Area 51: The Mission-3 (30 page)

"What if they decode the message?" Faulkener asked.

"I don't think anyone can break a one-time pad," Toland said, not even really aware of where he was for the moment as his brain worked. "No, I think we're just getting the signal picked up. Get the rig set up."

Toland blinked as Faulkener threw his ruck down and scrambled to pull out the radio. He focused on Baldrick. "What did you get out of that aircraft?"

Baldrick was adjusting his pack straps. "What are you talking about?"

"What did you just get? What did we come here for?"

"That's not—"

Toland drew his knife and slashed, the blade cutting across Baldrick's right cheek, a thin line of blood following the cut.

"Why did you do that?" Baldrick was calm, staring at the other man.

Toland stepped forward and slammed a knee into Baldrick's chest, pinning him to the ground. He pressed the point into the skin under Baldrick's right eye.

"What crashed over there?"

"I can't—"

The point of the knife edged forward until it was a scant millimeter from Baldrick's eye. "I'll take one eye, then the other. Nothing in Skeleton's orders about you keeping your eyes," Toland said. "Just get you and your cargo back.

What crashed?"

"It was a satellite," Baldrick said.

"A satellite?" Toland frowned. "What did you get out of it?"

"Film," Baldrick said.

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"Film of what?"

"The Amazon rain forest," Baldrick said. "The satellite wasn't supposed to come down so soon."

"That's worth millions?" Toland didn't wait for an answer. "Bullshit."

"This type of photo is worth a lot." Baldrick spoke quickly, eye still focused on the knife so close by. "The camera used special imaging. With thermal and spectral imaging the specialists can determine areas under the rain forest that have a high likelihood of holding diamonds, particularly alluvial flood areas."

"It's set," Faulkener reported.

Toland sheathed his knife and pulled out his onetime pad. He quickly began transcribing. He finished the message and punched it into the SATCOM and burst it out.

"Where did you say for the transportation to meet us?" Baldrick asked.

Toland laughed. "I don't think that's information you need. You just stick with us. We'll get you there."

"Both launches are go so far," Kopina said.

Duncan checked the red digits on the large clock, then returned her attention to the Endeavor. She thought of the crew, strapped to their seats, essentially sitting on top of a tower of high-explosive fuel.

"T-minus nine minutes. The count has resumed. GLS auto sequence has been initiated."

Five thousand meters to the south of Toland and his small patrol, Turcotte looked around, weapon at the ready. The bouncer was sitting a short distance away, silently floating.

"What do you think?" Yakov asked, looking about in the dark at the rolling terrain around them.

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"They were here," Turcotte said, pointing at where the grass was pressed down.

"Maybe three, four men."

"So where'd they go?" Yakov asked.

"They could have gone in any direction," Turcotte said. "We need help. Let's get back on the bouncer."

"T-minus one minute."

The shuttle on the pad directly in front of Duncan, three miles away, was mirrored in the TV screen in the observation room, with a view of Columbia on the pad at Cape Kennedy.

"T-minus fifty seconds. Ground power removal."

"If they have an abort now, there is an escape mechanism built in," Kopina said. "You can't see them, but there are seven twelve-hundred-foot-long wires from the top to the ground. Each has a basket big enough to carry three people.

"The wires come down right next to bunkers," Kopina said. "The theory is you get out of the orbiter, into the basket, ride the wire down, jump out of the basket and into the bunker."

"T-minus thirty-one seconds. Go for auto sequence. Start SRB APUs."

Duncan could see gas venting out of the bottom of the shuttle.

"T-minus twenty-one seconds. SRB Gimbal Test. Activate sound suppression water. Perform SRB AFT MDMS lockout. Verify LH2 high-point bleed valve closed.

Terminate MPS helium fill."

More gas venting, lines falling off the shuttle from the tower.

"T-minus ten seconds. Go for main engine start! Nine. Eight. Seven. Six."

"Engine three on the shuttle has started," Kopina said as a loud roar rumbled by them.

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"Five."

The roar grew louder as the second main engine kicked in.

"Four."

The third main engine on the shuttle now ignited. But still gravity held the shuttle in its grip.

"Three.

"Two.

"One. SRB ignition."

The ground shook as if the hand of God had come down and was waking up all nearby.

"The bolts have been cut," Kopina said. "It's free."

Rising on a plume of fire, Endeavor lifted off the launch pad. On the other side of the country, Columbia was climbing into the sky at the same rate.

"How long until linkup?" Duncan asked.

"Three hours for Alpha with the mothership. A half hour later for Bravo at the talon."

Duncan watched the tower of fire go higher and higher.

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-18-

"Okay, okay," Waker said as he read the intelligence request. He was pumped. He was hooked in to his electronic network, everything coming in and dancing in front of his eyes in letters and symbols his brain automatically translated.

"Perfect timing," Waker muttered. The KH-12 had picked up the SATCOM

transmission as it was being made. Within thirty seconds it had come up on Waker's screen. And now, three minutes later, someone on the ground in South America wanted the location of the transmitter.

This time, though, he was talking direct back to the man in the field, and that gave Waker a rush. It was as close as he was ever going to get.

He typed, each finger slamming down on the key with authority.

TO: TURCOTTE

FROM: NSA ALPHA ONE ONE

TRANSMISSION SENT BY SAME SATCOM

LOCATION UTM GRID 29583578

Waker hit the send button.

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"We've got an AWACS on channel two," the pilot of the bouncer informed Turcotte.

Putting a headset on, Turcotte switched to channel two. "This is Bouncer Two.

Over."

Circling two hundred miles to the northwest, just outside of the international boundary of Columbia, an Air Force plane was always on station, its mission to catch drug traffickers, part of an electronic wall put in place.

At 45,000 feet, over eight miles, above the Pacific, the Boeing E-3C Sentry AWACS—airborne warning and control system platform—could "paint" a picture of everything within a three-hundred-mile radius using the thirty-foot radome above the center of the fuselage.

Colonel Lorenz was the officer in charge (OIC) of the rear compartment. Most of his crew were veterans of the Gulf War and numerous missions over both the subsequent no-fly zone and this drug zone south of the United States. There was no real threat to the plane itself on this mission, but that didn't mean Lorenz let things get slack as they "rode the southern fence," as the drug mission was known among the AWACS crews.

Lorenz spoke into the boom mike in front of his lips as soon as he received acknowledgment. "Bouncer Two, this is AWACS Eagle. We have new coordinates for you."

The point man stumbled and fell. Faulkener was quickly at his side. The man reached up, grabbing Faulkener's arm.

"Damn!" Faulkener hissed as the man vomited over his arm.

Toland came up and looked at the man. He was a mercenary who had served with Toland for the last two years. "Can you go on?"

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The man groaned and rolled on the ground. Faulkener stood, flicking his arm to shake off the black vomit.

Toland rubbed his forehead. He brought up the Sterling. The man raised an arm weakly. Toland fired twice, then his arms slumped to his side, the Sterling hanging by its sling.

"Let's go." Baldrick said.

Toland thought of the two dead drug runners in their poncho stretchers. Two million dollars. Would he make it out of here in time to buy help? "Let's move."

As they went forward in the darkness, he noted that for the first time Faulkener had not added up their suddenly higher shares.

"Lock and load," Turcotte yelled. The bouncer came in fast, the pilot using the craft's superb turning capability to keep them just above the treetops.

In a small open area, less than a hundred meters short of the location they'd been given by the AWACS, the pilot touched down. Turcotte was out of (he hatch, followed closely by Yakov and Kenyon. The bouncer lifted and hovered ten feet overhead.

Turcotte scanned the area, but he saw nothing. He began moving forward, and Yakov grabbed his arm.

"What's up there?" Yakov was pointing with the muzzle of his MP-5 upslope at a tree that had been sheared off halfway up its trunk. Turcotte ran up the slope and crested it. A pile of twisted metal lay at the end of a trail of torn-up earth.

"The satellite," Yakov said as he knelt next to the wreckage. The scene was lit by a bolt of lightning. Thunder rumbled a few seconds later.

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Toland had his small band of survivors moving. He checked out the sky as everything was brilliantly lit. He'd seen this before. Heat lightning, soon to be followed by a torrential rain. Perfect. There was no way they would be found, no matter how close their pursuers were.

"Here!" Kenyon called out.

Turcotte ran over, the others following. A body lay in the grass. Yakov shined a light down and they immediately saw the blood and the bullet holes. But there was also the sign of the disease. Black welts crisscrossed the man's exposed skin.

"We're exposed," Kenyon said.

"Everyone will be exposed sooner or later," Turcotte said. He was tired of hiding in the suits. There was no way they were going to track down the source by hiding.

Turcotte looked out into the dark. The wind was picking up, and he could feel dampness being carried with it. "Weather's changing," he called out. "Back to the bouncer."

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-19-

The pilot checked his map one last time, then carefully folded it so that the portion he needed was faceup. He used a band of elastic to attach it to his kneeboard. He had no electronic devices on board other than the engine, windshield wipers, and the rudimentary instrument panel, so this Iruly was going to be a seat-of-the-pants navigation job. He did have a small FM radio to be used to contact the people on the ground when he got close. The pilot was used to such missions and felt confident he could find the target runway. He looked like Baldrick's brother—tall, his six-foot-two frame crammed into the cockpit, with straight blond hair and brilliant blue eyes.

He'd been waiting here for two days, the aircraft—a specially designed, top-secret prototype named the Sparrow—under camouflage nets at a deserted airstrip as close as he could get to the target area without actually entering the suspected infected zone.

He flicked the on switch and the engine coughed once, then smoothly started. It was a specially designed rotary engine, quieter than a conventional piston engine and mounted directly behind the cockpit in a large bubble. The propeller shaft extended forward from the engine, over the pilot's head to the high-mounted propeller, supported by a four-foot pylon mounted on the 270

nose. The long shaft allowed a high reduction ratio for the prop, and the very large blades—over eight feet long—turned very slowly. The resulting sound was no louder than a moderate wind blowing through the trees.

The Sparrow was made by a South African company off of designs stolen from Lockheed's Q-Star (Quiet Star) program. The company was a subsidiary of Terra-Lei. The entire aircraft was designed with two factors in mind: reduced noise and radar signature. It wasn't built for speed or endurance, but the target was only sixty miles away. The pilot knew he would be there in less than forty minutes.

The runway was dirt, and the rain had further complicated what was going to be a difficult takeoff with no lights. The pilot released the brakes and the plane began rolling. Peering through the Plexiglas with his night-vision goggles, the pilot ignored the sweep of the wipers and concentrated on staying straight. In two hundred feet he had sufficient speed and pulled back on the yoke, lifting off. As soon as he cleared the trees, he turned due west.

Colonel Lorenz had moved the AWACS until they were now farther south along the coast, opposite Peru. The only aircraft on his screens was moving in this direction, because he had ordered it to.

He keyed his mike. "Spectre One One, this is Eagle. Over."

"This is One One. Over."

Lorenz quickly relayed to the pilot of the Spectre gunship what he wanted. The AC-130 didn't look like a bloodhound, but it was the best Harris could come up with in the inventory. A C-130 transport plane modified to be an airborne gun platform, the Spectre could throw a lot of bullets in a very short period of time. From front

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to rear, along the left side, the Spectre boasted 7.62mm Gatling guns, 40mm cannon, and a 105mm howitzer, all linked to a sophisticated computerized aiming system on board the craft. The crewmen's job was to shovel away expended brass from around the guns so they could keep firing.

Using its low-light-level TV—LLTV—Lorenz wanted the Spectre to head to the bouncer's location, then begin a circular search pattern, literally looking for the people they were after.

"Roger that," the pilot of the Spectre acknowledged when Lorenz was done with his instructions. "ETA at target sight, fifteen minutes. Out."

"Another kilometer," Toland said. He pulled his canteen out and drank deeply while still walking, trying to replace some of the fluid he was losing and keep his temperature down.

He looked over. Faulkener and the other man weren't doing too well either, but Baldrick seemed all right. Of course, Baldrick hadn't been with them at the ambush.

Lexina listened to the report from Elek in Qian-Ling and then one from Gergor and Condan, still making their way south. Neither was good. Gergors description of what happened when he turned on the ship link did not bode well for current events. And Elek being trapped inside the tomb without access to the lower level was frustrating. The fact that the guardian in Qian-Ling could give no information on the location of the key had not surprised her, but she had had a faint hope it might. That hope was now gone.