He closed his eyes and tried to force his oxygen-starved brain to think through the overwhelming exhaustion and pain. He’d trained in high altitude and the cold many times in his Special Forces career and he tried to recall what he had learned. He was higher than he had ever been. His instructors had beaten one thing into him about working in the mountains — gravity could be your friend or your enemy, depending on which direction you were heading and how fast. He considered those words of wisdom. He needed to go down, and do it quickly. He looked below at the Kanshung Face on the north side of Everest. Gravity could be bis friend, but one slip and he would fall for a very, very long time.
There was one option. In a way Turcotte was glad he couldn’t really think it through and figure the odds of success, because he had no doubt they would be very low.
He hooked the ice ax onto his harness and grabbed the nylon strap attached to the front of it. He clipped the snap link on the end of the strap to the safety rope. He paused for a moment, amazed that he had succeeded against the other groups that had raced to this spot to try to claim the sword. The corrupt SEALs from Aspasia’s Shadow; the Chinese and the Ones Who Wait, sent by Artad; and his climbing partner and former watcher, Professor Mualama, who had been corrupted by a Swarm tentacle — all were now dead, their bodies scattered about the mountain.
Turcotte took the end of the rope, where the one SEAL had cut it, and laboriously tried to make a knot, thick enough so that it would not fit through the snap link. It took him several attempts and almost ten minutes of work before he achieved this simple task.
Taking the ice ax in his free hand again, Turcotte put his back to the mountain and faced outward, staring out over the Himalayas below him. It was dark, dawn still hours off. The stars glittered overhead and the moon was low to the west, its beams reflecting off the snow-covered peaks. Other than the nearby bodies, there was no sign of mankind as far as he could see. The silence was overwhelming, not even the wind, which had been his constant companion on his way up the mountain, was blowing. It was the most peaceful scene Turcotte had ever witnessed. It was serene and it was deadly.
Turcotte jumped outward with all his might.
The first piece of climbing protection — a piton — already weakened by Mualama’s fall, tore free of the mountain. Like stitching being ripped apart, the rope popped succeeding pieces of protection from their perch and Turcotte fell, swinging to the west as each piece held for just a moment, the effect jarring him slightly and curving his trajectory before free-falling again. His climbing harness dug into his thighs and waist, but the pain was barely noticeable.
Turcotte slammed against the side of Everest, on the sheer Kanshung Face, still falling, still being swung to the west. The impact knocked what little breath he had out of his lungs and he gasped for air. He came to a halt for a moment as a piton held for a few seconds. He twisted and looked about, mouth open, lungs straining. The northwest ridge was twenty meters away. So close, yet so out of reach.
Then Turcotte dropped abruptly as the next piton holding him pulled free. The pendulum effect swung him toward the ridge and he reached the last piece of protection, where the ridge met the face. It held for the slightest of moments. Enough for Turcotte to get his bearings — he was less than two meters from the ridge. Very close, yet still too far. He braced his feet against the Kanshung Face and as the last piton gave way, he pushed off, leaping to the side, swinging his ice ax, arm fully extended.
The tip of the ax caught for a moment in the ice at the very edge of the ridge, holding him in place as the rope hurtled by. Then the ax gave way and he slid, desperately slamming it at the ridge time and time again. It caught once more and he hung there, dangling from the ax. He twisted his body to face the rock.
Dully, he realized the rope would now be heading down and when it reached its fullest extension, the weight would pull him off the mountain and he would follow the equipment to his death.
Maintaining a one-hand grip on the ax handle, most of his weight on the strap from it stretched taut around his wrist, with the other hand he swung Excalibur. The blade severed the rope a second before it was fully extended. Turcotte followed through the swing and jabbed Excalibur at the ice and rock of the ridgeline. The sword cut through the ice and into the rock, penetrating a few inches. Using the leverage of sword and ice ax, Turcotte slowly maneuvered himself off the sheer face and onto the ridge. He pulled the sword out and held it against his chest.
He rolled onto the almost knife edge of the ridge and lay on his back, gasping for air and staring up at the stars. Only twenty-nine thousand feet to go.
Three hundred feet under the water, an undersea habitat was joined to the leg of an abandoned oil rig platform. Inside the habitat, strapped to a steel gurney, was Lisa Duncan, former presidential science adviser and the one who had initiated the investigation into Majestic-12 and Area 51. She’d been kidnapped from Area 51 and brought here where she met Dr. Garlin, who claimed to be a member of a new Majestic-12 committee. This had occurred after it was discovered that Lisa was not who she appeared to be. Who she really was, however, remained a mystery. While under the control of Aspasia’s Shadow she had partaken of the Grail, and was now immortal, something that was doing her little good in her present predicament.
She was a slender, dark-haired woman, covered with a white robe. On her head was a crown made of three bands of metal, an ancient artifact that had been carried out of Egypt by the high priest during the Exodus. Leads from the crown went to an object on a gurney next to her, something else that had been carried across the desert millennia ago: the Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark was three feet high and wide by four feet long. Gold plating covered the surface. On the open lid were two sphinxlike objects with glowing red eyes. The wires from the crown ran into the inner lid of the Ark. A thin, previously hidden screen had been pulled down, revealing a slightly curving, black surface. Just below it was a series of two dozen small hexagonal buttons with a rune on each one.
Silver-haired Garlin stood next to the Ark, wearing a white labcoat. He stood perfectly still, watching the black surface as colors flickered across it. His face was expressionless except for a slight twitching on the left side, a muscle out of control, but it didn’t seem to bother him in the least. A thin trail of blood was seeping from his left ear, but that also was ignored.
The black shimmered, flickered, then came alive with an image. Garlin leaned forward to look at what was displayed: a scarred mothership lifting off a planet’s surface. The area around the launch site was crowded with people, troops holding them back. For a moment the vision focused on a small child near the front of the crowd, then it swept back. As the mothership rose, the planet’s landmasses came into focus. Garlin noted the details.
Then the view shifted to the mothership moving through the vastness of space, going from one jump point to another at faster-than-light speeds.
The screen went black and then the mothership appeared again, this time looping into the edge of a planetary system at sub-light speed, but still traveling at a tremendous velocity. A cargo bay door opened and a smaller craft edged out as the mothership passed just inside the farthest planet. The craft was saucer-shaped, with a bulge in the forward center rising up and two large pods in the rear providing power. Like the mothership, its surface had also been damaged in battle. Unlike the mothership, its surface was not black metal, but rather a grayish compound. While the mothership headed back into deep space toward a jump point, the saucer flew on, toward the inner planets.
An image of Earth appeared. The craft was heading for it. Garlin took a step closer to the screen. Duncan moaned and twisted, fighting against the restraints and the invasion of her mind. The vision of the craft and Earth blanked out.