Legacy (61 page)

“Secure yourself to the spacecraft,” the colonel said over the radio.

“Roger, sorry,” Dugan said. He slipped his hook through the base of the mount. When he did, Kendal waved for him to take hold of the cable.

Dugan expected resistance, as if he were pulling something in from deep water. Instead, he was rewarded with the dish actually sliding nicely toward the mount. Kendal studied the panel that housed the recessed radar system. He saw a large dent on the cover and he shook his head inside the large helmet.

“Here’s the problem with the radar and why we got such a late collision warning,” he said as he started to unscrew the access panel. When he had the cover off, he saw the smashed circuit on the radar’s motherboard. “
Falcon
cut the power to the radar through the circuit breaker panel.”

Inside
Falcon
, Ryan lifted free of his seat and floated toward the circuit breaker panel for outside systems. He found circuit breaker 1911-b, radar and sonar, and he easily reached out and popped it into the break position.

“Power down,” Ryan confirmed to Kendal.

“Roger, pulling the motherboard for the system. Stand by.”

Kendal reached down and pulled the damaged board from the access hole. He looked to make sure that Dugan was having no trouble pulling in the dish. Satisfied, he let the damaged circuit board float free. He reached into his bag and pulled the new motherboard from its protective antistatic covering, then slipped it inside just as the damaged telecommunications dish hit the hard body of
Falcon 1
.

“There we go. She looks good, skipper,” Dugan said, as he examined the highly complex dish up close. “Cable is in fine shape. A new bolt assembly ought to do the job.”

As Kendal connected the small electronics cable to the motherboard, he looked up and nodded his head. Before Dugan could start placing the dish back on its mount, his VOX system came to life.

“Breakers back on, Colonel. We have radar contact bearing 117. It’s big and coming right for us,” Ryan said, and then hurriedly read off the coordinates. Maggio says you two should move to the bottom side of
Falcon 1
. The object is traveling fast.”

Kendal looked at Dugan and gestured for him to put the dish in its place.

“Wire-tie it for now and we’ll come back to bolt it into place.”

“Roger, skipper,” he said. As he reached for a wire-tie in his pouch, the radio came alive again.

“Smaller debris is heading our way in front of the main object!” Ryan called out on VOX. “Thirteen—no, make that fifteen small targets.”

As Kendal looked forward, he saw what Ryan was picking up on radar. From his position it looked like an oxygen or water tank that had once been attached to the ESA craft
Astral
. The smaller pieces were part of the landing pad from its missing gear. It had shattered when the
Astral
had separated from its mother ship. Dugan never knew what hit him as the rubberized pad slammed into him at over 34,000 miles per hour. The landing pad and several of its restraining bolts hit Dugan in the backpack and helmet, sending him skidding off the slick skin of
Falcon 1
, pulling his cable tether taught as it sprung like a bow string when he was hit. As Kendal reached for Dugan, he saw the blood inside the lunar lander pilot’s helmet as it spread quickly in the oxygen-rich environment. The sight made the colonel lose his grip and Dugan went flying past. Kendal held on tightly to the bulkhead as the rest of the debris slammed into him.

Ryan pushed off from the main breaker panel and went to the aft window of
Falcon
, where he saw Kendal’s suit get punctured in three different places. He saw the venting of his suit’s atmosphere just as the tether holding Dugan close to the spacecraft snapped. Ryan watched in absolute horror as Dugan slipped out of view and then Kendal, who gagged for air that wasn’t there. Jason watched, his eyes widening as Kendal’s rubber-coated tether became taut and then snapped as the ESA oxygen tank from
Astral
not only hit the communications array mount but the spot where Kendal had been anchored. The commander quickly flew free of
Falcon 1.
Kendal smashed into the engine bell and the impact sent him spinning crazily off into space.

Ryan continued to stare out of the window in silence. The two men were so far beyond sight that he just stared at the spot where they had been a brief moment before.

“What’s happening?” Maggio asked loudly.

Ryan didn’t answer. He continued looking out the thick glass of the window.

“Ryan! Come on, man, what’s going on?” Maggio called out again.

“They’re gone,” he finally answered quietly.

“What do you mean, ‘They’re gone,’ Goddamn it?”

Ryan turned toward the command chair angrily.

“What do you think I mean? They’re gone, dead, adrift. What do you want me to say?”

Down below, Sarah heard everything that was happening.

“What do we do?” Maggio asked no one in particular.

“We continue with the mission,” Sarah said and released her safety harness.

“In case you didn’t notice, we just lost the mission commander and the LEM pilot,” Maggio called out, wanting to get out from behind the command seat.

Sarah floated up to the top deck and pulled herself into the access tunnel. She appeared a moment later inside the command module.

“You’ve just been promoted to LEM pilot, Maggio. I’m senior on the project in rank, so I’ll be taking command of the excursion team.”

Maggio looked at Sarah for the longest time.

“What mission? It’s over here, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, well, she’s senior above a bunch of junior grades and Army personnel,” Ryan said in a calm and steady voice. “If you can get us there, I’ll land us, and Sarah will find what it is we came for. Can you get us there?”

Maggio looked from Ryan to Sarah. The two people had been in the program less than a month, but both commanded authority through their voices and demeanor.

“Yes, I can get us there,” Maggio said, “But the real question here, flyboy, is whether you can get the personnel down to the lunar surface without killing every mother-lovin’ one of us?”

“If not, Lieutenant, you just may end up having an elementary school named after you.”

Maggio was silent when confronted with Ryan’s confidence.

“You have to admit, Maggio, the idea of a school being named after you is appealing, isn’t it?” Sarah eyed the new command module pilot.

“As a matter of fact, a school in El Paso is just waiting to have my name put on it. Yeah, sure. Why not?”

Sarah reached out and pulled a floating Ryan toward her.

“You be the one to tell Mendenhall,” she said.

“Hell, I’m asking him to be my copilot.”

MÜELLER AND SANTIAGO MINING CONCERN, 100 MILES EAST OF QUITO

An hour after the last shots fired at the battle for Columbus Hill, Jack and Tram eased themselves off the electric cart while still in front of the double steel doorways. Jack looked over at the gift shop that had never felt a tourist’s touch. He wondered if they had planned on Hitler visiting the mine after the war was over, or if reich schoolchildren would have been paraded in and allowed to buy such items as Nazi coffee mugs and pictures of the artifacts discovered inside the mine. Collins shook his head in wonderment at the arrogance he was staring at.

“Come on, smiley. Let’s follow along and see if we can find my friends.”

Tram had the now reloaded M-14 lying across his arm as he examined the small Buck Rogers spaceship in the window. He turned and looked at Jack with a curious stare.

“‘Private’ will do, Colonel,” he said, with no malice lacing his voice.

“I’ll be damned—I didn’t think you spoke English. Your sergeant didn’t say anything about it.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t asked,” Tram said as he moved toward the large steel doors.

“You actually sound like you spent time at Yale, at the very least,” Jack joked.

Tram turned and faced Jack. With a slight tilt of the head, he gestured for him to go through the doors in front of them.

“Actually, Colonel, it was UCLA.”

“Hmm,” Jack said. He slid by the small Vietnamese soldier and entered the mine.

When both men stood on the precipice overlooking the main gallery of the mine, neither could believe what they were seeing. The immenseness of the excavation was nearly overpowering. They saw the small electric cart far beneath them in front of the damaged and ancient plastic-looking enclosures. He saw the long forgotten roadway paved over either by the Nazis or someone more recently. The gallery was lit up like New York’s Grand Central Station and its brightness cast shadows in all directions from where the lights were anchored overhead.

“Well, your English is so good, try describing this in a letter back home,” Jack said. He placed his M-16 over his shoulder and started down the steep trail, following the tracks of the electric cart.

“‘Amazing’ is the word that comes to mind,” Tram said as he turned to follow Collins.

The two men couldn’t help but be made uneasy by the false interior breeze that caused the tattered remains of the Nazi banners and streamers to sway and ripple in the wind. It was just another glorious day in the land of National Socialism.

“The day we stop running into more surprises left by these people, I think that’s the day I’ll retire,” Jack said, intending for Tram neither to hear nor to answer.

“They were very industrious, but how many men and women did the SS kill to get this mine dug?”

Jack eyed the Vietnamese sniper as he walked. He wondered why it had taken so long for the private to say something. Now he had an opinion about everything.

As they progressed down the steep incline of the man-made ramp, Jack had a feeling he was being watched, but from where he couldn’t tell. He heard Tram click the safety off on the old M-14; evidently he was feeling the same thing himself.

Far in back of them, near the steel doors, a pair of eyes was indeed watching. The Mechanic held up his hand. His men were anxious to get free of the exposed roadway. They were soaked from their climb up the waterfall and their entrance through the underground river. They had lost one man, who had drowned when the river had taken its downhill course under rock. They then had to fight to get up the rock wall Collins and Everett and his men had fallen from the previous week.

As the Mechanic watched Jack and his smaller companion walk the inclined trail, he finally gave the order for his men to follow, instructing them that they must do so from a great distance as he suspected more Americans were inside already.

Since his previous visits to the mine had been only cursory, the Mechanic knew he would have to be led to the valuable cache of advanced weaponry that he knew was hidden here. Once that was accomplished, he would return to his native Saudi Arabia and sell the specifications for whatever he found. From McCabe’s and Rawlins’s descriptions he knew it would be worth heaven itself to his cause.

The Mechanic fell into line and followed his men as he watched the long-ago flags flap in the strange breeze that seemed to come from nowhere.

*   *   *

As Alice and Sebastian gently sat Garrison Lee on a rock outcropping, Niles examined one of the buildings. He tore a flap of skin from the two-story structure that had been pushed in millions of years before by an earth movement that had slammed it askew of its neighbor. The age was such that any material or organics left over after this disaster had long since vanished. As Niles felt the strange material, he was approached by Appleby.

“It’s a composite, perhaps nylon, maybe a plastic and nylon weave, but it’s really too strong for that,” the man from DARPA said. He joined Niles, who handed the piece of material over to Alice and Lee. “It will take a while to learn how some of the materials survived in their original form, while others petrified.”

“I can’t imagine the violence of the earth that crushed the life out of this place,” Ellenshaw said. He moved the M-16 to his shoulder and looked into one of the glassless windows of the damaged enclosure.

Niles looked around and noticed small plaques had been placed in several rocks lining the ancient thoroughfare of crushed and mangled buildings. The words were in German and had been etched in the bronze of the embedded plaques.

“What do they say, Sebastian?” Niles asked the German major, who was examining the stone and its writing.

“Site excavated 16 June 1939. No sign of habitation at this level.”

“This level? You mean there’s another one under here?” Ellenshaw asked. He rolled down the sleeves of his tan shirt due to the briskness of the false breeze swirling inside the ruins.

“There must be,” Appleby said, as he leaned over and picked up something that caught his eye. “Major, what do you make of this?” he asked. He held out a small object. “There’s more than one here.”

Sebastian Krell took the small item and examined it. He laughed at what he was holding, then looked down and saw several more of the small round objects on the rock-covered ground around his feet.