The Reply

CHAPTER 22

Che Lu could see nothing. It was pitch black, even right next to the shaft to the outside world. She could hear a few snores and the nervous fidgeting of others who were too wound up to sleep. She could feel the hard stone floor under her as she lay on her side, her eyes open to the darkness. She’d slept under worse conditions but she’d been younger then. Now it was just uncomfortable and irritating.

The Russians had pointed their small satellite dish directly up the shaft and sent out a message earlier. Kostanov had explained to her that they could send, but they would not get a reply for a while according to some sort of schedule he had, and he wasn’t even sure if they could pick up a reply through the narrow opening.

She didn’t know how much good that would do. She doubted that the Russians would be so flagrant as to send in a force to rescue Kostanov and his men now that the PLA knew they were in here and were waiting outside. She also wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having Russians inside the tomb or even outside of it.

She wondered what was going on in the outside world. Were the Airlia coming? If so, then this tomb certainly had to play some part in their plans. From the news stories she had seen, the guardian cavern underneath Easter Island was a small complex compared to the machinery that was in the main chamber.

She also wondered what was deeper in the tomb, through the wall on the far side of what they had dubbed the control room. And what was down the corridor protected by the powerful beam? Perhaps the same thing, approached from a different direction? Or were there other, deeper chambers in the tomb? Where did the light shaft go?

Too many questions with no answers. Che Lu sighed. Maybe with the morning there would be some answers.

Kelly Reynolds watched the midmorning news conference beamed live from the UN in New York as anxiously as billions of others the world over. The decision had been made as to where Aspasia and the rest of the Airlia would land: right in the center of New York City in Central Park. There had been surprisingly little opposition to the decision from the Russian delegate.

Reynolds was thrilled that her own country would be the site of first contact between humans and an alien race. She considered trying to catch a commercial flight from Nevada to New York, but she decided to stay where she was, as New York would be saturated by the media. After all, she surmised, the Airlia would have to send someone here to check on the mothership.

At JPL, Larry Kincaid had driven in before the sun was up and was sitting at his desk eating from a box of doughnuts, drinking his fourth cup of coffee. He’d watched the same telecast as Reynolds, but his take was different.

“They don’t even know what the hell they’re going to have landing,” he muttered. He’d seen pictures of the mothership. If something like that was coming, the clearing in Central Park, big as it was, wouldn’t be able to handle it. Of course, the aliens could have some sort of landing craft to shuttle down in.

He was just biting into a doughnut when the screen of the front of the room showed a change in the Cydonia region as seen by the Surveyor imager. The rectangle in the center of the Fort was changing color on one side.

Kincaid was at first puzzled, then he realized what was happening: a cover was opening. The bright rectangle grew larger until it encompassed the entire square.

Suddenly the entire square flashed bright white, the IMS’s computer trying to compensate. Once the light level was settled, a half-dozen lean black vessels were revealed to be sitting inside the Fort.

Kincaid knew the stats for the Fort. His engineering mind quickly calculated. Each vessel was big, not anywhere near as large as the mothership, but impressive nonetheless. And they looked dangerous to Kincaid. He couldn’t articulate the feeling, but that rapier shape and black color told him that there was more to these ships than met the eye, and they were nothing like either the mothership or the bouncers.

“Well, we know how they’re coming,” he said to no one in particular. He looked at his own computer and checked on the status of Surveyor. Not much longer now until they would have to think about retracting the IMS and reorienting the craft for orbit over Cydonia.

Harker raised his fist, halting the team in a small streambed that headed up to the mountain grave, now less than a half mile away. They could see lights on the side of the mountain where the PLA unit guarded the entrance to the tomb.

Turcotte sank down to one knee, giving a hand to Nabinger. Chase pulled out the radio to send the initial entry report. He set the antenna dish up and oriented it. He hooked a digital message data group (DMDG) device to the radio. The DMDG took whatever was typed into it, transcribed it into Morse code, and then placed it on a spool of tape. When the message was sent, the tape was run at many times normal speed, transmitting the message in a short burst that greatly reduced the opportunity for interception. Even satellite transmissions could be intercepted if they were too long or were sent in the vicinity of an unfriendly satellite.

Turcotte knew the FOB, in this case Zandra, would receive the burst and copy it on tape. The tape would be slowed down and run across the screen of the FOB’s own DMDG.

“All yours,” Harker whispered to Turcotte, indicating the radio.

Turcotte knelt next to the machine, and in the dim glow given off by the screen, he typed in their initial entry report, telling Zandra they were on the ground in the right place and ready to proceed with the next phase of the operation.

He pushed the send key and the encoded message was burst-transmitted in less than one second.

He waited, then blinked as a reply came across the screen:

“Goddamn,” Turcotte muttered. He typed in a new message, asking about exfiltration.

“I wish they’d tell us what the ride’s gonna be,” Harker whispered.

“Where’s that grid?” Turcotte asked as he broke down the DMDG and handed the gear to Chase.

Harker had a red-lens flashlight shining on his map, the two of them hidden under a poncho liner. “Right here. Small field among the trees north of the tomb about four klicks.”

“Got to be a chopper.”

“Chopper can’t reach here on a tank of gas from friendly territory and get us back out.”

“Well, we have to trust that they figured something out.”

“I don’t trust that bitch Zandra,” Harker said.

“Dr. Duncan will be there for us,” Turcotte said. He saw the look Harker gave him. “I trust her.”

Harker shrugged. “She don’t come through, we’re history.”

“She’ll come through. Your guys ready?” Turcotte asked.

“We’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

Turcotte looked to the east. The sun would be up soon. “Let’s get in while it’s still dark.”

On the bridge of the USS O’Bannion Commander Rakes uneasily looked over the shoulder of his chief radar operator. His ship was threading the eye of a needle and Rakes didn’t like the eye hole. To the north the radar blipped the outline of the southern tip of Liadon Peninsula, only fourteen miles away. To the south, roughly the same narrow distance away, was the image of the north end of Shantung Peninsula. Those two pieces of land on either side squarely placed the O’Bannion in the entrance to the Gulf of Chihli, at the northeast end of the Yellow Sea, a veritable Chinese lake with only one way in and one way out.

The O’Bannion was a Spruance-class destroyer. Its primary armaments were Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon ship-to-ship missiles. It had a flight deck to the rear large enough to handle two helicopters. Despite the armament and flight capability, the O’Bannion was designed to operate as part of a battle group, not on its own.

Rakes was uncomfortable with the whole situation. No U.S. warship that he knew of had ever gone this far toward Beijing. Technically he was still in international waters as long as he kept Chinese land twelve miles from his ship, but he knew the Chinese were not big on such technicalities.

While the rest of the O’Bannion’s battle group was sailing southwest toward Hong Kong to participate in a show of force regarding the recent unrest between Taiwan and mainland China, he’d been ordered to break off on this course less than twelve hours ago. Following his orders he had gone in the opposite direction, straight toward the Chinese capital.

For his destination all he had been given was a set of coordinates, 119 degrees longitude and 38 degrees, 30 minutes latitude. The O’Bannion was to stay within a one-kilometer circle of that point on the ocean.

Go to that location and be prepared to land and refuel two helicopters, the orders read. When Rakes had radioed his commander to ask for more information, he was informed there wasn’t any more. When he’d protested about sitting still, surrounded on almost all sides by Chinese territorial waters, his commander had informed him that nobody had told him, either, what was going on but that these orders had come from very high.

“Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full,” Rakes muttered to himself as he scanned the dark horizon through his binoculars.

“Excuse me, sir?” the officer of the watch asked.

“Nothing,” Rakes said. “I didn’t say anything.”

Major O’Callaghan pulled in collective with his left hand and felt the Black Hawk’s wheels leave the ground. He climbed to four hundred feet and then waited until the other Black Hawk, with Captain Putnam at the controls, slid into place to his left rear.

While his copilot updated the Black Hawk’s Doppler navigating device with their present location, O’Callaghan pushed his cyclic control forward and turned on an azimuth of due west out of Camp Casey Airfield, just north of Seoul, South Korea.

O’Callaghan estimated a 3.7-hour flight to the O’Bannion, arriving at midmorning. That would give them some rest on board ship before having to take off to fly the rest of the mission. Just as importantly, it allowed them to fly this leg in the daylight; saving their goggle time for the actual penetration of the hostile airspace. Not that flying through the narrow gap into the Gulf of Chihli wouldn’t be flirting with Chinese airspace. O’Callaghan planned on keeping the chopper as low as possible to avoid radar and thus avoid flybys by the Chinese air force checking on them.

Once he was sure everything was working fine, O’Callaghan let his copilot take the controls. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, saving his energy for when he would need it.