Black Sun: A Thriller (22 page)

“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?

D
anielle burst through the doors to the emergency room. Hawker came behind her carrying Yuri in his arms.

“We need a doctor!” Hawker shouted.

“Necesitamos un médico,”
Danielle repeated in Spanish.

She looked around. The room was dark, lit only by the sunlight coming through tinted windows and by a pair of emergency lights in each corner.

“No power,” she said.

The drive to the hospital had been panicked madness. The traffic lights were out, cars stalled in various places. To get them here Danielle had driven on the median and down the sidewalk at one point. But the power loss had preceded them. As had a large number of prospective patients.

Like most ERs in America, this one was overcrowded and understaffed. There were already more patients in the waiting room than the unit could accommodate quickly.

Priority went to those most in need: heart attack victims, those with life-threatening wounds or conditions.
For patients who were fortunate enough to have minor traumas and lesser conditions, the wait could be hours.

Danielle was certain that Yuri did not have that kind of time.

A nurse glanced at them from across the room, focused on Yuri’s limp form. A second later she was rushing over, stethoscope in hand.

“Do you speak English?” Danielle asked.

The nurse nodded. “What’s happened to this child,” she asked, putting the stethoscope to his chest.

“He had a seizure,” Danielle replied.

The nurse checked the blood oozing from Yuri’s ear, then lifted one of his eyelids and flashed a light into it. The concern on her face deepened.

“He’s nonresponsive, barely breathing,” she said. “This way.”

She led them down a darkened hall to a curtained-off room lit by the emergency power. It was clean but the equipment was older. Danielle wondered if they would have what Yuri needed.

“We should have taken him to the States,” she said aloud.

“I assure you we have good doctors here,” the nurse said.

Danielle nodded. She hadn’t meant to disparage the health care they were likely to get at this place. She hadn’t even meant the statement to refer to now; she’d meant after Hong Kong, instead of coming to Mexico.

“It’ll be all right,” Hawker said, laying Yuri down on the examination table.

“How?”

“I don’t know. But it will.”

The nurse ducked out and a few seconds later a doctor came in. “I’m Dr. Vasquez,” she said, going right to the examination table without looking at either Danielle or Hawker.

“This child had a seizure?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Danielle replied.

Dr. Vasquez moved to the other side of the table, checking Yuri’s pulse and blood pressure.

“When?”

“Twenty minutes ago.”

The doctor looked up. “When the blackout hit?” she asked. “What was he doing at the time?”

Danielle paused, her mind searching.

“Was he watching TV? Or in a room without natural light?”

The question made sense to her now. Seizures could be caused by many different stimuli; one common cause was flickering light, like that of a television or computer screen cycling or on the fritz.

“No,” Danielle said. “We were outside, on the water.”

Dr. Vasquez stared at her and then looked over at Hawker. “Near Puerto Azul?”

Danielle didn’t reply. She guessed that news of the strange incident there had reached the hospital despite the blackout. Boats racing into a sleepy harbor, explosions that caused blackouts, and a group of people beaching their craft and racing on foot while carrying an injured child were not likely to go unnoticed.

Danielle stared into the doctor’s eyes. “Look, I have two years of medical training, and I saw this child have
a seizure. Now he’s unconscious, bleeding from his ear, with possible bleeding inside his skull. He needs an MRI or a CT scan or whatever you have available to make sure his brain is not swelling.”

Dr. Vasquez began to look uncomfortable.

“You’re not his parents,” she said.

At that moment, a tall, broad-shouldered orderly stepped through the curtain, closing it behind him. He seemed to notice the tension and looked at Dr. Vasquez.

“Ricardo—” she began to say as she reached for an alarm button.

Danielle was on her, a hand going over her mouth and slamming her into the wall. Ricardo lunged for Danielle, but Hawker was quicker. He slammed the orderly against the opposite wall, producing a black handgun and holding it to the man’s head.

The doctor looked at her, eyes filled with utter fright.

Danielle hated what she saw.

“Listen to me,” she said, quietly but with great intensity, her eyes boring into the doctor, willing her to understand. “I promise you,” she said. “I
promise you
. We are not here to hurt you, or your staff, or this child.”

She took a deep breath. Dr. Vasquez took a breath. Hawker pulled the gun away but held it at the ready.

The doctor turned her eyes back toward Danielle.

“I’m not his mother, nor am I some deranged person who’s kidnapped him and thinks he’s my son. He’s not. But he’s been through hell and there are people looking for him who’d like to drag him back there. And I am not going to let that happen.”

Danielle noticed a softening in the doctor’s eyes and
saw her steal a glance toward Yuri. She relaxed the pressure on the doctor’s mouth so she could speak, but held her hand close should Dr. Vasquez try to scream.

“Who are you people?” the doctor asked.

“We’re members of an American security service,” Danielle said.

“You have no authority here,” Dr. Vasquez said bluntly.

“No, we don’t. But our superiors are in touch with important members of your government.” Danielle had no choice but to lie. “People who both know of and have approved of our presence. I don’t have the time or the ability to contact them now. So please, just help us. Then we’ll go.”

Dr. Vasquez seemed torn. She looked at Yuri again. How could she not help? “We can do an MRI,” she said. “And after that you leave.”

Danielle nodded, thinking she would promise anything to get Yuri the examination he needed.

Professor McCarter sat in a public plaza, hiding among a crowd of people and the chaos of a traffic jam caused by the midafternoon blackout.

He tried to concentrate on the surroundings, looking for any sign of trouble, struggling against the flight reflex building within him.

In his backpack he carried the newly found stone, an object that had just discharged a massive burst of electromagnetic energy, an object that at least two groups of armed men were looking for and willing to kill over. As uneasy as he felt carrying it around undefended, both he
and Danielle realized it would be unconscionable to bring it into the hospital, where it could interfere with countless tests and devices, not the least of which were the items needed to examine Yuri.