Still, he knew he had no choice. He must go to Ararat and do as ordered. He told his driver to move forward while waving his arm to the troops behind, indicating they should follow. Two dozen tanks and twice as many armored personnel carriers lurched forward.
The guards saw the convoy coming and stood uncertainly in the road behind their thin wooden pole. One of them, an officer, stepped up just behind the pole and put his hand up, indicating for Kashir to stop. The general responded with a burst from his fifty-caliber machine gun.
The front of his APC crashed through the barrier. Other vehicles were firing, killing the guards as they tried to run away. Kashir had his driver pull off to the side to let the tanks take the lead.
He put the binoculars to his eyes and looked toward the mountain. So close, yet he knew so much could happen in the next seventeen miles. He keyed his radio. “Faster!” he ordered.
Mike Turcotte climbed up the side of the bouncer and slid inside. Quinn, Mualama, Kincaid, and Yakov watched him enter. Turcotte could smell the fear coming off them, no matter how much they tried to control it. They all knew they had been targeted for death and just barely escaped. He’d learned early in his military career that fear was a part of combat and could not be dismissed.
“What happened to Che Lu?” he asked, noting the blood splattered on Quinn’s uniform.
“She was killed.” Quinn’s hollow voice indicated his shock.
“I know that,” Turcotte said. “I just buried her. How did she die?” “Ricochet off the bouncer. Killed her instantly.”
Turcotte sat down on the floor of the bouncer feeling the little energy he’d gained drain from him. His earlier suspicious thoughts about the old Chinese professor and her timing of the opening of Qian-Ling had faded away as he dug into the sand with his bare hands. He remembered her concern for him when he had searched for the Mission.
He looked at each of the four closely. Quinn was in the pilot’s seat, a laptop extended across him, screen glowing, but his eyes were dull. Yakov, the large Russian, was standing, his presence filling the interior, the top of the bouncer just inches above his head. Kincaid had his own laptop clutched in his hands.
And Mualama — Turcotte frowned as he looked at the African archaeologist. His initial impression of fear and anxiety from those inside didn’t extend to Mualama, who appeared quite unconcerned about recent events. A metal briefcase was at his feet and Turcotte assumed that it held Burton’s manuscript.
“What have I missed?” Turcotte asked. “Major?” he said in a sharper voice, getting Quinn’s attention.
Quinn answered. “I’ve got no contact with anything at Area 51 and—”
“The equipment was destroyed and everyone left there arrested,” Turcotte said succinctly. “Area 51 is shut down. Who did it?”
“Uh—” Quinn was flustered. “I don’t know.”
“They were Americans,” Turcotte said. “Were they under the influence of Guides?”
“They were military,” Quinn said.
“Acting under whose orders?” Turcotte pressed.
“They had an ST-6 clearance,” Quinn said. “I’ve accessed the NSA and copied some of their transmissions.”
“We have an ST-6 clearance,” Turcotte said. “Who else has one?” “We had an ST-6,” Quinn said. “Not anymore.”
“Who else has one?” Turcotte asked again.
“Majestic — and us after them — were the only groups that had one as far as I know,” Quinn said. “ST-6 was invented by Eisenhower specifically for Majestic so they could operate in case of alien attack.”
Yakov was nodding as if this made perfect sense. “So there’s another Majestic.”
“Why do you think that?” Kincaid asked.
“Because that’s the way covert organizations operate,” Yakov told him. “Always have a backup. Which also means if they were willing to destroy Area 51, that there is another Area 51 somewhere where they’re operating from and where they’ve taken Duncan.”
Turcotte listened to the Russian and agreed with the logic, but he also thought that would require a hell of a lot of efficiency on the part of the US government, something his years of service had indicated didn’t happen often. He was tempted to ask Yakov where the backup for Section IV was, but refrained. “What is our backup?” Kincaid asked.
No one answered that.
“Aspasia’s Shadow sent a message to the UN,” Quinn said. He turned his computer around so they could gather and look at the screen. The message played through to the end, then Quinn closed the top.
“Truth and lies mixed together” was Yakov’s summation. “The issue is — which was which?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Turcotte said.
“Why not?” Yakov asked.
“Because Aspasia’s Shadow isn’t really human,” Turcotte said. “And Artad definitely isn’t. We could spend the rest of our lives trying to figure this crap out, but that’s the bottom line. Even if Aspasia came here long ago to protect the planet, it might be a case where the cure was as bad as the disease. He certainly hasn’t been a friend of mankind over the millennia. Nor has Artad.” Turcotte remembered something. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the medical papers he’d taken from the clipboard and handed them to Quinn. “I want you to check these.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are we going to stay here in the desert forever?” Yakov asked.
“We can’t trust the government,” Turcotte said, “so we’re going to have to go to a place where we can trust who is in charge.”
“And that place is?” Yakov pressed.
“Head for North Carolina,” Turcotte ordered Quinn.
“And then?” Yakov asked. “Do you persist in searching for Ms. Duncan?” Turcotte stared at the Russian, meeting his gaze. The silence lasted several seconds. “She’s not a priority right now.”
Yakov nodded. “That is a good decision, considering we don’t even know who she is.”
“We do what we planned on doing. The Master Guardian and Excalibur. Nothing’s changed.”
Yakov raised a bushy eyebrow. “How can you say that?”
“We’re alive,” Turcotte said. “We’ve got a bouncer. We’ve got all our data. We’re still in business.” He looked around at the others. “Everyone agree? I think it is what Che Lu would advise us to do.”
Slowly the other four nodded.
“Good. Let’s get going, then.”
The naval battle in the Strait of Taiwan was over quickly. The Taiwanese navy fought bravely but had never expected to face the brunt of the Chinese navy without any American aid, despite the lack of a standing treaty. There had been a tacit assumption among the ranking officers of Taiwan’s military that an aggressive move by the mainland would be met by a strong response from the United States and Japan simply in light of those countries protecting their own interests in the Far East. The Americans simply had no forces to deploy. The Japanese were quiet, calling up their reserves but keeping all their forces inside their borders.
The air battle was lasting longer, but the Chinese commander didn’t wait to gain complete air superiority. The invasion fleet set sail across the hundred-mile-wide stretch of water, every ship packed with troops. Overhead, Chinese rockets, guided by technology stolen from the West, roared through the air. Massive explosions peppered key military targets throughout the island. Half the rockets, though, were aimed at population centers to spread fear and panic. Their warheads contained chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.