Excalibur

CHAPTER 17: THE PRESENT

Colonel Lin fell to his knees and vomited. He was at the objective, Seoul, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. He staggered to his feet and looked about the empty downtown street. There were few dead on the streets, which was strange given that the nerve gas assault must have killed millions. He assumed most had crawled inside to die. He continued to move forward, even though he led no men. Most had been killed fighting north of the city and then when the mushroom clouds had appeared in the south, even the rigid discipline of the PKA had fallen apart and the rest had slunk away into the darkness of the previous evening.

But Lin had pushed on, his mind focused on the objective, even though he knew he was going farther into the radioactive zone. He assumed he had already received a fatal dose, as sickness was wracking his body. He reached down to his combat vest and pushed the send button for the mike attached there. “Headquarters. Colonel Lin. I am in the objective. Over.” “Roger. Proceed to river and find crossing sites. Over.” He came around a corner and saw the Han River. And the destroyed bridges. He knew he was a dead man and now he also knew the offensive was doomed. The western route was shut and would be shut as long as the radioactivity blocked the way, which would be beyond his lifetime and that of all his countrymen. And even if they won, what would they win? A devastated country full of dead?

Lin paused, something catching his eyes. A sign on a small store. He staggered over and shoved the door open. The front of the store was empty. He slung his weapon over his shoulder as he walked around a counter and pushed open the door to the rear. There were two bodies huddled together on a mattress on the floor. An old man, his arms around an old woman.

Lin knelt next to them. He realized he had taken the streets and woven his way through the southern capital to this destination subconsciously. He’d learned the address when he’d been doing intelligence preparation for his mission.

Lin noted how tightly the old man held the woman. He reached down and pulled a wallet out of the man’s pants. He flipped it open and recognized the name: his father’s brother. Separated over half a century ago.

Lin keyed the radio. “Headquarters. Colonel Lin. It is over. This was wrong. It is wrong.” He let go of the key.

The small earpiece squawked, as his superiors demanded an explanation of his strange message. Lin pulled the earpiece out and left it dangling. He threw his pack with the radio in it on the ground. He reached in, ignoring the radio and pulling out a thin blanket. He carefully placed it over the bodies.

Then he sat down on the floor. He put an arm up over the blanket, feeling the cold bodies underneath, and closed his eyes.

Chang Tek-Chong leaned against the front of the hastily dug foxhole, watching the advancing Chinese forces. They were less than a half mile away. The tactics he had come up with had worked to an extent, but there was no stopping the wave of humanity the Chinese kept pouring ashore behind the shield. His position was located in the foothills of the mountains that ran along the east coast of the island. The entire west coast had been overran. The most fertile and productive part of the country was in enemy hands.

Tek-Chong reached up and pulled a heavy piece of plywood over the top of the foxhole, covering it. He heard the rumble of heavy equipment and then the thud as a backhoe dumped a load of dirt on the top of the plywood, burying him and the other occupant of the hole.

Tek-Chong leaned back against the freshly cut earth. He noticed that he was breathing more shallowly, which brought a wry smile to his face. It wasn’t as if his partner in the hole was taking any of it. He reached out and felt the cold steel. No comfort.

He looked at his wrist and the small glowing face told him he’d been buried for ten minutes. He thought of his father, who had died fighting the refugees from the mainland who had taken over Formosa. And now he was fighting for that same regime, against another invasion from the same mainland. He laughed out loud at the insanity, and then cut it short, realizing that mainland forces were probably walking right over his site.

He checked his watch again. Given the rate at which the mainland forces had been advancing, he was now inside the shield wall. He reached out like a lover in the dark toward his companion. His fingers lightly reached over the metal to the small keyboard. He blindly tapped in the command.

Tek-Chong died instantly as the nuclear weapon went off. The explosion roared out of the foxhole, incinerating the mainland forces nearby, then rebounding off the interior of the shield wall like a captured tsunami of fire. The effect of the single bomb was multiplied by being captured inside the shield wall and within less than thirty seconds the entire contingent of mainland forces and all surviving Taiwanese inside were dead.

Garlin placed the priest’s crown on top of Duncan’s head. She was strapped to an upright table, her arms and legs bound tightly. He left the room briefly, then returned, wheeling in a cart with a large plastic case on top of it. Duncan’s eyes watched his movements, but she didn’t say anything. Her previous meal had been drugged, she knew that now, because her last memory was of eating the food Garlin had brought Then she had awoken, strapped down to the table. She blinked as she noted the massive amount of blood that blanketed the top of the plastic case. Fresh blood, glistening under the bright overhead lights.

“What happened?” she demanded.

Garlin ignored her. He flipped latches and took the top off the case. Duncan recognized the Ark of the Covenant. He reached inside and opened the Ark’s lid and pulled out the leads. He carefully attached them to the crown. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing, which Duncan found strange. It was as if he had handled the Ark and crown before.

Whose blood? she wondered. What the hell was going on?

Her thoughts were cut short by a spike of pain and then a vision of a beautiful white city with a magnificent palace in the center.

Garlin reached up and gripped her chin in his hand, squeezing tight, drawing her attention from the vision inside her head to him. “We want to know where you came from.”

It was a struggle to talk, to hold back the vision flooding in through the crown. “What do you mean?”

“We know you’re not from Earth,” Garlin said. “We want the location of your home world.”