The Lightning Stones

by Jack Du Brul

  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.”

  28

  There hadn’t been time to find design schematics of the Akademik Zhukovsky, but they had studied plans for the general cargo ship on which she’d been based. They knew in which hold the original control room had most likely been constructed, and they figured in this latest incarnation it would be where the ship’s nuclear power plant’s output would be directed and converted to some form of emitted radiation. Jason believed it was the likeliest spot where the crystals would be stored so the energy could be channeled through them and finally beamed into the atmosphere.

  Booker led Mercer through the door where the cigarette smoker had stood earlier. The interior of the ship was dimmed down to red battle lights to conserve energy, and even as they stood waiting to hear any movement, the air-conditioning system shut down with a sigh of slowing fans. The other thing they didn’t know is how well protected the ship would be. Just because they saw no guards on deck didn’t mean there weren’t any aboard.

  They started down the dull-green-painted hall. They weren’t interested in sweeping the entire ship, so they ignored any closed doors they passed, only checking the rooms they could look into. They found one person on the main deck, a ship’s maintenance specialist who was working in a bathroom. He was on his knees surrounded by plumber’s tools torquing on an open pipe fitting. He turned in time to see the men loom up behind him but never got a word out before Booker clocked him on the back of the head with the Kriss’s retractable stock. It was a well-measured blow that rolled the plumber’s eyes into his skull and collapsed him over his wrenches.

  Sykes tied his wrists behind his back with plastic zip ties, and they moved on.

  Moments later the PA system chimed again, and the same voice came over the speakers. “Huit minutes.”

  Mercer flashed eight fingers for Booker’s benefit. They were seriously running out of time.

  A door opened behind them. Mercer turned to see a man emerge from a cabin followed seconds later by two more. It was too far and too dark to tell who they were. He watched them for a moment longer, trying to determine if they were a threat, when one of the men spotted him in the hallway. There must have been rules in place about where personnel should be during the final critical moments before the experiment, because he shouted and suddenly the three were reaching for their weapons.

  Mercer fired two quick shots that forced the other men back into the cabin.

  “Go!” he shouted to Book. “I’ll hold them. Stop the test.”

  Sykes took off running, presenting a remarkably small target for such a big man. Mercer flattened himself against the wall behind a six-inch pipe stanchion, his pistol extended and ready.

  The corridor exploded in a riot of hot lead and muzzle flashes as a machine pistol on full auto was unloaded in his direction. The onslaught was terrifying, and ricochets careened down the passage, but nothing came close to hitting him. He loosened another pair of rounds to tell the guards they’d missed, but his position was untenable and so he withdrew. Mercer ran
through a door that led to a ladderway. He scrambled down as fast as he could and jumped into another hall one deck down.

  An alarm started to wail.

  Mercer hoped the commotion would make them postpone their experiment until the threat had been assessed and neutralized—but at the moment he wasn’t even sure where it was being conducted. The hallway in which he now stood was more utilitarian than the one upstairs. Not designed as living or recreational space for the crew, the hall was a steel tube with a metal-grate floor that looked down over some machinery. It was sweltering. Steam hissed through a relief valve somewhere. To Mercer it felt like he was in some mid-twentieth-century factory.

  He took a second to swap magazines, even though the first one was only half used up. Then he passed through the veil of steam. A shadow moved at the limit of Mercer’s vision, and he fired a snap shot. Ducking and then peering back, he saw he’d holed a plastic sign hanging on a string from some overhead piping.

  But that mistake attracted the attention of one of his pursuers, who’d taken an alternate route to this deck. Lead filled the air, and Mercer dove flat behind an unused generator. He slid across the hot deck, dropped down an open section of grating to a subdeck below, and doubled back to a spot below where the gunman stood. Mercer raised his pistol so the barrel was between the grating slats and fired twice. One bullet entered the man’s thigh, tearing through the femoral artery so that a dark pulse of blood erupted out of the exit wound. The other bullet went straight up through his groin, emasculating him before ripping into his gut and eventually pulping his heart.

  Mercer had to jump sideways to avoid the rivulets of blood that dropped through the floor grating.

  “Sept minutes.”

  Mercer swore. They weren’t stopping the test.

  He climbed back up and out of the machinery space and saw a figure farther down a dim hallway. The figure ducked around the corner. The steel passageway curved as it wrapped around the enormous structural pedestal supporting the main receiver dish that dominated the Zhukovsky’s stern.

  Mercer aimed at the concave wall and triggered off four quick shots. One of the heavy slugs gouged into the steel bulkhead, but the other three ricocheted around the corner and kept going until they hit something. Mercer could hear the slap of one bullet striking flesh.

  He ran after his shots and saw one guard lying on the deck and another farther down the passage. That guy was running away but he was still armed, and Mercer wasn’t in a forgiving mood. A single shot caused the guard’s back to arch at an almost impossible angle, and he fell flat.

  Mercer flicked his attention to the first guy he’d hit. He, too, was facedown, with a bullet wound to the back of his thigh. Rather than reach down to turn him, he kicked at the man’s hip with everything he had. The guard had been expecting a cautious flip and had his pistol ready to come around when he was rolled onto his back. The kick caught him by surprise, exposing the weapon before he could shoot at Mercer. Instead, Mercer fired one quick shot that put him down.

  Mercer took off running. Now that he had his bearings once again he knew how to reach the control center. He passed several open rooms where men in lab coats or crewman’s overalls loitered in the doorways, looking confused about the continuing alarm bells. Mercer shouted in French that they must remain at their posts, pretending to be one of the guards for their benefit. No one challenged him.

  “Cinq minutes.”

  He ran around a corner and almost got cut in half by Booker with the Kriss.

  “Shit, man. Don’t scare me,” Sykes whispered.

  “I’m the one who needs to change his shorts now, Book. What’s going on? We’ve got five minutes.”

  “Other side of this door is the control room,” Booker said. “They got it closed up just as I got here. I managed to get a few rounds in before they locked me out. We need to find another way.”

  “There isn’t time.”

  Mercer looked around the antechamber. It was a dead end. He checked the walls, the floor, the ceiling…

  He took just a moment to consolidate his two half-empty magazines before turning to Booker. “Give me a hand.” Mercer pointed to a large ventilation grille embedded in the ceiling.

  Sykes shouldered his weapon and made a stirrup with his hands. Mercer stepped into it and was nearly crushed against the roof when Booker lifted.

  “Easy!”

  “Sorry.”

  Mercer pulled off the large grille, pulled his sidearm, and wriggled up and into the duct. It was filthy and, he assumed, laced with Legionnaires’ disease and God knew what else, but it passed through the bulkhead separating them from the control room.

  The thin metal buckled and popped with even the slightest movement, so all Mercer could hope was that the sound was hidden by the klaxon’s shrill cry. There was light in the floor of the duct just ten feet ahead, which meant there was another vent. He slithered to it and tried to peer down, but the louvers were angled so he couldn’t see anything but the control room’s wall directly beneath him.

  “Trois minutes.”

  Mercer was going to have to do this blind, and there was no point in waiting. He hammered at the vent with the heel of his hand, and when it popped free he dove through it headfirst, widening the stance of his legs so his outer thighs caught on the duct’s sharp edge and stopped him from falling all the way to the floor.

  He hung upside down from the ceiling, supporting himself with his knees, and must have looked like a half-formed moth emerging from its chrysalis. His inverted position meant his head was beginning to fill with blood and in seconds his vision would dim.

  The control room on the old Soviet vessel was vast, with banks of computer stations designed for a time when the machines were the size of shipping containers. And it was tall. Mercer was suspended at least twelve feet from the sunken floor. One wall was dominated by massive display screens with the continents shown as a Mercator projection. These would have traced the paths of the Soviet space shuttles. Another wall was mostly a large glass partition. There were only a handful of people there, most in lab coats. They were already on alert because of the alarms and the reports of gunfire, although someone had had the sense to mute the klaxon in this space. As a group they startled at the bang of the metal vent grille hitting the deck, and they were all turning to see what had fallen.

  The first to spot Mercer was the man Mercer feared the most.

  It was the South African, and he moved as fast as a mamba from his native land. His weapon was already in hand even as he began dropping into a kneeling position that would give him the best stability for an overhead shot.

  Somehow Mercer knew he was going to take a knee, and he adjusted his aim to lead his target as he swung the barrel of the .45.

  The mercenary’s gun was just a few arc seconds from zeroing in on Mercer when Mercer fired. His first shot missed by a millimeter and he fired again. Dead on center, and the South African was punched back by the .45 slug.

  Mercer curled his torso up, grasped the edge of the vent with his fingers, and flipped his legs out. He dropped from the duct and landed squarely on the floor below, absorbing the shock in the long muscles of his thighs and calves. The scientists and techs moved back in a herd reflex, eyes wide with fear. Moments ago they felt secure in their fortress with an armed man to look out for them; now they were terrified. Mercer swept the gun so he covered them, and they all moved back until each was pressed against a workstation.

  Mercer kicked aside the unmoving mercenary’s pistol. He saw that he’d hit the man in the narrow spot just below his rib cage. The angle meant the heavy slug had torn through his intestines. It was a killing shot, only the man wasn’t yet dead. It could take a long time to die from being gut-shot. He had one crimson hand pressed to the wound, but more blood was oozing out from under him where the grisly exit wound leached out his life. He looked up now at Mercer, and a sickly smile spread across his scarred visage.

  “Can’t even finish me off proper, eh? Going
to make me die slow so you can watch.”

  “Not going to watch at all,” Mercer said, thinking about Abe.

  Mercer moved to the sealed door and opened the latch. Booker came in with the Kriss high and tight. He took in the tactical scene in an instant and quickly moved to keep the scientists covered.

  “Who is in charge here?” Mercer shouted. No one spoke, so Mercer fired a round into the largest display screen. The sharp blast of the pistol’s discharge was enough to loosen tongues.

  A middle-aged man in a lab coat stuck a tentative hand in the air.

  “You’re not in the bloody classroom. Put your hand down and tell me how to stop this experiment before it’s too late.”

  “Professor Jean-Robert Fortescue is the project leader,” the man said, his voice shaking. He pointed to the large glass window on the far side of the room. “He’s in there. That’s where the crystals are rigged to the antenna relays. This is just the monitoring room.”

  Mercer saw there was a thick door, like that of a bank vault, separating the two spaces. He peered through the massive slab of glass. Beyond was a bright space nearly as large as the control room with towering machines straight out of a mad scientist’s fervid imagination. They were sleek and high tech, their function completely unknowable. He imagined that somewhere in the tangle of power cords as thick as trash barrels, and featureless metal boxes wreathed in frigid clouds of super-cooling gas to keep them from overheating, were the fifty pounds of stones Amelia Earhart had lost her life trying to return to America.

  Mercer couldn’t begin to guess how to stop the experiment once it came online. He only knew from Jason that once energy from the ship’s atomic power plant was flooded through the crystals and into space, the planet’s magnetic fields could show the effects within moments.