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Al-Iblis’s eyes widened in surprise — surely they wouldn’t kill Mualama with grenades!

The flash-bangs went off. One was enough to deafen and blind anyone within twenty feet. Six, in the enclosed space between the Sphinx’s paws, was devastating.

Turcotte jumped off the head of the Sphinx, letting the line slide through the snap-link, rappelling down. The members of the A-Team were clambering up the side of the bouncer toward the hatch when the first gunship made its run spraying bullets at the rate of three thousand rounds a minute. Two SF men were hit, torn to shreds, bodies tumbling past Turcotte as he went down. He saw them fall but kept his concentration on what he was doing as he flexed his legs and sprang out, pushing his right hand out to release the rope brake on the snap link.

He hit the sand between the paws, all the men around him blinded, hands over their eyes, blood coming out of ears deafened by the detonations. He ran to Mualama and wrapped his arms around the equally stunned archaeologist.

“Go!” Turcotte ordered into the boom mike.

The bouncer lifted, half the survivors of the team inside, the others clinging to the side. Turcotte dangled below, his arms gripping Mualama tightly.

A second gun ship fired a quick burst before the bouncer was out of range and another green beret was hit, his body caught in the cargo netting that lined the bottom edge.

CHAPTER 2

Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, Africa

The lion had been in one place for two hours watching the grazing herd of gazelle slowly make its way through the high grass. The big cat was old, several steps slower in just the past year, and because of that, it was hungrier and more patient that it had ever been. Just two years ago, the lion would have sprung from its hide and chased down a tender youngster, culling it from the herd.

Now it watched with narrowed eyes as one of the herd wandered away from the main group. An old grandfather — the flesh would be stringy, the lion knew, but it would be meat. Over a week had passed since the last kill and there was little interest in being finicky.

Muscles tensed, claws grabbed into dirt just a little deeper as the lion prepared to spring. Another five feet and he would be assured of a kill. Suddenly the herd froze and all heads turned, not toward the lion’s hide, but to the sky near the rim of the crater, behind the lion.

Then they began galloping away. The lion slowly uncoiled from its spring position, its meal rapidly disappearing toward Soda Lake in the center of Ngorongoro Crater. The large shaggy head twisted and peered up, searching for what had startled the herd. Yellow eyes blinked, making no sense of the strange flying creature that had just cleared the edge of the crater.

It was far larger than any bird the lion had ever seen, over ten meters long, and slightly less than half that wide. A long, arced neck stretched up from the body to a serpent’s face with large jaws filled with black teeth. The eyes were dark red. Two short wings extended from each side, but they were stationary, not flapping like a bird’s.

The lion forgot about hunger and pride as it bolted after the gazelle in a desperate attempt to get away from the dragon.

Inside the flying machine unearthed from the Airlia cache in the upper levels of the Qian-Ling tomb in China, the human-Airlia clone, Elek, had his hands on the controls, slowing forward speed and bringing the craft to a hover.

Below the dragon, stretching twelve miles from rim to rim, Ngorongoro Crater was a throwback to a time before man made his presence known in the wild. Teeming with animals, it was isolated from the land around by the two-thousand-foot-high crater rim that surrounded the over one hundred square miles inside. The rim of the crater was over a mile above sea level. The center of the crater was covered in water, Soda Lake.

There was a flash of light to the right and Elek pivoted the dragon, known as Chi Yu in Chinese legend. The display screens in the cockpit located just behind the chest of the machine registered a second flash and Elek moved toward the light.

“Do you see me?” The voice over the radio was sexless, easily belonging to a man or woman.

“I see you, Lexina,” Elek confirmed as he brought Chi Yu to a landing near the source of the light.

Three figures waited. In the center was Lexina, the head of The Ones Who Wait. For decades she had tried to maintain Artad’s side of the truce, first from the secret base in Antarctica and now from the remains of an Airlia base underneath the crater. Now there was no more truce for Lexina to try to maintain — recent events had seen to that. It was time for action.

The back ramp, underneath the dragon’s tail, dropped down. Lexina, followed by her companions, walked on board.

“The spirits have passed on.” Elek nodded to the other two — the recently cloned and reborn bodies of Gergor and Coridan, two members of The Ones Who Wait. The previous Gergor and Coridan had received a fatal dose of radiation in the process of destroying the Russian Area 51 on Novaya Zemlya Island.

“The spirits have passed on,” Lexina echoed as she took a seat to the side of his. “Now let us make sure that Artad’s true spirit has not passed on.” She extended a long, thin hand. “Back to China.”

The Great Sand Sea, Western Egypt

Turcotte’s arms were ready to give out as the bouncer finally slowed and descended toward the desert floor. As soon as his feet hit the soft sand, he let go of Mualama, who promptly collapsed onto his back, eyelids rapidly blinking over unseeing eyes.

“You’ll get your sight back when the effect of the flash-bangs wears off,” Turcotte told him as the bouncer settled down next to them. He could see the body hanging in the cargo netting, a stream of blood down the smooth side of the bouncer.

“Where are we?” Mualama sat up.

“In the desert,” Turcotte said. “Where’s Duncan?”

“In the Black Sphinx, underneath the stone one. She’s with the Ark. She is safe for the time being inside — Al-Iblis cannot get to her there.”

The hatch swung open and Yakov appeared, followed by Captain Billam. They went to the body, untangling it from the webbing.

Turcotte got to his feet and took Mualama’s arm, helping him up. “We need to get on board.” He could sense Yakov’s eyes upon him, but he avoided meeting the Russian’s gaze as he guided Mualama up the side of the bouncer and inside. “I lost three men at the Sphinx and we left two bodies behind,” Captain Billam informed Turcotte.

“I saw,” Turcotte said.

“Where to, sir?” the pilot of the bouncer asked.

“Duncan is underneath the Sphinx.” Turcotte was checking the function on his MP-5. “If—”

“We cannot go back there,” Yakov said flatly.

“They’re disorganized now,” Turcotte said.

“No, there’s more of them now,” Yakov disagreed.

“We can’t abandon her.”

“We can’t get to her,” Yakov said.

“She is safe for now,” Mualama interjected. “She is with the Ark, and it does not allow anyone not wearing the proper attire close to it.”

Turcotte had no idea what Mualama was babbling about. “We need to go back to Area 51,” Yakov said.

Turcotte glanced at Captain Billam. His team had lost almost half its strength.

“I don’t see what we can do,” Billam said. “We don’t have a plan. We don’t know exactly where this place is that Doctor Duncan’s being held.”

“Sergeant Boltz has lost a lot of blood,” the team medic informed him from where he was working on the NCO wounded in the assault at the Kremlin. Reluctantly, Turcotte removed the magazine, pulled the bolt back to eject the chambered round, and put the MP-5 down. “Head for Area 51.”