"Because the Airlia are coming." He turned to Nabinger. "Professor, what can you tell us about this room?"

"It's a control center," Nabinger said. He was looking at the console.

"Controlling what?" Che Lu asked.

"This." Nabinger waved a hand absently around his head. "This entire complex.

From what I can gather, this entire mountain was built to house"-he paused, his eyes running over high rune symbols-"to house the equipment in the other room that we pa.s.sed getting in here- and . . ."

"And?" Kostanov prompted. In reply Nabinger pushed his right hand down onto the panel. A red glow suffused the black top, outlining more high rune symbols.

"What are you doing?" Turcotte asked.257.

Nabinger ignored those around him, concentrating on what was before him. His hands hovered over the top of the console for a long minute. A group of hexagons, fitted tightly together, appeared. Nabinger pressed his hand down on the hexagon field in a certain sequence. Everyone in the control room took a step back as there was a loud humming noise. A crack appeared along the edges of the door in the far wall as it began to slide upward. Turcotte and the other Green Berets instinctively swung up the muzzles of their guns to cover the door, as did Kostanov and his men.

Nabinger walked through their line of fire and disappeared into the room.

Turcotte was next through and he was half expecting what he saw as he stepped through. Sitting in the center of a small room hewn out of the rock was a six- foot-high pyramid, the surface glowing with a golden haze that extended out a few inches from the material that it was made of.Turcotte also wasn't surprised when Nabinger walked right up to the pyramid and put his hands on the surface, the golden glow extending around the archaeologist as if he had become part of the machine.

Chapter 25.

Exactly on schedule O'Callaghan smoothly banked his aircraft away from the O'Bannion and headed for the sh.o.r.e. He adjusted the throttle for maximum fuel conservation and they were on their way, skimming along at fifty feet above the waves at 130 knots.

The sun was starting to settle in the sky and he knew that soon, just before they reached the sh.o.r.e, it would be dark, which was just the way they had it planned. Just under six hours of flying to the pickup zone.

The sound of automatic fire echoed dully into the chamber. Turcotte's head snapped up and he grabbed his MP-5 before hustling out the door, followed by the rest of his men and Kostanov. Turcotte had sent Howes and DeCamp to guard the entrance as soon as Nabinger had made contact with the pyramid.

Halfway up the side corridor they paused as a259.

loud explosion thundered down the rock walls, the sound multiplied by the confined s.p.a.ce.

Farther up they met the two Special Forces men, both of them covered in dust.

"We had to blow the entrance," Howes said. "The Chinese were bringing up a tank."

"What now?" Kostanov asked.

"We'll figure something out," Turcotte said. "What about where you came in?"

"It was on the other side of the large chamber but now it's blocked from the outside." "We'll get out," Turcotte said, wishing he were as confident as he hoped he sounded.

Inside the "Fort" the cables fell away from the ships. Through tunnels hooked in to the base of each ship figures moved, crews manning vessels they had last been on board over five millennia ago. The tunnels pulled back.

Without any visible sign of energy being expended, the ships smoothly lifted off the surface of Mars. As they gained alt.i.tude their paths began to interlace in an intricate dance, six lean talons, their tips pointed toward Earth.260.

Chapter 26.

Turcotte checked his watch for the third time in the last ten minutes. Looking up, he caught Kostanov staring at him. The Russian raised his eyebrows in inquiry and pointed at his own watch. Turcotte looked past the Russian toward Nabinger, who was now leaning against the golden pyramid, his entire body encased in the golden glow. He'd been like that for two hours.

"The Chinese are out there in force by now," Kostanov said.

"Yep," Turcotte replied shortly in his northern Maine accent.

"We can't go out the way you came in and we can't go out the way I came in."

Kostanov summed the tactical situation up succinctly.

"Yep," Turcotte said. Then he added his own tidbit. "And my exfil is going to be time-on-target in four hours. If we aren't on the PZ then, well, it's a long walk home."

"How far is your pickup zone?" Kostanov asked.261.

"Six klicks north."

"We can make it in two hours," Kostanov estimated. "If we can get out."

"If no one shoots us," Turcotte added.

"That, too, my friend, that too."

"What about you?" Turcotte asked.

"My men and I have long since missed our ex-filtration window. Perhaps if we got out and could make communications with our higher command again, we could arrange something, but I do not believe we will have the time."

"You can come with us," Turcotte said.

"I believe that is the only option," Kostanov acknowledged.

"Why did you pretend to be a freelancer working for the CIA on the carrier?"

Turcotte asked.

Kostanov rubbed the stubble of his beard. "Hard as it may be to believe, we Russians support UNAOC. We thought my pretending to be what you thought I was would be the easiest way to give that information up to UNAOC and get the Terra- Lei site checked out. After all, we caught quite a bit of public grief over the revelation that we'd kept secret a crashed Airlia craft in our possession for decades, much as you Americans suffered a publicity problem over Area 51. We wished to minimize the publicity fallout."

"I don't buy it," Turcotte said. "Not all of it."

Kostanov smiled. "You are right, my friend." The Russian sat down, leaning his back against his rucksack. Turcotte followed suit. The Chinese students were gathered around their professor talking quietly among themselves. Harker had his Green Berets in the main chamber, arranged in a defensive line in case the PLA broke into the262.

tomb, something Turcotte didn't think was likely to happen. He figured the PLA would be more than happy to let them starve in here. Kostanov's two men were with Harker.

"Let me give you some information," Kostanov said in a low voice. "Information that crosses national boundaries. Have you ever heard of an organization code- named STAAR?"

Turcotte shook his head.

Kostanov ran a finger along his upper lip, deep in thought. "Where to start?

Ah, it is very confusing, so I will just start with what I know and then move to speculations. I did tell you some truths on your aircraft carrier. I was a member of Section Four of the Interior Ministry. The lie was not telling you that I still am a member of Section Four. Like your Majestic, Section Four was dedicated to investigating extraterrestrial activity and discoveries. Like Majestic we knew that extraterrestrial life had visited Earth because we had the remains of an Airlia craft. We searched for more artifacts, as I told you.

"But we had another mission. It is a logical one if you think of it: we were to prepare for alien contact, most specifically prepare for hostile alien contact. In fact, we made the a.s.sumption that any contact would be hostile simply based on the fact that they would not be human and therefore would have different objectives and thus there would inevitably be a conflict of interests.

Also"- Kostanov smiled-"you have to remember, we Russians have historically always been quite paranoid, and for good reason. We've had Napoleon and Hitler knocking at the gates of Moscow. It263.

was not much of a stretch to look to the skies and see a threat from that direction.

"We had the crashed craft. We had intelligence reports about some of what your Majestic had. We knew at the least that you were flying the bouncers. Your security at Area 51 was not as good as you would have liked.

"We were aware of the discovery of the bomb in the Great Pyramid. We knew that because at the end of the Second World War we recovered the n.a.z.i archives from Berlin and had the after-action report of the submarine that discovered the high runes and map on the stones off Bimini that directed Von Seeckt and the SS to the pyramid. The n.a.z.is had accepted that the high runes were a language and were working hard at deciphering it. Fortunately, we rolled over Berlin and the war ended before they got very far.

"So as you can see, we had a wealth of information. In fact, from what we captured from the n.a.z.is"-Kostanov leaned closer to Turcotte-"we knew about Cydonia and the Face and the Great Pyramid on Mars and the Fort. We knew that it was connected to the Airlia. After all, why do you think we launched so many probes and missions toward Mars?"

Turcotte believe him. It wasn't just the logic of what he was saying, but also the bond Turcotte felt for the Russian special forces officer.

"But there is something more we did," Kostanov said. "We a.s.sumed the Airlia Base on Mars to be a mechanical outpost, run by a computer, perhaps even abandoned and dead, but we could not take the chance that it was active. Also we could not take the chance that you Americans 264.

would get to Mars first and claim whatever was there. After all, you already had the bouncers, we could not let you get that much more. So we put nuclear warheads aboard our probes that we launched toward Mars. The decision was made in the mid-sixties at the highest level of the Russian government to destroy the Cydonia site."

"But-" Turcotte began, stunned by this revelation, only to be cut off by the other man.

"As you know, we did not succeed."

Turcotte rubbed his forehead and waited, trying to a.s.similate what he was being told.

"This brings me back to what I first asked you," Kostanov said. "We investigated and we heard rumors, nothing substantial but the tiniest of whispers here and there, of an organization called STAAR. For a long time we thought it was an American agency. Perhaps part of Majestic. But soon we began to suspect it was something much bigger and much more frightening: STAAR seemed to transcend national boundaries and also seemed to wield power in many countries, including Russia, as we at Section Four were constantly frustrated in our quest for hard information on STAAR."

Turcotte waited, but the other man had fallen silent, his eyes hooded, deep in thought.

"And? Have you discovered who or what STAAR is?"

Kostanov grimaced. "No. Not for certain. We lost some good men, friends of mine, trying to find anything we could on it. We even captured an operative in the early nineties who we believed was a member of STAAR."

Turcotte could well imagine that person's fate.265.

Section Four most certainly had to have had access to the many information- gathering techniques perfected by the KGB. "What did you get from the operative?" he asked.

"Nothing directly," Kostanov said. "He died before we could extract information."

"The interrogators killed him?"

"No, he simply died. Like turning a light switch off. There was no evidence of poison or other trauma. He simply stopped living. His heart just stopped and he was dead. We could not revive him."

"You said 'nothing directly,'" Turcotte noted.

"Ah, yes," Kostanov's eyes were distant. "Naturally, we did an autopsy on the body and we found something very strange." Kostanov turned and stared at Turcotte. "The agent was a clone. Our scientists had done enough research into cloning and genetic engineering that they could tell by looking at the man's gene structure that he had been cloned."

Turcotte pondered that. "Who could be doing this?"

"I have a suspicion," Kostanov said. "One that I nurtured for many years without vocalizing for fear of ridicule and disbelief but one that has grown since hearing what he"-Kostanov pointed at Nabinger, who was still in the thralls of the golden glow-"received from the guardian computer under Easter Island."

"And?" Turcotte repeated.

"I believe STAAR might be the Airlia rebels, operating from a secret base and using human clones as their agents among us."

Turcotte stared at Kostanov. "What--" he be- 266.

gan, but then was distracted as Nabinger staggered back from the golden pyramid and collapsed on the floor, his eyes closed and his body in the fetal position.

Turcotte jumped up and ran over.

"Come on, Professor," Turcotte said, kneeling next to Nabinger, straightening his body and lifting his head. "Wake up."

Nabinger's eyes flickered open, but they were unfocused. "Oh, G.o.d," he exclaimed. "We've got to stop him."

"Stop who?" Turcotte asked as he got the other man into a sitting position.

"Aspasia."

"I thought he was the good guy," Turcotte said.

"No." Nabinger shook his head empathetically. "He's coming here to destroy us and take the mothership."267.

Chapter 27.

"I had it all backward," Nabinger said to his captive audience. "Aspasia was the rebel, the one who wanted to use humans as his slaves and exploit this planet for its natural resources. The Kortad"-he looked about at the strange mixture of Chinese, Russian, and American faces surrounding him-"the Kortad weren't different aliens. Kortad is the Airlia word for, for, well, as best I can make out, 'police.' And they just managed to stop Aspasia, but in doing so they were stuck here on Earth."

There was a brief silence as everyone absorbed that, before Nabinger continued. "The leader of the Kortad was an Airlia named Artad, or perhaps that is simply his t.i.tle. He dispersed those loyal to him after destroying Aspasia's base at Atlantis. Aspasia retreated, using the warships they had carried on the outside of the mothership to Mars, and an uneasy truce evolved. Artad had control of the mothership, but Aspasia had control of their interstellar communication device.268.

"That's why Artad's followers built the Great Pyramid as a s.p.a.ce signal. They put the atomic weapon in it to destroy it if the signal attracted the wrong group. They built the high rune signal into the Great Wall. They built this tomb to house their equipment. They dug out the great chamber in the Rift Valley and hung the ruby sphere over it, threatening to destroy the sphere and the planet if Aspasia tried to come back to Earth. They hid the bouncers in Antarctica and the mothership in Area 51. They hid several guardian computers around the planet to monitor things: one here, one at Temiltepec which Majestic uncovered last year, and there are more."

"Why is Aspasia coming back here now?" Turcotte asked, his mind reeling from Kostanov's suspicions that STAAR was an Airlia organization operating on Earth and Nabinger's new revelation that it appeared they'd had it all backward about the Airlia.

"Because he thinks the long standoff with the Kortad is over and he must think the war is over."