Colonel Barbara Esmedina, Director of the White Sands project, watches impatiently as her technicians finish entering the coordinates of the seven Russian and four North Korean Global Positioning Satellites hovering somewhere over North America. Esmedina, a former administrator who worked on the X-33 prototype of NASA’s Venture Star, has earned a reputation for being an excitable, opinionated, and often bizarrely outspoken proponent of tactical, high-energy lasers (THELs). Twice married and twice divorced, she has long since retired from dating to pursue funding for her pet project—the construction of a dozen coastal MIRACL sites as a tactical means of defense against incoming ICBMs.

For eight years, Barbara Esmedina has fought a personal war with the Department of Defense, ever since the day Kim Jong Il’s government completed development on the Taepo Dong-2, a two-stage long-range missile capable of reaching the western part of the continental United States. Although highly respected by her superiors, she has been chided as being too smart for her own good and too beautiful to own such a nasty temperament—the latter, an irrepressible trait that has often hurt her own efforts to obtain funding. Despite extensive lobbying efforts five years earlier, the DoD had chosen to fund the Navy’s new CVN-78, a six-billion-dollar stealth aircraft carrier.

Barbara shakes her head at the memory in disgust. Just what we needed, another goddam six-billion-dollar white elephant.

“We’re ready here, Colonel.”

“About time. Retract the dome.”

A hydraulic whine from above as the immense concrete dome retracts, revealing a star-filled desert sky.

“Dome retracted, Colonel. Laser targeted. We’ve got a clear field.”

“Fire laser.”

In less than a blink of an eye, a brilliant crimson red beacon ignites, tracing a line into the heavens. Colonel Esmedina and a dozen technicians focus on a computer monitor that marks the enemy satellite’s position. The image flashes on and off, then abruptly disappears.

“First target destroyed, Colonel. Now acquiring second target.”

Esmedina suppresses a grin as the laser’s turret rotates into position. “That, Comrade Grozny, is what we call, in your face from outer space.”

Beneath the Kukulcan Pyramid,
Chichén Itza

Mick is floating.

Gazing down upon the two unconscious figures lying prone on the strange grating, he sees frozen masks of pained expressions, the frightened faces blue beneath the masks.

Recognizing the bodies, he feels no remorse or sorrow, only blessed comfort, mixed with a strange sense of curiosity. Turning, he sees the tunnel open before him, the bright light beckoning him inside. Without hesitation he enters, soaring like a bird without wings.

He senses the presence of the being and registers an immediate rush of love and warmth, something he has not experienced since his early childhood.

Mother?

The light embraces him, enveloping him within its energy.

It’s not your time, Michael …

A roar of thunder fills his ears as the light dissipates.