Area 51 (33 page)

Turcotte pushed the doors open and stepped in. A middie-aged woman in a white coat was bent over a large chest-high rectangular black object. Her hair was pulled back tight in a bun and she peered up over a pair of glasses.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Johnny Simmons?" Turcotte asked.

"What?" the woman replied, but Turcotte caught the shift of her eyes to the black object.

He walked past her and looked down. It reminded him of an oversized coffin.

There was a panel on the top—what the woman had been looking at. "What is this?"

he asked.

"Who are you people?" The woman looked past them at the door. "What are you doing here?"

There were a number of cables coming out of the ceiling, going into the black top. Some of the cables were clear and there was fluid in them. He turned on the woman. "Get him out of there."

"Johnny's in there?" Kelly stared at the casing. She walked over and picked up a clipboard hanging on a hook.

She checked the papers on it.

"Someone's in there," Turcotte said. "Those are IV tubes. I don't know what they're carrying, but someone's in there on the receiving end."

"It's Johnny," Kelly said, holding up the clipboard.

"Get him out of there," Turcotte repeated.

"I don't know who you are," the woman began, "but—

Turcotte slid his Browning High Power out of its holster.

He pulled the hammer back with his thumb. "You got five seconds or I put a round through your left thigh."

The woman glared at him. "You wouldn't dare!"

"He would," Kelly said. "And if he didn't, I would. Open it!"

"One. Two. Three." Turcotte dropped the barrel and aimed at the woman's leg.

"All right. All right!" The woman held up her hands.

"But I can't just open it. The shock will kill the obj--" She caught herself.

"The patient. I have to do this in proper procedure."

"How long?" Turcotte asked.

"Fifteen minutes to--"

"Make it five."

At the other end of this level of the facility Von Seeckt and Professor Nabinger were staring at an intellectual treasure trove. The archives had been dark when they opened the doors. When Nabinger hit the lights, a room full of large filing cabinets had come into view. Opening drawers, they found photos. The drawers were labeled with numbers that meant nothing to the two men. At the far end of the room there was a vault door with a small glass window. Von Seeckt peered through. "The original stone tablets from the mothership cavern are in there,"

he said. "But they must have photographs of them in these cabinets."

Nabinger was already opening drawers. "Here's the same high runes from the site in Mexico that Slader showed me," Nabinger said, holding up large ten-by-fif-teen-inch glossies.

"Yes, yes," Von Seeckt said absently, throwing open drawer after drawer. "We need to find ones she didn't show you--the ones from the mothership cavern. I do not believe our Captain Turcotte will have much patience once his five-minute limit is up."

Nabinger started going through drawers more quickly.

The woman's hands shook as she worked on the panel.

Most of the cables had been disconnected and she was checking some readings.

"What did you people do to him?" Kelly asked.

"It's complicated," the woman said.

"E-D-O-M?" Kelly spelled out the letters.

The woman stiffened. "How do you know of that?"

"Finish the job," Turcotte said.

The woman hit a key and the box began beeping. "It will be safe to open in thirty seconds."

Von Seeckt had paused at one drawer, looking at the photos more carefully. At the end of the aisle Nabinger was moving on to the next cabinet when he noticed something in a glass cabinet on the wall. He moved over and stared at the object inside.

Von Seeckt held up a handful of pictures. "These are the photos from the mothership cavern! Let us rejoin the good captain."

The beeping stopped and the woman pointed at a lever on the side of the box.

"Lift that."

Turcotte grabbed the red handle and pulled it up. With a hiss the lid came up, revealing a naked Johnny Simmons submerged inside a pool of dark-colored liquid.

Needles were stuck in both arms and tubes led to his lower body. A tube was inserted in his mouth, a clear plastic-type material wrapped around the tube and molded to his face, ensuring a seal to keep the fluid out.

"I have to remove the oxygen tube and the catheters and IVs," the woman said.

"Do it." Turcotte said. He turned as Von Seeckt and Nabinger appeared in the doorway. Nabinger's hands were bleeding and he held something wrapped in his jacket.

"You were not at--" Von Seeckt halted in midsentence when he saw the body inside the black box. "Ah, these people! They never stopped. They never stopped."

"Enough," Turcotte ordered. The woman was done. He leaned over and scooped Johnny up. "Let's go."

"What do I do with her?" Kelly asked.

"Kill her," Turcotte snapped as he headed out the door.

Kelly looked at the woman.

"Please don't," the woman begged.

"The change starts here," Kelly said. She shot the woman with the stun gun, then hurried after the others.

They piled into the elevator. Turcotte leaned Johnny up against the wall and Kelly kneeled to support him.

Turcotte punched in the button labeled G and the elevator rose. He poked Nabinger in the chest. "You and Kelly carry him out to the van."

"What are you doing?" Kelly asked.

"My job," Turcotte said. "I'll link up with you in Utah.

Capitol Reef National Park. It's small. I'll find you."

"Why aren't you going with us?" Kelly demanded.

"I'm going to see what's on sublevel one," Turcotte said.

"Plus, I'll create a diversion so you can get away." He hustled them out into the garage, then stepped back into the elevator.

"But--" The shutting doors cut off the rest of her words.

Turcotte punched in sublevel 2 and the elevator went back down to where he had just left. The doors opened on the unconscious guard. Turcotte ran out and grabbed the guard's body. He dragged the body back, wedging it in the doorway to keep the doors from shutting. Then he shrugged off the backpack of gear he had appropriated from the van. He knew it was only a matter of time before some alarm was raised. They had to have some sort of internal checks with the guards, and when the sublevel 2 guard didn't respond . . . well, then things would get exciting.

He laid out two one-pound charges of C-6 explosive he'd found in the van on the carpeted floor of the elevator. He molded the puttylike material into two footlong half circles, placing them about two and a half feet apart in the center of the floor. He pushed a nonelectric blasting cap into each charge. He'd crimped detonating cord into each fuse in the van, so all he had to do was tie the loose ends of the det cord together with a square knot, leaving enough to put on the M60 fuse igniter. The igniter was about six inches long by an inch in diameter with a metal ring at the opposite end from the det cord.

The det cord was just long enough for him to step outside the elevator doors.

He pulled the unconscious guard out of the way and held one of the doors open with his left hand. Then he checked his watch. It had been almost five minutes since he'd let the others out in the garage. They ought to be getting near the metal gate. He'd give them another two minutes, then showtime. The seconds dragged by slowly.

Time. Turcotte put the M60 in his mouth, clamping down on it with his teeth.

He pulled the metal ring with his right hand.

The detonating cord burned at twenty thousand feet per second. The result was that Turcotte was still pulling when the charges exploded. He threw down the igniter and stepped into the elevator. A three-foot hole was in the floor.

Turcotte jumped in, falling ten feet, landing on then concrete bottom of the elevator shaft. He heard alarms screaming in the distance.

The sublevel elevator doors were at waist level. Turcotte reached up and jammed his fingers between them and pulled. He felt some of the stitches Cruise had put in his side pop. The doors grudgingly gave six inches, then the emergency program kicked in and they began opening of their own accord.

Turcotte had his Browning out in his right hand as he peeked up over the lip.

There were two guards standing in the corridor and they were ready, the explosion having alerted them. Bullets ripped in above Turcotte's head. He ducked and heard the rounds thump into the wall above his head. He removed a flash-bang grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin, and tossed it toward the sound of the guns.

He squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears.

As soon as he felt the concussion, he sprang up. In his last assignment Turcotte had fired thousands of rounds from the pistol every day. It was an extension of his body and he could put a round into a quarter-sized circle at twenty-five feet.

One guard was kneeling, submachine gun dangling on the end of its sling, his hands rubbing his eyes. The other still had his weapon ready but was disoriented, facing toward the wall, blinking and shaking his head. Turcotte fired twice, hitting the first man in the center of his forehead, throwing the body back. The next round hit the second man in the temple. As he keeled over, his dead finger jerked back on the trigger, sending a stream of bullets into the wall.

Turcotte slowly slid on his belly up into the corridor. He got to his feet, staying low in a crouch. The hall extended about sixty feet, to a dead end.

There were several doors to the left and another corridor turning to the right.

There were red lights flashing and a teeth-jarring low-frequency siren wailing.

One of the doors to the left opened and Turcotte snapped a shot in that direction, causing whoever it was to slam the door shut. There were name plaques next to each door on the left and Turcotte surmised that those rooms were quarters for sublevel 1 staff.

He abandoned his cautious approach and ran forward, turning the corner to the right. The hall he faced was ten feet long, ending in a double set of doors with more dire warnings in red posted on them. Turcotte pushed the doors open and stepped in. The rough concrete floor angled down to a large cavern carved out of the mountain. The ceiling was twenty feet high and the far wall a hundred meters away. What caught Turcotte's attention first were several dozen large vertical vats that were full of some amber-colored liquid and each one holding something in it.

Turcotte stepped up to the nearest one and peered in. He recoiled as he recognized what was a human being. There were tubes coming in and out of the body and the entire head was encased in a black bulb with numerous wires going into it. It reminded Turcotte of what had been done to Johnny Simmons, except on a more sophisticated level.

A golden glow to the right caught Turcotte's attention.

He ran in that direction and stopped in surprise as he cleared the last vat. The glow came from the surface of a small pyramid, about eight feet high and four feet across each base side.

Several cables hanging from the ceiling were hooked into it, but it was the texture of the surface that caught and held Turcotte's attention. It was perfectly smooth and solid appearing. The surface seemed to be some sort of metal and when Turcotte touched it, it was cool and as unyielding as the hardest steel. Yet the glow seemed to come right out of the material.

There were markings all over it. Turcotte recognized the high rune writing from the photos Nabinger had shown him.

There was a noise. Turcotte spun and fired. A guard

racing through the double doors returned fire with a submachine gun, his rounds hitting several of the vats, shattering glass, the liquid pouring out. The man was disoriented by the layout of the room and had fired instinctively at the sound of Turcotte's gun.

Turcotte fired again, more carefully, and hit the man

twice, killing him. He felt nothing. He was in action mode,

taking care of what needed to be done. He needed information and he had plenty from what he had seen in this room. He didn't expect any more guards soon. One of the Catch-22's of a place like this was that the more guards you had, the more people you had who were security risks. This t'me of night he didn't think there was a platoon of men hanging around "just in case."

A humming noise drew his attention back to the pyramid A golden glow was flowing out of the apex, forming a three-foot-diameter circle in the air above. Turcotte staggered back. His head felt as if an ax had split his brain from ear to ear.

He turned and ran, heading away from the corridor he'd come down. When he'd first come into the room he'd realized they hadn't gotten all this equipment in here through the elevator he'd destroyed. There had to be another way. He fought to keep his concentration against the tidal wave of pain that surged through his skull.

The floor began sloping up again. A large vertical door beckoned. Turcotte grabbed the strap on the bottom of it and pulled up. It lifted to reveal a large freight elevator.

Stepping in, he pulled the door back down and checked the control panel. It had the same two-key system, but the keys were only needed to go down. He punched in HP and the floor jerked.

The pain in his head slowly subsided as he got farther away from sublevel 1. He went up past 2, 3, then 4. The parking garage passed by, then almost ten seconds of movement passed until the light came on for HP. The elevator came to a halt.

Turcotte pulled up on the inside strap and the door opened onto a large bay carved into the side of the mountain. Camouflage netting overhung the open end and the place was dimly lit with red night-lights. Crates and boxes were stacked about. If there had been a guard up here he must have responded to the alarm on the lower level, because the place was deserted. Turcotte ran across to the netting and peered out. A steel platform large enough to take the biggest helicopter in the inventory had been erected out there. He walked out onto it.

The side of e mountain was very steep here. Turcotte looked down.