Atlantis (31 page)

“We might not be coming back this way,” Ingram said.

Ariana stared at Hudson for a long moment. She could still hear movement in the jungle around them. “All right.” She turned to the others. “Let’s go.”

“You can’t--” Ingram began Ariana chopped her hand through the air.

“Like he said, it’s his decision. I’m not responsible for him. When he took Hie-Tech’s money that ceased. And he killed Mansor by allowing him to go out there when he had a SATCOM dish the entire time. I don’t give a damn about him any more” She turned. “Let’s move.”

They walked forward and passed underneath one 85 foot wing, Ariana and Carpenter facing forward, Ingram looking over his shoulder until Hudson and the B-52 disappeared from sight.

*****

“It’s a damn graveyard!” McKenzie hissed. The Canadian’s face was pale, his eyes wide as he took in what lay across their route of march.

Dane didn’t say anything. His mind was racing beyond, sensing how close Flaherty was. And where his old teammate was, he knew there would be answers.

But even Freed appeared shaken. They were at the mouth of a narrow ravine. A small creek ran down the center of the draw, passing them, heading toward the large stream they had crossed earlier. But what caught the attention of Freed and the other’s were the skeletons littering the draw, a veritable carpet of shattered white bone.

“This has to be hundreds of people,” McKenzie said. “And look at the weapons.”

There were numerous AK-47s scattered among the bones, the black of the metal contrasting vividly against the white bones.

“A battalion,” Freed said.

“A battalion?” McKenzie repeated.

“A Khmer Rouge battalion disappeared in this area and was never heard of again,” Freed amplified his statement.

“What wiped them out?” McKenzie wondered. He bent down and picked up an AK-47. With his other hand he picked up a fistful of expended brass. “They fought, fought hard.” McKenzie looked around, as if expecting something to come out of the mist and trees.

“We can’t do anything here,” Dane said. “Let’s keep going.”

“I ain’t going through there!” McKenzie protested. “Something killed all these men! Look at this!” The Canadian picked up a skull. The left side of it was cleanly sliced off. “What the blazes did this?” He pointed to their left front. A line of skeletons were against the rock wall of the draw, as if they had been literally blasted into the stone. “What did that?”

“Let’s go,” Dane said quietly.

“Bullshit!” McKenzie was adamant. “I’m not going through there.”

Dane shrugged and started walking. Bones crunched under his boots. There was no way to avoid stepping on them.

“Hold on!” Freed called out.

Dane paused but didn’t turn.

“You don’t come with us, you’re on your own,” Freed yelled to McKenzie. “No pay and no ride out of Cambodia.”

McKenzie laughed. “Dead men can’t spend money and don’t need rides.” He turned, the other Canadians right behind him, and they headed back in the direction they’d come from.

“You coming?” Dane asked Freed. “Or was the plane and its data more important than the people?”

“I’m coming.” Freed tapped the one mute spectator to all this on his shoulder. “Sticking with us, Doctor Beasley?”

Beasley watched the Canadians disappear in the mist, then his shoulders slumped, the decision made for him. “All right.”

*****

Mitch Hudson had watched the others fade into the mist before he slid his small backpack off. He was lying underneath the right wing of the B-52, the metal over his head like the massive flying buttress of a medieval church. Propping his injured leg up on a log, he opened the flap to the pack and pulled out a small black box. He was unlatching the top to the box when he heard something crashing through the undergrowth to his left. He paused, eyes darting fearfully in that direction.

Still watching the jungle, he flipped the lid open. He grabbed the coil of thin wire that lay on top and threw it out, away from himself. It extended for twenty feet and lay on top of the broken foliage. The small high frequency radio was his last resort, something he had made sure Hie-Tech agreed to before he committed to work for them. The Hie-Tech base camp at Angkor Wat was to monitor the set frequency, 24 hours a day. And they were to send help when Hudson called. The one piece of information that Hudson had focused on that Hie-Tech had gotten from the CIA was that high frequency radios seemed to work inside this strange area.

He knew that the chopper he had called in with the SATCOM beacon had been destroyed, but he was sure Hie-Tech knew that also and would approach with more caution, landing outside of the Angkor Gate and sending someone in for him on foot. Before he turned the radio on, he felt the outside of his shirt pocket, his fingers tracing the outline of a computer disk. It held all the data from
Lady Gayle
prior to the crash and it was his ticket out. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Hie-Tech would send another rescue team just for him, but he knew they would for the disk.

He twisted the on-knob. The small screen glowed. The lithium battery would only give him fifteen minutes of air time, but he didn’t anticipate needing that much. A minute to contact Hie-Tech, then the rest could be spent guiding them into here.

Hudson picked up the small headset and slipped it on his head, putting the small boom mike just in front of his lips.

“Big Daddy, this is Angler. Over.”

There was just the hiss of static in his earpiece.

“Damn,” Hudson muttered. He hunched forward over the radio set. “Big Daddy, this is Angler. I have the data. Over.”

The static grew louder, but there was no intelligible reply. Hudson’s major concern was that Hie-Tech had shut down listening. He knew the radio was working and he felt reasonably confident the HF was getting through.

“Big Daddy, this is Angler. I have the data. I need recovery. Over.”

*****

Foreman leaned forward in his chair. There was a lot of static, but there was no doubt there was a voice, someone trying to transmit on the high frequency band.

“Big .....,this....gler. .......”

“Can you get a fix on that?” Foreman asked his communications expert.

“No, sir. It’s very weak and dispersed.”

“Anything from Hie-Tech?”

“No, sir.”

Foreman checked a commo board. Sin Fen had been quiet for too long. Foreman looked to the side as the printer spewed out a sheet of imagery from Conners. The pattern was still growing. There was a dark swirl in the mist above the Angkor Gate, with lines branching out, reaching to the other gates. It looked like a massive tornado was centered above the Gate, high in the atmosphere. The storm was getting ready to break.

*****

Hudson thought he heard something. He pressed his hands against the small earpieces, muffling any outside noise.

“Say again. Over.”

Then he realized the noise wasn’t coming from the headset. He sat up bolt upright. He knew there was someone or something behind him. He just knew, just as he knew he was a dead man. Ripping off the headset, Hudson spun around. There was nothing. His chest heaved in relief, then the breath froze in his throat as a half-dozen green elliptical spheres, like oversized footballs three feet long, drifted down from above, surrounding him completely. He looked further up and could see more of them issuing forth from the open bomb bay door of the B-52.

Hudson’s hand gripped the mike tightly. “Big Daddy, this is Angler. Big Daddy this is Angler.”

He could now see that there were two bands of black crisscrossing the front of each sphere and the bands seemed to be moving, were glistening with a liquid blackness, reflecting the gloomy light back at him

“Big Daddy, this is Angler. I have the data. Big Daddy, this is Angler. I have the data.” Hudson closed his eyes and chanted the words like a mantra.

*****

Foreman was studying the imagery when the static-ridden voice calling for Big Daddy broke for two seconds, then a heart stopping screech sounded as clearly as if the man issuing it forth was in the control room with them. Every operator paused in what they were doing and looked up at the speakers bolted to the front of the room.

Then there was only the solid hiss of static.

Foreman raised his voice. “Get back to work!” He threw the imagery down on the desktop.

*****

Hudson had the radio clutched to his chest. One of the green ellipses had just churned through the trunk of a tree less than ten feet from him, sending splinters flying into him and causing him to scream. He reached up and felt his right side where blood was flowing.

“Oh, God. Oh, God,” he whispered as he backed up until he smacked into the metal of the plane.

The creatures formed a semi-circle in front of him, then began closing the distance.

At that moment, a blue beam shot of the jungle mist and hit him straight on, knocking the air out of his lungs. He felt the metal of the plane slide along his back as the blue beam encompassed his body and picked him up off the ground. He looked down and could see the ellipses reacting, coming up for him, when he was rapidly pulled forward toward the source of the light, passing over them.

*****

McKenzie paused, the other three Canadians bunching up behind him.

“You’re lost, aren’t you?” Teague, the next senior man whispered hoarsely.

“It’s that way,” McKenzie pointed, but the wavering fingertip belied the surety of his words.

“Oh, man, I knew we shouldn’t have taken this gig,” Teague said. “There’s no such thing as easy money in this part of the world. Everyone’s got a angle. We could have just--” he paused as something crashed through the jungle to their right. The muzzles of four M-16s swung in that direction. Then there was something to the left and all four men spun about in that direction.

The woods around them exploded in moving forms. McKenzie fired on full automatic into something that bounded forth on four legs toward him, the bullets slamming it back. The only impression he had were rows and rows of gleaming teeth.

One of the men screamed as his body exploded in a gush of blood and viscera. The tip of a green ellipse, black teeth churning, came out of his chest.

McKenzie backed up, slamming a fresh magazine into his weapon. Teague was at his side, firing at an ellipse, the bullets bouncing off.

Another creature came bounding in, body of a lion, snake’s head, scorpion stinger for tail, jumping through the air and landing on the fourth Canadian, claws ripping him open, the stinger darting forward and sinking into his face, right between the eyes. The snake’s head rose up and hissed as the stinger dug through bone and entered the man’s brain. The body jerked spasmodically.

McKenzie moaned, seeing the man’s fate.

Teague shook him out of his shock by firing a magazine on full automatic across his front.

McKenzie pulled the trigger but his finger froze at the last second as a golden beam sliced out of the fog and hit him and Teague, enveloping the both of them, pressing them together.

They were lifted off the ground, above the creatures, and then drawn into the mist.

*****

Dane paused, hearing the distant sound of firing that abruptly cut off. He sensed inside his head, more than heard the screams, which were too far away to carry. He glanced at Freed who made no comment, then at Beasley. The fat professor’s pale face was bathed in sweat.

“We’ll make it,” Dane said. As he turned away from the other man he paused. Dane stood perfectly still, his eyes closed. Slowly his head swiveled back in the direction they had come.

“Chelsea,” Dane whispered, not even aware he had also spoken out loud.

“What’s wrong?” Freed asked.

Dane ignored him. He focused on the mental images. There was still nothing from Sin Fen, but now he knew why. What he saw was distorted and fuzzy, but he could understand it. The view was through a series of lines and splotches that Dane knew were branches and leaves. And the perspective was low, less than a foot or two above the ground. But he could hazily discern two helicopters and black suited men walking about a blasted clearing. For just a second the entire image focused tight and he could see very clearly Sin Fen lying on the ground, trussed up tightly, her eyes closed, her face slack.

“Damn,” Dane muttered.

“What?” Freed repeated.

Dane pulled out his pistol and pointed it straight between Freed’s eyes. “Your boss is screwing everything up. He’s taken down my partner.”

Freed didn’t even blink. “Your partner? The weird woman? You didn’t even know her before she showed up. She had Agency written all over her.”

“So?” Dane stared at Freed. “Don’t you get it? We’ve left your corporate fighting far behind. This is much bigger than all that. I should just kill you right now,” Dane said, but he paused as the mental image changed again. Chelsea was moving, running away from the base camp, heading toward the west. Coming to Dane.

No!
Dane projected the command as forcefully as he could.

Chelsea halted, her head swinging about, searching for her master. The jungle surrounded her, full of strange noises and scents. She didn’t like this place.

Chelsea’s tail rocketed back and forth. She whined.

Easy, girl. Easy.

Dane was aware of Freed moving back, out of the aim of his pistol. Dane lowered the gun.

Rescue, Chelsea. Rescue.

Chelsea whined once more. She didn’t know where the voice was coming from. It was her master but it didn’t sound quite right. Her golden eyes peered into the shadows of the jungle, searching.

Then a picture came into her brain. Something she had just seen. The nice woman lying on the ground. Chelsea understood that was who her master wanted her to rescue. But she sensed he was in danger also. Her head swung back the way she had come and then to the west, indecisive.

Go!