“Perhaps I should have played harder to get then,” Dane said. “Maybe I'd know more.”
“Please,” Michelet looked tired. There were dark rings under his eyes. “I am sorry about the manner in which we are forced to operate, but there are lives and a great deal of money at stake.”
“Which is more important to you?” Dane asked.
“One of those lives is my daughter’s,” Michelet said.
“You didn't answer my question,” Dane said.
A red flush spread over Michelet face.
Freed leaned forward. “A specially modified 707 from our company carrying Mister Michelet's daughter and an imagery survey crew went down over Cambodia yesterday. Our last contact with it as it was going down put its position here,” he pulled a piece of acetate up from beside his seat and laid it over the map.
Dane checked the spot. As he had expected, it was in the area of his last mission.
“Do you have a transponder beacon?”
“We have nothing,” there was an edge to Michelet's voice. “No beacon, no radio contact, nothing.”
“Doesn't the airplane have an automatic transponder?”
“Yes, but we're not picking it up,” Michelet said.
Dane wasn't surprised. “How many people were on board?”
“My daughter, three in the flight crew and eight in the scientific crew.”
“How do you know they weren’t killed in the crash?”
“I don't know that, Mister Dane,” Michelet answered. “But while there is any possibility of someone being alive, I will pursue every option I have to rescue them.”
“What about the Cambodian government?” Dane asked. “With your money, you ought to be able to get them to launch some sort of rescue operation.”
Michelet's snort of derision preceded his reply. “What government?”
Freed was more explicit. “There is a lot of turmoil in the Cambodian government right now. Also, we did approach some of our contacts in the military and they flatly refuse to have anything to do with this particular area of their country.”
“I don't blame them.” Dane looked across the table at the old man. “You said that I was the last person to come out of there alive. How do you know that?”
Freed fielded that question. “We have it from good sources that you went on a covert mission in that area during the Vietnam War.”
Dane put his finger on the map. “I don't even know for sure if that's where I was. The CIA ran that mission and I presume they’re still in the secret business. How do you know that’s where I was?”
“I have extensive contacts throughout the government,” Michelet said.
Dane wasn’t buying that. “The CIA wouldn't give up that information without a reason.”
“I have supplied them with data from my surveys in the past,” Michelet said, “so it’s not unusual for them to supply me with information in return.”
“That was a very long time ago,” Dane said. “No one's been in there since 1968?”
“There have been reports that some people have gone in there,” Beasley spoke up. “There was even a report that a Khmer Rouge battalion fleeing government forces retreated into this area. The battalion disappeared to the last man.”
That comment earned Beasley a nasty look from Michelet.
Dane sat back in his seat. “I still don't get it. Why me? You've got so many contacts and so much money, even if the Cambodians won't cooperate, why don't you just charter a plane with a whole bunch of rescue guys and go there yourself?”
“As I told you,” Michelet said, “you’ve been there. I don't believe in going in blind.”
“It's jungle,” Dane said. “Mountains, rivers. There's plenty of people who've been in that kind of terrain.”
“But not that specific area,” Michelet repeated.
“No one's been in there since the war?” Dane asked again, believing it, but not wanting to.
“No one we know of who has come back other than you,” Freed said. “We've done an exhaustive inquiry.”
“What's so special about that specific area?” Dane asked, thinking of the nightmares that woke him drenched with sweat in the middle of the night.
“We don't know,” Michelet acknowledged Beasley. “Mister Beasley is an expert in ancient cultures, with an emphasis on Cambodia, its history, its geography, its people. He says that area might once have been part of an ancient kingdom that had its capital at a place called Angkor Kol Ker, somewhere in those mountains.”
“What does that have to do with a plane crashing?” Dane demanded, but the words echoed through his brain. He could see Castle lying on the jungle floor and he remembered the CIA man muttering those words with his dying breath. Dane had done some checking over the years but all he had learned was that Angkor Kol Ker was a legendary city that historians and archeologists gave little credence to.
Beasley ran his fingers through his beard. “This area of Cambodia is very unusual. Air Force aircraft overflying it during the war on missions between Thailand and North Vietnam experienced numerous instrument difficulties. So much so that the Air Force specified routes to the north or south and put the airspace off limits. This was after two B-52s and a SR-71 spy plane disappeared without a trace over the area.”
Dane controlled his breathing. Foreman hadn't said anything about B-52s going down. Or the area being off-limits to overflights. But maybe Angkor Kol Ker was the name the Air Force and the CIA had used for that area, taking it from the legends, and that explained why Castle had whispered it. But Dane remembered the look on the dying man's face and knew there was something much more to all of this. There was also the last thing Castle had said: The Angkor Gate.
“I understand your team--RT Kansas--went in there looking for the SR-71 crash site,” Freed said.
Dane knew there was no point in playing dumb with these people. “That's what we were told.”
“Did you find it?”
“No.”
Beasley continued. “Since the end of the war, several other aircraft have been lost over the area. No trace of them has ever been found. A Royal Cambodian helicopter that was searching for a missing commercial plane also simply disappeared. Twice search teams were sent in and never returned. The Cambodian government has had much else to worry about for the past several decades and has adopted an informal but very strict quarantine of the area.”
“You can see my reluctance to send men in there without knowing what the exact situation is,” Michelet said.
“What makes you think I know what the situation is now?” Dane asked. “It's been thirty years.”
“You went in there and you came back out,” Freed said. “That makes you an expert.”
“Expert?” Dane shook his head.
“You are all we have,” Michelet said.
Dane laughed, but there was a nasty edge to it. “Then you’re screwed. I can’t tell you what’s going on in there now, but you want to know what the situation was? It was a whole 'nother world. It's like you aren't even in Cambodia anymore.” He met Michelet's eyes and locked into them. “There's monsters there. That's what the situation was and probably still is. Monsters you can't even begin to believe in your worst nightmares. And there's something more than monsters. Something even worse. Something intelligent and powerful. That's what wiped out my team. I don't know what's screwing with the planes, but it's monsters who are on the ground that are killing the search parties.” He shoved back his seat. “Can I go now?”
Chelsea was on her feat, whining. The other three men in the room were startled into silence.
Finally, Michelet spoke. “My daughter was on that plane and I need to know whether she's alive or dead.”
“Then I'll tell you,” Dane said. “She's dead. If she's lucky, she died quickly when the plane crashed.”
“You're alive!” Michelet threw back. “You went in there and came out. She can come out!”
Dane shook his head. There was no way he could make
these people understand. Chelsea was moving around Dane in a circle, upset, her tail wagging wildly. She gave a low whine.
“Someone's alive there,” Freed said. He was looking at Michelet and Dane could read that look clearly: Freed did not want Dane involved and now his talk of monsters strengthened Freed’s position.
Dane's head swung to Freed. “How do you know someone's alive? I thought you said you haven't heard from the plane since it disappeared?”
“Just before she went down the Lady Gayle, that's the name of the plane, was forwarding everything its numerous data collectors were picking up to our IIC, imaging interpretation center, in the basement of this building.” Freed pushed a button on the table top in front of him. “They picked up an FM transmission from the ground just before we lost contact with them.”
There was a hiss of radio static, then a badly garbled voice spoke, the transmission very broken. “This . . . . Romeo . . . . Verify . . . Not . . Kansas . . . more . . . . Prairie . . . Repeat . . . Fire.”
“I understand the name of your reconnaissance team was Kansas,” Freed added unnecessarily.
Dane looked down at his hands. They were shaking. After all these years, it couldn't be. But that voice, it was Flaherty. There was no doubting it. “We're not in Kansas anymore,” Dane said quietly.
“Excuse me?” Freed was leaning forward.
“It was our verification to the SFOB, Special Forces Operating Base. To verify that it was indeed us and that we were in E & E mode.”
“E and E?” Beasley asked.
“Escape and evasion after a Prairie Fire was called.” Dane looked up. “But it can't be. That was so many years ago.”
“The message is less than two days old.”
Dane looked at Michelet. He could sense there was much the old man wasn't telling him but he could also sense that this radio transmission was real. He didn't know how that could be, but it was.
Dane stood. “When do we leave?”
***
Deep in the bowels of the National Security Agency, Patricia Conners reread the incoming sat-mail on her computer. The authorization code was correct, but still it bothered her; both the tasking request and the order to destroy any hard copy and computer back-up of the images she had had the KH-12 do over Cambodia. On top of the strange discoloration on the original Cambodia imagery and the nagging suspicion something was wrong with MILSTARS 16, it was turning into one hell of tour of duty for her.
Conners printed out a copy of the request and walked out of her office down the hallway to her supervisor, the head of remote imaging, George Konrad. The door was open and Conners entered, sliding the paper onto Konrad's desk, while settling down in the chair across from her boss.
Konrad put his reading glasses on and read the tasking, then glanced over the top of the rims at her. “And?”
“Who or what is Foreman?” she asked.
“Why do you want to know?” Konrad asked.
“Because he's ordering me to break standard operating procedure by destroying the computer back-up.”
Konrad shrugged. “Do it. This order has the proper authorization to do that. You know it's been done before.”
That was not the response she had expected. “What about the tasking?”
“What about it?”
“He's asking us to burn a lot of fuel and energy,” Conners replied.
Konrad gave her an indulgent smile. “That's not the real reason the tasking bothers you.”
Conners sighed. He always saw through her. “All right. How about I don't like using Bright Eye on an operational tasking? I thought it was just a test-bed? And how the hell does this Foreman guy know about Bright Eye?”
Konrad picked up the fax and looked at it once more. “Well, I suppose he knows about Bright Eye because he has the highest security clearance possible; higher than you or I.”
“Clearance isn't the issue,” Conners argued. “Need to know is.” She pointed at the paper. “Earlier today this guy tasked me for a large-scale view of north-central Cambodia using a KH-12. That was a waste of time and resources and he wants me to get rid of all record of it. Now he wants Bright Eye to look at the same area.”
Konrad leaned back in his seat. “'Tasked me'?” he repeated.
Conners flushed. “All right. Tasked us.”
“You take everything too personally,” Konrad said. “You can't do that working for the government.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“What was on the KH-12 shots that make him want to use Bright Eye?”
Conners had been expecting that question. She pulled the three images out of a file folder and gave them to her boss.
Konrad looked at them. He slumped back in his chair as he slowly went through the images one by one. Finally he put them down. “You aren't supposed to have these.”
“You wouldn't have asked for them if you didn't tacitly accept and know that I download all my imagery,” Conners said.
Konrad pointed at the discoloration. “Well?”
“I have no idea what caused that,” Conners said. “I've run through diagnostics on the KH-12 and my own system and it all checks out.” She didn't add her suspicions about MILSTARS 16. One thing at a time, she thought, and also, that satellite was the Pentagon's worry, not the NSA's.
Konrad shrugged. “Well, looking at these I know why Foreman wants to use Bright Eye. If anything can punch through whatever that is, Bright Eye can.”
“Getting back to the problem of using Bright Eye for an operational mission,” Conners prodded.
“It's not a problem,” Konrad returned. “You don't think we spent eight hundred million dollars just to put a prototype up there, run a few tests and then let it float in space, do you?” He shoved the tasking back toward her. “Get Bright Eye moving.”
Conners stood. She took the paper but didn't move. “Do you have any idea what caused the interference on those shots?”
A flicker passed across Konrad's face. “I have no idea.”
Conners frowned. “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
Konrad glanced past her at the open door. He looked troubled.
“George?” Conners pressed. “You've seen this interference before, haven't you?”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice.
Conners turned and swung shut the door without being asked. She walked over to his desk and leaned forward. “Where?”
Konrad laughed nervously. “You're gonna think I'm nuts.”
“Where?”
“Off the East Coast. South of Bermuda, on a line running down to Puerto Rico and across to Key West, then back up to Bermuda.”
Conners mentally processed that, then blinked. “The Bermuda Triangle?”
“I told you--” Konrad began but she cut him off.
“I believe you. When did you see this?”
“We pick it up every once in a while when we do a standard weather scan for NAOA. A haze blocking out all imaging covering a triangular shaped area. The size varies from nonexistent to a maximum of the triangle I delineated. We never forward it.” He pointed at the paper in her hands. “By orders of Foreman.”
“When?” Conners wanted to know.
Konrad laughed. “Hell, I don't know. Every so often. The interference doesn't last long, maybe a couple of hours every few years. We can always get good shots on either side time-wise so no one's really noticed. Been happening ever since I've been here.”
Conners blinked. Konrad had been at NSA imaging for over twenty-five years. “You mean Foreman's order on that has been in effect that entire time?”
“You're getting the picture,” Konrad said, “no pun intended.”
“But what's causing it?” Conners asked.
“I don't know,” Konrad said, “and since Foreman wants to use Bright Eye, I would say he doesn't either yet, but he damn well wants to find out.”
“Bright Eye has been up over a year,” Conners said. “Why now?”
Konrad me
rely shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Do you have any idea who Foreman is?”
Konrad lifted his hands toward the ceiling in a helpless gesture. “Jesus, Pat. You know how much this government spends every year on classified projects? You know how compartmentalized all those projects are? We get taskings all the time from various code-named organizations without a clue to their purpose. Foreman is just another one. All I know is he's CIA.”
“Who just happens to be interested in the Bermuda Triangle,” Conners said. “And a similar triangle in Cambodia.” She was thinking now. “Any place else?” She waited. “George?”
“He’s requested other shots over the years. I’ve seen something like what you have there on imagery taken off the coast of Japan.”
“The coast of Japan?” Conners considered that. “Where else?”
“Other places.” Konrad pointed to the door. “I suggest you get moving on that request. I've already said too much.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Taking stock of the situation had only served to increase the fear and gloom inside the Lady Gayle. Ariana had gathered the six surviving members of the crew around Ingram's console after further securing the door to the cockpit by pushing a table and several spare chairs up against it. There's been no more noise or activity outside the plane as far as they could tell, but being blind to the outside world deepened the anxiety inside.
Ariana had explained, as best she could, what had happened to the crew and Craight. To forestall further inquiry into things she couldn't explain, she'd had everyone do an inventory of the supplies inside the cabin.
There was some food in the galley, enough for perhaps a week if eaten sparingly. Water was more critical. They had enough for about four days if rationed. There were two fire axes. They had three first aid kits, one of which had been opened already to treat Hudson's legs. There were two pistols, Berretta 9mm’s. She took one, and gave the other to Mark Ingram.
She knew the most critical factor was the people. Some of them she knew quite well, but several were new. Mark Ingram was at her side and she felt comforted by his solid presence. They'd bandaged Mitch Hudson's legs and he was seated at a console, his face taut with pain despite the pills he'd been given. He was good with radios, one of the best, but outside of that she wasn’t sure about his capabilities.
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