Devil's Sea

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dane could see a destroyer circling the perimeter below, the submersible on one side of the flight deck, already rigged to a crane, ready to be lowered. With a slight bounce, the helicopter landed, and Dane slid open the cargo bay door and got out, joined by Loomis. Foreman was waiting for them, wearing a one-piece black jumpsuit.

“I’m going with you,” Foreman said to Dane.

“But, sir—“ Loomis began, but Foreman cut him off.

“Mr. Dane thinks I always send others in harm’s way,” Foreman said. “I thought I’d show him differently.”

Dane knew that wasn’t quite true. Foreman wanted to go to the graveyard and search for his brother’s plane. Still, he felt no need to mention that in front of Loomis. Dane quickly changed into a similar black suit and rejoined Foreman on the deck. The hatches were open on the two spheres that made up the crew compartments of Deepflight, and the pilot and navigator were already on board. Dane followed Foreman up a small ladder and then down into the small sphere. The hatch was closed behind them and screwed shut.

Dane lay down on the padded bottom of the sphere, ignoring Foreman, who was checking screens and gauges as if he had a clue how the thing operated. Dane closed his eyes and allowed his mind to roam, sensing the ocean around them as the submersible was lifted off the deck and lowered into the water. There was a jolt as the crane hook was released by divers. The nose of the submersible titled forward, and they were on their way.

Dane picked up no threat in the immediate area. He closed his eyes and within a minute was asleep as Deepflight continued its long descent to the bottom of the world.

He woke with a nudge of Foreman’s foot in his chest. “We’re at the door.”

Dane looked over the CIA man’s shoulder at one of the video displays. The flat, black metal extended in all directions.

“Any sign of activity in the gate?” Dane asked.

“Nagoya is monitoring from the FLIP, and he’s picked up nothing.”

Dane could see they were moving down along the wall. “How deep are we?”

“Ten thousand, five hundred meters,” Foreman said. He tapped the screen and spoke into the headset he wore. “That’s it. Go in there.”

A dark circle was in the center of the metal, exactly as it had been in the Milwaukee Deep in the Atlantic Ocean. It grew closer as the pilot directed them toward it. Dane felt the same strange sensation of disorientation as they passed through; then they were in.

The submersible surfaced inside the huge chamber, exactly in the center. Dane waited calmly, Foreman not so relaxed, as the pilot prepared the craft to allow them to exit. Finally, the green light came on next to the hatch above their heads, and Foreman spun the handle, slowly unscrewing the hatch.

Dane followed him out, balancing on the grid that surrounded the rear sphere. For security purposes, they’d agreed that the pilot and copilot would remain secure in the forward sphere for the mission.

“My God!”

It was the most emotion Dane had ever seen Foreman express. The black beach was littered with hundreds — thousands — of planes and ships. The spectacle was overwhelming both in number and variety. A clipper ship sat next to an oil tanker, next to a cluster of Polynesian rafts, next to a rowboat, next to the Chinese junk; all in just two hundred yards of beach. What was most disconcerting was the absolute stillness of everything. There was no sign of life in the graveyard, just as there hadn’t been in the Atlantic one.

“There!” Foreman clutched Dane’s arm, his fingers digging in painfully. A cluster of planes were just above the waterline. “That’s my flight. The tail numbers match. And the nose painting. That’s my brother’s plane.”

Foreman was already giving orders over the intercom for the pilot to head that way. Dane was looking about, not certain what he was searching for — something out of place, like the etching on the sail of the Scorpion or the Atlantean ship he had found in the other graveyard.

Deepflight slowly moved through the water toward the shore where the planes were. Dane saw a Russian submarine in mint condition except where the power plant had been; the deck plates had been sliced off, and the reactor was gone. A modern Japanese destroyer rested on the black beach, slightly canted because of its keel. Numerous dried blood trails were all over the side of it, ending abruptly where the waterline must have been.

There were several Flying Fortresses, lined up wingtip to wingtip, their silver skin gleaming. Dane startled when he read the name scripted on the nose of one of the planes: Enola Gay.

“Foreman,” Dane tapped the other man.

“What?”

Dane simply pointed at the plane.

Foreman shrugged. “Yeah. I knew about that. It’s in the files, classified top secret, Q-clearance. The first Enola Gay disappeared on the initial mission to drop the bomb. Lucky they had three bombs, not two, like history books have recorded. You can bet there were some scared people in the White House when they got that report. They covered it up pretty well, don’t you think?”

It was almost as if Foreman was telling him the sky was blue.

“And still, even after that,” Foreman’s voice took on an edge now,” they didn’t want to believe the gates were a threat. Lost in flight, cause unknown was the official determination for the first Enola Gay. You know how many lost in flights, or lost at sea, cause unknowns are on file?”

Foreman didn’t wait for an answer. “Over fifty years I’ve tried to convince them. No one wanted to listen to me. No one wanted to know the truth. But they know now, don’t they?”

“What truth?” Dane asked. “We know where those planes and ships are now, but we still have no clue why they’re here.”

Foreman pointed at the eviscerated Russian submarine. “For our technology, our power.”

“The power maybe,” Dane allowed, “but I doubt they need our technology. Did it ever occur to you that maybe they want the people, too? The craft are here, but where are the people?”

The submersible came to a halt, forestalling any answer by Foreman as he carefully lowered himself overboard and swam the short distance until he could touch bottom. Dane followed.

Foreman went directly to his brother’s plane, clambering up on the wing. The cockpit glass was pulled back, and Foreman leaned inside. Dane climbed up on the other side.

“Just like the day he got in it,” Foreman said. “It hasn’t aged a bit.”

There was a photo tucked next to one of the instrument panels. Two young men in flight suits standing on a beach smiling. Foreman noted Dane looking at it.

“Our last shore leave together in Hawaii.”

It was hard for Dane to connect the smiling young man in it with the hard old man on the other side of the plane. Even in the midst of World War II, Foreman had looked happier than he did now.

“Do you think your brother could still be alive?” Dane asked.

Foreman took the picture, sliding it into a plastic bag and putting it in his pocket. “When I saw the movie Close Encounters — have you seen it?”

Dane nodded, and Foreman continued.

“And all those people got of the mother ship at Devil’s Tower, all I could think about was my brother and all the others. I was a member of Flight Nineteen, the only one who didn’t go on that last fight into the Bermuda Triangle.”

“You have a knack for staying out of trouble,” Dane noted.

“Sometimes I wish I had been with my brother at the end.”

For one of the few times in their history, Dane believed him.

Foreman climbed off the wing onto the strange black beach. He looked about. “See anything interesting?”

Dane joined Foreman and scanned the beach. “Besides the Enola Gay?” He pointed. “How about the Indianapolis?”

The cruiser was resting on its side about a half mile away, a gaping hole where a Japanese torpedo had punched a fatal hole in the ship that had delivered the first atomic bomb to Tinian.

“That means the Shadow scavenges the bottom,” Foreman noted, seeing the damage.”

“There’s the Reveille,” Dane had just spotted the research ship between a World War II-era Japanese aircraft carrier and a battered steamer. He started walking in that direction, Foreman next to him.

As expected, there was no sign of life on the ship when they got to it. They climbed up a gangway onto the ship and went to the bridge. The video camera that the captain had held was lying on the floor of the wing. Dane picked it up. “Should we see if he continued recording after we lost contact?”

In response, Foreman took the camera from his hands and popped the tape out. He went into the bridge, to the rear where the captain’s cabin was. A small TV with a built-in VCR was bolted to the bookcase. Foreman slid the tape in and rewound it. The he hit Play. Dane sat on the captain’s bunk while Foreman sat in the chair, remote in hand. The screen came alive, showing the sea. Foreman hit fast-forward, and they saw the scene where the black sphere came up.

The opening irises shut, and they could hear the yells of alarm from the crew members. Then there was complete darkness as the top shut.

A voice — the captain’s, Dane recognized — came out of the TV‘s small speaker. “I can hear water being pumped. The air is strange. We have no power, not even emergency backup.”

A tiny shaft of light appeared.

“A flashlight. The camera is still working. So batteries work but no other power.”

There was a loud metal-on-metal noise.

“We’re grounded. Like a dry dock. Something’s happening. A golden glow on the starboard side.”

They could see the glow he was referring to on the screen now.

“Just like Ariana reported in the Angkor gate,” Dane said.

“There’s something coming out of the gold,” the captain reported. “Several objects.”

They could see about a dozen white dots silhouetted against the gold glow and growing larger.

“What the hell are those?” Foreman muttered.

The captain was yelling orders, and then he dropped the camera, and all they could see was gray metal. They heard shots and screams, and then the picture went dead. Foreman rewound it and then paused at the last useful frame, the dozen white objects against the gold glow.

“I think we might have had our first view of those who live in the Shadow,” Dane said, tapping the TV screen.

Instead of heading back to Heathrow, Ariana had ordered the helicopter pilot to head northwest toward Oxford. She’d called the number for Davon that she’d been given and arranged to meet him at a site he described to the north of the town.

As the chopper banked toward the field he had designated, Ariana could see a set of headlights cutting across the grass from the stationary car. The chopper touched down, and she instructed the pilot to shut down and wait for her. She felt a bit conspicuous as she walked across the field to the car, wondering why Davon hadn’t bothered to get out to greet her. As she reached the road, the passenger door swung open on the BMW.

“Get in,” a voice called out.

Ariana hesitated, then slid in the seat. Before she had the door shut, the car was moving. In the dim glow from the instrument panel she could barely make out the driver’s profile. A large hook nose dominated a hatchet face.

“Are you Davon?” She asked.

“Who the hell else you think would be waiting for you?” he replied.

“Where are we going?”

“Away from there,” he nodded his head over his shoulder at the field. He took a turn in the road a little to fast and over corrected with a jerk of the wheel and the squeal of the tires.

“Listen,” Ariana said, “I just—”

“Are you with the government?” he cut her off.

“Which government?”

“Well, you’re an American by your accent,” he said. “So let’s try that one first.”

“No, I don’t work for the U.S. government.”

“Any government?” he pressed.

“I don’t work for any government,” she assured him.

“And I’m supposed to believe you just ‘cause you say so, right, missy?”

“What the hell are you afraid of?” Ariana demanded. She was thrown against the door as he took another turn at high speed. “And would you slow this thing down?”

“They’ve tried to get me before,” he said.

“First,” Ariana spoke slowly and deliberately, “are you Davon?”

“Yes.

“Ok. Who is the they you’re afraid of?”

“You know. They. Them. The people with the power. The people afraid of the truth.”

“What truth?”

Davon gave a manic smile. “Well, if I told you that, that would mean they’d be after you, too, wouldn’t it?”

Ariana was beginning to believe she had hooked up with a paranoid crackpot. She grabbed the dash as he turned off the hard road onto a thin dirt tract between two rows of thick hedges.

“Where are we going?”

“You wanted to know about the stones. About the leys of power, right?”

“The what?”

“Leys of power. A ley. It comes from the Saxon word for cleared strip of land. The lines! They are what is important.” He smacked a hand against the steering wheel. “The stones are just the signs. It’s the power in the Earth that is the key. And it’s all over the world. Here and there.” He slammed on the brakes and they came to a halt. “Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t” Ariana said. She was certain Atkins had set her up for taking the crystal skull. She felt a surge of anger over the petty squabbles of academic intellectuals interfering with a mission that involved the fate of the world. She pulled out her cell phone. “I’m calling for my helicopter to pick me up.” She could see another field in front of them and knew she could bring the chopper in. She had a beacon in her pocket that would give the pilot her location.

“Just take a look,” Davon said. He opened his door and got out.

The pilot answered the call on the first ring. Ariana could see Davon walking toward a bit of high ground. “Hold on,” she told the pilot. She turned off the phone and got out of the car. She followed Davon up the slight rise and joined him. Below them was a strangely shaped standing stone. Peering in the dark she could see two other groups of stones.

“The Rollright Stones,” Davon said. “This is where it happened.”

“What happened?” Ariana asked, but he ignored her as he began pointing and speaking.

“That’s the King Stone.” He then indicated a group. “Those are the Whispering Knights. They got that name from the way the stones all lean toward each other as if plotting against the king here.” He then pointed at the second group. “Those are the King’s Men. They form a perfect circle one hundred four feet across.”

Ariana was amazed at the change that had come over the man at her side. His voice was perfectly normal, and he recited the information as if he were presenting a lecture at the university. She realized she was most likely dealing with a paranoid schizophrenic, and at the moment she was seeing his lucid side.

“Scientists have come here and run their tests. They’ve found electromagnetic fluctuations and even traces of radioactivity. Locals have long claimed that going inside the circle of King’s Men and spending the night has a healing effect.” He gave a strange laugh. “No one does that anymore. Not since I did. Not after what happened.”

Ariana waited, knowing that to ask questions or interrupt might bring forth another paranoid phase.

“What they don’t understand,” Davon said, “is that the stones themselves are not the key. Even at Stonehenge, which everyone traipses to and slobbers over, it is not the stone.” He cut his hand back and forth in front of him. “It’s the lines. The power of the lines.”

“Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of Kings of England, was the first document to mention the stones and the power of the lines,” Davon said. “That was in the twelfth century. At least here in England it was the first mention. The Chinese recorded it much, much earlier. They called them lung mei, which translates as dragon paths, thus the name for my project.”

He turned to her. “You’ve heard of feng shui, haven’t you?” he asked. “It’s been revived lately and is actually quite popular.”

Ariana nodded. “The harmony of things, their placement.”

“Actually feng shui stands for wind and water. Most people only think of feng shui on a small scale,” Davon said. “Lung mei is feng shui on a planetary scale and actually supersedes feng shui. The first thing a feng master must do is orient on the dragon lines, the lung mei. Then the master must determine whether they are yin, which is the white tiger, the negative force, or yang, the blue dragon, the positive force.

“The Chinese believed there was tremendous power in the planet, and of course, there is. Earthquakes, volcanoes, the movement of the tectonic plates, even the tides; all are on a scale not able to be imitated by man even with our most powerful weapons. In a most basic and primitive way, the practitioners of feng shui are tapping into the power.”

Davon trust his hand back and forth again, a gesture that made Ariana take a half step back. “There was a group called the Straight Tracker’s Club that tried to line up the various megaliths and places of worship in England. Find the pattern. They found that the Rollright Stones are on line with the Long Compton Church, the Chipping Norton Church, and a tumulus near Charlbury.” He gave the edgy laugh again. “Their vision was so limited. The lines of power are much, much bigger than that. And they are all over the world, not just here in England and not just tied to the megaliths.

“In ancient China, straight lines on the landscape were considered evil. Spirits were said to travel along those lines. Feng shui actually started as the practice of placing tombs so they would not fall along one of the evil lines.”

He turned away from the Rollright Stones and looked off to the southwest as if he could see something in the dark. “South America. Have you heard of the Nazca Lines?”

“Stones aligned in the high desert?”

“Stones in the high desert lined up for miles and miles.” Davon corrected. “Some perfectly straight, going over ridges and through gullies. Others arranged in various intricate designs. By who? And why?”

He fell silent, and Ariana felt a need to get him back on track. “What happened to you inside the circle?” she finally asked.

Davon turned back toward the stones. “In 1936, at Loe Bar on the Cornish coast, where two leys form a node, a man reported seeing a medieval army appear out of nothing and then disappear. He went back thirty-eight years later and reported seeing the same thing as if not a day had passed. As did his wife, who accompanied him.

“In 1974, at the Chanctonbury Ring, a man I’ve talked to, walked into the center of the ring, and an invisible force lifted him off the ground over five feet and held him up there for a minute. Three other chaps who were with him saw this. Chanctonbury is a node for five local ley lines and is the side of an ancient fort.”

“In 1976, at the node of two ley lines near Cilicom, a man and a woman claimed their car engine suddenly dies and they were approached by an alien, a creature with white skin and unblinking red eyes that disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.

“Last year—“Davon began but then halted.

“Last year what happened?” Ariana pushed.

“Last year, I spent a night inside the King’s Men. I brought my air mattress and my sleeping bag, and I set up exactly dead center. Nothing happened for hours, and I finally fell asleep. Then, at three in the morning, something woke me. I sat up. At first I saw or heard nothing and thought maybe I’d had a bad dream. A fog had come in, and I could barely see the stones all around me.

“Then I heard the voices. Calling out for help. Asking for mercy. Dozens, hundreds, of voices. I’ve never heard such pain. It was terrible. Like souls in hell begging for release. And they were speaking in a strange language, but somehow I understood what they were saying. Then they came for me.”

“The people crying for mercy?”

“No. The aliens. Two of them. They just appeared in front of me. Smooth, white skin. Large, red eyes. With long, black cloaks. And they hung in the air over me, looking down. Their hands… they had claws on them, sharp ones, like that fellow in the American horror movie. I knew they were the reason the voices were calling for mercy, and I knew they were coming for me. I ran. Left my gear behind and ran. Didn’t use my camera or recorder. I just ran.”

Ariana waited, but he said nothing more. After a while, she took out her cell phone and called for the helicopter. Megaliths, lines of power, crystal skulls; she knew there was a connection with the Shadow, but she had no clue what it was or even how they connected with each other.

While she waited for the helicopter to arrive, she walked down the slope toward the circle Davon had called the Whispering Knights.

“What are you doing?” Davon asked, but she ignored him.

Ariana passed between two of the standing stones. She felt the slightest of tingles on her skin. There was power in this place. She went to the center and slowly turned about. Davon was standing outside the circle, looking worried.

Ariana cocked her head. At the very edge of her hearing she could almost pick up something. Then the sound of helicopter blades overwhelmed all other sound, and she quickly left the circle.

Pytor Shashenka’s entire world was split between pain an unconsciousness. He preferred the latter, but he had no control over either.

Reluctantly, Pytor opened his eyes. The table across from him was occupied by the warrior. He was strapped down, muscles bulging against the straps as he futility attempted to free himself. Tangled black hair cascaded over the man’s face. His clothes were at his feet. His skin was pale white except the arms. He had apparently not been worked on by the Valkyries yet.

“Who are you?” Pytor called out in Russian, not really expecting an answer.

The man looked across at him, eyes raging with fury. He seemed to understand the question because he replied with one word. “Ragnarok.”

“Pytor.”

Ragnarok blinked, indicating he understood. He said something in his native tongue.

“I do not understand,” Pytor said. He was about to try English, when something appeared in his peripheral vision. A white form glided to a halt in front of Ragnarok. Pytor recognized it because one of the red crystal eyes was smashed.

It fired a probe into Ragnarok’s head and then consulted a small device attached to the wires. After several moments, it removed the probe and tossed the machine aside. Then it lifted one arm, a razor-sharp claw extended. With a savage slice, it cut through Ragnarok’s right wrist, severing the hand from the arm. The warrior didn’t’ even cry out, although the muscles in his jaw worked hard to keep his mouth shut.

The movement was repeated, and the left hand fell the floor, the fingers balled in a fist.

With its other arm, the Valkyrie extended a red, glowing tube. It tapped both stumps briefly, and there was the sound and smell of burning flesh as it cauterized the wounds. At that, Ragnarok passed out.

Pytor yelled curses at the creature to no avail until his own pain overwhelmed him, and he joined the warrior in blessed unconsciousness.