“Firing,” she told Turcotte as she pressed the execute key.
Turcotte saw a string of red lanced down from the Specter, lashing into the fog even as another lightning bolt came out, destroying a third helicopter. The string was a line of 20mm shells. Also firing, the 40mm and 105 Howitzer sent rounds raining down.
Turcotte tapped Sherev’s arm with his one free hand. “We’ve got to go in now!”
The Israeli’s jaw set, knowing what was implied in giving that order. He keyed his radio. “All units attack, all units attack. Gunships suppressing fire, assault force to the doorway location.”
The surviving Cobras stopped their evasive maneuvers and headed for the fog, gaining altitude. The Blackhawks lifted out of their canyon hide and flitted forward, straight for the rock spur.
Another lightning bolt took out a fourth Cobra. But the Israeli pilots didn’t waver, going right at the source of their death.
The Cobras began firing, spraying their minguns at the top of the mountain, adding to the rounds from Specter. Another Cobra exploded. The Blackhawks were less than a mile from the spur.
“Go,” Turcotte ordered the bouncer pilot. He locked the suit legs to keep from falling as the bouncer accelerated, racing past the Blackhawks.
A streak of lightning came out of the cloud, heading for the bouncer. Sherev and Yakov took steps back, throwing their hands up reflexively as they could see the bolt come straight for them. It hit.
The alien craft shuddered, knocking Yakov and Sherev off their feet. The two struggled to get up, but the floor was canted at an extreme angle, and they slid to the down side.
“We’re losing power!” the pilot yelled. “I’m slowing us as much as I can.” Turcotte could see Mount Sinai rapidly approaching as the bouncer lost altitude. He reached down and grabbed Yakov with one mechanical hand and lifted Sherev with the arm that had the MK-98. The suit strength amplifiers strained from the pressure as he lifted both men off the floor of the bouncer. He flexed his knees.
They hit and went from forty miles an hour to a dead halt in a microsecond. Turcotte crumbled to the ground, even the suit’s amplifiers giving way now and the entire system overloading. But it had been enough to save Yakov and Sherev, the arms and legs acting like shock absorbers, reducing the force of the impact. The pilots were thrown about in their harnesses and knocked unconscious.
Turcotte was in darkness. He tried to move but nothing happened.
Two more Cobras were destroyed in rapid succession as the Blackhawks closed to within a half mile of the spur.
Aspasia’s Shadow was standing in a hemispheric room deep inside Mount Sinai. The sword was set into another crystal, this one dark red and only two feet high, directly in front of him. A golden field emanated out of the pommel of the sword, encapsulating Aspasia’s Shadow and touching the equidistant curved walls. On the smooth surface of the walls the 360-degree surface view was displayed, as if he were standing at the very top of Mount Sinai and could see clearly in all directions.
Aspasia’s Shadow’s eyes shifted to the last Cobra gunship, the closest threat.
A streak of light flashed from the sword pommel to the wall, hitting the image of the Cobra.
A golden sphere was extended on a fifty-foot pole made of b’ja, the Airlia metal straight out of the peak of Mount Sinai. A bolt of lightning streaked out of the golden sphere, through the fog.
The last Cobra was destroyed.
In the rear of the AC-130 crewmen used snow shovels to clear the expended brass away from the still-firing guns.
Three digital counters clicked down rounds left in each of the three systems. As Macomber watched, the 25mm clicked to zero and the gun ceased firing, multi-barrel smoking. The 40 and 105 kept chunking out rounds, but they too were running low.
Turcotte tried to control his panic.
“Reboot,” he ordered, his voice contained inside the helmet.
His heart skipped a beat as nothing happened for several seconds, then the screen flickered and came alive with the scroll of data indicating it was rebooting.
Aspasia’s Shadow had noted the incoming rounds coming from above, but the Cobras had been a more immediate threat. He now shifted his gaze upward at the AC-130.
On her targeting screen, Macomber saw the glow coming out of the fog and knew they were targeted. There wasn’t time to think. She tapped the screen with her right forefinger, right on top of the glow. As the lightning streaked up, both the 40mm and 105 mm sent rounds screaming directly in the opposite direction.
Macomber shifted her hand and touched her grandmother’s picture as the screen filled with the approaching lightning.
The Specter exploded.
The last 105mm howitzer round that Macomber had targeted struck home, hitting the golden sphere.
Four thousand feet below, in the bowels of Mount Sinai, Aspasia’s Shadow cried out and staggered back as the walls flickered with streaks of black and red, the outside image gone.
He reached down and touched the pommel of the sword, willing the ancient technology to work, but the kaleidoscope on the walls continued unabated. Cursing, he pulled the sword out of the crystal and left the room.
On top of the mountain, the strange fog began blowing away with the desert breeze.
The data stopped and the screen showed only darkness. “Forward view, night vision,” Turcotte ordered.
He could see the top hatch over Yakov’s shoulder. The Russian was struggling to open it.
Turcotte got to his feet. Sherev was waiting at the base of the ladder. The pilot and co-pilot were unconscious in their crash seats in the center of the bouncer. The skin of the craft was solid, all power dead.
“Stand clear,” Turcotte told Yakov.
The Russian turned in surprise, searching in the darkness. “I thought you were dead. I cannot get the hatch to budge.”
Turcotte climbed up, hooked his weapon arm on the top rung, and with the other applied pressure. The hatch cracked open, letting in sunlight, then fell open with a clang. He climbed out, then reached down and helped the other two out.
The side of Mount Sinai was towering over them, topped with the strange fog. But even as they watched, the cloud was beginning to dissipate.
The first Blackhawk touched down. A dozen Israeli commandos leaped out. Satchel charges in hand, they dashed toward the base of the spur where Sherev had told them the door was.
Aspasia’s Shadow staggered as the entire complex shook.
“Come.” He gestured to a squad of his men waiting in the tunnel. He didn’t head for the surface entrance where the enemy was coming, but rather toward the room where Lisa Duncan was still undergoing the effects of the Grail.
The edge of the bouncer had crashed into the side of the mountain, about two hundred meters from the rock spur. Turcotte could see the Blackhawks landing, commandos leaping off. The three men headed for the commandos gathered outside the opening.
Lisa Duncan blinked. She felt intoxicated, not in control of her body, her head spinning. She tried to reach out with her right hand, to feel something solid, but her arm wouldn’t move.
She blinked once more, taking comfort that she did have some control. “How do you feel?” Aspasia’s Shadow loomed over her.
Duncan tried to say something, but no sound came. She saw that he was dressed in the priest’s clothes.
“We must be—” the man began, but he was interrupted by a loud explosion reverberating through the rock itself. Aspasia’s Shadow straightened. “Take her,” he ordered.