Free Area 51: The Truth by Robert Doherty Page A

inside the mothership, a perfectly round chamber encompassing the Master Guardian. He had sealed himself off from the rest of the ship as Artad’s troops were on board and had almost caught him before the Master Guardian was activated. The mothership was buried in a cavern deep inside Mount Ararat, hidden from sight for over ten thousand years.
    Yakov heard a buzzing noise and reached into his pocket, pulling out his SATPhone. “Yes?” “This is Quinn. Turcotte’s coming to your location.”
    “And how will he get to me?”
    “I don’t know. Can you move—” Quinn’s next words were lost since Yakov turned his head to the right as a loud thud echoed through the mothership. The sound was repeated a few seconds later. Yakov put the phone away and placed both hands on the side of the Master Guardian, making contact with the computer. He sorted through the rush of images that assaulted him, searching for some information on the current status of the mothership. He zoomed through several internal views until he received one relayed from a monitor in the cavern, looking down on the mothership just as a third thud reverberated through the ship.
    At first he saw nothing, then, near the nose, he spotted a clamp to one of the Talons withdrawing, slamming back into the hull of the ship, just as a fourth thud announced the action. The rapierlike ship floated free of the mothership and rose a few meters. Yakov tried to access a connection with the Talon via the guardian but he reached a dead end. He realized the Kortad must have cut any control the Master Guardian could have over the warship.
    But they were still trapped in the chamber, Yakov knew, as he turned his attention to any controls for an exit from the large cavern. At that moment, a golden beam lashed out of the nose of the Talon and struck the side of the cavern.
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    Turcotte looked down on Mount Ararat, noting the still-smoldering ruins of armored vehicles on the lower slopes. He could see other tanks and armored personnel carriers on the roads approaching the mountain. Several helicopters with Turkish markings flitted about, but he ignored them.
    He’d gotten the coordinates for the mothership cavern from Quinn and he edged the bouncer up the Ahora Gorge toward the spot. As he got close to a half-mile-high rock wall, he abruptly pulled back on the controls as the rock exploded outward with a thunderous roar.
    A car-sized boulder hit the left side of the bouncer and the craft flipped from the impact. Turcotte had both hands on the controls and he stopped the rotation and leveled out, just as the nose of a Talon appeared in the large hole that had just been blasted.
    He held the bouncer still as the entire two hundred meters of alien craft carefully exited. It had the same black metal skin as the mothership and was thirty meters wide at the base, tapering forward with a slight bend to a needle point at the front. Once clear of the mountain, the Talon turned to the east and accelerated away.
    Turcotte keyed the radio. “Quinn, this is Turcotte. A Talon just exited Ararat and is heading east. I need you to get Space Command to track it. Over.”
    “I’m on it,” Quinn responded.
    Turcotte pushed forward on the controls and entered the cavern, seeing the mothership below, partly covered with debris near the front. He saw the other Talons parked on the outside and the empty space where the one that had just left had been stored.
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    Yakov “saw” the bouncer enter through the hole the Talon had just exited. He accessed controls for the mothership and opened a hatch to a cargo bay not far from the room he was in. Then he headed for the exit to the Master Guardian room.
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    Turcotte saw the hatch opening on the side of the mothership and guided the bouncer to it. He entered the mothership, the hatch closing behind him. He set the bouncer down and unbuckled from the pilot’s spot. He held Excalibur in one hand and the MP-5 in the other as he climbed the ladder