Area 51 (34 page)

The valley below was in darkness, giving no idea how far down it went. Eight hundred feet above, the top of the mountain was silhouetted against the light of the moon.

Turcotte slid over the edge of the platform onto the rock-and-dirt mountainside and began climbing.

After a few minutes he could see lights moving in the valley below.

Reinforcements. It would take them a while to get air assets in--he hoped.

Having been in Special Operations for years, Turcotte knew that there just weren't packs of men sitting around with high-speed helicopters waiting around every corner.

He moved from rock to rock, clinging to bushes at times. He'd learned mountain climbing during a tour in Germany and this slope wasn't technically very difficult. The darkness was a bit of a problem, but his eyes were adjusting. He reached the top of the mountain after forty-five minutes. He turned to the west, following the ridgeline that he had seen coming into town during the day. He moved quicker now that he was gradually descending. His head still hurt, feeling as if a massive headache was worming its way around his head, moving from section to section. What had that pyramid been? It definitely wasn't man-made. He knew it was connected to the bouncers and mothership.

But how was it connected to the bodies in the vats? What the hell was going on down there?

He saw the lights of Dulce to his left and he curved downslope in that direction, heading for the western edge of town. As the ridgeline leveled out to valley floor he passed the first houses. An occasional dog barked, but Turcotte moved swiftly, not worried right now about the locals.

He spotted a pay phone outside a closed bowling area and jogged up to it. He picked up the receiver and dialed the number Dr. Duncan had given him. After the second ring a mechanical device informed that the number was no longer in service. Turcotte pushed down the metal lever, disconnecting. Then he dialed a new number with a 910 area code. Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

A sleepy voice answered. "Colonel Mickell."

"It's Mike Turcotte, sir."

The voice woke up. "Jesus, Turc, what the fuck have you done?"

Turcotte leaned against the phone booth, energy draining out of his body. "I don't know, sir. I don't know what's going on. What have you heard?"

"I haven't heard shit except somebody wants your ass bad. One of those agencies with a whole bunch of letters has put out a classified 'grab and hold' on you. I about shit when I saw it come through in my reading file."

Mickell was the deputy commander of the Special Forces Training Command at Fort Bragg and an old friend.

"Can you help me, sir?"

"What do you need?"

"I need to find out if someone is for real and, if she is, how to contact her."

"Give me her name."

"Duncan. Dr. Lisa Duncan. She told me she was the President's adviser to a thing called Majic-12."

Mickell whistled. "Oh, man, you're in some deep stuff.

How do I reach you?"

"You don't, sir. I'll get back in contact with you."

"Watch your butt, Turc."

"Yes, sir."

Turcotte slowly hung up the phone. He wasn't one hundred percent certain that Mickell would back him up. He didn't know why Duncan's number didn't work. The only means of communication she'd given him as he went undercover and it had been out now for a couple of days. Not good. Not good at all. He'd just killed three men this evening. "Fuck," Turcotte muttered. What the hell was that pyramid?

Turcotte rubbed his forehead. He'd played his last cards.

When it got down to it, he had to admit that the only people he could trust right now were heading for Utah and the rendezvous he had planned. He didn't want to go there, but it was the only place he could go.

He looked about. There was a pickup truck parked on the street. Goddamn, his head hurt. Turcotte drew deep inside, relying on years of harsh training. He drew up strength where most would find nothing. And headed for the pickup truck.

26

ROUTE 64, NORTHWEST NEW MEXICO

T-7O HOURS, 4O MINUTES

Johnny Simmons started screaming and Kelly's best efforts couldn't stop it. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, whispering words of comfort in his ear.

Getting out of the facility had been even easier than getting in. They'd piled into the Suburban, driven out past the unsuspecting guard, and linked back up with the van.

Returning the still-unconscious driver to his own truck, they'd jumped into the van and driven back down through town and turned left on Route 64.

"Can't you keep him quiet?" Von Seeckt asked from the driver's seat, checking the rearview mirror.

"I'd be screaming too," Kelly answered, "if I'd been locked in that thing for four days. You just drive. No one can hear him except us."

Johnny quieted down and appeared to fall asleep or, Kelly thought, slip into unconsciousness. She turned to Nabinger, who had his hands wrapped in a bloodstained towel. Kelly pulled out the first-aid kit. "What happened to you, Professor?"

"There was something I had to get and it was in a glass case. I couldn't find a key so I broke the glass," Nabinger replied.

"Couldn't you have used something other than your hand to break the glass?"

Kelly asked as she pulled out the gauze and tape.

"I was in a hurry," Nabinger replied. After a moment's silence he added, "I wasn't thinking about my hands."

"What was so important?" Kelly inquired.

Nabinger carefully unwrapped something from his jacket. He held a piece of wood, slightly curved, about two feet long by one foot high and an inch thick.

Even in the dim light in the back of the van she could see that it was covered with small carved characters.

"It's a rongorongo tablet from Easter Island," Nabinger said. "Do you know how rare these are? Only twenty-one are known to be in existence. This must be one that was secreted away."

Kelly pointed at the eight-by-ten glossies that the two men had gathered.

"What are those?"

Nabinger reluctantly looked from the tablet to the table, where the photos were piled. "Von Seeckt told me those are the photographs taken by the first team to enter the mothership cavern. They found flat stones with high runes."

"What do they say?" Kelly asked as she finished one hand and began working on the other.

Nabinger looked at the photos. "Well, it's not like reading the newspaper, you know. This will take time."

"Well, you've got some time, so get to work," Kelly said as she finished the second hand, then picked up a road map. She found where they had to meet Turcotte. "You've got all night," she announced. "I think we should get off this main road and take back roads through the mountains, heading west until we get to the linkup spot."

"How soon do you think they'll be after us?" Nabinger asked.

"They're already after us," Kelly said. "After us following this latest escapade, you mean. I think we'll be okay. I just hope Turcotte made it out all right."

"I am not concerned about them being after us," Von Seeckt said. "I am concerned that we only have seventy-two hours before the mothership flies."

THE CUBE, AREA 51

General Gullick did not look like a man who had just been awakened five minutes ago. His uniform was well pressed and his face clean shaven. Major Quinn had to wonder if Gullick shaved his face and skull before he went to bed every night for just such an occurrence as this—always ready for action. It suddenly occurred to Quinn that maybe the general never slept. Maybe he just lay there in the dark, wide-awake, waiting for the next crisis.

"Let me hear it from the beginning," Gullick ordered as the other members of Majic-12, minus Dr. Duncan, straggled in.

There wasn't much to tell. Quinn summarized the information an excited security chief had called in from Dulce.

In reality, Quinn realized, as he recited the brief list of facts concerning the break-in and the abduction of the reporter Simmons and the theft of photos from the archives, they knew more here at the Cube, because it was obvious from the description from the guards and the female scientist who'd been on shift that it had been Von Seeckt, Turcotte, Reynolds, and Nabinger acting in concert.

"I underestimated all of them," Gullick said when Quinn was done. "Especially Von Seeckt and Turcotte."

Kennedy leaned forward. "We're in trouble. They're going to go to the media with this Simmons fellow."

"How far into conditioning was Simmons?" Gullick asked.

Quinn was puzzled. What were they talking about?

Kennedy consulted his notepad. "They were sixty percent into phase four."

Gullick looked at Doctor Slayden. "What do you think?"

Slayden considered it. "I can't say for sure."

"Goddammit!" Gullick's fist smashed into the desktop.

"I'm tired of people bullshitting me when I ask them a question."

The room was silent for several moments, then Slayden spoke. "They disconnected Simmons before treatment was complete. That had to be a shock to his system, and the way his mind will react to that, nobody knows. If nothing else happens, the sixty percent he did have will be enough to assure that Simmons will be discredited if he speaks publicly. He'll fit in with all the other wackos, to use a rather unscientific term."

"What about the photos they stole?" General Brown asked.

"They were of the high rune tablets," Gullick said.

"Even if Nabinger can decipher the language, it will be quite a while before other scientists can verify his translation. The tablets are not a problem. Even if they go to the media, it will take a little time before anyone starts believing their story. They really don't have any proof."

Gullick's voice was void of emotion, but a vein throbbed in his forehead. "All right. Then we're still back at the original problem--Von Seeckt and Turcotte.

They're the threat, but I think at this point we can handle them for a little while. Long enough, at least, for us to finish the countdown. That's all that matters."

Quinn found that a little hard to believe. What about afterward? he wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut.

He knew that question would only earn him grief, so he chose another one. "What about the foo fighters?"

"We'll deal with that and this new problem too," Gullick snapped. "Prepare everything to move up twenty-four hours."

"But-" Quinn began. The general cut him off again with a glare.

"I want the hangar opened tomorrow," Gullick said, "and I want the flight to be tomorrow night." Gullick looked around the table. "I think everyone has a lot of work to do, so I suggest you get moving." As they all got up, his voice halted them. "By the way. I want the orders on capturing Von Seeckt and his crew changed. It's no longer capture at any cost. It is terminate with highest sanction."

27

CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL PARK, UTAH

ADJUSTED T - 4 4 HOURS

Just north of Monument Valley, Capitol Reef National Park was right in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. This time of year it was virtually deserted. In fact, in a few weeks the gates would be locked for the winter snows. The lack of people, and out-of-the-way location, were two reasons Turcotte had selected it as their meeting point. The location put a lot of distance between themselves and Dulce.

He drove in past the empty Ranger station and followed the road around. At the first campsite he spotted the van.

Kelly was standing outside, stun gun in hand, watching his truck. She relaxed when she saw him step out. There was a concrete walkway at the end of the campsite, going along the top of the cliff on which the site was located. It afforded a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains—or would have if the sun was up.

"Good to see you," Kelly said.

"How is everyone?" Turcotte asked, stretching his arms out.

"Johnny's semiconscious. Whenever he gains consciousness, he's delirious. I don't know what those people did to him but it's bad. Von Seeckt's sleeping inside. Nabinger is looking at photos from the mothership hangar."

"Has he gotten anything?" Turcotte asked.

"What about you?" Kelly asked in response. "What happened? What was done on sublevel one?"

"I don't really know," Turcotte answered honestly and vaguely. He walked to the side door and slipped in, Kelly following.

"What have you got?" he asked the archaeologist.

"Better wake up Von Seeckt," Nabinger said. "He'll want to hear this."

It took Von Seeckt a few minutes to get fully awake and then they all gathered around Professor Nabinger. He held a legal pad covered with pencil marks.

"First you have to understand that my knowledge of the high rune language is very rudimentary. I have a very small working vocabulary, and to compound that fact, there are symbols here that--although I believe they mean the same as similar symbols from other sources--have slight differences in the way they are marked.

"The other problem is that the symbols that represent what we could call verbs are most difficult to make out because of the variations in tense, which change the basic symbol.

"Beyond the simple deciphering of the symbols and the words they might mean,"

Nabinger continued, "there is an additional problem to working with a picture language.

The ancient Egyptians called hieroglyphics 'medu metcher.'

That means 'the gods' words.' The word hieroglyphs, which is Greek, refers specifically to the drawings in temples. It is difficult for us in the modern day to understand a language that was developed to explain the religious and mythical--"

"Wait a second." Turcotte was tired and had had a long night. "You're talking about hieroglyphics now. Let's stick with the high runes and what they say."

Nabinger was tired also. "I'm trying to explain all this to you so that you can take my few translations in the proper context. It would be wrong of us to superimpose our own culture and ideas upon what was written by a culture with a totally different set of values and ideas." He tapped the photos. "And here we are dealing with what appears to be an alien culture. We don't have a clue if their perception of reality is the same as ours."