Area 51: The Mission-3 (11 page)

Toland checked the bodies with a red lens flashlight. Various faces appeared in the glow, frozen in the moment of their death. Some of the faces were no longer recognizable as human, the mines and bullets having done their job.

As he got to the one of the bodies that had been carried, he saw a female's face caught in the light, the eyes staring straight up, the lips half parted. He could tell she had been beautiful, with an exotic half-Indian, half-Spanish look, but she was covered in blood now and there was a rash across her face—broad black welts. Toland walked over to the other makeshift stretcher. The body in there was in even worse shape. There was much more blood than the round through the forehead would have brought forth. The same black welts across the face. Toland reached down and ripped open the man's shirt. His body was covered with them.

"Let's get a move on!" Toland yelled out. After five minutes, the men began to file by, dropping whatever they'd found in front of him. A stack of plastic-wrapped packages soon covered the sheet.

Toland stabbed one of the packages with his knife. Coca paste poured out of the hole. "Shit," he muttered. He looked up at Faulkener. "It isn't here."

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Faulkener shrugged. "We were told to stop anyone coming out and find a metal case. What now?"

Toland pointed to the east, down the pass. "We do what else we were told to."

The patrol began moving toward the border with Brazil.

Turcotte headed back for the Osprey. He'd left Captain Miller in charge of Scorpion Base. Besides the bodies in the vats, there was little else to indicate anything about STAAR. There were several computers in an area that had obviously been a command-and-control center. Turcotte had the hard drives of those computers with him, and he would give them to Major Quinn at Area 51 for analysis.

Miller was also supposed to remove at least one of the bodies from its vat.

That task was going to be harder than it appeared, given that the liquid inside the tank had frozen also. They were going to have to thaw the entire thing out.

Turcotte gave the order for the plane he had come in on to head north.

As the Osprey took off, he looked at the hard drives he had with him. He doubted that STAAR had been stupid enough to leave anything of importance on them, but one never knew. He'd seen some very smart people do some very stupid things over the years when they were in a rush, and with the foo fighter bearing down on their location the STAAR personnel would have been in one hell of a rush.

The mystery of STAAR would remain a mystery. For a few days longer, at least.

"Major Quinn, this is security," the voice came over the tiny receiver fitted into the Air Force officer's left ear.

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Quinn's station was set on a dais that overlooked the Cube. Since the discovery that the two STAAR bodies weren't quite human, the entire facility had been shut down, bringing outraged cries from the media that had descended on the place after the "outing" of the mothership and bouncers by Duncan and Turcotte.

Quinn was actually happy they were closed off to the outside world. His years of working for Majestic-12 had left him ill-prepared to deal with the reporters who had tried poking their noses into everything. UNAOC and Washington both felt the STAAR story needed to be kept under wraps for now, and for that Quinn was grateful.

"This is Quinn," he replied into the small boom mike in front of his lips.

"What is it?"

"We've got an intruder."

"Location?"

"Well, sir, he just drove up to the main gate."

"Turn him over to the local authorities," Quinn said irritably.

"He's asking for a Larry Kincaid and a Lisa Duncan, sir."

Quinn pursed his lips. "What's his name?"

"He refuses to give it, sir. But he's not American. He says he's from Russia.

From something called Section Four."

"Bring him in."

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-7-

"Mike." Lisa Duncan wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tight.

Turcotte returned the hug, half lifting the much smaller woman off the flight deck. They stayed that way for a few seconds, then Duncan was the first to let go, conscious of the eyes watching them.

"Come on." Turcotte gestured toward a hatch in the island on the right side of the flight deck. The John C. Stennis was a sister ship to the carrier Duncan had left; a Nimitz-class carrier, the top of the line of the U.S. Navy. The class of carrier was not only the largest warship afloat, it was considered the most powerful weapon on the face of the planet, carrying over seventy war-planes capable of launching weapons up to and including nuclear warheads.

The Stennis's flight deck was 1,092 feet long and 252 feet wide. The plane Duncan had flown in on was already disconnected from the landing cable and being towed to the large elevator that would bring it to the deck below for service.

F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets crowded the deck, jammed in tight.

Turcotte led the way to a conference room just off the communications shack that the captain had reserved for his use. Turcotte had arrived on the Stennis a half hour before from his Antarctic expedition, only to learn 91

that Duncan was en route and that the Easter Island Task Force was in a communications blackout owing to the NSA shutting down the FLTSATCOM satellite.

As Turcotte poured them both a cup of coffee, Lisa Duncan took off her leather jacket and put her briefcase on top of the conference table.

"Nothing from Easter Island?" Turcotte asked.

"The Sea Eye torpedo went through the shield. But that's the last we've heard from it. The Springfield cut the wire."

"And the Springfield?"

"Sitting on the bottom, just outside the shield. Three foo fighters are around it."

"Where did they come from?"

"I'd say from Easter Island. Maybe the guardian made some."

"Made some," Turcotte repeated. "That's not good. How long can the sub just sit there?"

"Months if necessary," Duncan said.

"I wonder what the hell is going on with Kelly," Turcotte said. "I'm sure she was in contact with the guardian."

Duncan accepted the coffee and took a drink. She wrapped her fingers around the mug, feeling the warmth. "She could be dead."

"She could be, but I don't think so. I think the guardian would find her too useful."

Duncan didn't like dwelling on that, so she changed the subject. "I got your report on Scorpion Base."

"I'm having the computer hard drives forwarded to Major Quinn at Area 51.

Maybe his people can pull something out of them. We'll have to wait on the bodies until they can thaw those tanks out and remove them."

Lisa Duncan held up a sheaf of faxes she'd received in flight. "This is only a partial listing of what the guard-

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ian got into on the Interlink and Internet before it got cut off."

"Anything significant?"

Duncan snorted. "Yeah, everything's significant. Classified-weapons programs.

Research information. It accessed the skunkworks and got performance data on all the classified-aircraft programs. It completely went through NASA's database and got everything on the space program. Department of Defense records."

"A recon," Turcotte summed it up.

"Exactly."

"But for what purpose?" Turcotte mused. "Simply to gather information, or does it have something planned?"

"Probably both," Duncan said. "The guardian also went into the Internet."

"And?"

"NSA is still trying to track everything it did. But the disturbing thing is that it appears the guardian sent some e-mail messages."

"To who?"

"NSA hasn't tracked that down yet, and they're not sure they're going to be able to as the addresses no longer exist."

"What were the messages?"

"They were encoded. NSA is still trying to break the code." Duncan shoved the papers aside. "There's more."

Turcotte rubbed his eyes. "What?"

"I got a strange call." Duncan told him of the brief conversation with Harrison.

"Anything on this Harrison guy?"

"I've had Major Quinn check. Nothing."

"And his claim that Temiltepec was not the site the guardian was found at?"

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"Major Quinn's got someone checking on that, but Majestic didn't keep very good records the last year and a half at Area 51 on all that—it was all at Dulce."

"And the shuttles?"

"NASA is doing a dual launch. One shuttle from Cape Kennedy, the other from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The Columbia will rendezvous with the sixth talon.

The Endeavour will go to the mothership. I talked to Larry Kincaid about it and he says UNAOC has put a blanket of secrecy over the whole thing, but his opinion is that the whole operation, starting with the dual launch, to trying to make the rendezvous, is very dangerous and he hasn't really heard a good reason why there is such a rush to accomplish this."

"What about the possibility there is another ruby sphere, like this Harrison guy suggested?" Turcotte asked. "Could UNAOC have uncovered another one and kept it a secret?"

"I doubt it," Duncan said, "but it's possible."

"Why is the mothership so important right now?" Turcotte asked. "What's this plan that Harrison mentioned?"

"I have no idea," Duncan said. "There's other news out of Area 51."

"What?"

"I don't know yet. I just got a call while flying here. Major Quinn and Larry Kincaid are on their way here on a bouncer. Should be arriving any minute."

"Why are they coming here?" Turcotte asked. "Wouldn't it have been easier to videoconference?"

"I don't know," Duncan said. "Quinn sounded very weird. We'll find out when they get here."

"Let's take a walk while we wait," Turcotte said. He led the way, along a walkway just below the flight deck, toward the bow of the ship. They stood together at the

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very front of the Stennis, underneath the leading edge of the flight deck.

Turcotte could feel the spray as the bow cut through the water and the ship made flank speed to the north. He reached out and gave Lisa Duncan a hand as she stepped over a cable and joined him.

It was dark, but the phosphorescence of the algae being churned up glowed below them. Turcotte could feel the power of ship, its engines at full power, the propellers cutting the water, moving over 100,000 tons at forty miles an hour.

"I talked to UNAOC headquarters in New York and to the National Security Adviser at the White House on my way here," Duncan said, "to get a feel how things are going. And to try to find out about the shuttle launches and the ruby sphere."

"And?" Turcotte sensed her reluctance to speak. But he'd done some thinking on the way up from Antarctica and he had a good idea what was coming.

"From the former, like talking to a brick wall. I didn't tell them much, just tried to feel things out."

"What a surprise," Turcotte said.

"UNAOC is lying low," Duncan said. "The backlash against the destruction of the Airlia fleet took them by surprise."

"But they're still planning on launching space shuttles to hook up with the mothership and talon, right?"

Duncan nodded. "I know. Something strange is going on."

"I recommend we look at UNAOC like we used to look at Majestic-12," Turcotte said. "Don't run anything by them, don't ask them for anything."

"But they supported us against the Airlia fleet," Duncan protested.

"After the fact," Turcotte said. "And now they've changed their tune."

Turcotte let the silence play out.

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"All right," Duncan agreed to his proposal.

"What about our government?"

"Split."

"Great."

"Politics, Mike," Duncan explained. "The progressives are growing stronger every day. And then there's the isolationists."

"So we're on our own?" Turcotte asked.

"I can get us some help if we need it." Lisa turned to face him and took his hands in hers. "I also wanted you to know that I'm going to need you for whatever comes up."

"Who else?" Turcotte felt the sea breeze on his skin. He drew in a deep breath through his nose, his nostrils flaring as the scent of salt water filled them.

"There." He pointed down to their left. "See them?"

Duncan looked.

There was a flash of something white against the phosphorescent glow.

"Dolphins," Turcotte said. "They're playing."

But Duncan's attention was elsewhere. Turcotte followed her gaze toward the horizon. A silver bouncer was coming in fast and high, dropping altitude as it closed on the carrier.

"Time to go," Duncan said.

Turcotte was trying to assimilate all the new information that Duncan had just given him. "Give me a few minutes alone, Lisa."

"Mike—"

He placed a finger on her lips. "Give me a few minutes alone to think, then I'll join you in the conference room and we can try to figure out what's going on. Okay?"

"Okay."

Turcotte stood perfectly still, feeling the wind in his

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face, the smell of salt water. He remembered as a child going to the rocky coast of Maine with his family on their rare vacations. After entering the military he'd been shocked the first time he'd gone to a real beach, where the shoreline wasn't rock and the water wasn't freezing. But despite the discomforts, there was something about that coastline that called to him, like the mountains meeting the sea.

Turcotte pulled himself out of his musings and headed into the interior of the Stennis. He wove through numerous passageways until he arrived at the conference room that had been set aside for Duncan's use.

There were three men in the room along with Duncan. Two of them Turcotte knew—

Major Quinn and Larry Kincaid. The third was a rather impressive stranger, almost seven feet tall and wide as the door Turcotte had just come through. A thick black beard, streaked with gray, adorned a red face. The man looked tired, his eyes red with large dark bags under them. His face was weather-beaten.

"Mr. Yakov," Duncan began, "this is Captain Mike Turcotte."

"Just Yakov will do." His voice was a rolling deep bass with a heavy accent.