Turcotte wore camouflage fatigues that fit loosely on his solid body. On both shoulders was the same subdued military patch: an arrowhead shape, with a dagger insignia crossed by three lightning bolts: the patch for the US Army Special Forces. He was of average height and stocky, with short dark hair sprinkled with gray. The stubble on his chin indicated it had been a while since he had enjoyed the comforts of a warm shower and a sharp razor.
“I’m cold,” Duncan muttered.
Turcotte let go of her shoulders and blinked, looking about, taking in their surroundings, as if realizing for the first time that he was standing in a morgue and Duncan was sitting on a stainless-steel autopsy table. She looked small and vulnerable inside the bloody robe. Her short dark hair was plastered against her skull and her face was pale and drawn.
Turcotte scooped Duncan up in his arms and headed for the door. Yakov, Professor Mualama, Che Lu, and Major Quinn followed, the core of the group that was leading the fight against the alien presence on Earth. By default they were the ones who now ran Area 51.
Turcotte carried Duncan to a parked Humvee and slid her into the passenger seat before going around and getting behind the wheel. The others piled in, Quinn just managing to get inside before Turcotte stomped on the accelerator. He drove toward the large hangar cut into the side of Groom Mountain. To one side a long runway stretched out of sight along the dry bed of Groom Lake. Various hangars and support buildings were clustered around the end of the runway, between it and the mountain.
Area 51 was about ninety miles northwest of Las Vegas, in the middle of nowhere on the way to nowhere, established on land that held no value other than its isolation. Numerous mountains surrounded the dry lake bed, land that the US government had gobbled up to make the location secure. The spot had gained its name from the training area designation number it received on the military map for the Nellis Air Force Base range of which it was ostensibly a part.
Most had thought Area 51 was placed in the location because of its remoteness. The truth, however, was that it had been placed where it was because of the shocking discovery during the early days of World War II of a massive alien spaceship in a cavern underneath Groom Mountain — the mothership. Over a mile long and a quarter mile in width at its center, the craft had both stunned and intrigued the scientists sent to investigate it. Images on plaques found in the cavern led the Americans to discover smaller atmospheric craft, called bouncers and shaped like golden flying saucers, in Antarctica. They had been brought to Earth in one of the holds of the mothership.
The entire discovery was classified at a higher level than anything had ever been in the United States. A committee — Majestic-12—was established to oversee the alien artifacts. For over fifty years Majestic kept the truth secret from not only other countries but Americans also.
But even Majestic hadn’t known the real truth about the aliens: that Earth had been visited by aliens over ten thousand years earlier and they had headquartered themselves on a large island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean — the legendary Atlantis. And that when other aliens of the same species, the Airlia, had arrived thousands of years later, there was civil war between them. One side was led by an alien named Aspasia, the other by Artad. The initial battling resulted in the destruction of Atlantis and a tenuous truce. Aspasia was banished to an Airlia base underneath the surface of Mars at Cydonia, where human astronomers had long been intrigued by anomalies on the surface. Artad and his followers, the Kortad, went to China, underneath the massive tomb of Qian-Ling, and like Aspasia and his people, went into suspended animation. But each side continued a subversive war throughout the millennia on Earth. Aspasia’s side was represented by the Mission, led by a continually regenerated human, Aspasia’s Shadow, who passed Aspasia’s memories and personality through succeeding generations via the ka, a memory device that could be updated much like a computer hard drive. Artad’s side was represented by the Ones Who Wait, Airlia-Human clones, and Shadows of Artad, such as King Arthur and Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China.
Throughout human history both groups fought covertly, using humans as pawns in their battles. Turcotte and the others had discovered much, but they still didn’t know the full extent of this interference in human history. They knew about the clash between Arthur (Artad’s Shadow) and Mordred (Aspasia’s Shadow) in early Britain; the development and spread of the Black Death in the Middle Ages; the rise of the SS in Nazi Germany; the invention of the atomic bomb from studying an Airlia weapon discovered underneath the Great Pyramid, also in the early days of World War II. Many other events throughout history were the result of efforts by one side or the other to gain the upper hand.
Turcotte and the others had also learned that the human survivors of Atlantis had formed a group called the Watchers to monitor the aliens. The Watchers were former priests who had worshipped the Airlia as gods, and who tried to monitor their conflict.
The lid blew off all those covert actions when Majestic-12 was corrupted after discovering a guardian computer in South America. The guardians were golden pyramids secreted around the world by the Airlia, as part of their ancient outposts. Contact with one by a human resulted in a direct mind interface, with the guardian taking control and turning the person into a Guide. The members of Majestic were corrupted in this manner and Mike Turcotte was sent by Lisa Duncan to infiltrate Area 51 and discover what was going on. Turcotte had learned that Majestic was preparing to fly the mothership on orders from the guardian, most likely to go to Mars and pick up Aspasia and his followers. He also found information that initiating the mothership’s interstellar engine would attract the attention of the Airlia’s ancient enemy, known only as the Swarm, and bring destruction to Earth. Turcotte foiled that plan and all-out civil war had erupted between the two Airlia sides, the human race caught between them.
As it stood now, Turcotte had killed Aspasia and destroyed his fleet coming from Mars, but Aspasia’s Shadow was now secreted on Easter Island with the Grail in his possession and a burgeoning military force. And in China, Artad had been awoken by the Ones Who Wait.
It was this precarious world situation plastered all over the situation board at the front of the CUBE — command, control & communications, C3—deep under Groom Mountain, that the small group saw as they got off the elevator from the hangar above.
Turcotte ignored the sit-board and helped Duncan to the conference room. The others trooped in and the door was shut as an uneasy silence pervaded. Turcotte sat Duncan in the chair at the head of the table and slumped into the seat next to her.
Yakov was next to Turcotte. Mualama, an African archaeologist who had followed in the footsteps of Sir Richard Francis Burton and uncovered that explorer’s secret account of all he had learned of the Airlia and their influence on Earth, was next to him. Mualama had also uncovered the scepter that had allowed Duncan and him access to the Black Sphinx, deep under the Great Sphinx, which had contained the Ark of the Covenant and the Grail. They had also discovered that Mualama was a former Watcher.
Then there was the elderly Chinese professor, Che Lu. She had opened the upper levels of the ancient tomb at Qian-Ling. She had recently been trying to figure out an alien grid system that highlighted many of their ancient bases. She had cracked the code and was still working on fixing the various locations, which included Qian-Ling, Easter Island, and Mount Sinai, where the Mission had hidden itself for a long time.