Like a moth drawn to light, Tolya slowly walked into the chamber. Not only directly ahead, but left and right, the bodies stood like a forest of the dead. Tolya had served in the GRU and had been in Siberia, seen the secret gulags and the horrors perpetrated there, but even that didn’t compare to this.
His gaze came closer, able to make out details, and he saw a heavy wooden chair bolted to the floor. Leather straps were looped over the arms and legs. Tolya realized that someone had bolted people into that chair, left them there to stare at the dead. His gaze went up. Rails lined the ceiling, with chains dangling here and there. He realized that was the way each body had been conveyed to position over a stake and then lowered.
Tolya could sense the men behind him, peering in from the doorway. He knew he should give some orders, get moving back down the corridor, but he was unable to stir. He tried to see a far wall in any direction, but all that was visible were bodies. There could be thousands here. He looked at the closest one. The face was brown, stretched, mummified, tight against the bone underneath. The naked body was just as shriveled. Tolya could detect no sign of violence other than the wood stake the body was impaled on… more than enough to cause a slow, agonizing death that Tolya was loath to imagine too closely.
Then he noticed something else in the room: a large wooden cart with a metal device on it. He finally stirred, taking a few steps closer to the apparatus. There were large glass bottles on the lower level of the cart. Thin rubber hoses led from the bottles to the metal device on the top. Other hoses came out of the top of the device, with large-gauge needles on the end. There was writing in German on both the bottles and the metal device. A swastika was emblazoned on the side of the cart.
Tolya stared at it for almost a minute before he connected the setup with the state of the bodies and realized what the device was designed to do. Draw blood.
The bodies had been drained to just before the point of death, before being lowered and impaled.
Why was so much blood needed? The question reverberated in Tolya’s mind, and he took an involuntary step backward. He shook his head, turned on his heel, and marched to the door, shoving the commandos out of the way. He pulled it shut behind him. “We continue.”
Eyes looked back at him blankly. Tolya raised his voice. He jabbed the muzzle of his sub down the tunnel. “We continue!”
“Wild.” Sergeant Boltz was looking down between his feet at the surface of the Black Sea twenty-five feet below.
The bouncer was motionless after a rapid flight across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean, then across the middle of Turkey to their current position. The interior was packed with not only the twelve men of the A-team but their weapons, equipment, and ammunition.
Strapped tight against the side of the bouncer was the black coffin that had been recovered from Ngorongoro Crater. And carefully packaged inside the coffin was the atomic bomb that Quinn had procured for them at Turcotte’s request.
“All right.” Captain Billam was leaning over a large plastic case that contained demolitions. He spread out two map sheets. “Let’s pay attention.” The men gathered around, the inner circle kneeling, the outer peering over their shoulders.
“Let’s work some contingencies for going into Moscow and Cairo.”
Elek had disappeared inside of Chi Yu, the beast of Chinese legend, crawling through a panel just under the tail. Che Lu and Lo Fa were left standing outside, marveling at the detailed dragon the metal had been formed into.
Both were startled as the dragon lifted off the floor of the cavern several feet, hovering silently in the air. Che Lu could well imagine the fear such a beast would inspire among the peasants of ancient times.
The neck twisted, the dragon head going to and fro. Then the body slowly turned clockwise in a complete circle before the robot settled down on the floor once more.
The panel opened, and Elek exited.
“What good does that do if we are stuck in here?” Lo Fa demanded.
Elek looked down at the old Chinese man. “When the time comes, we will not be stuck in here.”
The tunnel finally ended. A steel door blocked the way ahead, and Tolya held up his fist, stopping the small group of commandos with him. They had slowly spiraled down for so long that he estimated they were over a mile below the city of Moscow. Whatever was behind that door had to be very important, of that he had no doubt. And the one he tracked was behind that door, the direction finder assured him.
Hassar was startled out of a fitful sleep as the door to his bedroom was kicked open. He sat up, then froze as two small red dots centered on his chest. He could see the two men holding the submachine guns flanking a third shadow, a tall figure dressed in a black robe. That figure scared him much more than the men with the guns.
“I have done as instructed, Al-Iblis!” Hassar held his hands up in supplication, giving the figure a name that was whispered about throughout the Arab world. “I have not allowed them a permit.”
“It is far past permits now,” Al-Iblis said. His voice was low and barely above a whisper, yet it hissed as if a snake were speaking. “Why did you not tell me they had the key?”
Sweat was pouring off Hassar’s forehead. “I did not know what it was.”
“You lie,” Al-Iblis said. “You have been here too long. You wonder what secrets the Highland of Aker holds. You are a fool. You do not even know who Aker is, do you?”
Hassar was thrown off by the question… all Egyptologists knew who Aker was. “Aker was the lion-god who guarded the gates of the horizon and allowed the sun to enter the sky each morning and leave each evening.”
Al-Iblis laughed, but there was no humor to it, and the harsh sound sent a chill down Hassar’s spine. “A god! Aker was a bureaucrat given a job which he did only too well.”
Hassar was totally still, afraid to intrude on the thoughts of the creature in front of him. He could not see the face hidden by the dark hood, and he had no desire to. As far as he knew, no one had ever seen Al-Iblis’s face. The name was a legend in the Middle East, a figure that Western intelligence agencies had a skimpy file on, who skirted around all the terrorist groups; a name mothers used to scare their children into going to bed.
Al-Iblis took a step closer to Hassar’s cowering form. “If it is to be about gods, then so be it. The time for pretense is fast fading. You must seal off the Plateau with your soldiers and allow no one in, no matter what happens. I will deal with the infidels. Is that clear?”
Hassar’s head bobbed in agreement. “Yes, Master.”
“Captain!” Yakov’s voice echoed through the cavern.
Turcotte had the duffel bag full of files, grabbed those he deemed important with only a cursory examination of the diagrams or photos enclosed. “What?”
“I think this is it.”
Turcotte rushed to the center of the chamber, where Yakov was standing over a crate he had smashed open.
The Russian lifted out a metal box as Turcotte arrived. It was steel, inlaid with gold and black bands, about two feet long by ten inches wide and high. The top was hinged. Looking closer, Turcotte recognized the black bands as being made of the same metal as the mother-ship and other Airlia artifacts.