Ancients

3

The hidden complex that housed the Event Group sat a half a mile below the desert scrub of Nellis Air Force Base. Its location underneath the northern firing range was not by accident. The mere fact that you could end up setting off one of the experimental missiles deployed by the air force was reason enough not to go snooping in the area. The complex had been finished in late 1944 by the same design team as had built the Pentagon complex. They had used the expansive natural cave system that dwarfed its more famous cousin in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Housed along with the military and science teams that made up the secretive Event Group were secrets that the world had mostly forgotten or that lived on only in folklore and legend. Behind thousands of banklike vault doors and inches of reinforced steel, the secrets of world history, once buried in time, were studied and cataloged. The charter of Department 5656: to make sure mistakes and civilization-altering moments from the past were never again repeated. The Group had been in existence officially since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, but their roots went far deeper, extending to President Abraham Lincoln.

The president of the United States handled the Group personally. The person who occupied the Oval Office--that person alone was trusted with the secrets studied in the ancient cave system below the sands of the high-desert airbase.

For every sitting president since the time of Woodrow Wilson, the first tour of the magical wonders of the Group, a subdepartment of the National Archives, always amazed and usually won over a new president.

The current director of the Event Group was Professor Niles Compton, recruited from MIT. Compton had been chosen by his predecessor, Senator Garrison Lee, and groomed specially to become the head of the most secret agency in the world outside of the American NSA.

He escorted the newly elected president past the third-vault level of the underground complex.

"Apart from the fact that you have artifacts like the Roswell saucer, something that may or not be Noah's Ark, and several items that include the bodies of historic figures, just where does it say you have achieved your mission, that you have been a deterrent to those who would harm our nation by studying past events?"

Niles Compton studied the newly elected president. The commander in chief was at the very least studious. It was a well-known fact that he came from an intellectual family and his platform of budget restraints and checks and balances had gotten him elected. Niles had his work cut out for him.

"Let us take the Ark as an example. Did it tell us anything about religion other than it fit the dimensions and design as stated in the Bible?" Niles shook his head. "Absolutely not. What it did lead us to is the now well-accepted science that the Middle East was most definitely flooded around thirteen to fifteen thousand years ago, which has led the scientific community to the conclusion that it was caused by a seismic event or a nonterrestrial occurrence like a meteor strike. Thus, we monitor the movement of the earth for patterns like they may have faced thousands of years ago. Our policy of tracking large bodies out in space is another example of what we have learned, just from this one Event."

Niles knew that the president needed this information to make a sound judgment when it came to budgeting hidden money for his department. Thus, he brought out the heavy guns on the initial tour.

The last soldier to be nominated for a fifth star in the nation's history, the new president didn't look at all convinced as he stepped up to a small vault and waited for the director.

"And that's just one artifact from the world's past," Niles said as he waited for his assistant, the eighty-two-year-old Alice Hamilton, to enter her security clearance on the keypad beside the vault. Then he and the president watched as she placed her thumb on a clear glass plate that read the minute swirls and valleys of her print. The vault hissed open.

"Okay, Dr. Compton, please explain the subject of this vault and its direct relationship to our nation's security, if you please."

Niles nodded and Alice opened the eight-inch-thick door of the small vault, and a cool mist rolled out and formed at the feet of the president.

"Very mysterious," was the only comment he made.

"This way, sir," Compton said, gesturing to the open door.

As they entered, the interior lights came to life. The two men stared at a small glass enclosure that had lines running into it, supplying nitrogen in its coldest state. Niles placed his thumb on a small plate just inside the door and allowed the center's Cray computer system to explain the find.

"The item you see before you, Event Group artifact and file # 4578-2019, was discovered in a Swiss bank vault by an undercover operative of Department 5656 in 1991."

The president looked closer at the acrylic enclosure and saw what looked like a small disk and disk player. Both items were worn and very old-looking. The disk itself was cracked and scratched and a third of it was missing.

"The object has been identified as a portable video-recording device manufactured by the Sony Corporation. Market date for this item was discovered to be in 2019 AD. This information was formulated through the serial number located on the video player/recorder and according to company sources the serial number coincides with a future manufacturing date as indicated by the last four digits of the serial number."

The president looked from the enclosure to the face of Niles Compton. The look told the director that the man was skeptical at the very least.

"Upon study by the Mechanical Forensics Department, the damaged disk, though incomplete, held a visual magnetic resonance of the Battle of Gettysburg, recorded on the evening of July 3, 1863. This has been verified by the alignment of stars recorded at the 1678 reference point of the disk's recording. Department historians authenticating the images recorded of the battle indicated no evidence of staging. The material enclosed was found on August 26, 1961, by Park Ranger August Schliemann one hundred and ten yards from the area known as "Little Round Top." This material was stolen from the National Parks Service and stored in The Bank of Switzerland, safe-deposit box number 120989-61. The item has been declared authentic by Group historians."

"What we have here is a device that was used to record the battle of Little Round Top in 1863. While we speculate that the damaged portion of the disk shows the actual battle as recorded at the time, we at Group have come to the realization that coupled with the manufacture time of the recording device, that battle was not only observed by someone from the future but recorded, for what reasons we can only speculate."

The president was speechless. He looked from the director to the acrylic enclosure. He turned and was about to ask a question when Alice, standing by the vault's door, cleared her throat.

"Director, the president has an urgent call from the White House."

"Thank you, Alice," he said as he gestured for the president to take the phone, which was just outside the vault door. As he moved off, Alice stepped in and smiled at the director.

"How's it going?" she whispered.

"I hate this stuff," he said back in a hushed voice. "It could go either way."

She patted Niles on the shoulder. "Well, it may cost us some budget money, but he can't close us down. Just keep that in mind." She smiled and turned toward the president as he spoke in quiet tones on the phone. Then she looked at Niles. "You seem to be taking this rather calmly, Niles. Are you forgetting to tell me something about you and our new commander in chief?"

Niles pushed his glasses back up to their proper resting place on his nose and then looked at Alice curiously.

"Forgetting something? No, I don't believe so."

The president hung up the phone and started to turn to them. Alice was looking at Niles with even more curiosity. She knew him well enough that she thought he wasn't being totally honest with her.

"Mr. Director, I'm afraid I have to cut this meeting short." He looked at the enclosure and then half smiled. "Even though I must say you have indeed piqued my imagination, the real world is intruding on us. The North Koreans are still rattling their sabers and now we have a serious incident at the Iran-Iraq border. It seems an earthquake caused a lot of deaths."

"Sorry to hear that, sir. We can continue when you have more time."

A frown crossed the president's face. "I can tell you're not used to being challenged on budgetary matters, Doctor. I assure you I just don't start axing programs and budgets without due consideration."

"Yes, sir."

"Ms. Hamilton, it's been a rare pleasure to meet a lady of your ... your--"

"Years, Mr. President?" she finished for him while batting her lovely eyes.

"Well, I was going to say quality. But if Dr. Compton has the smarts to keep someone like you way past mandatory retirement without anyone catching on, well, maybe you folks deserve the benefit of the doubt." The president turned to Niles and held out his hand. "Until we have more time, Mr. Director."

Alice watched their eyes meet and became aware of a momentary softness there that had not been evident before.

Niles watched Alice lead the president to the secure elevator, where he would meet his Secret Service escort, and frowned. He wanted to tell Alice and a few of the others about the president and himself, but he didn't know for sure what the man wanted everyone to know just yet. He decided that since the president hadn't said anything, he would play it close to the vest for now.

The presidential helicopter was waiting just inside the ancient-looking hangar. The staged dilapidation kept prying eyes from paying too much attention to gate number one of the Event Group complex. As the five-bladed rotor started to turn, the president frowned at the folder just given him by his chief of staff, Daniel Harding.

"Do we know just how much armor loss we're looking at?"

"No, sir. With the earthquake damage it's still a mess over there. The Iraqis are claiming to have lost forty percent of their ready divisions in the disaster. CIA reports that Iran has lost a like number. The quake hit at just the right area and the ayatollah is saying it's a divine sign that the end is near and that disarmament is the only option, starting with Iraq of course."

"Well, I wouldn't be crying over that, but how about unilaterally first," the president said as the huge marine helicopter eased out of the mysterious hangar of the Event Group. "Might make the world a sight happier."

"Indeed," the chief of staff said. "Now, that damn Kim Jong Il is a different story. He's claiming he has evidence of offshore tampering by South Korea that caused this earthquake and tsunami against the People's Army. He says it was underwater drilling that sparked the episode."

"Has he completely lost his mind? The South Koreans manipulated a seismic event by drilling for oil?"

"He claims to have evidence that shows naval elements and aircraft in international waters doing the foul deed. Even the Chinese are looking at him like he just fell out of the idiot tree and hit every branch on the way down."

"Well, get UN Ambassador Williams on it and tell him to find out what he can through unofficial channels. I don't want the State Department to officially give this story any credibility, understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Listen, also get Nathan Samuels to the White House. I want to know from my science adviser just how natural two quakes of this size almost half a world away can be separate natural events. I want an answer to tell the press when this idiot Kim Jong Il's statements hit the newswires."

Alice rode with Niles Compton on the elevator up to level seven. At first, the director was content to stare at the numbers as they rose. Then without turning he said, "I want a detailed report on all the field teams that may or may not have been affected by these quakes. Any team, no matter who they're attached to, gets removed if there's the slightest danger. We don't need anyone getting hurt while the president mulls over our value."

Alice was silent as she wrote his instructions in her small notepad. When she was done, she saw Niles remove his glasses and rub the bridge of his nose in worry.

"Everyone is out and safe."

Niles half turned and replaced his glasses. "Excuse me?"

"The Ethiopian field team--they're safe and should be home in about twelve more hours. Our wandering vacationers are with them."

Alice saw the director relax. He nodded as the real reason for his inquiry into the field teams had been answered.

"Are you angry with Jack?" Alice asked, looking at her notepad.

The elevator stopped and Niles waited for Alice to exit before following. He walked straight to his large office, which had the Group's motto above the door in gold letters: THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO FORGET THE PAST, ARE CONDEMNED TO RELIVE IT. He gestured for Alice to close the large double doors behind her.

The office was spacious and dominated by thirty small-screen monitors that could be tuned to any science department or vault on any of the seventy-five sublevels of the complex. In the center of these monitors that were situated on the wall in the circular office was one large monitor that was currently tuned to the dilapidated hangar designated gate one. It was empty, meaning that the president had safely lifted off. He went to the credenza and poured himself a glass of water, then sat behind his large desk.

"You asked if I was angry at Jack."

"Yes," she said as she sat down in a chair beside the desk.

"Not as much angry as I am worried." He took a sip of his water and rifled through some papers on his desk. He found what he was looking for and pushed the paper to Alice. "I requested that Jack be here for the briefing of the new president; he instead requested leave for himself, Everett, and Ryan."

"You granted the leave."

"How could I say no after what Jack has done for this Group in the past two years?"

"Then why are you worried?" Alice asked as she laid down the memo.

"He takes too many chances sometimes."

Alice smiled and looked at her boss. She knew that Niles from time to time overthought a situation, and she was duty-bound to ease his mind. Jack Collins was the very best at what he did. His army record was unparalleled in achievement. The only mark against him was his battle with the Pentagon over policy, which had eventually led him to be transferred to the Group.

Carl Everett was Jack's equal in many ways, with the exception of his heart. Everett was the one to whom Jack turned for the harder things involved with his new command. Such as how to handle people.

"Jack doesn't have a death wish, Niles, if that's what you're thinking. What he does have is an overwhelming commitment to do what is right. He was restrained for so many years in his duties with the army. The inability to do the right thing instead of what policy dictated he do. You gave him the freedom he needed to act when you brought him here. Bad people were hurting us in the field and Jack stopped that after you gave him a free hand, and I must say it was the smartest order you could ever have given a man like Colonel Collins."

Niles placed the glass down and then looked at Alice and nodded. "Do I always overlook the obvious?"

"Jack's not growing bored. He wanted to be there to give Will Mendenhall his new second-lieutenant's bar. He's proud of Will, you know that. A fishing vacation was only an excuse."

"He goes fishing and thwarts an attack on innocent students. Taking chances is a bad habit I want him to break."

"If he breaks that habit, we go back to losing field personnel. It's still an ugly world out there, Niles, and Jack just happens to know how to deal with it."

Eighteen hours later, Collins stood at semiattention before the desk of his director. He had not taken the seat offered by Niles, preferring to wait until the director got off his chest that which had to be said.

"Bring back any fish, Colonel?" Niles asked as he looked at the debrief folder that Jack and the others had filed.

"All we brought back was a hangover and an Ethiopian field team."

Niles flipped a page in the file and then looked at Collins. He tossed the filed report onto his desk and then gestured for the colonel to sit.

"Take a seat, Jack ... please."

Collins finally relented and sat. The silver bird on his collar sparkled in the soft light of the office.

"You take too many chances, Jack," Niles stated flatly as he looked straight at Collins.

Collins was about to speak when Niles held his hand up.

"Save it. For people like me who only see science and numbers, we can't even begin to imagine what it's like to have the ability you have. It is a hard thing for us to conceive of risking one's life to save a stranger. Cannot fathom it. I just want you to think before you leap. You are too damn valuable to this Group. To me." He mumbled the last words.

Collins watched the director. While he and Niles had never become close, they had a mutual respect for each other that went far beyond the normal working relationship. He may not have expressed himself to the director the way he should have, but Jack knew that the bookish director was the smartest man he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. In addition, the two worked well as a team, always thinking about the safety of their people.

"You and many others sell yourselves too short around here, Niles. My abilities are no greater than any one of the five hundred people assigned to Group. In my time you've made choices I could never imagine making--life-or-death decisions for people out in the field--and I must say you have never come up short. All soldiers ever ask for is a superior to have his back. They all know that you do."

Niles Compton nodded, signaling an end to that discussion. He cleared his throat, undid his top button, and then slid the knot in his tie down. He picked up the file with the field report in it.

"This Addis Abba archaeology team--their dig was similar to our own?"

"As far as we know, it was an information-and-acquisition dig only. No one knew what would be found."

Niles turned in his chair and typed a command on his computer. The main ten-by-fourteen-foot monitor came alive, and he and Jack looked into the clean room on level forty-three of the artifact-sorting room.

A straitlaced technician no older than thirty stepped up to the monitor. Professor Alan Franklin smiled and nodded at Niles.

"Mr. Director, good morning."

"What have you got so far?" Niles asked.

"Well, the team brought back some very rare finds. Artifacts, I may add, that had no business being in the area where they were unearthed. For instance," he turned away and pulled up a shard of pottery, which he held very delicately in glove-encased fingers, "this little item: I can tell you, even before my assistant hands me the carbon-14 test results, that it predates anything we or anyone else in the world has on record. The pottery is almost porcelainlike in looks and made from a material civilizations have never used before in the making of pottery. Initial analysis says it's made from crushed volcanic glass."

"That's interesting, but--"

"Now here's the twilight-zone moment, Mr. Director. The shard itself had no business being in Ethiopia. We suspect that a great and powerful flood event may have carried it against the Nile's flow from the Mediterranean. The design is usually associated with a carafe and is a cross between Greek and Egyptian lineage."

"Your point is ...?"

"You don't see? It should not exist. A cultural exchange between Egypt and Greece couldn't have happened before 3700 BCE." The professor accepted a handed printout. "Just as I suspected, carbon-14 dating places the aggregate material in the shard between 11,000 BCE and 14,000 BCE, give or take five hundred to a thousand years. This is totally amazing!"

"Have your team run the carbon-14 testing again. Test everything our team came back with."

"Yes, sir, we're on it."

Niles turned off the monitor and faced Collins. "You're steeped in history, Jack; tell me, have you ever heard of anything that old?"

"No."

"You know why?"

Collins knew he was not going to like the answer.

"The Egyptian and Greek civilizations didn't even exist at that time."

"Then who made this little item that was unearthed two thousand miles away from where it was made? And what event could have been powerful enough to make the Nile River reverse its flow?"

"That's what we need to find out. In addition, what artifact could those mercenaries have been looking for that was important enough to kill for?"

"I think maybe I'll bring in our new operatives at the FBI we recruited last year, it's time they earn their keep anyway. They can also find out who was on the other end of that cell-phone conversation in Africa."

Director Compton nodded, agreeing that Jack should contact FBI Special Agent William Monroe in New York to bring him up to speed on Ethiopia.

"This could be a find that changes the face of history. It would predate any known civilization by at least four thousand years."

The Event Group had a mission.

The large conference room was situated 160 feet below street level, under one of the oldest manufacturing firms in Europe. Grouped around this table were men and women from most western nations of the world, plus Japan, India, and Hong Kong.

The flags arrayed along the walls of the conference room were bright red and each carried a symbol handed down since the time of the Caesars, and each one differing only slightly from the others. A large golden eagle was prominent on all of them. Some had sloping lines that resembled a bent swastika clutched in the eagle's powerful talons, while others depicted more bizarre symbols from antiquity. The prevalent theme of all the flags was the golden eagle emblazoned over a scarlet field.

The most recently designed flag, the symbol of the Third Reich, was not present. The episode in the 1930s and '40s had almost dealt the Coalition a deathblow and the flag had become an embarrassment, especially to the younger and far more radical element now sitting among the old guard.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen and ladies, this meeting will come to order," said the small man known as Caretaker. He rapped a gavel on his small desk in the rear of the luxuriously appointed room. "We have many items to discuss this evening."

The twenty-six men and five women who made up the Juliai Coalition, named for the esteemed Roman family that was the precursor to the Caesars, calmed and took their seats. Though many were there for reasons outside that of legacy, they had many things in common. One of these was the fact that they were the richest private citizens in the world. Not one name would ever show up on any registry of the world's richest people, and you would never find the likeness or name of any Coalition member in a gossip column or tabloid. They did not bicker with governments in courts of law over the cornering of markets or the breakups of conglomerates so large that their value could not be computed. The Juliai Coalition answered to no power in the world.

"We will forgo the reading of the last meeting's minutes to concentrate fully on this first day of initial operational testing."

There were nods and smiles around the conference table. Then a lone figure at the center stood and chimed a knife against a water glass.

"The gentleman from Austria, Mr. Zoenfeller, has the floor," announced Caretaker.

"Before we have the report read to us from operations, I would like to bring to the attention of this council that we have ongoing missions to find the Atlantean Key. Without it, I daresay we will have more episodes like the one this afternoon."

There were a few nods and words of agreement with the large, gray-haired man, but they were far fewer than the hard looks coming from the younger majority.

"What was wrong with the initial tests of today?" asked a tall man with a head of boyish blond hair. "This is why we have started with nations that have neighbors who will eventually have to be dealt with. We all agreed that pinpoint strikes were not necessary, so it was effective to start with these locations." He was staring at the Austrian with mild contempt.

"The young gentleman from America has voiced the standard 'toe the line' opinion of the youth in this room. An opinion, I might add, that rings of dictate and not council."

Only a few of the older people rapped their knuckles on the polished table to indicate their agreement. With a bemused look, the American Coalitionist took note of those few who sided with the Austrian.

Nonplussed by the limited agreement, the old man plodded on.

"I must say, the tests today were reckless and their random destruction will attract attention to our endeavor. Without the Atlantean Key, we have no pinpoint-strike capability. We can and will harm the economies of friendly nations, and that, ladies and gentlemen, will affect most of us in this room directly."

The aged man from Austria sat down. The tall American watched but remained standing, intent on finishing his statement. Now was the time to hammer home his points against the old guard of the Coalition. As he waited for the murmurings to subside, he decided upon a gentler approach. After all, he really hadn't expected that the circle of destruction would spread so far across the Iranian border in the afternoon strike of Thor's Hammer.

"My friends, I know many of you have expressed your fear of starting before the Key has been recovered. I must again remind you that many of the economies of our own nations cannot afford the luxury of this wait. The elimination of old thorns must begin now so that new growth can begin. These outlaw and backward nations that we have targeted are a drain on everyone and every government represented in this room. Limited strikes with the Keyless Hammer can lessen some of the pressure of defending against such fools. We need these limited strikes for the time being. When our own people are in place at the head of these governments and our loans negotiated for boosting their economies, you will see the benefit of acting now."

The man from Austria stood suddenly, slamming his hand on the table-top.

"We must limit Thor's Hammer to today's strikes only and curtail operations until the Key is recovered. I am sure all here are thrilled at the power achieved in this first test. But, like most of you, I saw today what could happen if we act without knowing the full potential of the weapon, without some form of control."

"May we inquire as to the progress of the Ethiopian venture, Mr. Cromwell?" asked Caretaker from his seat at the small desk.

"The report filed this afternoon describes a disappointing end to one of our scout teams in Ethiopia, who it seems conflicted with a group of Americans that were conducting an unrelated dig nearby and were eliminated. The details are rather sketchy at the moment, but nonetheless cannot help but have the adverse effect of setting us behind in our search for the Atlantean Key, at least until another team can be dispatched from the Sudan." The Englishman sat after giving his brief report.

"I take it these Americans have no idea these mercenaries were working for us?" the Austrian asked, nodding toward the American. "Mr. Tomlinson?"

"I and the two other Americans in this room can hardly control the actions of every agency in our country. The identity of this agency is still unknown. How could the Americans have received any valuable information if the men we sent into Ethiopia had none to offer? However, I promise to use all of our influence and resources to discover who interfered, and those people will be dealt with."

"Even more ruthlessness?" Zoenfeller asked loudly.

"We are ranging far off the subject. The two strikes were a success. North Korea is hurt and hurt badly and is liable to strike out at any time. Iran will not soon recover, at least in the near future."

"What we have done, and all we have done, on the Korean peninsula is angered an old and weary tiger that is now wounded and fearful for its life. The weapon was weak in Korea and too powerful in Iran, and we ended up hurting Iraq!" Zoenfeller said as he tried to bring his point home. "And now the Middle East ally many of us, including your own country, have created in the past ten years has also been hurt beyond measure, now requiring even more funding from us in the near future, all because the weapon didn't have a particular enemy in mind." Zoenfeller was unhappy to see that only a very small percentage of members were nodding in agreement with his words.

Coalitionists who seemed to be losing their nerve were noted.

"Regardless, the next set of strikes will go forward. The Atlantean Key will be recovered before we start hitting government assets in our own nations and those of our allies. As for old enemies, we must continue to lay the groundwork. The last few years of drought have crippled the Russians, and the flooding in China has weakened an already flagging support base for their leadership. The time to hit them is now, not later," said Tomlinson, with so much calm that it froze the blood of the elder element of the council.

"You are suggesting that we advance our carefully planned timetable for the elimination of those two powers by four years? Am I correct?"

"Yes. Most here are so very tired of the Juliai Coalition's timidity when it comes to dealing with these two backward powers. The fear of these toothless tigers in the East has been so greatly exaggerated that it sickens those of us who have had to stand here in this room and hear tales of terror of how dangerous these nations are, when in fact it would take but a single nudge to send them both toppling over. This is not the fifties; it is now."

"And neither nation will react the way Kim Jong Il has? I guarantee you, instead of folding like a shoddy house of cards, they will fight to stay their power over their people. What if nations start believing North Korean claims of the disaster not being a natural occurrence? Silly as he seems to most, what if Kim's wild accusations cause other, more levelheaded people to start investigating your not-very-well-disguised laying of the sound amplifiers in North Korean waters? Russia and China are capable, my young friend, of doing the unexpected."

"That is your opinion of them. They are weak and they will fall. Their economies cannot withstand a natural disaster on the scale we plan. And the intelligence Kim has only shows oil exploration that was cleared far in advance by international treaty," Tomlinson said.

He looked around the room and smiled. A soft gesture coldly calculated to ease the minds of the elders.

"Due to our efforts in America, the grain and other foodstuffs that are needed by these nations just won't be available. They are already looking to the West and the United States in particular with a large degree of mistrust. The new president is having a hard time convincing them that he is not using food as a weapon to alter their national policies against rogue elements, like Georgia and Taiwan. A limited confrontation between East and West is an ally to our cause."

"I agree. The timetable must be adjusted to take advantage of these elements that can only have a positive effect on our plans," said the man from France. "We must accelerate."

More than 80 percent of the people in the room felt the same as they rapped their knuckles on the table before them. However, Tomlinson, ever the politician, felt he needed the support, at least for the moment, of the older members.

"I have assets in Ethiopia that are standing by to find the buried Key. In the States, my best intelligence person is close to tracing its whereabouts by finding the hiding place of the plate map stolen in 1875 by Peter Rothman. She has already learned it was sent to our brothers and sisters of the Ancients. Now is not the time to lose your nerve, ladies and gentlemen--not with your own governments in your control as the prize for rising above any timidity."

"The timidity we show, Mr. Tomlinson, is due to the fact that we only agreed to the tests in Iran and Korea. We did this because you guaranteed we could test the weapon without the Key."

"This argument is getting very tiresome. Now if you will excuse us ..."

The man from Austria shook his head. Events were moving too fast and the elder statesmen of the Juliai were worried. Maybe it was because the memory of another, even more zealous renegade was fresher in their minds than in those of the younger men and women. Adolph Hitler had once defied the Coalition and nearly destroyed them. Now it was happening again, and they were helpless to stop it. Tomlinson was bringing on the Fourth Reich his way.

The young lions had taken control of the most influential entity in the history of the world. It had happened once before, in the time of Julius Caesar, and that had ended in the splintering of the first family of man.

The young members of the Coalition were now in a state of near rebellion and the elders feared that the result could well mean the devastation of the planet itself.

Second Lieutenant Sarah McIntire sat with Collins and Everett in the cafeteria. She acted as if she were somewhere else as the two men spoke while eating. Then Collins looked over at the diminutive geology professor and nudged her out of her trance.

"All right, what's up?" he asked.

Sarah looked from Jack to Carl and set her fork onto her plate. "There's a rumor going around that you guys had one hell of a fishing trip."

"Nah, nothing special, didn't catch a thing," Carl said, straight-faced.

"Will had a nice commissioning party, that's all that happened. So, what are you up to?" Jack asked.

"My department's been running a little slow. A lot of people out on leave, like most of the complex. I have what's left of the Geology Department teaming with earth sciences and we're going over these earthquakes just as a training exercise. Everyone seems to be stumped."

"Stumped about what? That Korea was hit with a megaquake? It is on the Pacific Rim, you know. It's the old ring-of-fire thing. In addition, Iraq and Iran aren't exactly on stable terrain either. Shit happens," Carl said as he swallowed some water.

"Yes, they are all unstable. But there hasn't been one aftershock in either location since the main shaking stopped."

"Is that normal?" Jack asked as he tossed his napkin onto his plate.

"Jack--" Sarah caught herself and hoped that no one had heard her address him in the familiar sense. "Colonel, there are always aftershocks. It's just like a long-distance runner cooling down after the main shock of a race. There are always tremors, and this is so unnatural it's raising eyebrows across academic circles. And it's not just because of the wild claims by North Korea."

"Well, I'm sure the eggheads will--"

Will Colonel Collins and Captain Everett please report to the computer center. Colonel Collins and Captain Everett to the comp center, please.

The computerized female voice cut short the academic question of Sarah's point as she watched the two officers reach for their dinner trays and stand. Jack looked at Sarah and she smiled. As she watched the two officers leave, Sarah remembered the very first time Jack had smiled at her and the butterflies she'd gotten in her stomach, making her feel like a schoolgirl. She smiled inwardly at the warming thought. She knew that her love for Jack had become common knowledge among their closest associates like Carl, Mendenhall, and even Director Compton, but the secret had to remain intact because Jack was a stickler for military protocol. Soon a decision would have to be made, and she knew that it would be hers to make.

The main computer center was set up like a theater. Desks were arranged on the upper level, each with a monitor, and they looked down on the main floor, where technicians worked at other stations for direct access into the Cray system known as Europa. This system was the most powerful computing apparatus known in the world and there were only four in existence. However, the Event Group's system was special. It had the ability to "talk" its way into any computer in the world, bypassing security mainframes of most governments, universities, and companies.

Jack and Carl made their way down to the main floor and saw the man who had called them in. Professor Pete Golding, director of operations of the center, greeted the two men.

"Colonel, Captain, good of you to come." He turned to a small monitor attached to the plastic wall of the center and waved a hand across its face. That activated the screen, and as they watched, the face of Niles Compton appeared. "Okay, they're here, Niles. Shall we start?"

Compton nodded and watched on his own monitor in his office.

"Okay, the cell phone you came back from Africa with was damaged beyond repair. But the idiot who thought just disabling it never learned the fact that a cell phone is nothing but a small computer. It has a nonvolatile memory and this is what's used to store information. You know, it's amazing when you think--"

"Pete, listening to you is like having your teeth drilled into. Would you get to the point, please?" Niles said, rubbing his temples.

Pete looked hurt. Red-faced, he shoved his glasses back onto his nose.

"What did you learn, Pete?" Jack asked, to get things back on track.

"Well, the cell was used to call only one number. Europa tracked the owner of this number and we gave it to the Group's contact at the FBI for investigation."

They watched as Pete switched on another monitor and then they were looking into the young face of special Agent William Monroe. He was at his home in Long Island, New York.

"Bill, how are you?" Jack asked.

"Good evening, Colonel and Captain. Pete has passed on to me your information and we have tracked a rather shady individual right here in the U.S. As a matter of fact, he's in my own home state."

"Fortuitous," Niles said.

"As I was saying, our friend is an investment banker and commodities broker who has an estate in Westchester County. A small burg called Katonah. Our friend had over twenty-seven calls into this mercenary's cell phone, and after checking his phone records we've learned that he had numerous other calls to Africa, not only on this cell but many others--thirty-five to be exact."

"Talk about reach out and touch someone," Everett said.

"Also our friend has a black area that falls in line with this whole mess. He's a collector, anything and everything, from Greece to China. Under-the-table dealings mostly, very few are reported, thus he makes for an interesting entry in the books of the FBI and the IRS."

"What do you think, Bill--can we get into this man's humble abode without your bosses in D.C. getting wise?" Jack asked.

"Yeah; I have enough to get a search warrant. How you cover yourselves will have to be the key here. No one on my side of the fence can get even a hint I let someone pull a raid in my backyard."

"I think we can manage that. Can you have a few of your boys standing by in the wings for recovery purposes?"

"You got it, Jack. Just let me know and I'll have the warrant ready," Monroe said, then signed off.

"Well, Mr. Director, do we have a 'go' to get out to New York?" Collins asked.

Niles looked into the monitor and nodded. "You have a go, but remember, the main reason for bringing this guy down is the fact that he at the very least ordered the murders of innocent college kids and their professors, and for what, some shards of pottery? Yes, Colonel, you have a go."

Jack nodded.

"But it would be nice to know what it was they were looking for. I mean, if ten- to fifteen-thousand-year-old artifacts didn't interest them, just what does? That's the main reason we're handling this instead of the regular authorities," Niles said before he signed off.

Jack looked from the darkened monitor to the face of a grinning Everett.

"You packed yet?" he asked.

"Been packed. Let's go."

As they turned to leave the computer center, they heard Pete Golding behind them as they climbed the stairs.

"Does my voice grate on people like a dentist drilling teeth?"

"Don't worry, Pete, it only happens when you talk," Everett said as they reached the door and left.

The mansion was surrounded by immense manicured lawns and gardens, which belied the fact that hidden among imported shrubs and trees was the most sophisticated security system ever installed within the confines of a private estate. It had taken Special Agent Monroe only hours, with the help of his Europa link, to track the owner's business expenses, and the discovery of the advanced security system told the agent that the man had something to hide within the walls of the estate. The eight-million-dollar system had drawn scrutiny and been cross-referenced with the owner's identity. From there it had been only a matter of digging a little further to find the truth behind the wealthy world traveler.

The team had decided to travel over a mile overland to reach the outer gate at the rear of the property in lieu of using a helicopter. Nothing would have been more conspicuous than the taletell thump of rotor blades after dark in quiet Westchester County, New York.

The ten-man assault element watched as one of three security trucks negotiated the long driveway from the front of the mansion. They were nearly invisible in the dark, blending in well with the cloudy night in their Nomex clothing and hoods. The team was armed with MP-5s--lightweight, short-barreled automatic weapons.

The dark figure squatting beside a tree raised his hand as the small pickup truck cruised by, its spotlight swinging toward them but missing the ten men. He then held up two fingers and made a scissoring motion.

A large man in the middle of the line came forward after the truck had vanished around a curve. He removed a small black box and held it as close to the steel fence as he could without touching it, then he switched on the power to the box. The soft glow of the gauge was covered by the big man's hand as he studied the LED readout. He nodded and held up his left hand. He splayed his fingers wide, indicating five, then closed his hand again and spread them once more: ten. The man in the lead nodded, easily seeing the signal with his ambient-light-vision goggles, bringing the team into a silhouetted ghostly image of greens, blacks, and grays. The large man lowered his hand and removed the twin electrical leads. He was hearing the soft hum of ten thousand volts of electricity as it passed through the chain-link fence.

Another of the team duck-walked forward and brought out the insulated wire cutters, then he waited while the larger man ran rubber-coated wires from one link of the fence to another. He did this until he had a four-foot circle woven into and connecting the chain links. Then he held out his hand and took the cutters from the second man. Then he started snipping the thick wire of the fence.

The wiring he had woven into the fence was an electric-free corral, designed to isolate an electrical current and keep a connection of the fence to fool any alarm that would sound as the links were severed. With the last of the links cut, the man pulled free the circle of wire, and the team moved in.

Two three-man teams went left and right, hunkering low as they went. The leader took the last three and went straight ahead.

On the left, that team would make first contact, so they lowered themselves to the ground and waited. They were rewarded a moment later when headlights came around the corner from the back of the house. This was the second security truck. As it approached, one of the three men removed a small ball bearing from his armored vest and waited until the truck was ten yards away on the other side of the slope.

The first man in line crawled the last three feet to the top of the rise and pulled a funny-looking pistol from a holster at his side; then he aimed. The other drew back and threw the lightweight ball bearing in a nicely tossed arc. It struck the side of the truck, making a louder-than-expected crack as the vehicle came quickly to a stop, its driver curious as to the cause of impact. As soon as he stepped from the small truck and walked three steps to its hood, and looked to see what had struck the vehicle, the compressed-air dart caught him in the left side of his neck. The security guard yelped and then tried to make it to the driver's-side door, but he made only two steps before his legs refused to cooperate and gave out completely. He fell with a muffled thud. He would be that way for several hours, awakening with the worst headache of his life.

The three other vehicles and the three foot-patrol officers were dispatched just as easily. Only one had given the team a fright, as he had actually had the physical strength to get his hand on the radio clipped to his shoulder before giving up the ghost.

The team spread out into their designated entry points and waited for the signal. The large man who had cut the fence found the telephone and power boxes on the outside of the house near the basement door and placed a small, circular object against the incoming phone and power lines that ran in from the county grid. He set the timer for ten seconds and then backed away. A small electrical charge sent power racing back into both lines, popping the circuit breakers somewhere inside the house. The phone line would be useless until the phone company discovered that the fiber-optic line had been fused and clouded from the electrical charge.

The lights around the compound went out: that was the signal for step three in the structure assault. At that exact same instant, the front and rear doors, along with the center panel of French doors beside the pool, exploded inward with a shower of wood splinters and glass. The black-operations team entered with weapons held high.

On the ground floor, the unseen and invisible assailants roughly pushed several shrieking servants to the ground. They were expertly bound with plastic ties and then the men moved off quickly. The raid took exactly three minutes and twenty-two seconds from the time the first guard had been taken down.

The leader of the team stepped forward after counting heads and looking at each face. He came to a man who was looking up into the hooded face above him arrogantly.

"Your name is Talbot?" the man with the funny goggles asked.

The man only stared up into the darkness, not as arrogant now as he'd been before the man called him by name.

"Are you Talbot, the butler, the man in charge?" the man asked quietly again, this time kneeling down, bringing his science-fiction-looking outfit closer for inspection. For emphasis, he adjusted the MP-5 weapon on its strap menacingly.

"Yes, yes," the man said quickly.

"Where is William Krueger?"

"He ... he ... was upstairs when we retired for the night.... I swear."

The menacing figure glanced up at another even larger team member coming down the stairs. This man shook his head, negative, and then the man kneeling beside the butler unsafed his weapon, and everyone in the room, even the maids and cooks, knew a menacing click when they heard one.

"I'll ask one more time, and if I don't get the answer I want, you'll be serving your next high-paying master with a limp, because I will shoot you right through the kneecap--understood?" The threat was delivered with a menacingly cool voice.

"You can't do this ... you're ... you're police officers!"

The man chuckled and looked at the big man above him. "Who in the world ever said we were police officers? This is what you would call a home invasion, and we're the invaders. I'm also running out of patience."

The calm and sensible demeanor of the man wearing the strange goggles terrified the butler.

"For God's sake, Albert, tell them what they want to know!"

The man calmly looked over at the belly-down servants and saw an arrogant-looking woman trying to peer at him through the darkness. Then he remembered the detailed pictures shown to him by the recon team. She was Anita McMillan, the estate's chef.

"All right, all right. There's a panel in the library behind the desk. It's a false front, there are stairs behind it. Just slide it, it'll open right up. That's the only place Mr. Krueger can be."

The leader nodded toward the larger man and he and three others went to the library.

"Thank you, Albert. Your cooperation has been noted." The man gestured for another of his team and soon all the servants were blinded by black bags that were placed over their heads.

The leader joined the three men inside the library and watched as the paneled wall was probed. Then he heard the panel slide into the wall. He gestured for the middleman, the best rifleman on the team, to take point. As he did, the others waited until he was ten steps down the flight of stairs before they followed.

The men removed their night-vision scopes as there was a soft light coming from below. They were halfway down when the point man held up his hand with splayed fingers, and they stopped. As they watched him take another step, they were surprised by the sound of a pistol shot as it glanced off the stone wall, just missing the man in the lead position. They saw him grimace as stone chips struck the side of his face. Then he took a determined stance, braced himself against the stairwell's railing, and fired a ten-shot burst of 5.56-millimeter rounds into the basement. Then he waited another split second and fired ten more. The men behind him knew his routine and prayed it would work.

"Now, that was a warning! The next burst is going to chew your ass up. You have three seconds to surrender that popgun you have. Oh, hell, forget it. I'm not waiting." The point man fired a three-round burst into the stairwell and the basement below. The men behind him on the stairs smiled as he did so.

"Okay, okay, you son of a bitch. You didn't have to do that. Give a man time to think goddammit!"

"You're all out of time, fuckhead! You took a shot at the wrong goddamn black man!"

"Who in the hell are you?"

"That's of no concern to you at the moment!" Another three-round burst was sent into the basement, close to but not near enough to the unseen man below to cause him any harm. "I didn't hear that cap gun hit the floor yet, asshole!"

"Goddamn maniacs!" The whimpering voice answered from below, but that was quickly followed by the clatter of metal hitting concrete.

The point man didn't hesitate. He took the stairs quickly and the others behind him made as much noise as possible to tell the man below that the maniac had a lot of company. They heard the commands before they reached the bottom of the stairs.

"On your belly, Rockefeller. Hands spread out in front. Now, dammit! Put those silk pajamas on the cold-ass floor!"

The others arrived and watched as a plastic wire tie was placed on the wrists of a very large, rotund man. The man's breathing seemed distressed, and the leader of the assault team gestured for the point man to get him on his feet.

"Who ... who ... who are you? What do you want?" the man rasped in halting words.

The team leader found a large chair behind an even larger desk and pushed it toward him with his black boot.

"You're not going to die on us, are you?"

The fat man took several deep breaths and finally color began to run back into his face. The lighting was sufficient in the spacious basement to see that he was recovering from his initial shock.

"As for who we are, we're the people that have come to take back the things you have stolen over the years and to make you account for the lost lives of innocent archaeology students in Ethiopia. That's who we are."

The owner of the mansion watched from his chair as the black hood was removed. The three other men did the same. The angry black man to his front was staring a hole through him. He shied away, leaning as far back in the chair as possible, when he realized that it was the man he had taken the shot at.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm an investment banker and commodities trader," he said, still looking at Mendenhall.

Colonel Jack Collins stepped forward, tossing his hood to Carl Everett, standing at his side.

"Mr. Krueger, do we look like men who have been misinformed? Do you think we came here on a whim, or do you think we may have a purpose?"

Krueger looked from face to face. There was no identifying insignia on their clothing and each man had his face set, and it was a determined look.

"No ... I mean yes, you look as if you have a purpose."

"We know about your collection, so, if you would like to leave this house in one piece, you'll show it to us right now. I'm sure you don't want the authorities involved here, do you?"

Krueger looked as if he had accepted his fate in one fell swoop. His head lay to the side and he started to cry. His large frame shook with his sobbing as Will Mendenhall helped him to his feet.

Colonel Collins looked over at Everett, who nodded and then walked over and assisted in getting the overweight Krueger to a standing position. Collins waited while the art-and-antiquities thief, not to say murderer, composed himself. He heard a click in his earpiece. He thumbed a small switch at his throat that activated his transmitter. He turned away from Krueger.

"Recovery One," he said softly into his throat microphone.

"This is Eagle Eye. All palace guards are cooperating and we have Ernie's Fix-it Shop and Recovery Three on property and moving toward your pos, over."

Collins heard the whispered voice from his outside security. Instead of answering, he reached down and manually clicked his mic twice.

Everett also heard the report. All the security guards had been rounded up and placed in a safe location, still out from the tranquilizers, and now the three-man outside security element reported another Event team approaching the house. Carl rolled back his black glove and looked at his watch. Not bad, he thought; Ryan and his team were right on schedule. Not bad for a flyboy.

"Okay, Krueger, the artifacts," Collins said, stepping toward the man.

"Take me over to my desk, please."

Jack nodded, and Mendenhall and Everett walked him over to a large, ornate desk in the far corner of the basement office. The large man reached out for the top drawer.

"Ah-ah-ah, we'll open it for you," the black man said. Mendenhall leaned forward and gently pulled out the top drawer. He gave Krueger a mock-disappointed look and removed the snub-nosed .38 Police Special and tossed it over to Collins.

"That was not my intent. There's a button just under the lip of the desk. Push it once."

Mendenhall felt around until he found it and then pushed it.

At first, there was nothing. They could hear only the activity upstairs as Ernie's Fix-it Shop, an Event Group maintenance team, went to work with subdued hammering and electric-tool sounds. Then battery-powered flood-lights joined those few emergency lights and illuminated the room brightly. In the harsh glare, the team could see nothing but barren walls. There were a few things like diplomas and family pictures, but other than that, they were white and empty.

"Push the button one more time," Krueger said with his chin almost touching his chest in despair.

Mendenhall repeated the process and they heard an electric motor, obviously battery-operated also, start to hum, and then the far eighty-foot-long wall parted in the center and slowly slid back in two sections on hidden tracks.

Instead of watching the false wall divulge its secrets, Collins watched Krueger. He sniffled and wiped a hand across his sweating face, but his eyes weren't concerned about the secret door. Jack watched as the man's eyes quickly darted to the desk once more and then just as quickly looked away. Collins saw that the desk sat in front of one of the basement walls, and beyond that wall one would assume was dirt and rock. As he looked back, Krueger was again sobbing, but once again he saw the man's dark eyes glance at the desk.

"Jesus, you've been a busy little thief, haven't you?" Mendenhall said as spotlights illuminated a treasure trove of ancient and not-so-ancient artifacts.

Collins and Everett stepped forward and looked at the commodity trader's extensive collection. There were special pieces sitting atop pedestals from the third and fifth dynasties of Egypt. Lights shone down on armor dating back to the days of Alexander. There were oil paintings from the Renaissance. Other displayed jewelry had been stolen from collections around the world. Crowns of kings long dead. Collins activated his com link.

"Recovery Three, you can bring the trucks in now."

Jack turned to Krueger, who was still being held by Will. He stepped up to him, raised his double chin, and looked him in his watery eyes.

"Your cooperation will be noted and the prosecuting authorities will be notified."

"But you're thieves! Why ... what--"

"To further enhance the chances your team of defense attorneys have of getting you acquitted, do wish to tell us about the second room now?"

The man's face drained of blood right before their eyes. His thick lips started to tremble and his eyes widened. All at once, he wasn't timid or frightened any longer; he was mad.

"You bastards, you're dealing with things beyond your concept!"

"Seems you hit a nerve, Jack," Everett said.

"Will, reach in and push the same button again. I think our friend is hiding his real treasure in another location. This room here is nice, but X doesn't mark the right spot, does it, Mr. Krueger?"

As instructed, Mendenhall pushed the button again. This time there was a loud whine of an overgeared motor, and as they watched in amazement, a large circle in the center of the floor separated from the surrounding concrete and started to corkscrew down into the earth. The opening was about sixteen feet in diameter and started spinning faster as they watched. They could see the threads of the giant screw-type elevator as it spun and descended farther and farther. Jack could see that a man would use those threads as a winding staircase to enter the real treasure room.

"Now we know why his security system was so expensive," Jack said as the whine of the large motor stopped.

"Jesus," Everett said, looking from Krueger to Jack. "This guy and his engineers should have been working for us."

"You don't know what you're doing. You've just killed us all."

Everett feigned shock at Krueger. "Now that's a scary statement. Care to expand on it?"

Krueger closed his mouth into a tight line and looked away. His eyes did not follow Jack as he walked to the opening in the floor. Everett caught up with Collins and they both went down into the true light of the ancient past.

When they reached the bottom of the screwlike stairs, they couldn't believe what they were looking at. Row upon row and stack upon stack, layered a hundred thick, were scrolls of every shape and size. They had been neatly placed on specially designed mounts in hermetically sealed glass cabinets. As if they had entered an old library, Jack and Carl took in the most amazing collection of ancient writings they had ever seen.

The room was temperature and humidity controlled and they saw plastic clean-room suits, of the sort they had used on occasion when working with Europa, hanging on pegs in the corner. There were examination tables and viewing stands. In a clean area fifty feet to the rear was what Jack recognized as an electron microscope. There was a rolled-out scroll on the glass top in the process of examination; it was covered in thick plastic to protect it from any dust particles that filtered into the room.

Also lining the walls were a hundred different flags. Some were emblazoned with a symbol reminiscent of the swastika, different only in small and varying ways. The one constant symbol on every flag was the shape of a large golden eagle. Some had straight and unyielding outstretched wings, and others had the wings turned down.

"Holy shit--is this guy Krueger for real?" Everett asked, staring at the strange banners.

Jack shook his head as he moved on. Also arrayed on one of the walls were several large relief maps from ancient times, sealed in the same manner as the scrolls. There were signs beneath each, warning of severe shock if the frame was touched. Jack stepped up to one and examined it more closely. It was an ancient depiction of Africa before the continent of Antarctica had separated from it. The rest of the world's continents had just broken away from one another and were in the process of moving as depicted in the next four wall-mounted maps.

Everett turned to the rear wall and looked at a strange chart that had millions of lines running through a mosaic relief of the African, European, and even North American continents. The strange lines wiggled through the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Beneath this ancient diagram was a small table with a computer and a stack of research materials laid out upon it. Everett quickly rifled through it and then turned to face Jack.

"It looks like someone was trying to interpret this chart. Just what in the hell is this?"

Collins didn't answer. He was standing at the farthest end of the chamber, looking up at a giant glass-enclosed map that was by far the largest object in the room. A large spotlight shone upon it and illuminated the frame's meticulous construction, which showed specially designed nitrogen and air evacuation hoses built into it.

"Jesus," Carl hissed as he saw the huge map.

Everett walked over to where Jack was standing and staring upward. He saw what looked to be the ancient Mediterranean. The map looked as if it had been painted on some form of exotic paper. He could also see the age-induced crumbling around the edges and corners. While the obvious age of the map was a striking feature, it was not the one that held the colonel's attention. Everett had to take a step back when he saw the ancient depiction. It showed a large island, made up of four distinct circles of land radiating outward from a center island, that was surrounded by the great inland sea that was one day to be known as the Mediterranean Ocean.

"What in the hell?"

"Mr. Everett, contact Group and inform them that we will be bringing some things back to the complex. We cannot let the FBI have these. I will let Agent Monroe know he'll have to prosecute Mr. Krueger with what stolen items he finds upstairs. I'm sure there is enough."

"Right. Uh, by the way, Jack, are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked as his eyes centered on the island that should not have been in the middle of the sea that would someday be known as an ocean.

"You don't have to just think it," he said as he reached out and touched the gold plate beneath the twenty-by-fifteen-foot map of a world long gone. "I think this spells it out quite clearly."

Everett stepped closer as Collins moved away so that he could read the plaque. Carl closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Yeah, I don't think the FBI would truly appreciate the value of this room as much as our people would."

The gold plaque glittered in the illuminating spotlight and both men looked at it and felt numb inside.

Engraved on the plaque was only one word: Atlantis.

An hour later, the servants were in the process of being moved to a safe house where they would be informed of their possible prosecution for assisting their employer in his theft of stolen antiquities. That should worry them enough to guarantee their cooperation and silence, Jack thought.

Ernie's Fix-it Shop had just replaced the last door and fixed and replaced the fuse box. The Event Group specialists had cleaned up nicely and were just packing up when Special Agent in Charge Bill Monroe was allowed inside the mansion for the first time.

"Bill," Collins said as he stepped toward the man with his hand outstretched.

The FBI agent shook Jack's hand.

"Colonel, I hear you took quite a haul?"

"Enough so that you'll get a nice little commendation in your Bureau file." Jack released the man's hand and then gently pulled him aside. "Look, this Krueger--there's far more to him than meets the eye. You need to find out all you can on him. He has stuff here that's pretty damn spooky and he keeps saying that we're all dead men for finding it."

"Isn't that usually a standard statement tossed about by scared rich men?"

"There's something in his eyes, Bill. I can't touch on what it is, but this guy is not scared of being prosecuted; he's afraid of something else."

"All right, I'll get what I can out of him. But too much might attract attention to who I really work for, Colonel."

"Don't give yourself up to your FBI. Just get what you can and hold him as long as possible until the Group can examine some of the more obscure items he has. Can you get a judge to recognize that he's a flight risk and not allow bail, at least for the time being?"

"Yeah, I think we can pull that off for a while. So, I only get the upper room of artifacts and you get the really good stuff Ryan's loading up--that right?"

"Sorry, Director Compton says this other room's contents are off limits until researched by the Group. Don't worry, you're getting some great stuff, Billy. Hell, there's a crown in there that belonged to Charlemagne."

"You're kidding?"

Jack Collins just smiled and walked into the darkness beyond the lights.

William Winthrop Tomlinson came from an old line of wealth that stretched back far before the Revolutionary War in the United States and then even further back in Europe. It would have taken a specialized team of IRS agents approximately a hundred years to unravel the intricate web of hidden properties and ownerships to discover the fact that he was three hundred times wealthier than the public figurehead who led the nation's and world's periodicals on that subject. He had used that family wealth wisely. He was now the most powerful man in the Coalition. Money was never an object to attain; it was a means to gather what he really craved--power, the power of rule.

Tomlinson was watching the dark sky outside his window as his private Boeing 777 streaked across the night sky, heading to New York. The remains of his salad and bottle of wine were still in front of him on the ornate cherry table.

He did not look around when one of his assistants leaned over with a fax. He absently continued to look out the wide window.

"Sir, this is quite important," the young assistant stated quietly.

The expensively attired Tomlinson still watched the night sky. Ignoring the man at his side, he merely held up his left hand and accepted the fax. He waited until the assistant had turned silently away and gone back to the office areas of the large aircraft. Then he reached out, lifted the crystal wineglass, and sipped the two-hundred-year-old vintage that came from his private stock in the belly of the giant plane. After savoring the deep richness of the wine, he finally looked at the paper in his hand.

0023 hours: Silent alarm tripped at storage station JC-6789. Security dispatched from New York City at 0031 hours by air. Observed a US federal agency raid upon property. Artifact examiner Krueger was removed from property in restraints. Artifacts confiscated and removed from secure location. Instruction require. --L.M.

Tomlinson raised the wineglass and drained its contents in one large gulp. His eyes were steady but belied the fact that his insides were crawling. He squeezed the wineglass almost hard enough to break the exquisite crystal, but then used his formidable willpower to calm himself. He pushed a call button beside the window frame.

"Yes, sir?" the assistant asked as he stood beside the large leather-covered chair.

"Signal our main asset in New York and order her to take care of this development in Westchester." Tomlinson looked at the assistant for the first time and his blue eyes were penetrating. "By any means necessary. There will be no expenditure of funds or personnel too extreme to that end. Is that clear?"

"Clear, sir."

"And inform Dahlia that this information is for my eyes only. The rest of the Coalition is not to be informed as of yet. In addition, I want her most up-to-date research and information on the Atlantean Key, and the plate map currently ongoing in Massachusetts, to come directly to me. I want all Westchester materials recovered as early as possible and the name of any agency involved in the raid on Coalition property. An extreme effort on this front is required, and I stress once more, regardless of losses."

The man nodded and quickly turned away to fax the instructions to New York.

Whoever was responsible for this action in Westchester was about to be introduced to the wrath of the new chairman of the Juliai Coalition.

The president stared at the situation report from Korea. As a former general, he understood the dire consequences of an unstable man and his shaky regime that held a nuclear trigger in his hands. The sit-rep said there had been a limited artillery exchange between the Second Infantry Division and Korean shock troops lining the border. Almost a hundred Americans and South Koreans were dead and a like number of Northern troops.

The intelligence reports that had flooded his desk in the last twelve hours were full of long fitness reports of Kim Jong Il, but what was not printed was the fact that no one really knew where the man was coming from, or where he was going, and in international politics that wasn't good.

"How do we stand on getting the Second Infantry Division reinforced?"

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs opened a file folder and read from a report. "We have the 101st Airborne Division on alert for deployment, as well as the 82nd fast-response units. But I'm afraid they were scattered for the July Fourth holiday and will take at least forty-eight hours to recall and deploy."

The president looked at Kenneth Caulfield and grimaced. "That's it, Ken? What about moving more air force units into Kempo from Japan--how are we looking on that front?"

"We have sent elements of the Third Tactical Fighter Squadron in from the Philippines, where they were conducting joint maneuvers with that government. We're also moving the John F. Kennedy and George Washington carrier groups into position off the coast of North Korea, but that will take more than four days."

"Jesus, can the Second ID hold if the North comes across the border?"

Caulfield lowered his eyes and shook his head. "Six hours' defense is estimated without tactical-weapons authorization."

The president looked stunned.

"We still have hope of the ceasefire holding as we make our case at the UN," said National Security Advisor Nate Clemmons. "But Kim is still claiming that we and the South Koreans were responsible for the seismic activity off their coast."

"What about the ships depicted in this surveillance footage of theirs?"

"CIA traced the ship's registry on each of the three vessels in question. They are registered to the Mid-China Oil Corporation, with exploratory permits issued legally from Seoul."

"Is there any scientific authority in the world that could prove this ridiculous theory he's spouting about these ships or aircraft being responsible for an earthquake? I mean, does Kim have any firm ground to stand on here?"

"In his country's weakened state, Mr. President, does it really matter? We are dealing with a wounded, very paranoid man here. Forget about walking softly; we have to hit this bastard with a heavy stick and do it before he has the advantage of tank divisions on the south side of the thirty-eighth parallel," General Jess Tippet, commandant of the Marine Corps, said, facing the others around the long table.

"As of this moment I want every single entity of our armed forces breaking their asses to get the Second Infantry Division some help. Strip whatever forces you need to strip. I also want our best minds working on this earthquake crap that he's thought up as an excuse to move south. I want a firm and decisive answer if this seismic thing could possibly be a manmade event."

The warehouse used for East Coast storage was a temporary-use facility only. Items recovered from digs, or in this case the raid on the Westchester mansion, could be secured and a precursory examination done before the trip out to the Nellis complex and the secure labs and vaults there.

While Jack and his recovery team took a needed rest, five stories below street level, the items recovered in the raid were getting their initial examination by an East Coast Event team of technicians called in from their various universities. These scientists and techs had the highest of security clearances and all worked for the Event Group in one capacity or another. The leader of the forensic effort was Professor Carl Gillman of NYU. He would work the archiving of the scrolls and artifacts until a better-equipped team from Event Group Center could arrive on station.

It was after Jack had received four hours of rest that Gillman tapped him on the foot. His eyes opened and he looked around before sitting up.

"Sorry to wake you, Colonel, but you have an urgent call from the director."

Jack nodded and placed his feet on the floor. He rubbed a hand through his hair and then took the offered phone.

"Collins."

"Jack, Niles here. I just wanted to let you know that the president has just placed the armed forces on full alert."

"The Korean thing getting worse?"

"Yes, to put it mildly. As a department in the federal government, the alert affects us also. I have a C-130 standing by at JFK airport for your team. I also want all written materials, scrolls, and maps you recovered last night to be brought to Nevada. I could only squeeze one plane out of the air force due to the situations in Iraq and Korea, so for now we have to leave the bulk of the artifacts until the next flight. Professor Gillman will remain there and catalog what we don't take now. Clear, Jack?"

"Yes, sir. We'll get the scrolls, maps, and ourselves out now."

"As for the security element for what items stay in New York, are we good on that point?"

"We have building security in place, plus I'll only take Everett and Will Mendenhall back with me. I'll leave Lance Corporal Sanchez here with the rest of the assault team until we get the rest out."

"Whatever you think best, Jack. Sanchez is quite ready for more responsibility; he's a good man."

"A kid really, but a very capable marine."

"I understand we have some interesting stuff. Carl Gillman is in the process of sending us a video feed of some of the more fascinating discoveries. Do you have any idea why he has requested Sarah and a geologic team to stand by here?"

"No idea; I've been out for a while."

"That's fine. I also understand our friend Mr. Krueger is to be charged this morning in federal court. Monroe said they filed fast to keep him in jail while other charges are sought. Good work, Jack. We'll talk soon."

Jack handed the cell phone back to Gillman and then fixed the professor with a tired look.

"Doc, Director Compton said something about you requested a geologic team to stand by for your video feeds?"

Gillman removed his glasses and ran a hand through his thin and graying hair.

"Besides the existence of several pieces of very ancient jewelry, pottery armor, and the treasure trove of ancient scrolls and books, we have something that is baffling the hell out of our team here. It has something to do with the earth's plate movements. Strange stuff. We just want a geologist to look these charts over so we can know how to catalog them. So, nothing earthshaking, just strange."

Jack just nodded his head and yawned, ignoring the pun by Gillman. "Is the complex locked down, Doc?"

"It's buttoned up tight as a drum. Your men are even shutting down the loading dock and lobby areas."

"Good. Listen, a part of my team is taking the scrolls and maps out of here this morning, but I'm leaving a large security contingent here under Lance Corporal Sanchez. So everyone watch out for wolves at the door."

Gillman watched Jack move off, yawning, to wake the others to load the scrolls and maps and leave for Kennedy, then he moved off himself to return to the most wondrous discoveries he had ever seen. The most interesting of which was a large world chart that had thick lines running through the continents and oceans that just so happened to dissect in many areas of the known tectonic plates. How ancient man had known about these was a puzzle that was driving him and his small team mad.

Little did Gillman know that, over a hundred years before, Professor Peter Rothman had dubbed this particular chart the Atlantean Parchment just a day before he was murdered by a man from the Juliai Coalition.

Now, over a century later, that same Coalition was using the Atlantean Parchment in conjunction with an ancient weapon known as Thor's Hammer.

As Special Agent William Monroe sipped his coffee and read the morning paper, he heard the town's garbage truck outside and then frowned as he heard the clatter of his trash-can lids being tossed like Frisbees into his driveway and then the loud crash of the cans themselves onto the ground. He closed his eyes in frustration as he lowered his paper, then he looked toward the stairs, where he heard his wife moving around. The garbagemen must have awakened her, because it was a good two hours before she was due to get up.

Monroe just shook his head. He moved to the front door with coffee cup in hand, preparing to enjoy chewing on someone's ass for waking his wife, and for tossing his garbage cans just as if he could afford to buy new ones every week.

As he opened the door, he was shocked to see two men in casual clothes standing on his porch. His hackles rose immediately as the sense of danger hit him like a Mack truck.

He dropped his coffee cup and tried to slam the door closed but the two men were fast and he was hit and knocked backward into the entrance hall and then before he could recover was wrestled to the floor. One of the large men hit hard him hard on the face just as he saw through the still-open door the garbage truck move slowly down the street. As his head rocked backward from the blow, he was amazed at the normalcy of things just outside the horror that was happening in his home.

Monroe was stunned, but he was determined to get upstairs somehow. He was roughly turned over, and as the front door and the view of that normal world was cut out of his view, he felt a plastic wire tie being zipped to his wrists behind his back. He was frustrated beyond measure but tried to keep his cool. He had to allow his wife, Jenny, time to realize what was happening. He was pulled roughly to his feet as blood dripped from his mouth and stained the white bathrobe he was wearing.

He heard his bedroom door close upstairs and he closed his eyes. He just knew that Jenny was going to walk right into the middle of what was happening to him. But then again, he had the single ray of hope that his wife had the gun that was kept in the nightstand next to their bed.

Monroe was picked up then and led into the living room, where he was pushed to his knees. He raised his head just as he heard the soft padding of feet on the stairs. He looked up and his heart sank as he saw that it was a woman dressed in a nice pantsuit with a black overcoat. Her hair was blond and she walked with an air of confidence into the living room. She looked from the two men to himself and then sat on their couch and leaned forward with her gloved hands resting in her lap, one on top of the other.

The FBI agent lowered his head to try to get some sense of the situation. His hair was pulled roughly upward so that he faced the woman.

"Pay attention to the lady, she has words she wants to say," the larger of the two men said, leaning over Monroe's right ear.

"For you, Special Agent Monroe, this morning will not turn out as well as you're now hoping," the blond, very elegant-looking woman said as she held Monroe with her eyes and slowly removed her gloves, one finger at a time. "But for your wife, Jenny, who is now being detained upstairs, there is still hope that she can live beyond this day. Do you understand what I am saying? Just nod your head; no need to speak, as there will plenty of time for that later."

Monroe did as she'd instructed, giving a single dip of his chin.

"Good, we are off to a wonderful start. Your little foray into Westchester County last evening was beyond your scope of charter and expertise. I want you to tell my associates here who it is you are working for, and don't bother saying it was an FBI investigation because we have people in your field office that claim they had no knowledge of your actions. Your deceit may pass muster with your superiors, but I assure you it will not with me."

The woman, having stated what she had to state, slowly stood and looked at her wristwatch.

"Be very forthright, Agent Monroe, and your wife will be alive in the coming weeks, months, and years to mourn your passing. If you lead these men falsely, they will not kill your lovely wife without very much pain and humiliation. All we need to know is where the artifacts are and who it was that assisted you in your daring raid. Okay?" She smiled and nodded at the two men and then walked through the living room and disappeared.

The two men pulled him to his feet and led him into the kitchen. They sat him in a chair and then closed the curtains on the sliding glass doorway that looked out into his backyard. Then one of the men went to the kitchen table and moved a chair over to face him, and then sat down. He was smiling.

An hour later, the two men reported to the woman, who had relocated not far away in Islip, New York. They passed on the required information they tortured out of the FBI agent. What they had learned was almost unbelievable. They asked for instructions about the wife and they received them.

The man closed his cell phone, then reached out, and expertly sliced into the throat of Agent William Monroe, severing the jugular vein with ruthless precision. Then he stood slowly from his chair and made his way toward the stairs and the bedroom.

The new federal courthouse was situated in the middle of Long Island. The giant white concrete building had been constructed not for beauty but with security in mind, and all who passed by it had to shake their heads at the ugly monstrosity where federal justice was meted out.

William Krueger was waiting in a holding cell in the lower level of the courthouse. The orange jumpsuit they had issued him was four sizes too small and he could not even unzip the tight-fitting collar due to his handcuffs.

There were two other men waiting with Krueger to see a federal judge. One was a large black man with a shiny bald head who looked about with the soulless eyes of a career criminal. The other was what Krueger would have called normal-looking. His hair combed neatly, he looked as if a tailor had fitted him for his prison jumpsuit.

There were three guards in the holding area. Two sat behind a large desk and another walked a slow path between the three holding cells, of which only theirs was in use. Krueger watched as the guard looked in quickly and then moved off. He could not figure out what he was looking in the cell for: after all, the three of them were handcuffed to a chain that was bolted to the floor in front of them. They couldn't scratch their noses even if they wanted to.

Krueger was watching the large black man when he heard a noise in the corridor leading to the holding area. He figured that it was the courthouse guards coming to take him in to see his lawyer before he was to be arraigned. From what the guard had told him earlier, that was the procedure.

"Good morning," an unseen voice said to the guards.

"Morning," a female voice answered. Krueger figured that it was one of the guards from behind the desk. "Where's Stan?"

"He called in sick, so they got me moppin' in his place."

Krueger heard the sounds of a janitor and he relaxed. He heard the guards go back to an earlier conversation as the janitor went about his work.

The black man with arms the size of tree trunks was squeezed into his jumpsuit almost like Krueger was, only his discomfort was due to being muscle-bound. The man was looking at Krueger as if he were a bug that had just crawled out of his kitchen cabinet. Krueger immediately looked away.

Outside the cell, as the conversation continued between the two guards at the desk, Krueger heard two loud popping noises as if someone had hit a hollow cardboard tube. Then he heard running and then another hollow pop and then a clattering noise. As he looked around, he saw the thin white prisoner, who had a limited view of the area in front of the cell, lean back and then saw his eyes go wide. Krueger now became concerned.

A shadow fell inside the cell as a man stepped up to the bars. The three prisoners looked around wildly as they saw that the man was armed with what looked like a handgun with a long tube attached to the end. He was dressed in a janitor's jumpsuit and even had an ID tag with his picture on it. He looked from face to face and then raised the silenced weapon and fired twice into the small white prisoner.

"Hey, what the--"

The large black prisoner had tried to stand as he spoke but the chain held his cuffed hands and body close to the bench he was sitting on. He was then caught in midquestion by two bullets fired directly into his forehead. His head jerked backward. Then, just for certainty, another round went into his temple. Despite the silencer, the noise was loud enough that it echoed into the hallway and into the rest of the holding area.

William Krueger leaned as far away as his restraints would allow. He could only hope that the loud reports would bring someone running. However, that hope was fleeting because he knew exactly why that man was there. He also knew that the man would not fail at what he'd been sent there to do. He had expertly shot the three guards and then his cellmates. The silencer had worn out its insulation and had become very loud, which meant that the assassin had never intended to get away with his murders. Krueger's eyes were wide as the dark-haired man looked straight at him.

"I was told you would understand the price of failure, Mr. Krueger."

The fat man started shaking uncontrollably. "But ... but ... you'll die too," was all he said.

"That was a forgone conclusion long before today. What is better than to send a dead man to kill another?"

There were sounds of many footsteps running down the hallway and shouts of more guards. The assassin did not bother to look away from the cell. He simply raised the handgun and fired four times into the head and face of William Krueger. The Coalition had just made a public statement of their intention to come out of the shadows and protect what was theirs.

The assassin reached through the bars and tossed the smoking weapon into the cell, were it hit the body of William Krueger and then clattered to the floor. Without hesitation, the man turned and left the holding area and made his way to the back door.

Outside the courthouse, the blond woman watched from her expensive car as the federal building was hurriedly evacuated. Once outside, workers and visitors alike were held in an area just to the left of the white-painted fortresslike courthouse for questioning. As she watched, she saw guards and United States marshals swarm the interior of the building.

The woman started her Mercedes and slowly left the large parking area. She did not smile or gloat on how good she was at arranging things like the assassination. She did exactly what she was paid for--to fix problems.

She slowly turned her car out onto the street and made her way to the Southern State Parkway for her trip into New York City, where she had another job to do before she moved to her next location in Boston. This next venture was also to be a public statement by a power that was far beyond American law enforcement to thwart. It was against an entity that was as secret as the Coalition she worked for--the Event Group.

Two Mayflower moving vans backed into the large loading dock just a half hour after a nondescript truck removed the scrolls and maps--and the three-man security element of Jack, Carl, and Will--to JFK airport. The back of the Event Group-owned Freemont Building was deserted, with the exception of a guard in his shack overlooking the dock area.

A driver stepped from the first moving truck and hopped up to the dock. He was carrying a clipboard and was wearing the livery colors of Mayflower Transit. He looked around and waited.

The guard-shack door opened and a man stepped out wearing a standard security uniform. He placed a cap on his head and stepped toward the man who was looking at him with a smile.

"We don't accept deliveries at this address, son," the man said as he eyed the two trucks.

"Actually, my boss called and said that we had a pickup at this building." He made a show of looking at his clipboard. "Yeah, says right here, the Freemont. There isn't another building with that name on this street, is there?"

"No, but you may want to check back with your--"

A seven-inch knife in between his ribs cut the guard's words off as effectively as if he had shut off a radio. The man who had come up behind the guard was the driver of the second truck. The first man laid his clipboard down and then reached out and raised the sliding door of the first large moving van. As he did so, thirty-five men exited quickly. All were dressed in black Nomex and all had black hoods on their heads. It was exactly the same uniform that Jack and his men had worn for their raid the night before in Katonah.

A three-man team ran to the guard shack and another group to the large sliding doors of the loading dock. The first group smashed the communications-and-monitoring console in the guard shack and the second group placed quarter-pound timed charges against the base of each of the two loading doors that led into the warehouse. Each thirty-five-man team from the two trucks lined up on either side of the two doors just as two loud pops sounded, freeing the doors from their interior lock slots. As one man from each team slid the doors up, the rest ran into the dark interior.

Lance Corporal Jimmy Sanchez had been part of the Event Group for four years and loved the detached duty. He was moving up fast and the work under Colonel Jack Collins was challenging, to say the least. Being a veteran of the Event in the desert and the expedition down the Amazon the preceding year, he had come to be a trusted member of the security team that Collins had forged since he'd begun work for the Group. He'd even heard from Will Mendenhall that he was to advance in pay-grade to sergeant in the fall.

As Sanchez started to move, the ceiling lights flickered just as the sound of automatic gunfire erupted somewhere below them. He immediately ran to the wall-mounted phone and picked it up. There was no dial tone. He then reached into his pocket for his Group cell phone and punched only one number. It would alert all Event Group personnel that an emergency had arisen, which meant that the security team should come running to their aid. It also sent an automated message via satellite to Nevada, where the emergency alert would be relayed to Group Center.

Sanchez tossed the phone to the nearest wide-eyed technician.

"Dial 911 and tell them we have a break-in and shots have been fired!"

Sanchez withdrew his holstered 9-millimeter automatic and ran to the door. The corporal was on the second floor of the thirty-story Freemont Building, placing him only three levels above the loading dock. As he rounded the corner heading to the large staircase, he heard the volume of gunfire increase. He heard the distinctive reports of his own team's XM-8 automatic assault rifles, which meant that they had responded quickly to whatever was happening. As he gained the balcony overlooking the first floor, he stopped suddenly. Below, just as his men came into the main foyer to meet the attackers, they ran into at least fifty men. They quickly overwhelmed his first-floor team. They were everywhere. Sanchez cursed and ran back the way he had come. He had to get the technicians and professors out of harm's way.

"Corporal, the phones aren't getting a signal. At first we could, and then they all suddenly stopped sending. We couldn't get the police," the field tech said as Sanchez ran by him.

"They are jamming the cell signals with independent microwaves! Get upstairs with the rest of security; this is a kill raid!"

As Sanchez was trying to rally what was left of the Group's security element, the attackers started making their way upstairs.

Waiting below with a five-man protection team, the well-dressed blond woman looked at her watch, impatient for the long morning's work to be finished. She turned to her personal bodyguard.

"I want at least four of these people alive to answer questions. In addition, after we are finished here I want a man stationed outside to take photos of everyone who comes into the building. Police, medical teams--I want everyone documented, with particular interest taken in subjects in civilian attire."

As the last of the pallets containing the maps and scrolls were rolled into the vast cargo hold of the giant air force C-130 Hercules, Jack was approached by the aircraft's commander.

"Colonel Collins, a man by the name of Compton is on the radio. He said he couldn't get through to you on your cell phone, there isn't much signal here in the cargo hold. So he's been patched through the tower."

Jack followed the air force captain into the cockpit and took the offered headphones.

"Collins," he said, holding the headpiece to his ear.

"Jack, we have some major problems."

Jack heard the strain in those few words from Niles Compton.

"What've you got, Niles?"

"Jack, listen ..." Niles hesitated. "Agent Monroe has been murdered."

"What?"

"He was tortured and killed in his house. His wife was ... well she's dead also, Jack. That's not all I'm afraid of. William Krueger was hit this morning inside his secure holding cell at the federal courthouse out on Long Island."

"Dammit! How in the hell could this have happened?"

"Jack, you and Carl get back to Manhattan. We had an emergency alert from Sanchez. We don't know what's happening at the warehouse and we've been unable to establish contact. We had no choice but to bring in the local authorities. Their cover as a National Archives depot will hold up to scrutiny, so act accordingly when you arrive. Now move, Jack--move!"

Jack didn't comment, as he had already tossed the headphones to the aircraft's pilot.

"Get this bird in the air ASAP and don't stop for anything. You'll be given instructions in flight on your way to Nellis. Clear?"

Again, he didn't wait for an answer. Two minutes later, he, Everett, and Mendenhall were on their way back into Manhattan.

Collins, Everett, and Mendenhall were met at the front of the building by a police captain from the NYPD. Jack gave him identification stating that he was a field supervisor for the National Archives in Washington. The captain looked it over and then eyed Jack closely.

"I didn't think the National Archives Security Department carried firearms?" he asked, still holding Jack's ID.

Collins stared at the man and did not blink. Nor did he offer any explanation. All he knew was that this man was stopping him from checking on his team inside the building.

Everett stepped up and offered an explanation: "When you are used to guarding little documents like the Declaration of Independence, firearms are desirable, Captain. Now may we check on our people?"

The captain relaxed and returned Jack's identification.

"It's not good, gentlemen. We have paramedics working on the only survivor. It looks like a straight robbery. If you have information on what was being stored here, my detectives would be interested."

Jack didn't wait, he just brushed by the captain and went through the front doors. What he saw inside was like a scene from a battlefield. He noticed the covered bodies strewn about like so much dropped laundry. He counted thirteen on the first floor alone. He was joined a moment later by Everett and Mendenhall.

"Jesus, who in the hell hit this place?" Everett said as he turned to face the police captain.

"As far as we can tell, it was at least a fifty-man raid. So far, only your people are accounted for. Due to the fact that around each of the bodies are several expended rounds, we must assume that your security put up a fight, and bloodstains show that the suspects must have carried off their wounded and dead."

"You said there was a survivor?" Mendenhall asked, looking ashen, as he knew personally all the men in the security team they had left there. Jimmy Sanchez was a close personal friend.

"Second floor."

The three men left the captain and trotted hurriedly up the stairs. Everywhere they looked, the walls and doors were riddled with bullet holes. Technicians were lying about where they fallen after being hit. A few of the academics had been dispatched execution-style in one of the offices. Four of the scientists and assistants looked as if they had been tortured. The artifacts, as far as they could tell, were all missing.

"Over here, Jack," Everett called out.

Jack looked up and saw three paramedics close to the second-floor elevator. They had a single soul on a stretcher and were fiercely working on him. As they approached, Mendenhall froze as he discovered who it was who was fighting for his life: Lance Corporal Sanchez.

"Oh ..." was all the stunned Mendenhall could say as he looked on sadly.

Everett placed a hand on Mendenhall's shoulder and watched helplessly as the medics worked furiously.

Jack's eyes never blinked as he watched another one of his men slowly slide away from the living. As Sanchez took his last breath, Collins closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw the stairwell that still sported the blood where Sanchez had made a stand against the overwhelming odds he had faced.

One of the bodies closest to the corporal was a full-time archaeologist assigned to the main complex in Nevada. The boy was taped into a chair, and Collins could tell by the missing fingernails that he had been tortured in the most brutal manner possible. He closed his eyes, knowing that the poor kid would have given information on the Group. He didn't have to look far to find his proof. His eyes locked on a portion of the wall above just as Everett joined him. They examined the four words written in the blood of Corporal Sanchez, declaring the Event Group fair and open game. They dripped and ran red down the white wall above the stairwell.

NOT SO SECRET ANYMORE!

A man who had been taking pictures most of the morning from across the street changed his position and climbed the stairwell inside the building. He went to the second floor, where he was surprised to find a great location to shoot directly into the Freemont Building. He adjusted the telephoto lens and framed three men standing on the second-floor landing. A large blond man, a black man, and a man who stood ramrod-straight were glaring at the message left on the wall. As he clicked away, the hard-featured man turned to the landing's large window and seemed to look right at the camera's lens. The shooter abruptly stopped snapping pictures, as he could have sworn that the man was looking right at him. He lowered the camera and swallowed. He decided that what he had was enough.

Dahlia would have to make do with what he had learned, because, for some reason, the man on the landing scared the living hell out of him.

With the situation in Korea growing steadily worse, the Russian navy was on deployment alert. Every man in the Pacific Fleet, both surface and subsurface, had been recalled and awaited sailing orders.

Of the serviceable surface combatants, the fleet was in a sorry state, to say the least. Only three of her large battle cruisers were operational, and only one of them could ship a full-crew complement of trained seamen. The rest were out-of-date and undermanned light cruisers and destroyers. Still, the Russian navy was a proud entity and could still draw blood when needed.

The crew of the Russian heavy battle cruiser Admiral Nakhimov had been at their stations, ready to put out to sea for the past two hours to shadow the two U.S. carrier task forces. The captain of the Admiral Nakhimov was delayed, waiting for the bulk of their task force to form up before putting out to sea.

The surrounding harbor was full of antiquated warships, but the Nakhimov was part of the Russian president's massive strive to reclaim some of the old Soviet pride and power. Next to the Nakhimov was the heavy cruiser Petr Velikiy, commissioned the Uri Andropov in 1998. She would sail with the Nakhimov to the Sea of Japan.

Seven hundred miles out at sea in the freezing waters of the Pacific, a large aircraft strayed off course just as she had in the Middle East. This time her course would not take her over any appreciable landmass.

The navigator of the large Boeing 747 tracked their marker, an undersea beacon laid down a full year before by a Japanese-flagged fishing trawler.

Tomlinson, with his assistant in the seat next to him, had been silent since the registered charter flight lifted off from a private airstrip in the Philippines. The navigator and the pilot knew who the man was and it showed in their nervousness.

The head of the Thor program stepped out of the protected area and walked to Tomlinson. He cleared his throat.

"The Wave is operational and online. We have return echoes from the amplification modules on the seabed. Radar reports no contact of any air-superiority fighters in our immediate area."

"Then all is well for the strike?" Tomlinson asked, his blue eyes boring into those of Professor Ernest Engvall, former head of the Franz Westverall Institute of Geology and Seismic Study in Norway.

"All is as planned; nothing has changed for the past three years of calculations," he said, but Tomlinson knew that he had stopped short of finishing his report.

"Except?" he asked, holding his penetrating gaze on the world's foremost seismologist.

The thin, bookish man held his tongue for a brief moment but knew that he had to bring up what his entire technical crew was discussing.

"Do I have to ask twice, Professor?"

"We have two wave aircraft at our disposal, both of which could be tracked and attacked at any time. If I may ask, why have you risked your life to be on this particular strike?"

Tomlinson smiled and looked away without answering. His assistant cleared his throat and concluded the conversation.

"You may resume your countdown without further delay. Release Thor's Hammer, Professor."

Engvall's look went from Tomlinson to his impeccably dressed assistant. Then he abruptly turned and entered the protective area of the 747.

Tomlinson was staring at nothing as he thought about his father. He had been integral part of the Coalition in the latter days of the world war. He'd never risen as high in the council as his son would in future years, but he had done his part. The thought of his father being held up against a crumbling wall and shot by Russian shock troops just outside Berlin, after delivering the Coalition's ultimatum to Hitler, didn't anger him like it used to. After all, his father had allowed himself to be used by those higher in the order and thus had reaped that particular harvest. It was the Russian leadership he had always despised and their weak-minded followers. It was not personal, as most on the Coalition Council would believe, but the smart thing to do, with their government weak and their populace uneasy.

He looked up when he heard the soft humming of the Wave equipment. He wanted the strike to be flawless, and that was the real reason why he was here. The old guard of the Coalition would be shown that a limited strike did not need the Atlantean Key for control of the weapon. Now, he was here to prove it. Their race had split once before and it had almost cost them their existence in the time of Julius Caesar. He would see to it that if this demonstration did not have a positive effect on the Coalition members who refused to follow, he would scratch them from the equation in totem.

"Bring the Wave up to full power. Directional beacon is locked and confirmed."

Engvall ran to another panel and watched as the Wave buildup became a steady stream of blue and red on the computer's monitor.

"We have solid tone," one of the techs called out.

Once the stream turned pure red, the audio wave was pulsed to the amplifiers on the seafloor. Once the trigger had penetrated the depths of the sea, the audio signal would be activated and then the three-pronged decibel enhancers set inside the large steel enclosures would chime like a tuning fork, creating the desired tone that the Ancients had calculated thousands of years before for the science of breaking solid stone.

The amplifiers were laid along the Koryak-Kamchatka orogenic belt, which sat above one of the most active continental plates in the world. The wave from the amplifiers would sink to crust depth and hammer at its edges in an assault of sound that would crumble any natural strata in all of known geology.

The duration of the three-second pulse would be short, due to the instability of the Wave of the Ancients. That and the fact that the fault line above the plate ran all the way to Sumatra.

"Initiate trigger, now!"

Located at the bottom of the huge aircraft, a set of doors swung open and the small laser cannon deployed. It was not a cannon in the normal sense of the word; it was a laser-guided sound pulse. A three-second burst at full power shot downward into the sea, where it would actually pick up speed as it was not diminished by one single decibel due to the salinity of the water. Twenty-one miles below the surface of the sea, the wave penetrated the waters of the cold Pacific at the speed of sound. It struck the first amplifier, then relayed down the line of six. More than six hundred miles of fault line and its supporting plate were under attack. The strike would generate enough explosive energy as fifty twenty-megaton nuclear detonations going off in the earth's crust.

As it struck, the audio wave radiated in the only direction it could: straight down through sand and rock.

The Boulder Institute of Seismology in Colorado recorded the eruption underneath the crust as it traveled as far south as Australia and as far east as the United States. The epicenter of the quake originated two hundred miles north of the undersea Siberian Seamount. As the seafloor split, ten trillion gallons of seawater flooded into the void. The smaller seamounts nearest the eruption cascaded into the gap that had instantly gone from a mere fracture to the size of the island of Hawaii. The quake hit the Siberian coast and shook houses to their foundations. The first shocks hit Japan and China only twenty-three seconds later.

As he monitored the reports coming in from prepositioned seismic stations in the Pacific, Engvall knew that they had unleashed a strike accurate to the mile. As he listened to the euphoria in the voices of his technicians, the realization had struck him that he just might have destroyed a great deal of Russia's eastern coast.

As a listening post at the northern end of the Sea of Japan, the Joint Communications and Seismic Station did not garner much respect from the U.S. Navy. The antiquated equipment failed to measure seismic activity accurately. Japan and the United States had succeeded in doing that in the late 1950s. The communications network was in an even worse state.

As the bored men fought to stay awake, the needle on the antiquated Richter monitor moved once and held steady. The operator failed to see the quick jump of the needle. Instead, the ancient radio monitor told them something was amiss.

The two young Korean and Russian officers listening in on the Japanese and American chatter were using a radio and direction finder that was surplus back in 1959. The constant replacement of its tubes and the limited-frequency channels made finding anyone, anywhere, talking openly as rare as good food on the anchored station. However, the one thing it was good at was picking up low-range high-decibel-burst releases, only because the equipment lacked the necessary filters of modern sets to block it out.

Both radiomen suddenly shouted out and threw the headphones from their ears. The Russian doubled over in pain and the Korean actually felt the trickle of blood flow from his right ear.

"What are you two fools doing?" asked the Korean duty officer.

"It must have been some sort of burst transmission," the soldier said as he grabbed his Russian counterpart for support. "An aircraft directly overhead, that's the only thing it could have been, maybe--"

That was as far as he got as the anchored platform was rocked on its stiltlike legs.

"My God, look at this!"

The officer gained his balance and turned to the Richter scale. The long needle was swishing back and forth on the graph paper, almost creating a solid wall of red as it moved.

The technician shouted out, "6.5 ... 7.1 ... 7.9 ... 8.0," as he counted the numbers the needle struck. As he did so, the platform--an old oil derrick of Russian design--lifted and then swayed. He continued: "8.7 ...9.6..."

"My God, the sea is erupting around us!"

"Track that aircraft!" the officer screamed as he lost his footing.

The men of the battle cruiser Admiral Nakhimov were making ready to get under way when the harbor waters started to recede. At the same time, warning sirens sounded throughout the naval base. The above-deck crew ran to the railing and watched in amazement as the sea rolled out from under them and her sister vessel, Petr Velikiy, as both giant vessels strained at their many mooring ropes. As the two great warships groaned and creaked, their heavy bulk settled into the dark mud of the harbor. Smaller warships of the fleet were torn from their moorings, kidnaped by the retreating waters of the Pacific.

Onshore the quake hit with devastating power. Buildings constructed to withstand direct bomb hits were knocked flat with no warning. Streets buckled and fell into voids created by ancient riverbeds collapsing underground. Thousands of people were crushed to death as cranes and material in the dry dock area broke and fell. Giant cruisers rolled over and crushed the lives of seamen as they tried in vain to make it over ships railings.

Men aboard the Admiral Nakhimov were knocked from their feet as thick, viscous mud erupted like lava from the harbor floor. The giant ship rippled as the mud below waved up like a maddened sea. At that moment, the men heard the most horrible of sounds. It rumbled even above the noise of the quake. It was the return of the sea.

"Abandon ship, all hands abandon ship!" the loud speakers on both vessels bellowed.

The horrible roar grew from the east and the sea beyond. The sun was blotted out as the giant wave built as the ocean rushed back in to fill the land vacated in its backlash. As the sea started to crest, just one mile south of the port of Vladivostok another quake, of greater magnitude, struck. The air itself became a living thing as scared people became disoriented and fell to the undulating ground. Then the water was returning just as if hell itself had opened its gates.

The crew of the Nakhimov knew they were about to die as the wall of water was seen taking out the city before them. Entire buildings were knocked free of their foundations, their debris joining the onrush of destruction. The wall of water hit the two great ships. They were smashed and then lifted and flipped over like toys in a tub as they cascaded into the eastern end of the port city.

The Petr Velikiy disintegrated like it had been made of wood. The thick steel plates made to withstand a standard torpedo strike caved in and fell apart as easily as if made of the finest crystal. The Nakhimov was flipped end over end three times before it struck the roiling waters below, breaking the ship into three pieces. Still the waters rushed inland.

The Wave had created an earthquake with its accompanying tsunami the likes of which the modern world had never seen. The quake struck in Sydney, killing seventeen people when one of her older bridges collapsed. The tsunami, though diminished by that time, struck northern Japan and destroyed two small villages.

The American carrier force sent to help the Second Infantry Division lost one supply ship and two destroyers, as the sudden surge of ocean had caught the smaller ships in a wide turn. The carriers themselves suffered only minor damage.

By far the second-largest devastation and loss of life occurred in China, where it struck as far inland as Beijing. One hundred thousand Chinese lost their lives to Thor's Hammer.

The target city of Vladivostok was destroyed. Not a single human life survived the quake and tsunami that followed Thor's Hammer. The water reached as far inland as Mongolia and wiped out mining operations in Siberia. All told, the death toll in Russia would exceed one million people. The Russian Pacific Fleet, which was preparing to monitor the American response to North Korea's actions, was gone forever.

Now, the one thing not expected by Tomlinson and the younger Coalition members was the fact that a Russian and Korean monitoring station had picked up the initial trigger broadcast that activated Thor's Hammer. The president of Russia, after finding this out, grew suspicious and suddenly the ravings of Kim Jong Il didn't seem so far-fetched. The Russians and Chinese for precautionary reasons brought their military forces to red alert.

The Doomsday Clock had started.