Black Sun

In the next moment a large group of the juveniles hit, spi

She saw a larger one rocketing in. She dodged the hit, but the shark crashed into the DPV, ripping it from her hands and sending the yellow device spiraling toward the bottom.

She righted herself, saw a flash of the surface above, and kicked toward it but something grabbed her. She turned to see Hawker; with an arm around her waist he pulled her close. She reached for a handhold on the DPV just as the acceleration from the propulsion unit kicked in.

Another group of sharks came racing their way. She hardened her body against the impact, but two more followed, and a third on its own.

They broke the surface and Danielle spun around. McCarter was racing toward them in the boat. Thank God he was close. He slowed and turned beside them.

She grabbed the ladder, pulling herself up as Hawker pushed her from behind.

Tumbling into the boat, she whipped around, stretching a hand toward Hawker.

He clutched at it, just as a gray-green shape split the surface, rammed him like a torpedo, and dragged him away.

She felt his hand ripped from hers.

“Follow him!” she shouted to McCarter.

McCarter punched the throttles and spun the wheel and Danielle grabbed for the speargun.

Flying through the water, pushed by the big shark, Hawker felt as if he’d been hit by a train. His mask was torn off and the DPV wrenched out of his hands as he was pulled by forces he could not overcome or even influence.

He twisted and wrenched his body to try to free himself but the animal’s flat, angular head had wedged itself between his tanks and his back.

And then suddenly he flipped over and slowed. The shark had torn itself free after dragging him two hundred feet or so.

Kicking upward, Hawker burst through the surface, gulping the air and looking around for the boat. He spotted it circling toward him.

He guessed, and hoped, that the sharks would leave him alone now, as they had before he’d teamed up with Danielle. But as he caught his breath and began to tread water, he saw a line of color dripping down the edge of his nose. He touched his forehead and his hand came away red with blood.

Instant panic hit him. He shed his tanks and began kicking hard for the oncoming boat, trying desperately to keep his face above the water.

On the boat, Danielle saw him. She saw the blood and a pair of dorsal fins slicing through the surface right at him.

She threw out the cargo net. “Hurry!” she yelled to McCarter.

They sped toward him. Hawker grabbed the net. Danielle pulled with all her might, leaning back and throwing her weight into it.

Hawker rolled and tumbled into the boat as one of the hammerheads launched itself, arching its back, half its body out of the water.

It landed on the cutaway, tipping the small craft, almost swamping it.

The front third of the shark was inside the vessel. The head whipped around, jaws snapping for anything it could grab. Yuri screamed, Hawker kicked it, and Danielle grabbed for the speargun again.

And then it flipped back into the water and disappeared in a tremendous splash.

“Go!” she shouted.

McCarter punched the throttles and the V-hulled fishing boat leaped forward like a stallion launching itself from the gate.

Danielle locked the cutaway back into place as other sharks whipped by. They followed briefly before falling behind the speeding boat. All she could think of was Petrov’s story of being followed by sharks and killer whales. She thanked God that she’d rented the fastest boat available.

Suddenly she felt Yuri at her side. “This siren,” he said, grabbing for the stone. “This siren.”

She tried to calm him and then opened the equipment locker and pulled out a lead-lined box they’d had specially made. She placed the stone into the box, sealed it shut, then slipped the box into her backpack. Beside her, Yuri stared.

“Siren,” he said quietly. “Siren.” As Danielle placed her pack inside the locker and latched it shut, he sat next to it and stared as if it were a television.

Danielle stroked his hair and looked out in front of them. A mile off, the boats McCarter had seen were splitting up, one continuing toward them, the other heading directly west to cut them off.

Perhaps the hard part was not over.

CHAPTER 34

The convoy of vehicles rumbled down a weathered strip of road in the high desert of western Nevada. A camouflaged eighteen-wheeler held the center position, flanked by an escort of machine-gun-toting Humvees and a pair of missile-armed Black Hawk helicopters two hundred feet above.

Fifty miles more and they’d arrive at Yucca Mountain and the erstwhile nuclear depository that had been in limbo for the better part of three decades.

The place had originally been designed to store nuclear waste, with the plan that it would accept the growing stockpiles of spent radioactive fuel from all across the nation. But the environmentalists had attacked and overwhelmed the process almost from day one. Years of litigation, impact studies, and changing political winds had left Yucca Mountain empty. As a result the vast majority of the country’s radioactive materials remained right where they were: at 107 different reactor sites, most of which were only lightly guarded and just miles from the nation’s largest population centers. Apparently, to those who fought against the project, that was a safer alternative.

Such efforts had left Yucca Mountain sitting empty and thus usable for the NRI. And so Moore’s team had removed the Brazil stone from its vault beneath the Virginia Industrial Complex and loaded it onto a military C-17. After a four-hour flight they touched down in Nevada and then continued overland toward Yucca Mountain.

The journey had been pla

Riding in the cab of the semitruck, Arnold Moore listened as one of the Black Hawks thundered overhead, moving forward to take point in the formation. He found himself amused at the overkill of their protection force.

The convoy was firmly in the heart of military controlled property, traveling an u

Moore glanced through the window. He saw a barren landscape, pockmarked with bomb craters, test sites, and ugly mountains of piled-up dirt. A thousand different types of explosive had been tested here, from cluster bombs to “daisy cutters.” Even nuclear warheads had been exploded here.

The scars remained on the dry desert surface without even a hint of life to soften them. Not a blade of grass, nor a cactus, nor the smallest desert scrub could be seen. It looked like the moon or another planet. Perhaps that was why the UFO junkies were so certain that aliens had been brought here; they just might have felt at home.