Black Sun

“I think I know what happened.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“We’ve found another stone,” she told him. “We pulled it out of a sunken temple eight miles offshore.”

“That’s damn good news,” he said.

“Thanks,” she replied. “But the thing is, this stone spiked also. I don’t know if you have access to the news up there but half the Yucatan is blacked out—just like Vegas from the sound of things.”

“I thought we caused that,” he said.

“Nope,” she said. “That one’s on us. And it sounds to me like the timing was identical.”

“What are you saying?”

She gathered her thoughts. “The stones sent out a constant signal, right? A carrier wave that cycles like a beacon or a searchlight, rotating over and over again. What we’ve never known is what happens when that wave bounces off something,” she said.

“You think the stones found each other,” he said.

“One stone queried and the other answered. Like our computer networks.”

“Sounds like a possibility,” he said. “How come they haven’t found each other before?”

“You had that one buried underneath Building Five,” she said. “We found this one eighty feet beneath the gulf, shielded by a thousand tons of rock and coral. But we happened to bring it up to the surface at the same time you were transporting that one.”

She expected Moore to be skeptical but he was with her.

“That makes a lot more sense than you know,” he said. “We’ve been studying the buildup of the energy wave, what we were able to record anyway. And the main signal showed a sudden divergence from its prior, constant pattern. A change in the carrier wave that we could only account for in two ways. Either the stone was having some type of internal malfunction, or the divergence was the result of the two separate waves merging.”

“It has to be,” she said.

“It would help explain some other things, too,” he added, sounding relieved. “To begin with, the burst we had up here was more powerful than normal by a factor of ten. That’s easier to understand if something new was amplifying the signal.”

“These stones were meant to do something in concert with one another,” she suggested confidently. “They might even be co

He hesitated. “Maybe they were for a moment, but not now. Once we got the Brazil stone into the tu

She considered that. Apparently Yucca Mountain would work as a containment site after all.

“I’ll have a workup done on your theory,” Moore said, “but I think you’re on the right track.”

“So what’s the next move?” she asked. “I hope you have some plan for getting this stone back there. Because I doubt I can get it through security in my carry-on. Not that I’d bring it on a plane.”

“Don’t even try,” he said. “Just keep it with you. At least for now. Find some way to shield it or you’ll be causing blackouts every seventeen hours and thirty-seven minutes.”

“I can do that,” she said. “But I need you to arrange travel for Yuri.”

“Why?”

“He was injured by the pulse. He seems to be okay now but I want to get him out of here. Whatever the Russians did to him, it seems to have made him vulnerable to harm from this thing.”

“What exactly are you talking about?”

“He has some type of implant embedded in his brain,” she said. “He had a seizure during the event and was unconscious for thirty minutes or so afterward. I got him to a hospital and they did an MRI.”

She took a breath. “Bottom line is this: He needs more care than I can give him, and we’re endangering him by keeping him with us. We’ve already been attacked once and even though we’ve moved, we’re not safe by any means.”

Moore remained awfully quiet.

“Can you arrange something discreet?” she asked.

“I told you before, you risk the Agency getting their hands on him,” Moore said. “My guess is that they’d take custody of Yuri if they got the chance and I don’t know if that would be any better than turning him over to Saravich.”

Danielle felt a wave of anger surge through her. “We can’t endanger him like this,” she said urgently. “He’s just a child, a special-needs child at that.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but things are going out of control up here,” Moore replied.

“They’re not exactly going well down here, either,” she said.

“Yuri will be safer with you,” Moore said.

Moore really had only two expressions: smug satisfaction and thinly veiled disgust. Nervousness was not his way, but she could hear a type of tension and concern in his voice that was out of place.

“What’s going on?”

“The Russians and the Chinese are going out of their minds over this event. They’re accusing us of building and testing some new weapon that we can’t control. It’s giving Stecker a lot of ammunition and the president, who I thought was smarter than that, is playing right into it.”

“Bottom line,” she asked.

“Suddenly showing up with a Russian child who’d been kidnapped by the Chinese, before being stolen by American agents and dragged off to Mexico, might not be the smartest thing to do right now.”

“Then find me a safe house,” she demanded.

“In Mexico?” he said. “Do you really think we have one?”

Danielle cursed under her breath and looked at Yuri again. She’d begun to feel as if she were risking Yuri’s life for someone else’s gain. Being forced to make that type of compromise was the main reason she’d quit the NRI in the first place.

“Are you telling me the safest place for him is here with us?”

“No,” Moore said. “I’m telling you that if things get any worse there might not be anywhere safe for anyone.”

Moore’s voice was cold and unyielding. It left her wishing she’d never answered the phone. She felt a soft breeze drift in from the balcony. The storm was growing closer.

“You’ve got ninety-two hours,” Moore said. “Make them count.”

She had no choice but to trust his take on the situation. “Find out what you can about Yuri,” she asked. “I’ll let you know before we make our next move.”

Moore signed off and Danielle put the phone down. She turned out toward the balcony. The wind had grown stronger and cooler and drops of precipitation had begun to spatter against the wall. As the lightning flashed in staggered waves, she could see the rain blowing sideways across the beach.

Hawker had moved from his chair and was now leaning against the wall in the sheltered part of the veranda, just outside the doorway. He was just standing there quietly, watching the storm.

She wondered if he was thinking of the last storm they’d been in together, a moment in time two years ago that was so fresh in her mind it could have been yesterday. She wanted to walk over to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and wait for him to turn to her, but she knew things could not be that simple.

She thought about Marcus and felt a new wave of guilt. She imagined him back there waiting, forced to trust what Moore told him about her well-being, probably worried sick over her fate. Now she wished that she’d spoken with him when offered the chance.

She took a deep breath. She didn’t like this. Didn’t like confusion.

Her mind flashed to Moore’s statement. There might not be anywhere safe for anyone. She needed to focus. To stop thinking about Hawker, to stop thinking about Marcus. To stop thinking about anything but the job in front of her.

She watched Hawker a moment longer. And then she turned from temptation, walked to her bedroom, and closed the door.

CHAPTER 38

The massive warehouse on the outskirts of Campeche belonged to a subsidiary of Kang Industrial. But the normal business that was conducted there had been moved, giving way to Kang’s pursuit of the stones.

From his chair Kang surveyed the effort. Through the windows near the back of the structure, he saw the Skycrane helicopter his men had used to hoist the statue from Isla Cubierta. It sat dormant on a helipad, waiting with two others of its kind for a new mission to fulfill. Inside the building, stacks of equipment lined the walls: there were armored vehicles squatting on massive tires, containers holding inflatable rafts, a small two-ma