The Sphinx

CHAPTER 22

At the Grumman plant in Calverton, California, an F-14 Tomcat took six months to make it from the beginning of the assembly line to the end. The micro- and nanorobots on Easter Island reversed that process in two hours. They carried the pieces of the airplane off the wreck of the George Washington and laid them out on the tarmac of the Easter Island airfield.

The guardian integrated information it had gathered over the Department of Defense Interlink and the objects lying on the concrete runway. Two parts of the plane especially interested it right now: the AN/APG-71 radar and the AIM-54 Phoenix missiles that had been attached under the wings.

The guardian examined both objects, then gave orders. A cluster of microrobots swarmed over both, breaking them down into portable pieces, then trekked up the side of Rano Kau to the highest point. Then, just as quickly, they put it all back together with some minor modifications.

The AN/APG-71 radar was placed on a tripod. A line to power the radar was run from the thermal coupling underneath the volcano. An antenna for the radar was constructed in fifteen minutes nearby, mounted on a rotating base.

With five kilowatts of juice surging through it, the radar system came alive, reaching out over seven hundred kilometers. It picked up the lurking fleet, located well over the visual horizon three hundred kilometers offshore.

The AIM-54 Phoenixes were mounted on racks, pointed out to sea. The Phoenix was the navy’s top-of-the-line weapon, costing over a million dollars apiece. Its range was over a hundred kilometers, with an onboard computer that allowed it to obtain and lock on to fast-moving targets. A link was established between the system and the guardian computer and all was set.

Below the shadow of Rano Kau, more people were moving about, the survival rate growing higher as the guardian continually adjusted its microvirus to control their nervous system.

Turcotte pulled himself to a sitting position. “Yakov?” His voice echoed, indicating he was in a large open space. “Yakov?” The ride in the tube had gone on for an extremely long time, then he had suddenly fallen into space, dropped at least ten feet, and landed on a solid floor that had knocked the wind out of him.

“Yes, yes.” The Russian’s rumbling voice came from somewhere to the left.

“Do you have the light?”

“I dropped it when I fell out of that tube,” Yakov said. “It should be somewhere close by.”

Turcotte reached down and felt the ground beneath… pitted concrete that was slightly damp. He stretched his arms out, testing to see if everything worked properly. He felt bruised but not broken. The muzzle of the AKSU had caused the most damage, digging into his left side and leaving a bloody gouge and sore rib in its wake. He edged toward Yakov’s voice, carefully checking the surface in front of him. He had no idea how deep they were, but they had slid for a long time.

“I’ve got it,” Yakov suddenly announced. “Damn bulb is broken. There is another in the handle. Wait.”

When the penlight came on, it speared through the dark. Turcotte followed the light as Yakov slowly swept it in a circle around them. They were on a rough concrete floor… check that, Turcotte realized as the light halted on a massive spring to his right running up into the darkness above, he was on the concrete roof of a bunker. Turcotte knew that such shelters were hung on huge springs and placed on shock absorbers, in the hope that whatever was inside could sustain a nuclear blast this far underground. Looking up, he could just see the opening of the pipe they had fallen from. Probably an air conduit, Turcotte guessed. The walls beyond the edge of the concrete roof were of raw rock. There was about ten feet of separation between the edge of the bunker and the cavern wall.

“There.” Yakov switched the direction of the light.

There was something ten feet in front of them, sticking up a few inches. Turcotte and Yakov crawled over to it… it was a metal hatch with a round latch on top.

Yakov glanced over. “What do you think?”

“I think we’re lucky to be alive,” Turcotte answered.

“Should we see what is inside?”

“Definitely.”

Yakov stuck the end of the penlight in his mouth, clamping down on it with his teeth. With great effort, muscles straining in the dark, they turned the rusted latch. It gave way slowly, emitting great shrieks of protest.

“If there’s anyone in there, they know we’re coming,” Turcotte said.

“I don’t think anyone has been down here in a long time.”

The latch finished turning. With all their might, Yakov and Turcotte pulled up on it. With a clang, the hatch fell open. A faint light shown up out of the hole. Turcotte leaned over and looked down. The floor was over fifteen feet below, a steel ladder leading down to a flat concrete floor. The light came from the right, but even sticking his head down into the opening, he couldn’t see, as the concrete top was more than three feet thick.

Turcotte lowered his legs into the hole, holding himself in place with his hands on either side of the opening. “I’ll let you know if it’s safe.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Yakov said. “We have nowhere else to go.”

“What is this?” Tolya asked the lieutenant. A narrow tunnel, obviously very old judging from the tool marks on the wall, was at the end of the more modern shaft they had been following. Shining a light down the tunnel, Tolya could see that it descended and was curving slightly to the left. Tolya checked the tracker. His object was very far below and slightly to the left front.

“Uh… sir, that’s not on any chart I have. According to what I have, this is the end.”

“Then I no longer need you?” Tolya turned, the muzzle of his submachine gun pointed at the other officer, his finger resting on the trigger.

The engineer’s face had gone pale. “We have to get out, sir, don’t we? I have the charts. The… ”

Whatever else the man was going to say was stifled in a three-round burst that knocked him against the side of the tunnel. Tolya grabbed the map case and slipped the sling over his shoulder. “Now I have the charts.”

He signaled for the men to continue.

On board the Anzio the ship’s sophisticated radar array picked up the probing finger of the AN/APG-71 radar. Alarms rang and the ship turned hard away from Easter Island. Missile and gun crews went on maximum alert until it was realized that the radar was not approaching and there were no inbound missiles.

“What the hell does it mean?” Captain Breuber, the commander of the Anzio, demanded of his chief weapons officer, Lieutenant Granger.

“From the signal,” Granger said, “it appears to me that the radar is ground based, not moving. It’s definitely located us. But at that range, there’s nothing that was on board the Washington that can reach us.”

Breuber considered that. “But there was plenty that could intercept an incoming missile, wasn’t there?”

Granger nodded. “Sidewinders, Sparrows, and Phoenixes. Besides the ship’s own SAMs and air defense guns.”

Breuber rubbed his chin. “Which means we have a problem for our launch.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can we beat the AN/APG-71?”

“That’s top of the line, sir. The best our Navy has.”

“Lieutenant, I know that. I want to know if we can beat it. Because if we can’t, our Tomahawk is not going to be able to do the job it’s supposed to.”

“Well, we built it, sir. We have the specs on it.” Seeing the look in his commander’s eyes, Granger quickly answered. “Yes, sir. We can beat the radar.”

“All right. Anything from the Springfield?”

“No, sir, but they had to have heard the message.”

“Good.” Breuber looked to the horizon, beyond which lay the shield covering Easter Island. “Not much longer now.”

Che Lu came up behind Elek. The hybrid creature was standing at the top of the tunnel that descended to the lowest level of Qian-Ling. Twenty meters in front of Elek, the holographic image of the Airlia was playing. The legs and arms were longer than a human’s, the body shorter in comparison. The head was large, covered with bright red hair. The skin was pure white, without a mark. The ears had long lobes that almost touched the shoulders. The eyes were bright red under fierce red eyebrows, and the pupils were elongated like a cat’s.

The figure wavered in the air, the descending corridor behind dimly visible. The right arm was raised up, a six-fingered hand on the end, palm open toward them. A deep, guttural sound echoed up the tunnel, coming from the figure, but the language was singsong. The figure spoke for almost a minute, then faded out of sight.

“Do you know any more than when we came in here?” Che Lu asked as Elek turned from where the image had been and spotted her.

“I know the key isn’t here. I know that the guardian doesn’t know where the key was sent.”

“That was important enough for all those men you brought here to die for?”

“If the key is not here, it allows others to search elsewhere,” Elek said simply. He regarded her with his red eyes. “What have you discovered? Anything worth the deaths?”

Che Lu shook her head and lied. “No.”

“There is something else I have learned, though,” Elek added. “A way we can open up a door to the outside world.” He turned and walked away, heading down toward the cavern. Che Lu followed, curious to see what could get them out of their current trap.

Elek strode among the black boxes that filled the floor and halted before a large one, about twenty meters wide by thirty long. He went to a hexagonal panel in the center of the short side. Che Lu could see that the hexagon was divided into numerous smaller, six-sided sections.

Elek pressed on several of them in a pattern too quickly for Che Lu to keep track. The panels were lit with an inner light, revealing high rune markings on each small section. Elek stared at it for a little while, then again ran his hands across the panels, almost as if playing a musical instrument, so quickly did his fingers move.

With a rumble, the black cover slid back. Che Lu moved to the side along with Elek to see what was revealed. Lo Fa came walking up, alerted by the strange noise.

“What is it?” the old man asked as the cover came to a halt. He blinked as he took in the form. “It is a metal dragon!”

A large, silvery device, ten meters long by four wide, rested on a cradle of black metal. It was indeed shaped like a dragon, with a high arced neck above a sleek body. The two eyes were dark red and glittered in the light coming down from the bright orb overhead. The mouth was open, revealing a row of black teeth. Two short, stubby wings poked out from the body, extending less than two meters on each side. It appeared to have been damaged at one time: A long black smear about a meter wide on the left side extended from just forward of the wing to the base of the tapered tail. At one point along the smear the silver skin had been breached, revealing wires and tubes inside.

“It is Chi Yu,” Che Lu said. “The Dragon Lord of the South who fought with Shi Huangdi!”

The moon highlighted the face of the Sphinx. Professor Mualama had watched the shadow of the night horizon creep down the face inch by inch over the last several hours, his attention caught between the marvel in front of him and searching the road leading to Cairo for Duncan to arrive.

He had located the block he thought needed to be removed. It was on the right paw, at the base. He’d knelt in the sand and cleared away the bottom of the stone with his bare hands. If he had had his own vehicle and equipment he would have tried to open it himself, but Hassar had left him standing between the paws after Mualama turned down his offer to return to Cairo. Duncan had gone with Hassar to try to contact UNAOC and get Sterling’s successor to put pressure on the Egyptians.

For the hundredth time, Mualama looked to the road, searching for his crew. He checked his watch. He walked between the paws once more, feeling the weight of the scepter in his backpack. He placed his hands on the stone and pressed his palms flat. He could feel the time, the millennia that had passed since the stone had been shaped.

He looked once more to the road.

What he didn’t notice was the figure standing on the temple wall that surrounded the body of the Sphinx. Wrapped in dull-gray robes, the figure had not moved once the entire evening, waiting as Mualama waited.

Captain Forster had walked through the entire ship, poking his head into every compartment where a member of his crew was, personally making sure they were all ready for the upcoming mission.

He could see it in his men’s eyes that they didn’t have much optimism that they would be able to escape. Hearing the Washington hit the island had been a rather devastating experience. If whatever was on the island could take down an aircraft carrier, what chance did they have? Plus, they had all been nearby when the Pasadena was destroyed by the foo fighters, hearing their sister ship go down into the depths, the sound like that of popcorn popping as bulkheads gave way.

After going on all decks, from the rear of the sonar sphere in the bow to the engine room adjacent to the reactor halfway back in the sub, he returned to the control room. Not long now.

Larry Kincaid studied the new imagery from the Hubble under a magnifying glass. The “Face” had definitely changed in the last forty-eight hours. He looked up at Forrester, who had just brought the photographs to the Cube conference room. “Well?”

“The black smear is an army of robots, average size about six feet long.”

“What are they doing?”

“Excavation,” Forrester said. He pointed. “These four piles are the rubble they’ve taken off the top of the ‘Face.’ A rather large amount. Estimates by imagery specialists put it on the order of… ”

“What are they excavating?” Kincaid interrupted the scientist.

Forrester slid another photograph across. “This is the latest. They’ve reached whatever it is, but they haven’t fully cleared the surface area. You can see this small area in the top right quadrant. Appears they’ve reached some structure made of the same black metal as the mother-ship.”

Kincaid’s pulse doubled its pace. “Another ship?”

Forrester shook his head. “I don’t believe so. It’s something else.”

“What something else?”

“We don’t know yet.”

The possibilities that he could imagine raced through Kincaid’s mind, and then he realized it was the possibilities he couldn’t imagine that scared him the most.

The interior of the chamber was one large concrete vault, stretching over a hundred meters in each direction. Steel beams ran from floor to ceiling every ten meters. It was filled with crates, dimly lit by the glow of a half-dozen lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. The ladder they’d climbed down was in the exact center.

“Someone must come down here to change the lightbulbs,” Turcotte said. “So there has to be a way out.”

Yakov pointed toward the left. “There is a door over there. I would think maintenance of this room was Pasha’s job.”

“This is the Archives?”

“We best hope it is. I would prefer not to fall through any more pipes.” Yakov rubbed dust off the side of the nearest crate, exposing Cyrillic writing. “‘Recovered from German Aviation Ministry, 1945.’”

Turcotte looked around and spotted a rusty crowbar resting against one of the crates. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” He jammed the edge under one of the borders and pried it up. After several minutes’ work, he had the side off, revealing a thick glass surface, heavily covered in dust. The case was six feet high by four wide and deep. It looked as if it had not been touched in decades, as did most of the piles of boxes and files in the room.

Turcotte rubbed the sleeve of his shirt against the glass, leaving streaks, gradually clearing a few inches. He leaned forward.

“Oh, jeez!” he hissed, stepping back as he saw the dark black eye staring back at him out of the yellow-colored orb, the sphere floating in some liquid.

“Ah, Okpashnyi’s twin,” Yakov noted. “We are in the right place.”

Turcotte looked more closely. He could see the crude sutures where the sphere had been put back together after autopsy.

Turcotte checked the other crates nearby. There were several wood boxes with the Nazi eagle stenciled on them. He flipped open the lid on the closest one. It was full of files. He pulled the front file out. A drawing of Okpashnyi was the first piece of paper in there.

“You read German?” he asked Yakov.

“A little.”

“Can you tell which of these are important and which aren’t? Which one holds the Spear if it is here?” Turcotte asked.

“I will check.”

As Yakov moved about rubbing dust off crates, Turcotte pulled out his SATPhone. He knew it wouldn’t work this far underground, but it was a sign of the straits they were in that he flipped open the cover anyway and pressed the on button. As he had expected, nothing but static came out of the earpiece.

“This is strange.” Yakov’s voice floated through the room.

Turcotte walked over to where the Russian was prying open the top on a crate. “What do you have?”

“Files reference the Ark.” Yakov pulled a folder out of the crate and opened it. He quickly read the opening page. “An after-action report from an SS reconnaissance.”

“Where?”

“Turkey.” Yakov’s lips were moving as he read. “In 1942.” He turned a page and held out a photo. “Aerial recon.”

Turcotte took the black-and-white picture. It showed a snow-covered mountainside. “What am I looking at?”

“Mount Ararat.”

“Ararat.” Turcotte made the connection. “Noah’s Ark?” He shook his head. “Wrong ark.”

“When you are not certain what you are looking for,” Yakov said, “you cannot afford to ignore anything.” He was looking at the photo. He tapped the corner with a thick finger. “What is that?”

A long object was embedded in the ice. Turcotte had some experience with overhead imagery, but the quality of this photography was poor. “Probably a spur of rock.”

“Or Noah’s Ark?” Yakov asked.

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Turcotte asked, even as he threw the folder into Pasha’s satchel. “Let’s keep looking. We’ve got to find the Spear.”