Chelsea’s ears than what the secretary of defense was saying. He’d missed Chelsea, an old golden retriever, whom he’d been forced to leave behind when traveling to the Caribbean. Her tail thumped against his chair as he scratched, to the annoyance of the chairman of the Joint chiefs to Staff, who was seated to his right. Ariana Michelet was seated to his left.
They were deep under the Pentagon in the War Room, and the mood was grim. Dane didn’t need his special ability to pick that up. Situation displays along the wall of the conference room showed the devastation in Iceland, Puerto Rico, and Connecticut wreaked by the Shadow. And they were no closer to knowing what the Shadow was.
Dane shifted his attention from Chelsea to the podium when Foreman took the secretary of defense’s place. He had first met Foreman over thirty years ago at a secret CIA base camp in Cambodia, just before he had unknowingly gone with his team into the Angkor gate. He hadn’t trusted Foreman then, and didn’t’ trust him now, but he did acknowledge that the CIA man was the foremost expert on the planet on what little was known about the gates.
“We stopped this assault through the Bermuda Triangle gate.” Foreman didn’t waste time on preliminaries. “And we stopped the first attack before that, through the Angkor gate. I don’t think we’re going to be able to stop a third attack.”
“Hell,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, “let’s just throw some nukes through one of these things.”
“And most likely get them thrown back at us,” Foreman said. “Gentlemen, let us remember that the Shadow has shown itself to be quite adept at using our own weapons against us.”
Dane stirred. “The Shadow will come at us in a new way. We were lucky the first two times. They used our satellites against us the first time and our own nuclear weapons off the Wyoming the second. I think it’s obvious the Shadow learns from its mistakes.”
Ariana Michelet leaned forward. “The Shadow knows how to cause mass destruction. The loss of Iceland proves that. It used the juncture of two tectonic plates in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and gave the forces there a nudge, and look what happened.”
“I just checked, and Professor Nagoya in Japan has picked up muonic transmissions indicating the Shadow is probing out the Devil’s Sea gate off the coast of his country and measuring the Ring of Fire that surrounds the Pacific Rim. If they can do there what they did in Iceland, then half the world could be destroyed. I think Iceland was just a test.”
“The Shadow destroyed Atlantis over ten thousand years ago,” Dane said, “So we know they have the capability to do more than they did in Iceland.”
“We don’t even know what these gates are,” Ariana noted.
“Foreman answered, “They could be a door to another dimension in our own world; one that we have not been able to access yet but that coexists with the world we know. Or they could be a gateway to an alternate universe. Or they could be an attempt by an alien culture to open an interstellar gateway from their planet to ours.”
“The Russians had a theory,” Foreman continues. “In 1964 three of their scientist with backgrounds in electronic, history, and engineering published a paper in Khimiyai Zhizn; the journal of the old Soviet Academy of Sciences, titled “Is the Earth a Large Crystal?” Their theory was that a matrix of cosmic energy was built into our planet when it was formed, and these gates are at key junctures of this matrix. They divided the world into twelve pentagonal slabs. On top of those slabs they drew twenty equilateral triangles. Using this overlay, they pointed out that these lines along the edges of the triangles have had a great influence on the world in many ways: fault lines for earthquakes lie along them: magnetic anomalies exist; ancient civilizations tended to be clustered along some of them.
“The places where the triangles met they
They were deep under the Pentagon in the War Room, and the mood was grim. Dane didn’t need his special ability to pick that up. Situation displays along the wall of the conference room showed the devastation in Iceland, Puerto Rico, and Connecticut wreaked by the Shadow. And they were no closer to knowing what the Shadow was.
Dane shifted his attention from Chelsea to the podium when Foreman took the secretary of defense’s place. He had first met Foreman over thirty years ago at a secret CIA base camp in Cambodia, just before he had unknowingly gone with his team into the Angkor gate. He hadn’t trusted Foreman then, and didn’t’ trust him now, but he did acknowledge that the CIA man was the foremost expert on the planet on what little was known about the gates.
“We stopped this assault through the Bermuda Triangle gate.” Foreman didn’t waste time on preliminaries. “And we stopped the first attack before that, through the Angkor gate. I don’t think we’re going to be able to stop a third attack.”
“Hell,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, “let’s just throw some nukes through one of these things.”
“And most likely get them thrown back at us,” Foreman said. “Gentlemen, let us remember that the Shadow has shown itself to be quite adept at using our own weapons against us.”
Dane stirred. “The Shadow will come at us in a new way. We were lucky the first two times. They used our satellites against us the first time and our own nuclear weapons off the Wyoming the second. I think it’s obvious the Shadow learns from its mistakes.”
Ariana Michelet leaned forward. “The Shadow knows how to cause mass destruction. The loss of Iceland proves that. It used the juncture of two tectonic plates in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and gave the forces there a nudge, and look what happened.”
“I just checked, and Professor Nagoya in Japan has picked up muonic transmissions indicating the Shadow is probing out the Devil’s Sea gate off the coast of his country and measuring the Ring of Fire that surrounds the Pacific Rim. If they can do there what they did in Iceland, then half the world could be destroyed. I think Iceland was just a test.”
“The Shadow destroyed Atlantis over ten thousand years ago,” Dane said, “So we know they have the capability to do more than they did in Iceland.”
“We don’t even know what these gates are,” Ariana noted.
“Foreman answered, “They could be a door to another dimension in our own world; one that we have not been able to access yet but that coexists with the world we know. Or they could be a gateway to an alternate universe. Or they could be an attempt by an alien culture to open an interstellar gateway from their planet to ours.”
“The Russians had a theory,” Foreman continues. “In 1964 three of their scientist with backgrounds in electronic, history, and engineering published a paper in Khimiyai Zhizn; the journal of the old Soviet Academy of Sciences, titled “Is the Earth a Large Crystal?” Their theory was that a matrix of cosmic energy was built into our planet when it was formed, and these gates are at key junctures of this matrix. They divided the world into twelve pentagonal slabs. On top of those slabs they drew twenty equilateral triangles. Using this overlay, they pointed out that these lines along the edges of the triangles have had a great influence on the world in many ways: fault lines for earthquakes lie along them: magnetic anomalies exist; ancient civilizations tended to be clustered along some of them.
“The places where the triangles met they
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