It followed the other Valkyrie and disappeared into the dark.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dane looked through the binoculars, ignoring Chelsea’s uneasy whine. The Devil’s Sea gate was a black wall to the north, extending ten miles across and a mile into the air. Radar also indicated it went a mile deep into the ocean. He was on board the USS Salvor, classified by the Navy as an auxiliary rescue and salvage class vessel. Two hundred twenty-five feet long and fifty-one feet wide, it was smaller than the destroyer that lurked on the horizon, providing them with a modicum of security.
Towed behind the Salvor was the FLIP, lying low in the water. All except the most essential electromagnetic equipment was turned off on both vessels, reducing their EM signature to a minimum. Dane echoed Chelsea’s unease at being this close to a gate. He could sense the presence of the Shadow, an alien evilness, biding its time, waiting to strike again. He was on the starboard side of the Salvor’s bridge, feeling the cool ocean breeze on his skin.
Dane had always been different from others, and Sin Fen had been the first person he’d met like himself, with the unique ability to sense things others couldn’t and to hear voices and have visions of things. She had explained it to him as best she could, and as best she knew, but given the fact that she had held back her own secrets, he wasn’t sure how much of what she had imparted to him could be counted on.
She had told him that they were different because their brains were abnormal. That the speech center on the right side of their brains, which was underdeveloped and not used by most humans, was the source of most of their difference from the rest of the humans race. Sin Fen had told him that early humans had had a basic telepathic ability before they were able to communicate with language, and it was centered on the right side of the brain in the speech center. Once a spoken language developed, that ability became dormant and eventually disappeared from most of the population with the exception of throwbacks like Dane and Sin Fen.
Dane had never known his parents, growing up in orphanages and foster homes until he was seventeen and joined the army. Sin Fen had also claimed to be an orphan. As he stared at the darkness of the gate, Dane had to wonder where she — and he — truly came from.
He sensed someone coming and turned as Colonel Loomis came out of the bridge. “A Deepflight submersible is on site above the Challenger Deep.”
“What happened to Shashenka’s brother?” Dane asked. “The one who went into the Chernobyl gate?”
“We don’t know. He disappeared. He took a fatal dose of radiation the minute he went into the reactor, so we assume he’s dead.”
“Did he go through the portal there?”
“The video cameras blanked out when he went in,” Loomis said. “When they got power back, there was no sign of his body.”
Dane could see the patches on Loomis’ camouflage fatigue shirt, and he noted the combat infantry badge on his chest and the Special Forces patch on his right shoulder indicating combat service with the unit. He figured the CIB most likely came from the Gulf War or perhaps one of the many peacekeeping operations in the years subsequent to that. Either way, it was a much different type of experience than what he had gone through in Vietnam as a member of the MACV-SOG — the Military Assistance Command Vietnam — Studies and Observation Group, a rather innocuous name for commando teams that conducted cross-border missions into Cambodia, North Vietnam, and Laos.
Dane had been a member of Recon Team Kansas and had accompanied the other three members along with a CIA operative from Foreman on a cross-border mission deep into Cambodia in 1968, which was his first encounter with a gate. During that mission, three of the four men were killed, and the team leader, Sergeant Ed Flaherty, was snatched away. Dane had been the only one to come out alive, and he’d sworn never again to be in such a situation.
But he’d gone back into the Angkor gate on a rescue mission for Ariana Michelet, again being manipulated by Foreman. Actually, the real reason he had gone was the copy of a radio broadcast from Flaherty. At Angkor Kol Ker, the ancient and abandoned capital of the Khmer Empire, he had met Flaherty once more, a Flaherty who had not apparently aged a day since disappearing over thirty years previously.
Flaherty had warned him of the Shadow and told him of the Ones Before. He’d also said he could never come back. But the Scorpion had come back, although they now knew that had been a trap sent by the Shadow. It appeared that only the Shadow had control of the gates, and the Ones Before could do little inside them. Too many unknowns. For Dane, who had always been able to anticipate what others would do, this was a very unnerving situation.
“Are you ready to leave?” Loomis indicated the helicopter, which was warming up on the back deck. The colonel was uncomfortable with silence, a trait Dane didn’t understand or respect. He’d always believed that as much could be learned by what wasn’t said as by what was. “The Salvor will stay here and await the arrival of the Grayback.”
“What about Chelsea?” Dane asked.
“I’ll have someone in the crew take care of her until we get back.”
Reluctantly, Dane rubbed Chelsea’s head and said good-bye, then followed Loomis to the helicopter.
Rain was falling, something Ariana recollected to be standard for England. A helicopter from one of her father’s subsidiary companies was waiting for her as the Learjet rolled to a stop. Her dash across the Atlantic in the middle of the night after leaving New York had brought her to London early in the morning, just after sunrise.
She hurried across the Tarmac, not bothering to open the umbrella that had been thrust in her hand. The skulls she had gathered remained on board the Learjet, and she had ordered the pilots to refuel and await her return. When they’d complained about mandatory crew rest, she”d gotten on the phone and ordered up two new pilots. There was to be no rest on this mission, as the incoming date from Mounts Wrangell and Erebus indicated.
The chopper was in the air within a minute of her having gotten off the Learjet, and it headed from Heathrow on the very western edge of the city toward downtown London. It was only about a dozen miles to the London Natural History Museum, and the helicopter landed in Hyde Park, three blocks from the museum, startling some early-morning walkers and joggers. A car waited on Kensington Gore. Ariana ran past the man who was waiting with an umbrella and jumped in the open door. The man climbed in after her and offered his somewhat damp hand.
“Professor Atkins, at your service.” He was an old man with thick white hair and a long beard. “I am the collection leader for the mineral collection.”
“Ariana Michelet.”
“Your father has a long reach,” Atkins noted as the car began moving. “I’ve never met a helicopter before for a research request. Especially such a strange request.”
“You do have a crystal skull?” Ariana asked.
“Yes. Quite an odd duck. We’ve never displayed it. Doesn’t quite fit in, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
They were passing Royal Albertson Hall and then turning onto Exhibition Road. Ariana had been here before, and London was one of her favorite towns, but she knew there would be no time to savor the trip.
Atkins laughed, a deep, mellow sound. “My colleagues are not fond of displaying things they can’t explain. You don’t want some school-age child asking, “What’s that?” and not being able to tell them. Would be quite embarrassing, don’t you think?”