The Sphinx

CHAPTER 6

Mualama and his nephew Lago were both startled when a long cacophony of thunderclaps rolled down the mountain, following on the heels of two dozen lightning strikes that had split the gloom in less than five seconds. If there was to be an end to the world, Lago figured it would sound very much like what he was listening to. They were in a netherworld lost among the clouds. Snow, ice, and rock were the only things visible around them.

Sweating was no longer a problem as Lago pulled his jacket tight around the neck to keep out the chill. His uncle was seated on his pack, which rested on the foot-deep snow, reading the journal once more and looking about.

They had cleared the tree line at eleven thousand feet an hour before, and it was now well past noon. Lago knew that if they did not begin their descent soon, they would be trapped on the mountain overnight. The cold did not scare him as much as the incessant lightning. He’d never seen the like. Now he knew why these mountains were avoided and why the locals believed the gods forbade travel there.

It was the worst of two worlds… Amazonian-type jungle the first two-thirds of the journey, followed by Alpine terrain with the most awful weather in an incessant mist that threatened to make them lose their bearings. Technically the climb was not difficult, but the weather made it hazardous.

Lago’s eyes continued to search the misty gloom as his uncle studied his notes. It was as if the mountain were alive, telling them with the thunder to turn back, to return to the normal world.

His uncle abruptly stood and slid the book back into his pack. “Not much farther.”

They tramped up the steep trail, tied together by a twenty-foot section of rope, Lago leading the way. As the altitude increased, occasionally Lago had to put in protection… a piton, a nut in a small rock crevasse… and clip the rope in. His uncle would pull the protection out as he passed.

“Uncle.” Lago paused after one particularly tricky section of climbing. “We must turn back or we will be trapped by darkness.”

“Not much farther” was Mualama’s response. “We do not have to reach the very top.”

That was the best news Lago had heard in a while. “What are we looking for?”

“We will know when we see it.”

Afternoon was sliding into early evening, and Lago had no idea how far they were from the summit. The rocks were now sheathed in ice. Visibility had increased to about a hundred feet, but darkness would put an end to that.

“There!” Mualama was pointing to the right of their narrow trail. A spectacular wall of icicles over fifty feet long and twenty feet wide dangled from a rock cornice that extended out from the mountain’s side. “Would you call that the Devil’s Thumb?”

Lago squinted up. The spur of rock might indeed be called that when viewed in profile.

“And this is the Devil’s Veil?” Mualama walked to the wall of six-inch-thick icicles that covered the depression under the spur. Lago would have thought them quite beautiful if not for the fact that they were on the side of a sixteen-thousand-foot mountain, the temperature was dropping, and night was less than an hour off.

Mualama pressed his face and a flashlight against the ice. He moved along the wall, peering in.

“There it is!” The excitement in his uncle’s voice was evident. Lago joined him, looking. There was a dark square on the other side, the exact nature of which was unclear. He jumped back as Mualama swung the ice ax in his hands and it splintered one of the icicles, a four-foot-long shard crashing to the ground. “Come on!” Mualama yelled. “Help me!”

All eyes were on Yakov, the question prompted by Lexina hanging over the table. The Russian got up and walked over to a small table on the side of the room. He reluctantly poured a glass of water. “Haven’t you stocked anything stronger yet?” he asked Major Quinn.

There was no answer, nor did Turcotte think Yakov had expected one. He knew the Russian was digesting this new information. Yakov sat back down, then looked at Duncan. “Do you have the key this Lexina creature wants?”

“No.”

Yakov’s bushy eyebrows contracted. “Then why does this creature think you have it?”

“The first time she asked me, while we were combating the Black Death, I told her we had it, trying to get more information out of her,” Duncan said.

“That was a mistake,” Yakov said. “Now, if you tell Lexina you do not have the key, the creature will think you are lying and follow through on her threat”

“What is Strategicheskii Zvyezda?” Turcotte finally asked, tired of the verbal sparring.

“You have to understand… ” Yakov began, but Turcotte cut him off.

“What is it? Can it do what Lexina threatened?”

Yakov slowly nodded. “Strategicheskii Zvyezda-… the long form for what was called in classified circles Stratzyda… means ‘Strategic Star.’”

Turcotte put a hand to his forehead. “This doesn’t sound good.”

Yakov continued. “Stratzyda was launched in 1988, just before the end of the Cold War. A one-hundred-ton payload over thirty-seven meters long and four meters wide.

“It was put into orbit four hundred miles up. We knew your tracking systems would pick it up, so we fed the world a cover story. We said it was a first-stage experimental platform in preparation for launching our Mir space station. But it was not that, of course. It was… is… a weapons platform designed to…” Yakov stopped and took a deep drink from his glass, his face tightening when he remembered it was water, not vodka.

“What kind of weapons?” Duncan’s voice was cold.

“Thirty-two one-megaton, cobalt-salted, nuclear warheads with their own reentry engines, pretargeted, as Stratzyda passes over the center of your country, to blanket the United States with a grid pattern that will ensure every square inch is covered with a lethal dose of radioactive material.”

“You idiots.” Duncan’s comment filled the stunned silence that followed. “Our own sword against us,” Turcotte muttered.

The Secretary of Defense’s motorcade departed the Pentagon and headed north along the George Washington Expressway, paralleling the Potomac. A lead and trial car contained bodyguards, sandwiching the limousine holding the Honorable William Wickham.

Wickham was going to the White House to plead with the President to give him nuclear weapons release with regard to Easter Island. The Navy had a plan to attempt to probe the shield once more, but Admiral Poldan, the commander of Task Force 78, which surrounded the island, wanted to do more than just probe. Wickham agreed with the admiral. The takeover of the Warfighter satellite and the destruction of Atlantis had been the final shove, landing the Secretary of Defense solidly in the camp of those in the Pentagon who believed that all-out war against the aliens and their supporters had to be waged.

Wickham paused in his musings as he saw the familiar landscape of Arlington National Cemetery out the left window of the limo. He always took this route into the capital, because the numerous rows of white crosses that stretched across the green fields overlooking the capital were a constant reminder to him of the weight of the decisions he had to make and advise the President to make. It was because Wickham felt the responsibility that would be his if his recommendations caused more young men and women to be buried that he had urged caution and restraint to this point, but the attack on the hangar at Area 51, on top of the loss of the shuttles and the submarine Pasadena to foo fighters and the entrapment of the Springfield, had changed that stance.

The three vehicles turned east onto the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Wickham turned his attention from the cemetery, which was now behind them, to the Lincoln Memorial, which was directly ahead on the other side of the river. The going was slow, because one of the lanes of eastbound traffic was closed due to construction.

Wickham knew the severe pressure the President was under from the isolationists and that it would be a hard sell to get authorization to nuke Easter Island. He was considering arguments he could use, when he was jerked forward, almost falling off the rear seat when the driver slammed on the brakes.

“What the hell?” Wickham reached for the intercom to the driver, when he saw directly ahead what had caused the halt. A backhoe had rumbled out of the construction lane between the lead car and the limo. The backhoe turned, the heavy steel shovel now pointing at the front windshield of the limousine and coming closer.

“Get me out of there, George,” Wickham yelled into the intercom.

The driver threw the limo into reverse and abruptly backed into the trail car, fenders crumpling. Wickham fumbled with door as the shovel came down on the front seat, spearing through the bulletproof windshield, pinning the driver against the seat. The steel blade sliced the man in two as it buckled the frame of the car.

Wickham pulled on the latch, trying to get the door open, but the entire car was twisted, the metal bent and unyielding. He could hear shots, his guards firing at the driver of the backhoe. The blade pulled free of the front of the limousine and the backhoe advanced, large tires climbing up onto the twisted metal. Through the tinted sunroof Wickham could see the blade looming overhead.

Outside, the guards from the first car blazed away at the man driving the backhoe, partially protected by the metal roll cage that surrounded him. Bullets ricocheted off metal, the driver ignoring everything but the rear half of the car in front of him. As a round ripped through his chest, he slammed forward the lever controlling the shovel and it dropped, crashing through the top of the car.

Wickham dove to avoid the blade as it smashed down. The edge caught his ankles, severing his feet from his body and momentarily pinning him in place. The pain exploded along his nervous system, almost causing him to black out.

The driver pulled back on the lever, edging it in the direction of the Secretary of Defense. A bodyguard was climbing up the side of the backhoe. As the guard fired a fatal shot through the driver’s head, the man’s hand slammed the lever forward one last time.