Raine raised a sceptical eyebrow, but before he could utter a response a definite crunch of underbrush sounded from the far side of the ship’s hull. Both men spun to face the sound and saw a human-shaped shadow dash down the ship’s length.
“Now it’s really time to go,” Raine told King and this time the archaeologist did not protest.
They crept low and fast towards the hole and Raine went through first, wary, watching, scanning the jungle. Deciding it was all clear, he gestured for King to follow.
They stepped out of the ship’s shadow and—
Six men in jungle-camouflaged NBC suits burst out of cover from behind the trees and from beneath the underbrush, weapons raised. They shouted at them to raise their hands and, totally surrounded, they had no choice but to comply.
“United States Special Forces!” one of the masked soldiers declared. “Identify yourselves.”
A wave of almost uncontrollable relief washed over King. “Thank god,” he sighed, noticing the iconic Stars and Stripes of his country’s closest ally’s flag on the man’s arm. “I’m Doctor Benjamin King, part of the Sarisariñama Expedition.”
“Where’s the mask, Doctor?” he demanded brusquely. For a moment, King thought about resisting but, totally surrounded, what could he do? Slowly, he removed the lady’s purse from over his shoulder, suddenly feeling very conscious of the less-than-masculine shade of pink, and handed it to one of the soldiers.
The soldier efficiently ran a radiation detector over the two masks he discovered within and the oddly shaped map. The fake mask and the map produced little more than a bleep from the handheld device, but the original mask sent it crazy, a constant clicking noise reverberating out. “Over five hundred thousand Curies,” he said to the leader. Another soldier stepped forward and dropped a black, hard-shell rucksack from his back. He unclipped the air-tight seal and placed the irradiated mask into the padded interior.
“Bag the whole lot,” the leader ordered, just to be on the safe side.
As the team hastily packed away all of the materials, the soldier with the detector scanned Raine and King. He looked back at the leader, his expression hidden behind his NBC’s hood, but the confusion in his voice was evident. “I’m only picking up about thirty Rads in each of them. That’s not possible. Most of the science team has sustained a dose of about six hundred Rads.”
Without being requested, another soldier double-checked the first’s readings. “I concur. No more than thirty Rads. They’re clean.”
The leader nodded and proceeded to remove his suit’s hood to reveal an ugly face with puckered skin and a nose broken many times. “We’ve been searching everywhere for you, Doctor King. The expedition base camp is secure. Medical teams are attending to the sick and evac choppers are on their way.”
It’s over, King sighed, his mind suddenly catching up with the messages of pain and exhaustion his body had been trying to feed it for hours. It was all he could do not to crash upon the ground and weep.
The leader turned to Raine. “Identify yourself, mister.”
King snapped his head around to look at the man he had just faced life and death with. We’ll find somewhere secure for you to hide until they arrive. Then I’m out of here, his words repeated in King’s head.
But Raine had never had the chance to get away.
He kept his head down, staring at the ground, his face lost in shadow.
“I asked you a question!” the soldier shouted, unused to his orders being ignored.
Slowly, Raine raised his head. King heard a gasp of surprise and then another soldier stepped forward, ripping his own hood off his head to reveal the smooth, handsome features of a young African-American.
“Boss?” the man asked, shocked.
“Boss?” King repeated, glancing at Raine.
At that moment, the team leader slammed the butt of his rifle into the side of Raine’s head, knocking him out cold.
21:
It’s All Politics
There was chaos in the United Nations Security Council chamber as the Chinese Permanent Representative fought off the indignant attacks from the other fourteen member states.
Alexander Langley kept his silence, trying to hide the bemused expression which twitched at the corners of his mouth.
His nation’s actions, the Chinese representative argued, differed in no way to the actions that any other nation, having intercepted the information the Sarisariñama Expedition had sent to UNESCO, would have taken.
“How convenient was it then,” Ambassador Chal Chan had said at one point, “that the United States happened to have a Special Forces team within range of the beleaguered scientists when their mayday came through?”
All eyes had turned to Langley. Tall and lean, his dark skin betraying his African ancestry, Alexander Langley had a kind face and an ever-ready, wry grin. Just into his fifties, there was no denying that there was more salt than pepper in his close-cropped hair. Crows-feet seemed to wander at will around his eyes and a couple of pale ‘age spots’ had appeared on his cheeks in recent years.
Of course, the Chinese representative was right. The U.S. Special Forces team was very conveniently located to be the first rapid response team on site.
He had known the moment he had stepped into the Oval Office two days ago that far more was going on upon the summit of Sarisariñama than an outbreak of Weil’s Disease. He had listened with a mixture of shock, fear and interest as the CIA Director had, at the President’s request, told him about the tachyon radiation that had been detected in Karen Weingarten’s body.
Emitted from an ancient artefact which the expedition had unearthed only the previous day, the tachyons, he was told, had the potential to unleash an uncapped amount of energy.
A bomb, the likes of which the world had never seen.
Of course, Langley wasn’t naive enough to think that the U.S. Government, especially if the Agency was involved, didn’t want this technology for itself. He had been on the ground in enough missions the world over to know that the morals of Washington were no higher than Moscow’s or Beijing’s. But the United Nations had been alerted to the situation, and that meant they couldn’t just swoop in and steal the mask without creating the same international crisis that the Chinese had managed to stir up.
In fact, by having Langley be the one to talk to the U.N. Director-General and the President of the Security Council, requesting an emergency session, the U.S. had not only saved face, but had also stepped up onto the moral high ground. They had sent a rescue team, securing both the mask and the stricken scientists and overseeing their evacuation to the States.
He knew that, secretly, it must have galled President Harper to hand over the Moon Mask to U.N. custody, despite his grandiose speech about international cooperation.
“Unlike the splitting of the atom, it will be down to all nations to decide the fate of the tachyon,” he had proclaimed in a closed session.
It was all politics.
In response to Chal Chan’s accusation, Langley had spoken the truth. “Very convenient, Mister Ambassador,” he replied, smiling.
Now, chaos reigned in the ‘Norwegian Room’, the unofficial name for the Security Council Chamber. Gifted by Norway, a huge mural depicted a Phoenix rising from the ashes, symbolic of the rebuilding of the world following World War Two.