* * *
“A suitcase nuke!” Pooh Bear exclaimed.
Jack said, “They say there are Israeli suitcase bombs at secret locations in all the major capitals of the world—New York, Washington, London, Moscow, Paris—and in the major cities of Israel’s key enemies: Damascus, Tehran, Cairo. They’re Israel’s ultimate insurance policy. Small nuclear devices. Fifty-kiloton yield, blast radius of two kilometers, minimal fallout—but everything within that radius will be vaporized. Nice thing to mention in passing to your enemies.”
“So what do we do?” Pooh said. “We can’t get to the Halicarnassus. It’s a standoff.”
“It is,” Jack said. “Which is exactly what I want.”
THE AROHAM RUINS
IT WAS indeed a standoff, a standoff in the middle of the desert.
The Roman ruins at Aroham were once an ancient spice-route way station. Their only claim to fame: their deepwater well. Now they were crappy ruins that not even the tourists bothered to stop at.
Twenty minutes ticked by, and the rest of the Israeli chase force arrived on the scene.
Six more choppers, plus a convoy of vehicles on the highway: command vans, troop trucks, antiaircraft jeeps.
Inside the main command van, his face red with fury, was Mordechai Muniz.
Of course by now it was known that the blast at Dimona had not caused any radiation leak. Jack’s detonation had only blown the outer wall of Machon-2, but at a facility like Dimona, in the event of any blast, full emergency procedures had to be observed.
But now the Israelis were pleased—they’d managed to cut Jack off from his escape plane. And sieges like this always came out in favor of the side with time and food on their side, and the Israelis had all the time in the world.
General Mordechai Muniz raised his binoculars.
He saw the big black 747 in the distance, just visible about four hundred yards beyond the ruins on the low hilltop. The scene had not changed for thirty minutes now. Occasionally, movement could be spotted within the ruins, a figure crossing a doorway, a head bobbing up.
“What about their plane?” a lieutenant asked. “Choppers are awaiting instructions.”
“Don’t destroy it yet,” Muniz said calmly. “They need to think they have a chance of escape.”
He brought his radio to his lips. “Captain West. Captain Jack West Jr. Come in. Let’s talk.”
Silence.
After a moment, Jack’s voice came in, crackly and grainy over the speaker. “You offering a deal, General?”
Muniz rolled his eyes. “This is unpleasant, Captain. What do you honestly hope to achieve here? Your rescue attempt, while loyal and inventive, has failed. You cannot escape from this situation.”
“Don’t even think of storming these ruins. If I see anyone come within the two-klick perimeter, I’ll detonate the nuke.”
“What do you want?” Muniz demanded flatly.
“I want access to our plane and safe passage to Syrian airspace. I can’t imagine you’ll shoot down a nuclear-loaded plane over Israeli population centers, nor would you like to have one of your nukes go off over Syria.”
“Not going to happen.”
“You going to wait us out, General?”
“Captain West, be serious. Even if you did board that plane, I’d still shoot you out of the sky as soon as you took off. Then your suitcase merely becomes a dirty bomb, and dirty bombs mean little out here in the desert.”
“How about I just detonate the suitcase bomb right here, right now, and we all die together. The concussion wave from the blast is easily enough to take you with us.”
“You’re not like that, West,” Muniz said. “I’ve seen your profile: you wouldn’t kill those you love. On the contrary, you prefer to risk your own life for theirs.”
“And I know this about you, Old Master. You don’t want to die. Let’s see who blinks first.”
“I don’t bluff, Captain.”
“Neither do I.”
And at precisely that moment, an hour after the siege had begun, several things happened at once.
“Sir!” an Israeli corporal called from a radio console. “Aerial Two just called in! They’ve been watching the plane over in the next valley—someone just ran over to it from a second cluster of ruins over there! The plane is starting to taxi down the highway . . .”
“It’s doing what—?” Muniz turned, frowning.
“Sir!” Another Israeli trooper ran into the command van, holding some plans. “Those ruins they’re holed up in! They’re an ancient entrance to Uqaba, the salt mine that runs underneath this plateau.”
“A salt mine . . .” Muniz’s mind began to race.
There was a salt mine underneath this plateau?
“Where are the other entrances and exits to this salt mine?”
“It’s huge, sir. There are over a dozen entrances, some as far as ten miles away. The nearest one is in the next valley, right near their plane,” the corporal said. “That second set of ruins is another entrance to the mine.”
Muniz’s eyes widened as suddenly he saw Jack’s plan.
Jack hadn’t been holed up here at Aroham by chance. He’d wanted to get here, to these exact ruins. He’d wanted the chase helicopters to catch up to him when they did. He’d wanted to stage a standoff here and then slip through the mine tunnels to his plane while they wasted time negotiating . . .
Muniz thundered: “Stop that plane, now—”
“Sir!” a third soldier called urgently. This trooper was manning a radiation console. “Sir! Geiger counters and passive radiation meters just went off the charts! The suitcase bomb just went into the primary stage! He just activated the nuke . . .”
“Can we get to it in time?” Muniz asked.
“No, the primary ignition phase is five minutes, we can’t get to it and disarm it in that space of time. That thing’s going to go off. Our friend Captain West just initiated the detonation of a nuclear device.”
“Get everybody back!” Muniz roared. “As far back as possible. The blast won’t reach us, but the shock wave will. Go! Go! Go! The man is insane.”
The Israeli force leaped into action, retreating back north as fast their vehicles could carry them.
At the same time, the big black 747 that had been pinned down in the next valley lifted off into the sky and banked round, heading west, making a beeline for the nearest border, that of Egypt.
Five minutes after that, the small-yield suitcase-borne nuclear bomb went off.
THE FLASH was blinding.
A colossal boom followed, the ground shook, then a great towering mushroom cloud rose high into the sky above the Negev Desert, like some kind of unearthly force released from captivity.
In the five minutes they’d had, Muniz and his force had managed to get twelve kilometers away from the blast. To them, the mushroom cloud looked like a skyscraper looming on the southern horizon. Thanks to the compact size of the device, at this distance the electromagnetic pulse from the blast only served to disrupt their communications mildly.
For a long moment, Mordechai Muniz just stared at the eighty-story-high cloud growing into the sky.
His lieutenant came alongside him. “Sir. What should we do now?”
Muniz ground his teeth. “Scramble some F-15s. Tell them to acquire that 747 and blast it out of the fucking sky.”
Two F-15 fighters were launched from a nearby base and within twenty minutes they had acquired the Halicarnassus, fleeing over the Sinai Peninsula, well into Egyptian airspace.
Maybe West had thought he’d be safe once he’d crossed the border, Muniz thought. Maybe he thought our fighters would pull back once he was over sovereign Egyptian territory.
They didn’t.
The Israeli F-15s just flew straight into Egypt and the lead plane unleashed two Sidewinder missiles at the fleeing jumbo jet.
Both missiles hit their mark.
And the big black 747 simply exploded in the sky, cracking in the middle, bucki
ng in midair, orange flames spewing all around it and a long thin line of black smoke trailing it as it rushed downward at outrageous speed and crashed into the side of a rocky mountain in the Sinai.
The Halicarnassus was no more.
* * *
Egyptian Air Force personnel monitoring the area would later report that three illegal aerial signatures had entered Egyptian airspace that morning: two F-15 fighter signatures and one civilian airliner.
The two fighters left the area soon after they’d entered it, while the airliner signature had simply disappeared from their screens. A check was made, but no commercial airliners had been reported missing.
Curiously, however, just before the two fighters had caught up with the airliner, the Egyptians noticed a miniscule signature soaring down through the air beneath the airliner.
It was a very small signature, too faint to be an aircraft of any kind, more akin to the ghostlike trace signal one saw when a paratrooper did a drop. The Egyptian Air Force personnel dismissed it as a software glitch.
Back in the Negev Desert, about ten miles to the east of the towering black mushroom cloud that stood above what had once been the Aroham ruins, Zoe, Pooh Bear, and Stretch drove toward the Jordanian border.
They traveled in an old WWII-era jeep that Jack and Zoe had left there earlier, one without electronics that could be affected by the EMP emitted by the blast.
The labyrinthine salt mine beneath the ruins had indeed been vast, with tunnels running in every direction—including the one that had headed south toward the valley containing the black 747, and another running eastward. While Jack had gone south to be seen boarding the plane—talking to Muniz on his radio as he did so—the others had long before entered the mine and hurried east, getting nearly an hour’s head start.
The only things that had been in the Aroham ruins when the nuke had gone off were their escape ambulance, some crudely strung-up human-shaped objects that would move every few minutes to create the illusion of their presence, and, of course, the suitcase bomb.
After a few hours, the jeep crossed the border into Jordan, where its occupants beheld a sea of sand dunes. As it crested the first dune, both Stretch and Pooh Bear’s jaws dropped as they saw what lay before them.
The Halicarnassus.
Jack’s big black 747 stood proudly on a blacktop road, flanked by giant sand dunes, its black-armored sides and wing-mounted guns giving it a particularly fearsome look. Beside it, standing equally proudly, was Sky Monster.
“Hello folks,” he said jovially.
“But how . . .” Pooh Bear said. “I thought . . .”
“That other plane you saw, it was a black 747, sure,” Sky Monster said, “but did it have guns like this one? Or stealth panels? Or was it just black?”
“But where did you get a—” Stretch said, his voice husky and dry.
Sky Monster grinned. “Remember how Jack got the Halicarnassus in the first place: it was one of several escape planes Saddam Hussein had stashed around Iraq. One of several. Jack’s SAS buddies in western Iraq had found one of the others a while back and Jack called ’em to say he needed it.”
Sky Monster held out a portable radio handset. “Here.”
Pooh and Stretch took the radio. “Hello?”
“You got away? Good,” Jack’s voice said. “Now, if you don’t mind, would someone please come and get me. I parachuted into the middle of goddamned nowhere! I’m in the Sinai somewhere . . .”
“Quit your whining, West, it was your stupid plan.” Sky Monster grinned. “We’ll meet you at the rendezvous point as intended. You’ll have to get there under your own steam.”
“Copy that,” Jack said. “Oh, Pooh and Stretch . . . it’s good to have you back.”
Stretch and Pooh Bear smiled.
“Hey Jack,” Stretch croaked.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
ZANZIBAR
JANUARY 14, 2008
TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE 3RD DEADLINE
FOUR DAYS later, Jack rejoined the group, meeting them at the Sea Ranger’s hideaway buried within the eastern coast of Zanzibar, underneath a long-dead lighthouse.
By the time Jack arrived there, Stretch had been cleaned up and had slept for almost twenty-six hours straight. He was sitting up in bed with a notebook computer on his lap when Jack walked in.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come for me,” Stretch said.
“Had a gap in my schedule,” Jack said. “And really it was Pooh Bear who did all the legwork.”
“Is that Daddy?” a voice said from the laptop.
Stretch swiveled the computer so Jack could see Lily on its screen. She was still at Alby’s place in Australia, and until now had been unaware of the mission to save Stretch.
“You could’ve told me what you were doing,” she said.
“No, I couldn’t,” Jack said. “It was too dangerous even for you to know. I’m sorry about that.”
“But . . .” she hesitated. “I was awful. I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“Don’t be sorry, kiddo. You were right,” Jack said, “and your instincts were right, too. We don’t leave any of our friends behind. We bust ’em out or we die trying. I’m just sorry I had to keep it from you and make you so upset.”
Lily smiled. “I’m proud of you, Daddy.”
“I like making you proud. Thanks.” He turned to Stretch. “It’s great to have you back, buddy. Eat up and get some strength, because things are about to get hectic.”
“Why? What happens now?”
“Now we figure out where the other Pillars and Vertices are, and we go after them.”
JACK’S TEAM assembled around a long table in a glass-windowed office inside the Sea Ranger’s underground submarine dock. The dark gray conning tower of the Ranger’s stolen Kilo-class submarine loomed outside the office’s windows.
Jack sat at the head of the table, with Wizard and Zoe beside him. Pooh Bear and Stretch sat with the twins, Lachlan and Julius Adamson. Sky Monster lounged in a couch under the window, dozing, while J. J. Wickham watched from the doorway.
Also there was the newest member of the group, the archaeologist Diane Cassidy. While Jack’s team had gone to Israel, she’d taken the African youth, Ono, to an orphanage in Mombasa that helped dislocated African tribesfolk adapt to the modern world. Cassidy had also used that time to return to the States and contact family and friends, to let them know she was alive. Eager to repay her rescuers with any information she could provide, she had returned the day before.
Lastly, Lily and Alby were present via videolink, patched in from Perth.
Strewn over the table were numerous sheets of paper—the random notes of Wizard, Jack, and the twins; from photos of Stonehenge, maps with notations scribbled on them, plus Wizard’s summary sheet:
“All right,” Jack said. “While we’ve been breaking into high-security bases, Wizard’s been working on the next phase of our mission. Max, the dates.”
Wizard stood and wrote on a whiteboard:
3RD PILLAR – MARCH 11
4TH PILLAR – MARCH 18
5TH PILLAR – MARCH 18
6TH PILLAR – MARCH 20 (DUAL EQUINOX)
“For your benefit, Diane,” Wizard said as he wrote, “allow me to summarize. Late last year, at a secret base off the coast of England, we placed the Firestone atop the Mayan Killing Stone—one of the Six Sacred Stones—and thus discovered these crucial dates. They are the dates on which the remaining four Pillars must be laid at the last four Vertices. As you can see, they are clustered around March of this year.”
“The Fourth and Fifth Pillars have the same date,” Pooh Bear said. “Can that be right?”
“It’s right,” Wizard said. “I triple-checked it.”
“Which means?” Stretch queried.
“It means that Pillars Four and Five must be set in place at the same time.”
“But those Vertices could be on different sides of the world . . .”
“We know,” Jac
k said. “But we’ll come to that later. Wizard informs me that March 11 and March 18 are both dates for the celestial event we know as the Titanic Rising, an event which coincided with the first two Pillar placings at Abu Simbel and Table Mountain. The last date, March 20, is not a Titanic Rising.”
“What is it, then?” the Sea Ranger asked.
“It’s the big one. On all the other occasions, Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, serve to bend the light of the Dark Star. That bending of the light also weakens it somewhat. But on March 20, it’ll be different. Wizard?”
Wizard explained. “March 20, 2008, is a rare event, one that has not occurred in thousands of years. It is a dual equinox, a time when both our Sun and its twin, this Dark Star, are aligned on opposite sides of the Earth. Only on that date, Jupiter and Saturn will not shield us from the Dark Star’s rays. On that date, the Dark Star will emerge fully from behind them and shine its deadly light directly onto our planet.”
“By which time, the Machine must be ready, all its Pillars set in place,” Jack said.
“Or what?” the Sea Ranger asked.
“Or we all get to witness the end of the world,” Wizard said.
“And what exactly will the end of the world look like?”
Wizard paused. “Hit by the Dark Sun’s fearsome energy, our planet will spasm from within, causing it to go wild on the surface.
“Imagine every volcano on Earth erupting at the same time. Imagine tsunamis crashing onto every shore. Imagine earthquakes at every fault line. And all this will go on for years.
“Undersea eruptions will heat the oceans, turning them into boiling nightmares. The sky will go dark with ash and the atmosphere will quickly be filled by sulfurous gases escaping from the planet core. The air will become poisonous to breathe.
“Our planet is very robust, but life on it is not. Humans can survive only on the Earth’s surface, and after March 20 that surface will become a hellish environment totally hostile to life—a landscape of black cloud, raging seas, endless fire, and choking gas.
The Five Greatest Warriors Page 5