He would have loved to have stayed and observed the dancing and chanting all night, but he had a job to do. Get the box. Andjiow, he thought as he scrambled back down the mountain, he knew how he was going to do it.
The night sky was spinning…
"See the stars fall from the sky!" the Indian named Katcheewan chanted. He raised his arms over his head, one hand holding an M-16 decorated with tribal feathers and ornaments, the other holding a rattle-like instrument called a wan-tauk. "Hear the owl!" he bellowed. "The wind sings! The voices of the dead are with us!"
The other 24 Indians sat transfixed, their eyes cast deep in the shaman's hypnotic spell.
"Tonight!" Katcheewan whispered dramatically, pointing the wan-tauk first at the blinking black box that sat on the stone before him, then to the crystal-clear full moon directly above them. "The moon fills up the sky!"
The sweet smell of peyote smoke was everywhere, swirling with the winds that sporadically buffeted the top of the Devil's Tower. The brightness of the moon and the light of the raging bonfire combined to cast the most eerie of shadows around the band of warriors.
Katcheewan — himself into a peyote-induced trance so deep, his eyes had turned red — slowly began to rattle the wan-tauk.
"Tonight!" the shaman yelled, his voice rising an octave and startling the other Indians. "The wind tells me it comes!"
As one, the group raised its eyes and stared out into the night sky. Shooting stars were falling everywhere. Never had they'd seen a night so fantastic.
Off in the distance a rumbling sound deeper and louder than the wind arose. It was coming from the east. The noise slowly turned to even deeper thunder as it drew closer to the Tower.
Katcheewan saw it first. It was just a speck with a faint thin flame spitting out beneath it. The object moved slowly into silhouette in the large white moon, at which time all the Indians saw it. A gasp ran through the warriors.
"It comes…" one warrior shouted out in awe. The other Indians instinctively started chanting in low, moaning voices. Katcheewan himself felt paralyzed. He was unable to take his eyes off the strange flying object.
It moved to the center of the moon, then seemed t< stop. The flames emitted underneath it turned from yellow to bright white and grew in intensity. Th< object hovered for a moment. Then it started to move toward them.
A chorus of frightened yelps came from the warriors, some breaking from their cross-legged sitting positions. Katcheewan wanted to yell to them to stay where they were and to not be afraid, but he could not speak. The words would not come out. The object grew larger as it came closer. The noise was getting very loud, by now drowning out all evidence of the high wind. Not one of the warriors thought to raise his M-16.
Now the object was directly above them, no more than 200 feet away.
Katcheewan — his mind swimming in a mixture of surprise and shock — could not even shake the wan-tauk. He watched as the intense white flame took on a tinge of deep blue. By now the noise was a thunder, never ending, getting louder. Some of his warriors fled to the nearby rocks; others sat like stones, unable or unwilling to move. They had come south to the Tower 12 seasons before from deep in the Caribou Mountains of northern Alberta. Of them all, only Katcheewan had ever seen an airplane, and that was only once.
But he had never seen anything like this. The object was very close. So close, they could make out its silver color and the large red star bordered in yellow painted on its side. As many as ten blinking lights flashed from its wings and tail. The power of the flame was kicking up dust and stones on the platform as the craft hung barely 100 feet above them.
Suddenly its nose burst into flame. Streaks of light shot out from it, adding the combined sound of hundreds of explosions to the already excruciating noise of its whining engine. The craft started to turn slowly, streams of tracer lights still emitting from its snout. Another half dozen Indians jumped up and fled to relative safety of the rocks. Still, Katcheewan could not move.
The craft completed its circle and the firing from the nose ceased. The engine noise now reached its peak and the downward wind thrust was like a hurricane.
It was coming straight down. Still a few die-hard warriors stayed in their places, their peyote-resin soaked blood pumping rapidly through their bodies.
Somewhere deep in his diaphragm, Katcheewan found the strength to scream: "It comes!" Then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he collapsed in shock. Seeing their leader fall was all it took for the rest of the Indians to scatter. From their ledgework hiding places they saw the craft come down and land next to the stone altar where the blinking box lay. They could see a figure, wearing a strange white headpiece sitting inside a glass bubble at the front of the strange craft.
Suddenly the bubble burst upward and the man stood up. He raised his right hand, causing some of the Indians to cower behind the rocks in case the god was going to strike out a lightning bolt in their direction. He did not. Instead the figure climbed out of the broken bubble, stepped onto the craft's wing, then leaped to the ground. The light from the still raging bonfire reflected off his suit.
Thankfully, he didn't approach the warriors. Instead he walked to the altar, picked up the black box, then quickly returned to the craft. Sitting back down inside, the figure somehow made the bubble top come together with the rest of the craft.
Then with a roar and a flash of fire, the craft started to shake, then move. Slowly it began to ascend into the night sky. Some of the Indians stood now and watched as the craft rose high above them. A reassuring chant rose up from them as the object climbed back into the light of the moon, getting smaller by the instant.
When the craft was as small as when they first spotted it, they heard one last burst of noise and saw another long streak of flame come out of its tail. Then it suddenly shot forward and was gone…
Chapter Eighteen
Jones was waiting on the tarmac when the Yak-landed.
Two runways over, a pair of A-7 "Strikefighters" roared away on take-off.
Almost immediately, two more taxied out onto the strip and awaited permission to go. In back of them waited two F-106's. Then another pair of A-7's.
The VTOL craft settled down and Hunter jumped out. Jones saw the box and, shook Hunter's hand. "All right, Hawk," he said breaking out in an appreciative grin. "How to come through, buddy."
"Two down, three to go," Hunter said, taking off his helmet for the first time in what seemed like days. He ran his hand through his long, sandy hair and looked around the base. The place was jumping with activity.
"You've found a forward base?" Hunter asked the general, correctly interpreting the reason behind all the hustle.
"Yes, old Denver airport," Jones replied, leading the pilot toward the base's all-purpose mess hall saloon. "The city is deserted, of course. But the airport's big and it's got good mountain cover all around. We've found places to stick our mobile radar units and our own SAMs. The runways are still in good shape as are the maintenance shops."
"What's the word from Fitz and St. Louie!" Hunter asked. He was anxious to find out about his two friends.
"All reports are go," Jones told him. "Everyone got out clean in both Syracuse and Football City. The F-20s are down in Dallas and Fitzie's '105s are sitting up in Winnipeg, waiting for us to tell them where to go."
"Anything else from the Texans?" Hunter asked as they reached the mess hall.
"They were raided again during the night, I'm afraid," Jones said, claiming the first table they could find. "They hit a place called Pampa, up near Amarillo. Really tore it up."
"Same pattern?" Hunter asked.