Turcotte took the Calico submachine gun and placed it in his lap. He swiftly fieldstripped it down to its component parts, balancing them on his thighs. He lifted up the firing pin and checked to make sure the tip wasn’t filed down. He put the gun back together, carefully checking each part to make sure it was functional. When he was done, he slid the bolt back and put a round in the chamber, making sure the select lever was on safe.
“What do you think is going on?” Simmons asked nervously, wishing he had his camera. The first C-130 was moving ponderously toward the end of the runway. The other smaller plane had taken off like a helicopter and disappeared to the north.
“Holy shit!” Franklin exclaimed. “Do you see that!”
Simmons twisted and froze at the sight that greeted him. Franklin was up and running, stumbling over the rocks, heading back the way they had come. Simmons reached for the small Instamatic camera he had secreted inside his shirt when the night sky was brilliantly lit for a few seconds and then Simmons saw and felt no more.
Turcotte held on to the web seating along the inside skin of the aircraft as the nose lifted, and then they were airborne. He caught a glimpse of a bright light somewhere out in the mountains through the far portal. He glanced over at Prague, and the man was staring at him, his eyes black and flat.
Turcotte calmly met the gaze. He knew the type. Prague was a hard man among men who prided themselves on being tough. Turcotte imagined Prague’s stare intimidated less-experienced men, but Turcotte knew something that Prague knew: he knew the power of death. He knew the feeling of having that power in the crook of the finger, exercising it with a three-pound pull, and how easy it was. It didn’t matter how tough you pretended to be at that point.
Turcotte closed his eyes and tried to relax. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he wasn’t going to get anything up front here. Wherever they were going, he’d find out when they got there. And whatever he was supposed to do when they got there, he’d find out when they told him. It was a hell of a way to run an operation. Either Prague was incompetent or he was deliberately keeping Turcotte in the dark. Turcotte knew it wasn’t the former.
The V-22 Osprey circled the south shore of Lewis and Clark Lake at ten thousand feet. In the rear the team leader listened on the headset of the satellite radio as he was fed the latest from the Cube.
“Phoenix Advance, this is Nightscape Six. Thermals read clear of humans in MSS. Proceed. Out.”
The team leader took off the headset and turned to the three members of his team. “Let’s go.” He gave a thumbs-up to the crew chief.
The back ramp slowly opened to the chill night sky. When it was completely open, the crew chief gestured. The team leader walked to the edge and stepped off, followed closely by the other men. He got stable, aims and legs akimbo, then quickly pulled his ripcord. The square chute blossomed above his head and he checked his canopy to make sure it was functioning properly. Then he slid the night vision goggles down over his crash helmet and switched them on. Glancing above, beyond his chute, he could see the other three members of his team hanging up above him, in perfect formation. Satisfied, the team leader looked down and oriented himself. The target area was easy to see. There was a long section of shoreline with no lights. As he descended, he checked the terrain through the glow of the goggles and started picking up more details. The abandoned ski lift was the most prominent feature he was looking for, and once he spotted it, he pulled on his toggles, aiming for the high terminus of the lift. There was a small open field there, where years ago beginning skiers had stumbled off as the chairs deposited them.
Pulling in on both toggles less than twenty feet above the ground, the team leader slowed his descent to the point that when his boots touched down it was no more of a jar than if he had stepped off a curb. The chute crumpled behind him as he unfastened his submachine gun. The other men landed, all within twenty feet. They secured their chutes, then took position underneath the top pylon of the ski lift, on the highest bit of ground within ten miles.
From there they could oversee the jumbled two miles of terrain lying between them and the lake.
The area was called Devil’s Nest and it was rumored that Jesse James had used it as a hideout over a century ago. The rolling plain of Nebraska abruptly dropped off into sharp hills and ridgelines, starting right where the men were and running up to the edge of the man-made lake — the result of the damming of the Missouri River ten miles downstream. A developer had tried to turn it into a resort area a decade ago — hence the ski lift — but the idea had failed miserably. The men weren’t interested in the rusting machinery, though. Their concern lay in the center of the area, running along the top of a ridgeline pointed directly at the lake.
The team leader took the handset his commo man offered him. “Nightscape Six Two, this is Phoenix Advance. Landing strip is clear. Area is clear. Over.” “This is Six Two. Roger. Phoenix main due in five mikes. Out.”
In the air Turcotte watched Prague speak into the satellite radio, the words lost in the loud roar of the engines. He could feel the change in air pressure as the C-130 descended. A glance out the window showed water, then shoreline. The wheels of the 130 touched earth and the plane began rolling. It stopped in an amazingly short distance for such a large aircraft and the back ramp opened, as the plane turned around, facing back down the runway.
“Let’s go!” Prague yelled. “Off-load everything.”
Turcotte lent a hand as they rolled the helicopter off and into the shelter of the nearby trees. He was impressed with the ability of the pilots. The runway was little more than a flat expanse of rough grass between dangerously close lines of trees on either side.
As soon as they had the helicopter and equipment out, the plane was heading back down the strip, the ramp not even fully closed as the plane lifted off into the night sky. Less than a minute later the second plane was landing and the process was repeated. In a few minutes they had all three helicopters and personnel on the ground.
As the sound of the second plane faded into the distance, Prague was all business. “I want camo nets up and everything under cover, ASAP. Let’s move, people!”
CHAPTER 3
“I don’t know what’s wrong with this thing,” the graduate student said, twisting knobs and adjusting controls on the machinery in front of him. The sound of his shrill voice echoed off the stone walls and slowly died out, leaving stillness in the air.
“Why are you so sure there’s something wrong with the machine?” Professor Nabinger asked in a quieter voice.
“What else could be causing these negative readings?”
The student let go of the controls of the magnetic resonance imager that they had carried down here, with great effort, into the bowels of the Great Pyramid.
The effort had taken two forms: in the past twenty-four hours the actual physical effort of carrying the machine through the narrow tunnels of the Great Pyramid of Giza down to the bottom chamber and, for a year prior, complex diplomatic effort to be granted permission to bring the modern equipment into the greatest of Egypt’s ancient monuments and turn it on.
Nabinger knew enough about the politics of archaeology to appreciate the opportunity he was being given to use this equipment here. Of the original seven wonders of the ancient world the three pyramids on the West Bank of the Nile were the only one still standing, and even in ancient times they were considered the greatest of the seven. The Colossus at Rhodes — which most archaeologists doubted had even existed as reported — the hanging gardens of Babylon, the Tower of Babel, the Tower of Pharos at Alexandria, and other reported marvels of early engineering had all disappeared over the centuries. All but the pyramids, built between 2685 and 2180 B.C. They were weathered by the sand long before the Roman Empire even rose, were still there when it fell, centuries later, and were standing strong as the second millennium after Christ’s birth approached.