The War Cloud (27 page)

The long, bitter road ended here, at a belated funeral ceremony for a general more feared than revered, and a corpse that finally allowed the Pentagon to save face and bury the whole affair with full military honors.

For Conrad it was a homecoming of sorts to the only family he had left: the U.S. Armed Forces, even if he was its black sheep.

At the gravesite stood a gray-haired U.S. Air Force chaplain, an open Bible in hand. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he said, quoting Jesus and gazing straight at Conrad. “He s in me, though he dies, yet shall he live.”Six Blue Angel fighter jets streaked overhead in a missing-man formation. As they peeled up into the dark skies, the thunder from their rainbow-colored vapor trails faded and an unearthly silence descended upon the gravesite.

As Conrad watched the flag being lifted off the coffin and folded, he remembered his school days as a military brat when his dad was a test pilot, like many of the other dads at the base. The sound of jets had filled the base playground. But every now and then there’d be a sputter or pop and all the kids would stop playing and listen to the long whistle, waiting to hear the poof of an ejector lid blowing. You knew who was flying that day just by looking at the faces. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred he would look up and see a chute open. But if it didn’t, two days later he would be standing at a funeral just like this one, watching a friend’s mom receive the flag and disappear from his life.

The miracle, he thought, was that it took this long for his turn to come.

Packard presented Conrad with his father’s Legion of Merit award, his Purple Heart medal, some obscure medal from the Society of Cincinnati, and the flag from the coffin. The flag was folded neatly into a triangle of stars. The stars, so crisp and white against the dark navy blue, seemed to glow.

“On behalf of a grateful America,” Packard told him, “our condolences.”

The oppressive air was suddenly and violently broken by the crack of gunfire as the seven-member rifle team shot the first of three volleys.

A lone bugler played Taps, and Conrad looked on as the casket was lowered into the earth. He felt angry, empty and lost. Despite his doubts that his father was in that casket and his feeling that this whole charade was yet another attempt by the military to bring clo-sure to a mission gone bad, the full weight of his father’s death sank in, a sense of loss more profound than Conrad expected.

His father often spoke of fellow Apollo astronauts who had “been to the moon” and then came back to Earth only to find civilian life wanting. Now Conrad knew what his father had been talking about. Everything Conrad had been searching for his entire life he had discovered in Antarctica, including Serena. Now it was all lost.

Gone were the days when Conrad was a world-class archaeologist whose deconstructionist philosophy–namely, that ancient monuments weren’t nearly so important as the information they yielded about their builders–led to mayhem and media coverage in many of the world’s hot spots.

Gone, too, was his academic reputation after disastrous digs in Luxor and later Antarctica, where he had returned only to find that any traces of Atlantis had vanished.

Gone, last of all, was his relationship with Serena, the one ruin in his life he actually cared about.

Someone coughed and Conrad looked up in time to see the chaplain step aside from the grave, the sweep of his vestment parting like a curtain to unveil the tombstone behind him.

The sight sucked the air from Conrad’s lungs.

Like some of the older stones in the cemetery, his father’s tombstone was in the shape of an obelisk, just like the 555-foot-tall Washington Monument in the distance. This obelisk was a little over three feet tall. Inscribed in a circle near the top Christian cross. Beneath the cross were the words:

GRIFFIN W. YEATS
BRIG GEN
US AIR FORCE
BORN
MAY 4 1945
KILLED IN ACTION
EAST ANTARCTICA
SEPT 21 2004

Unlike any other obelisk at Arlington, however, this one had three constellations engraved on one side, and on the other a strange sequence of numbers he couldn’t quite make out from where he was standing. The markings were bizarre by any measure, and yet familiar all the same. Four years ago in Antarctica Conrad had come across a similar obelisk.

Conrad stared at the tombstone, an uneasy feeling creeping up his spine.

It had to be a message from his father.

Conrad’s heart pounded as he caught Packard watching him. Other mourners were staring, too, watching him. Belatedly, Conrad recognized the faces of five senior Pentagon code breakers and two hostage negotiators among the gathering. Then it dawned on him: This burial service wasn’t meant for his father. And it wasn’t meant for the DOD, to save face. It was meant for him. It was all some kind of setup.

They’re gauging my reaction.

Conrad felt a surge of fight-or-flight in his veins, but he kept a poker face for the rest of the service. Afterward, the funeral party dispersed, and a few tourists drifted down the hillside from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to watch from a distance as the horses clomped away with the empty caisson. Only he and Packard were left at the grave, along with a younger man who looked vaguely familiar to Conrad.

“Conrad, I’d like you to meet Max Seavers,” Packard said. “He’s your father’s acting replacement at DARPA.”

DARPA stood for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and was the Pentagon’s research and development organization. Among other things, DARPA took credit for inventing stealth technology, the global positioning system, and the Internet. DARPA’s mission was to maintain America’s technological superiority and to prevent any other power on earth from challenging that superiority. That mission is what sent his father and, ultimately, Conrad to Antarctica four years ago.

Conrad looked at Seavers and remembered now where he had seen the sandy locks, the dimpled jaw, and the piercing blue eyes before. Seavers, barely 30, was the Bill Gates of biotech and a fixture in business magazines. A few years ago Seavers had turned over his day job running his big pharma company, SeaGen, in order to devote himself to “a higher calling” by developing and distributing vaccines to fight disease in Third World countries. Now, it appeared, he had been called to public service.

“A younger and, hopefully, wiser DARPA, I see,” Conrad said, offering his hand.

Seavers’s iron grip as they shook hands felt like ice. And his gaze conveyed all the warmth of a scientist in a white lab coat studying a microscopic specimen of bacteria at the bottom of a petri dish.

“We still take America’s technological superiority seriously, Dr. Yeats.” Seavers spoke in a baritone voice that sounded too deep for his age. “And we could always use a man with your unique skills.”

“And what skills would those be?”

“Cut the bull, Yeats.” Packard glanced both ways to see if anybody was within earshot, leaned over and rasped. “Tell us the meaning of this.”

“Meaning of what?”

“This.” Packard pointed to the obelisk. “What’s the deal?”

“I’m supposed to know?”

“Damn right you’re supposed to know. Those as-trological signs. The numbers. You’re the world’s foremost astro-archaeologist.”

It sounded funny coming out of Packard’s mouth:
astro-archaeologist
. But that’s what he was these days, an archaeologist who used the astronomical alignments of pyramids, temples, and other ancient landmarks to date their construction and the civilizations that erected them. His specialty hadn’t made him rich yet. But over the years it had given him his own now-canceled reality TV show called
Ancient Riddles
, exotic adventures with young female fans, and the expertise to spend an obscene amount of other people’s money–mostly Uncle Packard’s.

“Hey, your people handled all the funeral arrangements,” Conrad said. “Couldn’t your brilliant cryptologists at the Pentagon crack it?”

Seavers steamed but said nothing.

Conrad sighed. “For all we know, Mr. Secretary, this obelisk is probably another sick joke to send us around the world looking for clues that ultimately lead to a statue of Dad giving us all the finger.”

“You know him better than that, son.”

“Obviously a lot better than you did, sir, if you and your code breakers can’t figure it out. Why do you even care?”

Packard glowered at him. “Your father was a test pilot, an astronaut, and the head of DARPA. If it involves him, it’s vital to national security.”

“Dr. Serghetti is the real expert on this sort of thing,” Conrad said. “But I’m looking around and don’t see any sign of her.”

“And see that you don’t, son,” Packard said. “This is a state secret. And Sister Serghetti is an agent of a foreign power.”

Conrad blinked. “So now the Vatican is a foreign power?”

“I don’t see the pope taking orders from the president, do you?” Packard said. “You are to share noting with that girl. And I expect you to report any attempt by her to reestablish contact with you.”

If only
, Conrad thought, as Packard walked away with Max Seavers.

It had started to drizzle, and Conrad watched the pair march down the hill to the secret service detail, which welcomed them with two open umbrellas and escorted them to the convoy of limousines, town cars, and SUVs. Conrad counted nine vehicles parked on the narrow road. Before the funeral procession he had counted eight.

One by one the cars left, until a single black limousine remained. He was certain it wasn’t the cab he called for. He’d give it another two minutes to show up before he walked down to the main gate and hailed another.

Conrad studied the obelisk in the rain.

“Now what have you gotten me into, Dad?”

Whatever answers he was looking for, however, had apparently died with his father four years ago.

He turned again toward the road and splashed toward the limousine to tell Packard’s boys to take the day off.

Conrad felt a strange electricity in the air even before he recognized beefy Benito behind the wheel. Then the window came down and he saw Serena Serghetti sitting in back. His blood jumped.

“Don’t just stand there, mate,” she told him in her bold Australian accent. “Get in.”

The truth is
down
there…

A
New York Times
,
USA Today

and No. 1 eBook bestseller

“A wonderfully honed cliff-hanger—an outrageous adventure with a wild dose of the supernatural. A fun read from start to finish.”

— Clive Cussler, No. 1
New York Times
bestselling author

“A gripping page-turner. Better than The Da Vinci Code.”

—CBS News

“An enchanting story with an incredible pace.”

— The Boston Globe

“A gripping plot…colorful characters…and some clean, no-nonsense writing…adds to the reading speed and suspense.”

— Chicago Tribune

L
ieutenant Commander Terrance Drake of the U.S. Naval Support Force, Antarctica, paced behind a snow dune as he waited for the icy gale to pass. He badly needed to take a leak. But that would mean breaking international law.

Drake shivered as a blast of polar air swept swirling sheets of snow across the stark, forsaken wasteland that seemed to stretch forever. Fantastic snow dunes called
sastrugi
rose into the darkness, casting shadows that looked like craters on an alien moonscape. Earth’s “last wilderness” was a cold and forbidding netherworld, he thought, a world man was never meant to inhabit.

Drake moved briskly to keep himself warm. He felt the pressure building in his bladder. The Antarctica Treaty had stringent environmental protection protocols, summed up in the rule: “Nothing is put into the environment.” That included pissing on the ice. He had been warned by the nature geeks at the National Science Foundation that the nitrogen shock to the environment could last for thousands of years. Instead he was expected to tear open his food rations and use the bags for a urinal. Unfortunately, he didn’t pack rations for reconn patrols.

Drake glanced over his shoulder at several white-domederglass huts in the distance. Officially, the mission of the American “research team” was to investigate unusual seismic activity deep beneath the ice pack. Three weeks earlier the vibes from one of those subglacial temblors sliced an iceberg the size of Rhode Island off the coast of East Antarctica. Moving at present ocean currents—about three miles a day—it would be ten years before it drifted into warmer waters and melted.

Ten years, thought Drake. That’s how far away he was from nowhere. Which meant anything could happen out here and nobody would hear him scream. He pushed the thought out of his mind.

When Drake first signed up for duty in Antarctica back at Port Hueneme, California, an old one-armed civilian cook who slopped on the mystery meat in the officers mess hall had suggested he read biographies of men like Ernest Shackleton, James Cook, John Franklin and Robert Falcon Scott—Victorian and Edwardian explorers who had trekked to the South Pole for British glory. The cook told him to view this job as a test of endurance, a rite of passage into true manhood. He said a tour in Antarctica would be a love affair—exotic and intoxicating—and that Drake would be changed in some fundamental, almost spiritual way. And just when this hostile paradise had seduced him, he was going to have to leave and hate doing so.

Like hell he would.

From day one he couldn’t wait to get off this ice cube. Especially after learning upon his arrival from his subordinates that it was in Antarctica that the old man back in Port Hueneme had lost his arm to frostbite. Everyone in his unit had been duped by the stupid cook.

Now it was too late for Drake to turn back. He couldn’t even return to Port Hueneme if he wanted to. The Navy had closed its Antarctica training center there shortly after he arrived in this frozen hell. As for the one-armed cook, he was probably spending his government-funded retirement on the beach whistling at girls in bikinis. Drake, on the other hand, often woke up with blinding headaches and a dry mouth. Night after night the desert-like air sucked the moisture from his body. Each morning he awakened with all the baggage of a heavy night of binge drinking without the benefits of actually having been drunk.