Sacred Stone of-2

by Clive Cussler

  Then his telephone rang.

  “The signal from the meteorite is leading right to the Akbar,” Hanley said.

  “Al-Khalifa,” Cabrillo spat out. “I wonder how he found out about the meteorite.”

  “I alerted Overholt that Echelon has a leak,” Hanley said, “that’s the only way.”

  “So the Hammadi Group is trying to produce a dirty bomb,” Cabrillo said, “but that doesn’t explain who the first people that grabbed it were.”

  “We haven’t been able to find out any information on the passenger,” Hanley said, “but my guess is that it was someone working with Al-Khalifa and they had a falling out.”

  Cabrillo thought for a minute. It was a plausible explanation—maybe the only one that made sense—still, he had an uneasy feeling. “I guess we’ll know when we recover the meteorite and liberate the emir.”

  “That’s the plan,” Hanley agreed.

  “Then this will be over,” Cabrillo said.

  “Neat as a pin.”

  Neither Cabrillo nor Hanley could foresee that the outcome was still days away.

  Nor did they know it would be anything but neat.

  “Have Huxley call me,” Cabrillo said. “I need some medical advice.”

  “You got it,” Hanley said as he rang off.

  ON BOARD THE Akbar, high-powered landing lights were flicked on to light the landing pad.

  Off to the side, a pair of Arabs watched as Al-Khalifa lined up over the fantail then eased forward and touched down. As soon as the helicopter’s skids touched the deck, the two men raced under the spinning rotor blade and secured the skids to the deck.

  The blade slowed as Al-Khalifa pulled on the rotor brake, and once it was stopped he climbed out and walked around to the passenger side. Taking the box in his hands, he walked to the door to the main salon and waited until it was opened.

  He walked inside and approached the long table and sat the box on the top.

  As he unfastened the clasp and flipped the lid open, the terrorists gathered around and stared at the orb in silence. Then Al-Khalifa reached down and lifted the heavy sphere and held it over his head.

  “A million more infidels dead,” he said grandly, “and London in ruins.”

  “Praise be to Allah,” the terrorists shouted.

  “ONE MILE DEAD ahead,” the captain of the Free Enterprise said, “moving at fifteen knots.”

  A total of nine men dressed in black waterproof uniforms were clustered in the pilothouse. The men were armed with rifles on slings, handguns, and grenades.

  The Free Enterprise was dead in the water. Outside on her rear deck, a large black bulletproof inflatable boat was being lowered over the side. Fifty-millimeter machine guns were mounted on the bow and stern of the inflatable. Mounted to the rigid fiberglass floor of the vessel was a high-performance gasoline engine.

  The boat disappeared over the side and splashed into the water.

  “We go in at the stern,” the leader said, “neutralize the targets, retrieve the meteorite, and then get out again. I want us back on board in five minutes tops.”

  “Will there be any friendlies?” one of the men asked.

  “One,” the leader said, handing out a photograph.

  “What do we do with him?”

  “Protect him if you can,” the leader said, “but not if it means your own life.”

  “Leave him on board?”

  “He’s of no use to us,” the leader said, “now let’s go.”

  The men filed out of the pilothouse and onto the rear deck. They walked in single file down a set of steps built along the hull to a small platform where the inflatable was docked and idling. As soon as the men were all aboard, one of them took up position behind the wheel, engaged the drive and steered away from the Free Enterprise.

  At a speed of fifty-five knots it did not take long for the inflatable to reach the Akbar.

  Once they reached the rear of the yacht, the man operating the inflatable held his vessel against the rear swim platform of the steaming Akbar with a judicious application of power. The men stepped onto the platform and the captain of the inflatable backed away a short distance and kept pace with the yacht. Slowly the eight men made their way topside.

  THE PRISONER IN the cabin on the Akbar had managed to free his hands but not his legs. Hobbling over to the toilet, he drained his bladder and then sat back on the bed and refastened his hands. If someone didn’t show up soon to rescue him, he’d have to take matters into his own hands. He was hungry, and when he got hungry he got mad.

  ONE DECK ABOVE, the only sound that could be heard was a light thumping of boots covered by felt liners as the men from the Free Enterprise spread out throughout the Akbar. In a few seconds, the sounds of light popping like lazy popcorn filtered through the ship. That was followed by the sound of bodies hitting the deck.

  A few seconds later the door to the prisoner’s cabin was flung open and a man in a black hood shined a light in his face. The man in the hood looked at him again, consulted a photograph in his hand and then closed the door. The prisoner began to tug at the coating covering his face.

  The Akbar began to slow, then stopped.

  Moving rapidly, four of the men weighed down the terrorists’ bodies, starting with their leader, and dumped them over the side while the other half of the team cleaned up the blood. Four minutes and forty seconds after first standing on the deck of the Akbar, they were filing down to the swim platform once again.

  The leader of the team from the Free Enterprise carefully placed a box in the rear of the inflatable and the men filed back aboard. The driver engaged the throttles and the black boat skimmed quickly across the water toward her mother ship.

  A frozen pizza would have taken longer to cook than the assault on the Akbar.

  Once the team was back on board and the inflatable was stowed on deck, the captain of the Free Enterprise pulled alongside the Akbar. The fog had cleared a little and the Akbar’s lights glinted off the black water of the ocean. The yacht was bobbing in place like a boat anchored over a reef. The difference was that here the water was too cold to dive—plus there was no one left aboard, save one, who could come out to play.

  The Free Enterprise steamed past, then the captain gradually increased its speed.

  18

  ADAMS HOVERED THE Robinson helicopter above Mount Forel, then used the remote speaker to send out the sound of an air horn. He waited a few minutes then caught sight of a green glowing light from below. Flying a short distance toward the light, he sounded the air horn again to give Cabrillo warning to move away from the landing pad, then he set the helicopter down on the snow. Once the rotor blade had stopped spinning, he climbed out.

  “Mr. Chairman,” he said as Cabrillo walked over, “I’m glad I found you. It’s as black as a sack of licorice out here.”

  “Everyone get out of Iceland safely?”

  “It all went according to plan,” Adams said.

  “That’s one bright spot,” Cabrillo said. “Now, how are we for weight?”

  “With the two of us aboard and fuel, we still have a few hundred pounds left over. Why do you ask?”

  “We have another passenger,” Cabrillo said.

  “Who?”

  “A civilian who was shot,” Cabrillo told him. “I think it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Is he dead or alive?”

  “I’m not sure, but it doesn’t look good,” Cabrillo said, pointing toward the entrance to the cave. “Go into the cave, then carry him out to the helicopter. I’ll move the snowcat over and begin refueling.”

  Adams nodded and started walking up the hill. At the entrance he stopped and stared north. Along the horizon blue and green lights flickered and danced like wispy sheets of fabric illuminated by dancing light. The plasma that comprised the Northern Lights was putting on a show, and Adams felt a chill from the unnatural scene.

  Turning on his heels, he entered the cave.
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br />   CABRILLO CLIMBED INTO the snowcat and drove it over to the helicopter. He began to transfer the fuel using a hand-cranked pump on the top of the spare tank. He was just finishing filling the Robinson’s second tank when Adams appeared through the darkness carrying Ackerman, who was still inside the sleeping bag. Carefully placing the archaeologist into the rear seat, he attached a seat belt then walked around to Cabrillo.

  “I’ve got some bottles of octane booster that need to be added,” he said.

  “Give them to me and I’ll put them in. I want you to get Huxley on the radio and ask her if there is anything we can do for our passenger. Explain that he has a serious bullet wound and he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  Adams nodded then reached into a storage compartment and removed the two bottles of octane booster and handed them to Cabrillo. Then he climbed into the pilot’s seat and turned on the radio. He climbed back out once he had completed the call, then reached back into the storage compartment and retrieved a collapsible snow shovel. As Cabrillo finished the refueling, Adams began shoveling snow into Ackerman’s sleeping bag.

  “She said to ice him down and slow his heartbeat,” Adams said as Cabrillo walked over, “to induce hypothermia and put him into a suspended state.”

  “How long until we reach the Oregon?” Cabrillo asked.

  “They were steaming at full speed when I took off,” Adams noted, “so that will shave some time off the return trip. If I had to guess, I’d estimate about an hour.”

  Cabrillo nodded and brushed some snow from his eyebrows. “I’ll move the snowcat,” he said, “you fire this up and get everything to operating temperatures.”

  “Got it.”

  Four minutes later, Cabrillo climbed into the passenger seat of the idling helicopter. A few seconds more and Adams engaged the clutch and set the rotor blades spinning, and a minute after that he lifted the helicopter from the snow.

  ABOARD THE OREGON, Hanley was working on the plan for the assault on the Akbar. Off to one side of the control room, Eddie Seng was sketching out notes on a yellow pad. Eric Stone walked over to where Hanley was seated and pointed at the large monitor on the wall. The image showed Greenland’s coastline, the location of the Akbar, and the course the Oregon was steaming.

  “Sir,” he said, pointing, “the Akbar has not moved in fifteen minutes. The same, however, cannot be said for the meteorite. If the signal from the sand is correct, it’s moving farther away.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Hanley noted. “Could we be receiving a false reading?”

  Stone nodded affirmatively. “With the Northern Lights acting up and the curvature of the earth this far north, we could be getting a skip in signals off the ionosphere.”

  “How long until we reach the Akbar?” Hanley asked.

  “We were about an hour away,” Stone said. “Now that she’s stopped, it shaves ten minutes or so off that estimate.”

  “Eddie,” Hanley asked, “can you have your men ready earlier?”

  “Sure,” Seng said, “the first man aboard does most of the work. Once he sprays the paralytic agent into the air duct and the bad guys go to sleep, the rest is just mopping up and securing the ship.”

  Stone had walked back to his chair. He was studying a radio frequency graph that showed signal strengths on the various bands. “We’re picking up something down low,” he said.

  “See if you can tune it in,” Hanley ordered.

  Stone fiddled with a dial then pushed a button on the console to boost the receiving strength. Then he flicked on the speaker.

  “Portland, Salem, Bend,” a voice said, “okay to transmit.”

  ON THE AKBAR, the prisoner had managed to free his hands again and his legs. Listening at the door of his cabin he’d heard nothing, so he’d cracked the door and peered out. There was no one in the hall. He’d slowly searched the ship from stem to stern and found it empty.

  Then he had tugged off his latex mask.

  He’d made his way to the pilothouse and had reached for the radio.

  “Portland, Salem, Bend,” he repeated, “okay to transmit.”

  ON THE OREGON, Hanley reached for the microphone to answer. “This is Oregon, identify.”

  “Six, eleven, fifty-nine.”

  “Murph,” Hanley asked, “what are you doing on the radio?”

  “THAT WAS A bold plan,” Adams said as he flew the helicopter through the black sky, “using a double for the emir of Qatar.”

  “We’ve known Al-Khalifa was planning a move on the emir for some time,” Cabrillo said, “and the emir went along with our little operation. He wants Al-Khalifa out of the picture as much as we do.”

  “You eaten lately?” Adams asked. “I brought some sandwiches and cookies plus some milk. They’re in a bag on the rear seat.”

  Cabrillo nodded and reached back onto the seat next to Ackerman. He opened a padded cooler bag and removed a sandwich. “Do you have any coffee?”

  “A pilot without coffee?” Adams said lightly. “That’s like a fisherman without worms. There’s a thermos on the floor back there. It’s my special Italian roast blend.”

  Cabrillo retrieved the thermos and poured a cup. He took a couple sips then placed the cup on the floor by his feet and took a bite of the sandwich.

  “So it was planned all along to have the fake emir kidnapped?” Adams asked.

  “Nope,” Cabrillo said, “we figured we could grab Al-Khalifa before he made his move. The one bright spot is that we’re certain Al-Khalifa has no plans to kill the emir—he just wants him to abdicate the throne in favor of the Al-Khalifa clan. Our man should be as safe as a cow at a vegetarian’s conference as long as he’s not found out as a fake.”

  Cabrillo ate another third of the sandwich.

  “Sir,” Adams said, “can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” Cabrillo said, taking the last bite of sandwich and reaching for the coffee.

  “What the hell were you doing in Greenland, and who exactly is that guy that’s near death in the back of my helicopter?”

  “AL-KHALIFA AND HIS men took off,” Murphy said. “I’m the only one left on board as far as I can tell.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Hanley said. “Is the helicopter still on board?”

  “I saw it sitting on the rear deck,” Murphy said.

  “And you walked the entire yacht?”

  “Yep. It’s as if they never existed.”

  “Hold on,” Hanley said, turning to Stone.

  “Thirty-eight minutes, sir,” Stone said to the unasked question.

  “Murph,” Hanley said, “we’ll be there in a half hour. See what you can dig up before we arrive.”

  “Will do,” Murphy said.

  “We’ll be there soon,” Hanley said, “and then we can figure this all out.”

  “I RECEIVED A call from our contact at the CIA,” Cabrillo said. “When we were in Reykjavik, Echelon intercepted an e-mail pertaining to a meteorite comprised of iridium. The CIA was concerned about it falling into the wrong hands, so they asked me to fly over and secure it. That gentleman,” he said, motioning to the rear, “is the man that discovered it.”

  “He dug it out of the cave?”

  “Not exactly,” Cabrillo said. “You didn’t have a chance to take the tour. There’s a large shrine that was built on a shaft above the one you were in—very elaborate. Someone long ago must have unearthed the meteorite and fancied it as a religious or spiritual artifact. The guy in back is an archaeologist who somehow found a clue and tracked down the site.”

  Adams adjusted his flight controls then spoke into his headset. “Oregon, this is air one. We’re twenty minutes out.”

  After receiving a reply from Stone in the control room, he continued. “The whole thing seems odd. Even if the meteorite has historical value, I don’t see rival archaeologists killing each other over a find. They probably dream about doing that, but I’ve never heard about an instance.”

  “Right now,” Cabril
lo said, “it looks like Al-Khalifa and the Hammadi Group intercepted the e-mail and recovered the meteorite for the iridium. They must want to construct a dirty bomb with the material.”

  “If that’s the case,” Adams said, “then they must already have a working bomb of some sort to use as the catalyst. Otherwise they have a fuel and no fire.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Then after our team recovers the meteorite, we still need to locate the mother bomb.”

  “Once we have Al-Khalifa,” Cabrillo said, “we’ll make him give up the location of the weapon. Then a crew can be sent to disable it and we’ll be through.”

  Cabrillo didn’t know it yet, but Al-Khalifa was on the bottom of the ocean.

  Right next to a series of geothermal vents.

  19

  THOMAS DWYER WAS a name that sounded serious and staid. Even Dwyer’s title, scientist of theoretical physics, made one imagine a pipe-smoking academic. An egghead, or a man who lived a carefully controlled existence. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Dwyer was the captain of his darts team at the neighborhood pub, raced rally cars on the weekends, and chased single women with a purpose his forty years of age had not diminished. Dwyer bore a passing resemblance to the actor Jeff Goldblum, dressed more like a movie producer than a scientist, and read nearly twenty newspapers and magazines a day. He was smart, imaginative and bold, and was as up-to-date on current events and trends as a fashion maven.

  His job title, however, could bring back the notion of a more serious side. His business cards read Central Intelligence Agency, Thomas W. Dwyer (TD)—Senior Scientist Theoretical Applications. Dwyer was a spook-scientist.