Complex 13

THE LONELY MOUNTAIN

The American troops shouldn’t have been there—out in the barren northern mountains of Siberia, a thousand miles from anywhere, breaching the sovereign territory of Russia.

Indeed, technically, since they were carrying weapons and wearing combat uniforms, not only were they breaching the sovereignty of Russia, they were committing an act of war.

But these twelve battle-hardened Force Recon Marines didn’t care.

Their mission was to be a quick one.

Get in, verify that it was the right complex, get whatever documents they could find on the subject, and get out.

Why? Because this was urgent.

Their own government had one big problem back home and this might be the only way to solve it.

‘It’s under this one!’ Rockmeyer indicated the ominous black mountain rising up before them. It soared into the sky like a slab of seamless black stone, its front face covered in the rocky detritus of a major landslide.

Master Sergeant Rockmeyer held in his hands a high-density sonic-resonance imager, aimed at the mountain. The imager now revealed that there was a cave-system inside the mountain, but one that featured voids with squared-off corners.

A man-made structure.