The Jewels of Cyttorak (10 page)

Service nodded. “Let’s go to my office. I’ve warned my father that he would have visitors, but I want to tell you what I saw before I subject you to a talk with him.”

Scott gave Jean a puzzled look, then said, “As you wish.”

Without another word, Service turned and led the three X-Men down a concrete path through an ornately decorated garden. Lights, like small mushrooms sprouting in the plants, kept both the path and the garden illuminated like a pathway at Disneyland. Scott found it both attractive, and odd for a New York estate.

The mansion was a large, white, three-story building that dominated the area in the middle of manicured lawns, also illuminated by little mushroom lights. Service led them in a back door, through a big kitchen filled with copper pots and pans, then down a hall and into a large office.

He closed the door behind them and moved around behind a cluttered desk, indicating three leather chairs in front of the desk for them to sit. .

Scott studied the room, filled with books and magazines. Mostly financial, a few science. A large computer dominated one corner of the big desk and there was no doubt to Scott that the computer was hooked up worldwide and got a lot of use.

“Again,” Service said as he dropped down into his chair with a sigh, “thanks for coming.”

“It wasn’t a problem,” Hank said gently, “but it would be nice to know why we’re here.”

“I suppose,” Gary said, “that starting from the beginning would be the best. You see, during the Korean war, my father found a large emerald in the ruins of a temple.”

Scott felt as if someone had run an electrical shock through the seat of his chair. And with the intimate connection with Jean, he could feel she was just as surprised as he was. That sounded exactly like how the Juggernaut had gotten his powers.

Service looked first at Scott, then at Jean, then Hank, a puzzled expression on his face. He could clearly tell they were shocked. “Does that mean anything?”

“It might,” Hank said. “But please go on with the story.”

Service nodded. “My father was warned by a monk to never touch a gem he found in that temple, so when he discovered the emerald, he says he didn’t touch it.” “And he kept it all these years?” Jean asked. Service nodded. ‘ ‘Up until the other night my brother, Robert, and I didn’t even know it existed. But you see, my father is dying of cancer, so he decided to show us, and warn us to not touch it.”

‘ ‘And your brother ignored the warning?’ ’ Scott said. His stomach was twisting like he was about to go into a life and death battle. Could it be possible that there were now two Juggernauts? That thought was just too ugly to comprehend.

“That’s correct,” Service said. “Robert has a real ego problem. His goal in life is to be the richest and most powerful man alive. And, I’m afraid, he will stop at nothing to get it.”

“So what happened when he touched the gem?” Jean asked.

Service shuddered. “It was amazing. Some sort of energy flowed out of the emerald and surrounded him, expanding him, making him bigger and much, much stronger. I’ll bet he’s almost eight feet tall now.” “Another Juggernaut,” Scott said softly.

“Possibly.” Hank said. He stared intently at Service across the desk. “How tall would you say he is now?” Service frowned. “He barely hit six feet before, and he grew at least half a foot.”

Hank nodded. “Then he’s not quite at Cain’s level. The Juggernaut is closer to seven feet tall. Did the gem in some fashion attach itself to him?”

“No,” Service said. “He still held it in his hand when he left the room.”

Scott was starting to see where Hank was going with the questions. The pattern of what happened to Robert Service when he touched the emerald was similar to what happened to Cain Marko when he touched the Cyttorak ruby. But it wasn’t
exactly
the same. And that was a good sign.

“So where is your brother now?” Scott asked.

“He’s on our private jet. I just got a report that he's just taken off from Boise, heading north toward Spokane.”

“Idaho?” Jean said. “What’s he doing out west?” “I have no idea,” Service said, sighing.

Jean stared at Service for a moment, then said, “I

think we should talk to your father now, if that would be all right?”

Service shrugged and stood. “He’s got a special, round-the-clock care unit set up near the front of the house. I hope you can stand the smell.”

“Smell?” Scott asked.

Service nodded, leading them toward the office door. “That’s right. You see, my father is dying of a nasty form of skin cancer. It is not pleasant.”

After four hours of standing totally still in a small alcove just down the street from the entrance to the Bijou, Remy’s “ghost” from the previous night hadn’t shown up.

Around the French Quarter, the tourists were now mostly bunched around the shops, bars, and clubs along the narrow Bourbon Street. Only a few braved on foot the darker side streets between Bourbon and the Cafe Du-mond down near the river.

A11 the good restaurants in the Quarter were long closed, and the thick smells of gumbo and Cajun cooking had been replaced with the faint odor of rotting garbage and spilled rum drifting on the warm humid air.

When Remy had left the alcove, he half expected the “ghost” to show up and follow him, but on that guess he was also out of luck. At some point he was going to figure out what that “ghost” thing had been all about. But it didn’t look as if it would be tonight.

Remy moved past the laughing tourists sitting in the outdoor Cafe Dumond and down along the river levy, heading for Toole’s headquarters. It was time someone talked to Toole about the old ways of the city.

Remy figured he was just the person to do it.

And tonight was as good a time as any.

The black water of the river lapped at the rocks along the dike as Remy slipped from shadow to shadow, moving up into the neighborhood of the warehouse that had been converted by the mysterious Mr. Toole. The area was a

rundown section of town. At one time, in the distant past, the district had been a busy area for shipping and business, but no one had yet taken the old, gray warehouses and converted them into shops for the tourists. So the buildings rotted in the heat and humidity and rain, occupied mainly by the homeless, the streets around them prime markets for illegal drugs of every type.

That applied to most of the buildings and most of the streets in the district, but not all of them. One warehouse complex had been saved by Toole.

Remy’s first sign of a guard was half a block away from Toole’s building. Two men walked along the street, almost as if they were tourists, very lost, walking slowly in one of the most dangerous areas of town.

Not hardly.

They both wore trenchcoats, even though the night was warm and humid. Remy knew for a fact that machine guns were hung in slings under those coats, armed and ready to be swung up at a moment’s notice.

Remy held his hand on two playing cards in the pocket of his duster, ready to charge them with energy at any moment as he moved silently across the street. He ducked into a small alcove and waited for the two guards to pass.

Then, moving from shadow to alcove, then back to shadow, he made his way closer to Toole’s buildings. The two guards would have been easy to take out, but why announce his presence just yet? Better to get inside before doing that.

A quarter of a block from Toole’s buildings, the guards got even thicker. Two by two, they walked the streets around the old warehouse. More guards were posted in windows of buildings nearby, machine gun barrels sticking out of the windows like popsicle sticks out of children’s mouths.

Remy stopped and studied what lay ahead. He could count at least fifty armed men just around the front. No doubt at all that there were many more inside, and maybe even a few he hadn’t spotted.

The army’s here
, he thought.
This guy is one scared sucker.

Remy moved back down the street and circled around a few blocks until he was down on the dike that held the river out of most of New Orleans. One thing a thief learned real early in life was that if you couldn’t get in the front door, more than likely the back door was wide open.

Remy moved up and over the dike, then climbed down the rocks into the lukewarm water. It smelled slightly like dead fish and motor oil, but nothing as bad as the thick swamp water of Cajun country where Remy had grown up. And this river supposedly didn’t have any alligators in it.

He let the gentle current drift him down along the levy until he was even with the back of Toole’s building complex. There had once been a dock there, but it was long rotted away to a few timbers sticking out of the water.

Using one of the old dock timbers for cover, he slowly climbed out of the water, stopping for a few minutes to let most of the water finish dripping off his waterproof costume and duster. Then he headed up the side of the dike toward a power pole located thirty yards from the back of the warehouse.

There, using the power pole for cover, he studied the back of Toole’s building.

A half-dozen guards were stationed at various locations along the warehouse side of the dike and Remy could see another dozen in positions along the tops of the warehouses. In all his years he had never seen a location with so many armed guards. It was as if all the gold of Fort Knox was inside there.

What was this Toole so afraid of? This level of protection made no sense at all.

Of course, the number of men made no difference at all to Remy. They just made getting in a little more of a challenge, that was all. And getting to Toole would, more than likely, take a little more time. But at this point Remy was in no hurry.

None at all.

He studied the guard positions, the power lines running into the building, the locations of the windows and the back doors, the large, old loading dock that covered a third of one side of the building. Spotlights flooded the area around the building and along the land side of the dike. The area under those spotlights would be a killing field. So the trick was first to shut them down.

He moved slowly and silently back down the rock-covered dike toward the water and the shelter of old dock timbers. Along the way he picked up baseball-sized stones, dropping a few into the pockets of his duster, holding the others in the crook of his arm.

At the timber he stopped, gathered up a few more

stones, then smiled to himself. “Mon
ami,"
he said softly to Toole inside the building, “here I come, ready or not.”

Using his mutant power, he charged one of the rocks in his fist with a full charge of kinetic energy, then, with the accuracy of a professional baseball player, he threw it at the base of the power pole.

Direct hit.

The explosion shook the night and echoed over the black water, shaking the drinks in the bars on Bourbon Street.

The lower half of the power pole evaporated into splinters, dropping the top half down, pulling the wires tight.

There was a loud snapping and popping, then the lights of the warehouse flickered and went out. Remy had no doubt that the place would have backup power systems, but this would give him a good start.

Moving to the right along the waterline, Remy charged one rock after another, stopping to throw each one back up over the dike toward the left comer of the warehouse complex.

Each rock hit and exploded like a huge bomb, sending bits of rock, concrete, and wood flying into the air in a concussion of orange light.

A few of the guards started firing, and others picked up the pace. What they were firing at Remy had no idea, since he was nowhere near the area. But the entire warehouse district of New Orleans now sounded like a war zone.

He picked up a few smaller rocks that he felt he could throw farther, charged them, and tossed them even harder

at the left side of Toole’s building. Then right behind them he tossed a few larger ones.

Explosion mixed with explosion.

The roar of gunfire became like an explosion in and of itself.

Remy moved down the dike, away from the fight, toward the right side of the warehouse where an old loading dock used to let tracks in from a small side alley.

He was going in there, while everyone else focused on the other side of the complex.

He neared the top of the dike and stopped just long enough to pick up three more rocks. One right after another he charged them and tossed them as far as he could toward different parts of the left side of the building.

After the three blinding flashes and explosions intensified the gunfire and blinded anyone looking in that direction, he went over the top of the dike and down across the darkened open area to the loading dock, moving in under it like a shadow of the night, unseen by the hundreds of guards.

The river tumbled down over the rocks, filling the steep-walled valley with a low rumbling sound. On most evenings over the many years that Albert Jonathan had lived in this secluded mountain valley, the sounds of the river had comforted him, soothed him to sleep.

But not tonight.

Tonight there would be no sleep for him. Tonight the river sounded like a wounded mountain lion, roaring its warning to anyone who would listen.