The Lightning Stones

27

The chartered Gulfstream III had taken off from Futuna Island, destined for Nadi International. Philip Mercer and Booker Sykes sat alertly in the plush leather seats. Rory Reyes slept, no doubt dreaming of a replacement for the Suva Surprise. Once they were airborne, Book had listened to the voice message left by Jason Rutland, immediately handing over the phone so Mercer could call him back.

Rutland was actually on a discussion panel when Mercer’s call came through, and he left it without a word.

“We have a big problem,” Rutland had said straightaway, laying out his case before Mercer could even say hello. Rutland talked for ten minutes. Mercer interrupted only to tell him what the South African mercenary had said about the stones being used to beam energy into the sky, which meshed with Rutland’s frightening theories. Two minutes later, they signed off.

Mercer immediately called his old boss, Ira Lasko. Lasko had been deputy national security adviser to the former president of the United States, and Mercer had reported to him in his role as special science adviser. Since the last election, both men had been out of government work, but Mercer hoped Ira still had connections.

He had gotten only a minute into his story when Lasko, a retired admiral, said, “Stop right there. I don’t doubt what you’re telling me is true, but I have zero pull with the current administration. That’s what happens around here when the party in power switches. Not only was everything done by the predecessor in the Oval Office wrong, but his staffers were all idiots who can’t be trusted. Far from being the loyal opposition, everyone who served in the past becomes persona non grata.”

“Ira, this transcends politics.”

“Nothing transcends politics to the current occupant of the White House. The national security adviser is a former policy director for a leftist think tank who once opined that Neville Chamberlain didn’t appease Hitler enough. I can’t go to her with this. I can’t go to anyone.”

“All right, then keep it with your former family.”

“Huh?”

“The navy, Ira. You were an admiral. You still have pull there, don’t you?”

“Yeah but—”

“No buts on this,” Mercer said. “They just flew off with the crystals, and they’re on alert because they know we’re looking for them. If my friend is right, they could be used to cause a cascade effect within the earth’s magnetic field lines. At best it could cause a reversal of the poles, which is a phenomenon that occurs naturally every few million years, but it’s something mankind — a species now dependent on satellites and power grids and all kinds of other vulnerable technology — has never experienced.”

“And at worst?”

“Jason isn’t sure…nothing like this has ever happened. The fields could collapse entirely, leaving the planet exposed to massive amounts of solar and cosmic radiation. In a short time, Earth would become a lifeless cinder.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “You’re sure about this?”

“I am staking my reputation and our friendship on the fact that this is deadly serious, Ira. It’s why I called you. I need someone who can help me stop this, but there’s no time to bullshit with bureaucratic channels. If Jason’s right, they’re about to pump power through these crystals and attempt to geoengineer the planet’s magnetic fields. A slight miscalculation and we’re all dead. This needs to stop before it gets started.”

“What do you need?” Ira asked. “Your friend said they are likely working off of a ship.”

“Yes, a special kind of ship, one that only the Russians ever built. It has massive antennas for tracking objects in space. Jason thinks they can be used to beam radiation upward.”

“Where is this ship now?”

“Booker and I put a tracking chip onto the PBY Catalina they’re using to transfer the stones. We think it will link up with the ship in the next few hours. I’ll give you the coordinating information off the tracker so you can get me the GPS location. Jason tells me that it’ll be someplace close to the equator so both north and south polarity will be affected. These guys are ecoterrorists…what I’d like is a Tomahawk cruise missile to take out the ship, but it’s nuclear powered and I know that’s never going to happen.”

“Nuclear meltdown at sea because of a navy attack…No. That definitely isn’t going to happen. Besides, I couldn’t get you a cruise missile anymore — even if I pulled in every chit I’ve got. I can provide some logistical support on this, pass it off as a goodwill stunt or something, but I can’t get weapons or combat troops.”

“I’ll take anything you can give me, Ira. Jason is finding out everything he can about this ship, the Akademik Nikolay Zhukovsky. Once we’re familiar with her layout, Book and I will come up with a plan and get back to you.”

“Okay. I’ll be ready.”

Twenty hours later, true to his word, Ira Lasko had pulled in favor after favor, and Mercer and Book found themselves in the rear cargo compartment of a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey aboard the amphibious assault ship USS America, the latest in the navy’s fleet. The Osprey was a tilt-rotor hybrid of a plane and a helicopter. It could land and take off vertically, but the rotors then translated into a horizontal position to become giant propellers that gave it a top speed of 350 miles per hour at fifteen thousand feet.

Apart from the loadmaster, a young kid wearing an oversize helmet that made him look like a boy playing soldier, they were alone in a space designed for two dozen combat troops. The engine noise was nothing compared to the jaw-shaking thunder of the rotors when they got up to speed. They beat the air over the cabin into a screaming fury. The pilot waited for one last authorization from crewmen on the ship’s deck, and he applied even more power to lift the plane into the evening sky.

Out the tiny window next to his seat, Mercer could see the lights of the amphib’s control island, and a pair of sleek F-35 Lightning II strike fighters. Like the Osprey, those supersonic planes could also land and take off like helicopters. And then those sights all dropped away in a gut-wrenching climb that was the ultimate rebuke to gravity’s reign. The V-22 clawed for altitude, bucking like mad as it rose within an envelope of its own turbulence, but then the rotors started to tilt. They lost a little altitude but gained speed and lift across the wings. In seconds they were flying normally, the turbines cut back since they weren’t working nearly as hard.

“First time in one of these?” Book shouted to be heard.

Mercer grinned like a kid. It was all the answer he needed to give.

From Fiji, where they’d left Rory with the promise to cooperate with the insurance inquest, they’d continued on in the hired Gulfstream to Tarawa. There they were met by a Sea King helicopter sent for them from the America. The assault ship had just completed a friendly port call and was on her way to Indonesia, where her complement of over a thousand Marines was to hold joint exercises with several regional powers.

Mercer had followed Book’s lead on each flight and gotten as much sleep as he could, but he still felt like he’d accrued a sleep debt he’d never be able to repay. Now that they were on the last leg of their odyssey, Mercer was keyed up and ready.

They’d been able to borrow some equipment from the ship’s stores — wet suits and dive gear. They weren’t, however, allowed to take any weapons from the armory. That was a favor Ira couldn’t have called in. It wasn’t a problem for Booker since he still had the Kriss and four magazines. Mercer had lost his pistol. The America’s captain, William R. Tuttle, had met them in his cabin shortly after they’d arrived. He explained that he’d never served under Ira’s command at sea, since Lasko was a submariner, but they knew and respected each other immensely. Tuttle was sticking his neck out for Ira. At the end of their meeting, Tuttle went to his desk and slid out a wooden presentation box with a glass window in it. The case was a beautiful piece of workmanship that seemed too ornate for what it contained, until Tuttle explained the origins of the particular piece within.

“This was my great-uncle’s,” he said, opening the lid and pulling out a dull M1911 Colt .45 that looked like it had been through the wars. And in fact, it had. “He carried it on Guadalcanal, Saipan, and Iwo Jima. He gave it to me when I graduated Annapolis, and I’ve illegally brought it with me on every one of my floats to remind me that I stand upon the shoulders of giants.

“Admiral Lasko made me understand how important this is.” He flipped the pistol in his hand and presented it butt first to Mercer. “If at all possible, I would like it back.”

The antique weapon now hung in a waterproof pouch from Mercer’s belt, its two magazines loaded from Booker’s stash of ammunition.

The tracking chip Sykes had secreted on the PBY indicated the plane had landed for an hour at a spot directly on the equator, two hundred miles east of Tarawa, so they were heading there now. The PBY had taken off again and was currently sitting just off the island of Tuvalu, presumably its role in the operation complete.

For the first leg of the rendezvous flight, they cruised at comfortable speed and altitude, but the plan Mercer and Book had devised would require some fancy piloting as soon as they neared the operational limits of the Akademik Zhukovsky’s radar. The Osprey’s copilot kept an eye on the threat board; as soon as they were painted by the tracking ship’s radar, the pilot would drop them to the deck so fast the operators on the former Soviet tracking ship would assume they’d seen a false return.

Two hours into the flight, after full night had settled in, that’s exactly what happened. Without warning, the engines seemed to die, and the plane fell out of the sky like a brick. The Osprey had such poor lift on its own that without constant thrust from the engines it went into free fall. They dropped fourteen thousand feet so fast that Mercer felt weightless, and certain they would never recover. Booker was actually whooping like a cowboy, and even the young loadmaster seemed to be having the time of his life.

It was only at the last possible second that the engines began to take the strain, only this time they were partially translated for vertical flight. When the big rotors began chewing into the air, the express ride to hell came to a gentle end, with the Osprey just fifty feet above the waves and cruising along at a mere thirty knots.

A minute later the pilot spoke to the loadmaster over his intercom helmet, and the young man unclipped from his seat and approached Mercer. “Pilot says we have the fuel to make it to your target flying low and slow like this, but after you jump we can only fly this way for another ten minutes before we’re going to need to transition back to normal flight. Egg-beating like we are right now sucks up the JP-8. There’s a chance we’ll be back on their radar then, and your cover will blow.”

“Understood. Once we’re aboard the jig’s up anyway.”

The kid gave him a thumbs-up and went back to his seat.

A few minutes later, the young Marine cocked his head like a dog hearing a piercing whistle while he listened to another report from the pilot. He nodded as if he could be seen and unstrapped himself once again. “Pilot says we just got a radio query from a boat calling itself the Jarwyne. Our gear tells us it’s your target. Anyway they bought our line about us being a cargo ship. We’re moving at the right height and speed that we look like a ship’s superstructure on their radar. Pretty slick, huh?”

Mercer didn’t tell the kid that it was his idea to approach the Zhokovsky at night like this. “Very slick,” he said over the racket.

They would fly about four miles west of the Russian ship, supposedly as they were making their way to Hawaii with a load of containers. It was far enough to suppress the distinctive echoing thrump of the rotors but not so far that Booker and Mercer would be floundering around the tropics.

Since they had arrived in the Pacific, days ago, Mercer had kept his mind focused on putting an end to this. Abe’s ghost was about to find, if not peace, then a little justice. Now, as they were almost at their target, doubt began to creep up on him — doubts about himself, his ability to carry out his self-assigned mission, and doubts about his right to mete out punishment as judge and executioner. And like other times when these feelings surfaced, he crushed them down. No sane person would question the need to protect himself from a rabid animal, and that’s what these fanatics had proven themselves to be.

He thought about the mercenary and about how that chance encounter had changed their lives. For Mercer it was the beginning of a lifetime of service to his country, in ways he’d never thought possible. Since that first firefight, he’d taken up arms a hundred times to defend the defenseless, and he did so without question or need for recognition. That day had made him a better person, someone willing to step in when others stepped back. It had been a momentous point in his life. He imagined it had altered the South African too. He had seen the pain in the other man’s eyes, and the savagery with which he had pursued the lightning stones. A lifetime of physical disfigurement had clearly had psychological ramifications. That one shot was a single act of both creation and destruction…of the good Mercer had perpetrated, and the evil from which the South African hadn’t turned away. Mercer knew the final echo of that bullet’s journey was about to die out. Soon one or both of them were going to die. There was simply no other alternative.

A red light flashed next to the rear cargo ramp.

“Game time,” Book shouted.

Mercer purged all thoughts of the past, and he stood with Book against the bulkhead.

A minute later, the young loadmaster lowered the rear cargo door. A wash of humidity and spray whipped into the cargo bay. They each picked up one of the carrying handles of the used Jet Ski they’d bought in Fiji. Mercer struggled. They shuffled forward until they were standing over the precipice. Fifty feet didn’t seem that high, and thirty knots didn’t seem that fast, until you were looking backward out of an aircraft from which you had to jump. Then the ocean looked miles below and flashed past in a dizzying blur of speed.

As the aircraft came directly abreast of the distant tracking ship, the pilot slowed almost to a stop and dipped the Osprey thirty feet closer to the sea.

The two men were grateful for the courtesy. They leapt in perfect synchrony, and just before they crashed into the phosphorescent water, they both pushed off of the Jet Ski so they landed well clear of the 250-pound watercraft.

Mercer came up spitting water and swam over to the bobbing machine. Booker reached it a second later. They checked that the duffel strapped to the old Kawasaki was in place. Running without lights, the Osprey was just a distant drone that quickly faded to silence.

“Ready?” Sykes asked.

“Let’s do this.”

While the Jet Ski was capable of speeds in excess of thirty knots, the two men clinging to it kept it humming at just about five. They didn’t want to generate excessive noise, and they certainly didn’t want to be noticed on radar. “Slow and steady” was how Book proposed they reach the Akademik Zhukovsky, and that’s just what they did. It was awkward for the two men to cling to the slender little craft, designed to be ridden by one person standing on the rear deck, but they made it work. It rode so low that occasional waves broke over its bow and doused the duo, but with dive masks in place it was nothing more than an annoyance.

It took a little under an hour to cover the distance, and Booker checked his wrist compass constantly. With the former Russian ship running as dark as their Osprey had been, they only realized they had arrived when they were almost on her. There was no moon, and while the stars were bright, the big ship seemed to have been swallowed whole by the night.

They were less than four hundred yards away before Mercer could see that the slight disruption of the star field along the horizon was actually their target. He pointed it out to Sykes so he could adjust their bearing slightly. With its three giant dish antennas pointing skyward, the ship looked massively top heavy. As they drew closer, they could see bits of light leaking from a few portholes. Book killed the Jet Ski, and for another ten minutes they watched the Zhukovsky from a distance, looking for any movement that gave away the presence of roaming guards. They saw nothing except a shadowy figure in the darkened wheelhouse who twice walked out onto the wing bridge. At one point another man had opened a hatch and stood at the rail to enjoy a late-night cigarette; when he was finished, he pitched the butt into the sea so it looked like a tiny meteorite that winked out when it hit the water.

It was clear that the Osprey returning to her operational altitude hadn’t been noticed by the radar operators aboard the ship.

“Half hour?” Book asked.

“If we’re not done by then, we’ve screwed the pooch. So yeah.”

They had borrowed a waterproof tablet computer from the America’s XO that had an alarm clock app that lit up the screen and played Sousa marches. Sykes slid it from the pouch along with some other gear. Once he’d set the alarm, he duct-taped the tablet to the Jet Ski’s steering column. With no way to secure the little machine to the towering side of the ship so that it wouldn’t bang against the hull, they would have to let it float free. They would be able to find it easily after they were finished with their mission and the alarm had gone off.

They closed the last few yards by using their legs to flutter-kick the Jet Ski across the surface. Mercer put out a hand so they didn’t ram into the steel side of the Nikolay Zhukovsky. He held them steady while Booker laced special pads over his dive booties and then fitted his hands into oddly shaped paddle gloves that were the size of cookie sheets. He placed a palm on the side of the ship and it stuck fast.

He whispered, “Those DARPA weenies never disappoint.”

DARPA was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. military’s very real version of the fictional Q Branch from the James Bond movies. They are credited, among other things, with creating the Internet, building the predecessor to the GPS system, aiding in the development of driverless cars, and running the secret X-37B space plane program.

This latest toy was called Geckskin. DARPA-funded engineers had studied how it was possible for geckos and other lizards to support their weight while climbing up walls and across ceilings. Eventually they’d cracked the interplay of tendons and muscles and hit on the right combination of stiffness for strength and softness for maximum surface contact. The result was an adhesive that could hold a large amount of weight for its size while also being very easy to peel back off again and reuse an infinite number of times. Their goal all along had been for a man to be able to perform one of Spider-Man’s greatest feats, and they had more than succeeded.

Once Mercer had slid into his own set of Geckskin pads, Book unstuck his hand, reached a little higher, and restuck the pad to the ship. He did the same with his feet, and just like that he was stuck to the side of the ship, perched like a housefly on a smooth wall. They’d received some instruction on using the Geckskin from the DARPA rep who was field-testing it with some Marines aboard the America, so Mercer and Book knew how to properly peel off the adhesive pads, reach slightly higher, and reattach. They’d originally planned to use good old-fashioned rope and hooks to reach the deck, but the Geckskin method eliminated virtually any chance of being detected.

Mercer followed the ex — Delta raider and was soon fifteen feet above the abandoned Jet Ski drifting below his feet. The sensation was a little different from traditional rock climbing, but no more stressful on the body. It was even easier in that you made your own handholds and didn’t have to expend energy looking for them.

The Zhukovsky’s main deck towered twenty feet above the waterline, and the two men climbed it in just a couple of minutes. Even where the hull plates were wet, the Geckskin stuck as surely as a magnet.

Mercer noted something anomalous as he climbed. Half-inch-thick braided wire had been welded to the hull in parallel rows about five feet apart. The wire ran from below the waterline up to the deck and then continued onward until it vanished into the darkness surrounding the main dish antenna. He couldn’t tell if the wire was a recent addition or had been added years earlier, but it certainly appeared to be some sort of retrofit.

They stopped climbing just below the ship’s rail, listening hard for a few seconds. They heard nothing but the lapping of waves and the hum of auxiliary equipment and other electrical gear on board the ship. They rose a little higher and peered onto the deck. As before, there was no movement.

Mercer and Book completed the climb up and over the rail, huddling in the shadow under a lifeboat to remove the pads and stow them where they wouldn’t be found.

“Too quiet,” Booker whispered as he pulled the Kriss off his shoulder.

Mercer agreed. These guys had been in possession of the crystals for almost a full day. They should be getting ready to use them, but there was no indication anything was happening. He removed the antique .45 from its pouch, cocked it quietly, and lowered the hammer.

“I don’t get it,” Mercer said. “It’s a perfectly clear night — why aren’t they at least running a test on their gear?”

Book shrugged, and they pressed in tighter beneath the lifeboat. Other than the sound of an occasional door closing within the hull of the ship, there was no movement on deck.

A lyrical ping broke the silence, and a moment later a voice erupted from the vessel’s integrated PA system. “Votre attention s’il vous plaît,” a male voice intoned in French.

Because he had spent the first twelve years of his life in West Africa, French was the only foreign language Mercer spoke comfortably, even if actual Frenchmen thought his accent atrocious.

The message continued and he translated for Booker. “This is it…they started a ten-minute countdown for their first experimental test with the actual stones. All personnel who have not cleared the decks must do so immediately. All nonessential electric equipment must be powered down. All reactor technicians must be at their stations.”

The message ended and Mercer said to Book, “You had to jinx it by saying things were too quiet, didn’t you? We could have just snuck aboard, stolen the stones, and been done with this.”

The big man shrugged. “You know I like things dramatic…with lethal countdowns and shit.”