rear of the aircraft. He waited for the ramp to open. He swayed to the front as the aircraft slowed down from 250 knots to 125 knots.

The loadmaster leaned over Turcotte's shoulder and stuck an index finger in his face. Turcotte looked at the team and screamed: "One minute!"

"Hang tough," Turcotte yelled in Nabinger's ear. "We're almost there." Ten seconds later Turcotte felt his knees buckle as the plane rapidly climbed the two hundred and fifty feet up to the minimum safe drop alt.i.tude. The noise level increased abruptly as a crack appeared in the ramp and grew larger as the gaping mouth drew wide open. As the ramp leveled off open, Turcotte stared out into the dark night. The wind was swirling through the back of the plane, the sound layered on top of the roar of the engines.

Turcotte got to his knees. Grabbing the hydraulic arm on the left side of the ramp, he peered around the edge of the aircraft looking forward, blinking in the fierce wind. It took a few seconds to get oriented, but there it was in the moonlight. Only about twenty seconds away a lake loomed. It had the right shape.

He could see a large mountain, it had to be the Qian-Ling, to the left of the lake. Despite himself Turcotte was impressed. Over four hours of low-level flying and they were right on target.

Turcotte stood up and yelled over his shoulder as he shuffled out to within three feet of the edge of the ramp. "Stand by!" He made sure Nabinger was right behind him. He could see that the professor's eyes were wide open.

Turcotte stared at the red light burning above232.

the top of the ramp. Now that he knew that they were on track for the right drop zone, as soon as the light turned green they'd go.

Turcotte edged a few inches closer to the edge. Looking down he could see the leading sh.o.r.e of the lake below.

The green light flashed.

Turcotte yelled "GO!" over his shoulder and was gone.

The team moved forward. Nabinger hesitated but the pressure of the six men behind him turn- * bled him off the edge into the swirling air.

Jumping at five hundred feet left little time for anything other than landing.

Turcotte was only two hundred and fifty feet above the water of the lake when his main parachute finished deploying. He checked for Nabinger but the impact of the water quickly regained his attention as he went under. The natural buoyancy of the air trapped under his dry suit popped him back to the surface after a brief dunking.

The parachute settled into the water away from him where the wind had blown it. As the pull of his two weight belts tried to draw him back under, Turcotte quickly pulled his fins out from under his waistband and put them on to tread water. Rapidly he worked on getting out of the parachute harness. Unhooking his leg straps, he then pulled the quick release on his waistband. He pulled out the parachute kit bag that had been folded flat under those straps and held on to it while he shrugged out of the shoulder straps.

With the harness off Turcotte pulled in on the lines to his parachute. Holding one handle of the kit bag with his teeth, he used his hands to stuff233.

large bellows of wet parachute into the bag. After a minute of struggling Turcotte succeeded in getting the chute inside and the kit bag snapped shut.

Turcotte took off the second weight belt he wore and, attaching it to the handles of the kit bag, let it go. The water-logged chute and kit bag disappeared into the dark depths.

Allowing his rucksack to drag behind him on a short five-foot line, Turcotte turned to swim in the direction he believed the aircraft had been heading, where Nabinger should be. As he lay on his back and started finning, he checked his wrist compa.s.s to confirm the direction, straight along the azimuth the aircraft had flown over the DZ. Soon he heard m.u.f.fled splashing ahead, which verified that he was heading in the right direction.When Nabinger popped to the surface after landing, he found his parachute descending on top of him and covering him in the water. The two weight belts he wore gave him an almost neutral buoyancy, and without his fins on, he found it difficult to keep his head above water as the nylon of his parachute descended around him. When Nabinger reached up with his arms to push the nylon away so he could breathe, the movement caused his head to slip underwater. With the chute bearing down on him, Nabinger quickly panicked.

Two feet below the surface of the water he was momentarily trapped. In his fear Nabinger started struggling that much harder and got himself more entangled. He stroked vigorously and broke surface underneath the canopy. Taking a gulp of air,234.

Nabinger sank back underwater and wrestled with his parachute, which was becoming waterlogged. Nabinger remembered Turcotte had told him that a parachute would stay afloat for only about ten minutes before becoming completely soaked and sinking. He estimated he had been in the water over five minutes now, using only his one free leg to get him to the surface to grab quick breaths.

Nabinger was tiring and the chute was starting to press down on him like a cold, wet blanket.

Turcotte saw the blue chem light come on ahead. It was then that he came across Nabinger desperately treading water in the middle of a half-submerged parachute. Turcotte grabbed the apex of the chute and pulled it off the professor.

Nabinger spit a mouthful of water out. "I'm never doing that again!"

"Can you make it to sh.o.r.e?" Turcotte asked.

"h.e.l.l, yes," Nabinger said.

"Drop your weight belts and hang on to me. Don't worry, I'm not gonna leave you. We got plenty of time."

Turcotte hooked himself to Nabinger with his buddy line. Together they swam toward the blue chem light.

When Turcotte arrived at Harker's position he found the entire team accounted for. They quickly swam for the nearby sh.o.r.e, the bulk of Qian-Ling rising up in the sky ahead of them, a darker form against the night sky. After only a minute of swimming the team got to where the bottom came up to meet them. They quickly discovered that the sh.o.r.e was not solid, as the lake melted into a235.

bamboo swamp. They stood up and trudged through the swamp for two hundred meters until they hit a patch of firm ground. The men then formed a circular perimeter.

One man started taking his dry suit off while the other readied his weapon and provided security. Turcotte helped Nabinger with his gear, peeling off the dry suit, knowing that time was of the essence.

"Let's go." Harker gave hand and arm signals and the team fanned out, moving forward, sliding night vision goggles over their eyes. Turcotte slid his own pair down and turned them on. The night gave way to a bright green field of vision. He helped Nabinger adjust his set and then they quickly followed the team.

"Stay right with me," he whispered to the professor.

Chapter 22.

Che Lu could see nothing. It was pitch black, even right next to the shaft to the outside world. She could hear a few snores and the nervous fidgeting of others who were too wound up to sleep. She could feel the hard stone floor under her as she lay on her side, her eyes open to the darkness. She'd slept under worse conditions but she'd been younger then. Now it was just uncomfortable and irritating.

The Russians had pointed their small satellite dish directly up the shaft and sent out a message earlier. Kostanov had explained to her that they could send, but they would not get a reply for a while according to some sort of schedule he had, and he wasn't even sure if they could pick up a reply through the narrow opening.

She didn't know how much good that would do. She doubted that the Russians would be so flagrant as to send in a force to rescue Kostanov and his men now that the PLA knew they were in here and were waiting outside. She also wasn't thrilled237.

with the idea of having Russians inside the tomb or even outside of it.

She wondered what was going on in the outside world. Were the Airlia coming?

If so, then this tomb certainly had to play some part in their plans. From the news stories she had seen, the guardian cavern underneath Easter Island was a small complex compared to the machinery that was in the main chamber.

She also wondered what was deeper in the tomb, through the wall on the far side of what they had dubbed the control room. And what was down the corridor protected by the powerful beam? Perhaps the same thing, approached from a different direction? Or were there other, deeper chambers in the tomb? Where did the light shaft go?

Too many questions with no answers. Che Lu sighed. Maybe with the morning there would be some answers.

Kelly Reynolds watched the midmorning news conference beamed live from the UN in New York as anxiously as billions of others the world over. The decision had been made as to where Aspasia and the rest of the Airlia would land: right in the center of New York City in Central Park. There had been surprisingly little opposition to the decision from the Russian delegate.

Reynolds was thrilled that her own country would be the site of first contact between humans and an alien race. She considered trying to catch a commercial flight from Nevada to New York, but she decided to stay where she was, as New York238.

would be saturated by the media. After all, she surmised, the Airlia would have to send someone here to check on the mothership.

At JPL, Larry Kincaid had driven in before the sun was up and was sitting at his desk eating from a box of doughnuts, drinking his fourth cup of coffee. He'd watched the same telecast as Reynolds, but his take was different.

"They don't even know what the h.e.l.l they're going to have landing," he muttered. He'd seen pictures of the mothership. If something like that was coming, the clearing in Central Park, big as it was, wouldn't be able to handle it. Of course, the aliens could have some sort of landing craft to shuttle down in.

He was just biting into a doughnut when the screen of the front of the room showed a change in the Cydonia region as seen by the Surveyor imager. The rectangle in the center of the Fort was changing color on one side.

Kincaid was at first puzzled, then he realized what was happening: a cover was opening. The bright rectangle grew larger until it encompa.s.sed the entire square.

Suddenly the entire square flashed bright white, the IMS's computer trying to compensate. Once the light level was settled, a half-dozen lean black vessels were revealed to be sitting inside the Fort.

Kincaid knew the stats for the Fort. His engineering mind quickly calculated.

Each vessel was big, not anywhere near as large as the mothership, but impressive nonetheless. And they looked dangerous to Kincaid. He couldn't articulate the feel-239.

ing, but that rapier shape and black color told him that there was more to these ships than met the eye, and they were nothing like either the mother-ship or the bouncers.

"Well, we know how they're coming," he said to no one in particular. He looked at his own computer and checked on the status of Surveyor. Not much longer now until they would have to think about retracting the IMS and reorienting the craft for orbit over Cydonia.

Harker raised his fist, halting the team in a small streambed that headed up to the mountain grave, now less than a half mile away. They could see lights on the side of the mountain where the PLA unit guarded the entrance to the tomb.

Turcotte sank down to one knee, giving a hand to Nabinger. Chase pulled out the radio to send the initial entry report. He set the antenna dish up and oriented it. He hooked a digital message data group (DMDG) device to the radio.

The DMDG took whatever was typed into it, transcribed it into Morse code, and then placed it on a spool of tape. When the message was sent, the tape was run at many times normal speed, transmitting the message in a short burst that greatly reduced the opportunity for interception. Even satellite transmissions could be intercepted if they were too long or were sent in the vicinity of an unfriendly satellite.

Turcotte knew the FOB, in this case Zandra, would receive the burst and copy it on tape. The tape would be slowed down and run across the screen of the FOB's own DMDG.240.

"All yours," Harker whispered to Turcotte, indicating the radio.

Turcotte knelt next to the machine, and in the dim glow given off by the screen, he typed in their initial entry report, telling Zandra they were on the ground in the right place and ready to proceed with the next phase of the operation.

He pushed the send key and the encoded message was burst-transmitted in less than one second.

He waited, then blinked as a reply came across the screen: LINK UP WITH CHE LU AND RUSSIAN OPERATIVE, CODE NAME GRUEV, INSIDE TOMB. THEY.

ARE ALL SEALED IN.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n," Turcotte muttered. He typed in a new message, asking about exfiltration. PICKUP ZONE AT GRID 294837 AT 2000 HOURS LOCAL.

"I wish they'd tell us what the ride's gonna be," Harker whispered.

"Where's that grid?" Turcotte asked as he broke down the DMDG and handed the gear to Chase.

Harker had a red-lens flashlight shining on his map, the two of them hidden under a poncho liner. "Right here. Small field among the trees north of the tomb about four klicks."

"Got to be a chopper."

"Chopper can't reach here on a tank of gas from friendly territory and get us back out."

"Well, we have to trust that they figured something out."

241.

"I don't trust that b.i.t.c.h Zandra," Harker said.

"Dr. Duncan will be there for us," Turcotte said. He saw the look Harker gave him. "I trust her."

Harker shrugged. "She don't come through, we're history."

"She'll come through. Your guys ready?" Turcotte asked.

"We'll be ready in ten minutes."

Turcotte looked to the east. The sun would be up soon. "Let's get in while it's still dark."

On the bridge of the USs...o...b..nnion Commander Rakes uneasily looked over the shoulder of his chief radar operator. His ship was threading the eye of a needle and Rakes didn't like the eye hole. To the north the radar blipped the outline of the southern tip of Liadon Peninsula, only fourteen miles away. To the south, roughly the same narrow distance away, was the image of the north end of Shantung Peninsula. Those two pieces of land on either side squarely placed the O'Bannion in the entrance to the Gulf of Chihli, at the northeast end of the Yellow Sea, a veritable Chinese lake with only one way in and one way out.

The O'Bannion was a Spruance-cla.s.s destroyer. Its primary armaments were Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon ship-to-ship missiles. It had a flight deck to the rear large enough to handle two helicopters. Despite the armament and flight capability, the O'Bannion was designed to operate as part of a battle group, not on its own.

Rakes was uncomfortable with the whole situation. No U.S. warship that he knew of had ever242.

gone this far toward Beijing. Technically he was still in international waters as long as he kept Chinese land twelve miles from his ship, but he knew the Chinese were not big on such technicalities.

While the rest of the O'Bannion's battle group was sailing southwest toward Hong Kong to partic.i.p.ate in a show of force regarding the recent unrest between Taiwan and mainland China, he'd been ordered to break off on this course less than twelve hours ago. Following his orders he had gone in the opposite direction, straight toward the Chinese capital.

For his destination all he had been given was a set of coordinates, 119 degrees longitude and 38 degrees, 30 minutes lat.i.tude. The O'Bannion was to stay within a one-kilometer circle of that point on the ocean.

Go to that location and be prepared to land and refuel two helicopters, the orders read. When Rakes had radioed his commander to ask for more information, he was informed there wasn't any more. When he'd protested about sitting still, surrounded on almost all sides by Chinese territorial waters, his commander had informed him that n.o.body had told him, either, what was going on but that these orders had come from very high.

"Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full," Rakes muttered to himself as he scanned the dark horizon through his binoculars.

"Excuse me, sir?" the officer of the watch asked.

"Nothing," Rakes said. "I didn't say anything."243.

Major O'Callaghan pulled in collective with his left hand and felt the Black Hawk's wheels leave the ground. He climbed to four hundred feet and then waited until the other Black Hawk, with Captain Putnam at the controls, slid into place to his left rear.

While his copilot updated the Black Hawk's Doppler navigating device with their present location, O'Callaghan pushed his cyclic control forward and turned on an azimuth of due west out of Camp Casey Airfield, just north of Seoul, South Korea.

O'Callaghan estimated a 3.7-hour flight to the O'Bannion, arriving at midmorning. That would give them some rest on board ship before having to take off to fly the rest of the mission. Just as importantly, it allowed them to fly this leg in the daylight; saving their goggle time for the actual penetration of the hostile airs.p.a.ce. Not that flying through the narrow gap into the Gulf of Chihli wouldn't be flirting with Chinese airs.p.a.ce. O'Callaghan planned on keeping the chopper as low as possible to avoid radar and thus avoid flybys by the Chinese air force checking on them.

Once he was sure everything was working fine, O'Callaghan let his copilot take the controls. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, saving his energy for when he would need it.244.

Chapter 23.

The time was right. The Airlia had scanned the data banks, quickly getting up to speed on the present situation. A long finger reached out and lightly touched various points on the master control console. The program for first-echelon resuscitation was continued.

Checking the sensors, there was one other minor detail that needed to be taken care of. The alien instructed the computer to send a message to Earth.