Six Sacred Stones

by Matthew Reilly

  “And we have no defense against that! They’re like fleas I can’t shake.”

  “You have to do something…!”

  “Wizard, I don’t know of any pilots who’ve been in this kind of situation before! I’m adapting the best I can!”

  “Can we take off?”

  “Yes, but we’ll need a hell of a long runway.” Sky Monster started swinging theHalicarnassus wildly left and right.

  On the wing outside, the Egyptian troops staggered and struggled for balance, grabbing for handholds, one of them dropping off the wing with a shout and falling to the road below.

  But they soon got their balance, and the bus under the starboard wing began unloading more troops.

  The Halicarnassus —speeding along the desert highway, unable to take off—was under siege.

  In the cockpit, Wizard clumsily unfolded a map. “This highway straightens out in about three miles into a long unbroken stretch about two miles long. But after that it twists and turns through hills all the way to the Sudanese border.”

  “Then that’s our runway,” Sky Monster said.

  “Our only runway.”

  Sky Monster was still staring anxiously out the starboard window. “Wizard, you think you can drive this for a few minutes,” he said, standing suddenly.

  “Drive?” Wizard blanched. “I don’t even drive acar very well, Sky Monster.”

  “Well it’s time to learn. Here, pay attention, I’ll show you how…”

  About a mile behind the desperate scenes on theHali, the last bus in the Egyptian military convoy drove quietly in its allotted place, everyone on board it keenly watching the spectacular goingson up ahead.

  They never noticed the little Land Rover Freelander—now driven by Pooh Bear—swing onto the highway behind it, never noticed it creep right up close to its rear bumper, never noticed the three figures of West, Stretch, and Astro clamber out onto the hood of the Freelander and climb up the ladder attached to the back of the big coach.

  The three small figures then danced along the roof of the speeding coach, pausing briefly to drop two of Astro’s knockoutgas grenades through a hatch.

  A moment later—as all the occupants of the bus passed out and the coach began to veer off the bitumen, West lay on his belly and reached down, unlatching the safety catch on the coach’s forward door, and swung himself inside, followed by his two comradesin arms.

  Inside the bus, wearing his lightweight half gas mask, West pulled the unconscious driver out of the driver’s seat and took the wheel.

  He scanned the road ahead: beyond the convoy, he saw the woundedHalicarnassus lumbering along, spewing black smoke from its right wing, and bearing bad guys on the inner segments of both its wings.

  Astro examined the rest of their bus. It was filled with slumpedover soldiers, all of them lowlevel infantrymen.

  “They’re Egyptian Army,” he said, grabbing the uniform of the nearest trooper.

  “Like a lot of African countries, sometimes Egypt’s army is up for hire,” Jack said. “If you’ve got enough dough and the right contacts, you can buy yourself some local muscle for a day or two. The question is: Who’s paying for Egypt’s services today? Now, if you don’t mind, it’s time to clear the road and get those bastards off our plane. Stretch, I don’t need this windshield anymore.”

  Stretch stepped forward and fired a burst from his submachine gun into the windshield. It shattered and dropped from view. Wind rushed in.

  “Gentlemen,” Jack said, removing his gas mask. “Tires.”

  With wind now blasting into his bus, West gunned it, lifting his coach to over 80 mph and bringing it forward through the convoy, at the same time as Stretch and Astro fired their guns out the open front windshield, blasting the rear tires of the other buses in the convoy.

  The tires of the other buses punctured loudly and caught off guard, they fishtailed crazily, skidding off the roadway and onto the sand shoulder while West’s bus shot past them, moving ever forward.

  After four such bus crashes, one of the Egyptian Humvees noticed West’s rogue bus and it turned its turret gun on Jack—just as Stretch nailed the Humvee with a Predator missile.

  The Humvee exploded, lifting completely off the ground before flipping and rolling in the dust.

  Another jeep saw them and brought its gun around, only for West to ram it with his bus, sending the jeep spinning off the road like a toy.

  “Pooh Bear!” he called into his radio. “Stay in our shadow! We’ll shield you all the way to theHalicarnassus ’s loading ramp!”

  At the wheel of the Freelander, Pooh Bear shouted, “Roger that!”

  Beside him, Zoe and Alby peered out at Jack’s stolen coach and at the vehicles of the enemy convoy ahead of them.

  They were now only about sixty yards behind theHalicarnassus —on which they could see about a dozen armed men, six on each wing and gathering at the wing doors. Four more buses and a couple of Humvees stood between them and the fleeing 747, all of the enemy cars hovering at the flanks of the plane, tucked under its wings.

  They heard Jack in the stolen coach calling over the radio:“Sky Monster! Come in! We need you to open the rear ramp!”

  But, oddly, there was no reply from Sky Monster.

  AT THAT VERY same moment, the Egyptian troops on the lefthand wing of theHalicarnassus managed to get its wing door open. They flung it wide—

  Boom!

  The first Egyptian trooper was blown off his feet by a massive shotgun blast.

  All the other troopers dived for cover as they saw the enraged figure of Sky Monster standing inside the doorway, shucking a Remington twelvegauge, readying it for the next shot.

  “Get off my plane, yer ratbastards!” the hairyfaced New Zealander shouted. Unseen by him, his radio earpiece dangled uselessly off his ear—dislodged in his desperate scramble to get down here from the cockpit.

  At the same time back up in the cockpit, Wizard drove the speeding plane—terribly—but right now any driver was better than none.

  “Damn it,” Jack swore. “I can’t get hold of Sky Monster, so I can’t open the ramp.”

  He stared up at theHalicarnassus from his speeding bus, trying to figure out another way to board it, when suddenly Astro leaned forward and said, “May I make a suggestion?”

  As he spoke, he pulled an unusual weapon from a holster on his back and offered it to Jack.

  Seconds later, Jack and Astro found themselves again standing on the roof of their speeding coach, only this time they were looking up at the gigantic tail fin of theHalicarnassus looming directly above them.

  Astro held his unusual weapon in his hands.

  It was a weapon peculiar to the elite of the United States Marine Corps, the Force Reconnaissance Marines: an Armalite MH12A Maghook.

  Looking like a twin gripped Tommy gun, a Maghook was a pressurelaunched magnetic grappling hook that came equipped with a 150foot length of highdensity cable. It could be used either as a conventional grappling hook—with its clawlike anchorhook—or as a magnetic one, with its highpowered magnetic head that could attach to sheer metallic surfaces. The “A” variant was new, smaller than the original Maghook, about the size of a large pistol.

  “I’ve heard of these, but never seen one,” Jack said.

  “Don’t leave home without it,” Astro said, firing the Maghook up at the tail fin of the Halicarnassus. With a puncturelikewhump, its magnetized hook soared into the air, trailing its cable behind it.

  The hook slammed into theHali ’s high tail fin and held, suctioned to the great steel fin with its magnet, holding firm.

  “Now hold tight,” Astro said as he handed Jack the Maghook and pressed a button on it marked RETRACT.

  Instantly, Jack was whisked up off the roof of the speeding bus, reeled upward by the Maghook’s powerful spooler.

  He came level with the tail fin of theHalicarnassus and swung himself onto one of its flat side fins. Then, safely on the plane, he grabbed the Maghook again and prepare
d to throw it back down to Astro, so that he could come up after—

  But Astro never got a chance to follow Jack: at that moment, his bus was hit from the side by one of the Egyptian coaches, a great thumping blow that knocked Astro off his feet and almost off the roof entirely.

  Driving the bus, Stretch swung to look right…and found himself staring into the angry eyes of the driver of the other coach.

  The driver raised a Glock pistol at Stretch—

  —just as Stretch drew a Predator RPG launcher in response, holding it like a pistol, and fired.

  The RPG blasted through his automatic door, smashing through the glass, and drilled into the rival bus. An instant later, the Egyptian bus traveling alongside his coach lit up with blazing white light before bursting like a firecracker into a million pieces.

  Inside the Halicarnassus, Sky Monster was standing guard at the open port side wingdoor, the wind whipping around him, with his shotgun levelled and ready to fire at anything that dared poke its head through the doorway.

  Abruptly, two troops on the port wing slid across his view, and he fired but missed, they were too fast, and for a moment he wondered what they had been trying to do—their movement hadn’t achieved anything, when suddenly it dawned on him that ithad done something: it had captured his attention.

  Almost immediately, thestarboard side wingdoor behind him was blown inward and stormed by Egyptian SF troopers.

  More raging wind rushed into the cabin.

  One, then two, then three troopers charged in, AK47s up and ready to shred the totally exposed figure of Sky Monster—

  Blam!blam!blam!

  Multiple gun blasts filled the cabin.

  Sky Monster was ready to collapse under a hailstorm of bullets, but it was the three intruders who fell, their bodies exploding in fountains of blood.

  As they dropped to the floor, Sky Monster spun and saw who had shot them: Jack, standing on theport wing, his Desert Eagle smoking. He must have fired over Sky Monster’s shoulder from behind.

  Sky Monster sighed with relief, only to see Jack’s expression turn to one of horror.

  “Monster! Look out!”

  Sky Monster spun, bewildered, to see one of the three fallen Egyptians, hit but not dead, whip up a pistol with a bloodied hand and aim it at him from pointblank range. The Egyptian pulled the trigger—just as from out of nowhere a speeding blur of brown whooshed past him and in the blink of an eye the Egyptian was gunless.

  It was Horus.

  Jack’s little falcon—who’d remained on board theHali during the mission at Abu Simbel—had snatched the gun from the attacker’s bloody fingers!

  Jack stepped past Sky Monster and kicked the shocked Egyptian out the starboard doorway and suddenly there was silence in the cabin, a brief moment of respite.

  Horus landed on Jack’s shoulder, presenting him with the Egyptian’s pistol. “Good work, bird,” Jack said, striding back to Sky Monster and replacing the hairy pilot’s earpiece in his ear. “Ifyou’re down here, who’s driving?”

  “Wizard.”

  “Wizard can hardly ride a bicycle,” Jack said. “Get back up top, I need you to open the rear ramp—we have to get the others on board. I’ll cover the entrances down here.”

  “Jack, wait! I have to tell you something! We’re gonna run out of road soon! With only three engines we need a longer runway to take off and this stretch of road coming up is the last chance we’ve got.”

  “How soon till we hit it?”

  “Couple of minutes, at the most. Jack, what do I do if…if not everyone gets on board in time?”

  Jack said seriously, “If it comes to that, you get Lily, Wizard, and that Pillar out of here.

  That’s the priority.” He clapped Sky Monster on the shoulder. “But hopefully you won’t have to make that call.”

  “Roger that,” Sky Monster said, bolting back up the stairs toward the upper deck.

  AFTER THEIR first failed attempt, the Egyptians now doubled their efforts to storm the 747: two more buses swung under theHalicarnassus ’s smoking right wing, traveling in single file, one in front of the other, disgorging armed men who ran across the roofs of both buses before leaping up onto the wing.

  Where they were met by Jack.

  Bent on one knee, halfhidden in the wing door and blasted by speeding wind, Jack fired away at the onslaught of invading troops.

  But just as he took down one man, another would appear in his place.

  He couldn’t keep this up for long, and with a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw a bend in the highway up ahead. Beyond it was—

  —the long straight strip of highway.

  Their last chance of escape.

  Better do something fast, Jack…

  Bullets slammed into the doorway above him and he saw the next wave of Egyptian assailants—and to his horror saw that these guys carried lightweight armored shields, like the ones riot police use, complete with little peepholes in them.

  Shit.

  Blam!He fired—and the first attacker to appear on the wing dropped, hit in the eye, shotthrough the peephole.

  This is getting totally out of hand,he thought.

  But then he saw the road behind him and a look of total despair fell across his face.

  His enemy’s reinforcements had arrived……in the form of six American Apache helicopters thundering low over the highway from the direction of Abu Simbel, blasting through the heat haze. Beneath them was another armada of military vehicles, this time American vehicles.

  “I guess we know who’s paying now,” he breathed as the lead chopper loosed two Hellfire missiles in his direction. “Sky Monster—!”

  Sky Monster charged into the cockpit of theHalicarnassus and slid into the captain’s chair, hitting LOADING RAMP OPEN as he did so.

  The rear loading ramp of theHali instantly lowered, kicking up sparks as it hit the fast moving roadway.

  Then Jack’s voice exploded in his ear:“Sky Monster! Deploy decoys, now, now, now!”

  Sky Monster hit a button markedCHAFF DECOYS —and immediately two firecracker like objects shot out from theHali ’s tail, springing up into the air.

  The first Hellfire missile hit one of the decoys and exploded harmlessly high above the speedingHalicarnassus.

  The second missile—confused by the decoys, but not completely suckered—shot right past them and slammed into the roadway next to the 747’s right wing—causing the entire plane to shudder wildly and almost taking out the two Egyptian special forces coaches laying siege to that wing.

  It was chaos. Total chaos.

  And in the midst of all this mayhem, the plane and its chasers took a final bend in the road and swung onto the last straight stretch of highway in Egypt.

  THINGS WERE happening everywhere now.

  Sky Monster yelled into his radio: “People, whatever you’re gonna do, do it soon, because we’re about to run out of road!”

  As his bus took the final bend behind theHalicarnassus, Stretch saw a third Egyptian bus swing unseen beneath the plane’s left wing with men on its roof.

  “Pooh Bear!” he called to the Freelander behind him. “You’ll have to make your run for the ramp by yourself! I have to get that bus!”

  “Got it!”Pooh Bear replied.

  Stretch peeled off to the left, powering forward, leaving Pooh’s Freelander thirty yards directly behind the nowopen loading ramp of theHalicarnassus.

  Speeding wildly, Stretch’s bus rammed into his opponent, causing it to fishtail wildly, the enemy bus’s tires slipping off the bitumen and onto the rubble shoulder, where it lost all grip and control, and it flipped horribly…and rolled…an entire bustumbling over and over in a great cloud of dust and smoke and sand.

  Pooh Bear gunned his Freelander—with Zoe and Alby still in it with him—accelerating hard, his eyes fixed on the loading ramp of theHali.

  The little Freelander skimmed along the highway, gaining on the plane, when suddenly Alby called, “Look out!” and Pooh
yanked on the steering wheel just in time to avoid a kamikazestyle lunge from an enemy Humvee on the right.

  The Humvee missed them by inches and went careering off the road, bouncing away into the dust.

  “Thanks, young man!” Pooh shouted.

  At that moment, Zoe’s cell phone rang. Thinking it’d be Wizard or one of the others, she answered it with a yell, “Yeah!”

  “Oh, hello,”a soft female voice said pleasantly from the other end.“Is that you, Zoe? This is Lois Calvin, Alby’s mother. I was just calling to see how everything was going there on the farm.”

  Zoe blanched. “Lois! Er…hi! Things are going…great…”

  “Is Alby there?”

  “Wha—huh?” Zoe stammered, trying to process the weirdness of receiving this call at this moment. In the end, she just handed the phone to Alby. “It’s your mother. Please be discreet.”

  A missile whooshed by overhead.

  “Mom…” Alby said

  Zoe didn’t hear the other end of the conversation, only Alby saying, “We’re out in the east paddock in a jeep…I’m having a great time…oh yeah, we’re keeping busy all right…Lily’s good…I will…yes, Mom…yes,Mom…okay, Mom, bye!”

  He hung up and handed the cell phone back.

  “Nice talkin’, kid,” Zoe said.

  “My mom’d have kittens if she knew where I was now,” Alby said.

  “So would my mother,” Pooh Bear growled as he pulled the Freelander right in behind the Halicarnassus and readied to zoom up its ramp when—bamthey were hit with terrible force from the left, by another Humvee that none of them had seen.

  The Freelander was thrown violently to the right, out of alignment with theHali ’s ramp, and it slammed up against the broad flank of one of the two Egyptian buses attacking the plane’s starboard wing, pinned against it by the Humvee.