Area 51: The Sphinx-4 (11 page)

"What is Strategieheskii Zvyezda?" Turcotte finally asked, tired of the verbal sparring.

-89-

"You have to understand—" Yakov began, but Turcotte cut him off.

"What is it? Can it do what Lexina threatened?"

Yakov slowly nodded. "Strategicheskii Zvyezda-—the long form for what was called in classified circles Stratzyda—means 'Strategic Star.' "

Turcotte put a hand to his forehead. "This doesn't sound good."

Yakov continued. "Stratzyda was launched in 1988, just before the end of the Cold War. A one-hundred-ton payload over thirty-seven meters long and four meters wide.

"It was put into orbit four hundred miles up. We knew your tracking systems would pick it up, so we fed the world a cover story. We said it was a first-stage experimental platform in preparation for launching our Mir space station.

But it was not that, of course. It was—is— a weapons platform designed to . . ."

Yakov stopped and took a deep drink from his glass, his face tightening when he remembered it was water, not vodka.

"What kind of weapons?" Duncan's voice was cold.

"Thirty-two one-megaton, cobalt-salted, nuclear warheads with their own reentry engines, pretargeted, as Stratzyda passes over the center of your country, to blanket the United States with a grid pattern that will ensure every square inch is covered with a lethal dose of radioactive material."

"You idiots." Duncan's comment filled the stunned silence that followed.

"Our own sword against us," Turcotte muttered.

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

D - 48 Hours, 40 Minutes

The Secretary of Defense's motorcade departed the Pentagon and headed north along the George Washington

-90-

Expressway, paralleling the Potomac. A lead and trial car contained bodyguards, sandwiching the limousine holding the Honorable William Wickham.

Wickham was going to the White House to plead with the President to give him nuclear weapons release with regard to Easter Island. The Navy had a plan to attempt to probe the shield once more, but Admiral Poldan, the commander of Task Force 78, which surrounded the island, wanted to do more than just probe.

Wickham agreed with the admiral. The takeover of the Warfighter satellite and the destruction of Atlantis had been the final shove, landing the Secretary of Defense solidly in the camp of those in the Pentagon who believed that all-out war against the aliens and their supporters had to be waged.

Wickham paused in his musings as he saw the familiar landscape of Arlington National Cemetery out the left window of the limo. He always took this route into the capital, because the numerous rows of white crosses that stretched across the green fields overlooking the capital were a constant reminder to him of the weight of the decisions he had to make and advise the President to make.

It was because Wickham felt the responsibility that would be his if his recommendations caused more young men and women to be buried that he had urged caution and restraint to this point, but the attack on the hangar at Area 51, on top of the loss of the shuttles and the submarine Pasadena to foo fighters and the entrapment of the Springfield, had changed that stance.

The three vehicles turned east onto the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Wickham turned his attention from the cemetery, which was now behind them, to the Lincoln Memorial, which was directly ahead on the other side of the river. The going was slow, because one of the lanes of eastbound traffic was closed due to construction.

Wickham knew the severe pressure the President was

-91-

under from the isolationists and that it would be a hard sell to get authorization to nuke Easter Island. He was considering arguments he could use, when he was jerked forward, almost falling off the rear seat when the driver slammed on the brakes.

"What the hell?" Wickham reached for the intercom to the driver, when he saw directly ahead what had caused the halt. A backhoe had rumbled out of the construction lane between the lead car and the limo. The backhoe turned, the heavy steel shovel now pointing at the front windshield of the limousine and coming closer.

"Get me out of there, George," Wickham yelled into the intercom.

The driver threw the limo into reverse and abruptly backed into the trail car, fenders crumpling. Wickham fumbled with door as the shovel came down on the front seat, spearing through the bulletproof windshield, pinning the driver against the seat. The steel blade sliced the man in two as it buckled the frame of the car.

Wickham pulled on the latch, trying to get the door open, but the entire car was twisted, the metal bent and unyielding. He could hear shots, his guards firing at the driver of the backhoe. The blade pulled free of the front of the limousine and the backhoe advanced, large tires climbing up onto the twisted metal. Through the tinted sunroof Wickham could see the blade looming overhead.

Outside, the guards from the first car blazed away at the man driving the backhoe, partially protected by the metal roll cage that surrounded him. Bullets ricocheted off metal, the driver ignoring everything but the rear half of the car in front of him. As a round ripped through his chest, he slammed forward the lever controlling the shovel and it dropped, crashing through the top of the car.

Wickham dove to avoid the blade as it smashed down. The edge caught his ankles, severing his feet from his

-92-

body and momentarily pinning him in place. The pain exploded along his nervous system, almost causing him to black out.

The driver pulled back on the lever, edging it in the direction of the Secretary of Defense. A bodyguard was climbing up the side of the backhoe. As the guard fired a fatal shot through the driver's head, the man's hand slammed the lever forward one last time.

-93-

MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, RUWENZORI, UGANDA

D- 48 Hours, 25 Minutes

Mualama slid between the sharp shards of shattered ice, the glow from his flashlight reflected a hundred times by the glistening walls of the cavern. The far wall was ten feet in front of him. A circle of blackened stones, where a fire had once burned, was in the center of the floor.

A large stone set against rear of the cavern caught his eye. He went around the fire pit and shone the light on the rock. Etched into the stone was a word in Arabic: Sedgh. Mualama felt a wave of excitement. The word meant truthfulness and honestly, one of the virtues of a Sufi Master.

"Help me move this," he ordered Lago.

Together they put their shoulders to the boulder and edged it away from the cavern wall. Underneath, an oilskin-wrapped package was revealed. Mualama sat down and got his breathing under control before picking up the package. It was much heavier than what he had found underneath the stone in the Devil's Throat in South America. Carefully he unwrapped the covering. Inside he uncovered a sheaf of several hundred pages, bound by a red ribbon, preserved by the freezing air.

In bold letters that Mualama recognized as Burton's handwriting, several words in Arabic were written on the cover page. Mualama translated them as he read: THE PATH OF A TRUTH SEEKER

By SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON

-94-

Mualama peeled off his glove and carefully turned the page. "Ahh!" he exclaimed as he saw the handwritten script on the next page that began the body of the text.

"What is wrong, Uncle?" Lago asked.

"It has never been easy to follow Burton, and even now he makes it hard,"

Mualama said as he quickly began thumbing through the manuscript.

"I have never seen writing like that," Lago commented.

"I have seen this at a dig in Iraq. It is an extinct tongue. It is called Akkadian and was written and spoken in ancient Assyria and Babylon."

"Why the title in Arabic and the body of the text in another?" Lago asked.

"The title is an arrow pointing in the text. It is Burton's way."

"Is there anyone who can read it now?" Lago asked.

"Perhaps," Mualama said as he stopped on a page where there was a drawing. He held up the piece of paper. "Ah! This is even better for right now. This is the piece I needed."

"What is it?"

"Burton must have copied this from another source." Mualama carefully put the page back in the manuscript. "It fits in with two other drawings I found following his trail and tells me where we go next."

Lago sat on the floor of the cavern, exhaustion etched on his face. "And that is?"

"Home to Tanzania. To Ngorongoro Crater."

"And what is there?"

"We will know when we find it." Mualama stood and slapped his nephew on the shoulder. "Come on, young man. You can't be more tired than I am, and this is exciting! We are on the trail of a great mystery!"

-95-

AREA 51, NEVADA

D- 48 Hours, 20 Minutes

"Forty-nine hours." Kincaid spun his laptop around so they could all see the screen, although no one other than he could make out what the numbers and lines displayed meant. "Lexina didn't pull that number out of the air. This is the drifting orbit of the talon and Warfighter—" Kincaid touched the left side of the screen. His finger moved to the right side. "This is the orbit of Stratzyda.

The two will come within two kilometers of each other in forty hours here, over the Atlantic. I assume she'll use the talon to then take control of Stratzyda and change its orbit to coincide with the talon's. Then it will take the talon and its new satellite another nine hours to drift east on the talon's orbit, as the earth turns beneath it, to be in position over the center of the United States to deploy the nukes."

"Can't your government bring Stratzyda down before the talon gets control of it? Or change its orbit?" Turcotte asked Yakov.

"It is now out of maneuvering fuel. It has been just drifting up there for the past five years. We have no control over it anymore," Yakov said. "It was never designed to be able to reenter the atmosphere—the bombs, even unexploded, are simply too radioactive.

"You have to understand that things have changed in my country in the past ten years. There is no money, no working system. Only a quarter of our ground-based missile system is functional—the rest is falling into disrepair. For over two-thirds of every twenty-four-hour cycle, we have no satellite coverage of the United States and are essentially blind, as our surveillance satellites have degraded."

"Can we destroy Stratzyda before it gets close to the talon?" Turcotte asked Kincaid.

-96-

"We're a little slim on orbital vehicles right now," Kincaid said. "Lexina made sure of that. I'll check into it, but I wouldn't count on it. Also, we'd have to go through other agencies, most likely the Air Force, to get help and .

. ."

Duncan supplied the answer. "And there's a good chance any plan might be compromised, as the Atlantis launch obviously was." She shook her head. "Forty-nine hours until we die."

"Actually," Quinn said, "forty-eight hours and twenty minutes now."

"Is there a way to find Lexina? To stop her control of the talon?"

"It is possible there is a device that might control the talon," Yakov said.

"Where?" Turcotte asked.

"Section Four recovered an alien artifact that they believed might be some sort of remote piloting device."

"Wouldn't any archives have been destroyed when the base was destroyed?"

Duncan asked.

"The archive area was far underground. It might have survived intact."

Duncan nodded. "All right. You go to Russia and see if you can get control of the talon from Lexina. Any other ideas on what the key is or where it might be if Yakov doesn't succeed?"

"Obviously, the key would be an Airlia artifact," Major Quinn said. "I'll inquire throughout the intelligence community to see if anyone has found anything new regarding the Airlia or if someone has been holding artifacts in secret."

"I'll double-check the hard drives we recovered from Scorpion Base," Kincaid said.

"Anyone else?"

"Maybe the guardian on Easter Island might have some information," Quinn added.

-97-

Duncan nodded. "I've already thought of that. If the guardian is using Kelly Reynolds to send out information, maybe we can make a connection the other way.

I'm going to Easter Island to see if I can contact Kelly. The Navy has a new plan to penetrate the shield around the island and find out what is going on. If they can get through, maybe I can make contact with her."

The look on Turcotte's face indicated what he thought of that plan of action.

"The Navy already tried that once, and the Springfield is still sitting at the bottom of the ocean, trapped by foo fighters."

"I think Easter Island is important," Duncan said. "It's the center for Aspasia's faction here on the planet, just as Qian-Ling seems to the center for Artad's faction. We can't get close to Qian-Ling again due to the Chinese nuking it, but we can get close to Easter Island. As Yakov noted, maybe the enemy of our enemy can give us some information.

"Status of the Airlia base on Mars?" Duncan had already moved on to Kincaid.

"We're watching it," Kincaid said. "No visible activity. Communications between the Cydonia guardian and the one under Easter Island have continued on a pretty regular basis. The NSA still hasn't been able to decipher the code."

"Mike?" Duncan had made it around the table.

Turcotte shrugged. "I'm just the hired gun. Sitting around waiting for the next crisis. There's nothing new with me."

"Your Special Forces team just arrived." Major Quinn was looking at the screen of his laptop, which was connected to the Cube operations center.

"I'll check them out," Turcotte said.

Yakov stirred. "Until the next crisis arises, I would like Captain Turcotte to accompany me to Russia. I could use some—how do you say—backup? I do not

-98-

think I will get much support from my government, given all that has happened."

"Is that all right with you?" Duncan asked.

Turcotte nodded. "Sure."

Duncan stood and leaned forward, putting her hands on the top of the conference table that the men of Majestic-12 had sat around for five decades.