Free Area 51: The Mission-3 by Robert Doherty Page B

he could recognize was the English word for the tomb that the foreigners had invaded—Qian-Ling!
    He yelled for his radioman. The sergeant ran up, holding out the handset for the radio on his back.
    The lieutenant got in contact with the helicopter that was still quartering the area after dropping them off. He ordered it to return to pick them up so that he could take this most important of discoveries back to headquarters.
    Ruiz rubbed his crotch. His testicles ached. It was not the first time he'd had trouble in that part of his body. He knew the source. That whore from earlier, although he'd never had a reaction this quickly.
    Ruiz cursed. The ache was under his skin, and no amount of scratching was going to make it go away. He checked his watch. He was going to have to get the cure.
    Ruiz walked away to the Vilhena Mission Hospital. A rather ostentatious name for a few shacks sitting off to the side of the Catholic Church that didn't even have a

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    doctor in attendance. The hospital was administrated by missionary nuns. The primary problems they saw were malnutrition, but they also dealt with every possible type of injury and illness in a country where there was an average of only one doctor per ten thousand people, the ratio ten times worse over a thousand miles from the major cities on the east coast.
    All day long people were lined up outside the hospital. Some had walked many days out of the surrounding countryside to get there. Ruiz took his place in line.
    The young nun working the reception table asked him a few questions. Her face didn't register anything as Ruiz explained that he had a venereal disease.
    The nun gave him a piece of paper, and he walked over to another table where an older sister held court with a shiny hypodermic needle. She looked at the paper, dipped the syringe in a dish of warm water, then drew out the appropriate medicine from a vial on the shelf behind her. She jabbed the needle into Ruiz's buttock and pulled it out. He was done.
    As he walked away, the nun dipped the syringe into the warm water, pulled up and down on the plunger to clear out the inside, then checked the piece of paper from the next client, a young boy with an infected hand. She picked up the appropriate vial and gave him a shot, looking up with tired eyes at the line of people behind the young boy. It was going to be a long morning.
    Ruiz walked back to the boat tied up on the river and decided to get some sleep. He did not feel well at all, and surely the American had nothing planned for today. He was probably still trying to find a radio so he could tell the world the tragedy of the village of dead Indians. Ruiz chuckled at that.
    He noted that one of the small plastic cases that Har-

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    rison had had on the rear deck was gone, but there was no sign of the American.
    Ruiz curled up in the shadow of the boat and pulled a poncho up over his head, slipping into a very uneasy slumber.

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    -6-

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    Turcotte stood on the edge of a twenty-foot-wide section of buckled ice. Behind him he could hear the second Osprey landing, the tilt wings rotating upward so that the large propellers brought the craft to a hover.
    The second one settled down next to the first and the back ramp lowered. The scientists and engineers from UNAOC waddled off, swathed in heavy layers of protective clothing. The tractor had gone back for them.
    The lead engineer came up next to Turcotte. He'd been here four days, and the skin on his face was already cracked and blistered from the cold, like the ice that surrounded them.
    "That damn foo fighter did a number on the surface." Below them, in the center of the trench, the ice had been melted, then refrozen, forming a glassy surface.
    "How about the base?" Turcotte could see his breath forming puffs of white, the moisture immediately freezing.
    "A mile and a half of solid ice is pretty good protection. We're not sure, but we think it should be in good shape." He pointed at the jagged gash