Area 51: The Mission-3 (14 page)

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"How do you even know there is a place like this Mission?" Turcotte asked.

"It is no coincidence that General Hemstadt ended up there," Yakov said. "I believe The Mission was founded many centuries ago. It is not a specific place, because what little I have learned says it has changed location over the years.

"When our troops overran Berlin at the end of the Great Patriotic War, we uncovered many documents. I have spent the last two years trying to find those documents and other material recovered. Some of it the KGB kept, and I have not been able to get access to it. But some of it I was able to find, and I uncovered some mention of The Mission. What I found strongly indicated that The Mission was involved with the Nazis during World War Two.

"Think of the work on biological weapons at Dulce and in my country and other countries. The fact that key personnel working at those facilities have disappeared. The fact that The Mission was a refuge for Nazis. The fact that Earth Unlimited launched this satellite and plans more launches—what better way to spread a plague than raining it down from above?"

"But why would these Guides want to do this?" Duncan asked.

Yakov gave a bitter laugh. "Why? I already told you I don't know their ultimate goal, but I would say right now, perhaps vengeance? You destroyed the fleet. Killed Aspasia. But they still want to win their millennia-old war.

Humans have been a pawn in this war as long as it has been going on. If I were the surviving Airlia on Mars controlling the guardian and thus the Guides, I would want to get rid of the opposition in the same manner they have done many times in the past. I

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believe you would agree we have not only become dispensable, we have become quite an irritant."

"The only way to find out what exactly is going on"— Duncan tapped the satellite imagery—"is to go here and get a sample of whatever killed these people. And we need to find The Mission."

"There must be a quicker way," Coridan said.

Gergor pulled his pack off and put it down in the snow. "You know there is no quicker way here. Once we get to the southern shore, we can travel more quickly."

The land around them achieved something Coridan had not thought possible—it was even more desolate than the terrain around the Section IV compound on the north end of the island. Whatever vegetation that had once struggled to live here had been blasted away over years of nuclear testing. They had been moving nonstop and were thirty miles south of Section IV, having crossed the first mountain range with great difficulty, but Gergor knew his way.

"How hot is this place?" Coridan took his own pack off and sat on it.

Gergor laughed. "You worry too much. Even though the ban went into effect, that doesn't necessarily mean it was followed. The Russian military has tried to slip a few tests through here and there. In 1997 researchers recorded what seemed like a nuclear explosion on this island. The Russian government managed to convince them it was an earthquake. The other countries wanted to believe that—what else could they do?—so they believed."

"Was it a nuclear test?" Coridan was looking about nervously.

"Oh, yes. I saw the mushroom cloud."

"Then this is hot."

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Coridan had brought the conversation full circle.

Gergor momentarily stopped what he was doing. "Yes, it's hot. Worse than the nuclear weapons, Minatom, the Russian atomic agency, has been surreptitiously slipping in spent fuel here for many years. This place is an environmental disaster. But what do you expect? People are hardly better than the animals."

"I expect not to kill myself stupidly," Coridan said.

"You think you have a right to your life? Your body, your life, belongs to The Ones Who Wait. As does mine. We do as we are ordered."

"We did not wait in destroying Section Four," Coridan noted.

"There is a reason for everything," Gergor said cryptically.

Coridan snorted. "We did not find what we needed. And we killed many in accomplishing that failure."

"We succeeded in one way," Gergor said. "We know one more place where it isn't. Plus we did get something worthwhile out of there."

He returned his attention to the object he had pulled out of the pack. It was a black sphere, fourteen inches in diameter. The surface was completely covered with very thin lines shaped like hexagonals. Gergor pulled his gloves off, ignoring the bitter-cold wind. He turned the sphere in his hands, looking carefully at the very faint high rune writing on it, then pressed down on the top. A red inner glow lit the globe, highlighting the high rune hexagonals.

Three panels on the bottom opened, extending short legs.

"What are you doing?" Coridan was shivering, now that the heat produced by moving was gone and the cold wind was biting through his outer garments.

"It would be stupid to carry this thing all the way only to find out it doesn't work," Gergor said. He had put

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the sphere down on top of his pack and was reading the markings.

He pressed. There was a low humming noise. Around the center of the sphere were eight hexagonals. One blinked red, then turned black. The next one did the same. Then the next.

But the fourth one blinked red and continued blinking. Gergor looked up at Coridan even as the fifth, sixth, and seventh ones all went black. The eighth, and final, hexagonal blinked red, then went down to a steady orange flash.

Coridan reached forward with a gloved finger and touched the one hexagonal that was a steady red. "How can that be?"

Gergor turned the sphere off and began repacking it. "You know what that means."

"But I thought they were all destroyed."

"You thought wrong."

"UNAOC is launching the American shuttles to—"

"I know what UNAOC has planned," Gergor interrupted.

"We have to tell Lexina. She has to know this!"

Gergor had his rucksack back on his back. "We will, but we can't signal out of this area. When we get to the aircraft, we will call her."

"Why couldn't you have put the aircraft on this side of the test area?"

"Because security was the primary consideration," Gergor said.

Without a backward glance at the other, Gergor skied into the test range.

Ruiz stared at his arm. A deep trace of black welts crisscrossed the skin. His head was pounding, his throat

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and mouth were dry, even though he'd just drained a canteen full of water.

He heard deck boards creak. Lifting his head off his chest, he saw Harrison leaning over the plastic cases.

"Senor!" Ruiz croaked.

Harrison slowly stood and turned. Ruiz wasn't surprised to see the man's skin had a faint trace of the same welts. The American had a case in his hands. He walked over to the bridge shield and put the case on it.

"Ruiz." Harrison nodded.

"We have it—what the villagers had?"

Harrison nodded.

"Did you know?" Ruiz asked.

"I suspected this might come, but it's happening faster than I expected."

"You weren't looking for the Aymara," Ruiz reasoned out loud. "You were looking for that village. For this—" He held his arms up.

Harrison paused, then nodded. "Yes."

"Who are you?" Ruiz asked. "You are no university professor."

"I am a Watcher," Harrison said.

Ruiz staggered, bending over double and vomiting over the side of the boat.

When he looked up, Harrison had a videocamera in his hands, the lens pointed at Ruiz. He pulled out a tripod and set the camera on it, locking it down, then adjusting the focus.

"What are you doing?"

"We have to let others know the threat."

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-9-

The patrol looked like a party of ghouls as the sun revealed details. Most of the men were splattered with dried blood and all were covered in mud. They'd made good time in the darkness, following the pass down from the site of the ambush. The stream in the center of the ravine had grown larger as they went lower, until now it was almost a river.

Steam was rising off the surface of the water, mingling with the trees that hung over it. The foliage almost touched in the middle overhead, making the band of water a dark tunnel with splotches of light playing along the surface.

"All right. We'll break here," Toland called out. Daylight revealed him to be more than just a voice in the dark. He was a tall, thin man, his hair completely white—unusual for a man of thirty-six, but not for someone in his line of work.

Faulkener placed out flank security on either side and the rest of the men slumped to the ground, exhausted. Faulkener was the opposite of Toland in body type: short and stocky with heavily muscled arms and legs. He'd been the heavyweight boxing champion of the regiment before Toland.

"I suggest everyone take a bath and get cleaned up," Toland said.

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"Hell, we're just going to get dirty again," one of the new men replied, pulling his bush hat down over his eyes. Those who had served with Toland before were already beginning to strip down.

"Yes, but cleanliness is very important," Toland replied, keeping his voice neutral.

"I'll clean when I get out of this pigsty of a country," the Australian joked.

Toland pulled the bolt back on his Sterling, the sound very loud in the morning air. "You'll clean now."

The Australian stared at him. "What the hell, mate? You queer or something?"

"I'm not your mate. I'm your commander. Take your clothes off, put them on the riverbank, then get in line." He centered the muzzle of the submachine gun on the man. "Now strip."

Soon there was a line of naked men standing waist deep in the water. The white ones had farmer's tans, their torsos pale, their faces and forearms bronzed from the sun. Toland and Faulkener went through the men's clothes and gear, very slowly and methodically.

Toland held up a plastic canteen and shook it. He turned it upside down. No water came out. He took his flashlight and peered in. "Ah, what do we have here?" Toland asked. He drew a knife and jabbed it into the canteen, splitting the side open. A plastic bag full of brownish powder fell out.

"Whose gear?"

The men all turned and looked at one of the Australians who had just joined them for this mission. The one who had complained about taking a bath. "Come here, mate," Toland called out with a smile.

The man walked out of the water, his hands instinctively covering his groin.

"I told you no drugs, didn't I?" Toland asked.

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"I didn't—"

The first round caught the man in the stomach, and Toland casually raised his aim, stitching a pattern up the chest. The man flew backward into the river, arms splayed, blood swirling in the brown water.

The men redonned their clothes and gear. "Make sure you drink upstream from that," Faulkener advised the men, pointing at the body of the Australian, which was slowly floating away downstream. "We'll rest here for a few hours."

Toland retired to the shade of a tree. Faulkener joined him there and handed him a sheet of paper. "The message Andrews received last night."

Toland looked at it—a long list of letters that made no sense. "They encoded it. Must be getting worried about someone listening in."

Faulkener didn't reply. He took his knife out and began sharpening the already gleaming edge.

Toland retrieved a Ziploc bag from his breast pocket. Inside it was a small notepad. He turned to the eleventh page—equaling the day of the month they received the message on—and began matching the letters of the message with the letter on the page. Then, using a tri-graph, a standard page that had three letter groups on it, he began deciphering the message. It was slow work, made more difficult by the need to figure where one word ended and the next one began. After twenty minutes he had it done:

TO TOLAND

FROM THE MISSION

LINK UP WITH PARTY

VICINITY PACAAS NOVOS ACROSS BORDER IN BRAZIL

AT COORDINATES SEVEN TWO THREE SIX

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FOUR EIGHT

IN TWELVE HOURS

FOLLOW ALL ORDERS OF PARTY TO BE MET

BONUS ASSURED

A MILLION A MAN

TIME IS OF ESSENCE

CONFIRM ORDERS RECEIVED

END

Toland pulled out his map and looked at the coordinates. About fifty kilometers north and east. He handed the message to Faulkener.

"Why don't they just drop this party off at one of these dirt runways in-country?" Faulkener asked.

"The Americans have this area blanketed with radar. To track drug runners.

Whatever The Mission is up to, they must want to keep it secret."

Faulkener looked at the map. "It's a long walk and not much time. What's the rush?"

"We can do it." Toland rubbed the stubble of his beard. "I wonder what they want us to do after we link up with this guy?"

Faulkener nodded toward the merks. "Some of these boys won't want to go farther into the jungle."

Toland laid a hand on the stubby barrel of his Sterling. "Anyone says anything, they can talk to my complaint department. We move out in fifteen minutes."

"They are afraid." Lo Fa lowered the binoculars. "But they are many. More than we have here."

"Are you afraid?" Che Lu asked.

Lo Fa laughed. "Mother-Professor, I am not one of your stupid students to be manipulated so easily by your words."

He pointed to the west, where the bulk of Qian-Ling

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was highlighted against the setting sun. It rose out of the countryside, over 3,000 feet high, so large it was hard to imagine that human hands had made the mountain. And it was not a mountain, but a tomb, a monument built before the birth of Christ to honor the Emperor Gao-zong and his empress, the only empress in the entire history of China.

Or at least that was what Che Lu had thought. Now she wondered why it was really built and who was behind the building. The man-made hill dwarfed even the Great Pyramid of Giza, making it the largest tomb in the world. The amount of labor needed to move that amount of dirt and rock was staggering to conceptualize. Trees and bushes had taken root on the mountain, and it looked almost natural except for the symmetrical shape. Around the tomb were various statues, particularly on the wide road leading up to it, where rows and rows of statues were lined, to symbolize all the people and officials who had come to honor the funeral procession of Gao-zong when he was buried in A.D. 18.