Black Sun

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?

CHAPTER 35

Danielle 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 u

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.