Finally they went to work on the desk with the jaws of life, carefully tearing sections of it away until they exposed the person on the other side. A fireman shone his light in, illuminating a young woman, her features covered with dust and blood. They carefully scooped her out and Dane finally let go. He rolled onto his back as the woman was strapped to a stretcher and hustled down the corridor and out to the surface.
“Want to come up?” the head rescue man asked him.
Dane slowly shook his head. He wanted to just lie where he was and for everyone to leave him alone. “There's three or four more missing. Maybe somebody else made it.” But he knew there weren't any more survivors, even an unconscious one. The building was dead and everyone who had been in it were dead. He knew it, but he had to go through the paces.
Dane got to his feet, hunched over under the collapsed ceiling. “Come on, Chelsea. Just a little further.”
Chelsea whimpered disapprovingly but she moved. Dane knew she knew what he did, but they could at least locate the other bodies. They slowly went down the remains of the corridor and by the time they reached the end of the void space, they'd planted three more flags where Chelsea had tapped her paw.
Dane finally turned her around and led her out, handing her up to rescuers who helped them out of the shaft.
“The woman's going to be all right,” one of them told Dane, slapping him on the back. “Couple of broken bones and a knock on the head, but otherwise she's going to be fine.”
Dane nodded. There was a lighter mood in the air. Fifteen bodies and one survivor, but that one was what everyone here had worked for. The reality of the dead would come home to all later, when they were in bed and their mind played back the crushed and mutilated bodies.
Dane shook hands and walked out of the wreckage. He gratefully accepted a cup of coffee from a Red Cross worker, but only after getting a bowl of water for Chelsea and watching her loudly slurp it up.
Dane removed his glasses and ran a dirty hand across his face. The headache wasn't as bad now.
“Mister Dane.”
Dane didn't even turn his head. “Mister Freed,” he said.
“I wasn't sure you heard me before you went into the building,” Freed began.
“You want me to help you with a rescue,” Dane said.
“Yes.”
“You don't seem very concerned,” Dane said, finally looking at the other man. “Or in much of a rush.”
“Time is of the essence,” Freed said, somewhat taken aback by Dane's comments.
“Isn't it always?” Chelsea pressed her head against Dane's leg and his hand automatically began scratching behind her ears. “I work through FEMA,” Dane said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “They contact me, fly me to the site, and then we get to work.”
“This doesn't fall under FEMA's jurisdiction,” Freed said.
“Everything in the States' falls-” Dane paused. “All right, why don't you just tell me what the situation is and why you want my help?”
“A plane has crashed and we need your help in finding survivors.”
Dane frowned. “I haven't heard of any plane crash on the news. And besides, Chelsea's a search dog, not a tracking dog.”
“The plane went down in Southeast Asia,” Freed said, “and it's not Chelsea we want. It's you.”
Dane slowly went to one knee and ran his hand through Chelsea's coat, from the nape of her neck to the root of her tail. It comforted him as much as it did her and right now he needed the comfort.
“The plane went down yesterday,” Freed continued. “We don't have much time.”
“Surely you have people closer,” Dane said.
Freed ignored that statement. “I have a limousine waiting and a private jet at the airfield. All I ask is that you go with me to California and listen to an offer. You say no, I'll fly you back wherever you like. Plus you get ten thousand dollars just for going to California.”
After a few moments, Dane finally spoke. “I don't understand. Why do you want me?”
“I think you do understand, Mister Dane. Because you're the only person we know of who ever came out of there alive.”
“Where-” Dane began, but Freed answered the question before it was asked.
“Cambodia. North-central Cambodia.”
The Lear Jet was two hours out of Washington. Only one man was in the passenger compartment, lounging in a deep leather chair. A single overhead light glowed over his head, otherwise it was dark in the cabin. He had long wavy hair that had turned completely white. His face was well tanned, the lines hard, as if cut from stone. Much had happened but one could still recognize the young marine gunner who had looked out over the ocean after Flight 19 had disappeared so many years ago, listened to the disappearance of the USS Scorpion and the SR-71 and sent a special forces reconnaissance team deep into Cambodia.
A fax machine was next to Foreman, hooked to the plane's satellite dish. The green light on top began blinking, then it gently puffed out a piece of paper. Foreman picked up the paper and looked at it as a second sheet came out, followed by a third.
Unlike Patricia Conners, Foreman was not surprised at the hazy triangle in the center that blocked the view, nor did he suspect there was anything wrong with the equipment.
He reached into a briefcase and pulled out several similar images. He placed a new one on top of an old one and held the paper up to the overhead light.
A frown creased his aged forehead at what he saw. He reached down and picked up the satellite phone resting on the arm of the chair. He punched in auto-dial. A voice answered on the second ring.
“Yes?” the woman's accent was strange, hard to place.
“Sin Fen, it's me. I will be landing in twelve hours.”
“I will be waiting.”
“Any activity?”
“It is as you predicted. I am watching.”
“Cambodia?”
“Nothing yet.”
Foreman glanced at the paper once more. “Sin Fen, it is changing.”
“Smaller or larger?”
“Larger this time and the fluctuations are severe. More than I've ever seen.”
There was no reply, not that he had expected one.
“Sin Fen, I’m going to try the orbital laser. Also I am going to check the other Gates.”
“It is as we discussed,” Sin Fen said, which was all the agreement he was going to get.
“Do you-” Foreman paused, then continued-”sense anything?”
“No.”
Foreman glanced at another piece of paper. A surveillance report. “Michelet has contacted Dane.”
“That is also as we discussed,” Sin Fen said.
“I’ll see you shortly,” Foreman said.
The phone went dead. Foreman opened up his briefcase and pulled out a slim laptop computer. He hooked the line from the satellite phone into the computer. Then he accessed the NSA and typed in the commands for what he wanted.
Finished with that, he then punched the number for his superior in Washington. He always believed in acting first, then getting permission, especially when dealing with small minds. The phone was picked up on the second ring.
“National Security Council.”
“This is Foreman,” Foreman said. “I need to speak to Mister Bancroft.”
“Hold.”
Foreman listened to the static. He hated talking to anyone else about his project. He was considered an anachronism in the Black Budget Society of Washington, a man with much power dealing with an unknown entity. As such he engendered much animosity. With over sixty billion dollars a year pumped into it, the Black Budget had many strange little cells, searching into different areas, from Star Wars defense systems, to the Air Force's classified UFO watchdog group, to Foreman's Gate program.