Chapter Twelve
The Army convoy of missile trucks, troop trucks, and Jeeps followed the road into the mountains. Bolander looked at his prize almost lovingly. It would be so pretty once all the rings were lit – but more to the point, it would yield its secrets. The United States would be secured in its rightful place as the world’s foremost superpower and he, Bob Bolander, would have more than a minor role to play in it. And after that – who knew what else he could accomplish?
"Hurry," he said, slapping his driver on the shoulder. "We're on a very tight schedule."
"I don't want to drive us off the edge of a cliff, sir," the driver said.
"We'll have much bigger problems if we don't get this to Mount Keemo in time," Bolander said. "And I'll make sure you die first."
The General marveled at him. "You really believe all that stuff Dr. Jones and Dr. McGregor were talking about, don't you?"
"Of course," Bolander said. "We've seen enough already, haven't we?"
"Yet you don't seem worried at all."
"We own this cylinder now. We're going to control the power. Bernard was right. If those freaks can do it, so can we. Don't go bailing on me now, General McIntyre." A manic look had come into Bolander's eyes.
"Of course not." The General mused for a moment as the Jeep started up another steep incline. "We'll need to tell the President about this at some point, I suppose."
"Oh," Bolander said with a half-smile, "he'll definitely notice."
His driver was the first to notice the clouds overhead, illuminated by the moon, beginning to boil like a cauldron. "Look, sir!" Lightning flashed in the distance. The wind picked up, subtly at first, then with a sudden burst that ripped the canvas top off a troop truck behind them and exposed the soldiers inside.
“What’s going on?” the General demanded.
Bolander looked up at the clouds, then back at the device. In that moment another ring had lit. They were close. So close.
“Maybe we should stop?”
“No, keep going!” Bolander said, slapping the driver again. "Hurry!" Though the General technically outranked him, he didn’t dare argue.
***
“Indy...” Elaine looked up at the sky. The soldiers around them weren’t even bothering to hide their fear. Nice soldiers, had given her a much-needed drink of water, but she was glad to see them afraid. Anything that made them vulnerable could possibly be put to use. Somehow.
“I know,” Indy said. “Just hold tight.” He was working the knots against the sharp-edged railing of the truck and had cut about halfway through. It was laughable that these guys thought they could keep him tied up in here. He could get out of tighter spots than this in his sleep, almost.
As he worked, he thought about the alien they had just communicated with, and again wondered why it was speaking Sanskrit. He imagined a ship like that visiting India in the distant past, speaking to the natives, being heralded as a god. Again he thought of the similar properties of this device and the Sankara stones. And were they similarly connected with all the other ancient cultures represented in the coordinates?
He wondered if many of the supernatural phenomena he had encountered over the years, all over the world, had their basis in extraterrestrial activity – if the things he hadn’t been able to explain were actually the result of technology light-years beyond Earth’s. Even in his more skeptical years, he had always believed in God, but he was never comfortable postulating in detail about who or what God actually was. Each inexplicable discovery had only confused him more, and this one topped it off.
One thing clicked in his head, though. “Maybe the dog is still alive.”
“What?” Elaine said.
“If the aliens are friendly, maybe they didn’t kill the dog,” Indy said, keeping his voice down so the guards wouldn’t hear. “Maybe they just immobilized it for a while. Think we could go back and see about adopting it?”
“I don’t care if they’re the Gandhis of the galaxy, I’m not going back in that store for all the artifacts in the world,” she snapped.
"I don't like this," one of the guards said. "I don't like this at all. We never should have signed on."
"Keep it together, man," the other said. "You don't really believe the alien rumors, do you?"
"I don't know what to believe. The truth is out there..."
"The crash was just a weather balloon. And this is just weather. And we're just hunting Ruskie spies like these two." The second guard didn't sound convinced by his own words at all. "Come on, let's keep a little optimism here. Cigarette?"
So, Indy realized, the enlisted men weren't in the loop but had heard rumors and let their imaginations wander. He exchanged a glance with Elaine. She had been listening too.
A streak of light flashed over the convoy. A moment later another flashed by in the opposite direction. Up ahead Bolander and the General watched it, concerned. One of the flashes returned and moved with the convoy, exposing itself as a saucer, before disappearing over the next rise.
“I thought you said you got them all!” Bolander snapped.
“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.” The General got on his radio. “Follow it!” The convoy moved into the valley, following the saucer.
Indy finished cutting through his ropes and looked up at the guards, who were distracted by the disturbances in the sky. They had fallen silent. One of them crossed himself.
Elaine’s face flared and she started to chant. “Makoo, Churoo. Keesna!”
The guards looked at her, frightened. Under normal circumstances they wouldn’t have been bothered so much as confused, but these were hardly normal circumstances. “Hey, make her shut up!” one of them told Indy.
“I can’t,” he said. “She’s possessed. They’re speaking through her.”
The guard walked over to them, trembling from more than the vehicle's motion. “What did she say?”
Indy whipped his arms in front and snatched away the startled guard’s gun, pointing it at him and the other young soldier. “She said, get out before they kill you.”
Both men looked at her, then back at the sky, and jumped off the moving truck. They were just a couple of kids, really, trying to serve their country. They wanted nothing to do with whatever was going on, and Indy knew they didn't deserve it. He was glad he'd given them a chance to get out of here.
"Great acting," he said. "I almost thought Nur-Ab-Sal was back."
"Who?" Elaine said. “Never mind, now what’re we going to do?”
“Get this truck,” Indy said.
“How’re you going to do that?”
“Climb over to the cab.”
“But Indy!”
“Don’t worry,” he said, tipping his hat, “I’ve done this before.”
“Of course you have,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.
Indy held onto the railing of the truck and swung out but, unlike before, he slipped. Well, everyone had their off days. They just weren’t potentially fatal for most people. His feet dragged along the rocky ground as he tried to pull himself up. The driver, looking in his rearview mirror and seeing him, swung the truck around to shake him off, but Indy hung on. For the moment.
This was no time to be prideful. “Elaine!” he cried out.
She hung over the side and saw his predicament. “I thought you said you’d done this before!”
“It’s not like riding a bike, apparently! Do something!”
Elaine looked around, grabbed the soldier’s discarded gun, and tapped on the window behind the cab. “Please,” she told the driver, “stop the truck. Now.”
The driver looked through the window at her and pulled the truck over. A moment later, Indy yanked him out from behind the wheel and climbed in. Still holding the gun, Elaine joined him from the passenger side.
Indy gave her a look. “Don’t say it.”
“Say what?”
“Thanks.”
"Don't say thanks?"
"No, thanks for not saying it." He put the truck back into gear and tried to start after Bolander and the rest of the convoy, but the engine stalled. He turned the key again, and the engine revved, but nothing happened. “Great. What are the odds?”
“I can get out and push,” Elaine offered.
“I’ll get out too,” Indy said, turning the key again with no more success. “Looks like we might have to hitchhike our way up there.”
***
The convoy moved toward the saucer, which was about the size of a small car, and sitting on the crest of a ridge as if waiting for them.
Bolander’s Jeep came to a stop and General McIntyre got out. He hadn't joined the Army for this. He had never dreamed a night like this would come. But he knew his duty and he would perform it regardless of what unexpected factors popped up, just as he had from the moment they discovered the spaceship crash. Nazis, Commies, aliens, they were all the same to him.
“Okay,” he said grimly, “let’s finish this job.”
The troops spread out. Rockets were prepared. Tank turrets swung into position. Shells were loaded into barrels. Soldiers waited for the command. The saucer hadn't moved. Maybe it was malfunctioning, or maybe the aliens were inside cowering in fear. He didn't care why. He wasn't about to pass up an opportunity like this.
“We’ve got ‘em,” he said. “Fire!”
Missiles and tank shells battered the spacecraft. For a moment the sky was lit up as bright as noonday with artillery. For a moment, it was Normandy all over again in the General's mind, but this time no one was returning fire. The Army laid waste to the aliens for a full minute before he decided they'd had enough.
“Cease fire!” he said.
When the smoke cleared, the spaceship was obviously damaged. Its lights were weaker.
“I think we just about have it,” the General said.
Then it began to rise.
The small saucer revealed itself to actually be the top piece of a much larger saucer that continued to rise above the ridge, higher and higher, illuminating the soldiers’ faces with its lights until the entire valley shone like noonday, more permanently this time. It towered over them, easily the size of the mountain itself.
The General swallowed. His left eyelid twitched. His hands fidgeted.
“Now,” he said to himself, “I know how Custer felt.”
For a moment the huge saucer did nothing, as if relishing the paralysis of fear it had struck into the Earthlings. Then a wind picked up across the valley floor in the direction of the Army. As it blew it created small cyclones here and there and picked up more and more speed. Bolander, seizing the moment, climbed behind the wheel of the Jeep and made a break for it.
The General had never retreated or surrendered, and this wouldn't be the first time. “All fire!” he yelled. But this time it was too late. Tank barrels were clogged with sand. Missile truck commanders were blinded. Soldiers dropped their guns and ran, but the wind caught them. Jeeps flipped and sent their occupants flying. Tanks spun away through the air like plastic toys. Men were buried alive in the burning sand with barely time to scream.
General McIntyre watched the scene in disbelief before he, too, was buried in the sand.
Next: Epilogue
"Hurry," he said, slapping his driver on the shoulder. "We're on a very tight schedule."
"I don't want to drive us off the edge of a cliff, sir," the driver said.
"We'll have much bigger problems if we don't get this to Mount Keemo in time," Bolander said. "And I'll make sure you die first."
The General marveled at him. "You really believe all that stuff Dr. Jones and Dr. McGregor were talking about, don't you?"
"Of course," Bolander said. "We've seen enough already, haven't we?"
"Yet you don't seem worried at all."
"We own this cylinder now. We're going to control the power. Bernard was right. If those freaks can do it, so can we. Don't go bailing on me now, General McIntyre." A manic look had come into Bolander's eyes.
"Of course not." The General mused for a moment as the Jeep started up another steep incline. "We'll need to tell the President about this at some point, I suppose."
"Oh," Bolander said with a half-smile, "he'll definitely notice."
His driver was the first to notice the clouds overhead, illuminated by the moon, beginning to boil like a cauldron. "Look, sir!" Lightning flashed in the distance. The wind picked up, subtly at first, then with a sudden burst that ripped the canvas top off a troop truck behind them and exposed the soldiers inside.
“What’s going on?” the General demanded.
Bolander looked up at the clouds, then back at the device. In that moment another ring had lit. They were close. So close.
“Maybe we should stop?”
“No, keep going!” Bolander said, slapping the driver again. "Hurry!" Though the General technically outranked him, he didn’t dare argue.
***
“Indy...” Elaine looked up at the sky. The soldiers around them weren’t even bothering to hide their fear. Nice soldiers, had given her a much-needed drink of water, but she was glad to see them afraid. Anything that made them vulnerable could possibly be put to use. Somehow.
“I know,” Indy said. “Just hold tight.” He was working the knots against the sharp-edged railing of the truck and had cut about halfway through. It was laughable that these guys thought they could keep him tied up in here. He could get out of tighter spots than this in his sleep, almost.
As he worked, he thought about the alien they had just communicated with, and again wondered why it was speaking Sanskrit. He imagined a ship like that visiting India in the distant past, speaking to the natives, being heralded as a god. Again he thought of the similar properties of this device and the Sankara stones. And were they similarly connected with all the other ancient cultures represented in the coordinates?
He wondered if many of the supernatural phenomena he had encountered over the years, all over the world, had their basis in extraterrestrial activity – if the things he hadn’t been able to explain were actually the result of technology light-years beyond Earth’s. Even in his more skeptical years, he had always believed in God, but he was never comfortable postulating in detail about who or what God actually was. Each inexplicable discovery had only confused him more, and this one topped it off.
One thing clicked in his head, though. “Maybe the dog is still alive.”
“What?” Elaine said.
“If the aliens are friendly, maybe they didn’t kill the dog,” Indy said, keeping his voice down so the guards wouldn’t hear. “Maybe they just immobilized it for a while. Think we could go back and see about adopting it?”
“I don’t care if they’re the Gandhis of the galaxy, I’m not going back in that store for all the artifacts in the world,” she snapped.
"I don't like this," one of the guards said. "I don't like this at all. We never should have signed on."
"Keep it together, man," the other said. "You don't really believe the alien rumors, do you?"
"I don't know what to believe. The truth is out there..."
"The crash was just a weather balloon. And this is just weather. And we're just hunting Ruskie spies like these two." The second guard didn't sound convinced by his own words at all. "Come on, let's keep a little optimism here. Cigarette?"
So, Indy realized, the enlisted men weren't in the loop but had heard rumors and let their imaginations wander. He exchanged a glance with Elaine. She had been listening too.
A streak of light flashed over the convoy. A moment later another flashed by in the opposite direction. Up ahead Bolander and the General watched it, concerned. One of the flashes returned and moved with the convoy, exposing itself as a saucer, before disappearing over the next rise.
“I thought you said you got them all!” Bolander snapped.
“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.” The General got on his radio. “Follow it!” The convoy moved into the valley, following the saucer.
Indy finished cutting through his ropes and looked up at the guards, who were distracted by the disturbances in the sky. They had fallen silent. One of them crossed himself.
Elaine’s face flared and she started to chant. “Makoo, Churoo. Keesna!”
The guards looked at her, frightened. Under normal circumstances they wouldn’t have been bothered so much as confused, but these were hardly normal circumstances. “Hey, make her shut up!” one of them told Indy.
“I can’t,” he said. “She’s possessed. They’re speaking through her.”
The guard walked over to them, trembling from more than the vehicle's motion. “What did she say?”
Indy whipped his arms in front and snatched away the startled guard’s gun, pointing it at him and the other young soldier. “She said, get out before they kill you.”
Both men looked at her, then back at the sky, and jumped off the moving truck. They were just a couple of kids, really, trying to serve their country. They wanted nothing to do with whatever was going on, and Indy knew they didn't deserve it. He was glad he'd given them a chance to get out of here.
"Great acting," he said. "I almost thought Nur-Ab-Sal was back."
"Who?" Elaine said. “Never mind, now what’re we going to do?”
“Get this truck,” Indy said.
“How’re you going to do that?”
“Climb over to the cab.”
“But Indy!”
“Don’t worry,” he said, tipping his hat, “I’ve done this before.”
“Of course you have,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.
Indy held onto the railing of the truck and swung out but, unlike before, he slipped. Well, everyone had their off days. They just weren’t potentially fatal for most people. His feet dragged along the rocky ground as he tried to pull himself up. The driver, looking in his rearview mirror and seeing him, swung the truck around to shake him off, but Indy hung on. For the moment.
This was no time to be prideful. “Elaine!” he cried out.
She hung over the side and saw his predicament. “I thought you said you’d done this before!”
“It’s not like riding a bike, apparently! Do something!”
Elaine looked around, grabbed the soldier’s discarded gun, and tapped on the window behind the cab. “Please,” she told the driver, “stop the truck. Now.”
The driver looked through the window at her and pulled the truck over. A moment later, Indy yanked him out from behind the wheel and climbed in. Still holding the gun, Elaine joined him from the passenger side.
Indy gave her a look. “Don’t say it.”
“Say what?”
“Thanks.”
"Don't say thanks?"
"No, thanks for not saying it." He put the truck back into gear and tried to start after Bolander and the rest of the convoy, but the engine stalled. He turned the key again, and the engine revved, but nothing happened. “Great. What are the odds?”
“I can get out and push,” Elaine offered.
“I’ll get out too,” Indy said, turning the key again with no more success. “Looks like we might have to hitchhike our way up there.”
***
The convoy moved toward the saucer, which was about the size of a small car, and sitting on the crest of a ridge as if waiting for them.
Bolander’s Jeep came to a stop and General McIntyre got out. He hadn't joined the Army for this. He had never dreamed a night like this would come. But he knew his duty and he would perform it regardless of what unexpected factors popped up, just as he had from the moment they discovered the spaceship crash. Nazis, Commies, aliens, they were all the same to him.
“Okay,” he said grimly, “let’s finish this job.”
The troops spread out. Rockets were prepared. Tank turrets swung into position. Shells were loaded into barrels. Soldiers waited for the command. The saucer hadn't moved. Maybe it was malfunctioning, or maybe the aliens were inside cowering in fear. He didn't care why. He wasn't about to pass up an opportunity like this.
“We’ve got ‘em,” he said. “Fire!”
Missiles and tank shells battered the spacecraft. For a moment the sky was lit up as bright as noonday with artillery. For a moment, it was Normandy all over again in the General's mind, but this time no one was returning fire. The Army laid waste to the aliens for a full minute before he decided they'd had enough.
“Cease fire!” he said.
When the smoke cleared, the spaceship was obviously damaged. Its lights were weaker.
“I think we just about have it,” the General said.
Then it began to rise.
The small saucer revealed itself to actually be the top piece of a much larger saucer that continued to rise above the ridge, higher and higher, illuminating the soldiers’ faces with its lights until the entire valley shone like noonday, more permanently this time. It towered over them, easily the size of the mountain itself.
The General swallowed. His left eyelid twitched. His hands fidgeted.
“Now,” he said to himself, “I know how Custer felt.”
For a moment the huge saucer did nothing, as if relishing the paralysis of fear it had struck into the Earthlings. Then a wind picked up across the valley floor in the direction of the Army. As it blew it created small cyclones here and there and picked up more and more speed. Bolander, seizing the moment, climbed behind the wheel of the Jeep and made a break for it.
The General had never retreated or surrendered, and this wouldn't be the first time. “All fire!” he yelled. But this time it was too late. Tank barrels were clogged with sand. Missile truck commanders were blinded. Soldiers dropped their guns and ran, but the wind caught them. Jeeps flipped and sent their occupants flying. Tanks spun away through the air like plastic toys. Men were buried alive in the burning sand with barely time to scream.
General McIntyre watched the scene in disbelief before he, too, was buried in the sand.
Next: Epilogue
