Area 51 The Truth

CHAPTER 1: The Present MOUNT EVEREST Mike Turcotte muttered irritably, wanting nothing more than to be left alone. He was wrapped in a warm blanket and felt very comfortable. A Sunday morning in Maine, the one day of the week he was home from the logging camp and didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn. He was wrapped in his mother's handmade comforters. He so badly just wanted to continue sleeping. A dream kept intruding, an insistent, irritating buzz in his subconscious. A woman with dark hair, dressed in a white robe, standing on a beach. Looking at him. Her mouth was moving, saying something, but he heard nothing. There was something wrong about the place though. The shadows, the water. All wrong. He focused on her lips and he knew he had tasted them many times. They were thin and pale, her face angular. He had known her-- "Get up." He didn't hear as much as knew that's what she was yelling at him. "Get up." Turcotte didn't want to. He could never remember feeling as secure and comfortable as he did right now. He'd been so tired, he knew that, and however long he had rested, it wasn't near enough. "I need you." She had saved him; he knew that, although he could not recall details. Beyond that, he knew they had done much together, and been many places. And he had loved her fiercely. That emotion roared through him, shaking him out of his stupor. Turcotte opened his eyes but all he could see was white. He blinked, feeling something wet on his face. He shook his head, slowly realizing it was snow on his skin. Panicking, he sat up abruptly, six inches of snow falling off the upper half of his body. He looked about. Open air directly in front. Rock behind. He was flanked by bodies. Frozen solid. One dressed in a black robe with silver fringe. Another in ancient leather armor. And a third in early-twentieth-century climbing gear--Sandy Irvine, who had disappeared in 1924 while attempting to summit with George Mallory. With a smile frozen forever on his face. That shook Turcotte. He knew he'd have died with a smile on his face also if he hadn't woken. He could feel the cold throughout his body now. It was excruciatingly painful as his nerve endings came awake. He looked down and could just make out the sword across his knees. Excalibur. The key to the Master Guardian that he had freed from its scabbard, activating it. Reality came rushing back to him. Yakov had to be in the mothership with the Master Guardian. Duncan was missing. And he was high on Mount Everest. Next to the sword was a SATPhone, its surface frozen and covered with ice. With stiff hands he reached out and picked up the phone, shoving it inside his parka. The cold made even the slightest act extremely difficult. Mike Turcotte forced himself to get to his feet, Excalibur gripped tightly in his right hand, an ice ax in his left. He knew he had passed the peak of power the amphetamines had given him and that the oxygen richness of the blood doping was fading. How long had he sat there, he wondered. It couldn't have been too long because he still had some feeling in his hands and feet. He checked his mask, but there was no oxygen flowing. The tank on his back had to be empty by now. He knew, as surely as he could feel the sword in his hands, that he could not make his way along the ledge or down the mountain in the same manner he had climbed up. He glanced down once more at the three bodies frozen next to him. They had known the same thing. And they had never woken from whatever their last pleasant dreams had been. He closed his eyes and tried to force his oxygen-starved brain to think through the overwhelming exhaustion and pain. He'd trained in high altitude and the cold many times in his Special Forces career and he tried to recall what he had learned. He was higher than he had ever been.Doherty, Robert is the author of 'Area 51 The Truth' with ISBN 9780440237068 and ISBN 0440237068.