The Twelve Stones (30 page)

Ignoring the grim thoughts of his friend cut down before he could get back in time to help, Scott spurred himself to run faster.

Chapter Twenty-
One

Alex had only an instant to see the four men standing outside the exit pointing their weapons at him. They had left the Suburbans out front
,
knowing Alex would see them and go out the back instead.

Like mice running into a trap
. Alex cursed his own stupidity. He turned, using his back to shield his best friend from the hellfire of bullets
,
and threw
Scott
back into the hallway from where they had come.
He then slammed
the door shut in the nick of time as a second round of gunfire peppered the door behind him.

Scott had landed far harder than Alex had intended, but a broken bone was one thing. Dodging his way through the gunfire and weaving his way over behind a parked truck, Alex stumbled,
taking
a few hits to his body before managing to take cover. The wounds the bullets inflicted on him didn’t hurt anymore, the bloody holes healed only a few seconds after they appeared.

Alex turned, peering around the corner of his sanctuary
,
and tried to get a bead on the four men intent on killing him. He smiled grimly and thought of a plan. It was daring, but Alex was secure in the knowledge that
the
stone would protect him.

Clearing his throat
and
dusting his clothes off, Alex stood and faced the four men in jumpsuits
,
who were reloading their Heckler and Koch compact machine guns.
Irritated, he fingered a hole in his shirt.

“
Aww, now guys, that just ain’t cool. I just got this!” Alex spit on the shirt and attempted to clean the red stain where one of the bullets had hit him. “Any of you have any soda water?”
h
e continued in a normal conversational tone. Spitting again on the bloody shirt, he continued, “
T
he secret is to blot, not rub
.
Martha Stewart taught me that.”

He shook his head, “Scott is so gonna kill me. He got this shirt at our first Pearl Jam concert.”

The four men reloading their weapons stopped,
momentarily
dumbfounded as they looked at each other, unsure how to continue. Each man was certain they had hit Alex at least once. Omar was particularly dumbfounded. In all his years as a professional soldier
,
he’d never once missed a target. The soldiers racked the bolt
s
on their machine guns again, and
resumed firing on
Alex.

Nine-
millimeter cartridges are normally plenty lethal. In fact, only the kinetic energy from the bullets managed to somewhat knock Alex off balance
as
each of
the four mercenaries
empt
ied
another
magazine
into him. Alex just smiled broadly
.

Geoffrey Tate watched with binoculars to his face, dumbfounded at Alex’s incredible power.
“
So, I’m not crazy
,
” Geoffrey whispered to himself.
He
stepped out of the truck and moved closer to the four mercenaries, out of Alex’s eyesight.

“
Look
,
fellas,” Alex said in a conversational tone, withdrawing his pistol, “I’m not much of a killer. I’ve had to kill some of your buddies tonight in self-defense, but they made it me or t
hem, and…” Alex shrugged, “I ch
ose them.” He paused
,
winking at one of the mercenaries
,
whose jaw was currently on the ground.

“
Pluuus...” Alex drawled, almost enjoying himself as he watched one of the soldiers make the sign of the
c
ross
while
reloading
his machine gun
,
“
as
you can see, you must have gotten your bullets on discount, because they ain't having too much effect on me tonight.” Alex racked his pistol, loading a bullet into the chamber, holding the grip tightly, ready to pull the trigger on anyone who approached or made any threatening moves.

“
So,” Alex continued, “it appears to me you have two options: One, continue trying to pump me full of lead while I skip, dance and sing the Oscar Meyer Wiener song, or two, lay down your weapons, walk away
;
no harm
,
no foul.”

Alex stopped as he came within ten feet of the four men aiming their submachine guns at Alex’s chest. “So, what’s it gonna be
,
fellas?”

The four men glanced at each other nervously. No one wanted to be the first to lay down their arms, but with what they had just seen, their entire faith in reality had been skewed.

“
Deal ends in thirty seconds
,
guys.” Alex tapped his wristwatch with his pistol
.
“Tick tock, tick tock.”

The seconds ticked down, slowly at first, and then one of the more nervous mercenaries began to lay down his weapon, the other three almost following suit before Geoffrey
,
in disgust
,
whipped out his nine millimeter and shot the surrendering man in the forehead.

“
Coward,” Geoffrey hissed as he spat towards the already
-
dead man. Alex, unnerved by the sudden murder of the mercenary by one of his own people, was momentarily distracted. That was all the time Omar needed
;
he rush
-
tackled Alex
,
knocking the pistol out of his hands. Alex cursed himself for allowing Omar to get so close.

Alex fell to the ground hard, knocking the back of his head against the black pavement of the parking lot. Stars exploded
.
Alex’s vision swam.
With t
he world moving slowly around him, he watched helplessly as Omar took advantage and expertly pinned him down. Being highly trained in combat, one of the first things Omar had learned in boot camp was the restraint of another person. Interlocking his arms with Alex’s
,
he quickly eliminated any chance for Alex to get away.

Alex swore at his own stupidity and recklessness as he struggled against the man who now pinned him down. The stone gave him incredible healing powers,
but
not
, he knew,
total invulnerability.

Geoffrey stepped out from behind the passenger door of his SUV and approached the two entangled men on the ground
,
smiling for the first time all night.

“
So, it seems to me,” Geoffrey said in a perfect imitation of Alex’s earlier smugness, “
t
hat
you have two choices
:
one, coming with us or…” Geoffrey withdrew a small baton, flicking his wrist. The baton extended quickly, the side away from him with tipped with two metal prongs. He shoved the cattle prod into Alex’s side, sending more than 100,000 volts of electricity into his body.

Alex and Omar screamed as the current coursed through their bodies, the electricity overloading their nervous systems. The stone flashed, unable
or uncertain how
to heal the damage Alex was receiving from
the
shock
.

Geoffrey watched with satisfaction the man who had given him and his boss so much trouble tonight writhed pathetically on the ground. “Or you could just come with us
,
I suppose.”

Alex’s cried out in pain as Geoffrey plunged the cattle prod back into his side. His mind burned with one question
:
w
here
was Scott? Wherever he was, Alex hoped he was running far away from this little scene. Two deaths on his conscience
w
ere
more than he thought he could handle for one day.

Chapter Twenty-
Two

Scott was
,
in fact
,
very much alive
,
and sprinting down the hallways back to his laboratory. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
s
cientists
were encouraged to create and begin original projects on their own time using
u
niversity
resources. Some of the projects developed out of this program had become some of the most far
-
reaching and scientifically
-
advanced experiments mankind had ever attempted.

Scott’s proudest achievement had been a direct result of the free
-
thinking administrators
’
offer of support to independent projects. Scott’s first idea had started as an option to attach on the Mars Phoenix Lander. Needing a device that could dig through the solid concrete
-
like ice on Mars, NASA
had
turned to Scott
,
who
had
managed to develop a small handheld digging tool he proudly called the Microwave Sound Amplifier (MISAMP). The MISAMP had been Scott’s crowning achievement, a feat of engineering that hadn’t been seen in quite a
while. With a range of several hundred feet, it combined concentrated microwaves and a high
-
intensity sound wave that shook and separated materials on a molecular level, leaving a nice
-
sized hole behind.

Though l
auded
by his peers (and secretly envied), Scott’s model was
unfortunately
still far too heavy and
,
despite
its
compact size, demanded too much power for the revamped Phoenix Lander.

Unwilling to give the secret of his breakthrough to the Air Force, out of fear that it might be used for less
-
than
-
productive purposes, Scott’s MISAMP plans
had gone
into Cold Storage
,
and the prototype stayed in a safe in his office. Scott had decided if NASA ever did send a manned mission to Mars, only then would he allow the MISAMP out of his hands.

Pressing his palm onto the electronic door lock, he waited impatiently for the telltale click of the magnetic bolts releasing. The light on the panel flashed red, and Scott growled in frustration. Placing his hand over the electronic lock again, he was rewarded
this time
with the
release of the locks
. Wrenching the doors open frantically, he dashed towards the corner of his office where some of his former experiments lay.

He grabbed one that resembled a heavy
-
duty flashlight
,
w
ith
a thick outer shell encased in a black gunmetal frame
.
H
e
turned to his computer, calling up the security cameras aimed outside where Alex was. The screen flipped through several images of the campus until he finally found Alex among
them, getting too close to the
henchmen. Scott watched in horror.

“
What are you
,
stupid!?” Scott screamed at his display. But Alex couldn’t hear him, and so the question was moot. One mercenary fell from Geoffrey’s shot, and
a
nother
man
,
only a second later
,
dived onto Alex’s body
,
struggling to bring him down. Scott sighed.

“
Of all the idiotic things to do
,
” Scott said
,
shaking his head. “Now it’s up to me. It’s his own damn fault now if he gets us killed.” He checked the tool in his hand
,
flipping a switch
t
o
check the power level. Five out of five green bars indicated a full charge. Grimacing, he closed the display panel and opened the door of his office to go back and help his friend. He sprinted towards the emergency exit
,
arriving only a minute or two later. He paused, catching his breath as he panted heavily. He didn’t want to be puffing too hard once he got out there. One thing was for sure
:
if the men with guns didn’t kill him, he’d get back into the gym and let it finish the job.

Chapter Twenty-Three