The Six Sacred Stones jw-2

by Matthew Reilly

  Zoe leaned forward to help Pooh with his two attackers, but as she did the Freelander swayed wildly: if they gunned it now, they’d hit one of the loading ramp’s struts and crash terribly.

  Pooh Bear seemed to realize this, too. And he grabbed hold of the two men assailing him and in a fleeting moment locked eyes with Alby and Zoe.

  “Get away from here,” he growled.

  And then, before they could stop him, Pooh Bear leaped from the speeding Freelander,taking the two stunned Egyptian troopers with him!

  They landed on the roadway together, rolling and tumbling—although Pooh had made sure that his attackers took the brunt of the fall.

  Alby spun to watch them recede back down the highway, tears in his eyes, while Zoe climbed into the driver’s seat and took the wheel—now with a clear run at the loading ramp.

  Zoe floored it.

  The Freelander hit the ramp at phenomenal speed, leaping up into the hold and skid-smashing into the white Suburban already parked there, but at last safe and inside.

  From his position underneath the second Egyptian coach, still sliding on the riot shield, Jack had seen Pooh Bear whip back down the roadway with his two attackers; he’d also just seen the Freelander shoom up into the hold of the Hali.

  Abruptly something cut across his view: the side of a bus, with its forward door open, traveling right alongside him.

  Jack whipped up his gun—only to see Astro appear in the open door of this new bus, lying on its steps on his belly. “Jack! Give me your hand!”

  Thirty seconds later, Astro was hauling Jack out from under the Egyptian coach and up into his stolen bus, where Stretch was still at the wheel.

  After he hefted Jack up, Astro deftly attached a magnetic explosive charge to the Egyptian bus and yelled, “Clear!”

  Stretch pulled them a safe distance away as the charge detonated and the entire side of the Egyptian bus just blew off it.

  Suddenly Sky Monster’s voice came through Jack’s earpiece:“Huntsman! Where the hell are you! In about ten seconds I have to power up or else we’re not going to be able to take off!”

  Jack looked forward at the plane, and the realization hit him:it was too far away. He, Stretch, and Astro could never get to it in time.

  Then a dull echoing boom caught his attention, and he spun to look back behind him—and saw another Hellfire missile heading down the highway, chasing the fleeing plane.

  “Monster,” he said. “We can’t catch you.”

  “What?”

  Both Stretch and Astro heard this, too, and they exchanged a look.

  Then Lily’s voice came over the line:“No, Daddy! We’ll wait for you—”

  “No, honey. You have to get away. I’ll find you, Lily. I promise. But trust me,you have to get away from here. We’re not as important as you are.You have to survive. You, Zoe, Wizard, and Alby—you have to continue this mission and find the Second Pillar and place it in the Second Vertex. Call the twins, use their help. This is your mission now. I love you. Now Sky Monster, go.”

  He clicked off the radio and turned to Stretch: “Stop the bus.”

  Having heard everything Jack had said, Stretch just glanced questioningly at him.

  “Sideways. Across the road. Now,” Jack said.

  Stretch did so, bringing the bus to a skidding squealing halt across the center of the highway, blocking the road completely.

  The Halicarnassus powered off down the blacktop, disappearing into the heat haze, speeding up.

  “And now, gentlemen,” Jack said,“run.”

  Jack, Stretch, and Astro abandoned the bus, racing across the road and diving into the sand just as it was hit by the incoming missile intended for The Halicarnassus.

  The bus exploded—a billowing fireball that mushroomed into the sky, raining twisted metal everywhere.

  Covered in sand, blood, and sweat, Jack looked up to see The Halicarnassus rushing away to the south, getting smaller and smaller, until eventually, slowly and painfully, it lifted off into the sky, carried by its three remaining engines.

  Within a minute, a half dozen American-manned Humvees skidded to simultaneous halts around him. The six Apaches patrolled the air overhead, kicking up a sandstorm of their own.

  Jack stood, dropping his weapons and raising his hands behind his head as the first soldier—an American trooper—strode up to him and wordlessly smashed him in the face with the butt of his gun and instantly Jack saw nothing but black.

  K-10 SUBMARINE BASE

  MORTIMER ISLAND

  BRISTOL CHANNEL, ENGLAND

  DECEMBER 10, 2007, 2200 HOURS

  AT THE K-10 BASE on Mortimer Island, six SAS troopers stood guard outside a small building at the edge of the complex, grim sentries standing in the pouring rain.

  Inside the outbuilding, the Terrible Twins, Lachlan and Julius Adamson, were working away at adjoining computers.

  Lachlan talked as he typed. “You know that 5:12:13 right-angle triangle that connects Stonehenge to the Great Pyramid at Giza? Its right-angle corner actually touches an island not far from here, Lundy Island—”

  Suddenly Julius leaped back from his computer and punched the air. “I’ve got it! I’ve got the Second Vertex!”

  He kicked back his chair to allow his brother and Tank Tanaka to see his monitor. On the screen was a digital photo of one of the trilithons at Stonehenge, taken during the light show:

  Surrounding this image was a collage of satellite images of southern Africa, maps of the Cape of Good Hope, and even one window opened onto Google Earth.

  Julius smiled, pointing at the number “2” at the bottom of the trilithon. “It’s near Table Mountain.”

  “In Cape Town?” Lachlan said.

  “Are you sure?” Tank said.

  “Positive. It’s about three miles to the south of Table Mountain,” Julius said. “In the hills and mountains there. The whole area is densely forested, uninhabited, and very difficult to get to. I am the master!”

  He grinned triumphantly just as Tank’s cell phone rang. He stepped aside to answer it, saying a muffled, “Hello? Ah, konichiwa …”

  Lachlan said to Julius, “You do realize this doesn’t mean you’re in any way superior to me. No. 2 was an easy one. The outline of Africa was obvious. I’m still just trying to figure out where the coastline for No. 3 actually is. It doesn’t match any known coastline on the Earth today.”

  In the corner, Tank frowned at his phone. “Oh?”

  Julius clasped his hands behind his head mock-smugly. “Maybe I can give you some tutoring in topographical analysis sometime, dear brother. Hey, you know, that could be my call sign:Analyzer.”

  “Sure. And we can shorten it to Anal. You better send that location to Jack and Wizard, Anal. They’ll be pleased. Oh, and while you’re at it, tell Lily that I found her backpack in the observation room. She must’ve left it behind in the rush to leave.”

  “Righteo.” Julius tapped some keys, then cheerily hit SEND.

  As he did so, Tank ended his call with a curt,“Yoroshii, ima hairinasai,” and hung up.

  He walked back over to the twins.

  “Hey, Tank,” Julius said. “What do you think about the call sign Analyzer for me?”

  Tank smiled sadly. “That would seem most appropriate, young Julius.”

  “So who’s coming in?” Lachlan asked Tank.

  “What?”

  “You said it on the phone just now,‘Yoroshii, ima hairinasai.’ It means, ‘OK, you may come in now.’”

  Tank frowned. “You speak Japanese, Lachlan?”

  “A little. I once dated a Japanese science major—”

  Julius scowled. “You didn’t date her! You corresponded with her in a chat room!”

  Lachlan blushed. “There was a connection there, Anal. Which means it qualifies as dating—”

  Abruptly, the door to their study slammed open and one of their British SAS guards was hurled into the room by a wave of silenced gunfire: phwat-phwat-phwat-phwat-p
hwat-phwat!

  Blood sprayed the walls and all over Lachlan’s glasses. The corpse of the SAS guard hit the floor with a loud thud.

  Then the study was stormed by six black-clad men, all moving low, with perfect balance and posture, and all holding MP-5SN silenced submachine guns pressed to their shoulders in the special forces way, their goggle-covered eyes looking straight down the barrels.

  As five of the intruders covered the twins, the leader of the team went straight over to Tank and removed his goggles, to reveal a young Japanese face.

  “Professor Tanaka, we have a chopper outside. What about these two?”

  Two guns cocked next to the twins’ heads.

  Lachlan and Julius froze, holding their breath.

  For a long moment Tank eyed the two brilliant young men, as if he was deciding their fate: whether they lived or died.

  At last he said, “They can still be of much use. We take them with us.”

  And with that, Tank swept out of the study, walking with purpose, leading the way. The twins were shoved from the building after him at gunpoint and as they stepped out into the pouring rain, they passed the bodies of their SAS guards, all dead, all shot in the head.

  AIRSPACE OVER AFRICA

  DECEMBER 10, 2007, 0930 HOURS

  BELCHING SMOKE from its wounded starboard engine, The Halicarnassus limped through the African sky. The landscape below it was an undulating carpet of lush green hills.

  They had been flying for nearly two hours since their dramatic escape from Abu Simbel and were now flying over Uganda in eastern Africa.

  Their current plan was to head for their old station in Kenya and regroup.

  Zoe and Wizard entered the cockpit, where Sky Monster sat alone, flying the plane. Lily and Alby were downstairs, sleeping after their exciting morning.

  “You rang?” Zoe said.

  “Got good news and bad news,” Sky Monster said. “Which do you want first?”

  “The good news,” Wizard said.

  “OK. A message just came in from England, from the twins. Something about the Second Vertex.”

  Wizard leaped to a nearby computer and scanned the message. “Cape Town. Table Mountain. Oh, those boys are talented. Good work, boys.

  Good work !”

  Zoe turned to Sky Monster. “And the bad news?”

  “We’re almost out of fuel and Kenya just became a no-go zone.”

  “What!”

  “How so?”

  “About ten minutes ago I started picking up aerial signals running north–south grid patterns up and down the Kenyan-Ugandan border.Perfect north–south runs, which means computer-driven planes, which means unmanned aerial drones. Predators.”

  “But only the US and the Saudis have Predator drones—” Wizard began.

  “The fuel situation,” Zoe said. “How much longer can we stay in the air?”

  Sky Monster grimaced. “I had to dump a lot back on that highway when our engine got hit. I figure we got enough fuel to reach Rwanda. Another hour at the absolute most. Then we’ll be on fumes.”

  “We’re going to have to land in Rwanda?” Zoe said.

  “We can land or we can crash,” Sky Monster said. “Either way, we’re going to be on the ground somewhere in Africa within the hour.”

  Zoe exchanged a look with Wizard.

  Wizard said, “We have seven days to get to the Second Vertex. But we need to find the Second Pillar first, and Iolanthe said it still resides with the Neetha tribe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We’ll need a chopper at some point, but we can make it to the Congo going overland through Rwanda.”

  “Overland through Rwanda?” Zoe said. “I hate to remind you, Max, but Rwanda is still classified as the most dangerous place on Earth, with the Congo a close second.”

  Wizard grabbed a map of central Africa and unrolled it on the cockpit’s console:

  Sky Monster said, “We’re here, over Uganda, just north of Lake Victoria.”

  Wizard pointed at the vast southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo—taking up the whole left-hand side of the map. “The DRC’s nearly all jungle. Dense jungle. Few roads, no runways for a 747 anyway. Maybe we can steal a chopper in Rwanda, the UN left dozens of supply depots there.”

  “We’re gonna need help,” Zoe said. “Supplies, language, local customs. Solomon?”

  Wizard nodded. “Solomon. I’ll call him at the farm in Kenya. See if he can hightail it to Rwanda with supplies and anything else he can muster.”

  Sky Monster added, “See if he can bring some jet fuel while he’s at it. I don’t want to abandon my plane in Rwanda. She deserves more than that.”

  Zoe saw the look on Sky Monster’s face—to abandon his trusty plane in one of the wildest countries in Africa hit him hard.

  But then he said, “Go on, you guys. Better grab whatever you’re going to take with you, because in about forty-five minutes, we’re going down.”

  WOLF’S MINE

  SOMEWHERE IN AFRICA

  DECEMBER 11, 2007, 1800 HOURS

  DARKNESS,silence, peace.

  Then a blinding flash of violent pain in his right hand jolted Jack West awake.

  His eyes shot open—

  —and he found himself lying on his back on a large slab of stone, at the base of a deep square-shaped pit, with his arms spread wide…and a large black man hammering a thick nail into his right palm!

  The man brought his mallet down again, and to Jack’s horror the nail now went all the way through the flesh of his palm and into a small block of wood buried in the stone beneath it. Blood splattered from the wound.

  Jack began to hyperventilate.

  He snapped to look at his left arm, only to discover that it had already been nailed down into another block sunk in the slab—his mechanical left hand still wore its leather glove. His legs were tied down.

  It was then that the full horror of the situation hit him.

  He was being crucified…

  Crucified on his back against a slab of stone, at the bottom of a pit in God-only-knew-where.

  Still breathing fast, he scanned the pit around him. It was deep, about twenty feet, with sheer rock walls, and the world beyond its rim appeared dark, lit by firelight, like a cave or a mine of some kind.

  Then the muscular black man hammering his hand into the stone called, “He is awake!” and four men appeared up on the rim of the pit, gazing down into it.

  Two of the four Jack didn’t recognize: they were a pair of American soldiers, the first was a bulky young trooper with wide unblinking eyes, the second a compact Asian-American wearing Marine fatigues.

  Jack did know the third man. He was Chinese, older, and had furious eyes. It was Colonel Mao Gongli of the People’s Liberation Army, whom Jack had last seen in Laozi’s trap system, gagging on the contents of a smoke grenade. Jack vaguely recalled pistol-whipping Mao as he’d run past him there, breaking his nose.

  The fourth man, however, was a man Jack knew very well, and he figured (correctly) that the two younger troopers were his lackeys. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, the fourth man was an American colonel who went by the call sign Wolf. Jack hadn’t seen him in years and was quite happy with that.

  Wolf gazed down at Jack—helpless on his back, nailed to the pit floor—with a peculiar look on his face.

  Then he smiled.

  “Hello, son,” he called.

  “Hello, Father,” Jack said.

  The man standing above him was Jack West Sr.

  JONATHAN WEST SR.—Wolf—gazed down at his son from the top of the pit.

  Behind him, unseen by Jack, lay the workings of an enormous underground mine. In it, hundreds of emaciated Ethiopians stood on ten-story-high scaffold towers, toiling with picks and shovels at great walls of dirt, clearing centuries of hard-packed grit from what appeared to be a collection of ancient stone buildings.

  “Isopeda Isopedella,”Wolf said slowly, his voice echoing in the vast mine.

  Jack didn’
t reply.

  “The common huntsman spider,” Wolf said. “A large-bodied, long-limbed spider native to Australia. Similar to the tarantula in size and general notoriety, it’s known to grow to sizes in excess of six inches.”

  Still Jack said nothing.

  “But despite its fearsome appearance, the huntsman spider is not a lethal spider. In fact, it is not dangerous at all. A bite will cause no more than transient local pain. It is a fake, a fraud. An animal that attempts to mask its general ineffectiveness with the appearance of size and power, much like you. I never liked your call sign, Jack.”