had shaken Duncan badly, and she felt a momentary wave of loneliness and weariness sweep over her as she thought of the others who had been with her when they tore the curtain of secrecy surrounding Area 51 asunder.

Deep under Rano Kau her friend Kelly Reynolds was trapped by the guardian computer. That Kelly was trapped because she had gone there of her own free will in an attempt to stop Duncan and Captain Mike Turcotte from defeating the Airlia invasion was something Duncan had thought long and hard about over the past several days, ever since Turcotte had destroyed the incoming Airlia fleet.

Thinking of Turcotte, Duncan’s mind drifted south, where she knew he was joining the task force seeking to uncover the secret of Scorpion Base, where the mysterious STAAR organization had had its headquarters.

She could feel the power of the ship’s engines vibrate up through the deck under her rubber-soled shoes. She knew she looked out of place on the ship’s bridge, among all the sailors dressed in their uniforms. She could sense the military’s inherent distrust of civilians from the moment she came on board. It was something she had experienced before and knew there was no way to counter. “Ms. Duncan?”

The voice startled her. She turned toward the interior of the bridge where naval personnel bustled with the activity necessary to operate this floating city.

“Yes?”

A young ensign stood five feet behind her. “The admiral would like to see you in the commo shack.”

Duncan followed the officer through the bridge and through a door at the rear. Shack was a bit of a simplification for the room she entered. Able to communicate securely anywhere on the planet, the “shack” boasted top-of-the-line equipment, including numerous direct uplinks to various satellites.

Admiral Poldan, the officer who had commanded the last failed strike against the guardian computer on Easter Island, had not been a happy man the past few days. He led a task force capable of devastating whole countries, but the alien shield that surrounded the island had withstood the best his fleet could send at it short of nuclear weapons. Duncan knew he was itching to throw that last punch, but UNAOC — for the moment — saw insufficient threat from the Easter Island guardian to authorize such a drastic move in the face of political realities following recent events.

Duncan nodded at the admiral, who was giving orders to one of his men. Done, he gestured for her to join him in front of a large computer display.

“The guardian is talking” was his greeting. “The National Security Agency is picking up alien transmissions.”

“To who?” Duncan asked.

“The guardian on Mars.”

“Was there a reply from Mars?”

The admiral nodded. “Yes. Yes, there was.”

Duncan considered that piece of bad news. The nuclear attack on the Airlia compound on Mars via the Surveyor probe had been kept secret by the UNAOC for several reasons.

One reason had been not wanting to admit that the attack had occurred under the direction of STAAR, an organization about which they still knew practically nothing. The fact that STAAR had placed the nuclear bomb aboard the probe prior to launch, two years before, indicated that organization had been far ahead of any government in recognizing the threat the Airlia posed, or that there was even an Airlia base on Mars, something that seemed to have eluded NASA for years.

There was also the issue that there was still a sizable percentage of the world’s population that believed the Airlia represented good; that the destruction of the Airlia fleet was the most heinous act mankind had ever committed. The progressives, as they were called, felt that a remarkable opportunity for great strides in science — not to mention first contact with an alien race — had been destroyed.

Duncan had been hearing reports that a major reason Admiral Poldan wasn’t given the green light to nuke Easter Island was a powerful progressive lobby in the UN. This lobby felt that the guardian computer under Rano Kau was irreplaceable. While that looked clear on the surface, Duncan was concerned that there was more to the progressive camp than was readily apparent. The plan by UNAOC to send up space shuttles to rendezvous with both the mothership and talon seemed a bit rushed to her. Her paranoia, justified in her investigation into Majestic-12, was still alive and well.

There was a growing movement in the progressive camp making an icon out of Kelly Reynolds. Nuking the island would undoubtedly kill her — if the nuke got through the shield — and UNAOC was very concerned that would bring about a martyrdom that might incur severe repercussions from the progressive camp.

Several countries, most notably Australia and Japan, had threatened to pull out of the United Nations to protest the preemptive strike against the Airlia fleet commanded by Aspasia.

Duncan had been as surprised as Mike Turcotte at the backlash in the wake of the destruction of the Airlia fleet. It wasn’t that Turcotte had expected a parade down Fifth Avenue for his daring mission aboard the mothership, but he had not expected to be vilified in so many quarters. Nabinger’s interpretations from the guardian computer under Qian-Ling in China had been greeted with much skepticism, given that Nabinger had never made it out of China alive and they had only Turcotte’s word that Aspasia had been the enemy of mankind. The fact that the Airlia had destroyed a navy submarine near the foo fighter base had been explained away as an automatic defensive reaction by the guardian computer — as was the wall they now faced around the island ahead of them.

On the other end of the opinion spectrum the isolationists were pressing the UN to forget about the Airlia. They wanted Easter Island and the other Airlia artifact sites ignored. The isolationist thinking was that these artifacts had been on Earth since before recorded history — it had been only man’s interference that had caused all the recent problems. In Duncan’s opinion, the isolationists wanted to put the cork back in the bottle after the contents had already spilled out.

China had already pulled its representative from the United Nations and completely closed itself off from the rest of the world over the matter. The fact that the UN had launched a mission deep into China to uncover information in Qian-Ling about the Airlia had poured fuel on the fire. There were confusing intelligence reports that there was much fighting inside China, particularly in the western provinces where ethnic and religious groups were trying to break away from the central government using the uncertainty of the current world situation as their window of opportunity. Duncan, talking to several of her contacts in Washington, had heard rumors that the CIA and other intelligence agencies, particularly that of Taiwan, were aiding in this destabilization. So even as she had to concern herself with the alien situation, she knew she had to always take into account the fact that governments were going to act on their base, selfish interests first, and look at the larger, worldwide picture second.

The world had so anticipated the arrival of Aspasia and his ships that the sudden destruction of that fleet had created shock waves that were still echoing around the globe. Duncan had no doubt that she and her comrades had reacted correctly, but many didn’t — obviously Kelly Reynolds had not felt that way.

Upon returning from China, Turcotte had relayed the Russian Section IV concern that STAAR was an Airlia front, part of one of the two warring factions that had been on Earth over ten thousand years ago. That was an entirely differently problem that was somehow connected to all the rest. There were many pieces to the puzzle, and so far Duncan was not sure how what she had went together. This new information that Easter Island and Mars were talking verified that all they had won was a respite.

“Can we break the guardian code?” Duncan asked.

“Negative. It’s the same cipher they used before when they wanted to talk to each other and keep us in the dark. No messages of love and peace in binary to us.” The admiral tapped the screen. “They’re chattering back and forth at high speed and high data compression. A hell of a lot of information.”

Duncan knew the admiral was worried. The extent of the Airlia’s capabilities was not known. The foo fighter base north of Easter Island had been destroyed — at least all indications were that it had been, she amended now that it appeared the Mars guardian was still active — using a nuclear weapon. The talon ships had also been destroyed in orbit using nuclear weapons in conjunction with the ruby sphere that had been the mothership interstellar drive’s power core. But what else might be uncovered remained to be seen, and like most of the military men she had encountered ever since they had cracked the secret of Area 51, the admiral was more than a little paranoid. She knew he would prefer to shoot first and figure it all out later.

“Aspasia must have left someone to mind the store on Mars,” Admiral Poldan said.

“Or the guardian computer on Mars survived and is still functioning on its own,” Duncan noted. “At least we destroyed their space fleet.”

“Uh-huh” was the admiral’s take on that. “But whoever — or whatever — is left on Mars survived a nuke strike.”

“What about the Springfield?” Duncan asked, trying to focus attention on the immediate situation and the reason she was here. “Will the weather force a delay?”

“Weather doesn’t affect a submarine,” Poldan said. He pointed to a console where an Air Force officer was sitting. “We’ve got commo with it.”

“Do you think this plan will work?”

Admiral Poldan shrugged. “The submarine itself is not attempting to penetrate the shield — if the shield extends underwater — which we hope isn’t the case given that the foo fighter base wasn’t shielded. We think the probe has a good chance of getting through.”

“The foo fighter base probably didn’t have a guardian computer,” Duncan noted.

Poldan ignored that. “The probe is our best shot to get a look at what’s happening on the island.”

“No change in the shield?” Duncan asked.

“See for yourself.” The admiral handed her several sheets of satellite imagery. He pointed at a dozen red spots in the lower left corner. “That’s my fleet.”

His finger moved to a black circle that dwarfed the fleet’s images. “That’s the shield. The NSA has tried every spectrum their satellites are capable of to try to see through, and nothing has worked. That computer is hiding something from us. And the longer we sit here on our butts and do nothing, the more time they have to do whatever it is they’re doing.”

“Ma’am!” a voice called out from the other side of the communications shack. Duncan turned. “Yes?”

“NSA was doing an internal security check and they found an illegal tap in the Interlink from this area.”

Duncan knew the Interlink was the Department of Defense classified Internet system. “And?”

“They backtracked the tap and it’s coming from an uplink into FLTSATCOM from Easter Island. As far as NSA can determine, the guardian is into the DOD Interlink using some of the equipment we left behind when we abandoned the island.”

“How long has it been in?” she asked.

“Over a day.”

“And they’re just letting us know now!” She turned to the admiral. “Shut the satellite down!”

“No can do.” Admiral Poldan had listened to the exchange. “That FLTSATCOM is our only connection to headquarters.”

“Admiral, you’re letting the guardian into your Interlink and from there into the Internet. What the hell do you think it’s looking for?”

“I have no idea,” Poldan said stiffly.

Duncan stepped in close to the naval officer, who towered over her. “I don’t either, Admiral, but I highly recommend you shut down that link before it finds what it’s looking for — if it hasn’t already. Unless, of course,” she added, “there’s a reason you want the guardian infiltrating the Interlink? What exactly are your orders, Admiral?”

Poldan stared down at her for a second. “I’ll contact the NSA and have them shut the satellite down.”

He had been sitting in the same place for many days, wrapped in a heavy sleeping bag with a white camouflage sheet covering his position. He was wedged behind a blown-down pine tree, the branches providing excellent overhead concealment, as they were thick and covered with snow from the previous night.

There was always snow here, even at the height of summer. This was the northernmost end of Novaya Zemlya, an island seven hundred miles long that separated the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea. The north tip of the island projected into the Arctic Ocean. It was 560 miles from Norway, north and west.

Archangel was the closest Russian city, over five hundred miles away. The ocean surrounding the island was ice covered year round. The weather was extremely unpredictable, with fierce weeklong storms common. A large portion of the island, south of this location, had been used by the Soviet government for years as a nuclear test site. This precluded anyone coming north by land, even if they could make it across the brutal terrain that had no roads. There were only two ways to this spot: by air or by icebreaker.

The man was on a steep mountainside, overlooking a cluster of buildings huddled around a landing strip between the base of the mountain and a glacier to the east. The ice-covered ocean stretched as far as the eye could see beyond the small level cove of land, caught between mountain, sea, and glacier.

He heard the other coming long before he saw him. The other was making his way through the thick forest, moving slowly in the thick snow. The first one didn’t move, not even when the other stopped in front of him, breathing heavily and leaning on ski poles.

“I am Gergor,” he said simply.

The other caught his breath and nodded. “Coridan,” he introduced himself.

“Your trip went well?”

“It was difficult,” Coridan allowed.

Gergor nodded. “That is why this”—he gestured at the complex—“is here. Not like the Americans putting their Area 51 in the middle of their country where civilians could drive up to the boundary.”

“No one will drive here,” Coridan acknowledged.

Gergor pointed to his right. “Rest there for a minute.”

Coridan didn’t do that right away. Instead he pulled a set of binoculars up to his eyes, letting the sunglasses he wore fall to the end of their cord. He scanned the compound. “How many people work there?”

“Forty.”

“Security?”

“Half of them. The rest are scientists. This is the core of Section Four.” “It is smaller than I thought,” Coridan noted.

“Most of it is underground. Those buildings are just quarters for the security force and supply sheds. That gray concrete building holds the elevator access to the main facility.”

Coridan lowered the binoculars, revealing eyes that were the same as Gergor’s — elongated dark red pupils set against a lighter red eye. His hair was cut short and pure white. His skin, the little that was exposed, was pale.

“We are only two,” Coridan noted. He threw his backpack down.

“I have had many years to prepare,” Gergor said. “Do not worry. We are enough.”

The two sat still for several minutes as Coridan caught his breath.

“It is time.” Gergor pushed aside the white sheet and stood, snow falling off of him. He began walking down the hill. Coridan scrambled to gather his gear together.

Gergor was halfway to the Section IV compound by the time Coridan caught up to him.

“What are you going to do?” Coridan asked. “Knock on the front door?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Gergor said. He pulled a slim black controller from inside his heavy coat. “Let us knock.” He pressed the number one on the numeric pad.

Coridan staggered as the surface buildings erupted in violent explosions. When the smoke cleared, only the gray building that housed the elevator to the complex was still standing, the other buildings leveled.

“What did you do?” Coridan demanded.

“I told you I have had many years to prepare,” Gergor said. He continued walking. “I believe they heard our knock. But I don’t think they will open the door. So we must open it.”

He pressed the second button on the controller. The steel door on the front of the gray building blew open with a flash. Gergor led Coridan inside.

Two large stainless-steel doors stood at the end of a corridor. A security camera was above them, the light on it a steady red.

“The doors are six inches thick,” Gergor noted as they walked up to them. “The shaft is eight hundred meters deep. There are emergency explosives planted along the shaft designed to go off and bury the entire complex.”

Gergor smiled, revealing very smooth, even, white teeth. “Of course, I disabled the destruct long ago. I imagine someone down there is pressing a red button quite futilely, yet at the same time secretly relieved that it doesn’t work.”

“There will still be guards below,” Coridan said.

“They will be dead guards,” Gergor said. He walked to a vent shaft and ripped it open. He pulled a glass ball from inside his bulky clothes. A green, murky liquid filled it, glowing as if it were lit from inside. He dropped the ball into the shaft.

“It will take less than a minute,” Gergor said.

Almost immediately screams echoed up the air shaft, horrible undulating cries of pain. As Gergor had promised, though, within a minute there was only silence. “How do we get down?” Coridan asked.

“We ride,” Gergor said, hitting another button on the remote.

The doors slid open. “Will it be safe?”

Gergor stepped into the elevator and Coridan followed.

“It is safe now,” Gergor said as he pressed the down button and they descended.

The elevator came to a halt, but Coridan did not open the doors. He waited, checking his watch, until finally he was satisfied the gas had dissipated. Then he opened the doors.

“There’s Antarctica.”

Turcotte looked over the pilot’s shoulder, out the front windshield. Dark peaks, streaked with snow and ice, poked through the low-lying clouds, overlooking the ice-covered ocean.

“We’ll parallel the shore, then punch in when we’re closest to Scorpion Station,” the pilot added.

UNAOC had confirmed the location of the secret base STAAR had been headquartered in with a flyby. The flyby had also noted that the foo fighter had blasted the surface over the base badly. It had been impossible to determine from that, though, whether Scorpion Base had also been destroyed. The American Navy had airlifted an engineering unit to the site that had confirmed that the entranceway to the base was destroyed. The unit had begun digging, trying to get down the mile and a half of ice to the base.

As always, Turcotte knew, it was going to require someone on the ground to find out what the situation was. And, as he was used to in his military career, he was the person who got that honor.

Turcotte checked the map as they continued south and more peaks appeared along the coast. To the right was the Admiralty Range facing to the north; then the shoreline turned and headed south into the Ross Sea.

A single massive mountain appeared straight ahead, above the clouds, set apart from the others to the right: Mount Erebus, which actually formed an island just off the coast of Antarctica — Ross Island. Turcotte knew that McMurdo Station was on the far side of Ross Island, the largest man-made base in the continent. But where they were heading was far beyond that base, deep inside the continent. Looking over his shoulder to the back of the Osprey, Turcotte could see the Special Forces team in the cargo bay. He had no idea what they would find inside the base, so it was best to be prepared. The Osprey was a tilt-wing aircraft, capable of landing like a helicopter. A second Osprey followed them, carrying a HUMMV and a squad of Air Force Engineers to supplement the group already there.

Turcotte watched the slopes of Erebus come closer and then they punched into a thick cloud layer and all view was blanketed. The nose of the plane tilted up as the pilots made doubly sure they had plenty of sky between them and the mountain.

“The engineers have a beacon on the spot,” the pilot said. He pointed at his control panel. “We’re about two hours out.” The pilot turned his wheel and the plane headed over the coast and toward the interior of Antarctica.

They crossed the shoreline mountain range, and as far as they could see in front of them was just a rippling white surface.

“Hey, Captain,” one of the men in cockpit called out from his communications console. “Just got a message for you.”

“Go ahead,” Turcotte said.

“From a Lisa Duncan on board the George Washington. Says there is radio traffic between the guardian on Easter Island and Mars.”

“Both ways?” Turcotte asked.

“Both ways,” the man confirmed. “And also the guardian on Easter Island was into the Interlink and Internet for a while. They’ve cut off that link.” “Great,” Turcotte muttered.

Turcotte went back into the rear and sat down on the red web seating along the inside skin of the plane. He was tired. Upon getting back to Earth after destroying the Airlia fleet, he had been whisked to Washington for an in-depth debrief. He’d had only the one day off, shared with Lisa Duncan in her mountain home, before starting on this mission.

Despite his weariness, he was grateful simply to be alive. He knew others who had not been so fortunate.

He could clearly see Colonel Kostanov from Russia’s Section IV of the Interior Ministry — their version of Area 51. He had died on the slopes of Qian-Ling fighting off the advancing Chinese forces. Peter Nabinger was dead, his body unrecovered in the wreckage of the helicopter crash in mainland China. Kelly Reynolds was in the grasp of the guardian computer under Easter Island and had not been heard from since she radioed him to not destroy Aspasia. Von Seeckt was still alive, but barely, in the base hospital at Nellis Air Force Base outside Area 51. Of the original group that had uncovered the secret of that mysterious base, it looked as if only he and Duncan were still in the fight.

And from Duncan’s message it appeared the fight would go on.

Kincaid threw the imagery down in disgust. Wherever TL-SAT-9-3 was, he wasn’t going to be able to find it this way. The area he had had the spy satellite check showed only thick jungle. Using thermals or infrared wouldn’t help on an inert piece of metal.

TL-SAT-9-3 had been swallowed up by the jungle.

Kincaid’s computer beeped. He eagerly checked his e-mail, hoping he had another message from Yakov. When he had first received the e-mail message, Kincaid had checked in with Lisa Duncan and she had told him that Yakov was a Section IV operative. Given what had happened in China with Colonel Kostanov, another Section IV operative who had given his life so that Mike Turcotte and Peter Nabinger could escape from Qian-Ling, Duncan had told Kincaid to take Yakov seriously and check out the information.

But the message wasn’t from Yakov. Instead, it was from the CIA. He had asked for a check into the background of that satellite.

He read the short message: TL-SAT-9-3 had been launched by Ariane, the European Space Consortium, under contract to a civilian firm. No details about the satellite itself were available. The company that owned the satellite was called Earth Unlimited, and the report speculated that since that company dealt in mining, the satellite had been a ground-imaging sensor.

That didn’t make sense to Kincaid. Why would they have brought it down after only two days if its job was to take pictures from orbit? He scanned the rest of the message, which gave some information about Earth Unlimited. He paused as something caught his eyes. Nestled among a listing of two dozen subsidiaries of Earth Unlimited, a name jumped out at him: Terra-Lei. The same company that had discovered the ruby sphere in the cavern in the Great Rift Valley.

Yakov listened to the hiss of static coming from the earpiece of the SATPhone for ten seconds before pushing the off button. He knew he had dialed the right number — it was the same number he had used for two decades — but he carefully punched it in once more. And again, his ear was filled with static.

In those two decades the other end had always been answered by the second ring. Yakov knew there could only be one reason it wasn’t being picked up now — there was no one alive on the other end. Yakov had worked in the covert world long enough to know that, like an animal in the wild, a good operative had to adjust quickly and efficiently to any change in the environment they operated in. He didn’t want to accept what his ear was telling him, but he did. He shut the phone off, tucked it into his backpack, and continued on his way, already making new plans.