She paused before taking the binder back to the safe. She flipped through the hundreds of pages until she was back at the cover page. Two words stood out against the white paper:

THE PRIORY

She turned that page and looked at the first entry, which she had made over twenty-five years ago when she had first been contacted by someone representing that group. Despite the thickness of the book and the years between, she knew little more about the shadowy organization than she had in the beginning.

What she did know could be summed up succinctly: It was powerful. It was international. It had existed for a very, very long time. And now for some strange reason, it wanted HAARP operational worldwide.

She’d made a deal with the devil and now it was collecting.

There was a second binder in the safe. It was much thinner than the first one. It too had a cover page:

THE PRIORY S ENEMY

Opening that binder, the most recent entry was labeled The Ring. She knew something about the consortium of drug cartels that had been formed in Bogotá over twenty years ago. It had been the focus of much attention from the various American intelligence agencies over the years, although little had been discovered about it.

The problem was, she knew that the Ring was just a front for the Priory’s enemy, just as she-and her agency-were working for the Priory. The fact that the Priory’s enemy used drug dealers made her feel somewhat better about her alliance with the Priory. The enemy of her ally was indeed her enemy.

That the Ring was developing a weapon along the lines of HAARP was very disturbing, but they’d known that would be a problem when Dr. Souris disappeared from the program two years ago and was rumored to be working for the Ring. McFairn didn’t think it was a coincidence. She had a feeling whoever was pulling the strings behind the Ring had suborned Souris just as she herself had been suborned by Boreas and the Priory.

She controlled the most powerful intelligence-gathering organization on the face of the planet, and in the past three decades she had not been able to even come up with a name for this group that opposed the Priory or even the identity of a single agent of it. That made her very nervous indeed.

4

At 14,005 feet in altitude, the Mount of the Holy Cross joined by sixty inches the fifty-four peaks in Colorado known as fourteeners. South of Vail and Interstate 70, it was in the center of the White River National Forest and far removed from the nearest paved road. The mountain had gained its name from the cross-shaped snowfield on its north side-away from the sun-that was present year round.

It was an impressive peak and Sergeant Major Dalton’s new home. Two thirds of the way up the rocky east face, a camouflaged door was sliding up, revealing a metal grate that slowly extended outward fifteen meters from the side of the mountain. The pilots of the Blackhawk helicopter edged their craft perilously close to the rock face, blades less than a foot from striking, and did a perfect three-point landing on the grate.

Dalton slid open the door and handed out several crates and boxes to the administrative crew who were there to greet the chopper. This was the only way in or out of Bright Gate, and every flight had to carry resupply.

He threw the last box over his shoulder and headed into the dark cavern as the helicopter departed, going back to Fort Carson, outside of Colorado Springs. The grate began to move into the mountain, causing him to almost lose balance for a second, and the door came down, cutting off the light from the outside.

“Sergeant Major.”

Dalton nodded a greeting. “Lieutenant Jackson.”

She was standing next to the vault door that led to the interior of the mountain and Bright Gate. She wore a dull green one-piece flight suit, a silver bar on the shoulders. She was a tall, slender woman in her mid-twenties, and her blond hair was cut shorter than required by military regulations, a matter of practicality when operating as a Psychic Warrior in the isolation tanks that were their home during a mission.

“Are you all right?”

Dalton considered the question, knowing that it was more than just a pleasantry. Honesty dictated a long, involved answer, practicality a shorter, more direct one. “I’m functional.”

A look crossed Jackson ’s face, something he couldn’t make out, and he didn’t get a chance to see it again as she turned to the door and punched a code into the keypad on the side. The circular door was eighteen feet in diameter with rings of black metal on the polished steel surface. Dalton knew those rings were part of the psychic fence guarding Bright Gate and extended on either side of the door, and through the bottom floor and top ceiling, completely surrounding the facility.

The door rolled sideways into a recessed port, revealing a corridor lit with dim red lights. It was cut out of solid rock and descended slightly. The admin personnel entered, carrying their loads, Jackson letting them past. Once Dalton was through, she used the keypad on the other side to shut the door. The psychic fence was engaged once more.

“You can dump that here,” Jackson told Dalton as they paused next to a cross corridor the admin personnel had turned onto. “We just received a call. Raisor’s replacement is due in shortly.”

“ ‘Raisor’s replacement?” Dalton repeated. “Is Raisor really gone?”

Jackson didn’t answer, leading the way toward the team quarters.

Dalton stopped her. “I want to see my team.”

Jackson nodded and changed direction. The door she stopped at also had a keypad next to it. She punched in a code and it opened with a click. Dalton walked in slowly, taking in the bodies suspended in the tubes. Two teams of Psychic Warriors-twenty people.

“They’re alive,” Jackson said. “ Hammond ran CAT scans and there is brain activity. Very low level and not normal, but since we’re dealing with abnormal from the very start, she doesn’t know what it means. It might just be a reaction from the autonomic nervous system in response to the isolation tubes keeping the bodies alive.”

Dalton walked among the tubes, seeing the members of his Special Forces unit who had been “killed” on the psychic plane by Chyort/Feteror, the Russian avatar. And beyond them, the tubes holding the first Psychic Warrior team, the one he hadn’t been told about when first recruited to the PW program. He stopped in front of one of them containing a woman. He could see the resemblance to Raisor, whose body floated six tubes further down. The nameplate on the front of the glass read Eileen Raisor. Where Jonathan Raisor had gone on the last mission, when he broke off from Dalton ’s team, was a mystery, and since General Eichen’s visit the previous evening, something Dalton saw in a different light. The fact that Eileen Raisor had been recruited by Nexus and ended up being betrayed was something Dalton planned on keeping foremost in his mind to keep from suffering the same fate.

“Does the first team have the same CAT scan signs?” he asked.

“No. They’re flat.”

“Ah, crap,” Dalton muttered. He turned and left the room, heading for the control center.

Dr. Hammond was at her normal place, behind the main console, surrounded by computer terminals that gave her access to Sybyl, the master computer that controlled the entire facility and the Psychic Warrior program.

“Sergeant Major,” she said, nodding in greeting.

“Doctor.” He grabbed a seat and rolled it over next to her as Jackson did the same on the other side. “Anything on our people?”

“Nothing. We’re keeping the bodies alive, but their psyches…” Hammond trailed off.