Turcotte hefted the MK-98, finger on the trigger. He had no clue which cardinal direction he was going in and when he checked the small compass strapped to his watchband, the needle spun wildly. Turcotte looked at his watch. Dawn was only an hour off.
He reached the end of the hallway. Turcotte used the ring and the door slid open. He stepped through. He then turned in the direction he had come from, where the corridor descended.
“We have an Egyptian jet coming at us at Mach-2.” Colonel Zycki frowned at the report. They were over the Mediterranean, well clear of Egyptian airspace. “Make commo with it and request the pilot to stay clear,” he ordered. He turned his attention to the screen tracking the two choppers. They were over the Gulf of Suez, still heading west toward the Sinai Peninsula.
Inside the cockpit of the American-made F-16 Fighting Falcon, the Egyptian pilot, Ahid, ignored both the warnings from the American plane and the confused orders from his own higher command demanding he turn back to base.
Ahid’s eyes flickered down, checking his radar, ensuring he was on course. His hands were perfectly steady on the controls, his face relaxed despite the chatter coming through his helmet.
“Uh, sir, no response from the incoming bogey. We’re picking up transmissions from an Egyptian air base and they appear to be calling it back, too.”
Colonel Zycki frowned. “What’s the vector?”
“Straight on to us, ETA one minute. We’re already within Sidewinder range, but no fire indicator.”
If the F-16 was seeking to take them down, it would already have fired. So what was it doing?
“Where’s our nearest support?” Zycki asked.
“The Israelis could scramble and be here in seven minutes,” the man replied. “Goddamn,” Zycki exclaimed. Another game of chicken, he thought. It was a dangerous game, one that had been played for many decades in the Cold War and on into the years since the fall of the Wall. A jet would charge down on the AWACS, trying to scare the occupants. The fact that it worked, the crew of the defenseless surveillance craft feeling like deer caught in headlights of an approaching craft, was a big reason it had lasted so long.
Zycki keyed the crafts intercom so he could address the entire crew. “All right, people, we’ve got an inbound bogey trying to rattle us. Let’s keep doing our job and let this bozo go by.”
“Fifteen seconds out,” the screenwatcher reported.
“We still have tracking on the choppers?” Zycki asked.
“Yes, sir. They’re dry over the Sinai, turning to the north.”
“I want—” Zycki began, but the man tracking the Egyptian jet slammed his fist on the console.
“It’s still coming!”
“But—” Zycki never finished the statement.
Ahid could see the left side pilot of the AWACS staring out the small cockpit window at him as he rapidly closed the distance between the planes. His time sense had slowed everything down so that seconds seemed like minutes.
He could see the rotodome rotating inch by inch, the AWACS tail number, the star painted on the side of the craft, the lack of windows, the gray paint. Ahid adjusted course very slightly and, for added effect, kicked on his afterburners.
Then the F-16 hit the AWACS dead-on at over fifteen hundred miles an hour.
Over two hundred and forty miles away, Aspasia’s Shadow looked down at the desolate desert landscape below as the lead Panther fitted above the ground at less than fifty feet altitude.
“We’re clear of radar,” the, pilot reported. “The AWACS is gone.”
“Head for The Mission,” Aspasia’s Shadow ordered.
CHAPTER 17
The Giza Plateau, Egypt
Turcotte paused and got to his knees. He leaned over, ear to the floor. A faint roar, muted by the stone between him and the river. He had already passed through another doorway and he knew he was getting close to the chamber that held the shaft.
And there was something else, a sound that caused him to halt. A rapid clicking noise, almost in a rhythm, but there was something disconcerting about it. Turcotte closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to identify the sound. Metal on stone, like the rapid tap of a chisel on the tunnel floor. And it was coming closer.
Turcotte stood and began to run, more of a shuffle given the weight and size of the MK-98. He knew this was throwing his pace count off, but he could make out the glow of the chem light on the floor ahead. He reached it and slid the ring key along the wall, searching for the correct spot. Turcotte forced himself to slow down and make sure he was covering every square inch.
Turcotte paused and looked down the corridor. There was a golden glow, but he couldn’t make anything more out. It was getting closer. He continued to work the ring, searching. The clicking sound was louder, more ominous, causing him to look once more. He blinked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. His first thought was that it was the largest spider he had ever seen, legs over three feet long, a round golden body, but there was more to it. Just as many arms on top of the globe as on the bottom, filling the corridor completely, top to bottom, side to side. But the arms were metal, the source of the noise. And the golden orb — Turcotte had seen that before. A foo-fighter, encased in some sort of robotic extension. In the golden glow of the foo-fighter he could see the blood on the metal arms and he knew what had happened to the rest of the team. That meant the MK-98 was useless against it.
Turcotte slid the ring along the wall as the machine approached, now less than twenty meters away. The ring touched the right place, the stone door sliding up.
Turcotte fired. The steel dart hit the foo-fighter dead center and ricocheted off. Turcotte threw the MK-98 with all his might at it and dove into the tunnel, the stone slamming shut behind him.
He could hear the clatter of the metal arms on the wall for several seconds, as if it were scratching at the door, then silence. He didn’t wait for anything more to happen and assumed the thing was taking another route. He raced down the tunnel until he came to the stone debris that had been the last door. He entered the chamber. The hole in the floor beckoned.
Turcotte lowered himself into the tunnel. He let go and fell.
Vicinity Easter Island
The crew of the E-2C Hawkeye felt like sacrificial lambs as they circled five miles to the east of the shield wall surrounding Easter Island. The rest of the Task Force was two hundred miles to the north. A pair of F-14 Tomcats were halfway between them and the fleet, but the jets’ mission was to guard the fleet, not support the Hawkeye if there was trouble.
“Look at that,” the pilot didn’t have to point out what he was indicating, as the ship that was heading toward the island was the largest thing floating anyone on the crew had ever seen.
The combat information officer (CIO) keyed his radio. “Operations, this is HK-12. Over.”
The reply from the Stennis’s operations center was immediate. “This is operations. Over.”
“We have visual on the Jahre Viking three miles from the shield wall and she’s still heading straight for it. Over.”
“Roger that.”
The CIO waited for more, then finally asked what they all wanted to know. The answer was apparent from the lack of activity on their radar screens — no strike force winging in from the north — but they wanted the answer in plain English. “What are the orders from Pearl? Over.”