Area 51: The Mission-3 (35 page)

(research reconstitution and field report 6/16/97-Coridan- ) Overview :

In a previous report I described how The Mission appears to have been instru-

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mental in the complete annihilation of the Aymara civilization, whose capital was in Tiahuanaco. This is connected to contact between the Aymara and the people of Easter Island (cross-reference an entry made on 5/24/96).

The Mission departed South America for a long period of time, some records of its actions and locations are in other entries. It appears, though, that The Mission returned to South America sometime during World War II. After the war, it was a magnet for expatriate Nazis, particularly scientists who had worked in the camps.

Due to the presence of these Nazis and their strong influence in their new land, The Mission has a built-in level of secrecy and security, a tactic it has used throughout the ages. Initially, I believe The Mission was located in Paraguay.

However, I am certain it moved from that country sometime in the 1970s. So far, I have only been able to cull some rumors out of those who might know something.

One word that keeps coming up is the Devil, but The Mission has often been associated with demons or devils due to the nature of its work.

Recommend we send an operative to search for the site of The Mission with the highest priority.

"Sister Angelina mentioned the Devil," Turcotte said, having finished reading the document.

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"Ah." Yakov was disgusted. "Our base for Section Four was called the Demon's Station. This does not get us any closer to finding where The Mission is. Even STAAR had not found it."

"Or the Watchers," Duncan said through the computer link.

"Damn it!" Turcotte slammed a fist into his side. "South America is a big place. If these people had been looking for years, there's no way we're going to

. . ." He paused. "Kourou."

"What about it?" Yakov asked.

"When is the launch of the next four satellites scheduled?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Then The Mission will have to put their Black Death payloads into the rockets soon, right?"

Yakov nodded.

"But we got the payload from the last launch," Turcotte said.

"They were either refining the virus with this launch," Kenyon said, "or making more. Most likely the latter, as they were confident enough to schedule the four launches for tomorrow. You said there were two previous launches. They most likely have Black Death virus from those that they can use."

"So they don't have to have this load?" Turcotte asked.

"I doubt it," Kenyon said. "One thing, though—even as tough as this virus is—

I'd say they'd have to keep it viable, which means keeping it refrigerated and not loading the payload dispersers until the last minute."

"I doubt they're holding it at Kourou unless all of Europe is in on this,"

Turcotte said. "The previous launches—where did they come down?" Turcotte asked.

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Duncan answered that: "Off the coast of French Guiana in the Atlantic."

"I saw something," Turcotte muttered. He grabbed the map off the floor of the bouncer. He ran his finger along the coast, up from Brazil to French Guiana where Kourou was located.

"It's there," he whispered. "It's been there right in front of us all this time."

"What?" Duncan's voice out of the speaker echoed Yakov's.

"The Mission." Turcotte stabbed his finger on a spot on the map. "Right off the coast from Kourou. The old French prison. Devil's Island."

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"If you arc wrong, we will have wasted critical time," Yakov said. The Amazon rain forest was flashing by beneath the bouncer as they headed northeast toward the coast.

"You got a better suggestion for the location of The Mission?" Turcotte asked.

He held up his hand. A faint trace of black was under the skin. He felt terrible, a pounding headache on top of a fever. He held on to Baldrick's last statement about a cure. It was their only chance.

"If you are wrong, at least we will be close enough to Kourou." Yakov said. "I will ensure those rockets never launch in the morning."

"Better to bum out than fade away," Turcotte said. He knew what Yakov had in mind—a Special Operations warrior conducting a suicide mission was a most formidable foe. He had no doubt the two of them would be able to make a good charge at disabling those rockets no matter what security there was at the field. The problem, though, was that the Black Death would still continue burning through South America and eventually move outward from there.

"What does that mean?"

"It's a song," Turcotte said. "Means it's better to go out with a bang than a whimper."

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"A bang, yes," Yakov said. "That is what it would be."

"According to the information Dr. Duncan was able to find," Turcotte said,

"Devil's Island has been abandoned since the Second World War. She's having the NSA get some overhead shots and she's tracking down the plans for the prison there.

“From the little we know of it. this Mission uses people and things that are already established. Devil's Island seems custom made for it. Add in the fact that Kourou is right next to it on the mainland and the first two satellites were recovered to the east of the island in the Atlantic and it all fits. Plus the name Devil's Island, which corresponds to what Sister Angelina said."

Turcotte nodded. "This is it. I can feel it."

"I hope you are correct, my friend." Yakov pointed to the left. "Because if you are wrong, that is our next slop."

Brilliantly lit by spotlights, four Ariana rockets sat on the four launch pads at Kourou about eight miles to the north of where they were flying.

"'NSA Seven, this is Eagle Leader. Over." Lieutenant Colonel Mickell released the transmit button on the radio and waited. He was in the cargo bay of an MC-130 Combat Talon—a specially modified version of the venerable four-prop Hercules transport plane that had been in the Air Force's inventory for decades.

The Talon was special in that it could fly very low, hugging the terrain, thus evading getting picked up on radar. This was a relatively easy flight so far, given that the flight path had been over water since reaching the Atlantic off the coast of South Carolina.

The radio crackled as Duncan answered. "This is NSA Seven. Over."

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"This is Eagle Leader. I'm calling for final mission authorization.

Authenticate, please. Over." Mickell released the send button.

The radio hissed. "I authenticate NSA Directive 6-97. I say again, I authenticate NSA Directive 6-97. Over."

Mickell nodded. He at least had a pretense of legitimacy. "'Roger, NSA Seven.

I copy NSA Directive 6-97. Over."

"NSA Seven. Out."

Mickell keyed the mike again. "Tiger Leader, this is Eagle Leader. Did you copy NSA Seven? Over."

From two hundred fifty kilometers to the south the reply came back. ''Roger that. I'll get it cranking. Over."

"Good luck. Out."

Lisa Duncan put the SATPhone down. She was on board a bouncer, flying back to Area 51. She had far overstepped her bounds giving authorization for military action in a foreign country. NSA Directive 6-97 gave her some power, but not that much.

"We're six minutes out from Area 51, ma'am," the pilot announced.

"Thank you," Duncan said. She called ahead and had Major Quinn patch into the SATCOM frequency for the Delta Force operation.

Turcotte sat on the opposite side of the tree trunk from Yakov. Kenyon was slightly behind him. They were near the top of a knoll. Below them were the old walls of the abandoned French prison. Beyond the prison, the Atlantic Ocean crashed into the rocky shoreline with thunderous breakers.

The bouncer had dropped them off on Devil's Island, on the opposite side of a ridge behind the supposedly

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long-abandoned prison. The island was rough and heavily vegetated. The prison was on the western side, a walled compound about two acres in size. Turcotte, Kenyon, and Yakov had quickly hiked over the ridge to their present location.

"The Mission must be in the old prison," Yakov said.

Turcotte pointed to the right. "Two boats are tied to the pier." The pier was about a mile from the prison.

"One is a patrol boat." Yakov noted the dark silhouette, dimly lit by a couple of lights on the pier. "Russian made. We have made some good money selling items like that to the highest bidder in the past several years. Pauk class. It could have been used to pick up the satellites in the water. The other boat is smaller." He turned his attention back to the prison. "There's a helicopter inside the walls," he noted.

Turcotte pulled a set of night-vision goggles out of his pack and put them on.

"Guards. Four on the dock. Others along the top of the wall and inside the compound. About fifteen."

"I think you have—how do you say—hit the jackpot," Yakov said.

Turcotte slipped the pack off his back and pulled out a SATCOM radio. He unfolded the tripod legs of the little dish and angled it up to the sky, then hooked in a scrambler and put on a small headset. He did a trial shot and got a successful bounce back from the communications satellite, indicating he was on the right direction and azimuth.

He hooked a small portable printer into the radio along with the laptop computer. It was a long way from his time in the infantry when he'd gone to the field with just a bulky FM radio for communications.

"I've got a link to both Duncan and Area 51," Turcotte confirmed to Yakov.

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The printer came alive and a sheet of paper scrolled out. "Current real-time thermal of the island from a KH-12 spy satellite," Turcotte said. He tapped two small red dots. "That's us."

"Amazing" was Yakov's take on that.

"And we're not alone." Turcotte slid his finger along the paper. "This dark blue square is the other wall of the prison. This building inside has people in it." There were about a dozen red dots on the paper. "And the guards at the dock and people on both boats."

Turcotte frowned. "The chopper is red. The engine is still hot."

"You think they have already delivered the payload to Kourou?" Kenyon asked.

"I don't know," Turcotte said. "You said they needed to keep it refrigerated.

Let's hope they haven't taken it out yet. I'd say if the boats are still here, the Black Death is still here."

"So what do we do now?" Yakov asked.

"We wait for just a little while, then we go visiting."

"I will stop those rockets from taking off at Kourou no matter what," Yakov vowed once more.

"Let's start here," Turcotte advised.

Lisa Duncan was walking a fine line. She had told no one other than Turcotte about Kopina's action in destroying the shuttle Endeavor. She wanted to stay clear of the official reaction to that event and the destruction of Columbia by the talon. With one fell swoop, two-thirds of America's space fleet was gone; only the shuttle Atlantis, currently being refitted, was left.

She'd arrived in Area 51 and was now in the Cube, coordinating all the forces she had set in movement. Major Quinn was helping her, his military experience invaluable, his links to intelligence networks critical.

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The progressives were using the events to further their own cause, as were the isolationists. China firing a nuclear weapon within its own borders had the world's governments fixated on that event and how it affected their own little backyards.

Now that she had a slightly better view of the playing field, Duncan had to wonder how much of that was due to the influence of the Guides. The Ones Who Wait, and the Watchers.

Meanwhile, from Quinn's intelligence, Duncan knew the Black Death was spreading in the Amazon rain forest and the four rockets were set to launch at Kourou in less than six hours.

"They have to have a Level Four biolab somewhere in there," Kenyon said.

"We'll find it," Turcotte promised. He cocked his head as the SATPhone gave a very low buzz.

"Turcotte," he spoke in a low voice.

"Mike, this is Colonel Mickell. We're en route."

"Yes, sir."

Mickell gave him the satellite radio frequency they would be working on and the call signs that would be used.

Turcotte switched from the phone to the more secure radio. "Eagle Leader, this is Wolf Leader. Over."

The reply from Mickell was immediate. "This is Eagle Leader. Go ahead. Over."

"Roger, we've got the prison under surveillance. One thing—we've got to recover a cure for the virus inside the prison, so tell your people to be careful who they shoot and what they blow up. Over."

There was a moment of silence on the other end. "Roger. Over."

Turcotte knew the Delta Force men with Mickell had

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no idea that they were here outside the normal chain of command. And if they knew, they wouldn't really care— as Colonel Mickell hadn't cared—given the urgency of the mission.

The trend in Special Operations over the past two decades had been for fewer and fewer people to be informed and involved in actual operations. The after-action report on the debacle at Desert One had shown up glaring faults in the number of people who were actively involved in the decision-making process, from the President on down. The military had pushed for less outside involvement and more autonomy for the leader on the ground. It also allowed those on the inside to use Delta Force for this mission without having to inform everybody and their brother about what was going on and having the chance of a Guide becoming involved. After what had happened to Endeavor there was most definitely a need for keeping this in close.

"They'll keep the cure with them," Kenyon said. "If they move the payloads with the Black Death, they'll move the cure."

"Why'.'" Turcotte asked.

"If you were going to handle snakes, wouldn't you keep your antivenom kit close at hand?" Kenyon asked.

Sergeant First Class Gillis signaled to the pilot. "Crank her up, Corsen."

The pilot started his helicopter. The aircraft was an OH-58, the military version of the Bell Jet Ranger. The twin-bladed helicopter could hold only the pilot and the three men of Tiger element. They were flying out of the airfield at St. George's in Grenada, where, as members of the Seventh Special Forces Group, they were always on standby for counterdrug operations. Gillis was glad 321