Primeval egt-5

by David L. Golemon

  The beast took two large steps and stood over the two fallen men, and then watched them closely for any sign of movement. When there was none, the giant grunted once more. It easily stepped over the one dead man and the unconscious Petrov, and went in the direction the children had fled. It saw the small prints in the snow as if they were glowing bright green. As the great animal disappeared, blending into the darkness, several of the other giant beasts showed themselves from their hidden places and came forward, dragging Petrov and the dead sergeant away into the night.

  * * *

  Anastasia tried her best to keep Alexei moving. The boy was dead on his feet as they broke through the last of the trees and onto the stony riverbank of the Stikine. The smell of the water made Anastasia pull even harder on Alexei's hand and arm. She thought she could maybe traverse the thicker of the ice flows and get across to safety. It was foolhardy, but she knew it was their only hope of escaping the horror she knew was following them.

  Just as they reached the river's edge, she came to a stop. Alexei collapsed against her legs as she cried, "Oh, no… no."

  The ice had melted during the day at the river's edge, or was so thin she could see the moving water beneath in the moonlight. They would fall through if they tried to escape over the ice. She tried to get Alexei up. He refused. She angrily tossed Petrov's journal away, where it landed on the thin ice, then slid until it hit the water through a large crack ten feet away. The journal lodged against the side of the ice for a moment, and then the swifter current caught it and dragged it under, sending the record of the last of the royal family on a long journey south.

  Alexei was still refusing to move, so Anastasia just simply gave in to the boy and slowly sat down beside him on the snow-covered rocks that made up the shores of the Stikine.

  "Our journey away from Mama and Papa has come to an end," the young girl said as she placed her hand on the cheek of her little brother. As she did, she saw the giant step from the trees. It stood, watching the children. "It will be nice to see them and our sisters once more, won't it, Alexei?" She made sure the boy's face was covered so that his eyes could not behold that which could not really exist.

  "I am sorry I was not stronger for you, Anna," Alexei said in a whisper, his large eyes looking up and then holding hers. He started to turn away, but Anastasia held his head and made him look at her, most desperate that he not see the giant horror that watched them from twenty feet away.

  "You are the strongest boy I have ever known. To be as sick as you are, you have done the most amazing thing — you have traveled half the world. Even Colonel Petrov said he would be proud to have you in his combat regiment any day."

  "Really?" he said as his eyes slowly closed in exhaustion.

  "Yes," she answered. She looked up and saw the beast was now coming toward them, slowly, menacingly. She rubbed her gloved hand along the boy's face and watched their destiny as it came at them, and soon they were surrounded by the only inhabitants of this area of the world for the past twenty thousand years.

  Anastasia Romanov closed her eyes and waited.

  * * *

  In the small valley, hidden in a snow-covered covered cave, were four large wagons filled with gold. The bulk of the smuggled treasure of the last tsar and tsarina of Russia would stay hidden for almost a full century until future men of greed found it, and the hidden world of the past would once more run with blood.

  The Forest Primeval had not changed for 20,000 years — always hiding its secrets well, protecting whatever lived amongst its woods and streams.

  In the night came the nocturnal cry of They Who Follow, as they, too, waited for their lands to be visited by men from the outside world once more. The woods swallowed them, and they became one with the world that nurtured and protected them.

  MCCHORD AIR FORCE BASE WASHINGTON

  OCTOBER 7, 1962

  OPERATION SOLAR FLARE

  Thirty-five armed USAF air police had most of the base maintenance personnel cornered in a giant hangar outfitted for one of McChord's many Globemaster cargo planes. Most of the men had noticed that the M-14 automatic rifles carried by the police unit had their safeties in the off position. But even stranger was the fact that there were thirty U.S. navy flight technicians waiting just inside of the giant hangar door. No explanation had been offered as the men were rounded up and placed inside the hangar. They waited twenty minutes, and then a loud horn sounded.

  A U.S. navy officer in class "A" blues and a white saucer cap nodded at the captain in charge of the air police, and he in turn waved his men into action. In thirty seconds, the hangar was cleared of all air force personnel with the exception of the base commander and ten of the air police. They were soon joined by twenty men in civilian attire. The men went straight to some very large crates that had been unloaded thirteen hours earlier after they had been delivered from March Air Reserve Base in California. They quickly started uncrating the shipment.

  As the group of base commanders and air police waited, they heard the loud whine of twin jet engines as they spooled down. The roar was loud enough that all inside knew that a beast was demanding entrance to its dark lair. As the giant twin hangar doors started to slide apart, the men inside were blinded by the landing lights of a powerful jet as it barely waited for the doors to open wide enough to fit its extraordinary wing design. The aircraft cleared the doors by mere inches as it made its way inside, flanked on both sides and also front and back by United States Army Special Forces soldiers who had been waiting just off the runway for the arrival. The president of the United States himself had instituted the new concept of the Green Berets, and the group was newly arrived from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and they trotted inside with the aircraft with their weapons at the ready.

  As the technicians and security men watched in silence, the scream of the twin J79-GE-8 jet engines bounced loudly from one corner of the giant hangar to the other. The pilot of the brand-new Navy F-4 Phantom made a fast maneuver with its nose wheel, and made a complete and precise 180-degree turn until it was facing the now closing hangar doors.

  The newest and only version of the Navy F-4 was loaded with the new AN/APQ-72 radar, its bulbous nose standing out dramatically from the front end of the fighter. Every technician noted the package the Phantom carried under the centerline hard point. The plastic-covered, steel-framed object was hidden from view, but every man present was aware of what the disguised monster was, and they all had that deep-seeded fear upon seeing it only feet away. They were even aware of what the package and also the very operational name of the mission was called, a name thought up by air force and naval intelligence — Solar Flare. It was a five-hundred-megaton nuclear weapon, and was the most powerful nuclear device ever created. For the moment it was harmless, but its potential as a man-made hell on earth shook them all to their core.

  With the brakes finally set and the giant General Electric engines winding down, the cockpit canopy started to rise. The lights from above shone off the Phantom's gleaming dark blue paint scheme, and all present saw that the aircraft had not one identifying marker on its aluminum skin. No navy serial number, no numbers of any kind. The stars and bars had been removed as well as every single etched engraving that would identify the origin of the flight or its manufacturer. As the canopy rose, the navy pilot didn't wait for the ground crew to assist him from his seat. He stood as soon as the large Phantom stopped moving, and was quickly stepping onto the wing. He avoided the ladder that was placed for him and hopped nimbly down from the slick wing. He waved several of the crew away.

  "Bathroom!" he called out as he ran in the direction he hoped was appropriate.

  A man ran to catch up to the helmeted officer, still dangling his oxygen line and directed him to the right door, and then they both disappeared.

  The ground crew from the navy and several of the civilian technicians ran for the Phantom and started removing small plastic covers along the Phantom's wing hard points. The caps hadn't been off more than four
seconds when the ground crew rolled up seven experimental fuel pods specially designed for the Phantom. The fiberglass and plastic pods were extremely lightweight and each of six was fifteen feet in length and was capable of carrying a thousand gallons of JP-5 jet fuel. The seventh fuel pod was designed to fit under the Phantom's belly to the rear of Solar Flare, and was only ten feet in length. With every hard point of the fighter filled with fuel pods, the aircraft had not one single defensive or offensive weapon onboard — not counting the strange object hanging hidden under the Phantom. Even the defensive flair and chafe system had been removed. With all of this, the massive twin-engine fighter would have to fight the forces of gravity to even get off the ground.

  The pilot soon emerged from the restroom and was met by a navy doctor and medical corpsman. He was directed to a closed-off area where a catheter would be inserted into his bladder for the long flight awaiting him after his next fuel stop. That was where the pods would be fully loaded and the mysterious shroud would be removed from Solar Flare. The next stop for this most secret mission of October 1962, would be Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. At that point, Solar Flare would become active upon the order of President John F. Kennedy, and then Solar Flare would vanish into the night sky, its destination — the Soviet Union, its mission — to advance beyond its fail-safe point and to destroy the top military leadership of not only the Soviet military, but the KGB and the high command of all Russian strategic rocket forces.

  As the pilot cleared the medical area, he felt uncomfortable with the attention of everyone as they followed his every move. He didn't know if it was because of the mission he was chosen for or the fact that he just had two feet of plastic line shoved up his penis — he hoped it was the latter.

  Commander John C. Phillips, fresh from the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was preparing the largest strike package ever issued by the U.S. navy. The weapon was far beyond the scope of detonations delivered by the U.S. Army Air Corps at the end of World War II. An experimental device loaded upon the newest supersonic jet fighter in the American inventory, and with the aircraft loaded with so many secret and technical devices, Phillips knew he was more than likely to blow himself and half of either Washington State or Alaska into oblivion than he was the intended target, the head of the chicken, or as it was officially known — the Soviet high command.

  As the commander was approached by two admirals, a general, and three men in civilian suits, he took advantage of the little time he had to wolf down a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of energy orange drink.

  "Commander, your final orders: You will unseal them ten klicks before you cross into Soviet airspace."

  Phillips handed one of the flight crew the empty glass and wiped his mouth onto the sleeve of his flight suit. His eyes took in the admiral and didn't flinch.

  "And the members of the high command targeted are going to be where they are supposed to be?" he asked, still not reaching for the orders. As he watched the brass before him, the rumor mill was being proven right, and all of the hard work and training was about to be realized if the negotiations in Washington and Moscow failed. Phillips knew he was the only member of the four horsemen of the apocalypse that really counted, and it made his stomach queasy.

  "Assets inside the Soviet military apparatus have informed our intelligence services through the French DGSE that everyone from Khrushchev down to his valet will be there. Yelteli is your target, commander."

  "And if they're not in Yelteli?" persisted the navy officer.

  "They are, buried underneath five hundred feet of reinforced concrete and two hundred of clay, with nothing else but trees protecting them. They didn't think we knew about their little hiding spot, but thanks to the head of French intelligence, we do."

  The commander had no doubt that he was carrying the payload to do the job. He knew it would create a crater the size of the meteor hole in the desert in Arizona, only deeper. He was just concerned about his mission being the one to initiate a full nuclear exchange.

  "What if the president gets those stupid bastards in Moscow to back down?" he asked, almost, but not quite reaching for the plastic-covered orders.

  "He won't," said a man in a black suit.

  "Your name, sir?" Phillips asked.

  The man remained silent as he looked from the commander to the admiral, and then turned and walked away.

  "In that case, Commander, you'll receive the callback—Genghis. Are we clear? Everything is explained in your orders. Now, your mission will continue with no further communication from here on out. Your layover at Elmendorf is only fifteen minutes, so you will not even leave the cockpit. After the strike, if you successfully egress from Soviet soil, your training in ice landings will become perfectly clear to you. The coordinates for the ice-pack landing are included. Sorry that couldn't be explained to you during training."

  Phillips finally nodded his head and took the offered orders, feeling them under his gloved hands and knowing the impossibility of it, and also knowing full well he would never make it past Soviet defenses after his bird laid its nuclear egg. There would be no ice landing, and he doubted very much if there was even a plan for him to do so.

  "Will you gentlemen excuse the commander and me for a moment, please," the small rear admiral asked.

  The men surrounding the pilot walked away when asked and didn't bother with protesting the time restraints they were under.

  "Listen to me, Commander, the president has been backed into a corner here. Hell, he has Soviet merchants and armed combatants charging to the Cuban quarantine line, and he doesn't think those bastards are going to stop. If they don't, this may be the only chance we have if the Soviets strike in Germany or, God forbid, the U.S. You're the first option for stopping this before it really gets started." The admiral paused for the next words he would speak. "Commander, if you have any doubts, it's worse than we thought in Cuba. At least four sites there are fully operational, and the ranges of the missiles are not what have been reported. They can hit as far away as Seattle."

  Phillips didn't respond to the admiral's pep talk because he knew the Soviet military, no matter how much of the command structure he destroyed, would strike back. It was what he would do, and he knew the Russian soldiers and airmen would feel the same.

  "Yes, sir," Phillips said as he gave the admiral a salute, crisp and sharp. He didn't wait after he let his hand slip to his side; he stepped away and joined his ground team.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, under cover of darkness, and no runways lights save for every thousand yards as an aiming point, Operation Solar Flare roared down the McChord runway. As the wheels lifted free of the concrete, Phillips felt a small pop from somewhere in the aircraft as it rose into the sky. Unbeknownst to the highly trained pilot, the restraining bolt holding the nose of Solar Flare to its hard point broke free and tumbled into the woods surrounding Fort Lewis and McChord.

  Two hours later, the aircraft passed over the most desolate and unexplored region of British Columbia on its zigzag course in order to avoid the Russian trawlers off the coast toward Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, when the nose of the most secret weapon in the American nuclear arsenal broke free and dropped three feet. Now its center and rear bolts were the only restraints keeping the weapon from tumbling into a large river that wound its way across the northern face of hills and mountains below.

  Commander Phillips knew his aerodynamics were shot as the weapon hung, suspended half on and half off its hard points and was pulling the aircraft into a nose-down attitude. The problem started in the planning stages of the operation as the Canadian government knew nothing of the American flyover of their territory and airspace, so the commander was under orders to stay "in the weeds," below the Canadian radar. It was a good plan, but it doomed the mission and Phillips. He just didn't have the altitude to maneuver.

  "Snowman, Snowman, this is Arrowhead, mayday, mayday," Phillips called out as calmly as he could as the Phantom rolled hard to the right
side. He fought the control stick as hard as he could but knew he was losing the Phantom far more quickly with the heavy load. The design of the extreme aircraft was so radical, it naturally didn't want to stay in the air anyway, and he knew that. "My position is—"

  The heavy F-4 Phantom clipped the tree line with its right wing and then Phillips felt his face flush and his heart freeze as the heavy jet fighter, with Solar Flare still attached, slammed into the Stikine River and then bounced three times as it came apart, spreading fire and debris into the desolate reaches of the surrounding woods and finally smashing into pieces against the facing of the small rise that sloped into a barren plateau.

  * * *

  The code name, Operation Solar Flare, would be lost forever, never to be mentioned in the annals of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, nor would the official histories of the U.S. navy and air force have anything placed into their archives telling the world that the United States was prepared to strike first against the Soviet Union. Even with the massive four-decade search for the lost superweapon, Solar Flare, the cover-up of an event of that magnitude would be kept secret — until fifty years later.

  STIKINE RIVER

  JULY 1968

  L. T. Lattimer was the last of the old miners who had worked the goldfields from Nome to South Dakota. Like most, Lattimer had spent twenty-four years of his life, his life savings, and a good portion of his family's fortune, and again, like most, had absolutely nothing to show for it. Raised in wealth and educated in ivy, the Boston-born Lattimer knew he could never go home again after such a monumental misjudgment. The burned bridges and a family alienated by his arrogance have assured him of a life of loneliness.