Six Sacred Stones Part 46

No sound but the cras.h.i.+ng of the waves.

"Who are you!" an Africanaccented voice demanded suddenly from behind them.

The twins whirled. Lachlan whipped up his gun.

"Lachlan, no!" Jack leapt forward and pushed the gun down.

The move saved Lachlan's life.

They were surrounded.

Somehow, as they'd stood at the base of the lighthouse, no less than ten Tanzanians-all with deep black skin and all wearing navy blue military fatigues and armed with brand new M16 a.s.sault rifles-had crept up on them. Absolutely soundlessly.

Jack recognized the leader of the group.

"Inigo, is that you? It's me, Jack. Jack West. These are my friends, Lachlan and Julius Adamson, a couple of net jockeys from Scotland."

The Tanzanian did not acknowledge Jack's introduction at all.

He just glared at the twins.

"Net jockeys?" he said, frowning fiercely. "Computer persons?"

"Yyes," Lachlan said, gulping.

The Tanzanian was still frowning darkly. He had a line of raised traditional markings on his forehead.

"You play Warcraft on Internet?" he demanded.

"Er, yeah..." Julius said.

The African pointed at their "COW LEVEL"Ts.h.i.+rts. "The cow level. You play computer game, Diablo II?"

"Well...yes..."

Abruptly the leader's dark frown became a broad smile, showing a mouthful of enormous white teeth. He spun to face Jack: "Huntsman, I have heard of this cow level, but for the life of me, I just cannot get to it!"

He turned to the twins: "You two will show me how to find it, you...cowboys!"

Jack smiled.

"Nice to see you, too, Inigo. But I'm afraid we're in a bit of a hurry. We need to see the Sea Ranger immediately."

THEY WERE taken into the lighthouse, where instead of going up, they went down-first through a dusty old cellar and then through a storage bas.e.m.e.nt. In this storage bas.e.m.e.nt was a hidden staircase that went even farther down, delving deep into the headland before emerging in a giant cave at sea level.

Sometime in the distant past-probably by pirates in the 1800s-the cave had been fitted with two wooden docks and some cabins. More recently, the Sea Ranger had installed generators, lights, and some concrete extensions for the docks.

Taking pride of place in the center of it all, tied up to one of the docks with its conning tower soaring high, was a Kilocla.s.s submarine.

Jack had been here before, so he wasn't surprised by the rather impressive sight.

The twins, however, were gobsmacked.

"It's like the Batcave..." Lachlan said.

"No, better..." Julius agreed.

A winding riverlike pa.s.sage led out to the ocean, and halfway along it, a movable breakwater protected the cave from the rough seas outside. Exit from the cave could only be achieved at high tide-at low tide, jagged rocks would be exposed along the winding pa.s.sage.

J. J. Wickham stood waiting on the dock at the base of the stairs: former US Navy XO, brotherinlaw of Jack West Jr., the Sea Ranger.

He and Jack embraced. They hadn't seen each other since that New Year's Eve party in Dubai.

"Jack," Wickham said, "what the h.e.l.l's going on? These last few days, half the African continent has gone completely nuts. The Saudis put up half a billion dollars for any country that found two people who sounded a lot like my niece and your mentor."

"The Saudis...?" Jack said aloud.

Up until now, he'd thought the Saudis had been backinghim -by sending Vulture to be a part of his team.

Vulture,he thought.You scheming little...

It explained the blocked air corridors in the south of the continent-only the Saudis could afford to pay off whole African countries.

"The Saudis are in league with my father..." he said aloud.

It made sense. The Caldwell Group and the Saudis had longstanding links based on oil.

And if the Second Reward-"heat"-was what Wizard suspected it was, an unending energy source, perhaps even perpetual motion, then the Saudis had ahuge interest in acquiring it. All this time, he hadn't just been battling against his father, he'd been fighting atriple threat: the Caldwell Group, Saudi Arabia, and China, all allied together.

He turned to Wickham. "It's a complicated situation that just got a whole lot more complicated. Right now, I need to get to Cape Town inside of four days, unseen, and I can't go by air. I can tell you more along the way."

"Your father is involved?"

"Yeah."

"Say no more," Wickham said, already moving toward his submarine. "Fathersinlaw can be tough, but that man was the biggesta.s.shole of a fatherinlaw a guy ever had."

Jack walked after Wickham. "Our enemies'll be on the lookout for subs. You got any kind of cover?"

Wickham kept walking. "As a matter of fact, I do."

OFF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

DECEMBER 16, 2007, 1755 HOURS.

THE AFTERNOON BEFORE THE SECOND DEADLINE.

THREE DAYS LATER, Jack and the twins found themselves rounding Cape Agulhas, approaching the point where the Indian Ocean met the Atlantic Ocean.

Cape Town lay to the northwest, over a mountainous peninsula of wilderness, facing out over the Atlantic.

They'd made excellent time from Zanzibar, traveling halfway down the east coast of Africa on the surface of the ocean in Wickham's dieselelectric Kilocla.s.s submarine, rechristened by him theIndian Raider.

The reason they could travel in this way was because of the sh.e.l.l Wickham had recently created to cover his 242footlong Russian submarine.

The upper half of an ageing South African fis.h.i.+ng trawler-gutted of its engine and heavy machinery-had been mounted on top of the submarine. With the advent of wakespotting satellites, Wickham had recently decided that he needed an extra level of visual protection, and had hit upon the idea of a "sh.e.l.l" to mount on his sub.

Then a few months back, when a crew of drunken South African fishermen, in port on a break from a sixweek cruise, had beaten one of the sweeter prost.i.tutes in town, the Sea Ranger and his men had decided to teach them some manners.

The South African fishermen were dealt with and while they lay unconscious in a back alley, Wickham stole their boat and brought it back to his cave.

There it was stripped and gutted and hoisted on chains, ready for a mission just like this.

As the sub cruised toward Cape Town, Jack told Wickham about his epic quest so far-of negotiating a b.o.o.bytrapped cavern in China decoding Stonehenge finding the incredible First Vertex near Abu Simbel and then engaging in a busvs747 car chase in the desert.

He also told him about the Six Ramesean Stones, the Six Pillars, and the Six Vertices of the Machine, and how all six Pillars had to be set in place before the arrival of the Dark Star.

At the same time, the twins were getting along famously with Wickham's crew of Tanzanian sailors, showing them some computer tricks, including guiding them to the cow level on Diablo II, an act which made the sailors gasp in wonder and which finally earned the twins their nicknames:the Cowboys.

Individually, Lachlan becameQuickdraw, while Julius wasGunslinger. Theyloved their call signs.

At regular intervals on the journey, Jack checked theLord of the Rings notice board for messages from Wizard, Zoe, or Lily.

For three days, no messages appeared.

But then, at the beginning of the fourth and last day, as Jack forlornly signed on, he found a single message waiting for him, from the user ID: "GANDALF101."

Jack almost leapt out of his chair.

The message had been posted only an hour previously: a cascade of numbers a coded message that could only have come from Wizard, Lily, or Zoe.

They were alive!

He turned and quickly grabbed the collection of books he had bought at Nairobi Airport, six paperbacks and one hardback novel.

The entire Harry Potter collection.

Jack's code with the others was a "book code."

Most book codes used three digits to find words in a single book: the code "1/23/3"

means "page 1, line 23, word 3."

For Jack this wasn't secure enough. He'd added an extra digit at the start, denoting which Harry Potter book the code was coming from.

Therefore "2/1/23/3" meant "Book 2(Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) , page 1, line 23, word 3."

Jack set about decoding the message on the chatroom screen.

When he was done flipping pages in the novels, he was left with: MISSION TO JUNGLE A DISASTER.

WOLF CAUGHT UP WITH US AND NOW HAS BOTH PILLARS, PHILOSOPHER'S STONE AND FIRESTONE. RON TAKEN PRISONER. KINGSLEY SHACKLEBOLT.

DEAD.

REST OF US SAFE ON THE HIPPOGRIFF NOW, BUT SOUTH AFRICA CLOSED.

TO ALL AIR TRAFFIC.

OUT OF OPTIONS AND JUST HOPING YOU'RE ALIVE.

PLEASE REPLY.

Jack reeled at the message.

His worst fears had come true.

Wolf had the Second Pillar. That Wolf might lay the Pillar at the Vertex was disturbing but not disastrous: Jack only wanted to save the world from destruction, and so long a.s.someone set the Second Pillar in place today, the world would be OK for another three months until the next set of four vertices required attending.

But as Jack now knew, Wolf had the suicidal Switchblade in his team.

"Oh, this is bad," Jack said aloud. "This is very, very bad."

He stared at the line KINGSLEY SHACKLEBOLT DEAD and sighed. Kingsley Shacklebolt was a tall black wizard from the fifth Harry Potter book and hence their code name for Solomon Kol.

So Solomon had been killed.d.a.m.n.

But worse still was the previous line: RON TAKEN PRISONER. Of course "Ron" was code for Alby-for just as Ron was Harry Potter's best friend, so Alby was Lily's.

Wolf had Alby.

Jack rarely swore wholeheartedly but he did so now. "f.u.c.k."

Consulting hisHarry Potter books, he quickly typed out a reply, then clicked "POST."

His message was: STILL IN THE GAME.

ON WAY TO CAPE TOWN WITH FRED AND GEORGE AND SIRIUS BLACK.

CAN'T RISK CALLING YOU YET. WILL CALL WHEN I CAN.

SO GLAD YOU'RE SAFE. WILL GET RON BACK OR DIE TRYING.

Hidden beneath its false sh.e.l.l, theIndian Raider powered toward Cape Town.

As it happened, it would be the very last boat in a line of about a dozen South African fis.h.i.+ng trawlers to be allowed back into South African waters that afternoon.

Then the sealanes were closed.