The Six Sacred Stones jw-2

by Matthew Reilly

  After another leap, he was standing at the base of a long stepped bridge that soared upward to the roof of the next tower.

  “Hey, Cowboys,” he called back to the twins. “Go grab some spray paint or something from the Raider and then follow us, painting the correct stones as we go. Oh, and if something happens to us, you’ll have to take our place, jumping across these stones.”

  Lachlan and Julius both gulped. Then they raced back to the submarine to find some paint.

  And so Jack made his way across the labyrinth of high bridges—leaping onto stepping-stones—guided by the voices coming in over his headset, answering the riddles.

  “What is the best number of eyes…”

  “One,”Wizard’s voice had answered. “The all-seeing eye that appeared on capstones.”

  “What is the best life…”

  “The second life, the afterlife,”Wizard said. “Jump onto the stone saying ‘Two.’”

  He made good progress, with the Sea Ranger and the twins running after him across the bridges and over the hollow towers.

  As they advanced across the dazzling bridged city, Jack looked out across the cavern, trying to gauge Wolf’s progress—and to his dismay, he saw that Wolf was moving just as fast, if not faster, than he was.

  Then suddenly bullets started pinging off the walls above his head.

  Alerted by his radio transmissions, Wolf’s men had spotted him and were now firing at him whenever they got a clear line of sight through the dense forest of towers and bridges.

  Jack and the Sea Ranger came to a ledge that burrowed inside one of the hollow towers. Inside the tower, they were presented with another triple choice, only here there were no carvings at all on the three available stepping-stones.

  Lily quickly translated the inscription on the ledge. “What is the direction of Death…”

  “It’s west,”Wizard said,“the direction of the setting Sun. The ancient Egyptians always thought that the Sun was born every morning in the east and died every evening in the west. That’s why they always buried their dead on the western side of the Nile. The answer is ‘west.’”

  Jack jumped for the stepping-stone to the west of him.

  It held and he ran up the stair-bridge to the next tower, followed by the Sea Ranger.

  They’d made it halfway to the ziggurat in the center of the minicity when suddenly they heard some shouts and Wolf yelling, “Okay! Switchblade and Broadsword! It’s all yours! Go! Go!”

  Jack peered out around the corner of a building—and spotted Wolf’s CIEF team scampering up the stairs on the front face of the ziggurat, looking like ants against the scale of the structure.

  Damn it, no!Jack thought.

  They’d reached the ziggurat first and were now heading for the ladder that led across the ceiling to the great pyramid.

  Jack saw Wolf with his son, Rapier, and Alby on the stairs of the ziggurat with the main cluster of CIEF troops. Then he spotted two men dashing out ahead of the main group, running up the ziggurat: one was Caucasian in appearance and wore the uniform of a Delta operator. The second man was of Asian appearance and wore the distinctive battle dress uniform of a Marine Force Reconnaissance trooper.

  Switchblade.

  The traitor.

  And so despite the fact that he was still well behind in this race, Jack just kept going as best he could.

  Never stop,he thought.You never give up.

  Across the bridges he flew.

  Up the ladder, Broadsword and Switchblade went.

  Jack leaped across more riddle jumps, aided by Wizard and Lily from afar, all the while under fire from Wolf’s men guarding the ziggurat.

  Broadsword and Switchblade reached the top of the ladder, started venturing out across the ceiling of the supercavern, hanging from the rungs by their hands high above the underground city.

  Jack’s course from the western harbor took him in a wide northward curve that passed close to the suspended pyramid. Here Jack discovered that there was indeed another abyss delving deep into the Earth directly beneath the immense bronze pyramid.

  He came to a tower at the very edge of the city, one that adjoined the abyss itself—the tower’s northern side actually blended perfectly with the near wall of the abyss—and from there Jack got a clear view of the pyramid itself.

  He watched as the two CIEF men climbed hand over hand down a line of hand rungs cut into the spine of the pyramid. Dangling high above the seemingly bottomless pit, they edged downward, moving ever closer to the pyramid’s peak.

  And Jack came to a horrific realization.

  He was too far away.

  He was too late.

  He couldn’t get there in time—there was no way he could get to the ziggurat, somehow get past Wolf ’s men there, and then scale the ladder and the spine of the pyramid and stop Switchblade from doing whatever he planned to do.

  The two CIEF men reached the inverted peak of the pyramid—and Jack watched in wonder as the Delta man named Broadsword slung a climbing harness over the last hand rung and, hanging from it, used his now-free hands to extract from his chest pack…

  …the Second Pillar.

  Cleansed and ready to be set in place.

  On the ziggurat, Wolf also gazed in awe at the scene, his eyes glistening with delight. With him stood Rapier and Alby and the warlock of the Neetha, flanked by two guards.

  Wolf’s mind buzzed with the possibilities.

  The reward would be his:heat. According to his chief researcher, the MIT professor, Felix Bonaventura, it was heat generated by the secret of perpetual motion. Energy without fuel.Limitless energy that could power electricity grids, airplanes and cars, but which would not require coal or oil or gasoline. The Saudi stranglehold on America would be broken; the entire Middle East would become irrelevant.

  It was of course at that precise moment, as Wolf reached a rapture of delight, that the most unexpected thing of all happened.

  For then, as Wolf watched in horror, out on the inverted pyramid’s peak—while Broadsword readied the Pillar for placement—Switchblade drew a Ka-Bar knife and sliced it across Broadsword’s throat, grabbing the Pillar from him as he did so.

  Broadsword went instantly limp, blood flowing from the gaping hole in his neck and dribbling down into the abyss like a macabre waterfall.

  Then Switchblade callously cut Broadsword’s harness and the dying Delta operator fell from the peak of the pyramid, dropping into the fathomless void, his limp figure disappearing into darkness.

  “What the fuck…?” Wolf said. “Switchblade!”

  From his position on the nearest tower, Jack also watched as Switchblade killed Broadsword.

  “Oh, God…” he breathed as he saw Broadsword fall.

  Out on the pyramid, Switchblade now hung from his own harness, holding the Pillar in one hand. He held it up for Wolf to see and shouted, “Welcome to the end of the world, Wolf! A world that gloried in the humiliation of my people! Now that world will be no more! Nippon was never defeated!”

  “Switchblade! No!” Wolf yelled.

  Switchblade snarled, “Covetous man! You want earthly power. There is no greater power on this planet than the ability to destroy it. Now witness that power, and know that, in the end, we won the war!”

  He then thrust the Pillar out from his body, his arm fully outstretched, preparing to drop it into the abyss.

  “See you in Hell!” he roared.

  And with those final hateful words, Switchblade dropped the cleansed Second Pillar into the abyss.

  SWITCHBLADE let go of the Pillar—at the exact moment that someone came thudding into him, swinging on a rope of some kind.

  It was Jack, hanging on to the end of Astro’s Maghook,having swung across from his tower, two hundred feet away!

  With nothing else to call on, he’d fired the Maghook’s magnetic head into the side of the pyramid and hoped to God that the structure had magnetic properties.

  It did, and the bulbous magnetic head stuc
k fast against the pyramid, and Jack swung—a long, swooping arc over the bottomless abyss, an absolutely astonishing two-hundred-foot swing—arriving at the peak just as Switchblade yelled his final insult to Wolf and released the Pillar…

  …which Jack caught……a nanosecond before he slammed into Switchblade himself and stopped abruptly, becoming entangled in the insane Marine’s harness! Clutching desperately for a handhold, he was forced to release the Maghook and it swung back toward the city, leaving him clinging to Switchblade at the peak of the pyramid.

  Switchblade was furious. His eyes blazed with rage at this intrusion on his triumph.

  He punched Jack hard in the face, a withering blow, and Jack recoiled sharply, his helmet-camera dislodging from his head. It plummeted down into the abyss, cartwheeling wildly. As he was flung backward by the blow, Jack only just managed to keep hold of the Pillar with his right hand while clinging to Switchblade’s chest harness with his left.

  Hanging on desperately, he looked up into Switchblade’s eyes……and saw that the Japanese madman wasn’t finished.

  Switchblade glared at Jack as he began to unclip the central buckle of his harness.

  “Oh, you’re not…” Jack said.

  He was.

  He was going to drop them both into the abyss!

  “We’re both going to die anyway!” Switchblade yelled. “Might as well die now!”

  And with those words, he managed to unclip the buckle—just as Jack made a final lunge, yanking himself up Switchblade’s body, reaching with his outstretched arm for the peak of the pyramid—and in the very instant that the buckle unclasped and they both dropped together,he jammed the Pillar into its slot in the summit of the pyramid and then fell, with Switchblade but no longer holding the Pillar, dropping away from the pyramid’s peak, watching it get smaller and smaller as the sheer walls of the abyss closed in around him.

  And thus Jack West Jr. and the fanatic named Switchblade fell down into the abyss beneath the inverted pyramid of the Second Vertex of the Machine, an abyss that for all anyone knew went all the way to the center of the Earth.

  AS THE TWO tiny figures disappeared into the dark abyss beneath the pyramid, the great structure’s mysterious mechanism came loudly and spectacularly to life.

  First there was heard an ominous thrumming, then a deafening thunderboom that shook the entire supercavern. Then a dazzling laserlike beam of light lanced out from the pyramid’s apex, shooting down into the abyss, before a moment later it sucked back up into the pyramid’s peak.

  Silence.

  The combination of the ancient spectacle and the fall of Switchblade and Jack hit the various spectators in different ways.

  Wolf.

  At first, he’d been shocked by the reappearance of Jack, but he regathered quickly and after the light show he dispatched Rapier to go and grab the now-charged Pillar from the pyramid and thus garner the reward, the secret of perpetual motion.

  Once the Pillar was retrieved and in his hands, Wolf swept out of the underground city.

  Someone asked him what they should do with the boy, Alby, and he cast a dismissive wave.

  “Leave him here,” he said before striding out with his men, leaving Alby alone, on top of the ziggurat in the middle of the city.

  The Sea Ranger and the twins.

  They just stood motionless on the roof of the tower from which Jack had swung only moments before.

  The Sea Ranger stared at the scene, digesting what had just happened.

  The twins stood with their mouths agape. Horus, who had been sitting on Lachlan’s shoulder, flew off toward the abyss.

  “He did it…” Lachlan breathed. “He fucking-A did it. He set the Pillar in place.”

  Julius shook his head. “The guy is frigging Super Jack.”

  “You can say that again,” the Sea Ranger said, glancing around them.

  None of them had seen Alby through the labyrinth of buildings.

  “Come on, gentlemen,” Wickham said. “We can’t stay here. We have to get back out that entry tunnel before Wolf’s buddies send a destroyer to seal it off. Come on.”

  They hustled back to the Indian Raider.

  “What about Horus?” Lachlan said as they moved.

  “That bird’s destiny is with Jack,” Wickham said grimly. “Always has been.”

  Alby.

  Standing alone on the summit of the ziggurat in the middle of this vast underground space, abandoned by his captors and with darkness descending all around him as their flares began to fade, he felt the most profound sense of aloneness.

  The sight of Jack West plummeting from view had shocked him to his very core—till now Jack had seemed indestructible, incapable of dying, but now he was gone, swallowed by the great abyss, dead.

  And with that thought, a cold horror swept through Alby’s body as he realised that he was going to die here, in this huge dark cave, alone.

  Standing there on the ancient ziggurat in the encroaching darkness, clutching Jack’s helmet, he softly began to cry.

  Wizard, Zoe, Sky Monster, and Lily.

  They saw it happen on their videophone monitor.

  Watching it all first from Jack’s helmet camera and then from the camera that Lachlan had been wearing, they watched in horror as the ultratiny figures of Jack and Switchblade fell away from the tip of the immense pyramid, dropping down into the abyss, before they both disappeared from sight.

  “Daddy…!”Lily cried, leaping at the screen. “No!No, no, no…!”

  “Jack…” Zoe’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Huntsman…” Wizard whispered.

  Sky Monster pointed at the screen. “Look, he laid the Pillar before he fell! He did it! The crazy bastard did it…!”

  But then an alarm siren blared out in the cockpit and Sky Monster went to check on it and he called, “Zoe! Wiz! We have incoming South African aircraft! F-15s! We have to get out of here!”

  Despite their tears, Zoe and Wizard hurried off to man the wing guns, leaving Lily staring at the monitor—alone, frozen, stunned—sobbing deep wrenching sobs and searching for some sign, any sign, that her father was alive but knowing in her heart that he could not possibly be.

  “Oh, Daddy…” she said again. “Daddy…”

  Then The Halicarnassus powered up and they took to the air, flying north this time, away from southern Africa, fleeing yet again, uncertain and unnerved by the knowledge that now without any shadow of a doubt, they faced the remaining challenges of their quest—the placing of the last four Pillars in March of 2008—alone, without Jack West Jr.

  THE END OF

  THE 6 SACRED STONES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WRITING A NOVEL can be a somewhat solitary experience: you spend months alone at the keyboard, lost in the world you have created. I happen to find this enormously fun, which is why writing novels is the best job in the world for me.

  But when you decide to write a book with ancient Chinese characters and Japanese military language in it, you have to call for help, and this is where I get to thank those many people who helped me along the way.

  As always, my wife, Natalie, is the first to read my stuff and her comments still manage to be both insightful and gentle. Having read all my books in draft stage plus all my screenplays, she’s now really quite an experienced manuscript reader!

  To my good friend John Schrooten, who (again) read this one while sitting in the M.A. Noble Stand at the SCG while waiting for the cricket to start. The cricket commenced and he just kept on reading, so that was a good sign! Great friend, great guy.

  For technical support, I am indebted to Patrick Pow for getting the ancient Chinese scripts from China, and to Irene Kay for putting me in touch with Patrick.

  For the Chinese language tips, my thanks go to Stephanie Pow. Likewise, since I know no Japanese, I have to thank Troy McMullen (and his wife and sister-in-law!) for their help!

  I read many books while researching The 6 Sacred Stones —from works about s
pace and zero-point fields to more esoteric books about Stonehenge and other ancient places. I’d like to make special mention, first, of the works of Graham Hancock, which I just love and would recommend wholeheartedly to anyone who wants to view global history from an unconventional point-of-view, and second, of a little gem of a book called Stonehenge by Robin Heath. It was in this book that I first saw the theory that connects Stonehenge to the Great Pyramid through a series of right-angle triangles.