Area 51_Nosferatu

by Robert Doherty

  The captain pulled back and looked up. “My strike team is on its way down. Wait for reinforcements before you do anything.” “Certainly,” Kokol said.

  The captain clamped onto the pole and began heading down. Kokol turned back to the ramp and waited, AK-74 at the ready.

  • • •

  This had to be it—sixteen crates loaded on four-wheeled carts. There were faded swastikas stenciled on the outside and writing in German. Petrov used his knife to pry up one of the lids. Nestled in straw inside were rows of bottles similar to the ones on the lower level of the cart. Inside each was a dried, coagulated reddish mass that Petrov assumed had once been blood. He ordered his men to wheel the carts out.

  • • •

  Kokol heard the squeal of unoiled machinery coming his way. Then he spun to his right as he heard a muffled curse. A soldier was struggling to get through the air vent and join him.

  Kokol put his finger to his lips, then turned to face , back down the ramp, the butt of his AK-74 tucked tight into his shoulder. The sound was getting closer and he couldn’t figure out what was making it. Having fought in many wars, from World War II to the present, he decided to make himself a smaller target and went down to one knee.

  The soldier managed to make it through and joined him as a second one appeared in the grate. Kokol sighted in as the muzzle of a weapon appeared, followed by the man wielding it, dressed in black. He saw Kokol just as the soldier yelled out for the man to drop his weapon.

  The man did neither, bringing the weapon to bear instead, and Kokol squeezed the trigger of the AK-74 twice in rapid succession. The first bullet hit the man in the cheek, ripping a gash along the side of his face while the second hit right between the eyes, sending him flopping back down the ramp.

  The reply was instant and fierce as automatic weapons let loose and high-velocity rounds tore up the ramp, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting all about. A round hit the soldier coming out the grate in the back of his head, killing him instantly and leaving his body jammed in the hole. Kokol dived to the ground and fired several rounds even though he could see no targets, figuring the ricocheting would work just as well the other way.

  He heard a strange grunt, a sound he had heard before—a last breath of air being expelled as a bullet tore through lungs—and glanced to his left to see the other soldier sink to his knees, then fall face forward, blood seeping out of a wound just under his armpit where his vest didn’t cover.

  Kokol rolled twice, putting himself behind the man’s body and resting his submachine gun on top of him. Several more rounds hit the body and Colonel Kokol emptied the rest of his clip, silently counting to himself, so that when he fired the last round, his finger hit the release, the magazine fell and he slammed another home without making the mistake of firing on an empty chamber and wasting precious seconds.

  Where the hell was the captain? The firing from below suddenly ceased and Kokol heard voices, someone issuing muffled orders. Were they retreating? Regrouping?

  The answer came swiftly as three hand grenades came flying through the air. Colonel Kokol rolled, pulling the dead body on top of him as the first one went off less than ten feet away. The concussion hit him, followed by two more, like body blows from a mule, but the dead SVD man absorbed the shrapnel. The last wave slammed Kokol’s head against the inner wall, knocking him out.

  • • •

  Petrov jumped in the van with the blood, as his mercenaries fired back at the security forces on the outskirts of the Kremlin wall. He pressed a detonator, and two of his own people’s cars exploded, behind his van, taking out several police cars with them, blocking the way, and allowing enough of a diversion for his van to disappear into the warren of alleys.

  He had the blood. The issue he had now was what exactly to do with it. He was not sure any longer that turning it over to Adrik was the most prudent course of action—at least not without a substantial finder’s fee.

  CHAPTER 16

  Mount Everest

  Namche rubbed the frost off the eyepieces of his oxygen mask and checked his global positioning receiver. According to the data he’d been given, they were close to the other two bodies.

  “Not far,” he shouted, the words muffled by his mask. He wasn’t certain whether Tai heard him or not. The other man was leaning against the side of the mountain, obviously exhausted. Namche wondered if he would still be paid the remainder of his fee if Tai died and had to be left on the mountain.

  They were approximately two thousand meters from the top of Everest. To the right was the Kanshung Face, a practically vertical mile-long stretch of rock on the north side of Everest. From the display he had seen in Hong Kong, it appeared to Namche that the two bodies they were after had been on top of the Kanshung Face and fallen. Instead of plummeting all the way to the bottom, it appeared as if the rope connecting them had caught on a spur of rock jutting out from the face and they were frozen in place, an adornment to Everest’s deadliness. He looked in the direction, trying to see through the blowing snow.

  “There,” he yelled, pointing. The wind had shifted direction briefly, exposing the Face. The bodies looked like white lumps on the rock wall about fifteen meters away.

  This time Tai acknowledged he’d heard by nodding.

  Namche climbed up, checking over his shoulder to make sure Tai was following. They gained another thirty meters in altitude, then Namche halted. He pulled four pitons off his climbing rack and used a small hammer to pound them into the mountain, making sure they were in place. Then he secured a fifty-meter length of doubled rope to all four.

  “You stay here,” he yelled to Tai. Tai nodded once more.

  Namche tied himself off to the fifty-meter doubled rope, gathering the slack. Holding the loose rope in one hand and his ice axe in the other, he edged over a meter, arriving at the left side of the Kanshung Face. Reaching as far as he could, he slammed the point of his axe into the ice that covered the Face. Then, using that as his leverage point, he scrambled out onto the Face. He dug the toes of his crampons into the ice and began making his way across. It was precarious climbing and Namche didn’t allow his mind to dwell on the numerous lethal possibilities.

  He moved quickly, staying in no position for more than a few seconds, afraid the thin sheet of ice would give way. He glanced down and saw he was now above the bodies. It was clear that their rope had caught on a small spur, less than eight inches long, that poked out from the mountain. Namche knew he’d have one shot at this.

  Namche let go of the mountain and fell. As he went down he slammed the point of the ice axe into the mountain to slow his descent and to be ready for when he reached the bodies, which occurred in less than two seconds. His axe caught on the dead climbers’ rope and slid along until he reached one of the bodies, where it jammed against the attachment point of the rope on the body. Namche came to a jarring halt, breathing hard.

  Using short nylon slings, he made sure both the dead men were attached to the rope he had brought. Then he leveraged the ice axe underneath one of the bodies, trying to break it free from the mountain. It detached with a last crack of ice, sliding down until it reached the end of the rope, where it jerked to a halt, then swung to the left, coming to a halt just below where Tai was.

  Namche did the same with the second, except this time he made sure he was attached to the body. Once more he fell free for a couple of seconds, then he and the body swung over and came to a halt.

  Namche put in more pitons, securing the bodies in place as Tai climbed down.

  “What now?” Namche asked. He assumed Tai was there to collect something from the bodies. Perhaps a family heirloom? Or to perform some burial rite? Namche was surprised when Tai began lashing the two bodies tightly together.

  “We cannot carry them down,” Namche said.

  Tai ignored him. He opened his pack and took out what appeared to be a very thin blanket, which he wrapped around both bodies. Namche had seen that kind of blanket before—it was an emergency
heater, designed to be used to rapidly raise someone’s core body temperature. Numerous thin wire conductors were woven into the material and attached to a power source, in this case a pair of lithium batteries Tai had in his pack. Once the blanket was tight around the bodies, Tai turned it on.

  This confused Namche even more. What was the purpose of thawing out dead men?

  As the blanket poured heat into the frozen flesh, Tai pulled something else out of his pack. A syringe and several plastic blood bags.

  “What are you going to do?” Namche demanded, although he was beginning to get the idea. But the reason behind these apparently insane acts escaped him.

  Tai continued to ignore him. He reached under the blanket and checked the exposed flesh of one of the bodies by the expedient method of poking it with the syringe. Apparently the body wasn’t quite ready yet as Tai turned his attention to what was left in and on his pack. He removed the two pieces of PVC pipe and unscrewed the ends. He pulled out a complicated mass of extendable titanium poles and Kevlar cloth from each. They connected together at an anchor point.

  Tai turned back to the body and poked it with the syringe. The point punctured the skin and he searched, trying to find a vein. When he located one, he attached a small battery-powered pump to the line and began draining the blood from the body. Namche watched in horrified fascination. Tai drained the first body into four bags. Then he did the same to the second.

  Namche watched, confused as to the purpose of Tai’s actions and what would happen next. As soon as Tai had the second body drained, he packed the blood bags into his rucksack. Then he unhooked his harness from the safety line.

  “What are you doing?” Namche reached forward to grab him.

  Tai connected a snap link on the back of his harness into the anchor point of the strange tube-and-cloth contraption, looked at Namche, smiled, and then jumped out into the clear air in front of the Kanshung Face.

  Namche stared in shock as Tai free-fell. Then the poles on his back snapped out, spreading, deploying the high-strength cloth. A half mile below Namche’s position, the hang glider locked into place and Tai grabbed the controls, banking to the north and west, disappearing from view in the blowing snow.

  Kouros

  Final checks were made, no glitches were found, and the countdown now moved into its final phase. A night launch was a bit unusual for Kouros; but Nosferatu had insisted, and since he was paying top dollar, the officials at the facility had been only too happy to agree. He was in launch control, in the VIP lounge, watching the procedures. He had been forced to pay a considerable amount of extra money to keep the launch information from being released, a particularly difficult task given this was the first manned launch ever performed outside of the American or Russian programs.

  The overly attentive lackeys of the ESA were beginning to bother Nosferatu. Waiters hovered at his elbow, offering him champagne, and the luxurious buffet laid out at the rear of the room bustled with activity. He brusquely ordered everyone out of the suite.

  The Ariane 5 booster, the X-Craft on top, was fixed in spotlights. A beautiful sight to Nosferatu, who had been at the forefront of spaceflight for many years, ever since the beginning. It was another of his objections to the Airlia—how they had hamstrung the human attempts to get into space. It was amazing that man had managed to make it to the moon and walk on it, an effort that had been rewarded with an intense push by the Ones Who Wait to make sure the space program went backward rather than forward. While science fiction writers had predicted that man would be much further ahead by the turn of the millennium, the reality had been a great disappointment.

  The X-Craft design was simple but functional. He’d begun work on it many years previously and kept it as secret as possible to prevent interference from the Ones Who Wait. Over the years he’d brought in the best and brightest to work on certain parts, but he’d kept overall control of the development compartmentalized so that only the tiniest handful of people knew the big picture. Money had been no object.

  The X-Craft was a delta wing craft, more arrowhead-shaped than the American space shuttle, and smaller. Its cargo bay could hold only one-quarter of what the American shuttle could, but it was one-tenth as costly to produce and fly. The crew consisted of a pilot and copilot. Additional personnel could be put on board if a crew pod was inserted in the cargo bay. For the moment, the cargo bay was empty except for two EVA space suits and special equipment they would need once they reached the derelict mothership.

  Nosferatu had test X-Craft models flown in Australia and even achieved two successful landings of the craft that was now on top of the booster, flying it up on top of a 747 and releasing it. The Ariane 5 booster was proven with many successful liftoffs. As far as Nosferatu could predict, everything should work perfectly.

  He was less certain of Vampyr’s actions.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the final seconds of the countdown. The rocket ignited and began to lift. Nosferatu slipped on a pair of sunglasses to protect his eyes as the flame seared the night sky. He watched the rocket accelerate upward until he could no longer see it.

  Time to move on to his next task.

  Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok Airport

  “You are not welcome here.”

  Vampyr had had a feeling that he would not be warmly greeted in Hong Kong. He was standing on the tarmac at the new Hong Kong International Airport, an island set apart from the mainland. His jet was behind him in a secure area, bathed in the flashing lights of security vehicles. The man who had greeted him with those five words wore the blue uniform of the Hong Kong police. There was some rank insignia on his collar but Vampyr had no clue what they meant.

  Vampyr had a pack slung over his shoulder. Inside the pack were some goodies he had rigged—just in case. He had walked into too many strange situations not to prepare for the worst possible scenario.

  “You are not welcome here,” the official repeated.

  Vampyr decided to ignore him as he saw someone approaching, a man dressed in a very nice suit that must have come from one of the most expensive stores in Hong Kong. More important, everyone in uniform who saw him approach immediately adopted body language that indicated this was a man with real power.

  “I am Chon. Deputy governor of Hong Kong. How may I be of assistance?” “He”—Vampyr nodded at the man in uniform—“says I am not welcome.”

  “A misunderstanding,” Chon said. “Things have been most in flux recently as I am sure I do not have to tell you. We in Hong Kong have a long history of welcoming guests regardless of outer circumstances.”

  Chon had been on Vampyr’s payroll for over twenty years. He held his high position through Vampyr’s influence. He had had only one task all those years—to keep tabs on Tian Dao Lin.

  Chon snapped a command in Chinese. The area immediately around them was suddenly clear for a distance of twenty meters. Chon glanced to the right, along the east-west runway. The sun was hovering above the western horizon, a landing 747 silhouetted against it. “We do not have much time before dark. Come with me.” With that Chon turned and headed for the helicopter he’d arrived in.

  Vampyr followed. The blades were powering up for takeoff as they boarded. The chopper lifted and headed toward Hong Kong proper, over forty kilometers away.

  Since Chon hadn’t bothered to put on the headset on the ceiling over his head, Vampyr assumed he didn’t want to talk while in flight. They landed on top of a tall building set among a cluster of skyscrapers. Chon got off and headed immediately for a door without looking back. Vampyr followed. They descended a flight of stairs, then went into a room containing a large desk and bay windows with a commanding view of Hong Kong.

  “Please be seated,” Chon said. Then he took the seat behind the desk and hit several buttons. Steel shutters dropped over the windows, cutting off the view. Vampyr placed the backpack next to the seat, facing the door behind them.

  “This room is now Tempest proof,” Chon said.

  Vampyr knew
that meant it was supposed to be secure from all forms of bugging.

  Tian Dao Lin was a very powerful man in Hong Kong, perhaps the most powerful. Some said he ultimately was in control of all the Triads. He also owned many legitimate businesses, just like Vampyr, Nosferatu, and Adrik. The most dangerous aspect of Tian Dao Lin, as far as Vampyr was concerned, was his inner core of Quarters. More than any of the other three Undead, Tian Dao Lin enjoyed breeding with human women and bringing offspring into the world.

  Even Vampyr feared being attacked by a pack of Quarters. “What is the latest?” Vampyr finally asked.

  “One of the Quarters, named Tai, paraglided off Everest earlier today. He is on his way here with a package.”

  Vampyr nodded. Tian Dao Lin had succeeded in recovering the blood of the One Who Waits. The end had begun. “Do you know when he arrives?”

  “In four hours.”

  “Will we be able to intercept?”

  Chon looked uncomfortable. “I have not yet been able to determine where Tian Dao Lin’s lair is. Every time we try to follow his people, they manage to lose us. He is most careful, and if one gets too close, then his inner circle makes that person disappear.”

  Vampyr had anticipated Chon’s failure. “I am trying to discover the location by other means. Still, have your men try to follow the blood when it arrives. I want both the blood and Tian Dao Lin.”

  Moscow

  Colonel Kokol felt the point of a needle enter his right arm but didn’t have the energy to react. He focused all his remaining power on opening his eyes. Once more he was greeted by the captain’s face looming over him.

  “There is a problem. We did not stop them from removing what they stole from the archives. They escaped.”

  Kokol forced his eyes open. He was lying on a cot in a mobile operations center. He could see soldiers and police scurrying about. For the moment, the two of them were left relatively alone. “What happened?”

  “After they knocked you out—and left you for dead under the body of the soldier—the infiltrators made their way up the ramp, then through other tunnels and out the exit they came in. The Moscow police and SVD security tried to stop them and suffered heavy casualties in the process.”