Mualama pressed his face and a flashlight against the ice. He moved along the wall, peering in.
“There it is!” The excitement in his uncle’s voice was evident. Lago joined him, looking. There was a dark square on the other side, the exact nature of which was unclear. He jumped back as Mualama swung the ice ax in his hands and it splintered one of the icicles, a four-foot-long shard crashing to the ground. “Come on!” Mualama yelled. “Help me!”
All eyes were on Yakov, the question prompted by Lexina hanging over the table. The Russian got up and walked over to a small table on the side of the room. He reluctantly poured a glass of water. “Haven’t you stocked anything stronger yet?” he asked Major Quinn.
There was no answer, nor did Turcotte think Yakov had expected one. He knew the Russian was digesting this new information. Yakov sat back down, then looked at Duncan. “Do you have the key this Lexina creature wants?”
“No.”
Yakov’s bushy eyebrows contracted. “Then why does this creature think you have it?”
“The first time she asked me, while we were combating the Black Death, I told her we had it, trying to get more information out of her,” Duncan said.
“That was a mistake,” Yakov said. “Now, if you tell Lexina you do not have the key, the creature will think you are lying and follow through on her threat”
“What is Strategicheskii Zvyezda?” Turcotte finally asked, tired of the verbal sparring.
“You have to understand… ” Yakov began, but Turcotte cut him off.
“What is it? Can it do what Lexina threatened?”
Yakov slowly nodded. “Strategicheskii Zvyezda-… the long form for what was called in classified circles Stratzyda… means ‘Strategic Star.’”
Turcotte put a hand to his forehead. “This doesn’t sound good.”
Yakov continued. “Stratzyda was launched in 1988, just before the end of the Cold War. A one-hundred-ton payload over thirty-seven meters long and four meters wide.
“It was put into orbit four hundred miles up. We knew your tracking systems would pick it up, so we fed the world a cover story. We said it was a first-stage experimental platform in preparation for launching our Mir space station. But it was not that, of course. It was… is… a weapons platform designed to…” Yakov stopped and took a deep drink from his glass, his face tightening when he remembered it was water, not vodka.
“What kind of weapons?” Duncan’s voice was cold.
“Thirty-two one-megaton, cobalt-salted, nuclear warheads with their own reentry engines, pretargeted, as Stratzyda passes over the center of your country, to blanket the United States with a grid pattern that will ensure every square inch is covered with a lethal dose of radioactive material.”
“You idiots.” Duncan’s comment filled the stunned silence that followed. “Our own sword against us,” Turcotte muttered.
The Secretary of Defense’s motorcade departed the Pentagon and headed north along the George Washington Expressway, paralleling the Potomac. A lead and trial car contained bodyguards, sandwiching the limousine holding the Honorable William Wickham.
Wickham was going to the White House to plead with the President to give him nuclear weapons release with regard to Easter Island. The Navy had a plan to attempt to probe the shield once more, but Admiral Poldan, the commander of Task Force 78, which surrounded the island, wanted to do more than just probe. Wickham agreed with the admiral. The takeover of the Warfighter satellite and the destruction of Atlantis had been the final shove, landing the Secretary of Defense solidly in the camp of those in the Pentagon who believed that all-out war against the aliens and their supporters had to be waged.
Wickham paused in his musings as he saw the familiar landscape of Arlington National Cemetery out the left window of the limo. He always took this route into the capital, because the numerous rows of white crosses that stretched across the green fields overlooking the capital were a constant reminder to him of the weight of the decisions he had to make and advise the President to make. It was because Wickham felt the responsibility that would be his if his recommendations caused more young men and women to be buried that he had urged caution and restraint to this point, but the attack on the hangar at Area 51, on top of the loss of the shuttles and the submarine Pasadena to foo fighters and the entrapment of the Springfield, had changed that stance.
The three vehicles turned east onto the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Wickham turned his attention from the cemetery, which was now behind them, to the Lincoln Memorial, which was directly ahead on the other side of the river. The going was slow, because one of the lanes of eastbound traffic was closed due to construction.
Wickham knew the severe pressure the President was under from the isolationists and that it would be a hard sell to get authorization to nuke Easter Island. He was considering arguments he could use, when he was jerked forward, almost falling off the rear seat when the driver slammed on the brakes.
“What the hell?” Wickham reached for the intercom to the driver, when he saw directly ahead what had caused the halt. A backhoe had rumbled out of the construction lane between the lead car and the limo. The backhoe turned, the heavy steel shovel now pointing at the front windshield of the limousine and coming closer.
“Get me out of there, George,” Wickham yelled into the intercom.
The driver threw the limo into reverse and abruptly backed into the trail car, fenders crumpling. Wickham fumbled with door as the shovel came down on the front seat, spearing through the bulletproof windshield, pinning the driver against the seat. The steel blade sliced the man in two as it buckled the frame of the car.
Wickham pulled on the latch, trying to get the door open, but the entire car was twisted, the metal bent and unyielding. He could hear shots, his guards firing at the driver of the backhoe. The blade pulled free of the front of the limousine and the backhoe advanced, large tires climbing up onto the twisted metal. Through the tinted sunroof Wickham could see the blade looming overhead.
Outside, the guards from the first car blazed away at the man driving the backhoe, partially protected by the metal roll cage that surrounded him. Bullets ricocheted off metal, the driver ignoring everything but the rear half of the car in front of him. As a round ripped through his chest, he slammed forward the lever controlling the shovel and it dropped, crashing through the top of the car.
Wickham dove to avoid the blade as it smashed down. The edge caught his ankles, severing his feet from his body and momentarily pinning him in place. The pain exploded along his nervous system, almost causing him to black out.
The driver pulled back on the lever, edging it in the direction of the Secretary of Defense. A bodyguard was climbing up the side of the backhoe. As the guard fired a fatal shot through the driver’s head, the man’s hand slammed the lever forward one last time.
CHAPTER 7
Mualama slid between the sharp shards of shattered ice, the glow from his flashlight reflected a hundred times by the glistening walls of the cavern. The far wall was ten feet in front of him. A circle of blackened stones, where a fire had once burned, was in the center of the floor.
A large stone set against rear of the cavern caught his eye. He went around the fire pit and shone the light on the rock. Etched into the stone was a word in Arabic: Sedgh. Mualama felt a wave of excitement. The word meant truthfulness and honestly, one of the virtues of a Sufi Master.