“That way.”
* * *
Dane paused as he heard the sound of an explosion. The mist muffled the sound as if it were occurring underwater, followed by a second, deeper explosion a second later.
“What was that?” Beasley demanded.
Freed and the Canadians were also turned in the direction the sound had come from.
“The plane’s gone,” Dane said.
“What!” Freed stepped in front of Dane. “How do you know?”
“I just know,” Dane said.
“But-”
“There are some survivors.”
“How do you know?”
Dane didn’t bother answering.
“But the equipment,” Freed said. “The images they caught.”
Dane pushed Freed out of the way. “We have to keep moving. We can’t stand still.”
“Why?”
Dane just shook his head. He reached out with his mind for Sin Fen, but there was no answer. He felt her absence, like a blank spot in his mind.
Dane moved into the jungle. The sound of the stream behind them faded. The mist was thick, but Dane could sense lighter areas, and using that sense he picked his path. He knew Flaherty was ahead of them somewhere, in the vicinity of the area they had been directed to. He couldn’t ‘hear’ Flaherty like he had been able to contact Sin Fen, but he could feel the presence of his old friend, like a distant torch on the edge of his consciousness. And the way that torch was flickering told Dane that the explosion had been the Lady Gayle being destroyed and that the people who had survived the crash were heading in the same direction. He also sensed that if he stayed to the lighter areas they would be safe, that the creatures of the mist would not find them. Somehow Flaherty was helping them, keeping them safe from the dangers inside the Gate. For a little while at least.
Dane paused, hearing the breathing and muted sound of weapons and equipment jangling behind him. He peered ahead. He felt the fear, just as he had the first time he had been in the Angkor Gate, but he could control it, just like he had been able to on cross-border missions before that last one. He didn’t know what was behind the threat he faced, but he knew there was a threat and he had a good idea of the nature of it from his previous experience. And Flaherty was out there.
Dane moved on, the others following.
* * *
“It’s changed,” Jimmy said.
“The pattern?” Conners asked. She felt a pulse of adrenaline flow through her tired veins. It had been a while since Thunder Dart had taken out the MILSTARS satellite, but perhaps it had taken that long for the effect to be felt.
“No, the source.” Jimmy swung his laptop around so she could see. “There was a momentary flicker, like the power got interrupted, and now it’s back but the flow is different. Close, but different.” Jimmy tapped the screen. “See how these lines have shifted?”
Actually, Conners couldn’t, but she nodded anyway.
“That means the source of the radiation and electromagnetic fluxes has moved. Not much. Maybe about seven or eight kilometers.”
“Will it change the rate of propagation?”
“No.”
“The strength?”
“No.”
“Great.” Conners picked up the phone. “I’ll inform Foreman.”
* * *
The AH-1 Cobra gunship had Cambodian Air Force markings painted on the side. It was a relic from the Vietnam War, appropriated from the Vietnamese Army when it had invaded Cambodia years ago and kept flying by cannibalization of other AH-1s that had been shot down or abandoned when the Vietnamese pulled out.
The Hie-Tech camp consisted of four tents surrounding a small open field on which sat a Russian Hind-D helicopter.
The AH-1 came in low and fast, the 7.62mm minigun in the nose firing as soon as it cleared the tree line. 2.5 inch rockets followed, blasting the Hind into tiny pieces. The pilot of the Cobra came to a hover and continued firing, chasing the survivors into the cover of the jungle and thoroughly destroying the camp.
Michelet’s revenge was complete.
* * *
Ariana could hear movement around them, but nothing that sounded as large as the snake. They were moving steadily downhill. Ariana kept them on track by picking a tree as far as she could see into the fog and heading toward, then picking another one. Her compass was spinning wildly but according to the map, downhill was the way to go.
Ariana pushed aside a large hanging growth and paused as the hair on the back of her neck stood up. “What the hell!” she heard Ingram exclaim.
A large plane was set vertically into the ground, tail first, looming like a large cross over the path they were following except that the wings were swept back, almost touching the ground themselves. The nose of the plane disappeared into the mist, about a hundred and forty feet above them. The edge of the massive tail disappeared into the jungle floor. The flat gray paint was marred with lines of rust showing through and plants had woven their way around the metal skin. It was obvious the plane had been there for a while.
“It’s a B-52 bomber,” Carpenter said.
“How did it get like that?” Ingram wondered out loud.
“Same way we landed with no wings and lived to talk about it,” Ariana said.
“The engines are gone,” Carpenter said. Ariana looked up. Where the engines had been on the wings, the metal had been neatly cut. She looked down. No sign of the engines below the wings. Whatever had cut the engines off had also taken them.
“The bomb bay is open,” Carpenter noted.
Ariana shook her head. “Let’s keep going.”
“I’m not going any further,” Hudson said. “We’re screwed. We’re really screwed. This isn’t the way out of this place. This is the way in.”
“In to what?” Ingram asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t want to know.” Hudson pointed up at the plane. “That’s a warning. I’m not going in there. I say let’s go the other way and get out of here.”
“You don’t have a say,” Ariana reminded him.
“The hell I don’t,” Hudson yelled. “I get a say about where I go. And I’m not going any further. I’ll just wait right here until you come back.”
“We might not be coming back this way,” Ingram said.
Ariana stared at Hudson for a long moment. She could still hear movement in the jungle around them. “All right.” She turned to the others. “Let’s go.”
“You can’t-” Ingram began Ariana chopped her hand through the air.
“Like he said, it’s his decision. I’m not responsible for him. When he took Hie-Tech’s money that ceased. And he killed Mansor by allowing him to go out there when he had a SATCOM dish the entire time. I don’t give a damn about him any more” She turned. “Let’s move.”
They walked forward and passed underneath one 85 foot wing, Ariana and Carpenter facing forward, Ingram looking over his shoulder until Hudson and the B-52 disappeared from sight.
* * *
“It’s a damn graveyard!” McKenzie hissed. The Canadian’s face was pale, his eyes wide as he took in what lay across their route of march.
Dane didn’t say anything. His mind was racing beyond, sensing how close Flaherty was. And where his old teammate was, he knew there would be answers.
But even Freed appeared shaken. They were at the mouth of a narrow ravine. A small creek ran down the center of the draw, passing them, heading toward the large stream they had crossed earlier. But what caught the attention of Freed and the other’s were the skeletons littering the draw, a veritable carpet of shattered white bone.
“This has to be hundreds of people,” McKenzie said. “And look at the weapons.”
There were numerous AK-47s scattered among the bones, the black of the metal contrasting vividly against the white bones.
“A battalion,” Freed said.
“A battalion?” McKenzie repeated.
“A Khmer Rouge battalion disappeared in this area and wa
s never heard of again,” Freed amplified his statement.
“What wiped them out?” McKenzie wondered. He bent down and picked up an AK-47. With his other hand he picked up a fistful of expended brass. “They fought, fought hard.” McKenzie looked around, as if expecting something to come out of the mist and trees.
“We can’t do anything here,” Dane said. “Let’s keep going.”
“I ain’t going through there!” McKenzie protested. “Something killed all these men! Look at this!” The Canadian picked up a skull. The left side of it was cleanly sliced off. “What the blazes did this?” He pointed to their left front. A line of skeletons were against the rock wall of the draw, as if they had been literally blasted into the stone. “What did that?”
“Let’s go,” Dane said quietly.
“Bullshit!” McKenzie was adamant. “I’m not going through there.”
Dane shrugged and started walking. Bones crunched under his boots. There was no way to avoid stepping on them.
“Hold on!” Freed called out.
Dane paused but didn’t turn.
“You don’t come with us, you’re on your own,” Freed yelled to McKenzie. “No pay and no ride out of Cambodia.”
McKenzie laughed. “Dead men can’t spend money and don’t need rides.” He turned, the other Canadians right behind him, and they headed back in the direction they’d come from.
“You coming?” Dane asked Freed. “Or was the plane and its data more important than the people?”
“I’m coming.” Freed tapped the one mute spectator to all this on his shoulder. “Sticking with us, Doctor Beasley?”
Beasley watched the Canadians disappear in the mist, then his shoulders slumped, the decision made for him. “All right.”
* * *
Mitch Hudson had watched the others fade into the mist before he slid his small backpack off. He was lying underneath the right wing of the B-52, the metal over his head like the massive flying buttress of a medieval church. Propping his injured leg up on a log, he opened the flap to the pack and pulled out a small black box. He was unlatching the top to the box when he heard something crashing through the undergrowth to his left. He paused, eyes darting fearfully in that direction.
Still watching the jungle, he flipped the lid open. He grabbed the coil of thin wire that lay on top and threw it out, away from himself. It extended for twenty feet and lay on top of the broken foliage. The small high frequency radio was his last resort, something he had made sure Hie-Tech agreed to before he committed to work for them. The Hie-Tech base camp at Angkor Wat was to monitor the set frequency, 24 hours a day. And they were to send help when Hudson called. The one piece of information that Hudson had focused on that Hie-Tech had gotten from the CIA was that high frequency radios seemed to work inside this strange area.
He knew that the chopper he had called in with the SATCOM beacon had been destroyed, but he was sure Hie-Tech knew that also and would approach with more caution, landing outside of the Angkor Gate and sending someone in for him on foot. Before he turned the radio on, he felt the outside of his shirt pocket, his fingers tracing the outline of a computer disk. It held all the data from Lady Gayle prior to the crash and it was his ticket out. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Hie-Tech would send another rescue team just for him, but he knew they would for the disk.
He twisted the on-knob. The small screen glowed. The lithium battery would only give him fifteen minutes of air time, but he didn’t anticipate needing that much. A minute to contact Hie-Tech, then the rest could be spent guiding them into here.
Hudson picked up the small headset and slipped it on his head, putting the small boom mike just in front of his lips.
“Big Daddy, this is Angler. Over.”
There was just the hiss of static in his earpiece.
“Damn,” Hudson muttered. He hunched forward over the radio set. “Big Daddy, this is Angler. I have the data. Over.”
The static grew louder, but there was no intelligible reply. Hudson’s major concern was that Hie-Tech had shut down listening. He knew the radio was working and he felt reasonably confident the HF was getting through.
“Big Daddy, this is Angler. I have the data. I need recovery. Over.”
* * *
Foreman leaned forward in his chair. There was a lot of static, but there was no doubt there was a voice, someone trying to transmit on the high frequency band.
“Big……this….gler…….”
“Can you get a fix on that?” Foreman asked his communications expert.
“No, sir. It’s very weak and dispersed.”
“Anything from Hie-Tech?”
“No, sir.”
Foreman checked a commo board. Sin Fen had been quiet for too long. Foreman looked to the side as the printer spewed out a sheet of imagery from Conners. The pattern was still growing. There was a dark swirl in the mist above the Angkor Gate, with lines branching out, reaching to the other gates. It looked like a massive tornado was centered above the Gate, high in the atmosphere. The storm was getting ready to break.
* * *
Hudson thought he heard something. He pressed his hands against the small earpieces, muffling any outside noise.
“Say again. Over.”
Then he realized the noise wasn’t coming from the headset. He sat up bolt upright. He knew there was someone or something behind him. He just knew, just as he knew he was a dead man. Ripping off the headset, Hudson spun around. There was nothing. His chest heaved in relief, then the breath froze in his throat as a half-dozen green elliptical spheres, like oversized footballs three feet long, drifted down from above, surrounding him completely. He looked further up and could see more of them issuing forth from the open bomb bay door of the B-52.
Hudson’s hand gripped the mike tightly. “Big Daddy, this is Angler. Big Daddy this is Angler.”
He could now see that there were two bands of black crisscrossing the front of each sphere and the bands seemed to be moving, were glistening with a liquid blackness, reflecting the gloomy light back at him
“Big Daddy, this is Angler. I have the data. Big Daddy, this is Angler. I have the data.” Hudson closed his eyes and chanted the words like a mantra.
* * *
Foreman was studying the imagery when the static-ridden voice calling for Big Daddy broke for two seconds, then a heart stopping screech sounded as clearly as if the man issuing it forth was in the control room with them. Every operator paused in what they were doing and looked up at the speakers bolted to the front of the room.
Then there was only the solid hiss of static.
Foreman raised his voice. “Get back to work!” He threw the imagery down on the desktop.
* * *
Hudson had the radio clutched to his chest. One of the green ellipses had just churned through the trunk of a tree less than ten feet from him, sending splinters flying into him and causing him to scream. He reached up and felt his right side where blood was flowing.
“Oh, God. Oh, God,” he whispered as he backed up until he smacked into the metal of the plane.
The creatures formed a semi-circle in front of him, then began closing the distance.
At that moment, a blue beam shot of the jungle mist and hit him straight on, knocking the air out of his lungs. He felt the metal of the plane slide along his back as the blue beam encompassed his body and picked him up off the ground. He looked down and could see the ellipses reacting, coming up for him, when he was rapidly pulled forward toward the source of the light, passing over them.
* * *
McKenzie paused, the other three Canadians bunching up behind him.
“You’re lost, aren’t you?” Teague, the next senior man whispered hoarsely.
“It’s that way,” McKenzie pointed, but the wavering fingertip belied the surety of his words.
“Oh, man, I knew we shouldn’t have taken this gig,” Teague said. “There’s no such thing as easy money in this part of the world. Everyone’s got
a angle. We could have just-” he paused as something crashed through the jungle to their right. The muzzles of four M-16s swung in that direction. Then there was something to the left and all four men spun about in that direction.
The woods around them exploded in moving forms. McKenzie fired on full automatic into something that bounded forth on four legs toward him, the bullets slamming it back. The only impression he had were rows and rows of gleaming teeth.
One of the men screamed as his body exploded in a gush of blood and viscera. The tip of a green ellipse, black teeth churning, came out of his chest.
McKenzie backed up, slamming a fresh magazine into his weapon. Teague was at his side, firing at an ellipse, the bullets bouncing off.
Another creature came bounding in, body of a lion, snake’s head, scorpion stinger for tail, jumping through the air and landing on the fourth Canadian, claws ripping him open, the stinger darting forward and sinking into his face, right between the eyes. The snake’s head rose up and hissed as the stinger dug through bone and entered the man’s brain. The body jerked spasmodically.
McKenzie moaned, seeing the man’s fate.
Teague shook him out of his shock by firing a magazine on full automatic across his front.
McKenzie pulled the trigger but his finger froze at the last second as a golden beam sliced out of the fog and hit him and Teague, enveloping the both of them, pressing them together.
They were lifted off the ground, above the creatures, and then drawn into the mist.
* * *
Dane paused, hearing the distant sound of firing that abruptly cut off. He sensed inside his head, more than heard the screams, which were too far away to carry. He glanced at Freed who made no comment, then at Beasley. The fat professor’s pale face was bathed in sweat.
“We’ll make it,” Dane said. As he turned away from the other man he paused. Dane stood perfectly still, his eyes closed. Slowly his head swiveled back in the direction they had come.
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