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  Each operator sat in a specially contoured crash seat that was mounted on tracks, allowing it to be moved to any console if need be. The seats could be locked down to the track at any location. Lighting was turned low, a mellow glow that allowed the people to concentrate on their computer screens.

  The space behind the console center, above the wings and slightly to the rear was filled with racks holding computer mainframes and other high-tech gear. Behind the computers, the tail of the plane held eight bunks, a small galley, shower and restrooms. When on deployment, the crew of the Lady Gayle stayed on board because security was vital.

  The pilot had over ten thousand hours in 707s, his co-pilot not much less. Their instrumentation was state of the art, as good as anything currently coming off of Boeing’s assembly line.

  The crew that manned the cabin of the plane consisted of eight specially trained personnel. With the aid of Argus, the imaging crew was able to do the job of many more. In fact, Argus was so sophisticated that Ariana could practically fly the plane from her rear position, using the master computer in conjunction with the autopilot and automatic tracking system. The Michelet personnel at the IIC in Glendale could also fly the plane from the other side of the world using their own master computer, sending commands via satellite link to the autopilot.

  Ariana oversaw all operations from her small office using video cameras and sensors. More importantly, she had a dozen small computer screens arrayed around her, each one showing multiple feeds from the screens behind her in the console area. To her immediate rear, her systems analyst and chief aide, Mark Ingram, oversaw the imaging consoles. He knew as much about the systems as any of the operators. Between Ariana and the cockpit sat her chief communications man, Mitch Hudson, surrounded by his radios.

  Ariana was thirty-four years old and the gods had not subtracted from her looks to bestow the gift of brains. She was tall and slender, her coloring a mixture of olive and dark. And though she looked lovely in bright colors, she tended toward khaki and denim slacks and shirts that were loose and comfortable and effectively hid her hard flared hips and full bosom. Ariana was extremely appreciative of her abilities as a scientist. Her looks, while important to some, were of little importance to the woman herself.

  She had deep brown eyes and when the smile left her face, those eyes could flash with displeasure. Right now, those eyes were flashing at Hudson, who was standing in the door to her office, having just reported to her that their trailing radio/imaging wire was having problems unreeling. The wire was in a pod under the tail of the plane and as the Lady Gayle gained altitude it spooled out until over two miles of it trailed behind the plane, a most effective antenna. Except at the moment, it wasn't working properly, having stuck with only a quarter mile unreeled.

  “Can you fix it?” Ariana asked.

  “I'm going to reel it back in,” Mitch said. “Maybe there's a kink and that will knock it out.”

  “Get it working. We only have one run and I have to give the final go at the Cambodian border which,” she looked at a numeric display, “is only six minutes away.”

  Hudson ducked into the passageway leading to his station. “I'm on it.”

  Ariana leaned back in her seat and scanned the computer screens. No other problems had been reported. She knew her crew would report trouble to her right away. It was the environment she fostered. She believed in honesty both ways, telling her crew everything she could and expecting them to keep her abreast of the latest developments. Unlike many managers, she also didn't eviscerate the bearers of bad tidings, unless, of course, the bad tidings were the result of the bearers' incompetence. In that case, the worker was quickly removed from Michelet Technologies. With billions of dollars and a corporate empire at stake, there was little room for incompetence.

  “We can do the run without the wire if we have to,” Ingram said, suddenly appearing in the passageway that led to the rear. He was in his mid-forties and showed the stress of having worked for her father since leaving MIT over twenty years ago. His hair was prematurely gray and his body in poor physical condition, about thirty pounds overweight on his six-foot frame, but his mind was as sharp as ever.

  In the beginning he had always been looking over her shoulder, checking everything, but over the past year he had accepted that she knew what she was doing and he had gone back to concentrating on his own responsibilities. It had relieved a lot of pressure for both of them, but there was still residual tension in Ingram having been de facto demoted when Ariana took over his job. His pay had in fact been increased, but she knew there were times he missed being in charge.

  “I know we can make do without the wire,” Ariana replied.

  Ingram nodded and went back. Ariana could sense some frustration on his part. For years this had been his place and he was uncomfortable working in the main console area. There had been no need for him to check on Hudson’s systems. On one hand she could appreciate Ingram’s thoroughness, on the other she could resent his intrusion. She decided to go with the former and focused her mind on the upcoming mission.

  Ariana picked up a small, cordless headset and put it on. She clipped a frequency changer onto the belt of her khaki pants. She flipped the channel on the changer without having to look, then spoke. “Glendale, this is Lady Gayle. How do you read me?”

  “We read you loud and clear,” a voice instantly responded. “Mister Michelet wishes to speak with you, Miss Ariana.”

  She leaned back in her seat as her father came on. “Ariana, how do things look?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “A little problem with the trailing wire, but other than that all systems are go.”

  “Can you go without the trailing wire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “I'll call you when we get on station,” she said, a dozen tasks awaiting her attention. Her father understood and signed off.

  ***

  At the IIC in Glendale, Paul Michelet tried to stay out of the way of his subordinates. Unlike his daughter, he didn't understand what all the machines in the room below him were doing. That's why he paid top dollar for those who did. His success over the years was based on his ability to understand people and the big picture and making the hard decisions. The details he left to others.

  Paul Michelet was currently standing in a small conference room that looked out over the imaging and interpretation center. A one-way glass wall separated him from the technicians below. He could see and hear everything that happened and they never knew if anyone was in the conference room. Michelet had long ago discovered that such a set up increased efficiency. If people never knew whether the boss was looking, they had to assume he was and work accordingly.

  There were two men in the room with Michelet. One stood so perfectly still that he might have been missed by a person casually glancing in. He was Lawrence Freed, Michelet's chief of security and all around trouble-shooter. Freed was a slender black man, less than five feet ten inches tall and looked like a strong wind might easily sway him. Michelet had had difficulty believing the man's dossier when he'd interviewed him three years ago for the position. The man described on paper was an ex-Delta Force commando, a black belt in five martial arts, and a brilliant operations officer. Not only was Freed's physical appearance deceiving, the man was so quiet and soft of voice that one had great difficulty imagining him capable of violence. Michelet had had his doubts, but Freed came highly recommended from some of Michelet's contacts in Washington so he'd taken a chance. He hadn't regretted it yet in the past three years. Freed got results.

  The other man in the room was Freed’s polar opposite. Roland Beasley had not stayed still from the moment he entered the room. Beasley was a large bear of a man, with a pale white forehead and a large bushy gray beard. Michelet had recently hired Beasley. He too came highly recommended. Beasley had yet to prove his worth.

  Michelet turned from the IIC. There was a map spread on the teak wood table in the center of the room. “It's taken me seven
months to pay off the right officials in Cambodia to allow this overflight.” He wanted Beasley to know that this wasn't some academic lark but a serious business venture with much at stake. Michelet had dealt with “academic” experts before and he knew it was important to make them realize they were no longer in the ivory halls.

  “It should be most interesting,” Beasley said. He spoke with a slight British accent, but his dossier indicated no significant time in England and a birth place of Brooklyn. Michelet assumed Beasley had acquired the accent in his academic circles. Beasley was an archeologist/historian, with a specific area of expertise in Southeast Asia.

  Freed didn't indicate that he had heard either comment. Of course, as Michelet knew, Freed had been in charge of organizing all those payoffs through their intermediary in Cambodia. He’d also gathered the material in Beasley’s dossier.

  Michelet continued. “Michelet Technologies, and everyone else in the geologic business, know that there are vast mineral resources in Southeast Asia. Bangkok is the center of the world's gem business and Thailand is the largest exporter of uncut stones on the planet. But we think Cambodia holds even more than Thailand.”

  “You're talking about spending so much money, though,” Beasley said. “Can it be worth that?”

  Michelet stared at Beasley as if the man had just uttered a string of profanities. “Rubies and sapphires are different colors of an element called corundum, which is the crystalline form of aluminum oxide. Trace elements inside the corundum give the gems their color. For rubies the trace element is chromium. For sapphires, it is titanium. Rubies are perhaps the rarest of gems, commanding four times the price of diamonds weighing the same amount.”

  Beasley frowned. “I know that some Thai businessmen have been running a black market mining operation in southwestern Cambodia, extracting some precious gems under the protection of the Khmer Rouge whom they pay off, but I didn't think it was that lucrative.”

  “It isn't if you consider forty millions dollars a year gross on the black market not lucrative,” Michelet said, reevaluating Beasley. Obviously the man hadn’t stuck his head in the textbooks all his life. “We think they are working a weak field area.” He tapped the map of Cambodia on the conference table. “The area the Lady Gayle is overflying is one that we believe, based on imaging from satellites and the space shuttle, holds very strong gem and crystal fields, estimated to be ten times as dense as the best field in Thailand. The Cambodian highlands, north of Tonle Sap. No one has ever gone into that area and looked.

  “The problem has always been two-fold. One is penetrating the harsh mountainous jungle region to survey for those gems. The other is surviving the various fighting factions and the over ten million land mines laid in Cambodia. Both those factors have effectively stopped any ground surveys. The lack of a stable government in Cambodia for decades has also been a problem.”

  Beasley nodded. “The closest I've been to the area is the ancient city of Angkor Thom which contains the temple Angkor Wat, just north of Tonle Sap Lake. I never attempted to go further north nor do I know anyone who has. It would have been most unhealthy. If the Khmer Rouge or bandits didn't get you, as you said, the mines would or the triple canopy jungle in very rough terrain, or the wild beasts of the region. There are no roads, no villages, nothing. A most dangerous area.”

  Michelet pulled out a binder and flipped it open. There were various photos inside, all taken from high altitude. “Last year, the Space Shuttle did some imaging on Cambodia as it flew over. I had contacts at the Jet Propulsion Lab forward me some of the basic data.”

  Beasley was looking at the photos with interest. “Amazing!” he said. His fingers traced over one of them. “Look at the Angkor Thom complex in this one. You can see the moats most clearly. I know archeologists who would give quite a bit for these.”

  Not enough, Michelet thought. It had cost him six hundred thousand dollars to get the imagery. Michelet more than most knew that everything had a price, and loyalty was usually the lowest.

  “The data from these photos told my interpreters that the area deserves a more detailed look. The initial readouts indicate a high likelihood of the type of geological formations that hold precious stones present in quantities worthy of exploitation.”

  Beasley nodded. “Cambodia has vast resources that have gone untapped in the midst of all the turmoil. There are parts of that country that no white man has ever seen. There were rumors of a great city in Cambodia for many years but the first explorer to reach Angkor Thom didn't get there until 1860. And it's my personal opinion that Angkor Thom wasn't the city of the legend, but a later, smaller city.”

  Michelet had done some checking with other sources and knew the specific area he wanted the Lady Gayle to survey was even more remote. He narrowed down the area he had indicated, tracing it on the map. “This area, the highland region of the Banteay Meanchey region, is practically unmapped and uninhabited.”

  Beasley looked at it. “There's a reason for that besides the roughness of the terrain, the mines and the Khmer Rouge.”

  “Excuse me?” Michelet was surprised. This was news to him. “And what is that reason?”

  “Angkor Kol Ker,” Beasley said.

  “And that is?” Freed took a step closer.

  “As I was saying. There was a legend of a great city in Cambodia for many years. When the French naturalist Henri Mouhot discovered Angkor Thom in 1860 everyone thought he had solved the mystery of the legend. But there have always been, and still are, rumors of ruins, to the north and east of this area. Of a city even more ancient and more magnificent than Angkor Thom and its temple Angkor Wat. It's called Angkor Kol Ker. Many legends surround those ruins, but very little fact is known. A French expedition tried to get there in the 1950's but it disappeared. It was assumed that they ran into unfriendly guerrillas, the forerunners of the Khmer Rouge. Since then, no one else has tried. It’s not even certain that the city ever existed. It might just be a myth. Sort of a jungle Shangri-la. Some of the legends that are associated with it are rather fantastic.”

  Beasley’s hand twirled an edge of his mustache. “The legends, if they are to be believed, promise dire consequences to anyone entering Angkor Kol Ker or the area surrounding it. So in mythical terms, this area is cursed.”

  Michelet turned his back to Beasley at the last sentence. Freed had quietly moved over and he was also looking at the map. “Let's hope Lady Gayle gives us some pinpoint data. That region is over forty-thousand square kilometers. That's a lot of jungle to survey.”

  Michelet smiled. “With the imagery from the Lady Gayle, the interpreters will pinpoint possible sites down to within a half a kilometer.”

  “That good?” Beasley was impressed.

  “That good.”

  Beasley was excited. “I wonder if we might be able to find Angkor Kol Ker using the data.” He squinted at the space shuttle imagery. “Hell, I bet no one's even looked at these pictures for ruins, have they?”

  “Ruins don't make money,” Michelet said.

  “Schliemann made out pretty well after he found the ruins of Troy,” Beasley commented. “And remember, people thought Troy was as much a legend as Angkor Kol Ker.”

  “What about the curse?” Freed asked. “Doesn’t that concern you?”

  “I didn’t say I believed in the legends,” Beasley said. “I just believe it’s worth looking into. Some of them are legends based on legends, including one that the people who settled this area over ten thousand years ago were refugees from Atlantis. In the same manner there are those who believe the early Egyptians, the ones who built the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids were also refugees from a greater kingdom.”

  Michelet was focused on the large electronic map in front of the IIC where the small dot represented the Lady Gayle had crossed the Cambodian Border and was approaching the target area, which was outlined in blue light.

  Freed glanced over at Beasley. “Do you think Angkor Kol Ker was real?”

  Beasley sprea
d his fat hands. “It’s a personal belief of mine that there is always much more truth to legend that most scientists espouse. But, to convince those others, I must hold a stone from a ruin of the city in my hand and smash it over their forehead. Then they might believe it is real. Until then, it is only a myth to them and thus for me.”

  “The stones we are looking for are more valuable than any that could come out of an old city,” Michelet said.

  Beasley picked up the imagery and looked at it more closely. “I would not be so sure of that.”

  *****

  At fifteen thousand feet, the Lady Gayle was cruising at three hundred knots and beginning to loop north toward the target area. Ariana had their location pinpointed to within ten meters, updated every one-thousandth of a second by use of the global positioning receiver mounted in the rotodome. The GPR worked off the band of global positioning satellites, GPS, the United States had blanketing the world, picking up a signal emitted by the three closest and then a computer in the GPR immediately determined location through triangulation. They were getting close to the target area and the interior of the 707 was a bustle of activity as controllers prepared their equipment.

  “Slow to imaging speed,” Ariana ordered and the pilots reduced thrust until the 707 was flying only 20 knots above the aircraft's stall speed.

  Ariana knew the routine by heart but she used the checklist taped to an open space on her console anyway. “Open viewing doors.”

  Along what had been the luggage compartment of the aircraft, hydraulic arms slid open doors on the right side of the plane. Inside were mounted the eyes of the Lady Gayle. There were regular video and still cameras with various degrees of telephotic lenses thermal sensors, and imagers that could view throughout the spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet. Although they couldn't directly see the outside world from the enclosed space of the plane, the analysts could now see the world below through the magic of their machines.