The warriors thrust me forward toward the doorway. The one on my right cried out and spun to the ground, blood spurting from a wound in the neck. The crack of a gunshot followed a split second later. I dove to the ground, rolling left. More shots echoed on top of the first, faster than one man could reload.
I grabbed the dead warrior’s spear just in time as another came at me. I spit him on the blade like a fish, the metal punching completely through him.
I scrambled to my feet as the war cries of the Bedouins split the air. Taiyaba came charging up the trail, followed by half a dozen of his men. The rest fired from on the rocks.
The warriors fell quickly before the sudden onslaught of the mighty warriors of the desert.
“Come!” Taiyaba beckoned.
I wasted no time, dashing down the trail and joining him. Above us the sky suddenly darkened, clouds swirled over the top of the mountain. Thunder roared. Lightning streaked the sky. All within less than a minute of the rescue, on a day when there had not been a cloud in the sky. Several of the Bedouin cried out in fear, but Taiyaba hushed them with a curse as we continued down the path.
“He was our guest!” Taiyaba explained succinctly.
I was knocked backward as a lightning bolt hit one of the Bedouins in front of me. When I struggled to my feet there was only a black spot to mark where he had been.
Taiyaba fired his rifle at the sky with another eloquent curse in Arabic, and we continued.
Another lightning bolt, another man dead. By the time we reached the bottom only I, Taiyaba, and two others remained.
We mounted and rode into the desert, leaving the storm behind as it did not seem to be able to move away from the top of the Mount.
I have never been able to figure out why I was spared, but from that day forward the shock that had shaken my core when I saw the Black Sphinx was softened by the thought that there was some power stronger than these strange creatures from the sky and their minions. A power that protected me that day on the mountain.
I have learned many strange things over the years, but that day reignited my faith. Not in life after death, or the various religions I have encountered, or of gods I have heard of, but in man himself. Taiyaba came back for me because of his beliefs. His men died to save me because of what they believed in. I learned that day that a man’s belief is a very powerful thing.
Tears were running down Che Lu’s cheeks. She was remembering her students in Tiananmen Square, dying for their beliefs. Those she had walked with in the Long March and watched die as they gave their food to others.
The SATPhone in the middle of the desk cut through her sobs with a sharp ring.
Professor Mualama reached over Che Lu’s shoulder and hit the on button. “This is Turcotte. Do you have the location of The Mission?”
“We have more than that — we have the location of the entrance.”
Turcotte read the words of Burton on the helmet screen as the bouncer skimmed above the light blue water. Yakov and Sherev were reading the same on a laptop.
“We have the entrance,” Turcotte said as he reached the end of the chapter. He began to check suit systems.
“I’ll relay the information to my men,” Sherev said.
Major Quinn had not been to sleep for over eighty hours, and his hand shook as he downed another cup of coffee. He was in the back of the Cube, watching the various developments play out around the world as they were displayed on the master board in the front of the room. Piles of documents, generated and brought into the Cube, and that were no longer being processed due to personnel shortages, littered both sides of his chair.
A thin leather portfolio, the cover worn and aged, caught his attention, crammed in among other folders. He reached down and pulled it out. The swastika on the cover was the first thing he noticed, then he realized it was part of what Turcotte and Yakov had recovered from the Moscow Archives. It contained documents written in German. He realized that it must have been sent to the Cube intelligence section for translation, but given that there was no longer a Cube intelligence section, it had been rerouted back to him.
Summoning up four years of college German and one tour of duty stationed in Stuttgart, Quinn began reading. He quickly realized that the paper in front of him was about Okpashnyi, the strange alien creature that Turcotte and Yakov had seen stored both at Section IV in Russia and in the German archives that had been moved from Berlin to Moscow at the end of the World War II. According to this report, both alien bodies had been recovered during a Nazi expedition to Tunguska in 1934. The creatures were composed of a spherical body, head with multiple eyes, and radiating out of the center were several, seemingly independent and interchangeable limbs.
First, Quinn found it strange that Germans had been able to search that far into Russia in 1934. Second, and more important, what were the Okpashnyi? Were they pets of the Airlia? Then there was what General Hemstadt of The Mission had said to Yakov just before dying — mentioning the word Tunguska.
Quinn scanned the document, which was a summary of the underlying after-action report from the expedition. The Okpashnyi had been found in the wreckage of an alien craft, origin unknown.
A paragraph near the bottom of the page caught his attention. It listed casualties from the expedition. Five men had died, cause of death not listed except that they had died in service of the Fuehrer.
Quinn thumbed through the documents below, searching for a report on the casualties, his curiosity piqued. He found the more detailed casualty report buried three quarters of the way into the folder.
The men had been infected by what the writer called an “alien infection” brought on by the discovery that one of the Okpashnyi was still alive in the permafrost and the subsequent thawing of it. The five had been shot by their own comrades to keep the infection from spreading.
Quinn hurriedly scanned the other pages in the report, but there was nothing else on the Okpashnyi that had been found alive. Only the two that Turcotte and Yakov had seen were listed on the transport manifest back to Berlin.
Quinn sat back in his chair overlooking the Cube, and tapped his fingers rapidly on the report. Something had happened over sixty years ago at Tunguska, something so terrible that it had been stricken from the report. What the hell was this Okpashnyi?
He was distracted from these thoughts as someone yelled out an update on the assault force heading toward Mount Sinai.
CHAPTER 22
The heavy wooden door creaked slowly open. Aspasia’s Shadow spun about, anger twisting the smooth skin of his face into an ugly mask, the sword half raised in threat. He was processing information from the Easter Island guardian. The attack had been a complete success and he had more than doubled his military power. The next phase of operations was already under way. He had the initiative and he planned on keeping it.
“I ordered no interruptions.”
“Sir—” The guard cowered. “There are helicopters inbound. Many helicopters. From Israel.”
Aspasia’s Shadow cursed. He strode from the room, the sword tight in his grip.
The Cobras led the way, less than twenty feet above the rocks and sand. The pilots had cut their teeth in Lebanon, flying through the streets of Beirut, having RPG rockets fired at them at point blank range. This flight was a “Hollywood” run so far — easy and sweet.
A mile behind the Cobras, the five Blackhawks carried the elite of the Israeli military. Weapons locked and loaded, the members of Unit 269 were hardened soldiers in one of the most war-torn places in the world. They sat in their web seats armed with the new Tavor assault rifles and carrying satchels of demolitions. They were uncertain what their mission was, but listened as Sherev’s voice came over their unit net telling them where they were going. Mount Sinai. A door needed to be blown open at the base of a rock spur.