“I am not concerned about them being after us,” Von Seeckt said. “I am concerned that we only have seventy-two hours before the mothership flies.”
General Gullick did not look like a man who had just been awakened five minutes ago. His uniform was well pressed and his face clean shaven. Major Quinn had to wonder if Gullick shaved his face and skull before he went to bed every night for just such an occurrence as this — always ready for action. It suddenly occurred to Quinn that maybe the general never slept. Maybe he just lay there in the dark, wide-awake, waiting for the next crisis.
“Let me hear it from the beginning,” Gullick ordered as the other members of Majic-12, minus Dr. Duncan, straggled in.
There wasn’t much to tell. Quinn summarized the information an excited security chief had called in from Dulce.
In reality, Quinn realized, as he recited the brief list of facts concerning the break-in and the abduction of the reporter Simmons and the theft of photos from the archives, they knew more here at the Cube, because it was obvious from the description from the guards and the female scientist who’d been on shift that it had been Von Seeckt, Turcotte, Reynolds, and Nabinger acting in concert.
“I underestimated all of them,” Gullick said when Quinn was done. “Especially Von Seeckt and Turcotte.”
Kennedy leaned forward. “We’re in trouble. They’re going to go to the media with this Simmons fellow.”
“How far into conditioning was Simmons?” Gullick asked.
Quinn was puzzled. What were they talking about?
Kennedy consulted his notepad. “They were sixty percent into phase four.” Gullick looked at Doctor Slayden. “What do you think?”
Slayden considered it. “I can’t say for sure.”
“Goddammit!” Gullick’s fist smashed into the desktop. “I’m tired of people bullshitting me when I ask them a question.”
The room was silent for several moments, then Slayden spoke. “They disconnected Simmons before treatment was complete. That had to be a shock to his system, and the way his mind will react to that, nobody knows. If nothing else happens, the sixty percent he did have will be enough to assure that Simmons will be discredited if he speaks publicly. He’ll fit in with all the other wackos, to use a rather unscientific term.”
“What about the photos they stole?” General Brown asked.
“They were of the high rune tablets,” Gullick said.
“Even if Nabinger can decipher the language, it will be quite a while before other scientists can verify his translation. The tablets are not a problem. Even if they go to the media, it will take a little time before anyone starts believing their story. They really don’t have any proof.”
Gullick’s voice was void of emotion, but a vein throbbed in his forehead. “All right. Then we’re still back at the original problem — Von Seeckt and Turcotte. They’re the threat, but I think at this point we can handle them for a little while. Long enough, at least, for us to finish the countdown. That’s all that matters.”
Quinn found that a little hard to believe. What about afterward? he wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut.
He knew that question would only earn him grief, so he chose another one. “What about the foo fighters?”
“We’ll deal with that and this new problem too,” Gullick snapped. “Prepare everything to move up twenty-four hours.”
“But—” Quinn began. The general cut him off again with a glare.
“I want the hangar opened tomorrow,” Gullick said, “and I want the flight to be tomorrow night.” Gullick looked around the table. “I think everyone has a lot of work to do, so I suggest you get moving.” As they all got up, his voice halted them. “By the way. I want the orders on capturing Von Seeckt and his crew changed. It’s no longer capture at any cost. It is terminate with highest sanction.”
CHAPTER 27
Just north of Monument Valley, Capitol Reef National Park was right in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. This time of year it was virtually deserted. In fact, in a few weeks the gates would be locked for the winter snows. The lack of people, and out-of-the-way location, were two reasons Turcotte had selected it as their meeting point. The location put a lot of distance between themselves and Dulce.
He drove in past the empty Ranger station and followed the road around. At the first campsite he spotted the van.
Kelly was standing outside, stun gun in hand, watching his truck. She relaxed when she saw him step out. There was a concrete walkway at the end of the campsite, going along the top of the cliff on which the site was located. It afforded a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains — or would have if the sun was up.
“Good to see you,” Kelly said.
“How is everyone?” Turcotte asked, stretching his arms out.
“Johnny’s semiconscious. Whenever he gains consciousness, he’s delirious. I don’t know what those people did to him but it’s bad. Von Seeckt’s sleeping inside. Nabinger is looking at photos from the mothership hangar.”
“Has he gotten anything?” Turcotte asked.
“What about you?” Kelly asked in response. “What happened? What was done on sublevel one?”
“I don’t really know,” Turcotte answered honestly and vaguely. He walked to the side door and slipped in, Kelly following.
“What have you got?” he asked the archaeologist.
“Better wake up Von Seeckt,” Nabinger said. “He’ll want to hear this.”
It took Von Seeckt a few minutes to get fully awake and then they all gathered around Professor Nabinger. He held a legal pad covered with pencil marks. “First you have to understand that my knowledge of the high rune language is very rudimentary. I have a very small working vocabulary, and to compound that fact, there are symbols here that — although I believe they mean the same as similar symbols from other sources — have slight differences in the way they are marked.
“The other problem is that the symbols that represent what we could call verbs are most difficult to make out because of the variations in tense, which change the basic symbol.
“Beyond the simple deciphering of the symbols and the words they might mean,” Nabinger continued, “there is an additional problem to working with a picture language. The ancient Egyptians called hieroglyphics ‘medu metcher.’ That means ‘the gods’ words.’ The word hieroglyphs, which is Greek, refers specifically to the drawings in temples. It is difficult for us in the modern day to understand a language that was developed to explain the religious and mythical—”
“Wait a second.” Turcotte was tired and had had a long night. “You’re talking about hieroglyphics now. Let’s stick with the high runes and what they say.”
Nabinger was tired also. “I’m trying to explain all this to you so that you can take my few translations in the proper context. It would be wrong of us to superimpose our own culture and ideas upon what was written by a culture with a totally different set of values and ideas.” He tapped the photos. “And here we are dealing with what appears to be an alien culture. We don’t have a clue if their perception of reality is the same as ours.”
“We’re flying their ships,” Turcotte noted. “It couldn’t be that far off.” He thought of the pyramid and the golden glow above it and mentally reconsidered his last statement.
“And not only that,” Kelly added, “but didn’t you tell us earlier that it appears this high rune language was the precursor to all of mankind’s written languages and probably served as the starting point for those languages? So if the roots are common, we must be able to understand it better than if they were totally alien.”