David Golemon - Ancients

The ten aircraft in question, hidden secretly at Aviano for a full day after having been flown in during the hours of total darkness, ten F-22A Raptors, America's fifth-generation fighters of the newly activated 525th Fighter Squadron, would play a pivotal role in the opening minutes of the attack. Meanwhile, the big surprise would come from the American air base at Diego Garcia, where two B-2 Spirit stealth bombers would be the first of America's warplanes to lift off.

As the fighters were made ready in Italy, the pair of B-2s were already rolling down the darkened runway at Diego Garcia.

Marine Corps General Pete Hamilton was on the flag bridge when the captain of the Iwo handed him a cup of coffee.

"We just received word that the first element of Morning Thunder cleared the runway at 0345 hours," the captain said.

General Hamilton sipped his coffee and looked out at the calm Mediterranean. He did not respond at first, only nodded. He knew that if their ploy didn't work, the landing force would not only have to deal with a stiff land defense, they would have to dodge an attack from the air.

"Thank you, Captain." He placed his coffee on the arm of the large chair. "Signal Nassau, Casper the Friendly Ghost has levitated."

"Aye, sir. Should we also signal Backdoor that Morning Thunder is off the ground?"

"If Colonel Collins started out on time and they're where they should be, he and my marines won't be able to receive you." He looked at the captain and shook his head. "Backdoor is on its own. No message."

The captain saw that the general was off in his own world, worrying over the time-worn problems of how to kill your fellow man without losing too many of your own, or of your enemy. The captain knew that very few men in the violent history of the world had ever found out how to do that.

The third piece of the surprise was the Cheyenne. The Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine had entered the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar three hours before and had run at flank speed until she reached her initial point. The captain of the Cheyenne, Peter Burgess, had received his orders the night before and was baffled as to why his boat was ordered to the relatively quiet Mediterranean when the world was getting ready to tear itself apart on the other side of the planet. Then he read the coded orders and his anger became an uneasy self-rebuke. The Cheyenne was ordered to launch all twelve of her Tomahawk cruise missiles at the island of Crete at exactly 0600. All twelve Tomahawks would be air-burst HE (high explosive) shots.

As he brought the Cheyenne up to periscope depth, he knew that whatever enemy was at those coordinates when the cruise missiles arrived was in for a major hurt.

"XO, open doors on vertical tubes one through twelve and spool up the birds."

The second element of Operation Backdoor was cooling its heels. For the past thirty minutes they had been at a standstill, since Everett had called Jack and told him that they had a major blockage of the passage and would have to blow an ancient magma flow from the tiled roadway.

While they waited, Sarah took pictures of the tunnel and its ornate wonders that depicted Atlantis in mosaic relief throughout the gateway. There were scenes of teachers instructing the young. Some depicted great battles fought with barbaric people; most brutal of all were the scenes showing the barbarity toward the lesser people of the world.

"Looks like these people were a little harsh on their neighbors," Mendenhall said as he saw the mosaic of slaves as they went about harsh work in the fields and buildings of Atlantis.

"It was a different world for those people. To be as advanced as they were, they had to have existed for at least ten or fifteen thousand years. As for their obvious brutality ..." Sarah remembered that Mendenhall always looked at such things this from a base point of view. Either you were good or you were bad. There was never, ever anything in between.

"What do you suppose those are?" Collins asked, coming up from behind.

Sarah saw where he was pointing. She walked over to Collins, bent down, and placed her hand over one of many crystals about two feet in diameter placed into the tiled walls about five feet up from the cobbled floor.

"They look like lights," Collins ventured.

"Hey, the colonel is brighter than I thought," Sarah quipped.

Collins looked at her expressionlessly.

Sarah cleared her throat and then took out a small hammer and chipped away at the clay tile around the crystal. She finally managed to pop it free and held it in her hands.

"See, it's been beveled into this shape--very efficient for amplifying light. It would have taken very little electricity to ignite this filament here." She probed a small copper wire attached to a larger one running through the tiled wall.

"Electricity again?" Jack asked.

"Yes. These people were as active as ConEd."

"If they were so smart, how come they didn't have a train running down here?"

Sarah didn't answer Jack's question because she was thinking. Suddenly she pushed the light crystal into his hands and then ran to the back of one of the two-ton trucks and removed a spare battery from the back. She relieved Jack of the crystal and ripped free the thicker copper line, part of which was so old that it crumbled in her hand. She laid the crystal aside, opened up her battery-operated flashlight, and emptied the batteries out, then unscrewed the lens cap. She easily popped free the two small wires and then attached them to the copper line that ran chainlike to the other crystals embedded in the walls. Then she kneeled by the battery and hesitated. She split the flashlight wires farther apart until each end could reach a battery post and then she attached them.

Jack was amazed when the crystals in line lit up like a row of Christmas lights until they disappeared down the long tunnel.

"Uh, did someone trip the house alarm?" Everett asked over the radio.

Jack smiled and raised his radio. "Advance one, that's a negative. We had one of our electricians just throw a breaker switch," Collins answered, just as they heard and felt a rumble from below.

"Understood. Get your team moving. We just cleared the road down here, continuing on."

Jack clicked his radio twice and ordered everyone to the vehicles. Then he looked at Sarah with his left brow raised.

"Think you're pretty smart, don't you?"

She batted her eyelashes, smiled, and then moved off.

Jack shook his head and ran to his vehicle. He raised his radio. "Captain, we have to push it. Things are going to start going boom pretty soon."

"You think this is a waste of time?" Tomlinson asked Caretaker without turning around to face him.

They watched the engineers clearing the last of the debris from the entrance to the Empirium Chamber.

"I have no comment one way or the other, sir."

"Then why don't you go eat some cheese and drink a glass of wine with the others?"

"I have no taste for such things."

"Mr. Tomlinson, we are through the outer wall of the Empirium Chamber," the lead engineer said as he removed his hard hat and wiped sweat from his brow. "We have four men inside setting up some klieg lighting; we still may have a very unstable situation in there. In addition, we may have found another extensive cave system under the building. My echo-sound people tell me it goes down at least a mile and a quarter."