The Six Sacred Stones

by Matthew Reilly

  “Jack!” he sobbed. “Oh, Jack. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry to have brought this on you! I thought I’d die here! I never thought you would come for me!”

  “You’d do the same for me,” Jack said, glancing at the thick ringbolts holding Wizard’s and Tank’s leg irons to the floor. “Don’t celebrate too soon. We’re not out of this yet.”

  Jack then extracted a handheld blowtorch from his utility belt, fired it up, and went to work.

  THE TRAIN zoomed through the tunnel.

  As it did so, the remaining chase copter flew ahead, gunning for the tunnel’s exit farther round the mountain.

  It beat the train there, steadying itself in a deadly hover just out from the tunnel’s mouth, cannons ready and aimed at the oncoming engine car.

  But before the train emerged from the tunnel, something else did.

  A Predator missile.

  It lanced out from the tunnel’s mouth, a deadstraight tail of smoke issuing out behind it, before it plowed into the hovering copter, blasting it to a million pieces, blowing it out of the sky.

  Then the train roared out of the tunnel and swung hard left, following the mountain railway on its course.

  But the meanest pursuer of all still remained.

  The Hind gunship.

  It chased Stretch around every bend, paralleling the fleeing train, harrying the engine car mercilessly with withering fire.

  Before suddenly, all the gunfire stopped.

  Stretch frowned, confused.

  What the—?

  Thumps on the roof—

  Then before he knew what was happening, a dark figure swung in through one of the shattered forward windows and into the driver’s compartment!

  Two boots slammed into his chest, knocking him to the floor.

  Damn it! I was stupid!he realized as he tumbled.They’re guards—from the back carriages of the train. Must’ve crawled forward along the roof…

  The first guard to land inside the cabin drew his pistol, only for Stretch to kick him viciously—square on the kneecap—breaking it backward, causing the man to howl out in pain, giving Stretch the second he needed to draw his own gun and fire it once, twice, three times into the man’s chest—

  More thumps on the roof.

  Stretch stood—just in time to see three more pairs of boots jump down onto the hood of the engine car, blocking his view of the track ahead: a long, straight section of track that ended at a sharp lefthand curve. Beyond that curve was a steep downward slope of densely packed snow.

  “Huntsman!” he called into his radio mike. “How’s it going back there?”

  “I’ve found Wizard and Tank. Just have to cut them free.”

  “I got overwhelming company up here, about to storm my position! They came over the roof, from the rear carriages! I have to launch us now!”

  “Do it.”West’s voice was calm.“Then get back here.”

  “Right.”

  Stretch knew what he had to do.

  He jammed the throttle fully forward—and the train sped up markedly. Then he wedged a grenade between the throttle and the brakes and pulled the pin.

  This was now a oneway ticket.

  He dashed back into the train itself, slamming the interconnecting door behind him—

  —just as the grenade exploded, ripping the controls to shreds—

  —a moment before the entire driver’s compartment was shredded by a volley of bullets, and three more guards swung in through the forward windows.

  They entered with their guns up, their leader—an older man, more seasoned than the others, more battlehardened, the Captain of the Guard—looking pissed as hell at this brazen assault on his train.

  THE TRAIN was now rocketing along the highaltitude railway, all but out of control and heading for the sharp lefthand bend that it couldn’t possibly take at this speed.

  Stretch burst into the third carriage, the prisoner carriage, where he saw West kneeling beside Wizard and Tank, blowtorch flaring.

  Tank was free, but West was still cutting through the leg irons fastening Wizard to the floor.

  The Captain of the Guard stormed angrily into the first carriage, not caring for the runaway state of the train—unable to slow it, he was going after the intruders.

  He found two of his men huddled in a cell there and heard their pathetic excuses, before he put a bullet in each of their heads for cowardice.

  Then he moved on, hunting.

  West’s blowtorch blazed away as it carved through Wizard’s chains.

  “How long?” Stretch asked anxiously.

  “Almost there…” West said, his face illuminated by the blowtorch’s magnesium glare.

  The rocking motion of the train was getting wilder.

  “We don’t have much track left, Jack…”

  “Just…another…second…”

  The door to their carriage burst open—revealing the Captain of the Guard!

  Stretch spun.

  West spun.

  The Captain of the Guard stood in the doorway, grinning. He gripped his gun tighter.

  But he needn’t have, because it was already too late.

  For just then, the runaway train hit the bend.

  The speeding train hit the alpine curve going way too fast.

  Derailment.

  The forward engine car jumped the tracks, bumping roughly over them before skidding out onto the steeply sloping plain of snow beyond the curve.

  The rest of the great black train followed the engine car, leaping off the rails before also sliding out onto the snow plain.

  The engine car skidded down the slope, its forward grille grinding into the powder, the rest of the train snaking along behind it like a twisted accordion, the whole crashing mess turning laterally as it slid until the entire train was slidingin reverse down the slope and headed inexorably toward the bottom, where there was nothing but a bare cliff edge and a thousandfoot drop.

  And circling above all this was the Hind gunship.

  Inside the train, the world spun crazily.

  The shocking jolt of their derailment had sent the Captain of the Guard flying sideways, slamming into the righthand wall of the carriage. Then the inertia of the train’s lateral spin as it slid down the slope—at first forward, now backward—pressed him into it.

  West and Stretch were better prepared: they’d grabbed hold of the nearest cell bars at the first bump and it still took all of their strength to stay upright during the crazy bouncing of the derailment—Stretch grabbing Tank, West clutching Wizard.

  Yet still, in its own outofcontrol way, this was part of West’s plan. He’d planned to crash there. To end up on this snow plain with the train buried in the deep snow.

  Because he still needed something.

  He still needed the Chinese to—

  But then with shocking suddenness something happened that Westhadn’t planned.

  The train went over the edge at the base of the snow slope.

  UNFORTUNATELY, the snow hadn’t quite been deep enough, its slick icy base causing the snakelike train to slideall the way down the snow plain to the very edge.

  Now traveling backward, the rear engine car went over the edge first, its weight pulling first one, then two, then three carriages over with it—

  West felt it coming an instant before it happened.

  Felt the distinctive tug of the train’s last three cars—the engine car and the last two regular carriages—going over the precipice a moment before his own carriage lurched sickeningly and…

  “Grab something!” he yelled to the others, including Wizard who was still not yet free of his ringbolts.

  Their carriage went over the edge.

  The world went vertical.

  Anything not nailed down dropped the length of the carriage, including one of the Captain of the Guard’s men.

  With a cry, the hapless fellow fell the full vertical length of the carriage, hitting the heavy iron door at the bottom with a foul cracking noise.

>   The Guard Captain and his remaining companion had quicker reflexes: as the carriage fell, they both discarded their guns in favor of having free hands, and rolled into a nearby cell at the top end of the nowvertical carriage.

  West and Stretch grabbed the bars of the nearest cell, holding on to Wizard and Tank, before—smack—their carriage’s fall was arrested.

  Somehow, the entire train had stopped its plunge down the cliff face, coming to a jarring, crunching halt.

  Although they couldn’t see it, the train’s lead engine car had rammed up against a large boulder at the edge of the precipice and lodged there, holding fast, holding the entire train suspended beneath it, dangling over the thousandfoot drop!

  West quickly took in their new predicament: he, Stretch, Wizard, and Tank were halfway down the vertical carriage. The Guard Captain and his buddy were up near the top, resting against the nowhorizontal wall of their cell, not far from the interconnecting door that led upward to safety.

  A grinding groaning sound.

  With a jerk the entire train dropped three feet. Chunks of snow rained past the barred windows. The upper engine was slipping, a yard at a time.

  West exchanged a look with Stretch.

  Then another groan, but a different kind: the sound of a metal coupling straining under the weight of the dangling train.

  “We’re gonna fall,” West said to Stretch.“Up! Now!”

  “What about you?” Stretch nodded at Wizard’s ringbolt. The old man’s leg irons were still chained to it.

  “Just go!” West said. “I’m not leaving him! Go! Someone has to get out of here alive!”

  Stretch didn’t bother to argue. He just grabbed Tank and started hauling him up the carriage, using the bars of the cells as ladder rungs.

  They climbed up the lefthand side of the carriage’s central aisle—passing the Guard Captain as he emerged from his cell on the right, dazed and gunless.

  West went back to work on Wizard’s chains with his blowtorch. He had to do this fast.

  Another grinding groan. More snow sailed past the window.

  The train dropped another three feet.

  The blowtorch cut farther through the chains before—shwack!—the flame sizzled through the final section of chain and Wizard was free.

  “Come on, old buddy,” West said. “We gotta move.”

  They looked up to see Stretch and Tank disappear through the interconnecting door at the top of the carriage—but also in time to see the Guard Captain step across their line of sight, staring daggers at West, blocking the way.

  “This way,” West said, leading Wizard down.

  “Down?” Wizard asked.

  “Trust me.”

  They came to the bottom door of the third carriage just as another metallic groan squealed out from nearby and—crack—the coupling connecting their car to the carriage beneath them broke loose and the bottom two carriages of the train, plus the rear engine car, just fell away into the void.

  The three cars fell forever, soaring silently down into the great mountain chasm before they smashed violently against the jagged rocks at the base of the ravine, the engine car exploding in a cloud of flames and black smoke.

  “No time to waste,” West said to Wizard. “This way.”

  Dangling by their fingertips, they swung out along the underside of their carriage, their feet hanging a thousand feet above the world, before they turned upward, climbingup the outside of the third suspended prison car, using any and every protrusion on it as a handhold—the bars on the windows, hinges, handles, anything.

  Up the side of the third carriage they went, moving quickly, Jack helping Wizard. They reached the gap between this carriage and the next one just as the Guard Captain and his companion did—moving inside the train—and so Jack and Wizard just kept on moving, scaling the exterior of the second carriage as quickly as they could until they reached its summit and clambered onto its flat upper surface—

  —just in time to see the Guard Captain climb up into the safety of the next (and last) carriage above them, his junior companion still waiting to climb up after him.

  It was at that moment that the Captain saw West—and something evil gleamed in his eye.

  He reached for the coupling, despite the fact that his own man was still standing on the lower carriage. The junior guard yelped “No!” when he saw what was going to happen but West just moved, leaping for a grille on the upper carriage, calling to Wizard as he did so:

  “Max! Jump for my legs!”

  Wizard jumped immediately, reaching for Jack’s waist as—

  The Guard Captain disengaged the coupling.

  The second carriage dropped instantly.

  It took the junior guard with it, his wide eyes receding into the chasm, his mouth open in a silent scream all the way down.

  But West and Wizard were still in the game: West now dangling from the bottom of the first carriage, with Wizard hangingfrom his belt!

  “Max, quick, climb up my body!” West yelled, as Wizard quickly and clumsily climbed up the length of West’s frame, at one point using the folded carbonfiber wings on Jack’s back for handholds.

  The look on the Guard Captain’s face said it all. He was furious. He wouldn’t let that happen again.

  He ducked back inside the carriage and started climbing—fast.

  Jack knew what was happening instantly.

  It was now a race to the next coupling.

  “Go, Jack! Go!” Wizard yelled. “I’ll catch up!”

  West charged up the outer wall of the final carriage, while the Guard Captain raced up its internal aisle.

  They both moved quickly, clambering up the vertical carriage.

  “Stretch!” West called into his radio as he climbed. “Where are you!”

  “We’re up, on the precipice, but we got a prob—”

  West knew what that problem was. He could see it.

  The Hind chopper was hovering directly above him, a short way out from the cliff top, not far from the sharply tilted engine car hanging out over the edge—waiting for them, if they made it up.

  Stay alive,he thought.As long as you’re alive, you have a chance.

  Up he climbed, up the outside of the vertical carriage, moving like a monkey.

  Then he rose over the final lip and stood…just as the Guard Captain emerged from the doorway there.

  Jack had beaten him in this race, got there first by a bare two seconds. He stepped forward to unleash a fierce kick at the Guard Captain—

  Only to see a gun appear in the Captain’s hand.

  Jack froze as the realization dawned on him: that was why he’d beaten the Captain in their race. The Guard Captain had taken a moment to grab a loose gun on the way up.

  Aw, shit…Jack thought.Shit, shit, shit.

  He stood there, frozen on the horizontal end section of the upturned carriage, the beating wind from the helicopter hammering his clothes. Without thinking, he raised his hands.

  “You lose!” the Guard Captain spat in English, grinning, as Wizard’s face popped up over the edge behind Jack’s boots and saw the situation.

  The Captain jammed back on the hammer of his gun.

  “Wizard…” Jack said. “It’s time to fly.”

  Then, just as Guard Captain pulled the trigger on his gun, quick as a flash, Jack’s raised hands grabbed the safety rod on the coupling above his head and disengaged it—

  —causingtheir own carriage to drop away from the engine car, with them and the Guard Captain on it!

  THE GUARD CAPTAIN’S eyes boggled. Jack had just condemned themall to death.

  The carriage fell fast. Down the side of the massive cliff.

  The gray rock wall blurred with speed as the iron prison car fell past it.

  But as the carriage fell, Jack was all action. He grabbed Wizard and pulled him into a bear hug, yelling “Hold on to me!” as he pressed something on his chest armor and suddenly his Gullwings sprang out from the compact unit on his back and
instantly the two of them soared away from the falling armored carriage, at first flying downward at incredible speed before swooping up in a graceful glide, leaving the Guard Captain to fall the rest of the way by himself, screaming all the way to his death.

  With Wizard hanging from his chest, Jack caught an upward thermal draft, and they glided away from the mountain railway and the twin mountain peaks that housed Xintan Prison.

  “Astro?” West said into his mike. “We’re gonna need a pickup farther down the railway.

  How about near that farm we saw earlier?”

  “Roger that, Huntsman,”came the reply.“Just gotta grab Stretch first. Then we’ll come get you.”

  Stretch stood on solid ground, knee deep in snow, with the weary Tank beside him, alongside the engine car of the prison train, tilted on the edge of the precipice, the only carriage still remaining.

  Unfortunately, hovering in the air in front of them was the Hind gunship, looming large.

  A voice over its loudhailer commanded in English:“You two! Remain where you are!”

  “Whatever you say,” Stretch said.

  The Hind landed on the snow plain, its rotors kicking up a miniblizzard.

  Ten Chinese troops rushed out of its hold, dashing through the billowing snow, quickly forming a ring around Stretch and Tank.

  Sitting in the chopper’s cockpit, the Hind’s two Chinese pilots saw Stretch raise his hands a moment before the miniblizzard shrouded the entire scene in white.

  Which was why the pilots never saw the snow plain around their gunship come alive, three ghostlike figures rising from beneath it, dressed in white camouflage gear and bearing MP7 submachine guns: Astro, Scimitar, and Vulture.

  The three whiteclad men took the unguarded chopper easily and once they had it, Vulture aimed its huge sixbarreled cannon at the tenman Chinese team on the ground and demanded over the loud hailer that they drop their weapons. Needless to say, they complied.