“As the Catholics have their angels and demons, Islam, according to the Koran, has its own version of other-than-human creatures: Al-Malak and Al-Jinn. Al-Malak are the beings of light. Al-Jinn are those who were created before man. It is written in the Koran that Mohammed, Allah be praised, was sent to be a messenger to both man and the Al-Jinn.”
Mualama stirred impatiently, the closeness of the Sphinx and the weight of the scepter in his pack pressing on him. “Every Holy Book has writings of other beings,” Mualama said. “Angels and demons and devils.”
“True,” Hassar acknowledged, “but Muslims are the true believers. Their religion comes first in all things. The word of the Koran is law. And either way, this does not bode well.”
“Either way?” Mualama knew that Hassar’s perception was slanted a certain way because he was a Muslim.
“If a Muslim chooses to interpret that Airlia are the Al-Malak, then they are angels and UNAOC has struck against the beings of God. If the Airlia are Al-Jinn, that means they are the devil… but the Koran says even the Al-Jinn can be saved. The leader of the Al-Jinn is named Al-Iblis, but he is also described in places as being an angel or a demon.”
“Dr. Hassar,” Duncan began, “perhaps if… ”
“I have heard Professor Mualama speak,” Hassar cut her off. “At the Pan-African Conference last year. Your topic was the power of myths and legends. Don’t you understand? What is happening here in Egypt is happening everywhere in the world. Angels or demons. Progressive or isolationist.” Hassar slapped the ancient stone they were sitting on. “This is not some intellectual pursuit you are talking about. Ah!” Hassar threw his hands into the air. “What you see so clearly with your own perspective, others see very differently.”
“UNAOC has gotten approval from your government for us to look,” Duncan said. “UNAOC had permission,” Hassar corrected her. “Do you know that Sterling was killed in New York? Shot?”
Duncan nodded. She wondered on the flight here which alien group had been behind the killing or if it had been the work of human fanatics.
“There have been other killings around the world,” Hassar said. “This has made my government reconsider. Your request has been put in abeyance.”
“What does that mean?” Duncan asked.
Hassar shrugged. “That means I stick it on the stack of hundreds of other similar requests that will never be granted.”
“We came here in good faith… ” Duncan began, but the Egyptian cut her off. “And I met you in good faith. I am trying to be reasonable. You are poking a stick into a nest of angry scorpions for no reason.”
“There is a reason,” Duncan said. “Why do you say there isn’t?”
“Because you are risking much for nothing. There is nothing under the Sphinx.” Hassar pulled a photo out of the inside of his jacket and handed it to Mualama. Duncan leaned over to see.
It was a faded black-and-white image. Two men, pith hats guarding them against the harsh sun, stood just to the left of the spot Mualama and Hassar were currently occupying.
“This was taken in 1922,” Hassar said.
“And?”
Hassar pointed to the right paw. “They opened the door you want to open between the paws. And found an empty room.”
“I will hire a local crew to help move the stone.” Mualama handed the picture back.
“Please.” Hassar gripped Mualama’s forearm. “Please do not do this.”
“I have to.” He placed his large black hand over the other man’s. “I will respect the Sphinx. But I must look.”
Mualama reached into his pack and pulled out the scepter. He tilted it in front of Hassar, the ruby eyes glinting.
Despite himself, Hassar was interested. “What is that?”
“A key,” Mualama answered.
Hassar took it out of Mualama’s hands. He turned it, feeling the weight. “Where did you find it?”
“Ngorongoro Crater.”
“Ngorongoro,” Hassar mused. “The Garden of Eden, so some say. Just lying there on the ground?”
“No.”
Hassar waited.
“It was in a coffin. There was a marker above the coffin. The marker directed me here.”
“Who was in the coffin?” Hassar asked.
“An Airlia body.” Mualama took the scepter back.
Hassar sighed and looked out toward the Nile. Duncan could well imagine the conflicting feelings the Egyptologist was experiencing. His entire life had been dedicated to promoting Egypt’s past, and in the past month all the supposedly known “facts” had been tossed on their ear.
“Was a spear found here?” Duncan asked.
Hassar frowned. “Excuse me?”
“During World War Two. Was a spear found in the Great Pyramid?”
“No.”
“Where is Kaji?” Duncan asked.
“I know no one named Kaji.” Hassar stood. “As I told you. You do not have permission to do anything in this area.”
“We will not leave,” Mualama countered.
“You touch any stone, dig anywhere on this Plateau,” Hassar said, “and I will not be held accountable for the results. You have been warned.”
Mars
D — 5 Hours
The steel claw flashed down, spearing through the Martian soil, and struck something solid that wasn’t rock. All the mechrobots came to a halt as the information was relayed back to the control center underground.
New commands were sent and the mechrobots began to dig more carefully, scraping away the soil. Soon black metal was exposed to the light of the distant sun for the first time in many millennia. The edges of the metal that met the light were twisted and scarred from some terrible force.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, more of the wreckage was uncovered.
Moscow
D — 5 Hours
Turcotte's fingers scrambled, trying to get a grip on a small piece of concrete, when the block fell away from him, out of his reach. He had to think for a second through his exhaustion to realize what that meant. He pushed himself forward, ignoring the sharp edges that dug into his stomach, and peered. There was only darkness. He reached out, hands probing.
His left hand went as far it could reach and touched nothing. He held his breath and cocked his head. Very faintly he could feel air flowing over the skin on his face.
“We’re through!” he yelled back to Yakov. “Come on!” Turcotte pushed himself forward and tumbled free, into the undamaged tunnel beyond the blockage.
Behind him, Yakov heard the yell. He squirmed into the tunnel to follow the American. As he got near the end, the going got much tighter. The only other time Yakov had wished he were smaller was when he had been caught in an ambush in Afghanistan. He pushed his wide shoulders through the narrow opening, hearing cloth rip. He exhaled, making his rib cage as small as possible, and held his breath. He pushed with his legs and fell free.
As Turcotte grabbed him, the top of the tunnel they had created imploded, leaving them in pitch black.
“The power line to the lights must have been cut,” Yakov said.
“You think?” Turcotte’s voice held an edge of sarcasm. “And, of course, we didn’t bring a flashlight. The Boy Scouts would not have given us a merit badge for this exercise.”
“Speak for yourself,” Yakov said. A glow of light came out of the penlight in the Russian’s hand, as bright to the two men as if it were a searchlight. “Let’s go.” Yakov strode off down the tunnel, Turcotte close behind.
After ten minutes, they had to make their first decision. The corridor split at a Y intersection. Yakov shone his light down each. The left fork was narrower and went down; the right stayed the same size and level.
“Well?” Turcotte asked.
“Flip a coin?” Yakov suggested.
“I say we go left. Seems like lower would be where the Archives are.”
“Makes sense,” Yakov agreed, and he bent over so he could fit in the five-and-a-half-foot-high tunnel.
As they went down, Yakov suddenly paused. There was a noise to his left. He shined the light in that direction. Several sets of eyes gleamed back at him. He cursed.
“Rats,” he warned Turcotte.
Turcotte noted something else. “Check out the walls.”
Yakov pointed the penlight. The walls were no longer concrete, but iron. Swinging the light around, Yakov showed that they were now in an iron pipe, five and a half feet in circumference. Streaks of rust circled about them, and the air was growing fetid.
“We might be in the drainage system,” Yakov suggested.
“Let’s keep going.”
“Maybe we should take the other… ” Yakov paused as a groaning noise came from beneath their feet. Both men looked down as Yakov pointed the light that way.
“Oh, crap,” Turcotte muttered as cracks in the iron radiated out from under Yakov’s feet and down the pipe faster than his eye could track. He looked for something to grab on to, found nothing, then the pipe gave way beneath him.
He slammed onto metal curved underneath him… another pipe, but this one was angled… and before he could slow his momentum, Turcotte was sliding after Yakov, going faster and faster as the pipe angled closer to the vertical.
* * *
Colonel Tolya cursed. He had been less than two hundred meters from the bug when it had begun moving. As he watched, the glowing dot moved horizontally and at an incredible pace vertically, dropping down on the screen so fast that Tolya had to quickly adjust the scale to keep the dot from disappearing.
“We need to go down, very far down,” Tolya told the engineer as he watched the screen, wondering how the others could be moving so quickly.
He wished he could call in more help, but he was uncertain how much more loyalty he could buy. Everything was for sale in Russia, and using the money Katyenka had given him, he had hired these men from among the contingent that guarded GRU headquarters in Moscow.
The other problem he had was lack of communications. FM radio didn’t work in these tunnels, so for all he knew the ones he sought might have even escaped, but he doubted that. Either Katyenka had dealt with things and no longer needed him, or she’d failed and no longer needed him. Regardless, Tolya’s task was to find the Archives and kill anyone else who found them.
CHAPTER 22
Easter Island
D — 5 Hours
At the Grumman plant in Calverton, California, an F-14 Tomcat took six months to make it from the beginning of the assembly line to the end. The micro- and nanorobots on Easter Island reversed that process in two hours. They carried the pieces of the airplane off the wreck of the George Washington and laid them out on the tarmac of the Easter Island airfield.
The guardian integrated information it had gathered over the Department of Defense Interlink and the objects lying on the concrete runway. Two parts of the plane especially interested it right now: the AN/APG-71 radar and the AIM-54 Phoenix missiles that had been attached under the wings.
The guardian examined both objects, then gave orders. A cluster of microrobots swarmed over both, breaking them down into portable pieces, then trekked up the side of Rano Kau to the highest point. Then, just as quickly, they put it all back together with some minor modifications.
The AN/APG-71 radar was placed on a tripod. A line to power the radar was run from the thermal coupling underneath the volcano. An antenna for the radar was constructed in fifteen minutes nearby, mounted on a rotating base.
With five kilowatts of juice surging through it, the radar system came alive, reaching out over seven hundred kilometers. It picked up the lurking fleet, located well over the visual horizon three hundred kilometers offshore.
The AIM-54 Phoenixes were mounted on racks, pointed out to sea. The Phoenix was the navy’s top-of-the-line weapon, costing over a million dollars apiece. Its range was over a hundred kilometers, with an onboard computer that allowed it to obtain and lock on to fast-moving targets. A link was established between the system and the guardian computer and all was set.
Below the shadow of Rano Kau, more people were moving about, the survival rate growing higher as the guardian continually adjusted its microvirus to control their nervous system.
Moscow
D — 4 Hours, 58 Minutes
Turcotte pulled himself to a sitting position. “Yakov?” His voice echoed, indicating he was in a large open space. “Yakov?” The ride in the tube had gone on for an extremely long time, then he had suddenly fallen into space, dropped at least ten feet, and landed on a solid floor that had knocked the wind out of him.
“Yes, yes.” The Russian’s rumbling voice came from somewhere to the left.
“Do you have the light?”
“I dropped it when I fell out of that tube,” Yakov said. “It should be somewhere close by.”
Turcotte reached down and felt the ground beneath… pitted concrete that was slightly damp. He stretched his arms out, testing to see if everything worked properly. He felt bruised but not broken. The muzzle of the AKSU had caused the most damage, digging into his left side and leaving a bloody gouge and sore rib in its wake. He edged toward Yakov’s voice, carefully checking the surface in front of him. He had no idea how deep they were, but they had slid for a long time.
“I’ve got it,” Yakov suddenly announced. “Damn bulb is broken. There is another in the handle. Wait.”
When the penlight came on, it speared through the dark. Turcotte followed the light as Yakov slowly swept it in a circle around them. They were on a rough concrete floor… check that, Turcotte realized as the light halted on a massive spring to his right running up into the darkness above, he was on the concrete roof of a bunker. Turcotte knew that such shelters were hung on huge springs and placed on shock absorbers, in the hope that whatever was inside could sustain a nuclear blast this far underground. Looking up, he could just see the opening of the pipe they had fallen from. Probably an air conduit, Turcotte guessed. The walls beyond the edge of the concrete roof were of raw rock. There was about ten feet of separation between the edge of the bunker and the cavern wall.
“There.” Yakov switched the direction of the light.
There was something ten feet in front of them, sticking up a few inches. Turcotte and Yakov crawled over to it… it was a metal hatch with a round latch on top.
Yakov glanced over. “What do you think?”
“I think we’re lucky to be alive,” Turcotte answered.
“Should we see what is inside?”
“Definitely.”
Yakov stuck the end of the penlight in his mouth, clamping down on it with his teeth. With great effort, muscles straining in the dark, they turned the rusted latch. It gave way slowly, emitting great shrieks of protest.
“If there’s anyone in there, they know we’re coming,” Turcotte said.
“I don’t think anyone has been down here in a long time.”
The latch finished turning. With all their might, Yakov and Turcotte pulled up on it. With a clang, the hatch fell open. A faint light shown up out of the hole. Turcotte leaned over and looked down. The floor was over fifteen feet below, a steel ladder leading down to a flat concrete floor. The light came from the right, but even sticking his head down into the opening, he couldn’t see, as the concrete top was more than three feet thick.
Turcotte lowered his legs into the hole, holding himself in place with his hands on either side of the opening. “I’ll let you know if it’s safe.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Yakov said. “We have nowhere else to go.”
* * *
“What is this?” Tolya asked the lieutenant. A narrow tunnel, obviously very old judging from the tool marks on the wall, was at the end of the more modern shaft they had been following. Shining a light down the tunnel, Tolya could see that it descended and was curving slightly to the left. Tolya checked the tracker. His object was very far below and slightly to the left front.
“Uh… sir, that’s not on any chart I have.
According to what I have, this is the end.”
“Then I no longer need you?” Tolya turned, the muzzle of his submachine gun pointed at the other officer, his finger resting on the trigger.
The engineer’s face had gone pale. “We have to get out, sir, don’t we? I have the charts. The… ”
Whatever else the man was going to say was stifled in a three-round burst that knocked him against the side of the tunnel. Tolya grabbed the map case and slipped the sling over his shoulder. “Now I have the charts.”
He signaled for the men to continue.
Vicinity Of Easter Island
D — 4 Hours, 45 Minutes
On board the Anzio the ship’s sophisticated radar array picked up the probing finger of the AN/APG-71 radar. Alarms rang and the ship turned hard away from Easter Island. Missile and gun crews went on maximum alert until it was realized that the radar was not approaching and there were no inbound missiles.
“What the hell does it mean?” Captain Breuber, the commander of the Anzio, demanded of his chief weapons officer, Lieutenant Granger.
“From the signal,” Granger said, “it appears to me that the radar is ground based, not moving. It’s definitely located us. But at that range, there’s nothing that was on board the Washington that can reach us.”
Breuber considered that. “But there was plenty that could intercept an incoming missile, wasn’t there?”
Granger nodded. “Sidewinders, Sparrows, and Phoenixes. Besides the ship’s own SAMs and air defense guns.”
Breuber rubbed his chin. “Which means we have a problem for our launch.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can we beat the AN/APG-71?”
“That’s top of the line, sir. The best our Navy has.”
“Lieutenant, I know that. I want to know if we can beat it. Because if we can’t, our Tomahawk is not going to be able to do the job it’s supposed to.”
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