“Yes, sir.”
“Can we beat the AN/APG-71?”
“That’s top of the line, sir. The best our Navy has.”
“Lieutenant, I know that. I want to know if we can beat it. Because if we can’t, our Tomahawk is not going to be able to do the job it’s supposed to.”
“Well, we built it, sir. We have the specs on it.” Seeing the look in his commander’s eyes, Granger quickly answered. “Yes, sir. We can beat the radar.”
“All right. Anything from the Springfield?”
“No, sir, but they had to have heard the message.”
“Good.” Breuber looked to the horizon, beyond which lay the shield covering Easter Island. “Not much longer now.”
Che Lu came up behind Elek. The hybrid creature was standing at the top of the tunnel that descended to the lowest level of Qian-Ling. Twenty meters in front of Elek, the holographic image of the Airlia was playing. The legs and arms were longer than a human’s, the body shorter in comparison. The head was large, covered with bright red hair. The skin was pure white, without a mark. The ears had long lobes that almost touched the shoulders. The eyes were bright red under fierce red eyebrows, and the pupils were elongated like a cat’s.
The figure wavered in the air, the descending corridor behind dimly visible. The right arm was raised up, a six-fingered hand on the end, palm open toward them. A deep, guttural sound echoed up the tunnel, coming from the figure, but the language was singsong. The figure spoke for almost a minute, then faded out of sight.
“Do you know any more than when we came in here?” Che Lu asked as Elek turned from where the image had been and spotted her.
“I know the key isn’t here. I know that the guardian doesn’t know where the key was sent.”
“That was important enough for all those men you brought here to die for?”
“If the key is not here, it allows others to search elsewhere,” Elek said simply. He regarded her with his red eyes. “What have you discovered? Anything worth the deaths?”
Che Lu shook her head and lied. “No.”
“There is something else I have learned, though,” Elek added. “A way we can open up a door to the outside world.” He turned and walked away, heading down toward the cavern. Che Lu followed, curious to see what could get them out of their current trap.
Elek strode among the black boxes that filled the floor and halted before a large one, about twenty meters wide by thirty long. He went to a hexagonal panel in the center of the short side. Che Lu could see that the hexagon was divided into numerous smaller, six-sided sections.
Elek pressed on several of them in a pattern too quickly for Che Lu to keep track. The panels were lit with an inner light, revealing high rune markings on each small section. Elek stared at it for a little while, then again ran his hands across the panels, almost as if playing a musical instrument, so quickly did his fingers move.
With a rumble, the black cover slid back. Che Lu moved to the side along with Elek to see what was revealed. Lo Fa came walking up, alerted by the strange noise.
“What is it?” the old man asked as the cover came to a halt. He blinked as he took in the form. “It is a metal dragon!”
A large, silvery device, ten meters long by four wide, rested on a cradle of black metal. It was indeed shaped like a dragon, with a high arced neck above a sleek body. The two eyes were dark red and glittered in the light coming down from the bright orb overhead. The mouth was open, revealing a row of black teeth. Two short, stubby wings poked out from the body, extending less than two meters on each side. It appeared to have been damaged at one time: A long black smear about a meter wide on the left side extended from just forward of the wing to the base of the tapered tail. At one point along the smear the silver skin had been breached, revealing wires and tubes inside.
“It is Chi Yu,” Che Lu said. “The Dragon Lord of the South who fought with Shi Huangdi!”
The moon highlighted the face of the Sphinx. Professor Mualama had watched the shadow of the night horizon creep down the face inch by inch over the last several hours, his attention caught between the marvel in front of him and searching the road leading to Cairo for Duncan to arrive.
He had located the block he thought needed to be removed. It was on the right paw, at the base. He’d knelt in the sand and cleared away the bottom of the stone with his bare hands. If he had had his own vehicle and equipment he would have tried to open it himself, but Hassar had left him standing between the paws after Mualama turned down his offer to return to Cairo. Duncan had gone with Hassar to try to contact UNAOC and get Sterling’s successor to put pressure on the Egyptians.
For the hundredth time, Mualama looked to the road, searching for his crew. He checked his watch. He walked between the paws once more, feeling the weight of the scepter in his backpack. He placed his hands on the stone and pressed his palms flat. He could feel the time, the millennia that had passed since the stone had been shaped.
He looked once more to the road.
What he didn’t notice was the figure standing on the temple wall that surrounded the body of the Sphinx. Wrapped in dull-gray robes, the figure had not moved once the entire evening, waiting as Mualama waited.
Captain Forster had walked through the entire ship, poking his head into every compartment where a member of his crew was, personally making sure they were all ready for the upcoming mission.
He could see it in his men’s eyes that they didn’t have much optimism that they would be able to escape. Hearing the Washington hit the island had been a rather devastating experience. If whatever was on the island could take down an aircraft carrier, what chance did they have? Plus, they had all been nearby when the Pasadena was destroyed by the foo fighters, hearing their sister ship go down into the depths, the sound like that of popcorn popping as bulkheads gave way.
After going on all decks, from the rear of the sonar sphere in the bow to the engine room adjacent to the reactor halfway back in the sub, he returned to the control room. Not long now.
Larry Kincaid studied the new imagery from the Hubble under a magnifying glass. The “Face” had definitely changed in the last forty-eight hours. He looked up at Forrester, who had just brought the photographs to the Cube conference room. “Well?”
“The black smear is an army of robots, average size about six feet long.”
“What are they doing?”
“Excavation,” Forrester said. He pointed. “These four piles are the rubble they’ve taken off the top of the ‘Face.’ A rather large amount. Estimates by imagery specialists put it on the order of… ”
“What are they excavating?” Kincaid interrupted the scientist.
Forrester slid another photograph across. “This is the latest. They’ve reached whatever it is, but they haven’t fully cleared the surface area. You can see this small area in the top right quadrant. Appears they’ve reached some structure made of the same black metal as the mother-ship.”
Kincaid’s pulse doubled its pace. “Another ship?”
Forrester shook his head. “I don’t believe so. It’s something else.”
“What something else?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The possibilities that he could imagine raced through Kincaid’s mind, and then he realized it was the possibilities he couldn’t imagine that scared him the most.