Her attention was drawn to one side of the cargo bay as two large doors opened. She could see out, noting that the mothership was hovering about a mile above the planet’s surface. Bouncers began leaving the hold, going about their missions. Looking down, Duncan saw water extending to the horizon in all directions.
A Talon spacecraft passed by between the mothership and the ocean. Something about what she saw disturbed Duncan; something wasn’t right.
Duncan started, feeling a lance of pain in her temples. She grabbed the crown and pulled it off. She felt as if every ounce of energy had been drained from her body. She set the crownm down and sat with her back to the Ark’s stand. Her eyelids drooped, her mind shutting down. Just before she fell asleep, her mind replayed what she had seen. The Talon was racing toward the horizon, the sun glinting off its black skin — no, that was it, she realized with alarm. There were two suns in the sky, one large, like the one she knew, but there was a second smaller, red one close to it.
CHAPTER 10
Major Quinn had to almost run to keep up with Turcotte as he walked across the hangar toward the elevator. “Did you get the ring?”
Turcotte held it up briefly, then asked his own question. “What do you have?” Yakov followed behind, walking more slowly.
“We got a team to help you on the Giza mission.”
“Who?”
“A mixed Special Forces-SEAL team from Space Command.” Quinn pointed toward one of the walls that crossed the large hangar. “They’re in there.”
Turcotte abruptly changed direction. Quinn opened a door in the partition and they entered a corner of Hangar 1. Satellite imagery was tacked to a large piece of plywood, the corresponding map sheets covered with acetate pinned next to the pictures. Several men in black jumpsuits stood in front of the maps, marker in hand, comparing them with latest downloaded photos of the same sites.
One of them, a tall man with a shaved head and large black mustache, turned at the sound of the door shutting behind Yakov. He came striding over.
He snapped a salute. “Lieutenant Graves.”
Turcotte returned the salute, then extended his hand. “Mike Turcotte.” Graves nodded. “I heard we’re going after the sons-a-bitches who took out our men on the shuttle. Every man here is a volunteer and eager to kick some ass.”
Turcotte felt at home, having been in this type of planning situation many times before in his Special Forces career. It was called “isolation,” where the team was given its mission statement and the intelligence data needed to plan the operation.
“The last time you tried this mission,” Yakov said, “it did not go well.” Graves frowned at the Russian and Turcotte quickly introduced Yakov.
“What do you have on the underground river?” Turcotte asked.
Quinn pointed at one of the boards as they walked across the room. There was a series of satellite imagery tacked on it. “There’s a KH-14 always on duty over that area, supporting our peacekeeping force in the Sinai. I had a buddy at NSA do a complete spectrographic workout of Giza and the Nile.”
“We’re looking for an underground river running from the Nile, below Giza, and back to the Nile,” Turcotte said.
Quinn didn’t hesitate for a beat. He tapped a color-filled picture. “Thermal. High discretion.” Quinn tilted his glasses, peering at it. “There. See the change. Something’s going on in the river on the west bank — right there. Then see how the shoreline at the spot is a little cooler, then follow the line looping around to Giza and back to the Nile. That’s your underground river.”
“How come no one’s seen this before?” Turcotte asked.
Quinn gave a short laugh. “This is top-secret, top-of-the-line imagery. Like we’re going to give it to someone? And there was no strategic or tactical interest in the Nile and Giza before this.”
Turcotte ran his fingers over the photo, noting the slight change in temperature on the shoreline, a cooler spot where water ran underneath the bank. “That’s how we’re getting in.”
“What do you think we should do for infiltration?” Graves asked.
Turcotte picked up a marker and circled the location where the underwater river branched out from the Nile, two kilometers below the Giza Plateau. “Water drop right here. Then we go into the tunnel.”
“Drop from a bouncer?” Graves asked. Turcotte had given that matter some thought on the flight back from England. “They aren’t rigged for that. We’ll take a bouncer to Israel to save time, but we’ll go in by conventional means from there.”
Major Quinn spoke up. “I’ve lined up an MC-130 out of Germany to meet you in Israel.”
An MC-130 was a specially modified C-130 transport plane, designed to be able to fly in all types of weather and at low level, below radar. Turcotte tapped the map. “We’ll go in low on the C-130 and parachute at less than two hundred feet with multiple drogue chutes rigged for underwater.”
Graves frowned. “Scuba? Why not use what we’re trained on?” He pointed to the wall where black suits were lined up, like an army of drones. “TASC-suits?” Turcotte asked. “What’s that?” Yakov asked. “Stands for Tactical Articulated Space Combat suit,” Graves explained. “Each suit is self-contained.” He looked at Turcotte. “If you’re going with us, you’ll have to run through the mentor program to learn how to operate the suit, which takes about two hours. And then you’re going to have to learn to actually use them in action, which isn’t exactly—”
Turcotte cut him off. “But they give us an advantage, correct?”
“Yes, sir. A lot of advantages. You’ll be completely armored, stronger, and the weapons are extremely accurate when using the suits aiming system. You have a built in rebreather so we can infiltrate directly into the water.”
“And I can learn to use it in a basic mode quickly, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Great.”
Graves turned back to the map. “Once we go into this underground river, do we have any idea where we’re going?”
Turcotte pointed at a surface photo of the Great Sphinx. “As near as we can tell, our objective is directly below that.”
“Does the river run to it?” Graves asked.
“Not directly,” Turcotte admitted, remembering Burton’s account. “We’re hoping we get some more information before we go wheels up. We do have directions once we go up the shaft that Burton came down. That shaft intersects with the river.” Turcotte ran through the account Burton mapped from the Hall of Records chamber to the one he was trapped in. “If his pace count is one hundred and sixteen steps per hundred meters, we can use that to approximate the location of these doors.”
“And the ring which helps find these doors and open them?” Graves asked. Turcotte reached into his pocket and pulled out the Watcher key.
“And exfiltration?” Graves asked.
Turcotte had been expecting that. It was something every special-ops man asked when given an assignment, and something that was rarely given in the mission briefing as higher commands always were much more concerned about getting the men in than getting them out.
“Helicopters from the peacekeeping force,” Turcotte said. “They can come in from South Camp and retrieve us. But we have to be in the river, ready to be picked up an hour before dawn. If we’re later than that, forget about getting out by chopper, and it’s a long walk.”
“Roger that,” Graves said.
“And Easter Island?” Yakov asked. “Qian-Ling? What is going on there?”
“Let’s go down to the conference room for that,” Turcotte suggested. He slapped Graves on the shoulder. “Keep planning and get my suit ready to be rigged.” He pulled one of the large-scale images of the Giza Plateau off the board.