The screen came to life with a new image.
The two standing stones and lintel were now part of a circle of similar stones. Five sets of two upright, each topped with a lintel stone. And around them a continuous circle of lintel stones on top of smaller upright ones. It was obvious that the site had been ravaged at some time, as some of the stones were cast over, including one right next to the gate. Garlin’s mind recognized the structure, but the Swarm tentacle was too focused on what was being shown to pick up the message.
Duncan was twisting on the table, pushing hard against the straps holding her down. Her face was taut with agony, her skin paler than usual as the alien virus strove to replace the vast quantities of blood she had lost.
On the screen there was a paved road near the stones, indicating it was from a more recent memory. Garlin was leaning forward. There was a sign on a post. It came into focus and he could read the letters: Stonehenge.
Garlin immediately shut down the Ark of the Covenant. He removed the crown from Duncan’s head. He then connected the table with Duncan to the Ark table and released the brakes on the wheels on the bottom of both. He slowly pushed both into the corridor and back into the escape pod.
Inside the chamber, the Swarm began preparing the pod for launch.
The sniper had been on the derrick towering high over the abandoned oil platform in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico for several hours now with no sign of Simon Sherev or his fellow Israeli commandos. He had the muzzle of the Heckler & Koch PSG-1 resting on a railing, aimed at the elevator where the men had gone carrying the Ark of the Covenant.
He knew something had gone wrong. Sherev and the others had been gone too long without updating him on the situation.
His options, however, were limited. Entering the elevator to go after them was not a good idea. If whoever was down there had overpowered Sherev and the five commandos, the sniper knew he stood little chance of surviving. So he waited and watched. He’d made a radio call on the emergency frequency, detailing what little he knew, but he had no idea if the message had been picked up.
Three hundred feet below him, on the Gulf floor, a black sphere fifteen feet in diameter separated from the undersea habitat and began moving to the east underwater, slowly reducing depth until a mile from the platform it broke the surface and moved through the air, staying low, less than ten meters above the wave tops.
The sniper saw the black sphere but it was already out of range and moving away. He had no doubt that it was not of human origin. Cursing, he reached for the radio on his combat vest. It was FM, which meant it didn’t have much range, so there was no way he could make contact with Israel. However, he felt that he had to make some sort of effort to inform someone of the location of the Ark and what he had just seen. He switched to the emergency shipping frequency for the area and began to broadcast once more, hoping someone would be close enough to pick him up.
The mothership was empty except for Turcotte and Yakov. They ignored entreaties from various officials to speak to them as Turcotte lifted the craft into the sky and turned to the east to head toward the mainland. His head still hurt, but nothing like it had. It was more like a strong headache now, and given all he had been through the past few weeks, not something he paid much attention to.
The adrenaline rush of saving those on Easter Island — and the Pacific Rim — was wearing off and the exhaustion from his Everest experience was once more taking over. Turcotte felt as if he would never be rested or feel up to strength again. He knew he needed to call Quinn and see what the latest information was. Hopefully Space Command was tracking Aspasia’s Shadow’s Talon in addition to Artad’s. At the moment, Turcotte truly could care less about either.
Where was Duncan? Was she in the Gulf of Mexico? Turcotte wondered why he cared anymore. She had lied to him, manipulated him into getting involved in the entire Area 51 fiasco in the first place. And Aspasia’s Shadow’s pointed references to his own past being a lie — Turcotte felt a surge of anger. All the lies, all the deaths, and there was still so much unknown, buried underneath a mountain of deception.
The West Coast of the United States appeared on the horizon. Turcotte spotted two F-16s to the south, turning in his direction. He knew the military was still jittery and the world wasn’t completely at peace yet.
Turcotte keyed the mike. “Quinn, inform the Pentagon we’re entering US airspace with the mothership.”
“Roger that.”
“Do you have anything for me?”
“A sniper on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has reported a craft coming out of the water and flying away to the northeast.”
“Is Space Command tracking it?”
“I’ve sent an alert — nothing back yet.”
“What else?” Turcotte adjusted course, turning more to the east from south as he realized there was no longer any need to head to the oil rig.
“I’ve got some interesting stuff both on Tunguska and a man named Tesla.”
“‘Tesla’?” Yakov repeated the name. “The Kurd at Ararat mentioned that name.” “He seems to be connected with the event at Tunguska,” Quinn said.
“Connected how?” Turcotte asked.
“From what I’ve been able to find,” Quinn said, “I think he may have shot down the Swarm scout ship.”
CHAPTER 10: THE PRESENT
The Swarm pod was less than five meters above the wave tops and practically invisible in the darkness. Lisa Duncan was still securely strapped to the gurney, no longer connected to the Ark of the Covenant. Crammed in next to the tables was Garlin, hunched over and waiting.
The pod flew over the southern English shoreline between Weymouth and Bournemouth, the lights of both cities clearly visible on either side. It raced over eastern Dorset until it reached the Salisbury Plain, where it reduced speed. Its objective was outlined ahead by several lights, but there didn’t appear to be anyone about — not unexpectedly, given the early hour.
A solitary set of headlights raced along a nearby road, then disappeared in the distance. The pod moved forward until it was directly above the lit area. It paused there, scanning the ground with penetrating radar, which revealed nothing, then moved to the northeast and slowly settled on the grassy plain, just outside a fence surrounding the compound.
Mary Keene had volunteered to work an extra shift so that some of her married colleagues who had been on extra duty during the recent world war could go home and see their families.
What she hadn’t told her supervisor was that she didn’t want to go home because she was afraid of what messages he might find there. Her only daughter was in the army and had been stationed in Seoul, South Korea. She’d seen the images downloaded from the spy satellites of what had happened to that city.
As long she didn’t know for sure, it wouldn’t be true. Keene couldn’t bear to think about it, so she focused on her screens with more attention than usual. She was inside one of the metal buildings set on heavy springs deep inside the complex. She was among a dozen operators watching their screens at a long, curved table.
Her area of observation was the North Atlantic, a region that had seen relatively little action given recent world events. She had access to three KH-14 spy satellites that observed from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast of Europe.
She sat up straighter as she noticed activity. A very fast thermal trace, arcing from the Gulf of Mexico, across the Atlantic, across the coast of England came to an abrupt halt in southern England. Keene accessed her computer, correlated the stopping point, and discovered there was no airfield in that location. It couldn’t have been a helicopter — it had moved too quickly and too far. In fact, as she entered the flight data, it had moved too quickly to be a top-of-the-line military jet.