Right?
Wrong… because the moment the man with the M-16 rifle let down his guard, two of the squad members were on him. They forced him to the ground and beat him unconscious. The man with the video camera — he was the one making the call to the team's nonexistent CO — dropped it and began to run. But the two other Spetsnaz guys were on him very quickly, too. Taking him down with their fists and gun butts, he, too, was soon beaten cold.
The Spetsnaz soldiers went through the guards' pockets, taking their wallets, watches, radios, and ID badges. They pushed the truck over the other side of the mountain. It landed, out of sight, into a crevice with a dull, almost noiseless thud.
The team quickly reconstituted itself and began moving down the side of the mountain, but not before the squad leader turned to Hunter. He indicated the two unconscious security guards and drew an imaginary knife across his throat
"Execute them quickly," he whispered harshly to Hunter. "Then catch up."
With that, the five Spetsnaz men disappeared down the other side of the mountain, leaving Hunter sitting there, mouth agape.
Damn … now what?
He knew if he didn't hurry and catch up with the others as ordered, they would certainly come back looking for him. And then his cover would be blown. But would that really make any difference? Could he call a halt to the mayhem here, just as he did earlier on the moon that recreated a bizarro version of World War Three? There was no way of knowing. But something told him these Russians would not play along like the last ones did. They seemed too committed, too serious…
On the other hand, there was no way Hunter was going to kill these two security guys, either. Yet he couldn't just leave, as the Spetsnaz might come back and finish the job themselves.
He finally took out his quadtrol and gave it a spin. He asked it the standard questions: Where was the Mad Russian? Where was the next ticket booth? He was surprised that he got a hit. The quadtrol claimed "something of interest" was located almost directly below him. The know-it-all device didn't know quite what; it was processing insufficient data. But it was a ticket booth at the very least — and maybe even the Mad Russian himself.
So now Hunter knew he had to continue this game and indeed join the others.
At this stage, it was probably his only way out of here.
He took off all but the guards' underwear and tossed their clothes over the cliff. Then he ran to catch up with the others.
He practically rolled down the hill, colliding with the squad leader at the bottom. They were now on a sort of plateau, just fifty feet above the northwest edge of the base. The squad leader's ability to mimic the guard's twang came into play when the guard's radio beeped just seconds after Hunter arrived. It was the security HQ calling their men on a routine check. The Spetsnaz officer replied in a near perfect imitation of the man's voice and even ended the conversation with a joke about an upcoming sporting event.
Meanwhile, Hunter did his best in pretending to wipe blood from his hands, hoping to maintain a charade of his own. Then he took up a position next to one of the other special ops soldiers and for the first time saw what was below them. At first it seemed like a road that ended nowhere. It started down by the hangars, ran past the fuel tanks and support buildings, and then… just ended.
But closer inspection told an even stranger tale. The road ran right into the side of the mountain. The Spetsnaz team did not have night scope devices, but oddly enough, they did not need them. Hunter just squinted a little and saw what the others saw. There was a huge door in the side of the rock. It was made of steel, painted to blend in, but it was a door nevertheless.
And this is where it got very weird for Hunter — if in fact this whole escapade could get any weirder. Because at that moment, he had a kind of convergence of both his previous lives. This door — he'd seen it before, or at least something very much like it. And this secret place — suddenly he knew what that was all about, too.
Way back when he first discovered himself in the seventy-third century and was brought to Earth to eventually win the prestigious Earth Race, one of his prizes was a tour of a place not unlike this. One big valuable secret, hidden away, under the tightest guard imaginable in a mountain in the western desert of present-day Earth.
But back in the time period he'd originally come from, the twentieth century, there was also a very secret place in the western desert of America.
It was called Area 51.
That's where he was now, or at least the dizzylando version of it. Top Secret air base then.
The home of the Big Generator now.
How freakin'strange is that?
The Spetsnaz squad stole down to the door — it was obviously their first objective — and very quickly attached a strip of plastic explosive to its huge right-side hinges. Incredibly there was an explosion with virtually no flash and absolutely no noise.
The door conveniently blew to one side for them. They rushed in, weapons up, the squad leader in front, Hunter, as usual, taking up the rear. They were suddenly running inside a very dark tunnel. It smelled of grease and spilled jet fuel. It had a sharp slope, and more than once Hunter almost wound up on his ass, losing his balance on the slippery surface. The deeper they ran, the stranger the sounds they could hear coming from below. They were very eerie. And not entirely mechanical. They almost sounded organic. Pulsating, pounding, there was also the element of human screams mixed in somewhere. With each step, these unnerving sounds became louder and louder, not unlike the sound effects back in Ping's Palace. Just a whole lot creepier.
The Spetsnaz guys knew what they were doing; Hunter caught himself imagining that they had practiced this assault many times before. Perhaps in a mock-up. (But then again, this whole place was a mock-up!) They came to several TV cameras hanging in the tunnel. Without breaking stride one iota, the Spetsnaz soldiers expertly shot them off the wall. Any security detectors they came to suffered the same fate.
This went on for what seemed like a long time, though probably only a few minutes. They were getting deeper and deeper into the base of the mountain. The weird sounds grew louder, as the air grew colder. Hunter kept up with the Spetsnaz soldiers but kept looking over his shoulder every few seconds, wondering when he was going to see someone coming after them.
They eventually reached another huge door. Again, the Spetsnaz guys barely stopped. They threw their explosive charges at it, and it blew off its binges just as they reached its threshold — a rather fantastic circumstance to Hunter's mind. Running past the blown apart door, they slid into a huge room and finally came to a stop.
This place was better described as a chamber. Its walls seemed covered in silver and gold. It was filled with computers and control panels and lights flashing on and off. A Klaxon began blaring as soon as they arrived, but a fusillade from the team leader's assault weapon silenced it as quickly as it had started. Sitting in the middle of the chamber seemed to be what the Russians had come for.
It was a flying vehicle of some sort. Hat, ovalish, with two very small winglets on its tail, and a very small canopy on its front. Hunter was stunned again. This, too, he recognized, though it took him a moment to realize why. Hat. Silver. Tiny wings, tiny top. Way back… during the mind ring trip he took to explore the devious origins of the Fourth Empire, in one version of how it all began, a vehicle just like this had crashed into a place called Kelly's Hollow, the site recognized by most as the birthplace of the First Empire.
But how could this be? Why was its re-creation here? What was the connection? Or was there any connection at all?
He had about two seconds to think about all this when he suddenly realized this was not their prize at all. While he stood gawking at the strange aircraft, his comrades were busy blowing yet another door off its hinges. This time the explosion was loud and violent, but that did not slow the Spetsnaz men one bit. They flowed through the new opening, and Hunter was compelled to follow.