The Seventh Stone (54 page)

Braydon clutched at the ground to steady himself. It was gritty, hard. The chanting hammered into his brain as dizziness threatened to blind him. ”Summum bonum, infinum falum. Summum bonum, infinum falum.” He grabbed two fistfuls of pebbles and thrust them at the face of the beast. Some met their mark, penetrating the mask’s eye holes. The beast instinctively clamped his hand to his eyes. He flailed outwards with his shield, knocking Braydon across the chamber into the bars of the jail cell.

“
He is the brightest light of the day and the deepest night of madness,” Basillades screamed, her voice like a Banshee. “To see him means blindness; To know him is sickness; To worship him is death; To hear him is wisdom; Not to resist him means liberation.”

The chanting suddenly stopped. Braydon tensed at the sudden silence. The monks must sense that he was close to being killed. Braydon grabbed onto the bars of the jail cell. His heart pounded in his chest, but his strength was spent. His bloody hands slipped on the steel as he struggled to heave himself back into the fight. Christa thrust her hand through the bars, grabbed onto his shoulder. “Stay down,” she said.

Braydon shook his head. “I’ve got to beat him to save you.”

“
No,” said Christa. “Bassilades said it. Not to resist him means liberation.”

Braydon locked his gaze with Christa’s. It went against every fiber of his moral being to crouch weakly while this monster prepared to deal him the final, deadly blow. Then he felt Christa press something into his palm. The cattle prod. He grabbed it, hid it against his chest as he stooped over it. The beast’s deep, irregular breaths behind him grew louder, closer. The crunch of the leather boots put him within arm’s reach, maybe. The putrid odor sharpened. From the beast’s shadow cast by the torchlight, the giant stood above him, shield raised high. It would crush Braydon’s skull in an instant.

In one sudden, swift movement, Braydon spun around. He thrust the cattle prod up, jamming it into the man’s ribs. The electricity bolted up the giant’s torso, jagging up to his metal helmet. The man went into violent spasms, uttering guttural, inhuman grunts. Coils of smoke and the acrid stink of singed flesh escaped his wound. He dropped his shield, clanging, to Braydon’s side, and clawed at his lion helmet. The electric current danced around the mane of serpents. The man’s eyes through the slits in the mask rolled back into his brain.

Braydon pulled away the cattle prod. He lunged upward. He clamped his free hand around the Abraxas stone and tore it from the man’s neck. The Abraxas teetered, then dropped backwards like a felled oak, landing with a thud.

Braydon’s fingers were raw, trembling from the strain of the battle. He fumbled the Abraxas key into the lock, his vision blurred, his brain misfiring. He sensed movement behind him. He hurriedly turned the key. Christa yanked open the door. He spun aside as she burst through it. She swooped up the Abraxas shield. She swung it with all her might, striking Basillades from the side. The black robed woman fell, unconscious, to the floor, her robe fluttering around her like a shroud.

Beyond her, to Braydon’s left, Rambitskov bulldozed his way through three of the monks, knocking them down like bowling pins. The one with the Sig Sauer flung apart his robe and yanked the weapon from his belt. Rambitskov fell upon it like a hungry animal. Rambitskov tore the gun from the monk’s hand, then shot him between the eyes. The gunshot boomed in the confined space. Blood and bone splattered the monk’s white robe. Black dust and pebbles peppered down from the dirt ceiling.

Christa frantically searched through Basillades’s black robe. “I found the remote,” she yelled. She pointed it at the trap door blocking the passage back to the record store. The door clanged open. “We got the Abraxas stone,” she yelled. “Let’s go.”

The chamber thundered with gunfire. Rambitskov shot the monks, three as they attacked him, four of them in the back as they fled for the passageway back to the record store and escape. The entire chamber began to shake. Dirt from above rained down.

Braydon jiggled the Abraxas key out of the lock of the jail cell door. He’d been around Christa too much. He could now feel the power of the stone in his hand. It infused him with a second energy. He’d need it. He had a gun aimed at his forehead, Rambitskov’s Sig Sauer.

Rambitskov’s face was pallid, his expression a grimace. The snake venom had to be getting to him, but not fast enough. Rambitskov grabbed Christa by the elbow, yanked her to her feet. The remote flew out of her hand, dashing against a charred timber. The remote’s cover popped off. The circuitry inside dropped to the ground. “Hand me the Abraxas stone, Fox,” he growled. “It’s the only way to save our country, and her.”

Braydon had counted twelve shots, a full mag for the Sig Sauer. But Rambitskov could have loaded one in the chamber. Braydon asked himself if he was feeling lucky. He wasn’t. But he couldn’t hand over the Abraxas. Rambitskov could lock them in here and let them be buried alive.

Christa jammed her elbow into Rambitskov’s gut and spun away from his grip. Braydon was beginning to love this woman. With his injured hand, he swept up the shield, screaming through the pain, and attacked. A gunshot boomed. The shield bucked back in Braydon’s grip. The bullet punched right through the metal, but it was deflected to the right of Braydon’s shoulder.

Braydon crashed into Rambitskov like a bull into a brick wall. The force of the hit wrenched his wounds with pain. A rumbling sound filled the chamber as more dirt, chunks now, dropped from the ceiling. The timbers on the far end creeked and cracked. With a sudden displacement of air, an avalanche of dirt crashed down in front of the escape route to the record store. It pounded down on the bodies of the monks, blocking the portal entirely.

Braydon coughed. The air was choked with dust. The torches sputtered and dimmed. Rambitskov lay unconscious. Braydon opened his fingers. The Abraxas stone was red with blood, but intact. “Okay,” he said, “we’re trapped, underground, with a bunch of dead people and unconscious maniacs, the ceiling about to collapse and bury us alive, but, hey, we got it, the last of these seven sacred stones.” Maybe it was the energy of the stone, maybe just the surprised joy of still being alive, but Braydon couldn’t help but smile at Christa. “Guess that means we’re destined to live through this,” he said.

Christa gathered the pieces of the broken remote. “Did I tell you I don’t watch much television? It’s because I can’t work the damn remote.” She tried to match the cover with the buttons onto the circuit board.

“
I have complete confidence in you,” said Braydon. “I’m not even going to point out that we have limited oxygen in here.” He snatched up Christa’s daypack, and fished out the silver box that held the Urim and Thummim. He opened the lid, and blinked. It was true, the stones, themselves, emitted some kind of energy, almost radiating light. He wiped as much of his blood as he could from the Abraxas stone, noting the monster with the lion head and snake legs carved into its back. He held out his hand to Christa. “I hope you’re a Mark Twain fan,” he said.

“
You’re either an amazing judge of character,” she said, frantically piecing together remote’s cover, “or really, really bad at last requests.”

“
Twain said to put all your eggs in one basket, then watch that basket,” he said. “Hand me the neckpouch with the Emerald and Turquoise.”

She hesitated, then slipped the lanyard from around her neck and tossed the pouch to him. “You might not know what the hell you’re doing,” she said, “but I trust Twain.”

“
I know that Turquoise has a hardness of 5.6 to 6.6 on Mohs scale, which means it will crack if struck forcibly,” he said. He pulled apart the pouches drawstrings, and tumbled the Emerald and Turquoise onto the velvet lining of the silver box. The five stones winked and flashed, even in the dimming light of the oxygen-hungry torches. “Jacinth, the Abraxas stone, can be brittle, too. Shame if they shattered at this point.” The box didn’t have enough space for the diamond and sapphire wrapped in the hotel’s linen napkin in his pocket. He placed the napkin, and the silver box, into Christa’s pack and zipped it shut.

With a whoosh, the rear steel door, the one with the portrait of the Abraxas, slid open. The cool, dank, brine air that had cast fear into Braydon earlier now brought in hope. He nodded at Christa. “I knew you could do it.”

Christa stood, her expression confused. “It wasn’t me,” she said.

Adam appeared, brandishing a Vietnam-issue Army rifle. His eyes scanned the chamber. “I heard the gunshots,” he said. “I had to come back to help. I realized that this was the only way for me to find peace. I will not die again as a coward.”

“
Happy for you,” said Braydon. “Now let’s get out of here.”

Braydon handed Christa her pack, shouldered his, and followed Christa and Adam into a passageway much like the one they had used to get to the chamber from the record store. Cement walls lit by caged, bare light bulbs, except there were no corners and the passage seemed to lead them up a gradual incline. On the left, they passed a ten by fifteen foot barred room, spartanly outfitted with a bunk, sink, toilet and a crude wooden desk and chair. The only items on the desk were a used syringe and rubber tourniquet. Gray overalls hung from the single hook on the wall. Workmen’s boots had been placed neatly below. It must have been where Bassillades had the man transform into the Abraxas. Braydon found himself feeling sorry for the man who had just tried to fight him to the death, and nearly succeeded.

The air grew cooler, moister. A dim gray seeped in from the gloomy outdoors ahead. The tang of brine air enveloped him. They emerged beneath a pier on the Embarcadero. The fog was thick. He could barely make out the massive structure of the Oakland Bay Bridge towering above them. On another day, it would look surreal. Today, nothing was more surreal than reality.

“
This way,” Adam said. “Up here. I know a safe place where you can get cleaned up.” He led them to a metal staircase zigzagging up to the pier. As he reached the top, Braydon scanned the wide, long, and empty cement pier, probably only active when the big cruise ships docked here. The only boat tied to the pier was a moderate-size motor yacht, which would look like a behemoth against the J24 sailboat now tacking beneath the Bay Bridge but was dwarfed by the immensity of the commercial pier.

They hurried down the pier. “A friend of mine is that yacht’s main cook and bottle washer,” he said. “The owners are only here in summer. You can stay as long as you like.”

The yacht was docked fifty yards down the pier. Braydon figured he could make it just that far before collapsing. He was worried about Christa. She was uncharacteristically quiet, a bit shell-shocked. A hot shower, and food, would do them both good, but they couldn’t linger. Donohue was waiting for their call. The retired colonel would have mustered the strike force and arranged transport to Colombia by now. “You’ve redeemed yourself, Adam,” said Braydon. “And thanks, but we need to get cleaned up, make a phone call and clear out.”

A gangplank led onto the foredeck of the motor yacht. Its name was scripted in nautical blue on its hull,
Flying Carpet II
. Adam held open the door to the main cabin. It was luxuriously decked out in rich, mahogany paneling, velvet lounge chairs, with richly framed antique maps lining the walls. Braydon hesitated. A familiar aluminum briefcase sat on the glass coffee table. Someone was sitting in the lounge chair at the far end of the cabin. The chair swiveled around to face him. It was Baltasar Contreras.

CHAPTER
62

Braydon’s first reaction was to kill Contreras with his bare, bloody hands. He advanced across the yacht’s cabin to do just that. Two men sidled through the aft door of the cabin, both armed and no doubt dangerous. One had an Uzi, a bit overkill. The other, a Glock handgun. Braydon stopped his advance by the mahogany bar. A sudden dizzy spell threatened to topple him. He shook it off. “Baltasar Contreras,” he said. “You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of Jared Sadler.”

Baltasar grinned, and then laughed outright. “Agent Braydon Fox,” he said. “I knew you would be a worthy opponent, but look at you. Adam, do get a fresh towel from behind the bar, there. I do believe Agent Fox is dripping blood on my Aubusson carpet. Adam told me about your battle with that marvelous Abraxas beast in the gladiator outfit. I do wish I could have seen you in action.”

Adam, unbelievably, edged past Braydon to get behind the bar. “Busted,” Braydon seethed at him. “From guardian of one of the world’s most precious objects to gofer.”

Christa must have sensed that Braydon was going to do something stupid, like strangle the hippie with his own love beads. She came beside him and grasped his arm. She turned to Adam as the hippie offered Braydon a white terry bar towel. “Why did you do it, Adam,”
she asked. “What did Contreras offer you?”

Adam’s face was no longer ashen, but flushed. He shakily laid the towel on the bar in response to Braydon’s sneer. “Peace, man,” he said. “Baltasar Contreras will use the sacred stones as they were meant to be used, to restore the Breastplate of Aaron, to bring peace to the world.”

“
He kidnapped my niece,” she said. “He poisoned the water supply which will kill thousands of people in New York. He has brought madness, not peace.”

Baltasar Contreras stood. His bodyguards tensed. “I did not poison the water to kill people,” he said, “but to save them.”

“
Gabriella knew about your plans to manufacture the poison,” said Christa. “She was desperate to find an antidote. She knew that was the only way to stop you.”