Area 51: The Mission-3 (38 page)

Yakov placed the muzzle of the MP-5 on Hemstadt's chest. "Where is the cure?"

"Gone."

"The Mission," Yakov said. "Where are they?"

Hemstadt smiled. " 'They'—as you call them—are long gone. You will never find them."

"Who are they?"

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Hemstadt simply shook his head. "Far beyond you. You don't have a clue about what is really going on. What has been going on throughout history. Nothing is as you were taught."

"They helped you in the camps during the Great War."

Hemstadt snorted. "Helped? They invented the camps. We helped them. You have no idea—-"

Yakov jabbed the steel barrel into the old man's frail chest. "Why don't you tell me. old man."

Hemstadt laughed, the sound echoing off the stone walls. "You think you have accomplished something here? You haven't stopped us. The launches have already been aborted and this plan abandoned. They're taking the cure out to sea to sink it."

Turcotte left the bridge and raced aft. Kenyon and Mickell were pushing pieces of the helicopter out of the way. There were several large plastic cases tied down on the deck.

"You've got a minute," Turcotte yelled.

"What?" Kenyon was at the cases.

"This ship's going to blow in a minute."

Kenyon flipped open the latches on the first one. A large stainless-steel cylinder rested on the cut-out foam, about three feet wide by six in length.

"One of the satellite dispersers," Kenyon said. He turned to the next case. It also held one of the satellite payloads.

"Thirty seconds." Turcotte knew that the concussion from an explosion carried well in water. Even if they got off in time, the blast would kill them as they tried to swim away.

Kenyon skipped the next two cases, which were the same size.

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The fifth, smaller box was different. Kenyon opened the lid and the top of rows of glass test tubes appeared, each one inserted in the foam padding.

"Black Death?" Turcotte asked.

Kenyon pulled one out and read the German label. "Yes."

He opened the next box. Pulled out a tube. "More Black Death."

Turcotte looked up. A bouncer was hovering overhead. A voice spoke in his earpiece—Duncan had arrived. He swung the boom mike for the FM radio in front of his lips to tell her what he needed.

Two more boxes of Black Death.

"Twenty seconds!" Turcotte yelled.

There was only one box left.

"Grab the cargo net!" Turcotte ordered as the bouncer came in low, hovering just above their heads. Kenyon and Colonel Mickell jumped.

Turcotte grabbed the last box with one hand and with the other grabbed hold of the cargo attached to the bottom of the bouncer.

His arm was wrenched in its socket as the bouncer accelerated straight up, the case almost torn from his

grip. Below him there was a thunderous explosion and pieces of the boat flew by.

"I'll tell you something to show you how ignorant you are," Hemstadt said.

"Nineteen oh eight. Tunguska. The great explosion. You should know what caused that, but you don't, do you? Your own government hid that from you. And you are Section Four, aren't you? You are a naive child."

Yakov saw that the old man's right hand had slipped under the blanket. He ripped the blanket off the Ger-

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man's lap. The hand flopped down, a small needle clenched between two fingers.

When Yakov looked up, Hemstadt's face was slack with death.

The bouncer came down very slowly over the courtyard of the prison on Devil's Island. Turcotte's feet touched the ground and he collapsed, cradling the case.

The bouncer slid over to the side and touched down. The top hatch opened and Lisa Duncan slid down the outside and ran over.

"Are you all right?"

Turcotte didn't have the strength to reply. He forced his other hand to let go of the handle of the plastic case. Kenyon unsnapped the latches and opened the lid. Rows of glass tubes were nestled in the foam lining. He pulled a tube out and held it up.

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-24-

Inside of Qian-Ling, Elek had been in contact with the guardian for the past hour. He stepped back, the golden glow retreating from his head. "I have sent a message," he said.

"To who?" Che Lu asked.

"To my superior. She will get us the key."

Four hundred meters down, the crew of the Springfield also waited. The foo fighters had not moved. Admiral Poldan, commanding the USS Washington on the surface, fifty kilometers from Easter Island, spent most of his time imploring his chain of command for permission to attack the island with nuclear weapons.

So far, he had not received permission.

Deep inside Rano Kau on Easter Island, the guardian received input from The Mission. The Black Death mission had been aborted because the attempt to seize the mothers hip had failed.

The news was noted, but it was only a stone thrown in the stream of action the guardian had planned.

The power from the thermal vent had the guardian running at 100 percent. In a corner of the cavern, the microrobots had been working. In a curious assembly line, the production of each successive generation had

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grown smaller. A circle of half-inch-long microrobots were at work on a new model. When they were done, a quarter-inch-long robot skittered across the floor on six tiny legs. Then it joined the production line.

The Guide Parker pulled the cellular phone connection off his laptop. Wind blew sand into the keyboard, but he didn't care. He stood up. The Chosen were gathered around him. The time had come and passed. The Prophecy was unfulfilled.

He felt a spike of pain in his left temple.

"The time is not now!" His voice was taken by the wind and whipped away. "But it will be soon. We must go back and prepare once more!"

Turcotte made a fist with his right hand and pumped his arm. There was already swelling where the needle had gone in. Next to him, Lisa Duncan did the same.

"Will Kenyon be able to stop it?" she asked.

Turcotte nodded. "He thinks so. He's sending samples of the cure lo every disease-control agency on the planet, as well as the World Health Organization.

The governments may have their heads buried in the sand, but he's confident that if the Black Death shows up, the agencies and WHO will deal with it. He's pretty sure he can contain it in the Amazon and help those already infected."

"Several thousand are already dead," Duncan noted.

Turcotte grimaced, whether from the soreness in his arm or the subject, Duncan couldn't tell. "It's like when people in the States read about a flood in India or a landslide in Mexico killing a bunch of people. Very few people really care if it's not happening in their hometown."

"This came very close to happening in everyone's

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town," Duncan said. "At least we stopped The Mission."

"The Black Death has been stopped." Turcotte amended. '"The Mission is another matter."

"Yes, it is," Yakov said. The Russian had been unusually quiet the past hour, since Kenyon had taken off in the bouncer with the case of vials containing the cure for the Black Death. Yakov had dragged Hemstadt's body out of the tunnel and thrown the old man into the sea, letting the sharks have him. "We are going to have to find out about The Mission on our own."

"We'd better find it and take care of it," Turcotte said, "because we just won a skirmish in a long line of battles here. I've got a feeling the war really hasn't started yet."

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Robert Doherty is the pen name for a bestselling writer of military suspense novels. He is also the author of The Rock, Area 51, Area 51: The Reply, Area 51: The Sphinx, Area 51: The Grail, Area 51: Excalibur, Psychic Warrior, and Psychic Warrior: Project Aura. Doherty is a West Point graduate, a former infantry officer, and Special Forces A-Team Commander. He currently lives in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information, you can visit his website at: www.nettrends.com/mayer.

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