“Think about Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat,” Beasley said. “The moats the Khmer put around the city. I’d say the Khmer were trying to imitate what was done at Atlantis except they didn’t have the ocean. They had to make their own water supply and insure that it would always be there.”
Dane was listening to Beasley but he was more concerned about what was across the stream. If that radio call had been real and Flaherty was really out there then-Dane started. If Flaherty had sent that message just a few days ago…
“Let me have the PRC-77,” Dane said to Freed cutting off Beasley’s excited rambling.
“Why?”
“If that message you played for me was legit, then my team is still in there and they have commo,” Dane said.
Freed pulled his backpack off. Dane took it and lifted up the top flap. He saw the faded green paint on the top of the radio. He turned the frequency knob, the clicking noise almost comforting, reminding him of missions long ago, dialing up frequencies in the dark by feel. He screwed in the whip antenna, then turned the radio on. He dialed up the emergency FM frequency for that last mission, then took the handset.
“Big Red, this is Dane. Over.”
Dane waited for five seconds, then pressed the transmit button again. “Big Red, this is Dane. Over.”
Still nothing.
“Big Red, this is Dane. If you can hear me, break squelch twice. Over.”
“Watch out,” Freed hissed, grabbing Dane’s arm and pointing to the west. A large golden circle was forming directly opposite them in the mist, a mile away.
The radio crackled with two squelch’s, then a quick burst of Morse code. Dane’s mind was still working on the code, interpreting the letters, making them into words, as he raised the mike again. “Big Red, this is-” Dane paused as the letters came together in his head:
N-O-V-O-I–C-E
He dove down as a lightning bolt of gold flashed out of the center of the circle, heading directly toward their location. Freed grabbed Beasley and pulled the portly scientist down behind the cover of the stone rampart. The bolt struck with a thunderous crack. Dane heard stone shatter and felt himself peppered with fragments. He rolled onto his back and looked up. A large chunk of the rampart had been blown out, the stone splintered.
“You OK?” Freed asked, slowly getting to his feet.
“Yeah,” Dane said. Beasley was staring at the hole in the wall.
“No voice,” Dane said. “That’s what the Morse was.”
“Figure it out a little faster next time,” Freed said.
“You all right?” A voice echoed up to them from below, McKenzie calling out.
“We’re OK,” Freed yelled back.
“What the blazes was that?” McKenzie demanded.
“I don’t know. Get back to your security position,” Freed ordered.
“Security?” McKenzie was incredulous. “Against thunderbolts out of the mist?”
“Get back,” Freed said.
Shaking his head, the Canadian did as ordered.
“Do you have a Morse key?” Dane asked.
“Nope.”
“Damn,” Dane muttered.
The radio came alive again with dashes and dots crackling out of the speaker. Dane pulled a small pad out of his breast pocket and rapidly copied them down. When he recognized that the message was repeating itself, he stopped copying and began translating.
D-A-N-E-B-I-G-R-E-D-D-O-N-T-S-E-N-D-V-O-I–C-E-G-O-T-O-G-R-I-D-7-8-2-9-4-3 W-I–L-L-T-R-Y-T-O-C-O-V-E-R-Y-O-U
Dane looked up from the pad and through the newly blasted hole in the rampart at the mist. Flaherty was out there. Alive.
Freed had his map out, checking. “That coordinate is north of where the plane is down. About ten klicks.”
Dane stood. Without a Morse key he couldn’t ‘talk’ to Flaherty and it was obvious his former team leader wasn’t going to be sending much more than the terse message they’d just received. There was no way he could check on the MILSTARS issue like this. He looked at the map.
The grid was direct center of what looked to be a large, depression shaped like a rough rectangle, about seven kilometers wide by twelve long. The dark green marking covering the entire area indicated thick jungle. Of course, a notation on the bottom of the map informed the reader that the data represented was not verified. Dane noted that the area inside the depression held no contour lines and no detail, as if the map makers had simply made a best guess. He remembered Beasley’s comment on the plane about the blank areas on ancient maps. It appeared there were still blanks on modern ones too.
Dane looked up. “It’s out there,” he pointed to the right front.
“We go to the plane first,” Freed said.
Dan shook his head. “No.”
“Listen, this is my mission-” Freed began.
“Fine,” Dane said. “You go to the plane and take the Canadians with you. I’m going to that grid coordinate. Flaherty said he’d cover us if we went to the coordinate he gave.”
“What kind of cover can he give?” Freed demanded.
“I don’t know,” Dane admitted, “but I’ll take anything. You go to the plane, I don’t think you’ll get any help.”
“We’re wasting time standing around here jawing,” Freed said. He led the way down the interior stairs, Dane and Beasley following. “Let’s move out,” Freed ordered the Canadians.
“What happened to that chopper?” McKenzie asked, the other three men standing behind him, fingering their weapons uncertainly.
“That’s why we couldn’t fly in,” Freed said. “That fog does something strange to electromagnetic devices.”
“That was no fog that knocked that chopper down,” McKenzie said. “That was no fog that about blasted you guys to little pieces.”
“Let’s move,” Freed ordered.
“I don’t-”
“You move now,” Freed said, “or you can walk home. The only way you’re getting on the helicopter to get back to Thailand is if you stay with me and I’m going in there.”
“Sounds familiar,” Dane said.
Freed ignored him. “Move out.”
Dane didn’t move. “To where?”
Freed hesitated. “How about we go to the plane, then north to the grid?”
Dane shook his head. “We don’t want to spend any more time than we have to in there. Ed must have a reason he wants us to go to that grid and he’s already inside. He must know about the plane, too. I trust him and I think we should do what he says. I’m going to the grid.”
Dane could see Freed look past him to the shattered rampart of the watchtower. “All right. But only if we then go to the plane.”
Dane saw no need to respond to that. Even with Flaherty ‘covering’ for them, whatever that meant, he wasn’t overly optimistic about making it to the grid coordinate.
The Canadians spread out and led the way down the ridge into the river valley, Freed, Dane and Beasley following them.
Dane felt the same feeling of fear and distress rise up inside of him, but he could control it better now after years of entering destroyed buildings and disaster areas. He focused his mind on the immediate task of climbing down the hill.
“You came well supplied,” Ariana remarked as Carpenter lay out a length of blue detonating cord. The two of them were in the center of the console area. Directly below their feet, according the plane’s plans, lay the center fuel tank. They’d left Ingram in the communications area watching over Hudson, waiting to see if they received any more messages from Flaherty in response to their request for help once they left the plane.