The Grail

CHAPTER 16

Turcotte felt a momentary sense of panic as he entered the tunnel. Was it right or left now? He forced himself to concentrate on the mission. Burton had said the hidden door was on the right, which meant he had to turn left. He shifted in that direction. Seventy paces, which meant about sixty meters. Turcotte had checked his pace count in the suit while in the hangar during isolation. He moved quickly, the team following, each man keeping his own pace count. The last man in line dropped a chem light next to the door, marking the location as it slid shut.

Turcotte stopped where he thought the hidden keyhole should be. “Pace check,” he announced over the radio. The report from the rest of the team indicated they all agreed plus or minus about three meters, which wasn’t bad. Turcotte placed the ring against the left wall at shoulder level. Nothing. He shifted left several feet, then back to the right when the outline of a door appeared. The door shifted, then slid up.

Turcotte stepped through, weapon leading. He took a quick shift glance in both directions. He turned left. “Let’s go.”

Like a bear trapped with its paw in the honey pot, Lisa Duncan remained on her knees, frozen. The pain was centered in her hand, but now Duncan couldn’t move any part of her body as it radiated through her nervous system, crawling up her arm like an inevitable tide of agony. Every nerve ending vibrated with the feeling of a red hot needle knifing through it from the inside going outward, as if the source were her bone marrow itself. She didn’t even blink as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aspasia’s Shadow walk forward, past the bodies of the two soldiers that had been killed earlier.

“One hundred and eighty-seven meters,” Turcotte said. “Check,” Graves replied.

Turcotte put his hand on the wall and began searching for the next door. The last door between them and the tunnel leading to the Hall of Records chamber.

Beyond the pain resonating from her hand, up her arm, and exploding in her brain, Duncan barely felt it as two soldiers grabbed her and began carrying her out of the chamber, the arm with the Grail dangling. Four others picked up the Ark, carrying it by the poles out of the chamber behind her.

Aspasia’s Shadow knelt next to Duncan. His long fingers closed around the narrow center of the Grail and squeezed at a certain spot. He carefully removed the Grail from her hand. Then he turned it upside down and a glowing stone dropped out. That end of the Grail closed. He pocketed the stone and then placed the Grail inside the Ark. He threw a white sheet over the Ark, covering it.

Still Duncan didn’t move.

A burst of automatic weapons fire echoed into the chamber.

Aspasia’s Shadow stood. “It is time to leave.” He still had the black sphere in one hand. The surface was divided into small hexagonal areas. His fingers tapped several of the hexes.

The first burst hit the ceiling above Turcotte’s helmet, sending chips of stone flying. There was no chance for the soldier to get off a second burst, as Turcotte had centered the reticules on the man’s chest even while he was firing. Turcotte’s trigger finger twitched and a dart ripped through the man’s chest, sending him tumbling back down the tunnel into the darkness from which he appeared.

“We’re in the right place,” Turcotte yelled, hearing the echo through his own receiver.

“Right behind you, sir!” Graves replied.

Turcotte ran toward the darkness. He paused just before entering and fired the rest of the magazine into the blackness as quickly as the cylinder rotated. He grabbed another cylinder off the bandoleer on his chest and reloaded.

Then he went in.

A soldier staggered onto the landing leading to the tunnel, blood spurting from the stump of his right arm, neatly severed by a dart. The man tumbled over the edge and fell to the ground with a solid thud. The blood stopped spurting.

Aspasia’s Shadow yelled commands in Arabic, sending the soldiers he had in the chamber running up the stairs toward the ledge.

Just as the darkness enveloped him, Turcotte heard the beginning of a startled yell over the team radio net. Then it was cut off as if a switch had been flipped. He waded forward through the darkness and stepped into the brilliant light of the Hall of Records chamber. Behind him, the tunnel was as dark, the strange doorway closed behind him.

“IR off, normal light,” Turcotte ordered as his screen was overloaded and blanked out for a second.

That’s all it took for a three-round burst from an AK-47 to hit Turcotte in the chest, staggering him back a step. The special ceramic/alloy armor absorbed most of the impact, chips flying.

The screen came alive with normal light. The reticules were high. Turcotte drew them down to the lead man coming up the stairs and fired. The steel dart tore through his chest and kept going, taking out the two men directly behind him before hitting the spine of the third man changing direction slightly, flying down into the chamber.

Turcotte took a second to scan the chamber. The Black Sphinx dominated the view, but he was more concerned about finding people. He saw Duncan! She lay unconscious on a tarp, being carried by two men. Behind her was a tall figure in a black robe, and behind him something draped in white also being carried.

“Spread out on the ledge,” Turcotte ordered over the team net. There was no answer.

Turcotte fired another dart down the stairs. “Rear view.”

There was no one behind him. The tunnel went ten meters, then faded into the strange black darkness.

“Front view.”

Turcotte fired the MK 98 again, spearing the closest man. He could see the flashes as others fired. Rounds from men on the floor of the chamber chipped stone all about him. Hard thuds on the suit indicated some of the bullets were hitting.

Turcotte took a step back into the tunnel, getting out of the angle of fire of those on the floor. A head appeared coining up the stairs and Turcotte fired, taking it clean off. That bought him some time. Still, no one came out of the darkness.

Silence on the team net.

“Can you hear me?” a voice yelled from below.

“External speaker on,” Turcotte instructed the computer. “I hear you.”

“You will let me out or your friend will be dead.”

“Who are you?” Turcotte needed to buy time for the team to reinforce him. He had no idea why they hadn’t come through yet.

“Aspasia’s Shadow. You will let me out or your friend will be dead and then we will kill you,” Aspasia’s Shadow continued. “Be glad I give you his offer.”

Turcotte tried to think, to assess the situation. “I’ll let you pass only if you give me her in exchange.”

“I cannot give you the woman. She has partaken of the Grail. She must go with me to finish the process. If you take her, she will die.”

Turcotte had no idea what he was talking about. Where the hell was the rest of the A-Team?

Another head appeared, peering cautiously. Turcotte aimed. A black object flew through the air. Turcotte shifted the reticules, tracking, fired, and the dart hit the grenade in midair.

At the same moment, a terrorist leapt up onto the ledge, firing on full automatic. The rounds impacted on the left side of Turcotte’s suit, staggering him sideways. The screen inside the helmet flickered, then adjusted as the left-side helmet mini-cam was destroyed. Turcotte dropped to his knees and fired, killing the man. Warning lights were flickering on the bottom of the screen, informing him that the left front mini-cam was out. Some of his lithium batteries had been destroyed, reducing available power by twenty percent and various other problems that he didn’t have time to read or know how to deal with.

“We will kill you,” Aspasia’s Shadow yelled. “And I will kill Doctor Duncan unless you immediately allow us to pass.”

Turcotte kept his aim on the top of the stairs. He switched to FM. “Report? Anybody?”

Silence.

“We are coming up and Doctor Duncan is in front,” Aspasia’s Shadow’s voice echoed in Turcotte’s helmet.

Turcotte stood. He could see two men coming up the stairs supporting Duncan, who appeared to be unconscious, between them. Turcotte knew he could take both men down easily, but they might take Duncan over the edge with them. Behind them loomed Aspasia’s Shadow.

“If you are thinking of killing me,” Aspasia’s Shadow began, a second before Turcotte pulled the trigger, “you need to know I am the only one who can revive her. Without me, she dies.”

“What did you do to her?” Turcotte demanded.

“I didn’t do anything,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “She accessed the Grail and now the process must take its course. And I am the only one who can make sure it develops properly or else she dies a most terrible death.”

“What process?”

The two men had reached the ledge, less than twenty feet from Turcotte. They paused as Aspasia’s Shadow came up behind.

“We will go now,” Aspasia’s Shadow said, the other survivors from his group on the stairs, carrying the Ark.

“What process?” Turcotte repeated.

Aspasia’s Shadow pointed and the men moved forward. Turcotte held his ground for a second, then stepped aside. “You’ll never get out of here.”

“I believe we will,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. He smiled, revealing long, sharp teeth. “Do you know who she is?”

Turcotte was at a loss for an answer, not understanding the intent of the question.

“She is not who you believe her to be,” the creature continued. “She has lied to you — or more likely even she does not yet know her true identity.” The two men and Duncan disappeared into the blackness. “Do not follow us or she will die.” He stepped into the blackness before Turcotte could say another word.

“Damn!” Turcotte cursed. He wondered if Graves and his men would ambush them. He waited a few seconds, so he wouldn’t be caught in the kill zone, then dashed into the darkness, the heavy metal thud of his legs hitting the tunnel floor echoing into his helmet.

The blackness grabbed him, and he propelled himself forward, the MK-98 extended, finger ready. He stumbled over something as he entered the tunnel on the other side, hit his knees, forced the muzzle of the weapon up, scanning the screen for targets — nothing moving.

As he got to his feet, he almost fell once more. “Down view.”

Turcotte blinked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. A black tube, about two feet long. Turcotte took a step back as he realized what it was. The severed leg of one of the team members, still encased in the suit armor. “Forward view.”

The tunnel was littered with body parts, some still in armor, others ripped out of the suits. A head, half out of the helmet, lay to one side. It was Graves, dead eyes staring at nothing, neck cleanly severed. The body was ten feet away, farther down the tunnel, blood pooled where the head should be. The walls of the tunnel held large divots where darts had hit, so the team had put up a fight against whatever had attacked them.

“It’s the whole team,” Turcotte whispered to himself, as if hearing the words would make the impact less severe. He counted, trying to add up body parts and suits. As near as he could make out, every member of the team was dead.

How could Aspasia’s Shadow have done this? He wondered, but even as the thought crossed his mind, he realized this had happened while he was in the chamber still talking to the alien creature.

The MK-98 was still pointing ahead, but Turcotte wasn’t aware of where the reticules were, the vision on the screen too overwhelming. Turcotte remembered something from the briefing given by the space command representative. He went over to Graves’s body, turned it over, the backpack now accessible. With his right hand, he pushed a button. A cover popped open, revealing the master computer. Turcotte removed a DVD disk. He knew he could put it in his own computer and have whatever it had recorded from Graves’s cameras and mikes played on his screen, but there wasn’t time for that now. He shoved it into one of the empty ammo pouches on the front of his suit.

He began to run. He left the bodies behind, hoping that carrying Duncan would slow Aspasia’s Shadow down enough so that he could catch them.

The pressure on the suit leg was so slight that Turcotte almost didn’t register it. He skidded to a halt, his instincts warning him a second before his mind was aware. Too late as the trip wire ignited the mine.

Steel ball bearing ripped into the TASC-suit, the concussion of the blast knocking Turcotte off his feet and sending him flying backward down the tunnel ten feet.

Two SA 365 Panther helicopters blew up sand as they landed next to the Great Pyramid. Egyptian troops surrounded the area, but none came close as Aspasia’s Shadow and his entourage came out of the Caliph’s entrance, carrying Duncan and the covered Ark toward the choppers.

They loaded, the doors slid shut, and the choppers lifted, heading to the east.

Turcotte had felt pain like this once before when he’d been shot in the chest while wearing a protective vest, except this was all over his body, not localized in one place. He was in complete darkness, and it took him a second to figure out why that was.

“Screen on,” he ordered. “Forward view.” Nothing.

He tried moving, but the suit didn’t respond. The inner, airtight pressure layer pushed in on every part of his body except his head, clinging, not allowing him to move. Into his trapped darkness, Turcotte screamed, the sound reverberating inside the helmet. Then he passed out.

“We’ve got two bogies moving due west. Takeoff point just about on top of the Great Pyramid.”

“Identification?” Colonel Zycki asked as he came down the aisle in the AWACS to stand behind the screen watcher who had made the report. “Negative ID.”

“Signature?”

“Definitely helicopter. Flying low level but fast. They aren’t Egyptian, because whoever’s flying them has got to have LLTV and extensive night-flying capabilities that the Egyptians don’t have.”

Zycki considered that. “Notify our Israeli friends and forward them updates on the helicopters.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zycki turned to another of his people. “Anything yet from the team?”

“No, sir.”

Zycki checked his watch. They only had an hour of darkness. He didn’t think they could manage an exfiltration from the Nile in broad daylight.

Turcotte regained consciousness and immediately began hyperventilating. He tried to get it under control, knowing that was how he had passed out.

“Status display?” he whispered, hoping the computer was back on line.

Only darkness. He tried to move his arms. Nothing. Legs immobile. He focused his mind back to the orientation he had received. There was an emergency release if all power was lost. Where? He remembered, turning his head as far as he could to the left and sticking his tongue out. It touched a toggle, which he flipped up.

Turcotte bolted upright as the front part of the suit swung away from his body. He rolled out of the suit, savoring the feel of the stone under his hands and knees. He just lay there for a minute. He knew that Aspasia’s Shadow and Duncan were long gone. He’d been in too much of a rush. He stood, pulling a flashlight out of the small butt-pack strapped to the rear of the suit.

Turcotte shone the light down on his suit. The mine had ripped the armor in many places. The protection had held — or else he wouldn’t be standing right now — but the pellets had ripped into the computer, damaging it beyond repair. Without that working, the suit was just a large pile of high-tech garbage.

Turcotte checked the SATCOM link that was bolted on just above the computer. It was also trashed. He grabbed the DVD disk he’d taken from Graves’s suit. He also took the Watcher ring off the right arm. Then he unlatched the MK-98 from the suit. Without the suit’s strength augmentation, the full weight of the weapon reminded Turcotte of carrying a fully loaded M-60 machine gun. He fastened a sling from his belt and slung the gun over his head. He took one of the lithium batteries from the suit to power the gun, increasing the weight he was carrying by ten pounds.

Turcotte hefted the MK-98, finger on the trigger. He had no clue which cardinal direction he was going in and when he checked the small compass strapped to his watchband, the needle spun wildly. Turcotte looked at his watch. Dawn was only an hour off.

He reached the end of the hallway. Turcotte used the ring and the door slid open. He stepped through. He then turned in the direction he had come from, where the corridor descended.

“We have an Egyptian jet coming at us at Mach-2.” Colonel Zycki frowned at the report. They were over the Mediterranean, well clear of Egyptian airspace. “Make commo with it and request the pilot to stay clear,” he ordered. He turned his attention to the screen tracking the two choppers. They were over the Gulf of Suez, still heading west toward the Sinai Peninsula.

Inside the cockpit of the American-made F-16 Fighting Falcon, the Egyptian pilot, Ahid, ignored both the warnings from the American plane and the confused orders from his own higher command demanding he turn back to base.

Ahid’s eyes flickered down, checking his radar, ensuring he was on course. His hands were perfectly steady on the controls, his face relaxed despite the chatter coming through his helmet.

“Uh, sir, no response from the incoming bogey. We’re picking up transmissions from an Egyptian air base and they appear to be calling it back, too.”

Colonel Zycki frowned. “What’s the vector?”

“Straight on to us, ETA one minute. We’re already within Sidewinder range, but no fire indicator.”

If the F-16 was seeking to take them down, it would already have fired. So what was it doing?

“Where’s our nearest support?” Zycki asked.

“The Israelis could scramble and be here in seven minutes,” the man replied. “Goddamn,” Zycki exclaimed. Another game of chicken, he thought. It was a dangerous game, one that had been played for many decades in the Cold War and on into the years since the fall of the Wall. A jet would charge down on the AWACS, trying to scare the occupants. The fact that it worked, the crew of the defenseless surveillance craft feeling like deer caught in headlights of an approaching craft, was a big reason it had lasted so long.

Zycki keyed the crafts intercom so he could address the entire crew. “All right, people, we’ve got an inbound bogey trying to rattle us. Let’s keep doing our job and let this bozo go by.”

“Fifteen seconds out,” the screenwatcher reported.

“We still have tracking on the choppers?” Zycki asked.

“Yes, sir. They’re dry over the Sinai, turning to the north.”

“I want—” Zycki began, but the man tracking the Egyptian jet slammed his fist on the console.

“It’s still coming!”

“But—” Zycki never finished the statement.

Ahid could see the left side pilot of the AWACS staring out the small cockpit window at him as he rapidly closed the distance between the planes. His time sense had slowed everything down so that seconds seemed like minutes.

He could see the rotodome rotating inch by inch, the AWACS tail number, the star painted on the side of the craft, the lack of windows, the gray paint. Ahid adjusted course very slightly and, for added effect, kicked on his afterburners.

Then the F-16 hit the AWACS dead-on at over fifteen hundred miles an hour.

Over two hundred and forty miles away, Aspasia’s Shadow looked down at the desolate desert landscape below as the lead Panther fitted above the ground at less than fifty feet altitude.

“We’re clear of radar,” the, pilot reported. “The AWACS is gone.”

“Head for The Mission,” Aspasia’s Shadow ordered.