“A thief never uses the same entrance twice,” said Bassario. “At least, not once he has been detected. Isn’t that right, prince?”
“Correct,” said Renco.
I turned to appraise the criminal Bassario. He was in fact a rather handsome man, despite his grimy appearance. And he smiled broadly, his eyes twinkling—the smile of a man happy to be part of an adventure. I could not say that I shared his joy.
Now Renco began to rummage through his quiver. He pulled out some arrows whose points had been wrapped in cloth, creating round, bulbous heads.
“Good,” said he, looking about himself and finding a lighted torch hanging on a nearby wall. “Very good.”
“What are you planning to do?” I inquired.
Renco did not appear to hear me. He merely stared out at three horses standing unattended on the far side of the plaza.
“Renco,” I pressed, “what are you planning to do?”
At which point Renco turned to face me and a wry smile crossed his face.
I stepped out into the wide-open plaza with my hands folded inside my saturated monk’s cloak, my sodden hood pulled low over my wet hair.
I kept my head bowed as I crossed the plaza—stepping deftly aside as clusters of soldiers ran past me, ducking quickly as horses wheeled about in my direction—desperate not to sport any attention.
Renco guessed that the soldiers in the plaza would not yet know that a renegade Spanish monk—me—was aiding the Incan raiding party. As such, so long as they did not notice my soggy clothing, I should be able to get near the three unattended horses and bring them over to a nearby alleyway where Renco and Bassario could mount them.
But first I had to clear a passage to the gate, which meant getting the flatbed wagon with the cannon on it out of our path. That task would be harder. It required that I “accidentally” scare the two horses harnessed to the wagon. Thus I carried concealed within my sleeve one of Renco’s sharply pointed arrows, ready to—God forgive me—surreptitiously jab one of the poor creatures as I walked past them.
I crossed the plaza slowly, careful to keep my eyes averted, not daring to lock eyes with anyone.
As in the other plazas around the city, this one had stakes driven into the ground all around it. Severed heads were impaled upon them. The blood on the heads was fresh and it trickled down the stakes to the ground. My fear was extreme as I passed them—such would be my fate if I didn’t get out of Cuzco soon.
The gate came into my view and with it the flatbed wagon that stood in front of it. I saw the horses and tightened my grip on the arrow inside my sleeve. Two more steps and—
“Hey! You!” barked a coarse voice from somewhere behind me.
I froze. Did not look up.
A large soldier with a potbelly stepped in front of me, so that he stood in between myself and the two horses. He wore his pointed conquistador’s helmet perfectly and his voice was laced with authority. A senior soldier.
“What are you doing here?” said he and curtly.
Said I, “I am sorry, so sorry . . . I was trapped in the city and I . . .”
“Get back to your quarters. This isn’t a safe area. There are Indians in the city. We think they’re after the Captain’s idol.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was so close to my objective and now I was being turned away! I reluctantly made to leave when suddenly a strong hand landed on my shoulder.
“A moment monk—” the soldier began. But he cut himself off abruptly as he felt the dampness of my cloak.
“What the—”
Just then, a sharp whistling sound filled the air around me and then—thwack!—an arrow smacked into the big soldier’s face, shattering his nose, causing an explosion of blood that splattered all over my face.
The soldier dropped like a stone. The other soldiers in the plaza saw him fall and whirled about searching for the source of the danger.
Suddenly a second whistling sound filled the air, and this time a flaming arrow flew down from one of the darkened rooftops surrounding the plaza and shot low over the flatbed wagon in front of me and slammed hard into the big wooden gate behind it.
Shouts filled the air as the conquistadors opened fire on the shadowed source of the arrows.
I, however, was looking at something else entirely.
I was looking at the cannon on top of the flatbed wagon, or more particularly, at the fuse protruding from the breech of the cannon on top of the flatbed wagon.
The fuse was alight.
The flaming arrow—I did not know at the time, but I understand now that it was Bassario who fired it—had been so well aimed that it had lit the fuse on the cannon.
I did not wait for what would happen next. I just ran for the three unattended horses as quickly as I could, for no sooner did I reach them than the cannon on the flatbed wagon went off.
It was the loudest noise I had ever heard in my life. A monstrous blast of such intensity and power that it shook the world under me.
A billowing cloud of smoke shot out from the cannon’s barrel and the big wooden gate in front of it snapped like a twig. When the smoke cleared before it a gaping ten-foot hole could be seen in the lower half of the giant gate.
The horses harnessed to the flatbed wagon bolted at the sudden thunderous blast. They reared on their hind legs and took flight, galloping off into the alleyways of Cuzco, leaving the damaged gate wide open.
The three horses I had been charged with procuring reared too. One of them bolted and ran off, but the other two calmed quickly as I held them firmly by their reins.
The Spanish soldiers were still firing blindly up into the shadowy rooftops. I looked up into the darkness. Renco and Bassario were nowhere to be seen—
“Monk!” someone called suddenly from behind me.
I turned and saw Bassario come running up with his longbow in his hand.
“Well, you couldn’t have fouled this up any more, could you, monk?” said he with a smile as he leapt up into the saddle of one of my horses. “All you had to do was scare the horses.”
“Where is Renco?” I inquired.
“He is coming,” said Bassario.
Just then a series of shrill, angry screams swept across the plaza and I turned instantly—and saw the row of manacled Incan prisoners charge as one at the Spaniards in the plaza. The Incans were free, no longer joined together by the long length of black rope.
Then suddenly, I heard a death scream and saw Renco up on one of the rooftops—standing over a fallen conquistador, hurriedly taking the fallen man’s pistol, while six more Spaniards hustled up the stairs on the side of the building, chasing after him.
Renco looked down at me and cried, “Alberto! Bassario! The gate! Go for the gate!”
“What about you!” I called.
“I’ll be right behind you!” Renco called back as he ducked under a musket shot. “Just go! Go!”
I leapt up into the saddle of the second horse.
“Come on!” Bassario cried, kicking his horse.
I spurred my own steed and shot off the mark, turning the beast sharply so that it charged toward the gate.
It was then that I turned in my saddle and saw a most amazing sight
I saw an arrow—a pointed arrow, not a flaming one—soar across the plaza from one of the rooftops. Trailing behind it, wobbling like the undulating body of a snake, was a long length of rope—black rope—the rope that had bound the row of Incan prisoners together!
The arrow shot over my head and, with a firm smacking sound, lodged in the intact upper half of the big wooden gate. No sooner had the arrow hit the gate than I saw the entire length of rope behind it go taut.
And then I saw Renco at the other end of the rope—up on one of the rooftops standing with his legs splayed wide, with his newfound satchel draped over his right shoulder—saw him lash the leather belt of his Spanish pantaloons over it, and grab hold of the belt with one hand. Then I saw him leap off the roof and swing—no, slide—down the le
ngth of the rope, over the entire plaza, hanging onto the belt with one hand.
Some Spanish soldiers opened fire on him, but the dashing young prince just used his free hand to pull his pistol from his waistband and fire it at them while he slid at incredible speed down the rope!
I spurred my steed on, increased her speed, and pulled her in at a full gallop under Renco’s rope just as he reached the end of his slide. He released his grip on the belt and dropped down perfectly onto the rump of my horse.
In front of us, Bassario leapt like a seasoned horseman through the enormous hole in the wooden gate. Renco and I followed close behind him, riding double, vaulting through the gate amid a hail of wild gunshots.
We burst out into the cold night air—riding hard across the massive stone slab that formed a bridge over the city’s northern moat—and the first thing I heard as I raced across that bridge was a roar of total and utter jubilation from the hoards of Incan warriors in the valley before me.
“How’s it going?” a voice said suddenly.
Race glanced up from the manuscript and for a moment was disoriented. He looked out through the small window to his right and saw a sea of snow-capped mountains and an endless expanse of clear blue sky.
He shook his head. He’d been so absorbed in the story that he’d forgotten he was on board the cargo plane.
Troy Copeland stood in front of him. He was one of Nash’s DARPA people, the hawk-faced nuclear physicist.
“So, how’s it going?” Copeland said, nodding at the bundle of paper in Race’s lap. “Found the location of the idol yet?”
“Well, I’ve found the idol,” Race said, flipping through the remainder of the manuscript. He was about two-thirds of the way through it. “I think I’m about to find out where they took it.”
“Good,” Copeland said, turning. “Keep us posted.”
“Hey,” Race said. “Before you go, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What is thyrium-261 used for?”
Copeland frowned at the question.
“I think I have a right to know,” Race said.
Copeland nodded slowly. “Yes . . . yes, I guess you do.” He took a breath. “As I think you were told before, thyrium-261 is not indigenous to Earth. It comes from a binary star system called the Pleiades, a system not far from our own.
“Now, as you can probably imagine, planets in binary star systems are affected by all sorts of forces because of their twin suns—photosynthesis is doubled; gravitational effects, as well as resistance to gravity, are enormous. As such, elements found on planets in binary systems are usually heavier and denser than similar elements found here on Earth. Thyrium-261 is just such an element.
“It was first found in petrified form in the walls of a meteor crater in Arizona in 1972. And even though the specimen there had been inert for millions of years, its potential sent Shockwaves throughout the physics community.”
“Why?”
“Well, you see, on a molecular level, thyrium bears a striking resemblance to the terrestrial elements uranium and plutonium. But thyrium outweighs both of these earthly elements by an order of magnitude. It is denser than our two most potent nuclear elements combined. Which means it is infinitely more powerful.”
Race began to feel a sense of dread crawling up his spine. Where was Copeland going with this?
“But like I said, thyrium has only ever been found on Earth in petrified form. Since 1972, two other samples have been discovered, but again both of those specimens were at least forty million years old. Which is of no use to anyone since petrified thyrium is inert, chemically dead.
“What we have been waiting for, for the past twenty-seven years is the discovery of a specimen of ‘live’ thyrium, a specimen that is still active on a molecular level. And now we think we’ve found it, in a meteorite that crash-landed in the jungles of Peru five hundred years ago.”
“So what does thyrium do?” Race asked.
“A lot,” Copeland said. “A whole lot. For one thing, its potential as a power source is astronomical. Conservative estimates predict that a properly constituted thyrium reactor would generate electrical energy at a rate six hundred times greater than all the nuclear power plants in the United States combined.
“But there’s an added bonus. Unlike our terrestrial nuclear elements, when thyrium is used as the core element of a fusion reactor, it decomposes with one hundred percent efficiency. In other words, it leaves no contaminated waste byproducts. As such, it is unlike any power source on this earth. Uranium waste must be discarded in radioactive rods. Hell, even gasoline produces carbon monoxide. But thyrium is clean. It is a perfectly efficient power source. Perfect. It is so internally pure that, based on our modeling, a raw sample of it would emit only microscopic quantities of passive radiation.”
Race held up his hand. “All right, all right. That all sounds great, but last I heard, DARPA wasn’t in the business of providing America with power stations. What else does thyrium do?”
Copeland smiled, caught.
“Professor, for the last ten years, DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office has been working on a new weapon, a weapon unlike anything this world has ever seen. It is a device code-named ‘Supernova.’ ”
As soon as Copeland said the word, something twigged in the back of Race’s mind. He recalled a conversation he’d overheard between Copeland and Nash soon after he had boarded the plane. A conversation in which they had mentioned a break-in at Fairfax Drive and the theft of a device called a Supernova.
“What exactly is this Supernova?”
“Put simply,” Copeland said, “the Supernova is the most powerful weapon ever devised in the history of mankind. It’s what we call a planet killer.”
“A what?”
“A planet killer. A nuclear device so powerful that when detonated, it would completely destroy nearly a third of the Earth’s mass. With a third of its mass gone, the Earth’s orbit around the sun would be corrupted. Our planet would spin out of control, out into space, further and further away from the sun. Within minutes the Earth’s surface—what was left of it—would be too cold to sustain human life. The Supernova, Professor Race, is the first man-made device that is capable of ending life as we know it on this planet. Hence its namesake, the name we give to an exploding star.”
Race swallowed. In fact he felt positively weak.
A million questions flooded his mind.
Like, why would someone build such a device? What possible reason could there be for creating a weapon that could kill everyone on the planet, including its own creators? And all that considered, why was his country building it?
Copeland continued, “The thing is, Professor, the Supernova that we have at present is a prototype, a workable shell. That device—the device that was stolen from DARPA headquarters last night—is useless. For the simple reason that the operation of the Supernova requires the addition of one thing. Thyrium.”
OK great . . . Race thought.
“In this regard,” Copeland said, “the Supernova is not all that dissimilar to a neutron bomb. It is a fission device—which means it operates on the principle of splitting the thyrium atom. Two conventional thermonuclear warheads are used to split a subcritical mass of thyrium, unleashing the mega-explosion.”
“Okay, wait a second,” Race said. “Let me get this straight. You guys have built a weapon—a weapon that is capable of destroying the planet—that is dependent upon an element that you don’t even have yet?”
“That’s correct,” Copeland said.
“But why? Why is America building a weapon that can do all this?”
Copeland nodded. “That’s always a difficult question to answer. I mean—”
“There are two reasons,” a deeper voice said suddenly from behind Race.
It was Frank Nash.
Nash nodded at the manuscript in Race’s lap. “Have you found the location of the idol yet?”
“Not yet.”
&n
bsp; “Then I’ll make this quick so you can get back to work. First of all, what I am about to tell you is of the utmost secrecy. There are sixteen people in the country who know what I am about to tell you and five of them are on this plane. If you mention any of this to anyone after the completion of this mission, you’ll spend the next seventy-five years in jail. Do you understand me, Professor?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. The justification for the construction of the Supernova is twofold. The first reason is this. About eighteen months ago, it was discovered that state-funded scientists in Germany had begun the secret construction of a Supernova. Our response was simple: if they were going to build one, so were we.”
“That’s great logic,” Race said.
“It’s exactly the same logic Oppenheimer used to justify building the atomic bomb.”
“Geez, you’re standing on the backs of giants there, Colonel,” Race said dryly. “And the second reason?”
Nash said, “Professor, have you ever heard of a man named Dietrich von Choltitz?”
“No.”
“Commanding-General Dietrich von Choltitz was the Nazi general in charge of the German forces in Paris at the time of the Nazis’ withdrawal from France in August of 1944. After it became apparent that the Allies were going to retake Paris, Hitler sent Choltitz a communiqué. It ordered Choltitz to set thousands of incendiary devices all over the city before he left . . . and then, after he was gone, to blow Paris sky-high.
“Now, to von Choltitz’s credit, he disobeyed the order. He didn’t want to go down in history as the man who destroyed Paris. But what is important here is the logic behind Hitler’s order. If he couldn’t have Paris, no one could.”
“So what are you saying?” Race said warily.
“Professor, the Supernova is but one evolutionary step in a high-level strategic plan that has existed in U.S. foreign policy for the last fifty years. That plan is called the Choltitz Plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is this. Did you know that throughout the Cold War, the U.S. Navy had standing orders to ensure that at any given time there were a number of nuclear ballistic missile submarines stationed at certain strategic locations around the world? Do you know what those submarines were there for?”
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