Area 51: The Grail-5 Read Free Page A

craft they had arrived on. It lifted and swiftly accelerated away, disappearing into the storm clouds.
    The heavens finally let loose with rain, announcing its arrival with a cacophonous barrage of thunder, lightning playing across the top of the Tor. A large bolt struck the high tower of the Abbey, shattering stone and mortar, spraying debris over the remains of the king.
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    THE GIZA PLATEAU, EGYPT

    Deep under the Giza Plateau, Lisa Duncan placed her hands on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant. A surge ran through her body, a feeling of power. A red glow suffused both of the cherubim-sphinxes on either end of the Ark and extended over the lid, encompassing her.
    She could no longer hear those outside the veil that surrounded the Ark. Her world was the Ark: the gold under her fingers. She grabbed the edge of the lid. She felt suspended in time, beyond the reach of everything she had ever known. She lifted the cover. A golden glow blazed out, overpowering the red as the lid went up. It locked in place, revealing the chamber inside.
    Of the seven wonders of the ancient world, only one remains in the modern world. Located on the Giza Plateau, southwest of Cairo, stand the three large pyramids of the Pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure; they are symbolically guarded by the Great Sphinx, whose stone visage peers to the east, into the rising sun and over the Nile River, the lifeline of Egypt through time immemorial.
    All four structures have been weathered and battered by time: the hand-smoothed limestone facing of the three great pyramids had long ago been looted for building materials, diminishing some of their majesty, 15
    but until the building of the Eiffel Tower, they had held reign for millennia as the tallest man-made objects on the planet.
    As one comes upon them from the Nile Road, the middle pyramid of Khafre appears to be the largest, but only because it was built on higher ground on the Giza Plateau. The Pharaoh Khufu, more popularly known as Cheops, was historically credited with building the greatest pyramid, farthest to the northeast. Over four hundred and eighty feet tall and covering eighty acres, it is still the largest stone building in the world. The smallest of the three is that of Menkaure, measuring over two hundred feet in altitude.
    The sides of all three are perfectly aligned with the four cardinal directions from northeast to southwest, largest to smallest. The Great Sphinx lies at the foot of the middle pyramid—far enough to the east to also be out in front of the Great Pyramid, behind the Sphinx's left shoulder.
    As long as men have stood on the plateau, dwarfed by the immense structures, they have been one of the greatest mysteries of the ages. Egyptologists had come up with dates and origins for the three pyramids and the Sphinx, but the data, upon close examination, was woe-16

    fully incomplete. Not a single mummy was found in any of the pyramids, casting doubt on the age-old theory they were large mausoleums. Up until recently, every chamber discovered was empty. Even more puzzling was the distinct lack of any documentation concerning the architectural development of the pyramids or Sphinx. Not even among the numerous stone and papyrus documents from the various Egyptian dynasties.
    The recent revelation that aliens—the Airlia—had visited Earth in the distant past, and never left, had thrown the accepted version of human history into disarray, including the reason why the pyramids and Sphinx were built.
    Peter Nabinger, one of the original members of the team that had penetrated the secret of Area 51, had come up with his own explanation of the pyramids'
    purpose before his death in China: when sheathed in the original smooth limestone their radar signature had been immense, able to be picked up far out into space. Thus, he reasoned, they were a beacon, designed to bring a spaceship close. That was stage one, the attention-getter. Then Nabinger had found stage two, the accompanying