Текст книги "Black Sun"

Автор книги: Graham Brown

Соавторы: Graham Brown
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CHAPTER 64

Pinned down by the circling drones, Hawker had cowered in the crown of boulders as three lumbering helicopters approached. In a flat area between the ridges, two of them touched down, disgorging a small army.

He saw twenty men fan out from the lead craft, while the second helicopter released what looked like a group of pack mules, moving in a precise and ominous fashion.

Through his binoculars he could see that these “pack mules” were some kind of mechanical walking machine, like four-legged donkeys with machine-gun turrets where their heads belonged.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mumbled.

The men hung back, allowing the strange walking machines to take the lead. He watched their hydraulic legs propel them forward, their turreted heads swiveling from side to side. He counted six of them, and all he could be certain of was that he didn’t want to see them up close.

Wedging the assault rifle into a gap between the rocks, he sighted the lead machine and opened fire. Shells from the rifle ripped into the lead beast. Sparks flew and it stumbled. But somehow it regained its balance and continued on its course, climbing the slope toward him. He fired at another with the same result and then let the rifle whale away on full automatic.

One machine crashed to the ground, its front legs damaged, the rear legs still trying to push forward. The others turned toward him and opened fire.

The rock wall in front of Hawker exploded from a convergence of shells. He dove to the ground, crawled fifteen feet, and tried to steal a glance out the other side. But the machines seemed to be waiting for it. The instant he poked his head out, another burst tore into the boulders around him. Whatever type of sensors the machines were using to find him—heat sensors, motion detectors, shape recognition software, whatever it was—they’d locked on to him now.

As the barrage continued, Hawker took cover. He pressed himself into the largest of the boulders, listening to the strange sound of the machines marching closer.

Danielle sat in the gunner’s seat of a massive Russian helicopter as it thundered across the countryside. The craft was a Hind-D, a huge military gunship armed with a 30mm cannon and racks of air-to-ground missiles, and powered by a tremendous turbine engine that pushed the craft through the air at up to two hundred and fifty knots. The sense of speed, the vibration, and the visceral feeling of power that coursed from the airframe was undeniably intoxicating. For once in her career she felt as if she were charging into battle on a stallion of superior power.

As Ivan piloted the craft, Danielle familiarized herself with the weapons systems. And as they approached the target zone, she was looking forward to wreaking havoc.

“How the hell did you get this thing in country?” she asked over the intercom.

“Officially it is part of a movie production,” Ivan said. “Not a bad cover, don’t you think?”

“Not bad at all,” she replied. “As long as it doesn’t fire blanks.”

Ivan laughed, a genuine belly laugh with a sense of warmth that could be felt even through the intercom. “I promise you, I didn’t come all this way to fire blanks.”

With that they rocketed over the third ridge and the helicopters on the radar scope came into visual.

One of the Skycranes was hanging back. Ivan was already angling toward it.

“Three seconds to range,” Ivan said.

The amber light on her targeting display lit up and an instant later it switched to green. Danielle pressed the fire switch and a heavy buzzing shook the craft as the rotary cannon unleashed the fury of a hundred shells.

The tracers laced into the hovering Skycrane, ten explosive shells in between each glowing marker. The hovering craft lit up with smoke and then exploded and fell toward the ground.

Euphoric, Danielle searched for the next target.

With the burrolike machines blasting at his stronghold, Hawker lay flat on the ground, slithering toward the back edge of the space. He was considering making a break for it when the sound of a thunderous explosion echoed across the landscape.

From the corner of his eye he saw a fireball in the east. It was one of the Skycranes. How or why, he didn’t know. But when he saw the drones spiraling out of control and crashing into a canyon wall, he didn’t waste time trying to find out.

He took off running. He had ten minutes.

As Stecker and the scientists left the trailer, Moore caught sight of the rocket sled, the vessel of destruction designed to send the stone into the deepest part of the mountain. It was ready and waiting.

The president shouted at him. “What the hell have you gotten us into, Arnold?!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were late to a briefing about Armageddon, looking like you’ve been out drinking somewhere all night, and you offer some cockamamie theory about the earth’s core.”

Moore was acutely aware of his appearance. He was unshaven, looking haggard, in the same clothes he’d worn the day before.

“I’ve been working on this all night with no sleep—”

The president cut him off. “That’s one of the problems, from what I hear: You haven’t been getting much sleep.”

Moore was stunned.

“When you didn’t show on time, I asked your staff about your behavior,” Henderson said. “They answered honestly. The way you should have months ago. Instead of endangering the country like you have.”

“I would never purposefully—”

“You brought this damned thing here, you sent your people after the other stones, you even mounted an illegal operation to rescue Danielle, despite the fact that I told you not to. And I covered your ass for it. Yet you couldn’t be honest with me?”

“I tried—”

“Stop lying to yourself, Arnold! You’ve put us at risk, and maybe the whole world along with us! I want to know why.”

“Mr. President—”

“Why?!” he shouted. “What are you holding back? Some hidden part of this prophecy you haven’t shared, something else you found down there in Brazil, or some bit of data you don’t want to give up? What is it that makes you believe in this thing beyond all reason?”

Moore looked away. His old friend knew him, knew he wasn’t being completely truthful. He caught sight of the blue countdown clock: seven minutes to zero.

“Now, Arnold!” the president shouted.

“I touched it,” Moore said finally, the admission feeling like a fool’s last act and a weight off his shoulders all at the same time.

“I held the damned thing when Danielle brought it back from the Amazon. And since that moment, since that very moment, I’ve had an unshakable sense that this thing, this stone, was sent here to help us. Not to harm us or hurt us, but to save us from something. Maybe from ourselves. The stone affects everyone who touches it that way.”

For a moment Moore wished he’d let the president touch it. They wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But at the time it had seemed unwise.

“There are patterns in the signal that mirror brainwave activity,” Moore added. “We think it was done that way on purpose, to give us a message, to condition us and teach us.”

As Moore spoke, the anger on the president’s face resolved into despair and a look of utter disgust. It became so obvious, so deep-seated and evident, that Moore could not stand to gaze at his old friend. The president offered no challenge, no angry rebuke. He was just done with Moore.

“You’re relieved,” he said. “Get Stecker in here.”

CHAPTER 65

Danielle watched as the cannon fire she’d triggered tore into the second of Kang’s Skycranes, shredding the thin aluminum fuselage and blasting off the tail rotor. The flaming craft came apart and careened into the ground, where it exploded.

“The third one is running,” Ivan said, turning toward it.

“Let it go,” Danielle said. “There are men on the ground.”

“Can you see your friend?” Ivan asked.

The Hind-D had a camera system with a telescopic lens, designed to sight targets visually and help prevent friendly-fire incidents. She scanned the terrain and saw only Kang’s people and the strange mechanical mules.

“No!” she shouted.

“You’re sure he’s not with them?”

Kang’s people were still pursuing something, still making their way toward the top of the mesa. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Why?”

“Because once we pass, there will be nothing left down there.”

“So be it,” she said. “For your brother.”

And with that, Ivan banked the helicopter fifty degrees, finishing the turn and lining up the figures on the ground. He bore down on them relentlessly and Danielle flipped the toggle to arm the cannon.

As they thundered in, the men started turning and firing. Danielle pressed the trigger for the cannon and fired a batch of air-to-ground missiles at the same time. The rotary gun blazed away, loosing three hundred shells in five seconds, missiles streaking out from the left and the right. Explosions rocked the terrain, and parallel balls of fire merged into a rising inferno where the men had once been.

The Hind raced past, pulling up to clear the smoke and flame. Only then did Danielle notice a second group of men.

“On the left,” she said. “Ten o’clock. Look out!”

The second group opened fire as they passed. But the Hind was built for low-level combat. Its armor shook off the rifle bullets as if they were BBs. Not so with the rocket-propelled grenade that exploded above their heads.

The windshield was instantly streaked with oil and fire. Smoke poured in and the helicopter shook like a speeding car that had lost a couple of wheels.

Ivan tried to control it, but the rotors were damaged. “Hang on!” he shouted.

Shuddering wildly, the helicopter lurched to the side, spinning and dropping from the air.

Aboard his personal Skycrane, Kang saw the Russian craft go down. His men had done well. “Turn us around,” he ordered.

“To the men?”

“No, up on the ridge.”

He could see a figure near the far side of the mesa, sprinting across it.

“That’s the one,” he said. “Run him down.”

The pilot turned the helicopter toward the target and accelerated. “We have no weapons,” he warned.

Kang shouted above the noise. “Just get me close. I’ll kill him myself.”

In the darkness of Yucca Mountain, Byron Stecker watched Arnold Moore step out of the trailer carrying his suit jacket awkwardly over his shoulder. His gait was slow, as a beaten man’s should be.

“What’s the word?” Stecker asked, keenly aware that there were less than five minutes to go before the zero state.

“You win,” Moore said. He nodded toward the rocket sled. “Might want to get that thing ready.”

Moore shuffled away, moving toward the big wrecker tow truck that had been used to drag the trailer in.

Stecker grinned and took a moment to soak up the glory of victory. He turned to his staffer. “We have four minutes. Get the sled primed. We’ll need to do this quick.”

He stepped inside the trailer.

The screen inside was still glowing with the president’s image. “About damn time, Stecker.”

“Moore just informed me,” he said. “We’ll destroy the stone immediately.”

“Good. Contact me when it’s done.”

The president cut the line and Stecker switched the screen off. He walked to the lab section and opened the door. The room was dark except for the glow of computer screens.

He stepped toward the viewing platform and nearly slipped.

“What the hell?”

Looking down, he saw a puddle of grape soda. Nathanial Ahiga lay sprawled on the floor, semiconscious, with a large welt across his forehead.

“What the hell happened?” Stecker asked.

Moaning, Ahiga opened his eyes, but before he could even say a word Stecker realized the truth. He rushed to the observation stand and looked into the vault. The stone was gone.

Without stopping to help Ahiga, he ran out of the lab and burst through the trailer door, into the tunnel.

The box truck was rumbling away with Moore inside it.

“Stop the truck!” he shouted. “Moore has the stone!”

CHAPTER 66

Whatever madness was going on behind him, Hawker could only guess at, but as he reached the edge of the cenote, he saw a different problem. The opening was a huge depression, a circular well carved from the granite, two hundred feet across and a hundred feet deep. From the precipice it looked like an open-pit mine flooded with unmoving water.

“What am I, a cliff diver?” he said aloud.

At the center he saw the tiny island that Father Domingo had told him about. It looked like the top of a spire, a pillar of stone twenty feet in diameter, with its foundation disappearing into the water, like a bridge stanchion. A set of stairs, carved into the side of the pillar, descended into the water, but no bridge or cable ran to it.

Apparently it would be a swim and then a climb.

He noticed a narrow pathway that wound down and around, but he didn’t have time for such a long route. He dropped in over the side, skidding down the slope until he reached a narrow ledge. As he stopped, a sound like thunder roared in above him.

Looking up, he saw Kang’s Skycrane fan out in a braking action. He expected a sniper to be targeting him from the open door, but instead he saw a man in body armor.

To his absolute astonishment, the man leaped from thirty feet above, falling toward Hawker and clotheslining him across the chest. The impact sent both of them tumbling down the slope.

Despite Ivan’s efforts, the Russian Hind-D was finished. It crashed and skidded forward on the mesa, sliding to a stop.

The impact threw Danielle about, but her seat belt held and she was uninjured. She pulled out of her harness, helped Ivan to extricate himself from the wreckage, and then dragged him away as the helicopter began to burn.

“Are you okay?” she asked

Ivan shook his head. “My feet,” he said. A quick look told her that both of his ankles were broken. She glanced toward the valley, where Kang’s men had been.

“Give me your gun!” she demanded.

Ivan held out the Makarov.

She grabbed it and crawled toward the edge of the ridge. The last of Kang’s men were headed the other way. Done with the battle. Thank God for that.

Now to find Hawker.

She made her way back to Ivan. “You should be safe here,” she said. “Which direction was the line?”

“West.”

She looked that way. A thousand yards off, the last of the three Skycranes hung in the air, circling something at a snail’s pace. She saw no sign of Hawker. And yet halfway between her and the hovering copter, she saw something else: a small figure, no more than three feet tall, running across the top of the mesa.

It was Yuri.

Hawker’s bruising ride stopped on a midlevel outcropping, fifty feet above the water.

He sprang to his feet and threw a punch toward his attacker’s head, but the man blocked it with his armored wrist and fired a punch into Hawker’s chest that knocked the wind out of him and sent him tumbling backward.

Landing hard, Hawker coughed uncontrollably and tried to shake off the blow. He’d been in plenty of fights in his life, a lot of them losing ones, but short of being hit with a two-by-four, he’d never felt a shot like that.

Still hacking, he tried to scramble away, but a hand grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him up. Before he could react, he took a blow to the side of the head and went spiraling down again.

Hawker looked up at his opponent. The man himself was average and frail looking, but built up around him were hydraulic actuators, padding, and armor that made him into a hulking brute.

“You are inferior,” the man said.

The statement rang out like a discovered truth. Not a boast or a threat, but a simple statement of the facts. Hawker couldn’t argue it.

“You should give me what I want,” the machine-assisted man told him. “I will make your death easier.”

Breathing hard, Hawker answered. “Why is it … you guys always think … that’s such a good deal?”

Kang stepped toward him and Hawker spun to one side, delivering a solid kick to the man’s knee. It should have shattered the joint, should have bent the knee sideways, tearing the ligaments to shreds, but the armor and the bracing prevented it from doing any damage at all.

In response, Kang thrust a knee into Hawker’s ribs. He went flying backward, slid off the ridge, and tumbled down to the lowest of the ledges.

Kang slid down after him, planting his feet firmly and standing ominously over Hawker.

Groggy from the last blow and tenuously holding on to consciousness, Hawker crawled a few feet, grabbing a rock from the rubble of the slope.

Kang reached for him. The hand was like a vise crushing his arm. It yanked him upward. And even as Hawker swung the rock, Kang’s other arm slammed down on his shoulder.

Hawker fell to his knees.

“Give me the stone,” Kang said.

Too dizzy to speak, too physically exhausted to argue, Hawker looked over the edge, to the water. He saw his own reflection, battered and bleeding; the vanquished man. He saw Kang standing over him, the hulking, victorious machine. He remembered what Father Domingo had said: The Mirror shows us who we are.

He pulled the backpack off one shoulder.

“Hurry,” Kang demanded.

Hawker pulled the other strap off, shook his arm loose, and then wound up and threw it past Kang. It sailed over his head onto the farthest part of the ledge. Kang’s eyes followed it.

In that instant, Hawker launched himself at Kang. He grabbed the air vents in Kang’s suit of armor, locking on to them like handles, and leaning back with all the strength that remained in his body.

The two men fell toward the water, shattering the calm surface of the Mirror with a tremendous splash.

Suddenly more alert, Hawker righted himself. Despite his hope, Kang remained operational. His suit must have been insulated against water. Hawker pushed off him but one of Kang’s mechanically assisted hands locked on to his ankle. With his arms and his free leg, Hawker kicked and stroked for the surface. Kang might even have been doing the same, but the hundred pounds of his armor, hydraulics, and battery packs pulled both of them toward the depths of the well.

CHAPTER 67

Byron Stecker rode in a Humvee, chasing Arnold Moore.

“Shoot him!” he shouted to an air force SP in the back. “Do you hear me? Shoot the son of a bitch!”

The man leaned out the side of the Humvee, firing with a rifle. But items of equipment, including the heavy vault that the stone had traveled in, were piled up behind the flatbed’s cab. Shells struck the vault repeatedly, but they would never penetrate.

A second Humvee tried to race up the driver’s side looking for a better angle to fire from, but Moore swung the big truck sharply, and the tail end slammed the smaller vehicle against the wall of the narrow tunnel.

A shower of sparks lit up the darkness. As Moore pulled away, the Humvee tumbled out of control, rolling over and almost wiping out Stecker’s vehicle in the process.

His driver swerved around it and a third Humvee joined the chase. But Moore had now built himself some space and was still accelerating.

“Shoot out the tires,” Stecker ordered. “Stop him or we’re all dead.”

As if on cue, alarms, hooked up throughout the complex, began to sound. “One minute to EM Burst Event,” a computerized female voice announced. “Shut down all electrical systems. Repeat, shut down all electrical systems.”

Stecker glanced at the digital readout that had been hastily installed in the cab of the Humvee. It was ticking unnervingly fast. The voice rang out through the tunnel. “Fifty-five … fifty-four … fifty-three.”

Up ahead, Stecker saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. A place he did not want Moore to reach.

“Seal the doors!” he shouted into the radio. “Seal the damned doors!”

Sinking fast, Hawker could feel the pressure growing in his ears. His hands scraped the walls, searching for something to grab, but the granite was smooth and the weight of Kang and his mechanical armor continued to drag him down.

He slammed his heel into Kang’s chest, trying to break free, and Kang tried to grab his other leg. Neither succeeded and they crashed into the bottom. The impact jarred Kang’s hand loose, and Hawker pushed off, pumping his arms and legs, desperate to reach the surface.

Below him he saw Kang trying to swim or climb, but the weight was too much and he fell back, landing at the bottom of the well, like some kind of offering to the gods. A spot beside him waited for Hawker if he didn’t keep going.

On the verge of blacking out, Hawker pushed harder, kicking and clawing for the surface.

He burst through, exhaling a cloud of carbon dioxide and sucking in a breath of clean air. The closest land to him was the island at the center of the cenote. He swam for the stairs.

By now he could feel the waves of energy whipping, a staticlike feeling that ran through his frame. The water around him began to churn and vibrate with a sound so deep that it shook his body from the inside.

Reaching the stairs, he dragged himself out of the water. He crawled up toward the well that Father Domingo had spoken of.

The Sacrifice of the Body.

Hawker stared at the altar. The vibration inside him had sharpened into pain; the sound in his head became a scream. With each piercing wave, ropes of water whipped up into the air around him, like some beast trying to break its chains.

To the left, on the shore, he saw movement. He turned to see a figure scampering down the slope. Yuri.

How was it possible? How had he come here?

Yuri made it down the side of the embankment to where Hawker’s backpack had come to rest.

“No!” Hawker shouted.

Yuri opened the pack and pulled the lead case out.

“Yuri, don’t!”

Yuri did not hear him. He opened the case and stared at the stone as if the gates of heaven rested inside.

The ground trembled from the next surge of energy, but Hawker remained locked on Yuri.

This can’t be happening.

He heard shouting. Over the noise in his head, and the chaos around him, he somehow heard shouting. He looked up. Danielle was sliding down, racing to Yuri.

Another wave of energy whipped through. The pillar he stood on shook to its foundations, knocking him down. More ropes of water whipped off the surface, lashing the walls and flying around like deranged spirits.

With the world coming apart around him, and the ground shaking so hard he could no longer stand, Hawker crawled forward. He saw the counterweights and the ropes. He spotted the lever that Father Domingo had said he would find.

Moore kept the pedal floored, but up ahead the light was dimming. The monstrous doors to Yucca Mountain were closing.

“Twenty-nine … twenty-eight … twenty-seven.”

He crossed into the triple-bore area near the entrance; the tunnel widened. Almost immediately the second Humvee pulled up on his left. Moore swerved toward it.

Shots were fired, blasting into the cab. Moore flinched as the mirror shattered. His arm took a hit and flew off the steering wheel.

Moore’s truck swerved, a front tire exploded, and the big rig went over on its side. It crashed down hard and skidded toward the exit, grinding to a stop twenty feet from the threshold.

“Twenty-three … twenty-two … twenty-one.”

Moore looked out through the shattered windshield. Blood ran down his face; one eye was swelling shut. But there was still a chance.

He grabbed his coat, extricated himself from the wreckage, and crawled toward the narrowing band of light.

He heard the klaxons sounding, heard the voice warning.

“Nineteen … eighteen …”

Suddenly he was unable to move. He looked back, straining to see through his swollen eye.

Stecker was standing on the tail of his coat, looking down at him like an owner who had caught the leash of a disobedient hound.

“You’re too late,” Stecker said. He yanked the coat from Moore’s grasp as the doors ahead of him slammed shut with a monstrous metallic clang.

Stecker opened Moore’s coat but found nothing inside.

“Fifteen … fourteen …”

“Nothing in here!” one of the guards yelled from the cab of the overturned truck.

“Where is it?” Stecker shouted.

Moore stared up at him, battered and shaking. “I don’t have it,” he said simply.

Stecker’s face betrayed utter confusion, but suddenly he seemed to understand. He looked back down the tunnel.

“Ahiga.”

In a distant part of the Yucca Mountain, at the top of a ventilation shaft that served as an escape route should something go wrong, Nathanial Ahiga heard the alarm go critical. He pushed upward, slamming against the hatch.

“Three …”

His mind reeled from the darkness and the fear of falling that gripped him. He pushed again, barely moving the heavy door.

“Two …”

Shouting a Navajo curse, he forced the hatch open. The blazing Nevada sunset burned his eyes and he tumbled out onto the mountainside holding the stone aloft.

“One …”

Hawker lunged for the handle.

“I believe,” he whispered as his hand slammed onto the lever.

The counterweights released. Heavy stones dropped into tunnels on either side of the well and the ropes spooled out over metal pulleys at tremendous speed. Something came racing up the tunnel toward him. The blocks slammed home and the fourth stone was jammed into position.

Hawker saw it for an instant. Then the world went still. His hearing shrank to nothing. And everything vanished in a blinding flash of white.