Overlord Read Online Free PDF Page B

the others strike the ice near him. Several screams of pain and thuds of bodies announced the arrival of his team.
    He finally managed to draw a breath.
    “Henson, Goodfellow, Wiley, are you all right?” he called out in a coughing fit as air filled his lungs.
    He tore at his parka hood and slapped away his broken goggles. Suddenly a bright flare of red-tinted light filled the frozen spaces around him, and he quickly closed his eyes to the harsh light.
    “I think Henson may be hurt bad,” Professor Wiley said. He was kneeling beside a prone man with the smoking flare alight by his face.
    Standish took a cue from his partner and struck alight his own flare. It sputtered and flamed to life as he assisted the others. Wiley stood and shook his head.
    “Henson is out like a light—he must have hit his head a good one on the way down. Concussion possibly.” The tallest of the group adjusted the light of the flare and looked back at the ice tunnel they had blindly stumbled into in their fight to find shelter from the sudden storm above them.
    “Looks like some sort of water runoff maybe, or just one hell of a big crack in the ice strata,” Professor Standish said as he examined the area high above them. The blue-tinted ice had not a hint to the daylight that was now possibly a mile above their heads. “Wiley, old man, please tell me your radio is still working and that we have a signal.” Standish removed his broken walkie-talkie from his belt and tossed it onto the ice.
    Wiley tossed down the flare he was holding and retrieved his radio. He called the basecamp and was happy to get an answer. After telling base to stand by, he nodded at the leader of the survey team.
    “Thank God for that, now we better—” Standish stopped when he saw both Wiley and a limping Goodfellow looking past his shoulder. Goodfellow slowly removed his goggles and then allowed them to fall to the ice at his feet.
    “Oh, bloody hell,” Wiley said as he quickly struck another flare.
    Professor Standish slowly turned around as the shock registered on his boys’ faces froze his blood far more than the temperature ever could have. His eyes widened as the newly struck flare erupted into a hellish tint of red.
    The giant object rose far above them and eventually disappeared into the thick, three-mile ice. The steel was frozen solid and looked as if it was buried in a long-ago green sea. His eyes traveled down its partially hidden length as he felt his bladder threaten to let go of its contents.
    “I bloody well think we found our prehistoric inland sea, Professor.”
    Standish didn’t answer as his eyes kept roaming over the giant before him.
    The British-sponsored survey team had found far more than an ancient sea. They had stumbled upon the greatest discovery in the history of mankind.
    *   *   *
    The small rail line had taken the British government almost six months to complete. The steepness of the ice-water runoff that had created the tunnel had to be shored up and the engineers had finally declared it safe enough to allow the scientific experts access to the site. The five gentlemen of the darkest sections of British Intelligence now stood looking at the object that was estimated to have been buried over a hundred million years before man began scrambling from the trees.
    “Well, now the Americans are not the only ones to have something like this to hide,” said the young man from MI6. He was portly and stood with his cold-weather clothing masking the heaviness of his body. He smiled and rocked back and forth from heel to toe as he studied the giant object buried inside the ancient sea before them.
    “You speak of the Roswell vehicle?” asked his aide. The question only elicited a look of disdain from the science advisor to Her Majesty.
    “From this moment on, gentlemen, the need to know on this project is absolutely being apprised through my offices.”
    “We cannot hide this from the men and women who need to know,” said his