“Those tribes will never gather under one leader,” Crazy Horse argued.
Bouyer folded the list and put it in his pocket. “You have time to prepare. It will most likely be years before we meet again where mother foretold. At the Little Big Horn,”
“And your list?” Crazy Horse asked.
“A man I’ve never heard of. A soldier named Custer and several of his brothers, along with some other officers and men.”
“Why these people?” Crazy Horse demanded.
“Warriors. Brave warriors in one place. As Earhart foretold.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“God-damnit,” Captain Anderson cursed. The mitten on his 19ht hand was still smoking from his vain attempt to hold Ensign Graeheme out of the gate.
Frost had the crystal skull cradled in his hands. There was a blue glow in the center of it, and his hands were warm. He pressed the skull against his chest, feeling the warmth penetrate the layers of clothing.
Anderson turned to Frost. ‘’Where the hell did he go?”
‘’To deliver the message. As I told you.” Frost reluctantly put the skull back in the box. He glanced toward the southern horizon. The glow was brighter. “Dawn” was only a few days away.
“Using a person’s life to deliver a message?”
“It’s war,” Frost said.
“War against who?” Anderson demanded ‘’What the hell ‘as that?”
Frost was latching the top of the box, apparently unconcerned about the loss of the ensign or the captain’s anger. “I don’t understand myself, but the thing that destroyed the sky, le big sphere, that’s the enemy.”
Anderson didn’t give up so easily. “You didn’t tell me this thing would take him. Did you see his skin? It was burning him alive.”
Frost stood with difficulty, hefting the box. “My dear sir, we’re all dead. At· least he went quickly and served a purpose. Let us all hope for the same fate.”
CHAPTER NINE
The hatch to the control center opened and Foreman entered, twisting as he came in to meet the angled floor. The CIA agent vas the man who had involved Dane in this war so many years ago during the Vietnam War.
Two years was optimistic,” Dane said, turning away from updating himself on the current world situation.
“I know,” Foreman replied. He had a hatchet face and thick white hair. The recent weeks had been hard on him as he Shadow had launched several all out assaults against the planet. There were deep pockets under each eye and Dane could swear whatever dark color had been left in his hair was completely gone now.
Foreman had a long association with the gates. In 1945, Foreman’s brother had disappeared into the Devil’s Sea off he coast of Japan while on a war mission off the Enterprise. Then, assigned to Fort Lauderdale Air Station, Foreman had watched Flight 19-which he was supposed to have been a member of-disappear into the Bermuda Triangle. Since then he’d dedicated his life to discovering the secret of such places and in the process had learned something of the gates and the Shadow behind them.
Foreman took the sheet of paper that Ahana held out to him. “The Shadow’s craft took enough ozone from the upper atmosphere to deplete the planet’s supply by over sixty percent. The entire southern hemisphere will be unshielded in less than two months. People will be unable to expose their skin to direct sunlight. But even if they survive the radiation, the loss of crops and livestock will result in starvation within a year.”
“The bottom line?” Dane asked.
“Annihilation of the human race within eighteen months. Most of Europe and Russia will be unlivable much quicker than that-within the month due to radiation. Some pockets might live longer if they go underground and use stored food and hydroponics, but they’ll need energy and water. And once the oxygen cycle is broken because of the ozone depletion-” Foreman didn’t finish.
“Options?” Dane knew the answer, but he felt the need to ask anyway.
“None that we’ve come up with.” Foreman waited. When Dane had come out of the Devil’s Sea portal the previous day after shutting down the portal draining the core of the planet, he had said he knew of a possible way to stop the growing disaster.
Dane went to the small porthole and looked out. The dark line delineating the Devil’s Sea Gate was a few miles to the west. “Tell me about the Nautilus,” he said. “What?” Foreman was momentarily confused by the sudden shift.
“I had another vision,” Dane explained. “I saw Robert Frost again. Except this time he was onboard the Nautilus at the North Pole. The rest of the world was dead and they were the last survivors. If I remember rightly, the Nautilus went to the North Pole around 1960?”
“1958.” Foreman had worked at the CIA from the end of World War n until the present and knew much of the hidden history of the past five decades.
“Did you ever use the Nautilus to investigate the gates?” Dane asked. He knew Foreman had used both the submarine Thresher and a U-2 spy plane in 1968 to investigate the gates, both of which had been lost. Dane’s first encounter with a ate had occurred in Cambodia that year when his Special Forces team had been ordered into that country by Foreman to try to recover the U-2’s black box.
The fact that Foreman had not bothered to brief the team about the gate he suspected there or any other aspect of the mission had been Dane’s first exposure to the CIA man’s duplicity. As the two had been forced to work together recently, Dane had reluctantly accepted that much of what Foreman had done in the past had been because of the disbelief he had received in his quest to uncover what was behind the strange gates. However, Dane had also learned that old habits were hard to break.
Foreman’s pause of a few seconds told Dane the answer even before the CIA man spoke. “The Nautilus was commissioned in 1954. It was the first nuclear powered submarine. What most people don’t understand about the significance of that is that the nuclear power plant allowed it to stay submerged for weeks, even months. Before the Nautilus, submarines had to surface every day to recharge their batteries.”
“And?’ Dane wanted Foreman to get to the point.
“You know I spent many years researching the gates. Tracking down legends. Like the Bermuda Triangle.” Foreman nodded toward the porthole. “The Devil’s Sea. Others.”
Dane jumped ahead. “And one near the North Pole?”
Foreman sat down. “You ever read Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth?”
Dane nodded. “As a kid.”
“Do you remember it?”
“Not really.”
“The opening chapter is most interesting. It’s about deciphering a runic message.” Foreman looked at Dane. “Runes. The language of the ancients.”
Dane remembered the runic writing on the sail of the Scorpion written by a Viking warrior more than a thousand years ago, a Viking warrior who had become one of the many across time and worlds to help in this battle against the Shadow.
Foreman closed his eyes and recited from memory. “In sneffels, Yoculis craterem kem delibat umbra Scartaris Julia intra calendas descende audas viator, et terrestre centrum attinges. Kod feci, Arne Saknussemm.”
“Which means?” Dane asked.
‘It’s not classic Latin,” Foreman said. “A perverted form. But basically: Descend into the crater of Yocul of Sneffels, which the shade of Scartaris caresses, before the calends of July. Audacious traveler. And you will reach the center of the Earth. I did it. Signed, Arne Saknussemm.”