The Reply

CHAPTER 19

The members of the Special Forces team and their two straphangers finished loading their rucksacks onto the floor of the MC-130 and seated themselves along the right side of the plane on the cargo webbing seats. To Turcotte’s eye the team looked like a group of seals out of water, as they all wore black dry suits over their camouflage fatigues.

In the bustle of loading onto the plane Turcotte had not had a chance to talk to Duncan alone. Just a hurried good-bye and good luck and then the back ramp had come up, sealing them off from the outside world, and the turboprop engines kicked into life. Turcotte felt a little out of sorts, and he shook his head to clear it of extraneous thoughts and focus on the task at hand.

Turcotte had coordinated several checkpoints en route to the drop zone. The loadmaster in the back of the aircraft would relay the checkpoint number from the navigator to him as they crossed each one, keeping him oriented to where they were on the route. At checkpoint one, where the aircraft dropped altitude and headed for the coast of China, Turcotte would have the team start their inflight rig to put their parachutes on. The last checkpoint was six minutes from the drop zone, where Turcotte would start his jump commands.

Turcotte glanced at Nabinger, who looked most uncomfortable in his dry suit. The professor was probably beginning to regret his enthusiasm about Qian-Ling and what might be hidden in the tomb. Turcotte knew that Nabinger would regret it even more when the plane began its low-level flight across China. Pressler, the medic, started passing out Dramamine pills to those who wanted them. Turcotte knew the Dramamine would help reduce the motion sickness that was an integral part of any MC-130 flight. He made sure that Nabinger downed one.

The wheels of the MC-130 lifted off the tarmac and the plane roared into the night sky.

Duncan watched the plane until it was no longer visible. Then she walked back to the operations center. She looked at Zandra, hunched over the communications console for a few minutes. As she walked behind her, Zandra finishing whatever she’d been doing, then turned and faced her.

“Time to work on the plan to get them out of there, don’t you think?” Duncan asked.

Zandra pressed the tips of her fingers together. “Certainly. It’s already being done.”

“By who?”

“By a responsible agency,” Zandra replied.

“Who are you?” Duncan asked.

“I told you—”

“And I know it’s bullshit,” Duncan said. “I’ve been around Washington a long time and I have some connections. You’re not CIA. Hell, you’ve got more clout than the CIA. It would have taken the Agency a week to get that Air Force plane here to fly that mission and a ton of paperwork, but you had it here with less than twelve hours’ notice and with authorization to send it into Chinese airspace.”

“The authorization came from a presidential directive,” Zandra said. “You can verify that if you wish.”

“Not from a directive issued by this President,” Duncan said.

“Nevertheless, I do have my authority from a presidential directive,” Zandra said, “and you are required by law to support me.”

“Your execution of this mission does not bear the stamp of the CIA or any other government agency I’m familiar with,” Duncan said. “Nor did the Rift Valley operation.”

“You question me because I am efficient?” Zandra asked.

“I question you because I want to know who you really work for,” Duncan said. “And I’ve told you that,” Zandra said.

“What I’d really like,” Duncan said, leaning close to the other woman, “is for those people you just sent to be brought back. They are not expendable, do you understand?”

Zandra didn’t blink or avert her gaze. “I understand quite clearly.”

Che Lu and Ki had passed the four-way intersection twenty minutes ago and continued straight through, taking what had originally been the right-hand passage that headed deeper into the mountain tomb. At first the passageway ran straight and slightly down, but now it began to do wide turns, right, then left, then back right, going down at a steeper angle until Che Lu suspected they were below the base of the mountain and into the Earth itself.

It was slow and tense going as the fear that any second they might trip another trap weighed heavily on their psyches. Despite her fear Che Lu was amazed at the length and exact construction of the tunnel they were moving down. The walls and floor were perfectly smooth and the tunnel seemed to go on forever.

Of course, she’d had to reevaluate her entire frame of reference about the tomb since seeing the holographic alien figure in the main tunnel. Ancient Chinese workers had not carved this tunnel out of rock. She had been so concerned simply about survival that she had not taken the thought farther than that, but as her mind went in that direction she felt the very roots of her knowledge base suffer tremors of uncertainty.

What was true now? What was the real history of her people and the people of Earth, for that matter?

“There!” Ki huffed, suddenly halting.

The tunnel widened ahead, opening into a chamber, the far end, sides, or ceiling of which their weak flashlight could not reach. Ki looked over his shoulder. “What now, Mother-Professor?”

“We go in, follow the wall to the left so we don’t get lost.”

But that wasn’t necessary, because as soon as they stepped out of the opening of the tunnel, a very dim glow appeared high above their heads. Both instinctively stepped back, afraid, but the light went dark.

“Ah,” Che Lu spat out. She was tired of this tomb’s games. She stepped forward several paces into the chamber. The glow came back, growing stronger with each passing second. Soon it was as if a minisun were hovering about a quarter mile above their heads.

Che Lu turned her head, taking in the scope of her surroundings. After so long limited to the confines of the small scope of light from the flashlight, she was staggered by what her senses revealed.

She was inside a massive cavern. Metal beams loomed up from the nearest wall and disappeared overhead, curving to follow the dome ceiling around to come down, she supposed, on the far side, which was hard to see because of the obstructions in the way. Obviously, the Airlia had not trusted the rock enough to hold without additional support. There were numerous large objects scattered about on the floor, the exact purpose of which was indeterminate. Most were in the form of black rectangles ranging from a few feet in size to one over a hundred meters long and sixty high. There were other shapes scattered about here and there also. As far as Che Lu could tell, the far wall was well over a mile and a half away.

To the far left was a bright green light glowing out of the wall, brighter even than the one overhead. Unable to determine the scale of the light, Che Lu had no idea how far away it was, but she estimated at least a half mile.

“What is this?” Ki whispered.

Che Lu felt the same need to speak quietly, awed by the scale of their surroundings. The place felt old and abandoned, with a thin layer of dust covering the floor, which was the same smoothly cut rock as that of the tunnel. “I do not know,” Che Lu replied.

“This is not a tomb,” Ki said.

“No.” Che Lu realized her student hadn’t yet grasped all they had experienced yet. “It isn’t of human origin either.”

“Ah!” Ki yelled and stepped back as a red circle appeared in front of them. Che Lu held her place, recognizing the beginning of a hologram. Soon the same figure was in front of them that had greeted them in the corridor. It spoke for several minutes in the same musical voice, occasionally pointing over its shoulder at parts of the room, then it disappeared.

“Let’s go back,” Ki suggested.

Che Lu regarded him curiously. “Back where?”

“Back to the others.”

“And then?” she asked. “We wait to die?” She pointed at a place the figure had also pointed at several times; where the strong green light was emanating. “We go there.” She started walking, not even waiting to see if Ki followed. She had no fear now. The message this time was different from the one in the tunnel, she could feel that. The first had been a warning; this one, well, she wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it had not been a warning. She didn’t bother with the bamboo cane and pole.

She led them amid the machinery, some of which hummed with power.

“Look!” Ki cried out.

Che Lu looked in the direction he was pointing. There were three men moving between several of the large objects, about five hundred yards away, moving toward their position.

Che Lu instinctively grabbed Ki and pulled him back. The men were out of sight now, behind something. Che Lu took a deep breath.

Ki had pulled a small knife out of his belt and was gripping it with white knuckles.

“Put that away,” Che Lu said sharply.

“But—”

One thing Che Lu had definitely noticed about the figures was the AK-74 weapons each held. Che Lu slowly looked around the edge of the next machine, Ki right behind her. Looking ahead, she could see one of the men about eighty yards ahead, halted and silhouetted against the green light source.

Where were the other two? Che Lu thought. Her instincts were tingling. Turning, she froze, looking into the end of two AK-74’s. Che Lu looked from the muzzles to the heads; they were not Chinese, that was for sure. She combined the weapons with the camouflaged smocks they wore and made a guess as to their origin.

“Please do not shoot,” Che Lu said in Russian.

The taller of the two replied in perfect Mandarin. “Who are you?”

“I am Professor Che Lu of Beijing University. And you are?”

“Colonel Kostanov of the Russian Republic. How did you get in?” “We blew open the main doors.”

Kostanov raised an eyebrow. “Are they still open?”

“No. The army shut them behind us. We are trapped.”

Kostanov smiled, revealing even teeth. “Ah, then you join us and our party, eh, Professor? You are either very brave or very foolish to be here so poorly equipped. Or perhaps you know something about all this”—his weapon made a small arc—“that we do not know?”

Che Lu shrugged. “What I thought I knew about this tomb is obviously not true, so I think I know nothing you do not know. But I find it curious,” Che Lu continued, “to find Russians inside one of China’s most ancient archaeological sites.”

“That’s the least of the strangeness you have found here,” Kostanov said. He shrugged. “I suppose I ought to just kill you both right now and continue on with my mission. Unfortunately, since I am unable to do the latter, I suppose I won’t do the former; for the moment that is.”

“Why are you here?” Che Lu said.

The muzzle of Kostanov’s weapon lowered and his free hand encompassed the chamber. “You need ask?”

“How did you know this was here?”

“High runes,” he answered simply. “We are not complete idiots. We can read some of them. More now that Professor Nabinger has made some of his findings public.”

“How did you get in?” Che Lu asked.

“A side tunnel leading directly to this chamber.” Kostanov pointed to the side of the chamber opposite where Che Lu and Ki had come in. “You came in from there?” he asked, directing his hand toward the tunnel they had come out of.

“Yes.”

“That was closed yesterday,” Kostanov said.

“You can’t get out either?” It was a question she had to ask even though Che Lu knew the answer, and now she knew why the army had been here and why her door had been blocked so quickly.

“No. At least not the way we came in,” Kostanov answered. “We went up to the door but it was sealed from the outside, as we already knew. The other tunnel led nowhere….” His voice trailed off.

“And the main way down, you tried that, did you not?”

Kostanov nodded. “I lost one of my men there.”

Che Lu pointed. “And the green light?”

“A control room of some sort,” Kostanov answered. He smiled. “We have not been foolish enough or desperate enough to start pushing buttons whose function we do not now. Not yet,” he added.

“How long have you been in here?” Che Lu asked.

“Three days now. It was dark when we came in. Nothing stirring. But two days ago the power came on in the control room and this room when you entered it. Perhaps you had something to do with that?”

“I wish I did,” Che Lu answered, “because that would mean I could get us out of here.”

“How long have you been in here?” Kostanov asked.

“We entered less than a day ago.”

“You are not as well supplied as we were,” Kostanov noted, “but we have reached your level now, as our food and water are gone.”

“What is all this?” Che Lu asked.

“I don’t know,” Kostanov said. “We have been unable to get into any of the containers. Some seem to have machinery inside that is operating. Others are silent.” His shoulder shrugged under the camouflage. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Che Lu pointed. “Let me see that control room.”