Sacred Stone of-2

by Clive Cussler

  In the last few minutes, Adams had been able to catch a few glimpses of the ground before the clouds closed in. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Why not?” Cabrillo asked.

  “Too hilly,” Adams noted, “there’s no place for a runway.”

  “Then that must mean—” Cabrillo started to say.

  “He’s making a drop,” Adams said, finishing the sentence.

  AS SOON AS he received Bennett’s call that the Cessna had left the Faeroe Islands and was being followed, the leader of the operation ordered two of the four men waiting at Glasgow to drive north at breakneck speed. The two men had made the hundred-plus-mile trip to Loch Ness in less than two hours, and they awaited further instructions. Ten minutes ago the men had received word to head to the east side of the loch, find a desolate area, and then wait until they were notified. Two minutes ago, a call came in ordering them to light their smoke grenades and wait for a package to be dropped.

  The men were sitting in the back of the van with the doors open, watching the smoke being blown about by the rain. The plane was due to arrive any minute.

  “Did you hear that?” one of the men asked, hearing the sound of a plane.

  “It’s growing louder,” the second man said.

  “I thought our guy was in a…”

  Bennett fought the controls as the jet wash from the Challenger buffeted the air around the Cessna. Whoever was flying the corporate jet was a madman or an incompetent, he thought. Surely his tiny plane must have been on their radar scope.

  “Two hundred feet,” the copilot of the Challenger said. “We lose an engine now and we’re toast.”

  “Watch out the window,” the pilot ordered. “I’ll make one pass and then pull up.”

  The Challenger streaked above the ground, barely clearing the hilltops. In the jet’s wake, snow was blowing in vortices from the rear. A taller hill dominated the view out the windshield and the pilot pulled up on the yoke then dropped the altitude again when they’d crossed over. They were flying over the loch now.

  “There,” the copilot said, pointing to a van on the eastern shore nearest Inverness, “I see smoke.”

  The pilot glanced over, then pulled back on the yoke and began climbing into the sky again. “Oregon,” he said once they had reached a safe cruising speed again, “we have a van on the eastern shore with smoke markers ignited. How long until the fighters are due to arrive?”

  “Challenger,” Hanley said, “the fighters are still fifteen minutes distant.”

  “They’re going to try a drop,” the pilot of the Challenger said.

  “Thanks for the report,” Hanley said.

  “THEY ARE GOING to try a drop,” Cabrillo said as soon as Hanley answered.

  “We know,” he said. “I was just getting ready to call you. The Challenger just made a low-level pass and witnessed a van with smoke markers active along the eastern shore.”

  “We just caught a glimpse of the Cessna,” Cabrillo said, “he’s just in front of us. Both of us will be over the loch within minutes.”

  “How’s the fuel situation?”

  “Fuel?” Cabrillo asked Adams.

  “I’ve never seen the gauge this low,” Adams said.

  Cabrillo repeated what Adams had said.

  “Break it off,” Hanley said quickly, “and land while you still can.”

  The Robinson flew through a patch of clearer air and Cabrillo stared down. The wind-whipped water of the loch was visible. “Too late for that, Max,” Cabrillo said, “we just started over the loch.”

  THE TWO MEN waiting by the loch had been ordered to maintain radio silence until they recovered the meteorite and were a safe distance away from the drop zone. Because of this they did not report the low-flying jet. There was a good chance the business jet was just an oil company plane having problems—if not, there was little they could do about it anyway. They continued to listen and scan the skies for signs of the Cessna.

  THE TORNADO ADV fighter passed over Perth, Scotland, and the British flight officer reported his position. They were less than six minutes from Loch Ness and closing fast.

  “Watch for a Challenger corporate jet and a rotary helicopter in the area,” the flight officer radioed his wingman. “They are friendlies.”

  “Acknowledged,” the wingman said, “target is a Cessna 206 prop plane.”

  “Five minutes, out,” the flight officer radioed to his base.

  BENNETT STRAINED TO see the smoke marker he had been told to watch for once he caught sight of the northeast end of the loch. It was hazy and the fog over the water mixed with the smoke. He lowered the flaps and slowed the Cessna to a crawl, then looked again. Flashing lights appeared from across the loch, and he turned to fly closer.

  “THERE’S THE LOCH,” Cabrillo said.

  The Robinson was closing fast on the Cessna and Adams slowed down. “He’s slowing,” he said through the headset to Cabrillo.

  Cabrillo stared at the moving map on the dash. “There’s no field showing, so he must be trying a drop, just like we thought.”

  The helicopter was halfway across the water, tracking the Cessna, which was turning to fly along the eastern shore. Adams had just moved the cyclic to head toward land when the engine started to sputter.

  ON BOARD THE Cessna 206, Bennett looked ahead. He could now see the smoke, the flashing strobe lights, and the van. Flying lower to the ground, he reached over and unlocked the passenger door and slid the box containing the meteorite to the edge of the seat nearest the door. A minute or so longer and he could open the door, tilt the plane over on her side and then push the box out.

  BILLY JOE SHEA drove along the eastern edge of Loch Ness in a black 1947 MG TC. Shea was an oil-field drilling-mud salesman from Midland, Texas, who had purchased the classic car only a few days before from a garage in Leeds. His father had owned a similar vehicle, bought in England when he was stationed there in the air force, and Billy Joe had learned to drive in it. It had been nearly three decades since Shea’s father had sold the car, and Shea had always had a secret desire to buy one himself.

  A search on the Internet, a second mortgage on his home, and the three weeks’ vacation he had accumulated finally made the dream a reality. Shea had decided to tour Scotland and England for a couple of weeks, until he would need to drop the car off at the port in Liverpool to be shipped home. Even with the top up the rain was seeping in through the open side doors. Shea picked up his cowboy hat off the passenger side of the bench seat and flicked the rain off. Then he stared at the engine gauges and motored on. He passed a van by the side of the road and then the road was clear again.

  It was quiet and peaceful, and the air smelled of wet peat and rain-slick roads.

  “I HAVE THE fighters on radar,” the pilot of the Challenger said to Hanley over the satellite telephone.

  “How far away are you from the Cessna?” Hanley asked.

  “Not far,” the pilot said. “We’re lining up to make a pass over the eastern shore from south to north right now. We’re going to buzz him as close as we can.”

  BENNETT WAS CLOSE to the drop point. He reached over, unlatched the door, and started to tilt the Cessna on her axis. Out of the corner of his eye Bennett caught sight of an old car driving along the road. Then he concentrated on making the drop as close to the van as possible.

  Just then the corporate jet appeared in his windshield.

  “THERE’S A VAN down on the road on the eastern shore,” the pilot of the Challenger said to Hanley as he screamed past Bennett at a low altitude.

  “What does—” Hanley started to say before being cut off.

  “There’s the Robinson,” the pilot shouted.

  “Can he see the van?” Hanley asked.

  “Probably,” the pilot said, pulling out of the pass and climbing, “but he’s still a distance away.”

  “Get out of there,” Hanley ordered. “We just received word from the British authorities that their fighters are only a few
minutes away. They can handle things now.”

  “Acknowledged,” the pilot of the Challenger said.

  ON THE GROUND near the van, the two men watched as the Cessna came closer.

  “I think I see a helicopter farther back,” one of the men said.

  The other man stared into the mist. “I doubt it,” he said. “If it was that close, we could hear the engine and the rotor slap.”

  They could see the door of the Cessna open.

  THE TWO MEN could have heard the engine of the helicopter—if the engine had been running. Instead, the cockpit of the Robinson had grown eerily quiet, with only the sound of the air slipping past the fuselage as Adams initiated an autorotation. He angled toward land and prayed they would not fall short.

  Cabrillo just caught a glimpse of the van and the flashing strobes as they dropped.

  He didn’t bother to tell Adams over the headset—he had his hands full right now.

  BENNETT PUSHED ON the box and it flipped out of the open door. Then he righted the Cessna and turned to head for the airport in Inverness. He was climbing into the air to clear the hills at the far end of the lake when he caught a quick glimpse of the helicopter only five hundred feet off the ground.

  As soon as he could get the Cessna stabilized and on course he’d call and report.

  A ROCK IN a box falls straight to earth. The meteorite plummeted down and slammed into a spot of soggy peat without breaking. The two men raced over and were just starting to pull the box from the mud when the high-pitched whine from the engines of a pair of fighter jets grew louder. Raising their heads, they stared up as the jets streaked past.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” the first man said as soon as he yanked the box from the peaty soil.

  The second man raced ahead to start the van while the first followed with the box.

  “I THINK I can make the road,” Adams shouted over the headset.

  The Robinson was in a depleting arc powered only by the air flowing up through the rotor blades and causing them to spin. Adams was controlling the helicopter to the ground—but he was losing air speed fast.

  The edge of the loch and the road were fast approaching, and he started his flare.

  THE FIGHTERS CAME up behind Bennett and the Cessna so fast it was as if they had appeared out of thin air. They crossed within feet to either side, then blew past him and initiated high-speed turns. Just then his radio squawked.

  “This is the Royal Air Force,” a voice said, “you are to make your way to the nearest airfield and land immediately. If you refuse to comply or take evasive action, you will be downed. Acknowledge receipt of this message.”

  The two jets had completed their turns and were approaching Bennett head-on.

  He waved his wings in reply—then he reached for the satellite telephone.

  SO CLOSE AND yet so far.

  Cabrillo glanced out the side window before the helicopter dropped behind a hill. The van and the drop zone were less than a mile away. Even if Adams could get them to the ground alive, by the time they climbed from the Robinson and jogged to the site, the van—and the meteorite—would be gone.

  He clutched his satellite telephone to his chest and braced to hit the ground.

  THE DRIVER OF the van slammed it into gear and stepped on the gas. The rear tires pawed at the muddy soil and spit peat into the air. Fishtailing, he reached the pavement and started down the road to the south.

  He glanced quickly in his rearview mirror and found the road empty.

  ADAMS PLAYED THE Robinson with all the finesse of a concert violinist. Gauging his flare with precision, he pulled up on the cyclic at the last possible second when the helicopter was in an arc only a few feet off the ground. The change in pitch on the rotor blades bled off the last of the stored air speed and the Robinson stopped in the air and dropped the last few feet to the road on her skids. The airframe took a thump, but not a hard one. Looking over at Cabrillo, Adams exhaled in a loud burst.

  “Damn, you’re good,” Cabrillo said.

  “That was a rough one,” Adams said, removing his headset and opening the door.

  The helicopter was blocking the road almost completely.

  “If we had a mile more fuel,” Cabrillo said, opening the door and stepping out, “we’d’ve had them.”

  The men rose to their full height on the road and stretched.

  “You’d better call Mr. Hanley and report that we’ve lost them,” Adams said as Shea and the MG appeared over the hill and slowed because the road was blocked.

  “In a minute,” Cabrillo said, glancing at the MG as it pulled to a stop.

  Shea poked his head out the side window. “You men need some help?” he asked in a Texas twang.

  Cabrillo trotted over to the MG. “You an American?”

  “Born and raised,” Shea said proudly.

  “We are working directly for the president on a matter of national security,” Cabrillo said quickly. “I’m going to need your car.”

  “Man,” Shea said, “I just bought it like three days ago.”

  Cabrillo reached in and opened the door. “I’m sorry, it’s a life-or-death matter.”

  Shea pulled on the emergency brake and climbed out.

  Cabrillo motioned to Adams with his satellite telephone as he started to climb into the MG. “I’ll call the Oregon,” he said, “and have them get ahold of somebody and have fuel delivered.”

  “Yes, sir,” Adams said.

  Cabrillo pushed the starter button and pushed in the clutch and popped the old MG into gear. Then he turned the wheel and started a U-turn.

  “Hey,” Shea said, “what am I supposed to do?”

  “Stay with the helicopter,” Cabrillo shouted out the side window. “We’ll take care of everything later.”

  With the MG now straight, he punched the throttle and sped away. In a few seconds he was over the hill and out of sight. Shea walked over to Adams, who was checking the helicopter’s skids.

  “I’m Billy Joe Shea,” he said, extending his hand. “You mind telling me who that was that took my car?”

  “That man?” Adams asked. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  30

  RICHARD “DICK” TRUITT scrolled through Hickman’s computer files. There was so much information that the going was slow. Finally he decided to just link onto the Oregon’s computer and send the entire contents of Hickman’s machine. Establishing a link, he began to transmit the data to a satellite that relayed the data stream down to the ship.

  Then he rose from the desk chair and began to search the office.

  Truitt removed several sheets of paper and a few photographs from a desk drawer, folded them and placed them in his jacket. He was scanning the bookshelf along the wall when he heard the front door open and the sound of a voice fill the hall.

  “Just now?” the voice said.

  There was no answer—the man was speaking into a portable telephone.

  “Five minutes ago?” the voice said, now growing louder. “Why the hell didn’t you send up security immediately?”

  The sound of footsteps in the hallway grew louder. Truitt slipped into the bathroom attached to the office and then ran through to a spare bedroom on the other side. Another hallway led through to the living room. He crept along slowly.

  “We know you’re in here,” the voice said. “My security people are on their way up here now. They have the elevator blocked, so you might as well just surrender.”

  THE KEY TO a good plan is imagining the contingencies. The key to a great plan is imagining them all. The data from Hickman’s computer was flying through the air and down to the Oregon. Three-quarters of the information had transferred when Hickman walked into the room. Truitt had missed one small point—he’d forgotten to turn off the screen. As soon as Hickman entered, he realized that the screensaver was not on and someone had been accessing the computer.

  Racing to the machine, he turned it off. Then he checked and found the vial
from Vanderwald undisturbed in his desk drawer.

  TRUITT SLIPPED DOWN the hall and into the living room. The sliding glass door was still cracked open. He quickly made his way through the living room. He was almost at the door when he bumped a sculpture and it fell and cracked.

  Hickman heard the noise and raced down the hall.

  Truitt was through the sliding glass door and on the rear patio when Hickman entered the living room and saw him outside. The intruder was dressed in black and moved with a certain purpose. Still, he was trapped on the patio and the guards were on their way up the elevator.

  Hickman slowed to relish the moment.

  “Just stop where you are,” he said, peering out of the glass door. “There’s no escape now.”

  The man turned and looked directly at Hickman. Then he smiled, climbed on the chest-high wall surrounding the patio, nodded, then waved. Turning around, he leapt off the wall and into the darkness. Hickman was still standing there in shock when the security guards burst into the room.

  BLIND FAITH IS a powerful emotion.

  And that was all Truitt had at the instant he pulled the cord attached to the front of his jacket. Blind faith in the Oregon’s Magic Shop. Blind faith that Kevin Nixon’s invention would work. A split second after pulling the cord, a small drag chute popped from the rear of the jacket and ripped the Velcro holding the back of the jacket together. An instant later, a pair of wings like those on a Chinese fighting kite unfolded and locked into place. Four-foot-by-four-foot flaps attached by shock cords dropped below the wings like air brakes on a plane.

  Truitt slowed and began to gain control.

  “GET READY,” GUNDERSON said, “he’s coming down fast.”