Niles stared at the screen, knowing full well the president was right. The burden of getting those kids out of that green and hostile world was squarely on the shoulders of the Event Group.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ambrose drove himself over to Foggy Bottom. The Department of State was clearing for the day, so he had no bothersome eyes watching as he took the stairs three at a time.
He was escorted to the secretary of state's office by two guards. As he entered the office, Ambrose saw the secretary was busy jotting something down on paper. For someone who was only fifty-two, the cabinet member's hair was turning a distinguished shade of gray at the temples. Ambrose had watched earlier in the day as the president praised him on television for his unyielding stance with the crisis that he had thwarted in Iraq. He was definitely the flavor of the month. But as Ambrose set his briefcase down and took a seat, he could see the man who would soon become the next president of the most powerful nation on earth was angry.
"I take it your conversation with the president was enlightening, Mr. Secretary?" Ambrose asked.
The tall man behind the ornate and ostentatious desk finally looked up.
"How in the hell could this happen?"
"How were we supposed to know his daughter was on that ship?"
"That little bitch has been nothing but a royal pain in the ass since the president took office and her presence in Brazil could bring our whole shaky house of cards down around our neck."
Ambrose swallowed as he listened to a man who was world famous for keeping his cool, a man who planned the outcome of events, never just hoping for a favorable one.
"They haven't been heard from since—"
"It doesn't matter, you fool, even if the whole expedition is dead, do you think for one goddamned minute the president will let the body of his daughter go unclaimed down in the fucking jungle?" He stood up and tossed the ballpoint pen he had been using at Ambrose, who flinched as it bounced off his shoulder. "Now he tells me he's authorized not one, but two naval task forces to the south. Sailing orders that you should have informed me of!"
"He consulted with the secretary of the navy directly. I didn't know anything until a moment ago. Look, we can steer him away from a recovery effort, just advise against it. I am his national security advisor, goddammit, and you're his secretary of state."
"That bastard just ordered me, ordered me to Brazil. He wants inroads laid so we can either clear the way for a rescue operation by the marines of all people, or at least get the Brazilian military in there."
Ambrose had been briefed as to what the president was going to say to the secretary, so he wasn't surprised by his orders.
"It's the president doing the requesting, so why don't you just put it as a threat? President Souza won't take too kindly to that. Make the situation hot enough to where there is no action taken at all. What will he do, invade a friendly nation over his wayward daughter who is most likely dead already?"
"Yes, goddammit, you work for the bastard; he loves his daughter no matter how much of a pain in the ass she is!" the secretary yelled as he paced to his large window behind his desk. "And now he knows about the team the intelligence chiefs sent with the Zachary group, who may or may not have eliminated the very team the president wants us to rescue!"
"Then all the better we get this thing to blow up. Cover our tracks where no one can trace our involvement in either Iraq or what was taken out of that damned valley down there. With any luck, Kennedy blew the goddamned thing up and buried everything and everyone forever."
The secretary of state turned toward Ambrose, his eyes afire. "If even a hint of this gets out, the election is lost. Remember, I'm still tied to the president's coattails whether I like it or not."
"That doesn't worry me all that much," Ambrose said as he stood.
"Oh, and why is that?"
"If even a hint of what we've done leaks out, we're all going to hang for treason, because the danger you failed to foresee when we took into our confidence the military chiefs of intelligence is that they will indeed cover their tracks, any way they can. And in case you didn't know it, Donald, they do have the assets to get that part done, and we would be the one to be covered up. Good luck in Brazil, Mr. Secretary. I'll do what I can from the White House."
"If they were so good at their jobs, why did we have the fiasco at Arlington?"
"That was contract work; for us, they'll come themselves. You have to look at the military hierarchy. The men we are dealing with are hungry for power, and that power lies in the climbing of the corporate ladder. This plan of yours was to help them in doing just that. They won't be happy if they sense it's too hot," Ambrose said. He opened the door and left.
The secretary of state watched the door close and then sat heavily into his chair. He knew he would virtually have to start a war in South America to confuse the situation and make that godforsaken valley in the Amazon vanish from everyone's radar.
Then it struck him. The president would never rely on just one option. He, like himself, always thought in the same terms as that of a master chessman, thinking five and ten moves ahead. That son of a bitch would have a second option already in the planning stages at least. That meant if his diplomatic queries failed, the president might even have an armed team on the ground or in the air for a rescue operation, hell, maybe even more options. An illegal and underhanded rescue attempt done behind the back of the Brazilian government? The secretary realized he had his out. An operation such as that would constitute an invasion of a friendly country. He had his main asset in the Brazilian Air Force, and he would alert that man that he might be needed.
He picked up the phone and called the front desk to have Ambrose turned around. He had one more instruction to give the advisor. All he needed was to know the location of that goddamned valley. He was sure the Brazilian authorities would welcome a tip that either their airspace or their ground territory was about to be compromised.
And that, he surmised, could get messy, and that mass confusion could be his best ally.
PART FOUR
BLACK WATERS
Man has always feared that which he cannot understand, hasn't conquered, failed to tame, failed to make his own. When man is confronted by the unknown, his greatest fear, and I daresay excitement, takes hold. And the death of innocence is always our answer to that fear in the end.
— CHARLES HINDERSHOT ELLENSHAW III, CRYPTOZOOLOGIST
11
USS JOHN C. STENNIS, CVN 74, 140 MILES EAST OF PERU 28 HOURS LATER
After almost seven full years of continuous warfare, the USS John C. Stennis had been mysteriously ordered from her home port of San Diego, California, with only half of her complement of warplanes. And those that weren't actually on the roster for flights were stored belowdecks in their hangars. The ship's crew of nearly five thousand-plus were curious as to the strange craft that lay in eleven distinct pieces of ten-foot sections on her flight deck. They knew they would find out soon enough, as another warship had joined them early that morning. The USS Iwo Jima, a navy assault ship, was brimming with U.S. Marine Corps helicopters, and the scuttlebutt said those choppers would be removing the strange package from the Stennis's flight deck.
Off in the distance, the Department of the Navy wasn't taking any chances, as another carrier battle group was two hundred miles east of the Stennis's position, to assist in an emergency, since they were shorthanded on attack planes. The USS Nimitz was riding shotgun, making the crewmen on-board the giant ship feel somewhat better about their hurried sailing orders.
The Styrofoam-packaged sections were flown from Louisiana to Los Angeles, where they were transferred onto army UH-60 Blackhawks and then flown out to the Stennis just 160 miles from South America. This would negate the need for flying over foreign territorial land and sea, as well as the need for asking permission from governments that become overly curious and suspicious. The plan was devised by Niles Compton, using the authority of the president. The mission was class
ified as a field test by a private company. That company just happened to be the Event Group.
Master Chief Jenks and the support team from the Group were still working on the engines and the electronics suite for Teacher. The task was made far more difficult because of the rush out of New Orleans to California and then having to install everything with the boat lying in eleven sections. The master chief had already threatened the lives of almost everyone on his team and some of those of the Stennis. Jack had actually and absentmindedly reached for a sidearm he wasn't wearing when Jenks had confronted him about something Jack had no control over. Actually, Jenks was mortified when he found out that Jack Collins was serving as head of the expedition and was essentially the man that saved his boat from the scrap heap. So Carl had seen him do something the master chief had never done before: he apologized to the major.
Carl joined Danielle on the signalman's platform overlooking the flight deck and was grateful for the sea air.
"This is what I miss about sea duty," he said as he stood by her side, "the air, can't find it in the desert."
She smiled and went back to watching the activity below with Teacher.
"Hi there," Sarah said as she joined them.
"Well, if it isn't Wild Bill McIntire," Carl teased her.
"Funny," she said as she lightly punched him on the arm.
"Seriously, Jack said you handled yourself at the Little Bighorn like a pro."
"So, Ms. Serrate, has Jack assigned you any duties yet?" Sarah asked as her attention swung to the Frenchwoman.
"Yes, it seems I will be assisting Professor Ellenshaw's Crypto group, all three of us," she answered. "And please call me Danielle. We're going to be shipmates, after all." She smiled but her eyes bore into Sarah's.
Sarah didn't respond. In her mind, something wasn't quite adding up with this woman, and she couldn't put her finger on it. Of course it just might be the fact that the attraction between Carl and Danielle was evident to anyone with eyes. Sarah wondered if she was jealous for her best friend who had died over a year ago. The friend and woman Carl had loved was killed on a mission not unlike the one they were currently undertaking. Now, here, the ex-wife of Colonel Henri Farbeaux, an enemy anyone in the Group would give five years' pay to bag, just conveniently showed up with her offer of help? Sarah wasn't buying what this interloper was selling, even though her director and even Jack seemed to be.
"I understand you'll be heading your own science team," Danielle said.
Sarah nodded, leaning back so she could see around Carl. "Yes, a two-man geology team, but we'll be a part of Virginia's overall sciences attachment."
Danielle was about to comment when the steel hatch opened.
"The major says we're needed in the ward room. Professor Ellenshaw wants to speak to the Group," Mendenhall said as he popped his head out of the hatch. His forehead was still half-covered by a bandage from the stone chips that struck him in the gunfight two days before.
Carl was about to say something, but Sarah held her hand up and stopped him. "We already heard about your little nickname for Ellenshaw's Crypto Department, so don't say it," she said as she anticipated his small joke.
"What, that we're about to be briefed by the 'Creepy-zoologist'?"
Sarah just rolled her eyes.
* * *
Professor Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III gave a briefing on the skeletal hand. But the facts just weren't there to support any conclusions as to the animal's origins or design. He had a lot of speculation and had prepared well for any contingency, but still had no real information to give other than the fact he would consider it a crime to harm such a species if it truly did exist. Jack cut him short as he started to preach about animal rights and how special and unique this creature would have to be to be alive at all in the modern world.
Sarah's briefing was more to the point and actually had a purpose. Gold, if any, would not be touched. The mine, if it existed, would be placed off limits because of the fact that the president had ordered it so. The geology team would follow its orders to the letter. With the assistance of Major Collins and his security team, if the mine did contain any gold deposits as the legend said, it would be treated as property of Brazil.
"Major," Mendenhall said as he entered the ward room. "The Iwo's helicopters are starting to line up and almost ready to start taking on Teacher."
The helicopters would airlift the sections of the boat to the small village of Rio Feliz, on the Amazon a hundred miles west of the Peruvian border. That was where the Event Group would start its expedition, saving valuable time by flying through a gap in the Andes and going straight to the source, the confluence of the Rio Negro (the Black Tributary) that fed off the main Amazon River. The route was exactly as Captain Padilla had laid down on the map and also what he had supposedly described in the diary.
The president had supplemented information to both the Peruvian and Brazilian governments on the pretext that they were experimenting with new mapping procedures and software, and that the two governments would be the beneficiary of those experimental new devices and the more accurate underwater maps — a pretext that the team would be doing as routine procedure in any case.
It was an amazing sight to see the Seahawk helicopters, the navy's version of the Blackhawk, lined up in the air off the stern of the John C. Stennis. One by one they would approach and hover as Jenks supervised the hookup of the sections of Teacher. Eleven Seahawks in all would ferry the sections to the village where the parts would become a whole, and everyone prayed the thing would float. The discovery team was on deck as the last section, the bow, covered in form-fitting plastic, was lifted into the air. Then the last hovering craft came in and, in amazement, they watched as the U.S. Marine Corp's MV-22 Osprey, the stubby-winged, tilt-rotor assault craft, slowly landed on the Stennis's flight deck, its two massive propellers making a humming sound from their perch atop the tip of the short wings. Before they realized it, a second Osprey landed in back of the first.
"I hate these things," Carl yelled into Danielle's ear.
"Why, because it's a radical design?" she asked, holding her bush hat in place through the wind the Ospreys created.
"No, it's because a marine pilot is driving that radical design!"
As they loaded their bags and personal items, Jack turned and looked at the flying bridge. There, the captain of the Stennis waved and saluted. Jack returned the gesture. The Stennis would stand off while the mission was in progress, in case they ran into trouble.
And so the third expedition was on its way to Hernando Padilla's valley, where a beautiful lagoon was ready to spill her secrets. What this group didn't know was the fact that another faction was already closing in on the legendary dark water.
12
THE AMAZON RIVER, 45 KILOMETERS EAST OF THE BLACK WATER TRIBUTARY
The helicopter had rendezvoused with Mendez, Farbeaux, and the crew of the charter boat Rio Madonna. Her captain had maneuvered the large tencabin river tug with precision, to receive the chopper's passengers. The first had been Captain Juan Rosolo, a man that Henri Farbeaux despised as an ambush killer of the lowest order, and the men that followed him onto the deck were probably no better. This development was most unsettling, but it was also one that Farbeaux had made allowances for.
Rosolo reported immediately to Mendez and the two had conversed in loud tones, enough so that Farbeaux knew Rosolo had failed his master in some capacity or other. Mendez, with all the delicateness of a wrecking ball, had spewed forth a list of his favorite profanities. Farbeaux was content to stay at the bow of the boat and keep out of it. He still heard the approach of Rosolo as the captain came forward after his browbeating by Mendez.
"What is it, watchdog?" Farbeaux said without turning to face the man.
"Do not call me that name, senor. My employer would like to see you at the stern," Rosolo said with a sneer.
Farbeaux watched the deep waters of the flowing Amazon for a moment longer before he turned and bru
shed past Rosolo.
The river pilot, Captain Ernesto Santos, gave a quick two-fingered salute to the Frenchman as he walked past the bridge. This captain seemed to know his business. His reputation and self-proclamation of knowing every inch of the Amazon were known to all onboard. He said he and his family had plied the river for generations.
But when their destination was finally revealed to him after they had set off, the scraggly bearded captain had grown quiet and sullen. He had protested in vain that the Rio Negro had no such inlet at that point of the river, that the only way in was several hundred kilometers to the east, and even that was only navigatable during the wet season. The argument didn't last long when he was presented with his overly large charter fee in cash.
Farbeaux maneuvered to the small fantail, where Mendez was waiting. Rosolo came up from behind and lightly brushed by him, obviously returning the gesture for Henri's brushing him a moment before. Farbeaux ignored Rosolo and sat at the small table where Mendez was examining some photographs.
"Ah, Henri, our friend here has brought with him from the States some rather disturbing news. As you know, we had Professor Zachary's office monitored. And we had some fish wander into our net." He slid a picture of Danielle toward Farbeaux. The Frenchman merely glanced at the picture, and then he looked at Mendez, who slid another eight-by-ten glossy toward him. "She was accompanied by this man," he said, watching him for a reaction. He wasn't disappointed; Farbeaux reached immediately for the second photo.
"The man in the tunnels," he said under his breath.
Legend egt-2 Page 22