Chapter 34
The convoy of vehicles rumbled down a weathered strip of road in the high desert of western Nevada. A camouflaged eighteen-wheeler held the center position, flanked by an escort of machine-gun-toting Humvees and a pair of missile-armed Black Hawk helicopters two hundred feet above.
Fifty miles more and they’d arrive at Yucca Mountain and the erstwhile nuclear depository that had been in limbo for the better part of three decades.
The place had originally been designed to store nuclear waste, with the plan that it would accept the growing stockpiles of spent radioactive fuel from all across the nation. But the environmentalists had attacked and overwhelmed the process almost from day one. Years of litigation, impact studies, and changing political winds had left Yucca Mountain empty. As a result the vast majority of the country’s radioactive materials remained right where they were: at 107 different reactor sites, most of which were only lightly guarded and just miles from the nation’s largest population centers. Apparently, to those who fought against the project, that was a safer alternative.
Such efforts had left Yucca Mountain sitting empty and thus usable for the NRI. And so Moore’s team had removed the Brazil stone from its vault beneath the Virginia Industrial Complex and loaded it onto a military C-17. After a four-hour flight they touched down in Nevada and then continued overland toward Yucca Mountain.
The journey had been planned with meticulous precision, designed to bring the stone out of hiding during the lowest phase of its power surge, when it was all but dormant, and get it back into hiding before the wave began to grow once again. So far, the transit had gone off without a hitch. As things looked, they would be deep in the mountain bunker at least seven hours before the next burst.
Riding in the cab of the semitruck, Arnold Moore listened as one of the Black Hawks thundered overhead, moving forward to take point in the formation. He found himself amused at the overkill of their protection force.
The convoy was firmly in the heart of military controlled property, traveling an unnamed road that cut through the center of the Nellis Bombing Range. To attack them, someone would have to cross a hundred miles of open desert and then breach the most heavily guarded military base in the continental United States. Missile-armed helicopters and F-22 Raptors patrolled the skies. Cameras and infrared sensors monitored every square inch of the perimeter and, even before Moore and his cargo had arrived, the military guards had standing authority to shoot any intruders on sight. The reason was simple: This section of desert was also home to Groom Lake, a top-secret test flight center where the Stealth bomber and other exotic aircraft had been developed. And if that wasn’t enough, the land surrounding them was the infamous Area 51.
Moore glanced through the window. He saw a barren landscape, pockmarked with bomb craters, test sites, and ugly mountains of piled-up dirt. A thousand different types of explosive had been tested here, from cluster bombs to “daisy cutters.” Even nuclear warheads had been exploded here.
The scars remained on the dry desert surface without even a hint of life to soften them. Not a blade of grass, nor a cactus, nor the smallest desert scrub could be seen. It looked like the moon or another planet. Perhaps that was why the UFO junkies were so certain that aliens had been brought here; they just might have felt at home.
The door to the trailer opened and one of the research scientists poked his head through.
“We have a problem, sir.”
Moore’s heart froze. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ve got an unexpected rise in the energy wave,” the scientist told him. “And it’s growing rapidly.”
Out on the Gulf of Mexico, Danielle studied the two boats charging toward them.
“They’re trying to corral us,” McCarter said.
“I told you we should have brought some missiles,” Hawker said.
“Next time I will,” she promised, only half joking.
Danielle watched as the gap between the two pursuing vessels widened and she thought she saw an opportunity. She nudged McCarter from the driver’s seat and reduced the throttles slightly and a moment later reduced them further. The other vessels rapidly closed the range.
A moment later, she chopped the throttles once again, whipped the boat through a quick ninety-degree turn, and then gunned the engines.
With the throttle to the firewall they charged for the gap.
As they raced across the water, Danielle held the boat’s throttles to full, ducking down as the air and spray whipped across the deck. She was gunning for the space between the two boats that had come out after them, something the drivers of those boats must have realized as they now raced to pinch it shut.
Her eyes flicked back and forth between the two boats. It would be close.
Behind her Hawker spoke to McCarter. “Might want to get down,” he said, as he gently forced Yuri to the deck. McCarter followed suit and Danielle hunkered down as far as she could while still being able to see and drive.
The boats were racing toward one another at a combined speed of seventy to eighty knots.
Seconds apart, Danielle dropped down, still holding the wheel.
She cut between them. As the pursuing boats crossed behind her, a spread of bullets whistled overhead, not aimed at her but at the squared-off shape of the outboard engines.
It was an impossible shot, taken from a pitching deck with only an instant to aim. A thousand to one, Danielle thought. She listened to the sound of the engines, felt the vibration, and glanced back at them. The odds had held. They’d come through unharmed.
She glanced behind them. One boat had been forced out to the north and the other craft had altered course and was now turning to follow.
From here it would be a race to the shore, one she wasn’t entirely sure they could win.
Out in the desert wastes of Nevada, Arnold Moore stared into the panic-filled eyes of the scientist. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked.
“A major energy spike,” his man said.
Moore tried to stand and found himself held back by the seat belt.
“That’s not possible,” he said, releasing the belt and realizing that he had no idea what was or was not possible in regard to the stone.
He pushed into the back of the truck. There, in a makeshift version of the Virginia lab, two of his staffers were monitoring the glowing stone. Moore looked at the readout on the computer screen. The energy output had clearly spiked, quadruple its normal passive state and growing.
“When did this start?”
“Five minutes ago,” the scientist told him. “First we noticed a change in the energy distribution pattern: more high-energy and less background readings. And then the countdown signal changed, becoming rapidly more complex and increasingly random.”
“Meaning what?” Moore asked, sensing that the man was hiding some conclusion he’d already reached.
“I don’t know,” his staffer said. “Something has changed and the signal is in a jumbled state now. As if it’s gone haywire and is trying to restore its order.”
Moore ran a hand through his gray hair. He glanced at the power curve. It was spiking up in an accelerating fashion, the way it normally did just prior to a discharge, but the benchmark levels were almost off the chart.
The computer attached to it began flashing a warning and chirping loudly as threshold levels continued to grow. The screen itself began to blur and bend as if it were being degaussed. The radios around them and in the truck’s cab began to squeal with feedback and static.
Moore shouted to the driver. “Are there any bunkers around here?”
The air force sergeant driving the truck seemed confused. “Mr. Moore?”
“Anywhere to hide this thing?”
“No,” the driver said. “It’s all open road.”
Hawker held Yuri tight, covering him and lying almost flat on the deck. Danielle continued to pilot the flying craft, whipping the boat to the right and then curving back to the left, doing all she could to present a hard target to the people chasing them.
As far as Hawker could tell, the boats were evenly matched in terms of speed, but every twist and turn cut into the distance between them. The pursuing boats were only fifty yards behind now, fanning out and taking potshots at them.
They’d done well so far. And in five minutes they’d reach the harbor. Hawker hoped the area would be public enough to keep their pursuers at bay. But he wasn’t sure they’d even get there. One hit on either outboard and they’d be finished.
A rifle shot hit the deck a few feet behind him and he heard another zip overhead.
Danielle ducked. “Now would be a good time to do something!” she shouted.
Even as she spoke, Yuri began to mumble something unintelligible and squirm out of Hawker’s grasp. The kid stretched out a hand toward the locker, his eyes wide as if he’d just discovered something new.
“Two,” he said suddenly, then looked at Hawker. “Two.”
Hawker beckoned McCarter, who crawled toward him.
“Is he all right?”
“I don’t know,” Hawker said. “Hold on to him.”
As McCarter grabbed Yuri, Hawker scrambled to the rear of the boat. He dug into the space beneath the seats and pulled out the anchor. They were coming up fast on the shoreline, but if they were going to make it they would need help.
“Hold us steady!” he shouted, sawing through the rope with his knife.
The boat leveled and ran straight and true for a moment. As it did, Hawker swung the thirty-pound anchor like a bolo and flung it into the air.
The anchor and a short section of attached rope trailed out toward their pursuers, but splashed down well short of the target.
“You’re going to have to throw harder than that,” Danielle shouted.
“Thanks,” he said. “I kind of realized that.”
Next he flung out one of the oars, which landed in front of the lead boat, only to be cut in half by the flying keel.
The men on the boats answered with another spread of bullets, and Danielle cut sharply to the right as tracers ripped into the sea all around them. Hawker ducked and spotted a flare gun.
That gave Hawker another idea. He strapped a buoy to one of the spare diving tanks. “One more time!” he shouted.
The turn eased and the wake stretched out behind them in a streaming line. Hawker opened the valves and pushed the tanks overboard. They splashed down and submerged, but the bubbles and the buoy were enough for him to see it by.
He waited.
He fired off a flare.
The crimson charge raced toward the bubbles of venting gas and a wave of flame exploded out of it as the 40 percent oxygen mix ignited.
The lead boat swerved too late and the explosion sent it airborne for just a foot or so. It landed slightly out of alignment, hitting the water and tumbling like a stock car that had blown a tire at Daytona. Debris flew off it in all directions and it came to rest right side up but swamped and still.
“Great shot!” McCarter shouted.
Hawker hoped the men in the second boat would stop to help their comrades. But they swerved around the ruined craft and continued the chase.
And this time when they’d closed in sufficiently, the men on the foredeck opened fire without holding back. Bullets and tracers began ripping into their boat.
Hawker dove to the deck as Danielle guided the speeding boat around the breakwater into the harbor, swerving around anchored sailboats and other craft. Behind him Yuri began to scream. He twisted free of McCarter’s grasp and lunged for the locker that held the stone. “Two!” he yelled, banging his hands on the locker. “Two! Two! Two!”
Arnold Moore shouted to be heard over the radios as they emitted a high-pitched shriek that he could hardly take.
“Get the helicopters down!”
“Why?”
“Get them on the ground now!”
The master sergeant grabbed the radio and tried to relay Moore’s order, yelling to be heard over the feedback and the static. The computers in the back of the truck began to overload. Sparks blasted from the vents of one and an oscilloscope attached to the setup exploded.
“Close it up!” Moore yelled to his men, reaching for the heavy lead hatch on the box containing the stone. “Close it up!”
The radios in the cab wailed and then blew out one after another. The remaining computer shorted. Moore and his scientist raised the heavy lid and began to slam it down but a flash of blinding light came from the stone and a shock wave blasted through the truck and out across the open desert.
“Two, two, two!” Yuri was shouting, and then his eyes went wide. “One.”
A blast ripped through the boat.
Hawker was almost flung overboard and Danielle was knocked forward, tumbling over the driver’s panel and hitting the deck. The engines behind them exploded. Sparks shot from the depth finder and radio transmitter.
Hawker had no idea what had happened. It was like he’d been hit by a pane of glass. His breath was gone, his head ringing. He saw McCarter bent over Yuri, trying to help him. Up ahead Danielle was crawling back to the wheel.
He looked behind. Their own outboards were belching black smoke and the boat that had been chasing them was going off course, flames licking out of its engine compartment. Several of the vessels in the harbor were having similar problems.
Danielle grabbed the wheel and guided them up onto the beach with the momentum they maintained. The boat skidded to a stop.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Hawker said.
He turned to McCarter, who was holding Yuri as one might hold a sleeping child, cradling his neck and head. He pulled his right hand away; it was soaked with blood, pouring from Yuri’s ear.
“Oh my God,” Danielle said.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Hawker said. “I’ll carry him.”
Hawker took Yuri from McCarter as Danielle pulled the equipment bag with the new stone out of the locker and then hopped over the side of the boat.
She helped McCarter hobble up the beach. As Hawker carried Yuri, a thought flashed through his mind: They’d found the second stone and recovered it, but at what cost?