Sacred Stone

Pushing Ackerman’s coat aside, Cabrillo took a knife from his pocket and cut away Ackerman’s shirt. The wound was bad, and arterial blood was pumping out of the opening like a fountain with too large a pump.

“Do you have a first-aid kit?” Cabrillo asked.

Ackerman motioned to a nylon bag near a folding table a short distance away. Cabrillo ran over, unzipped the bag and removed the kit. Opening the plastic case, he removed some gauze pads and surgical tape. He tore open the packets as he walked back toward Ackerman, then pressed a wad of pads over the wound and taped it in place. Then he reached over and placed Ackerman’s hand over the wound.

“Keep your hand here,” Cabrillo said, “I’ll be right back.”

“The Ghost,” Ackerman whispered, “the Ghost did this.”

Turning on his heels, Cabrillo sprinted toward the entrance to the cave. As he peered out into the gloom he could hear the turbine of the Eurocopter winding up and see the outline of the flashing lights on its fuselage.

Then a second set of blinking lights appeared in the distance.

AL-KHALIFA WAS AN excellent helicopter pilot. A falsified student visa and $100,000 in fees, as well as a year at the South Florida flight school he had attended, ensured that. Looking through the windshield, he carefully scanned the terrain on Mount Forel. He had just caught sight of an orange snowcat off to the side of the mountain when the other helicopter came into view.

Fate is funny—five minutes later and he would have missed his chance.

A second later, Al-Khalifa had assessed the situation and formed his plan.

CABRILLO SLID CAREFULLY out of the cave and then flopped down behind a rocky outcropping. He needed to make it to the Thiokol and recover his rifle, but the second helicopter was facing him directly. Sliding the satellite telephone from his pocket, he glanced at the readout. Now that he was outside the cave he was receiving a signal again. He hit the speed dial and waited until Hanley answered.

“It looks like the fall of Saigon up here,” Cabrillo said. “I arrived to find a helicopter on site, and now another one has just arrived. Who are these people?”

“Stony just identified one,” Hanley answered. “It’s a charter from western Greenland owned by a Michael Neilsen. We ran the owner for ties to any organizations but no hits yet, so I’d guess he’s just a pilot for hire.”

“What about the second one?”

Stone had been furiously typing on the keyboard. “It’s a Bell Jet Ranger leased by a Canadian mineral company.”

“The second one’s a Bell Jet Rang—” Hanley started to say.

“I’m staring at it right now,” Cabrillo said. “It’s not a Jet Ranger, it looks more like a McDonnell Douglas 500 series.”

Stone typed in some more commands and a second later a picture of a wrecked helicopter filled the monitor. “Someone has stolen the registration and ident to avoid detection. Can Mr. Cabrillo see any tail numbers?”

“Stone says we have a stolen registration,” Hanley noted. “Can you see any tail numbers?”

Cabrillo removed a pair of small binoculars from his pocket and stared through the darkness. “Two things,” he said slowly. “The first is that there’s a weapons pod hung under the fuselage. The second is that the tail numbers aren’t visible, but I can make out letters painted on the side. There is an A, followed by a K, followed by a B.

Then the rest are covered in ice. The next is maybe an A, I can’t be sure.”

Hanley related to Cabrillo what they had uncovered about the yacht named Akbar.

“It’s that son of a bitch Al-Khalifa?” Cabrillo blurted. “Who’s in the other helicopter? Al Capone?”

NEILSEN HAD THE rotor blade up to speed and he pulled up on the collective, taking the Eurocopter into a hover just as the other helicopter appeared in the windshield.

“Look there,” he said through the headset to Hughes.

“Take off, now,” Hughes shouted.

“I think we’d better set down and see what’s up,” Neilsen said.

With a lightning-fast move, Hughes pulled a pistol from his pocket and pointed it at Neilsen’s head. “I said take off.”

One look at Hughes and the pistol was enough; Neilsen moved the cyclic and the Eurocopter lurched forward. At that instant a flame erupted from the bottom of the other helicopter and a missile streaked toward where they had been hovering. The missile went wide and veered out into the frozen wasteland.

STONE BROUGHT UP an image on the monitor in the Oregon’s control room. “This is a DOD satellite shot one hour ago,” he said quickly. “Helicopter number two came from a location offshore of eastern Greenland on a straight course for Mount Forel.”

Just then Adams walked into the control room. “Our helicopter is armed and ready.”

“Do you have enough range to make it from here and back?” Hanley asked.

“No,” Adams admitted, “we’ll be thirty to forty gallons short on the return.”

“What kind of fuel do you burn?”

“One hundred octane low-lead.”