“Right. I can feel it.”

“There’s no time for this. Where are you?”

Dalton gave Mentor his location.

“We’ll be wheels up in five minutes,” Mentor said, closing out the conversation.

Hammond, meanwhile, was sitting with her back to the mountain. Her eyes had the “thousand-yard stare” Dalton had seen before, a precursor to going into shock. The diesel fumes combined with the surprise of the sudden assault and the subsequent explosion had taken its toll. He knelt down next to her and took her hands. They were ice-cold.

“You’ve got to hang in there,” Dalton said. “The helicopter will be on its way soon.”

“They just killed my people,” Hammond said. “Gunned them down like animals. Then they destroyed it.”

“I know,” Dalton said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He took off his fatigue shirt and draped it over her shoulders. He started talking, telling her about some of the places he’d been, trying to draw her mind away from what she had just experienced.

19

Captain Lonsky turned on the light above his bunk and squinted, trying to make sense of the message Zenata had just woken him to read. He could feel the vibration of the Gagarins engines through the floor plates.

“Your glasses,” Zenata reminded him.

He groped on the small shelf next to his bunk and retrieved his reading glasses, slipping them on.

“I have received a set of instructions,” Zenata said.

“Reference?”

“Changing the antenna dish arrays. Modifying them. I’ve already got my people working on it.”

“What kind of modifications?”

“Rather interesting,” Zenata said. “Adapting the two main dishes to transmit on different bandwidths at very high power.”

“Why would someone want to do that?” Lonsky yawned. “There is no one listening on those bandwidths.”

“I don’t know. It’s most strange.”

Lonsky turned the light off. “I am going to get some sleep. Wake me when our owner contacts us again.”

“Who were they?” Dalton demanded as soon as he put the headset on. “The Priory? It doesn’t make sense that they would attack Bright Gate. And why destroy it?”

Mentor reached up and flicked the controls for the intercom, insuring that only Dalton could hear him. “The Priory has an enemy.”

“Besides Nexus?”

“Yes.”

Hammond was collapsed next to Dalton, no headset, her eyes closed. The Blackhawk was racing away from the ridge where it had picked the two of them up. Dalton waited, then finally tapped Mentor on the arm. “Some more information would be helpful.”

Mentor leaned back against the web seating. “We don’t really have a current name for this enemy. If the Priory operates in the shadows, then this group operates in the pitch black.”

“The Droza,” Dalton said.

That caught Mentor ’s attention. “Where did you hear of them?”

“Never mind where I heard of them. Are they the Priory’s enemy?”

“Not exactly. That’s where the Priory came from. And this enemy.”

“And Gypsies-the Roma?” Dalton added.

“Yes.”

“Who is the enemy?”

“Because we’ve never met one, or even talked to anyone who has met one of this group, we had to take the Priory’s name for their enemy. Mithrans.”

“Mithrans,” Dalton repeated.

“Most people associate the name Mithras with the pagan Roman sun god, but it actually predates Rome. The Romans picked up Mithraism in the second century A.D. via their army’s conquests of areas where it still thrived. Mithras was originally an Indo-European god way back around the fifteenth century B.C. And we’ve learned that Mithra actually even goes back before then. Have you ever heard of Kali?”

The words stirred some vague memories in Dalton. “A statue with a lot of arms? India?”

“Kali is most commonly known as the primordial Mother Goddess of Hinduism. But the same name, or derivation of it, goes far beyond India. In prehistoric Ireland, people worshipped a goddess known as Kelle. Ancient Finland has an all-powerful goddess named Kal-ma. In Greece there was Kalli. In the Sinai there was a goddess named Kalu. I think the similar names in very dissimilar languages makes it more than just a coincidence.”

“So the Priory’s enemy is a goddess?”

“The Mithrans are undoubtedly matriarchal,” Mentor said. “While the Priory is patriarchal.”

“Lieutenant Jackson thinks the Mithrans exist on the virtual plane,” Dalton said. He could see the glow of Colorado Springs behind Cheyenne Mountain, a large dark bulk directly ahead of them. Pikes Peak was off to the left.

“That may well be,” Mentor said. “It would explain why we’ve never met one.”

“Maybe you have met one and you just don’t know it,” Dalton said.

“That is also possible,” he allowed.

“This Ring is just a front for the Mithrans then, correct?”

“Yes. But we don’t think the members of the Ring know that they are being used.”

“How can that be?”

“We don’t even know exactly what a Mithran is,” Mentor said, “so I can’t tell you how they operate. But while the Priory pulls strings through their various agents, I think the Mithrans are less direct in getting others to work for them. I think they subtly affect people’s minds and make their victims think the goals they are after are their own, when in reality, they are the Mithrans’ goals.”

Dalton considered that as they flew over the mountains: two ancient enemies going at each in a very modern way. And he and his people were caught in the middle.

“What is this place?” Dalton asked as the Blackhawk descended down the western side of mountain.

“Remember Eichen told you about what happened to JFK?”

What Dalton remembered was that Eichen had hinted but not explicitly said the Priory was behind the assassination, but he simply nodded.

Mentor continued. “President Johnson, upon being briefed about Nexus and the fate of his predecessor being most likely at the instigation of the Priory, decided he needed a secure location for Nexus to headquarter itself and for him to retreat to if the proverbial manure hit the fan. He had to assume, as our Nexus advisers did, that Blue Mountain in West Virginia, the alternate White House, was compromised by the Priory. There is a Nexus command and control center hidden under the Pentagon, but it was felt that was also probably known to the Priory”- Mentor gave a bitter grimace-“which was borne out not long ago. The only way to insure he had a place not known to the Priory was to build something under the supervision of Nexus.

“He authorized the extra millions to build an adjunct, highly classified, smaller facility next to the NORAD base. It was the logical place for such a facility, as we could easily tap into one of the underground, secure communications tunnels that connected the larger base with the outside world, and thus be able to communicate and be hooked into NORAD.”

The chopper was just about to touch down on the small landing pad. Dalton could see Jackson waiting for them, hand raised to protect her eyes against the blade downwash. She was seated in what appeared to be a golf cart.

“The Ranch, which is what Johnson christened it, is over two miles away from the main NORAD and Space Command complex. Besides communications, we tap into them for power, water, and sewage. There’s enough food stocked in the Ranch to keep a group of a dozen going for a year. It’s been running since NORAD was established, and no one has ever noticed the power or water drain because it’s never changed since the first day NORAD began.”

The wheels touched down.

“Have you told Barnes and Jackson about Nexus yet?” Dalton asked.

“No. They’ve been busy setting up the isolation tubes.”

As Mentor reached for the handle to slide the door open, Dalton halted him. “Are you going to tell them?”