Origins: The Reich (8 page)

Frank drove the
Mengshi fighting vehicle up to the Chinese military base checkpoint at full speed until slamming on the brakes at the last possible moment to avoid crashing through the gate drawn closed across the drive.  From the passenger seat, Chin flashed his credentials to the guard, prompting the front gates to open.

“Three buildings up on your left,” Chin instructed and Frank complied once the gate was opened wide enough to allow the vehicle’s broad frame to fit through.  As he drove, Frank saw the entire base was now on high alert and in the process of mobilizing its considerable complement of military hardware.

Row upon row of tanks roared to life along with numerous armored personnel vehicles.  Behind those impressive weapons of war ran an airstrip thrumming with helicopter rotors coming alive and the unmistakable whine of turbine engines of fixed wing aircraft winding up.

Frank’s vehicle screeched to a stop in front of the third building.  Without pause, Chin hopped out and began issuing orders.

“Everybody out and get inside.  Hurry!”  The man did not wait for a reply; he ascended the flight of five steps to enter the structure without a look back. 

Seeing no other options, Frank got out and followed Alex and Professor Russell up the steps with Chin’s guard bringing up the rear.  The moment he stepped through the door and around the corner, Frank knew he had erred.  He found Chin and two security guards pointing their sidearms at him.  Completing the hopeless predicament was the muzzle of a pistol digging into his back handled by the soldier bringing up the rear.

“Oh for the love of God,” Frank exclaimed.

“No, it is for the love of country that I disarm an American intelligence agent and take him into custody while inside the main command facility of this base,” Chin instructed.  “Now hand over your weapon and come with me to get a situation update or these men will take you to the brig.  Your choice.”

Frank was loath to hand over his firearm, but saw no alternative.  He placed the weapon into Chin’s outstretched hand and proceeded with the group to enter an elevator, which took them several stories below ground into a tactical command room with dozens of manned computer and radar stations.  In front of it all, spanning the far wall, were four ten-foot tall displays showing:  the map position of friendly and enemy ground forces in the area, a live video feed of the airstrip and front gate, along with a map of the base indicating the activated security systems.

“Remain in this corner with my men and do not move or make a sound,” Chin ordered before moving to the center of the chamber to speak with the man in command.  Unable to hear the words spoken, Frank turned his attention to the tactical displays.

Things appeared to be going very poorly for the Chinese forces at the moment.  The Terracotta army had commandeered at least thirty vehicles, and was pressing in toward the outer base defenses. 

A row of flashes along the front security checkpoint, followed by the ground shaking slightly beneath his feet, gave evidence to the clay army knowing full well how to use the mortars they discovered inside the vehicles they took over.  Explosions raked the front gate moments before a swarm of twenty Mengshi vehicles came barreling through the line.

Frank watched in silent awe as one of the menacing vehicles drove straight up the steps leading into their building.  It plowed through the entrance at well over eighty miles per hour and decimated everything in its path.  On its heels came ten more Mengshis.  They stopped just outside the building and hundreds of clay soldiers who rode inside or clung to the vehicle’s exterior poured out.  Most fanned out into the tank and aircraft staging areas dispatching the drivers, pilots, and gunners as if they were not even there.  Five, however, marched straight into the command building.  Moments later they heard the elevator leading to the subterranean command center begin moving.

“Kill power to the elevator,” Frank heard the base commander order.

The order was followed and all was quiet for what felt like an eternity, but in reality was only a few seconds.  Then a jarring clatter rang out from the elevator shaft letting every occupant in the room know their enemy had broken out of the elevator car.  Next came a set of earth shaking impacts from just outside the elevator doors that could only have come from the heavy clay warriors leaping down the five-story shaft to land at the bottom.

Chin found discretion to be the better part of valor.  He made his way over to Frank’s little corner of the room and allowed the personnel armed with automatic rifles to take up firing positions.

Both elevator doors began to bow inward from the blows and kicks from the other side.  Two more mighty impacts sent the metal doors sailing into the room with the five clay warriors right behind.  The gunners fired, but yielded no result.  Every individual with a weapon was either crushed or shot in the span of a few seconds, rendering the command room silent.  Three radar and communications operators were cowering under their desks as the base commander stood tall in the center of the room waiting to see what happened next.

To Frank’s complete and utter surprise, one of the clay soldiers addressed the base commander in perfect Mandarin. 
“Your command codes, now.”

“Never,”
the officer defiantly declared.

The clay soldier looked to one of its companions who hauled a radar technician out from under his desk by the arm.  Without preamble, the Terracotta warrior braced its shoulder against the poor bastard’s armpit and ripped his arm off at the shoulder as if it were a child ripping the arm off a toy doll.

Ear piercing shrieks of agony ended moments later when the clay warrior crushed the man’s windpipe, tossed the body aside with one arm and handed the severed limb to the base commander with the other. 

The horrified Chinese officer stood motionless at not only the gruesome sight, but also the raw power of the clay warriors.

“Your command codes,”
the lead Terracotta warrior repeated. 
“Or next time the victim’s suffering will not end so quickly.”

“Input the codes,”
the horrified base commander ordered.

“Thank you,”
the lead warrior said, tossing the communications technician out of his chair to sit down. 
“You and the others may leave now.”

While the lead warrior worked the computer terminal, his four companions corralled everyone else toward a side stairwell leading back to the surface.  Frank and Chin made sure to position themselves as last to exit the chamber in an attempt to see what the Terracotta warriors were after.

On one screen Frank saw a map with the locations of every nuclear missile in the Chinese arsenal.  On another screen he observed the telltale insignia of the Chinese Ministry of Astronautics and a schematic of the Taiyuan launch site near Beijing.  On a third screen, before a rough shove forced him through the stairwell door, Frank recognized a global positioning satellite rendering of Egypt; specifically the Giza plateau.

Frank was certain the clay warriors would shoot them once corralled into the tiny stairwell, but to his surprise, he saw their escort simply close the doors behind them.  Clearly they were not viewed as any sort of threat to these creatures.  Considering how easily the clay soldiers took over the base and command codes, Frank could find no real fault in their overconfidence.

Colonel Azire reached
with his right hand for the final ladder rung, but his mind was still down at the bottom of that three-mile long subterranean tunnel.  When he heard the word ‘tunnel’ attributed to the covert passageway leading to the interior of the Sphinx, he pictured a primitive mineshaft requiring one to crawl through on their hands and knees between earthen walls supported by rickety wooden beams. 

Instead, he was treated to a six-foot diameter tube lined with a metallic material that made surgical steel look like a rusty spoon by comparison.  Once this was all over, Colonel Azire could see cutting away sections of the metal, if that was even possible, and founding a metallurgical research firm to reproduce the advanced alloy.  It would certainly be within his financial capabilities if that shifty NSA agent actually made good on his promise to turn over the Cayman Island accounts confiscated from Director Hess in exchange for the colonel’s cooperation.

The potential list of clients for such a firm would be nearly endless, but that was putting the cart before the horse.  Before all that could happen, he needed to survive his current predicament.  Colonel Azire knew all too well that there were enemies ahead inside the Sphinx chamber, and more enemies behind him with Terrance and his armed soldiers.  The NSA director appeared mindful that he was a guest in Azire’s country, but if his experience to date with the American NSA taught him anything, it was that appearances meant nothing.

A helping hand from one of Azire’s men aided the aging man to his feet.  He was nearly out of breath, but somehow found the will to remain upright under his own power out of reverence for the place he now stood.  Every wall of the tiny chamber contained paintings with scenes from ancient Egypt: the pyramid under construction, the plagues, the slave exodus, and the great god Anubis standing proudly over the finished monument.  The historical significance of the chamber was nothing short of mesmerizing to the colonel and his men, but there was a job to do and they were professionals.

Colonel Azire sent two of his men up the ramp with weapons drawn; for all the good firearms would do them.  The men took up sentry positions on one knee at the top of the ramp and scanned the small outer chamber for signs of trouble.

“
Clear
,” one of the soldiers finally reported in his native Masri dialect.

“Go,”
Colonel Azire ordered the two men holding seven-foot tall, eight-inch diameter hydraulic braces to begin the installation process.  Each man placed a footing of his respective brace against a solid stone lip at the top of the ramp.  They then manually levered the hydraulic piston out until the other end pressed firmly against the point where the ceiling stopped and the ramp began.

With both braces working together, they could theoretically hold up a tank without even quivering.  The puny mechanism operating the trap door stood zero chance of working now.  Even so, Azire was not about to take unnecessary chances with the lives of his men.  He ordered four more of his soldiers up the ramp carrying oxygen tanks and breathing masks, enough for everyone.  Then, and only then, Azire paced up the ramp along with the rest of his men carrying two duffle bags loaded with thermite charges over their shoulders.

The sight of a massive metal door reminiscent of a bank vault greeted them.  The door was locked tight and illuminated by a workstation along the far wall.  A closer look at the workstation revealed a palm reader, a voice analyzer, and a retinal scanner.

Azire instantly dismissed the identity authentication equipment as a means to gain entry.  Commander Allen was correct in his assessment that the three-step verification could not be hacked.  That left them with the only option of using the thermite charges to cut through the impressive barrier.

The colonel turned his back on the door and raised to his mouth a handheld radio that utilized a series of signal repeaters placed throughout the tunnel to carry the message.  He gave an update to those still residing safely outside the chamber.  “We are in the outer chamber and have encountered no resistance so far.  I recommend we proceed with the thermite charges.”

“Agreed,” came the lifeless voice belonging to Terrance.

“Let’s start by setting ten charges across the top and see what that gets us,”
Azire ordered, prompting his men into quick action.  It was obvious they did not want to be there any more than he did.

One by one, the men peeled open the adhesive backing to the brick-sized packages of chemicals and ran out strips of magnesium to use as fuses.  It amazed Colonel Azire that the chemicals were perfectly stable, even when mixed with each other at room temperature.  However, once adequate heat was applied, the result was a destructive inferno that would not stop until all the reactants were spent.

Once the charges were set, Azire was handed the trigger box and immediately ordered,
“Glasses on.”
After his own welding goggles were securely in place, he depressed the trigger with his thumb and watched the show.

Through his dark shaded glasses, Azire saw ten sparks race up the fuse lines in the span of a heartbeat. All ten bricks erupted at the same moment with a blinding flash, almost no sound, but definitely heat. Oh gods, the heat; the sensation was like standing directly in front of a blast furnace.

The chemicals quickly heated into a molten slag smoldering at 2500° C.  The magma like substance oozed its way down the face of the door leaving broad red and orange streaks of varying length and thickness.  The visual combined with the intense heat from the reaction gave Colonel Azire the distinct impression that a fire-breathing dragon had just opened its gaping mouth to swallow him and his men whole.

After five intense minutes, the flames finally died down to a point that the men could remove their welding glasses to inspect the damage.  As Azire removed his goggles, he expected to find either a decimated door with deep grooves cut into the surface, or no door at all.

Instead, he found a metal door standing without a mark on it.  Azire stepped forward, licked the tip of his index finger and placed it lightning quick to the door’s surface expecting to be singed, but he felt nothing.  He opened his hand, lightly touched all five fingertips to the door, and followed by resting his entire palm against the room temperature surface.

He just stood there shaking his head and marveled at the extreme rate of heat dissipation displayed by the alloy.  He was going to be rich beyond imagination if he ever got a piece into a laboratory to replicate this stuff.

Not knowing what else to do, Colonel Azire used the radio in his hand to give an update.  “We didn’t even leave a mark.”

“It was worth a tr…”

Terrance’s words were suddenly drowned out by the colossal groan of metal resisting a great force, but ultimately losing the fight.  Azire spun around in time to watch those seemingly indestructible hydraulic braces bend upwards into the room.  The trap door achieved the feat as easily as a child might bend a plastic drinking straw between their thumb and index finger.

The door sealed shut with a thud and the now U-shaped metal pistons teetered for a moment before tipping over and crashing to the stone floor with a reverberating rattle.  When all was quiet once more inside the now sealed room, the only audible sound was a faint hiss that a punctured tire might make. 

A hollowing sensation in his lungs sent Azire racing for one of the breathing masks; what was once a precaution was now a necessity to remain alive.

“Masks, now!”
the Colonel ordered to those in the room who were not already following the example set by their commanding officer.

**********

“Colonel Azire?  Colonel Azire can you hear me?” Terrance asked in an overly polite tone from his seat inside the command tent alongside the Sphinx.  Receiving no response caused him to put his chair back on all four legs and lower his feet from their propped up position on the computer table.   

“Sir, this is Corporal Johnson holding position at the base of the ramp.  The trap door managed to close even with the braces in place.  The Colonel is trapped inside with eight of his men and they don’t appear to have radio capabilities any longer.”

“Understood,” Terrance responded as he handed the radio over to Commander Allen with a satisfied smile touching the corner of his lips.  “Impressive display of force put on by that trap door, wouldn’t you say?  Looks like I’m the ranking officer on site now.  That should make things go nice and smooth from here on out.”

The SEAL team commander and engineer exchanged curious looks with one another until comprehension sank in for both men. 

“Wait a minute,” Commander Allen protested.  “You sent them in there to get trapped?”

Terrance looked back at the SEAL team leader with a tilted head and shrugged his shoulders, “His plan could have worked, I suppose.  However, it was a safer bet to assume that any adversary capable of moving the moon around in the sky with their technology would have little trouble flicking those braces aside.  Now let’s get to work on the real plan that doesn’t involve Colonel Azire scrutinizing our every move.”

A continued disapproving stare from Commander Allen prompted one last comment from Terrance before the subject was dropped.  “It was either that or shoot the man.  Now bring in a communications operator, it’s time to put our game face on.”