Atlantis (30 page)

Foreman looked at his commo board. The light indicating a link to Sin Fen was dark. She’d relayed to him Beasley’s interpretation of the carvings in the watchtower that she had sensed from Dane’s mind.

As he watched, another light flickered on and a tone sounded. Foreman leaned forward and threw a switch.

“Foreman here.”

The President wasted no time on greetings. “What next, Mister Foreman? So far we’ve lost Bright Star, Thunder Dart, and one of our MILSTARS satellites.”

Foreman didn’t say anything.

“My scientific people confirm the radiation and electromagnetic spread,” the President continued. “I’ve been in contact with the Russian President and he confirms some of what you told me. They are investigating both at Chernobyl and Lake Baikal but they don’t know much more. I’ve also gotten reports from the NSA that the Russians lost one of their satellites trying to deal with this. I need some more options.”

“My man is getting ready to go into the Angkor Gate,” Foreman said.

“Goddamnit!” the President exploded. “According to these readouts I’m getting, we’re going to have people dying around these Gates in less than twelve hours.”

“I have nothing further to tell you than I’ve already told you, sir,” Foreman said. “The minute I learn something from inside Angkor Gate I will immediately contact you.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I’ll get back to you, sir,” Foreman said. He didn’t add that he feared they were too late.

The phone went dead.

*****

“It’s all set,” Carpenter said. She held up a small green plastic tube. “This is the fuse. We’ll have five minutes.” A length of blue cord ran from the fuse down into the floor panels where Carpenter had wired it to two pounds of C-4 explosive placed against the top bulkhead of the center fuel tank.

Ariana nodded. “OK.” She had the 9mm pistol in her hand and a small backpack slung over her shoulder. Ingram was holding on to Hudson’s right arm, helping him stand. They were all next to the emergency door over the right wing, or where the right wing had been, Ariana reminded herself.

“We pop the door,” Ariana instructed, “then go down the emergency slide which will inflate.” She looked at the faces that surrounded her. Carpenter’s was impassive. Ingram looked afraid but determined. Hudson’s was just afraid.

“Let’s do it.” Ariana grabbed the emergency level and shoved it. With a loud sucking noise the door swung open. There was a loud hiss, then the yellow emergency slide popped out and rapidly inflated.

Ariana took a quick look. It was daylight but only a feeble gray light penetrated the mist. She could see splintered tree trunks underneath the plane and the beginnings of thick jungle just ten feet from the side of the plane. Beyond twenty feet, she saw nothing.

“Go!” she yelled at Hudson and Ingram. The two men flopped onto the slide and disappeared out of sight. Ariana turned to Carpenter. “Do it.”

Carpenter pulled the fuse, checked it and gave a thumbs up. The black woman was by Ariana and down the slide. Ariana took one last look around the interior of the plane, at the bodies covered in sheets and jackets and at that moment she realized her father would have been more mindful of the expensive computers and other equipment she was about to destroy. She stepped onto the slide.

*****

Dane felt the cold water flow around his legs and paused. The mist on the far bank was thicker than he remembered. His eyes could penetrate only a few feet in but it wasn’t his eyes that were warning him. Like the steady beat of a heart, a warning pulsed in his brain, telling him to be aware, to be afraid, but this time, unlike thirty years ago, it also drew him on, into the mist.

He glanced over his shoulder. Freed, Beasley and the four Canadians were right behind him. Dane waded forward. He reached the far bank and climbed up without a backward glance and was enveloped in the fog.

*****

The helicopter settled gingerly onto the blasted foliage. Sin Fen stepped off as the engines began to power down. She walked to the edge of the clearing and faced the jungle, to the west, but her eyes were closed. Chelsea was next to her, tail wagging, tongue hanging out.

She reached out for Dane. She felt him, his essence, but it was flickering and she knew it was moving into the Gate. She sensed the water he had just passed through and could pick up images from his mind--he had talked to Flaherty on the radio.

She concentrated one message to send to him:

Listen to the voices of the Gods

Chelsea began barking, nose pointed to the east. Sin Fen turned in that direction. A Huey helicopter came in low and fast, flaring to a landing next to the chopper that they had come in.

Six men jumped off, weapons at the ready. They were white men, dressed in tiger stripe fatigues, with a hard look about them that spoke of much death and pain. She saw them walk up to Michelet, who pointed in her direction.

They came toward her, Michelet right behind. She picked up the threat from all of them, but it was hard to separate out individual thoughts.

“Do not do something foolish,” Sin Fen warned.

“You’re Foreman’s bitch,” Michelet said. “He set all this up.”

“He gave you enough information to back out,” Sin Fen said. “You are the one that put your daughter and her crew in harm’s way.”

Michelet shook his head. “He’s a manipulative liar.”

Sin Fen laughed. “Ah, that is ironic.”

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. One of the tiger stripe men brought something up in his hand and a small piece of metal flashed toward her. Sin Fen looked down at the small metal dart caught on her vest. She focused at the man holding the stun gun. He staggered back, dropping the gun without triggering it, his hands going to his temples.

Another one of the men fired his stun gun, the dart hitting her in the back. He was quicker, pulling the trigger as she turned.

Sin Fen went rigid from the electric current coursing through her, then the world went black and she collapsed. Chelsea whined and ran into the jungle.

The leader of the men stood over Sin Fen’s body and looked at Michelet questionably. Michelet pointed to the ravine on the northern edge of the camp. “Tie her up and throw her in there. Let the animals finish her.”

The leader gestured to two of his men. They pulled a piece of nylon rope out and began tying Sin Fen up.

“Hie-Tech?” Michelet asked the leader of the men.

“Being taken care of, sir. I coordinated with the Cambod’s to take care of that problem.”

“How much did that coordination cost me?” Michelet asked.

“Two hundred thousand.”

Michelet walked to the center of the LZ, in between the two helicopters and looked to the west. He stood hands on hips. “No one screws with me and gets away with it. No one.”

The leader of the mercenaries stared at him without comment.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Move!” Ariana yelled, grabbing Hudson’s arm and pulling him across the tangled vegetation. She glanced over her shoulder at the plane. The tail was lost in the fog but she could see the rotodome and the golden beam shooting from it into the sky.

Carpenter grabbed Hudson’s other arm. Together they hauled him across a large splintered tree trunk and then they were on the ground. Ariana turned and looked back over the wood. The plane had almost disappeared in the mist, about fifty meters away.

“Duck,” Carpenter said.

Ariana tucked her head down behind the cover of the tree trunk. There was the sharp crack of an explosion, followed by a thunderous secondary explosion. Ariana could hear shrapnel fly by overhead and slash into the vegetation. With a loud thump, a twenty foot section of fuselage landed less than forty feet away. Ariana stood and looked. The plane was gone. She checked her map and pointed into the mist shrouded jungle.

“That way.”

*****

Dane paused as he heard the sound of an explosion. The mist muffled the sound as if it were occurring underwater, followed by a second, deeper explosion a second later.

“What was that?” Beasley demanded.

Freed and the Canadians were also turned in the direction the sound had come from.

“The plane’s gone,” Dane said.

“What!” Freed stepped in front of Dane. “How do you know?”

“I just know,” Dane said.

“But--”

“There are some survivors.”

“How do you know?”

Dane didn’t bother answering.

“But the equipment,” Freed said. “The images they caught.”

Dane pushed Freed out of the way. “We have to keep moving. We can’t stand still.”

“Why?”

Dane just shook his head. He reached out with his mind for Sin Fen, but there was no answer. He felt her absence, like a blank spot in his mind.

Dane moved into the jungle. The sound of the stream behind them faded. The mist was thick, but Dane could sense lighter areas, and using that sense he picked his path. He knew Flaherty was ahead of them somewhere, in the vicinity of the area they had been directed to. He couldn’t ‘hear’ Flaherty like he had been able to contact Sin Fen, but he could feel the presence of his old friend, like a distant torch on the edge of his consciousness. And the way that torch was flickering told Dane that the explosion had been the
Lady Gayle
being destroyed and that the people who had survived the crash were heading in the same direction. He also sensed that if he stayed to the lighter areas they would be safe, that the creatures of the mist would not find them. Somehow Flaherty was helping them, keeping them safe from the dangers inside the Gate. For a little while at least.

Dane paused, hearing the breathing and muted sound of weapons and equipment jangling behind him. He peered ahead. He felt the fear, just as he had the first time he had been in the Angkor Gate, but he could control it, just like he had been able to on cross-border missions before that last one. He didn’t know what was behind the threat he faced, but he knew there was a threat and he had a good idea of the nature of it from his previous experience. And Flaherty was out there.

Dane moved on, the others following.

*****

“It’s changed,” Jimmy said.

“The pattern?” Conners asked. She felt a pulse of adrenaline flow through her tired veins. It had been a while since Thunder Dart had taken out the MILSTARS satellite, but perhaps it had taken that long for the effect to be felt.

“No, the source.” Jimmy swung his laptop around so she could see. “There was a momentary flicker, like the power got interrupted, and now it’s back but the flow is different. Close, but different.” Jimmy tapped the screen. “See how these lines have shifted?”

Actually, Conners couldn’t, but she nodded anyway.

“That means the source of the radiation and electromagnetic fluxes has moved. Not much. Maybe about seven or eight kilometers.”

“Will it change the rate of propagation?”

“No.”

“The strength?”

“No.”

“Great.” Conners picked up the phone. “I’ll inform Foreman.”

*****

The AH-1 Cobra gunship had Cambodian Air Force markings painted on the side. It was a relic from the Vietnam War, appropriated from the Vietnamese Army when it had invaded Cambodia years ago and kept flying by cannibalization of other AH-1s that had been shot down or abandoned when the Vietnamese pulled out.

The Hie-Tech camp consisted of four tents surrounding a small open field on which sat a Russian Hind-D helicopter.

The AH-1 came in low and fast, the 7.62mm minigun in the nose firing as soon as it cleared the tree line. 2.5 inch rockets followed, blasting the Hind into tiny pieces. The pilot of the Cobra came to a hover and continued firing, chasing the survivors into the cover of the jungle and thoroughly destroying the camp.

Michelet’s revenge was complete.

*****

Ariana could hear movement around them, but nothing that sounded as large as the snake. They were moving steadily downhill. Ariana kept them on track by picking a tree as far as she could see into the fog and heading toward, then picking another one. Her compass was spinning wildly but according to the map, downhill was the way to go.

Ariana pushed aside a large hanging growth and paused as the hair on the back of her neck stood up. “What the hell!” she heard Ingram exclaim.

A large plane was set vertically into the ground, tail first, looming like a large cross over the path they were following except that the wings were swept back, almost touching the ground themselves. The nose of the plane disappeared into the mist, about a hundred and forty feet above them. The edge of the massive tail disappeared into the jungle floor. The flat gray paint was marred with lines of rust showing through and plants had woven their way around the metal skin. It was obvious the plane had been there for a while.

“It’s a B-52 bomber,” Carpenter said.

“How did it get like that?” Ingram wondered out loud.

“Same way we landed with no wings and lived to talk about it,” Ariana said.

“The engines are gone,” Carpenter said. Ariana looked up. Where the engines had been on the wings, the metal had been neatly cut. She looked down. No sign of the engines below the wings. Whatever had cut the engines off had also taken them.

“The bomb bay is open,” Carpenter noted.

Ariana shook her head. “Let’s keep going.”

“I’m not going any further,” Hudson said. “We’re screwed. We’re really screwed. This isn’t the way out of this place. This is the way in.”

“In to what?” Ingram asked.

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know.” Hudson pointed up at the plane. “That’s a warning. I’m not going in there. I say let’s go the other way and get out of here.”

“You don’t have a say,” Ariana reminded him.

“The hell I don’t,” Hudson yelled. “I get a say about where
I
go. And I’m not going any further. I’ll just wait right here until you come back.”