Area 51: The Grail by Robert Doherty

Author:Robert Doherty
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0440234956
Publisher: Dell
Published: 2001-02-05T11:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Area 51

“Our mission is to infiltrate operational area Aker—the Giza Plateau—and secure both Doctor Duncan and any alien artifacts we come across, with emphasis on finding the Grail.” Graves slapped the pointer on the acetate covering the small-scale map of the Middle East. “We will depart this location at 0500 Zulu time via bouncer for transport to an Israeli military airfield located here at Hazerim, ten miles west of Beersheba. There we will crossload onto an Air Force MC-130.”

Turcotte followed the pointer in Graves’s hand as the team leader continued the briefing. It was standing operating procedure (SOP) for a team to present a briefback—their operational plan—at the end of isolation to their commander in order to get final approval of the mission and plan. Turcotte was a believer in following SOP. It reduced the possibility of screwups, and routine also reinforced men’s confidence. Turcotte leaned forward and followed the tip of the point as Graves drew it west, bisecting the Sinai Peninsula.

“We will fly low level across the Sinai to the Gulf of Suez. At that point, the MC-130 pilots have several possible routes to the target and they will decide the safest one to take depending on electronic intelligence of Egyptian air defenses at the time. All routes put us over the drop zone, DZ Nile, located here, two kilometers upstream on the Nile from the underground river which we have designated as Route Alpha.”

Turcotte held up a hand, causing the captain to pause. “Two klicks upstream? Why so far?”

“I’ve talked to the navigator for the MC-130 on a secure SATCOM link,” Graves said. “He says they go any further to the north, they will most definitely be spotted. It gets crowded very fast as you move north toward Cairo. As it is, they think they have a small window to get us over the river with a steep bank, a long enough flight over it to get all of us out, then they will have to bank hard again to get over the desert and out of sight.”

“How long will it take us to cover two klicks swimming?” Turcotte was trying to remember the times he’d done what special forces called maritime operations. Two kilometers was going to take a little while, even wearing the TASC-suits.

“We won’t be swimming it, sir,” Graves said. “The TASC-suits have fittings for propulsion units. Based on other operations we’ve conducted underwater using the suits, we can make it to the opening of Route Alpha in under ten minutes.”

Turcotte caught the note in Graves’s voice. He knew that the captain had everything locked down from the second they took off in the bouncer to the moment they entered that tunnel, but from there this mission was an unknown. And that bothered the officer. Turcotte now knew why Yakov had been hammering at him to slow down, to read the translation of Burton’s manuscript, to gather intelligence. For just a moment, Turcotte considered whether they should scrub the evening’s mission and delay it for twenty-four hours.

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