That clicked in Turcotte’s brain. “The ruby sphere.”
Kincaid nodded. “We never found out how Terra-Lei found the cavern or the sphere.”
“No,” Turcotte said, “UNAOC hasn’t found out. We haven’t tried to find out.”
The hint of a smile played across Kincaid’s lips. “Well, Major Quinn and I have done some digging.” He glanced over at Yakov. “I don’t know if our Russian friend knows this or not, but Earth Unlimited launched not only this satellite but two previous ones.”
“And,” Quinn interjected, “they have four simultaneous launches planned shortly. They’re going to use every launch platform Ariane has at Kourou.” “What are they doing?” Duncan asked.
“That we haven’t figured out yet,” Kincaid said. “At first I thought they might be trying something with the mothership or talon, but the flight paths of the satellite came nowhere near either craft.”
“What is Earth Unlimited?” Turcotte asked. “How did they know about the ruby sphere?”
“Well,” Quinn drawled the word out, “that’s a couple of good questions. Another interesting question would be what was Earth Unlimited’s connection to the facility at Dulce?”
“What?” Turcotte snapped.
“A subsidiary of Earth Unlimited was the primary Defense Department Contractor for the construction and continued operation of the biolab at Dulce,” Quinn said. “A contract let through the Black Budget.”
“But—” Turcotte turned to look at Duncan. “What the hell is going on?” “Maybe our Russian friend knows,” Duncan said.
All four sets of eyes turned toward the largest person in the room.
Yakov reached out and took the carafe of water. He poured himself a glassful and took a drink. He grimaced as he tasted the water. “We knew Earth Unlimited was associated with Terra-Lei, the company that was involved with the ruby sphere in the Great Rift Valley. We were interested in Terra-Lei’s compound in Ethiopia for a long time, as Colonel Kostanov must have told you. Section Four even sent a team to try to infiltrate it, but they were attacked and stopped.
“We also knew about the previous launches by Earth Unlimited from Ariane’s launch site at Kourou. When I requested that our own space-tracking satellites keep — how do you say? tabs? — tabs on any future launches, I started to get information back that someone was looking back in my direction. Wanting to know why I wanted to know about these satellites. That’s what caused me to warn my boss and to electronic-mail your Area 51.”
“Is Ariane in on it?” Turcotte asked.
“‘In on it’?” Yakov repeated. “I think not. Cash rules. Do you know how much Earth Unlimited is paying for those four rockets to go up at the same time? One point two billion dollars. That’s on top of the nine hundred million they’ve already spent for the three previous launches. People’s vision tends to get very blurry when that much money is involved.
“I have no evidence the European Space Consortium is aware of what Earth Unlimited is trying to do, but it would also not be the first time I have been proven wrong. They are everywhere.”
“They?” Turcotte asked.
Yakov ignored Turcotte and turned to Kincaid. “Since you have had some time to check on things, perhaps you know something more?”
“I’ve found out a little bit,” Kincaid said after Duncan indicated for him to go ahead. “I had a DOD satellite do a scan of the area the satellite went down in, looking for the payload. We didn’t find that, but something strange came up. Take a look at this.” He put a sheet of colored paper on the table.
“What are we looking at?”
“Thermal imaging of the region where the Earth Unlimited payload went down,” Kincaid said.
“And?” Turcotte saw various hues of blue and green.
“Lower right quadrant,” Kincaid said. He slid a second image to the center of the table. “Next shot is a zoom on that area.”
A new image appeared on the screen. Two areas were circled in yellow. One was full of tiny blue spots. The other had red dots.
“That’s two villages,” Kincaid said. “The blue dots are dead bodies. Recently dead and cold.”
“My God,” Duncan exclaimed, “there must be a hundred of them.”
“I don’t get it,” Turcotte said. “Are they connected to the rocket that went down there?”
“I think so,” Kincaid said.
“How?” Turcotte asked.
“I don’t know,” Kincaid admitted. “It just seems like too much of a coincidence. And what’s even more bizarre is the other village, where all the people show up dark red. The shade indicates the average body temperature is over 101 degrees Fahrenheit.”
“Everyone in the village is hot?” Turcotte asked.
“Looks like it,” Kincaid said. “If I hadn’t gotten the tip from Yakov, no one would even have looked in this area.”
“But we don’t know exactly what we’re looking at,” Turcotte pointed out.
“Not yet,” Kincaid said.
“What are we looking at?” Duncan addressed the question to Yakov.
“The end of the world,” Yakov said. “To be more specific, the death of every human being on the face of the planet who is not a puppet of the Airlia.”
Turcotte glanced at Duncan. She returned the look, which said that they didn’t know the how or why yet, but they believed Yakov.
Yakov picked up the imagery, then put it back down. He looked around the table. “Have any of you heard of something called The Mission?”
When there was no response, he continued.
“Have any of you heard of the Guides?”
Another silence.
“Your Majestic-12, they were what we call Guides.”
“What do you mean?” Turcotte asked.
Yakov tapped the side of his large head. “Their mind was affected by a guardian computer. You know of STAAR. It was founded by your government the same time as Majestic-12, but its mission was to prepare for actual encounter with aliens. But STAAR was just a cover for an organization that had existed already. The Guides are Aspasia’s version of STAAR. Not the same, but they, too, work for the aliens. I can only tell you the little I know, and the little I guess from that little I know.”
Turcotte found the Russian’s way of speaking interesting. He also understood the man’s paranoia, given what had happened ever since he’d been involved in this entire Area 51 mess.
“The Mission is an organization, not a specific place. It moves. It is the headquarters for the Guides. I do not know its exact makeup or much about it at all.
“We believe it is now in South America. How long it has been there, I do not know. I know it is the place behind this satellite that came down. You could call this company Earth Unlimited’s headquarters, although I think that is just the front they use to work in the world now. I think The Mission has existed for a very long time. It is the source for what came from the satellite and killed those people in your thermal imagery.”
“And what is that?” Turcotte asked.
“The Black Death.”
CHAPTER 8
The Guide Parker sat alone in the darkness, staring at the screen of his laptop. A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead, along his left temple, and onto the hard floor.
There was knock on the door to his room. He swung his chair around, wincing in pain. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then called out.
“Enter.”
A young woman in her early twenties cautiously stepped into the dimly lit room, only a pair of candles and the screen supplying light.
“Guide Parker?”
“Yes, my child.” Parker’s voice was low and soothing.
The woman stepped forward. “I…” She paused.
“Go ahead,” Parker said. “You must speak freely.”