Black Sun: A Thriller (40 page)

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!”

W
hatever 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.

B
yron 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.