Area 51: The Reply-2 (24 page)

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 York

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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 hell 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 encompassed 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-

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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.

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"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.

"Goddamn," 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."

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"I don't trust that bitch 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'Bannion 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-class 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 ever

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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 participate 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 latitude. 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 nobody 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."

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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 airspace. Not that flying through the narrow gap into the Gulf of Chihli wouldn't be flirting with Chinese airspace. 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.

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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.

Larry Kincaid didn't break anything when he got the order to abort the attempt to stabilize and reorient Surveyor, which was a case of considerable restraint on his part. The message had come in the clear from Mars just moments ago and UNAOC had relayed the "request" from the Airlia not to have the region overflown again.

UNAOC didn't consider the probe important anymore, and there was no desire in New York or

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anywhere else on the planet to go against the wishes of the Airlia.

"What the hell do you want me to do with Surveyor?" Kincaid asked his manager.

"I don't give a shit, Larry," his boss answered. "Just keep it away from the Airlia base."

"You ever wonder why they don't want us to get a closer look?" Kincaid asked.

"No." Seeing Kincaid's look of disgust, the manager amplified his answer.

"Don't you get it? We're dinosaurs here, Larry. When the Airlia get here in those ships our space program is going to look like a bunch of hand-pulled carts next to an Indy 500 car. Things are changing and this entire program is going to be out of date in another day."

"It's our program," Kincaid said. "What makes you think the Airlia are going to share their technology with us?"

"Just do what you're told. Surveyor's been a disaster anyway. Let it go."

Kincaid rubbed a hand across his forehead and bit back his sarcastic reply. He walked back to the control room and sat down. He started calculating to see if he could put Surveyor on a stable orbit that didn't overfly Cydonia, when he sensed someone behind him. He turned in his seat. The pale, white-haired man was standing there, sunglasses looking in Kincaid's general direction. Kincaid stared at him, but it was hard to win a stare-down when the other person wore shades.

"What?" Kincaid finally snapped.

"Stabilize Surveyor as you planned," the man said.

"Say what?" Kincaid looked at the man's clear-

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ance tag. There was only one name written there: Coridan. The clearance level said ST-8. The tag's scarlet, almost black, clearance indicator color showed that ST-8 was higher than anything Kincaid had ever dealt with before.

Coridan held out a piece of paper. "I've calculated what you need to do to stabilize the craft's orbit immediately. Once the burn is done, shut everything down and put the on-board computer to sleep and shut down the IMS."

"And then?" Kincaid asked.

"And then wait."

"I just got ordered to stand down," Kincaid said. "Why should I do this?"

"Because I have authorization higher than your boss's." Coridan tapped his badge. "And because you don't trust the Airlia and I don't either."

Turcotte had witnessed death many times in his time in the army. He'd once been part of an elite counterterrorist force in Europe where he had done his own share of killing. But what he was about to witness bothered him because it all seemed so pointless, man against man, when there was so much more at stake.

Harker had deployed his team on the hillside above the entrance of the tomb.

The snipers had bolted together their rifles and zeroed their night vision scopes on the Chinese soldiers manning the machine gun at the entrance to the small courtyard. The rest of the team was waiting, ready to slide down the mountain.

Harker turned to Turcotte, who was lying next

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to him. "I don't like this," he whispered. "What's so fucking important in that tomb?"

"I don't know," Turcotte answered. He didn't have the heart, time, or energy to make Harker feel better.

"It's your call," Harker said.

"Do it." Turcotte said the words flatly.

"Fire," Harker said in a slightly louder voice.

The two sniper rifles fired at the same time, a jet of flame coming out of the end of the barrel, the only sound the working of the bolt sliding back in the breech. Each round was a hit, knocking back the two soldiers manning the machine gun.

The sniper rifles continued firing as the rest of the team slid down the mountainside, weapons at the ready. By the time they got to the entrance level, all twelve Chinese soldiers were dead.

"Let's go," Turcotte said to Nabinger. He grabbed the other man's arm and helped him down the steep hillside.

Howes, the demo man, was already at the doors, looking them over. Turcotte walked over to the vehicle. A radio set was inside, the screen lit. He knew that meant that the dead operator had probably been doing regular checks in with higher headquarters and when he failed to make the next scheduled contact, they could expect PLA troops in force.

"Stand back," Howes called out.