The Reply

CHAPTER 4

At the same moment that Peter Nabinger was wondering where he was, Captain Mike Turcotte was sipping a cup of coffee in one of the ready rooms on board the aircraft carrier USS George Washington.

Turcotte could feel the steady drum of the engines reverberating through the floor panels. The George Washington was the newest carrier in the American Navy’s inventory. The most recent of the Nimitz class, it displaced over 100,000 tons of water and was cruising south at thirty knots from its normal duty station in the Persian Gulf. Off the starboard bow lay the coast of Ethiopia.

That the carrier had been taken off-station from the critical and volatile Persian Gulf told Turcotte how important this mission was, as much as what Lisa Duncan, seated to his left, had already told him. The presence of a British lieutenant colonel three seats over who sported the sand-colored beret of the elite British Special Air Service, SAS, also indicated a certain degree of martial seriousness. On the other side of the British colonel was an American major in a flight suit, the patch Velcroed to his left shoulder showing the Grim Reaper of Task Force 160, the Nightstalkers.

They were all prepared to listen to a briefing by a former Soviet operative. The man, Karol Kostanov, spoke in clipped English, his accent polished at one of the KGB’s finishing schools during the height of the Cold War. He claimed he had been working freelance around the world since the breakup of the Soviet Union. How the UN Alien Oversight Committee had gotten hold of him, Turcotte had no idea, but he imagined that it involved a lot of cash, based on the expensive suit and custom-made shoes Kostanov wore.

“Please proceed, Mr. Kostanov,” Duncan ordered once she made sure everyone was ready.

Kostanov had a carefully cultivated day’s growth of beard, framing his aristocratic face and thin glasses, the frames made of some obviously expensive metal. Turcotte wondered if Kostanov even needed the lenses in the glasses or if they were part of his costume, designed to impress. Kostanov’s skin was dark, his hair streaked with gray.

“I was contacted a day and a half ago by a representative of the United Nations Alien Oversight Committee,” Kostanov began, but Duncan waved a hand.

“I know about that,” she said. “You claim you know about a cache of alien artifacts in southwestern Ethiopia, guarded by people who work for a South African business cartel. Since we are closing on helicopter range of that area, I don’t have time to listen to your superfluous bullshit, as we will be launching a military strike force soon. Give me the facts.”

Kostanov pursed his lips as he considered the diminutive woman who had just spoken so harshly.

“Ah, the facts,” Kostanov repeated, just the slightest edge of mockery in his voice. “There are not many, so I will not waste your time.

“One. Before the breakup I worked at Tyuratam, a Soviet strategic missile test center. It was also headquarters to Section Four of the minister of interior. From what I have read recently in your newspapers, Section Four was the equivalent of your Majestic-12.

“We, however, were not so fortunate in our discoveries of alien artifacts as you Americans. We had the remains of one alien craft that had been severely damaged and that was all.”

Turcotte leaned forward in his seat. He’d seen the bouncer that had crashed from a very high altitude at terminal velocity into the New Mexico countryside. There hadn’t been a mark on it. What could have damaged the craft the Russians had?

“What kind of craft?” Duncan asked, showing that this was news to her also. “A bouncer?”

“Not a bouncer. Bigger than that but nowhere near mothership size either.” Kostanov shrugged. “It was very badly damaged. The scientists worked at reverse engineering what we had, but there was not much success.”

“Where was your craft found and when?” Duncan asked.

“Nineteen fifty-eight in Siberia. Best estimate from the crash site was that it had been there for several thousand years. I believe the disclosure of that craft was used by the Russian government as part of their attempt to maneuver one of their people high on the UNAOC council. I would assume UNAOC is keeping that quiet for their own reasons and because there is little to be gained from the craft.”

“Was it an Airlia craft?” Duncan asked.

“We didn’t specifically know about the Airlia until just recently,” Kostanov said, “but from what I have seen of your mothership, it was made of the same black material that the mothership is made of, so I would assume it was Airlia.” Duncan waved for him to continue.

“Despite the lack of success the head of Section Four felt that if there was one craft, there most likely would be others. The scientists postulated that this craft could not have crossed interstellar distances, therefore it had to have been ferried here. The unit I was part of was directed to search down other leads.”

The Russian turned to the map and used a handheld laser pointer. “In 1988 we received word from KGB sources that someone had discovered something strange, here in southwest Ethiopia. I accompanied a Spetsnatz — Soviet special forces — unit,” Kostanov added, with a glance at Turcotte’s green beret and the colonel’s sand-colored one, “that was sent in to do a reconnaissance.”

“And you found?” Duncan prompted.

“We never made it to our target site. We were attacked by a paramilitary force. Since we were going in on the sly and did not have air support and could not risk an international incident, we were heavily outgunned. Half the team was killed. The rest of us were lucky to make it back to the coast and get picked up by our submarine.”

“A paramilitary force?” Turcotte spoke for the first time.

“Well armed, well trained, and well led. As good as the Spetsnatz I was with and more numerous.”

“Who were they?” Turcotte asked.

“I don’t know. They weren’t wearing uniforms with insignia. Most likely mercenaries.”

“Get to the point,” Duncan said. “What was at that location?”

“The word we received was that there were some sort of evidence of advanced weaponry,” Kostanov said. “Alien weaponry.”

Everyone in the room sat up a little straighter. The question of alien weapons had been raised many times in the closed chambers of the UN Oversight Committee. Given that the A-bomb had been partially developed from an Airlia weapon left in the Great Pyramid, there was a great deal of speculation about what other deadly devices might be secreted somewhere around the planet. The destruction of the Majestic-12 bioexperiment facility at Dulce, New Mexico, by a ray from a foo fighter indicated that there were weapons the Airlia had that many governments would dearly like to get their hands on. Weapons that the UN would like to get under positive control before an irresponsible party gained hold of them.

The message Professor Nabinger had received from the guardian about the civil war among the Airlia indicated that they’d had a weapon powerful enough to have wiped the Airlia home base, known in human legend as Atlantis, off the face of the Earth so effectively that it had become only a myth.

“More specifics,” Duncan said.

“I don’t have more specifics,” Kostanov said. “As I told you, we never made it to the target. This happened in early 1989, and as you know there was much turmoil and change in my country that year. We were never able to relaunch another mission. You now know as much as I do.”

“And the target is?” the British lieutenant colonel asked.

Kostanov shrugged. “That is for your intelligence people to tell you. I gave them the location. I assume they have better pictures than I had ten years ago.”

Duncan gestured at a woman in a gray three-piece suit who had been sitting along the wall while Kostanov spoke. She now stood up. She was tall and slender with jet-black hair, cut tight around her head, framing an angular face. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, but it was hard to tell as her skin was perfectly smooth and pale.

“My code name is Zandra,” the woman said. “I represent the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Zandra held a small remote. She clicked a button. A long-range satellite photo appeared. “Northeast Africa,” Zandra oriented them quickly. She clicked and the shot decreased in scale. “Southwest Ethiopia, near the border with Kenya and Sudan. Very inhospitable terrain. Largely uninhabited and largely unexplored.” Turcotte nodded to himself. That fit the pattern. The Airlia had picked the most inaccessible places on Earth to hide their equipment: Antarctica, the American desert in Nevada, Easter Island. Always where it would be difficult for humans to get to and survive.

“The most significant terrain feature in this part of the world is the Great Rift Valley. It starts in southern Turkey, runs through Syria, then between Israel and Jordan where the Dead Sea lies; the lowest point on the face of the planet. It goes from there to Elat, then it forms the Red Sea. At the Gulf of Aden it splits, one part running into the Indian Ocean, the other going inland into Africa, to the Afar Triangle. The lowest point in Africa, the Danakil Depression, which is where our target is, lies directly along the Great Rift Valley.

“From there the Rift Valley goes south, encompassing Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest freshwater lake, before ending somewhere in Mozambique.”

Another click and there was a tiny square in the center of a deep valley, high mountains on both sides and a river running in the center. The next shot and they could see that the square was a fenced compound next to the river. The vegetation was sparse and stunted.

“That’s your target. According to legal documents we’ve traced, that compound is owned by the Terra-Lei Corporation, which is headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa. They own a variety of interests, and they claim this compound is a mining camp. It’s been there for sixteen years. Our satellites have never shown any mined material leaving. The only way in or out is by plane or helicopter or a hazardous three-day trip by all-terrain vehicle from Addis Ababa.

“The interesting thing about Terra-Lei is that the only sort of mining operation, if you could call it that, they’ve ever been associated with has been sending mercenaries into Angola to attack diamond mining camps. Terra-Lei’s main business is arms; manufacturing, buying, selling, and exporting them to the highest bidder. They used to do quite a good business on the international black market until Mandela came into power.”

Zandra used the laser pointer. “Here is the airstrip near the compound. This building”—she highlighted a three-story structure—”is where we believe the Airlia artifacts are stored. This is the barracks for the paramilitary mercenary forces guarding the compound. There are also surface-to-air missiles, here, here, here, and here. Several armored vehicles.” Zandra gave a frosty smile. “Certainly they would not need such protection for just a mining compound.”

“If these Terra-Lei people are out of South Africa, then why didn’t they just move what they’ve found home?” Duncan asked.

“We don’t know,” Zandra said. “Our best guess is that maybe they can’t move whatever it is they’ve found. Or perhaps the unstable political environment over the years in South Africa precluded that option. There was a discreet inquiry made through the United Nations Alien Oversight Committee to the South African government to get open access to the compound.”

“And the answer, as you can tell by the fact we’re heading there with a squadron of SAS on board,” Duncan said, “was silence.”

“So they know we’re coming,” Turcotte summarized.

“Most likely,” Zandra confirmed.

“Bloody hell,” the SAS colonel muttered, then asked, “What about the Ethiopian government?”

“What about them?” Zandra replied, her tone answer enough that that was not a factor here.

Duncan looked at the SAS officer. “Colonel Spearson, what’s the plan?”

Spearson stood and walked to the front of the room. He looked at the American officer in the flight suit. “When can we launch, Major O’Callaghan?”

O’Callaghan pointed at a map of northeast Africa. “The ship’s captain is pushing his engines to the max, so we’re making good speed. Our launch point, where all aircraft will have enough fuel for a round trip plus fifteen minutes on-station, is here, forty kilometers from our present position— which means we will be able to launch in less than an hour.”

Spearson didn’t look happy about that timetable, and Turcotte knew why. It would be dawn shortly, and the SAS would hit the compound just before daylight. It was a tight window with a lot of room for disaster.

Spearson cleared his throat. “An American AWACS is in position off the coast. It will control all flight operations, coordinating O’Callaghan’s helicopters and jets from your navy. I am the commander of all ground forces. I will be on board an MH-60 until the first air assault wave lands. At that time I will reposition to the primary target.

“The basic plan is a four-stage attack. Stage one is to land a squad by parachute on top of the building you believe holds the artifacts. These troopers are to gain a foothold. Stage two is an attack by antiradar missiles launched by Navy planes to take out their surface-to-air missile sites. Stage three is the rest of my force coming in by helicopter with gunship support. Stage four is to secure the compound.” Spearson looked at the others in the room. “Questions?”

“How is your airborne force going in?” Turcotte asked. “HALO or HAHO?”

“HAHO,” Spearson replied, letting Turcotte know that the men would be jumping at high altitude and opening their parachutes almost immediately, flying them in to the target. The thin chutes wouldn’t get picked up by radar like aircraft would, allowing them to arrive undetected.

“I’d like to go in with the jumpers,” Turcotte said.

“That’s fine,” Spearson said.

Duncan stood up. “All right—”

“I’ve got some questions,” Spearson suddenly said, looking directly at Duncan.

“What if these Terra-Lei people have indeed uncovered some Airlia weapons?” “That’s why we’re going there,” Duncan said. “To find that out.”

“But what if they can use these weapons against us?” Spearson clarified his concern.

“Then we’re in big trouble,” Duncan said simply.

“I doubt they have had any success in that area,” Zandra interjected. “We’ve kept close tabs on Terra-Lei. You can be assured that if they had uncovered anything they could use, it would be on the international arms market in one form or another.”

Spearson didn’t seem much comforted by that. “What are our rules of engagement?”

“If you meet any resistance,” Duncan said, “you are free to use whatever force is necessary to overcome that resistance.”

Spearson frowned. “Your planes will be taking out their radio and radar facilities right after my initial forces land. There’s bound to be some casualties from those strikes. That means we will most likely have fired the first shots.”

Duncan’s face was impassive. “We gave them their chance to cooperate. The United Nations Security Council has already considered this situation, and it is felt that the threat of Airlia weapons being in the wrong hands is too great a danger. UNAOC has been given the power by the Security Council to use whatever force is necessary to get all Airlia artifacts under UN control.”

Spearson stared at her hard, then nodded. “Right, then. Let’s get up to the flight deck and get going.”

Turcotte stood and followed the SAS colonel. As he reached the door, Lisa Duncan put out a hand and tapped his elbow. “Mike.”

“Yes?” Turcotte waited, surprised. That was the first time she had called him by his first name.

“Be careful.”

Turcotte gave her a smile, but it was gone just as quickly. “Did you know about the Airlia craft the Russians found?” he asked.

“No.”

“That’s not good,” Turcotte said. “Oh, well, I guess it’s not important right now. I’ll be safe. I’ll make sure I duck if I have to.”

“Try to do better than that,” Duncan warned.

Turcotte paused. They stared at each other in the narrow metal stairwell for a few seconds. “Well,” Turcotte finally said, “I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll see you on the ground,” Duncan said.

Turcotte turned and climbed the stairs that led to the massive flight deck of the Washington. There was a warm breeze blowing in from the seaward side. Looking across the flight deck, Turcotte could see SAS troopers rigging equipment. Some were doing a last-minute cleaning of their weapons, others honing knives or smearing camouflage paint onto their faces. Pilots from both the Army and Navy were walking around their aircraft, using red-lens flashlights to do a final visual inspection.

A figure loomed up in the dark and a rich British accent rolled across the flight deck. “You Turcotte?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Ridley. Commander, HAHO detachment, Twenty-first SAS. I understand you’re coming with us?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’ll assume you know what you’re doing. You jump last and don’t get in anybody’s way or you’re bloody well likely to get shot, and you won’t catch me crying in my tea over that. Clear?” Ridley was already walking toward their aircraft.

“Clear.”

“Turcotte,” Ridley said. “Sounds fucking French.”

“I’m Canuck,” Turcotte said. They came up to a C-2 cargo plane.

Ridley handed him a parachute. “Packed it myself. What the bloody hell is a Canuck?”

“French-Indian,” Turcotte said. “I’m from Maine. There’s a lot of us in the backwoods there.” He put the chute on his back.

Ridley was behind him, reaching between his legs with a strap. “Left leg,” he announced.

“Left leg,” Turcotte repeated, snapping it into the proper receiver. He felt comfortable around Ridley’s gruff manner. He’d met many men like that in his years working special operations. Turcotte had even worked with the SAS before in Europe, when he’d done counterterrorism work. He knew the Special Air Service to be top-notch professionals who got the job done.

Quickly Turcotte rigged and climbed into the plane. The C-2 was the largest aircraft the Washington had in its inventory. It normally moved personnel and equipment from the vessel to shore and back. Right now the small cargo bay held sixteen heavily armed SAS troopers in tight proximity to each other.

Turcotte smelled the familiar pungent odor of engine exhaust and JP-4 jet fuel, reminding him of other missions in other parts of the globe. The back ramp to the C-2 closed and the plane taxied to its takeoff position. The engine noise peaked and then they were moving, rolling across the steel deck. There was a sudden, short drop, then the nose of the plane tilted up and they were climbing in altitude. Below and behind them, like fireflies in the dark, helicopters lifted and followed.

“Ten minutes!” the SAS jumpmaster said. The message was picked up by the throat mike wrapped tightly around his neck and transmitted to the earpieces of all the jumpers, Turcotte included.

Turcotte did one last check of his gear, making sure everything was functioning properly. He looked around at the other men in the cargo bay. He was the only one in a single rig. The SAS troopers were wearing dual rigs — two people hooked together in harness with one chute. Turcotte had never seen that used for military purposes before. Usually such rigs were used by civilian jump instructors to train novice jumpers.

The jumpmaster continued, pantomiming the commands with his hands. “Six minutes. Switch to your personal oxygen and break your chem lights.”

Turcotte stood up at the front of the cargo bay. He unhooked from the console in the center of the cargo bay that had been supplying his oxygen and hooked in to the small tank on his chest. He took a deep breath and then broke the chem light on the back of his helmet, activating its glow.

“Depressurizing,” the crew chief announced.

A crack appeared at the back of the plane as the back ramp began opening. The bottom half leveled out, forming a platform, while the top half disappeared into the tail section. Turcotte swallowed, his ears popping.

“Stand by,” the jumpmaster called out over the FM radio. He moved forward until he was at the very edge, looking into the dark night sky.

Turcotte knew they were over fourteen miles offset from the Terra-Lei compound and should be attracting no interest from ground-based radar at this distance.

“Go!” The jumpmaster and his buddy were gone. The others walked off, the pairs moving in unison. Turcotte went last, throwing himself into the slipstream and immediately spreading his legs and arms and arching his back, getting stable.

He counted to three, then pulled his ripcord. The chute blossomed above his head. He slid the night vision goggles down on his helmet, checked his chute, then looked down. He counted eight sets of chem lights below him. He turned and followed their path as the SAS troopers began flying their chutes toward the target. With over six miles of vertical drop, they could cover quite a bit of distance laterally using their chutes as wings. Turcotte didn’t know what the current record was, but he had heard of HAHO teams covering over twenty-five lateral miles on a jump. He felt confident that with the sophisticated guidance rigs the front man of each pair of jumpers had on top of his reserve chute, they would find the target. All Turcotte had to do was follow. And, as Ridley had warned, stay out of the way as the SAS did its job.

Turcotte was cold for the first time in weeks since leaving Easter Island. Even at this latitude thirty thousand feet meant thin air and low temperatures. Turcotte’s hands were on the toggles that controlled the chute, both turning and descent rate. He adjusted as the line of chem lights below him changed direction slightly. He checked his altimeter: twenty thousand feet.

Fifty kilometers away the first wave of the air assault element was flying toward the target. Four Task Force 160 AH-6’s — known as Little Birds— led the way. They were modified OH-6 Cayuse observation helicopters. The AH-6 was designed as one of the quietest helicopters in the world, capable of hovering a couple of hundred meters from a person and not being heard. The two pilots both wore night vision goggles and used forward-looking infrared radar to fly in the night.

Two Little Birds carried 7.62mm minigun pods and the other two 2.75-inch rocket pods. In the backseat of each aircraft SAS snipers armed with thermal scopes provided additional firepower. The SAS troopers wore body harnesses and could lean completely out of the helicopter to fire their rifles.

Ten kilometers behind the Little Birds, four Apache gunships followed. Besides the 30mm chain gun mounted under the nose, the weapons pylons of each bristled with Hellfire missiles. A Black Hawk helicopter was directly behind the Apaches: Colonel Spearson’s command aircraft. And ten kilometers behind the Apaches came Spearson’s main ground force: eight Black Hawks carrying ninety-six SAS troopers ready for battle.

At a higher altitude and circling, the air strike force from the George Washington was poised. It consisted of F-4G Wild Weasels to suppress air defense and F-14 Tomcats with laser-guided munitions. And circling high above it all off the coast was the AWACS, coordinating carefully with Colonel Spearson to make sure that everything arrived on target at just the right moment.

Next to Colonel Spearson, in the command Black Hawk helicopter, Lisa Duncan felt reasonably calm. She had always handled stress and crisis well, and this was to be no exception.

She’d moved up in Washington for years until getting her last assignment, as presidential science adviser to Majestic-12. The fact that when she had been given the assignment she had only known of that organization as a rumor, had been the very reason the President had picked her. Even he hadn’t known exactly what Majestic-12 was, having been briefed when coming into office that MJ-12, as insiders called it, was a committee established after World War II to look into the discovery of various alien artifacts. At the briefing the head of MJ-12, General Gullick, had not told the President exactly what it was they had hidden at Area 51 in Nevada that required over $3 billion a year in black budget funding, other than to hint that they had recovered several types of alien craft, all in nonflying condition.

Unlike his predecessors this President had wanted to know more, and he’d tapped Lisa Duncan to get that information for him when the presidential scientific-adviser slot had come open upon the death of the man who’d held it for thirty years. The President had listened to those who told him that there were rumors Majestic had more than just nonoperational craft at Area 51 and that he was being kept in the dark. He wanted the truth and Lisa Duncan was the one he had chosen to get it for him.

Receiving the assignment, Duncan had gathered as much information as she could about MJ-12 and Area 51. One disturbing bit of information she was given by a senator, one of those who had pushed the President, indicated that MJ-12 had employed former Nazi scientists brought to America under the classified auspices of Operation Paperclip after the end of the Second World War.

Sensing that she was going into unfriendly waters, Duncan had intercepted Turcotte a few weeks ago on his way to a security assignment at Area 51 and coopted him to spy for her before she traveled there for the first time.

She had been shocked upon arrival at Area 51 to find out that MJ-12 was flying nine alien-made bouncers; disk-shaped craft that used the Earth’s magnetic field to power their engines. And that MJ-12 planned on flying the mothership, a massive craft capable of interstellar flight, hidden in a cavern inside Area 51.

That dangerous plan had dissolved with the help of Turcotte, Kelly Reynolds, Peter Nabinger, and Werner Von Seeckt, one of the original Nazi scientists. Von Seeckt’s physical condition had deteriorated shortly after they’d succeeded in stopping General Gullick’s attempt to fly the mothership, and he was now in the intensive care unit at the Nellis Air Force Base hospital.

Duncan felt that being in this Black Hawk, flying toward an unknown site in Ethiopia, was simply continuing to do her duty to her country, and to the human race as a whole. If there was something alien out there, she felt it was her job to help find it. There had been too much secrecy for too long all over the world.

But she wondered how many more people would die. She listened to the pilot of the C-2 report that all jumpers were away, and her thoughts went to Mike Turcotte.

Turcotte understood the tandem rigs now. The man in the rear was flying the chute. The man in front, not having to bother with controlling the toggles for maneuvering, held a silenced MP-5 submachine gun in his hands with a laser scope.

Turcotte checked his altimeter and the glowing numbers told him they were just passing through ten thousand feet. He looked around, now able to make out some details on the ground. There were mountains to both sides, some as high as his present altitude. Turcotte remembered the warning that the compound was in a depression, the deepest in Africa, Zandra had said, and they had to descend twelve hundred feet below sea level.

Turcotte pulled his oxygen mask aside and breathed in the fresh night air. He had a moment now to collect his thoughts, and one thing still bothered him from the briefing: Why had Zandra given so much information about the Rift Valley? It was Turcotte’s belief that people never did things for no reason at all. Zandra had to have had a conscious, or perhaps subconscious, reason for going into detail about the geographical formation. There was no doubt, looking about through his night vision goggles, that the terrain of the valley was spectacular. Jagged mountains rose on either side, framing a twisted and torn valley floor.

The formation changed directions, curving to the left, and Turcotte brought his mind back to the task at hand, pulling his left toggle and following the stream of glowing chem lights below.

The jump formation broke apart two hundred feet above the roof of the research building. Turcotte knew the guards on the roof had to be awake, but would they be looking up?

There was a brief sparkle to one side and below. One of the SAS troopers was firing. Through his earplug Turcotte could hear the men call in.

“Guardpost one clear.”

“Guardpost two clear.”

“Team one down.”

The first troopers were on the roof and it was clear of opposition without any alarm being sounded. Turcotte let up on his toggles and aimed just off the center of the roof. He could see the SAS men clearing themselves of their parachute rigs.

Turcotte pulled in on his toggles and braked less than three feet up. His feet touched and he immediately unsnapped his harness, stepping out of it even before the chute finished collapsing. He turned, looking about, MP-5 at the ready. He could see several bodies; guards dispatched by the SAS.

“This is Ridley. We’re landed and secure,” the squad leader’s voice announced over the radio.

“Air wing, in now,” Colonel Spearson ordered.

The F-4G Wild Weasel was the only remaining version of the venerable F-4 Phantom still in the U.S. inventory. It had one very specific job — kill enemy radar and antiair systems.

Two Weasels came in on Spearson’s orders fast and high out of the east. The radar systems of the Terra-Lei compound picked them up and locked on, which was exactly what was desired. Missiles leapt off the wings of the Weasels — Shrike, AGM-78, and Tacit Rainbows — fancy names for smart bombs that caught the radar beams and rode them down to the emitters.

The pilots of the Weasels banked hard and were already one hundred and eighty degrees turned when the missiles struck. All of the compound’s air defense went down in that one strike.

Right behind came the first air assault wave.

The SAS demolition’s men had been carefully placing shaped charges on the roof; four different charges, evenly spaced. They had run out their detonating cord and were waiting on the order to fire.

As the sound of helicopters came from the east Colonel Spearson gave the order to Ridley.

“Fire in the hold!”

The charges blew, searing the night with their explosive crack and brief flash. Four holes appeared in the roof, and soldiers jumped down into each one.

Turcotte paused, head cocked to the side. A roar of automatic fire reverberated out of the southwest hole. Turcotte sprinted over. A jagged opening, four feet in diameter, beckoned in the concrete. He looked down. The four SAS men who had gone into the hole lay motionless on the floor.

Turcotte pulled a flash-bang grenade off his vest and tossed it in, counted to three, then jumped in, just as the grenade went off, stunning anyone inside. Turcotte was firing even before he hit the ground. He landed on the body of one of the SAS men and fell to his right side. A string of tracers ripped by, wildly fired just above his prone body.

Turcotte stuck the MP-5 up and blindly returned the fire, spraying in the direction the tracers had come from. He heard the sound of a magazine being changed and was just about to move when he froze. That was too obvious. He rolled onto his stomach and peered about. All the SAS men were dead. There was a desk to his left in the direction the bullets had come from. That was where the man was. Whoever he was, he was using the mirror on the wall behind the desk to aim. Turcotte fired, shattering the glass. Turcotte put a couple of rounds into the desk, confirming what he’d suspected. He wouldn’t be able to shoot through it.

Turcotte heard just the slightest sound of someone moving over broken glass. The other man could come from around either side of the desk and if Turcotte picked the wrong one, the other man might get the first shot.

Turcotte fired at the lights, shattering them and throwing the room into darkness.

A small object came flying over the top of the bar. Grenade, Turcotte thought, and reacted just as quickly, rolling away. The man was right behind the object, vaulting the desktop — which didn’t make any sense if it was a grenade. Turcotte knew he’d made a mistake as he fired offhand with the MP-5, still rolling.

The other man was also firing in midair, his bullets trailing Turcotte’s rolls by a few inches, Turcotte’s winging by him.

Turcotte slammed into the wall just as the bolt in his MP-5 clicked home on an empty chamber. He dropped the submachine gun and drew his pistol, firing as he brought it to bear. In the darkness it was his night-vision goggles that gave him the advantage over the other man, and his rounds hit the other man in the chest, knocking him down.

Turcotte stood, listening to the radio, hearing the SAS clearing the building from top floor down. There was no sign of any Airlia artifacts yet. He called in his own location and that the room was secure as he moved to the door, and carefully opened it.

At the end of the hallway a searchlight came in the window from an AH-6 helicopter hovering just outside. Turcotte could see SAS sharpshooters hanging out the doors and the small laser dots creeping around the hall, searching for targets. He flipped a switch on the side of his night-vision goggles and they emitted an infrared beam, identifying him as friendly.

From five thousand feet Colonel Spearson was orchestrating the assault over five different radio nets. The airborne force was in the main building. The Little Birds were flitting about the compound, searching for targets. He turned to Duncan.

“All or nothing, now, miss,” he said.

“Let’s go in,” Duncan said.

Spearson gave the orders for the main assault force to land.

Turcotte kicked open the door at the juncture of the hallway, his reloaded MP-5 in his left hand. He spotted two men in khaki with their backs to him, firing around the corner. Turcotte killed them with one burst.

“Who dares, wins!” he called out the SAS motto, moving down the hall. Turning the corner he met four SAS gathered by the stairwell, one of them holding his muzzle inside the door, firing an occasional shot to keep more security men from coming up.

Ridley came around the corner with more men. Turcotte stepped back and let the professionals do their job as they began to clear down the building.

The Little Birds were also going down the building one floor ahead of the SAS inside. The two armed with 7.62 miniguns were firing through windows. The snipers hit anything they saw moving. Windows shattered out and tracers crisscrossed the floor. The men inside lay low, hiding from the carnage as best they could.

The two Little Birds with rockets were firing up the barracks buildings nearby as security personnel poured out of them. As the first armored vehicles began appearing, they switched to those.

The four Apaches arrived just in time and fired a salvo of eight Hellfire missiles at the armor. Each one was a kill, ending that threat.

A pair of SAM-7’s — shoulder-fired heat-seeker missiles and thus not affected by the Weasel attack — streaked up at one of the Apaches. It exploded in a ball of flame.

“Bloody hell,” Colonel Spearson muttered as he saw the signal for the Apache disappear and heard the pilot screaming before the radio went dead. He ordered in the F-14’s, directing the Apaches to laser-designate targets for the smart bombs the fast-moving jets carried.

Lisa Duncan watched the chopper go down, knowing that meant two men dead. “Let’s land,” she told Spearson, who looked like he was going to argue with her, then changed his mind.

The SAS soldiers were quickly overcoming their opposition in the building. Surprise, superior firepower, and superb training were winning the day. Turcotte followed them down, floor by floor, until the entire building was clear except for whatever was hidden behind a set of steel doors on the ground level.

One of the Little Birds was hit by ground fire and autorotated down. Once it was on the ground, the four men got off and immediately became embroiled in a gun battle with ground forces.

The Apache pilots were also firing now, trying to suppress any SAM fire from shoulder-fired missiles. They would be out of ammunition in another minute at their current rate of expenditure. The F-14’s came in, their bombs riding the laser beams down with pinpoint accuracy. The effect was devastating.

“One minute!” the pilot said.

Colonel Spearson keyed his mike. “Put us in with the first wave!” he ordered. The pilot glanced over his shoulder at Duncan and she nodded. The Black Hawk swooped down, heading toward the secondary explosions in the compound on the valley floor.

The Black Hawk touched down and Duncan jumped off, following Colonel Spearson. The chopper was back up and gone just as quickly.

“How are the men inside?” she asked.

Spearson had the handset for the radio his batman was carrying pressed to his ear. “They’re in the basement. Took some losses, but they’ve cleared the building.”

Turcotte watched as Ridley examined the steel doors. “Okay, men, let’s get through this thing.”

A demolitions expert took a heavy backpack off and pulled out a three-foot-long cone-shaped black object. He placed the shape charge up against the doors and ran out the firing wire.

“Fire in the hole!” he yelled, causing everyone to scatter and take cover.

On the surface the battle was about over, disheartened mercenaries surrendering now that they saw that there was only one possible ending to this conflict. Spearson’s men rounded them up, while they searched for the scientists who had been working at the site.

Spearson had been listening to the force inside the building, and he knew that they were getting ready to blow the doors. “They must be underground,” he told Duncan when she asked where the scientists were.

“Let’s get inside,” she told him.

“Oh, yeah,” Spearson added as they headed for the main doors to the building. “Your buddy is okay.”

The only acknowledgment Duncan made was to slow her walk slightly.

Turcotte’s head rang from the explosion, and swirling dust choked his lungs.

SAS men with gas masks on ran through the hole in the twisted metal.

Turcotte forced himself to wait. He turned as Lisa Duncan and Colonel Spearson came down the hallway and joined him.

“This has got to be it,” he said.

“We wait on my people to clear,” Spearson said.

“Fine,” Duncan acknowledged. She turned to Turcotte. “You all right?” “I’m getting too old for this,” he said, earning a laugh from Spearson.

The minutes stretched out. Finally, after almost a half hour of waiting, a dust-covered Major Ridley crawled back out of the hole. He pulled his gas mask off and wiped his eyes. “Did you find any of the scientists?” Duncan asked.

Ridley looked slightly disoriented. “Scientists? They’re all dead in there. All dead.”

“How?” Colonel Spearson demanded.

Ridley shrugged, his thoughts elsewhere. “Gas, most likely. Must have been set off by the guards when we attacked. It’s clear in there now. The merks were just delaying us until the gas worked. The scientists were trapped in there like rats. Looks like they hadn’t been allowed out in a long time. Probably lived down there for years. There’s plenty of tunnels full of supplies. Living quarters. Mess hall. All that.”

“What about Airlia artifacts?” Turcotte asked.

“Artifacts?” Ridley’s laugh had a manic edge that he was trying hard to control. “Oh, yeah, there’s artifacts down there, sir.” He slumped down into a chair. “But you best go see for yourself.”

Spearson leading the way, they went through the destroyed doors. They were in a large open tunnel with concrete walls and a floor that sloped down and to the right, disappearing around a curve a hundred meters away. Ridley had been correct about the supplies, Turcotte noted as they walked down. There were numerous side tunnels cut into the rock, full of equipment and supplies. Several of the side tunnels housed living areas, and as Ridley had noted, one was a mess hall. SAS soldiers stood guard at each door and told the colonel that there was no one alive inside.

Bodies were strewn about here and there, wherever the poison gas had caught them. Whatever Terra-Lei had used on its own people must have been fast acting and had dissipated quickly, Turcotte noted, but also appeared to have been painful. The features of each corpse were twisted in a grimace and the body contorted from violent seizures.

As they went around the bend, the three stopped momentarily in surprise. The wide walkway expanded to a sloping cavern, over five hundred meters wide, the ceiling a hundred meters over their heads hewn out of the volcanic stone. As far as they could see it descended at a thirty-degree slope. Rubber matting had been placed over the center of the smooth stone floor to form a walkway and there was a cog railway built next to the rubber matting.

“Bloody hell,” Spearson whispered.

“Look,” Duncan said, pointing to the right. A black stone stood there, like a dark finger pointed upward into the darkness. It was ten feet high and two in width, the surface a polished sheen except where high runes were etched into the stone.

“Hope it doesn’t say, NO TRESPASSING,” Turcotte said.

An SAS sergeant stood next to the small train and passenger cars. He saluted Spearson. “Already been down there, sir, with the captain,” he reported, pointing into the unseen deep distance where a row of fluorescent lights next to the rail line faded into the dark haze. “Left a squad on guard.” The sergeant swallowed. “Never seen nothing like it, sir.”

“Let’s take a look for ourselves,” Spearson said, climbing into the first open car.

Duncan and Turcotte joined him while the sergeant got in the cab and pushed the throttle into the forward position. With a slight jolt they began rattling down the cogs, descending farther into the cavern. As they went down, the cavern widened until they couldn’t see an end to either side, just the meager human light fading into the darkness ahead and behind. Turcotte pulled the collar of his battle-dress uniform tighter around his neck, and he could feel Duncan pressing closer to him. There was the feeling of being a tiny speck in a massive emptiness. Turcotte glanced over his shoulder back the way they had come. Already the brighter light of the cog railway terminal where they had boarded was over a mile behind them. The train was moving at almost forty miles an hour now, clattering over the cogs, but there was no sense of movement other than the fluorescent lights strung on poles next to the rail line flashing by.

After five more minutes they could all make out a red glow ahead. At first it was just the faintest of lines across the low horizon. But as they got closer, they could see the line grow clearer and larger over a mile ahead, perpendicular to their direction of travel. Turcotte had no idea how deep they were, but the temperature was starting to rise and he could feel beads of sweat on his forehead.

Turcotte looked down and could see that the floor of the cavern was still perfectly smooth. He’d seen Hangar Two at Area 51 where the mothership had been hidden, but this cavern dwarfed even that massive structure. He couldn’t imagine the technology that would be needed to carve this out. And for what purpose? he wondered. Directly ahead there was a red glow coming out of a wide crevice that split the cavern floor. Turcotte spotted several smaller glowing lights, the flashlights of the SAS squad at the end of the railway. As they slowed down, Turcotte could see the far side of the crevice, over half a mile away, but he couldn’t see down into it because they were still over a hundred meters from the edge when the train stopped at the end of the line.

“Sir!” An SAS trooper nodded at Colonel Spearson as they got out.

They walked together toward the edge and stopped where the smooth stone, which had been sloping down at thirty degrees, suddenly went ninety degrees straight down. Duncan gasped and Turcotte felt his heart pound as he carefully peered over the edge. There was no bottom that they could see, just a red glow emanating up from the bowels of the Earth. Turcotte could feel heat washing over his face, accompanied by a strong odor of burning chemicals.

“How deep do you think that goes?” Spearson asked.

“We must be at least seven or eight miles underground already,” Duncan said. “If that red glow is the result of heat generated from a split in the Mohorovicic discontinuity—”

“The what?” Spearson barked.

“The line between the planet’s crust and the mantle — then we’re talking about twenty-two miles altogether to the magma, which is what’s giving off that red glow.”

“Jesus,” Turcotte exclaimed.

“Look over there,” Colonel Spearson said, drawing their eyes from the spectacle of a doorway into the primeval inner Earth. To their right, about two hundred meters away, a series of three poles stretched across the chasm to the other side. Suspended from the cables, directly in the center, was a large, bright red, multifaceted sphere about five meters in diameter.

They walked along the edge of the crevice until they came to the first of the poles that held the sphere in place. The pole ran right into the rock face several feet below the lip. Turcotte had seen that black metal before. “That’s Airlia,” he said. “Same material as the skin of the mothership. Some incredibly strong metal we still haven’t been able to figure out.”

“What the bloody hell is that thing?” Spearson was pointing at the ruby sphere. It was hard to tell if the sphere itself was ruby or if it was reflecting the glow from below.

Duncan didn’t answer, but she led the way farther right where a group of low structures had been erected. It was obvious most of them had been built by the Terra-Lei scientists who’d been working down here. But in the center was a console that immediately reminded Turcotte of the control panel in one of the bouncers. “That’s Airlia too,” he said, walking up the panel. The surface was totally smooth. There was high rune writing etched on it and Turcotte imagined that once it was powered up, more rune writing would appear, pointing to various controls that could be activated with just a touch on the surface. He wished Nabinger were here to give them an idea what they were looking at.

“This”—Duncan was pointing at the panel—“controls that”—she pointed at the ruby sphere.

“And what does that do?” Spearson asked.

Duncan was looking about the great cavern. “I’m not too sure what more it can do, but I do believe it might have done this.” Her hands were spread wide taking in the space they were in.

“That thing blasted this out?” Spearson was incredulous.

“Something made this cavern,” Duncan said. “It isn’t a natural formation. The Airlia had technology beyond our imaginings, so I think it’s safe to say something of theirs made this cavern. And the Terra-Lei people spent a lot of years down here trying to figure this out. Now we know why they never moved this to South Africa.”

“They couldn’t move it,” Turcotte agreed. “That metal in those poles took the guys at Area 51 over fifty years to get through, and then only after they were taken over by the rebel guardian and given the information needed.”

“And the South Africans must have been scared of what they were working on,” Duncan added.

“Scared?” Colonel Spearson repeated.

“They killed all their own people,” Turcotte noted. “The guys we fought upstairs were just mercenaries who I’m willing to bet don’t have a clue who really hired them or what was in here.”

Spearson was looking about. “Why do you think it’s here? Over a crack in the Earth’s crust?”

“It picks up thermal energy?” Turcotte suggested.

Duncan didn’t appear to hear him. “I think I’ve just figured out what this is and I think they did too. And they had sixteen years to sit here and look at it. No wonder they were scared.”

“What is it?” Turcotte asked.

Duncan was staring over the massive crevice in the Earth at the ruby sphere. “I think it’s a Doomsday device set there to destroy the planet.”