The Special Operations Training Facility was located forty miles west of Fort Bragg and had been established during World War II as a training base for the Eleventh Airborne Division. A couple of decades later it served as the place where Colonel Bull Simon trained the Son Tay Raiders in preparation for their mission into North Vietnam. Years after that, Charlie Beckwith had utilized the area to prepare his Delta Force commandos for their ill-fated mission into Iran. It was now home to the field division of the Special Forces Qualification course as well as constantly being utilized by Delta Force, the Air Forces Special Operations Wing, and CIA covert forces as a training area.
In the nineties the fixed training site had been named the Colonel Rowe Training Facility, after a Special Forces officer who had escaped imprisonment in North Vietnam and was later assassinated in the Philippines. At the present moment, given the heightened state of alert for the US military, the Rowe Facility was empty, the instructors and students shipped out to the Special Forces Groups to get them up to strength. Next to the camp, there was a full-sized airstrip.
Thus, when Quinn brought the bouncer to a hover outside a large, rusting hangar, there was no one there to see. Turcotte exited, slid open the large doors, the rusted metal squealing in protest. Quinn flew the bouncer inside and landed it. They all exited and looked at Turcotte, waiting for the next step.
Turcotte checked his watch, then nodded to himself as he heard the whop of helicopter blades approaching. He went out of the hangar onto the runway and looked to the east, in the direction of Fort Bragg. A Blackhawk helicopter painted flat black came in low over the trees, circled about, and landed forty feet away. The side door slid back and a quartet of heavily armed men in unmarked fatigues exited. While two took the flanks, two others ran up to Turcotte.
He held his hands up, empty palms forward. One of them started to pat Turcotte down, but a fifth man who had just gotten off the helicopter called out: “That’s all right. Secure the perimeter.”
Turcotte snapped a salute even though the fifth man wore no insignia. “Colonel.”
The man returned the salute. “Major.”
Turcotte turned to his fellow refugees from Area 51. “This is Colonel Mickell. Delta Force commander.”
Yakov nodded, remembering the assistance Mickell had given them during the mission taking down Devil’s Island. Turcotte quickly introduced the others, then they moved inside the hangar.
“What do you need from me, Mike?” Mickell asked. “First, no word of our existence.”
Mickell nodded. “That’s a given.”
“Second, local security. We can trust no one.”
“I’ll leave the four I brought with me and send you a dozen more for outer perimeter. All men I trust.”
“Third,” Turcotte said, “we need one of your mobile command posts.” He knew that Delta had perfected a two-van setup that was mobile and could link into the secure military communications system anywhere in the world. It wouldn’t be as good as Area 51, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances. “We’re stretched pretty thin,” Mickell said. “There’s a lot of stuff going on around the world. Communication has been lost with Hawaii. North Korea has invaded the South with Chinese support. Taiwan and the mainland are going at it. The Middle East is going nuts, especially with Saddam dead.”
“Do you have a mobile command post available?” Turcotte pressed.
“Why don’t you clue me in?” Mickell asked in turn.
Turcotte figured that was a fair enough request given that the colonel was putting his military career, and most likely his life, on the line. “We think we have a way of stopping Aspasia’s Shadow.” He quickly briefed Mickell on the Master Guardian he suspected was hidden inside a mothership on Ararat and Excalibur being on Everest.
“All right,” Mickell agreed, when Turcotte was done. “I’ll have a command post out here as quickly as I can.”
Turcotte walked out of the hangar and stood on the runway. He’d trained here at Camp Rowe many times in his army career, often preparing for real-world missions overseas. A slight breeze blew over the pitted concrete, making him shiver. He had a feeling this next mission was going to be harder than any he had ever been on before.
He pulled the collar of his battle dress uniform tighter around his neck.
CHAPTER 11: THE PRESENT
“When you partook of the Grail,” Dr. Garlin asked, “did anything else happen?” “The minute I put my hand in,” Duncan said, “it took over my body.”
“What about before?”
“‘Before’?”
“You were in the Hall of Records,” Garlin said. “The Ark was there. You were wearing the robes and crown of a priest. The only things you didn’t have were the stones. Did anything happen before Aspasia’s Shadow gave you the one stone?” Duncan frowned. “There was a connection on the top of the Ark. Leads. That went to the crown I was wearing.”
“And you made the connection?” “Yes.”
“And?”
“I saw something when I was connected to the Ark,” she said. “Something strange.”
Garlin leaned forward slightly. “And that was?”
“I saw a mothership,” Duncan said. “I was inside it. There were bouncers in cradles.”
“The main hold of a mothership,” Garlin said. “Similar to what was found inside the one at Area 51.” “Yes.”
“What else?”
“I saw the Ark.” Duncan closed her eyes, replaying the vision. “An Airlia was putting the Grail inside of it. They put it on board a bouncer. The large bay doors opened. We were about a mile up in the air. We were over water. I saw a talon fly by. The bouncers began flying out of the hold. Going in different directions.” She fell silent for a moment, her face tight as she drew up the memory.
“Perhaps that is how the Airlia arrived here,” Garlin said, “and began—”
Duncan held up a hand. “No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t how they arrived here. Because when the talon passed by below the hold I saw its shadows.”
Garlin frowned. “What?”
“Shadows,” Duncan said. “Plural. There were two suns in the sky of this planet. It wasn’t Earth.”
“It makes sense the Airlia would have traveled to other worlds,” Garlin said. “But taking a Grail and an Ark to other worlds?” Duncan asked.
“Interesting,” Garlin said. “Two suns. We’re going to run a full-body MRI on you.”
Duncan seemed resigned. “What do you hope to discover doing that?”
“We have Majestic’s EDOM data. We want to see if you’ve been—” He paused, searching for the right word, but Duncan interrupted with a sharp laugh. “Changed?”
“We know you’ve been changed by the Grail,” Garlin said. “We want to find out what else has been done to you. Before the Grail.”
If a nanovirus could be disappointed, the collective swarm that controlled the humans at Pearl Harbor would be expressing that emotion. The hope had been to catch the remaining American fleet in the Pacific in the harbor and absorb the ships and crews into the Alien Fleet that was still approaching. With that combined might, the next step would be a multipronged assault on the West Coast of the United States.
Instead, the harbor was empty, everything that could move having gone to sea. As per commands from Easter Island, scout planes were sent out searching while the nanovirus spread, taking over all shore personnel. Civilians were ignored for the time being as they had no useful skills and there was no present need for cannon fodder. The exception was any type of communications off the island. All radio, telephone, TV, and satellite transmitters were seized, the personnel running them absorbed via the nanovirus. Oahu was cut off from the rest of the world. The other islands in the Hawaiian chain held little interest for Aspasia’s Shadow and were ignored.