"Robert Doherty - Area 51 - The Reply" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doherty Robert)

"I've been asking myself the same question," Nabinger said.
"And what have you come up with?" Reynolds asked.
"I don't know," Nabinger replied. "I think the high rune language in many
places was written by humans copying the Airlia, but I'm not sure." He gathered
up the photos. "By the way, do you know where Mike is?"
"No. He was in D.C. with Lisa Duncan testifying, but when I tried to call him
from the airport before I came back here, I was told he was off on a mission."
Nabinger nodded knowingly. "Yeah, well, I'd like to know exactly what he's up
to now. You can bet he isn't sitting on his butt wondering, he's doing
something."

36

Chapter 4


At the same moment that Peter Nabinger was wondering where he was, Captain
Mike Turcotte was sipping a cup of coffee in one of the ready rooms on board the
aircraft carrier USS George Washington.
Turcotte could feel the steady drum of the engines reverberating through the
floor panels. The George Washington was the newest carrier in the American
Navy's inventory. The most recent of the Nimitz class, it displaced over 100,000
tons of water and was cruising south at thirty knots from its normal duty
station in the Persian Gulf. Off the starboard bow lay the coast of Ethiopia.
That the carrier had been taken off-station from the critical and volatile
Persian Gulf told Turcotte how important this mission was, as much as what Lisa
Duncan, seated to his left, had already told him. The presence of a British
lieutenant colonel three seats over who sported the sand-colored beret of the
elite British Special Air Service, SAS, also indicated a certain degree of

37


martial seriousness. On the other side of the British colonel was an American
major in a flight suit, the patch Velcroed to his left shoulder showing the Grim
Reaper of Task Force 160, the Night-stalkers.
They were all prepared to listen to a briefing by a former Soviet operative.
The man, Karol Kostanov, spoke in clipped English, his accent polished at one of
the KGB's finishing schools during the height of the Cold War. He claimed he had
been working freelance around the world since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
How the UN Alien Oversight Committee had gotten hold of him, Turcotte had no
idea, but he imagined that it involved a lot of cash, based on the expensive
suit and custom-made shoes Kostanov wore.
"Please proceed, Mr. Kostanov," Duncan ordered once she made sure everyone was
ready.
Kostanov had a carefully cultivated day's growth of beard, framing his
aristocratic face and thin glasses, the frames made of some obviously expensive
metal. Turcotte wondered if Kostanov even needed the lenses in the glasses or if
they were part of his costume, designed to impress. Kostanov's skin was dark,
his hair streaked with gray.