Area 51: The Grail-5 Read Online Free PDF Page A

his right hand out to release the rope brake on the snap link.
    He hit the sand between the paws, all the men around him blinded, hands over their eyes, blood coming out of ears deafened by the detonations. He ran to Mualama and wrapped his arms around the equally stunned archaeologist.
    "Go!" Turcotte ordered into the boom mike.
    The bouncer lifted, half the survivors of the team inside, the others clinging to the side. Turcotte dangled below, his arms gripping Mualama tightly.
    A second gun ship fired a quick burst before the bouncer was out of range and another green beret was hit, his body caught in the cargo netting that lined the bottom edge.
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CHAPTER 2
    NGORONGORO CRATER, TANZANIA, AFRICA

    The lion had been in one place for two hours watching the grazing herd of gazelle slowly make its way through the high grass. The big cat was old, several steps slower in just the past year, and because of that, it was hungrier and more patient that it had ever been. Just two years ago, the lion would have sprung from its hide and chased down a tender youngster, culling it from the herd.
    Now it watched with narrowed eyes as one of the herd wandered away from the main group. An old grandfather—the flesh would be stringy, the lion knew, but it would be meat. Over a week had passed since the last kill and there was little interest in being finicky.
    Muscles tensed, claws grabbed into dirt just a little deeper as the lion prepared to spring. Another five feet and he would be assured of a kill.
    Suddenly the herd froze and all heads turned, not toward the lion's hide, but to the sky near the rim of the crater, behind the lion.
    Then they began galloping away. The lion slowly uncoiled from its spring position, its meal rapidly disappearing toward Soda Lake in the center of Ngorongoro Crater. The large shaggy head twisted and peered up, searching for what had startled the herd. Yellow eyes blinked, making no sense of the strange flying creature that had just cleared the edge of the crater.
    It was far larger than any bird the lion had ever seen, over ten meters long, and slightly less than half that
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    wide. A long, arced neck stretched up from the body to a serpent's face with large jaws filled with black teeth. The eyes were dark red. Two short wings extended from each side, but they were stationary, not flapping like a bird's.
    The lion forgot about hunger and pride as it bolted after the gazelle in a desperate attempt to get away from the dragon.
    Inside the flying machine unearthed from the Airlia cache in the upper levels of the Qian-Ling tomb in China, the human-Airlia clone, Elek, had his hands on the controls, slowing forward speed and bringing the craft to a hover.
    Below the dragon, stretching twelve miles from rim to rim, Ngorongoro Crater was a throwback to a time before man made his presence known in the wild.
    Teeming with animals, it was isolated from the land around by the two-thousand-foot-high crater rim that surrounded the over one hundred square miles inside. The rim of the crater was over a mile above sea level. The center of the crater was covered in water, Soda Lake.
    There was a flash of light to the right and Elek pivoted the dragon, known as Chi Yu in Chinese legend. The display screens in the cockpit located just behind the chest of the machine registered a second flash and Elek moved toward the light.
    "Do you see me?" The voice over the radio was sexless, easily belonging to a man or woman.
    "I see you, Lexina," Elek confirmed as he brought Chi Yu to a landing near the source of the light.
    Three figures waited. In the center was Lexina, the head of The Ones Who Wait. For decades she had tried to maintain Artad's side of the truce, first from the secret base in Antarctica and now from the remains of an Airlia base underneath the crater. Now there was no
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    more truce for Lexina to try to maintain—recent events had seen to that.
    It was time for action. ,
    The back ramp, underneath the dragon's