Matthew Reilly - Hell Island

He nodded at Alby’s sling. “So what happened to you?”

“I got shot.”

“Jesus Christ, your mom’s really gonna kill me. By who?”

“By that guy who fell into the chasm with you. Back in Africa, in the Neetha kingdom.”

“Maybe there is justice in the world,” Jack said. “Come on, little buddy, this ain’t over yet, we gotta move. We have to catch up with the Sea Ranger and the twins.”

He hefted Alby to his feet.

“How are we going to do that?” Alby asked.

“The old-fashioned way,” Jack said.

Jack and Alby hustled back across the city, heading for the northeast harbor, racing over bridges or swinging—with Alby piggybacking on Jack’s back.

After twenty minutes of this kind of travel, they came to the hill of stone steps that descended into the enclosed harbor there.

“I just hope they haven’t cleared the tunnel and got to the open sea yet,” Jack said, pulling off his helmet and stepping knee deep into the water.

Then he began banging the metal helmet against the first stone step beneath the waterline.

Dull clangs rang out. Three short ones, three long ones, then three short ones again.

Morse code, Alby realized.

Jack clanged the helmet against the stone some more, punching out another code.

“Let’s hope the sonar operator knows his Morse,” he said.

“How will they know it’s you?” Alby said. “They might think it’s a trap, that it’s Wolf trying to bring them back.”

“I’m signaling: ‘S.O.S. COWBOYS COME BACK.’ The twins only just got their nicknames, nicknames Wolf can’t possibly know.”

“How will you know if they’ve heard you?”

Jack sat down on the top step, holding his helmet limply in his hand. “I can’t know. All we can do now is wait and hope they haven’t already gone out of range.”

Jack and Alby waited, sitting on the top step of the hill of stairs rising out of the ancient walled harbor, in the dying yellow light of Wolf’s flares.

The shadows lengthened as the flares began to sink and fizzle out. The majestic underground city and the pyramid lording over it, having existed in darkness for so many centuries, were about to be plunged back into blackness.

And as the last flare began to flicker and die, Jack put his arm around Alby. “I’m sorry, kid.”

The flare went out.

Darkness engulfed them.

A moment later, a colossal whooshing noise filled the air, followed by splashing and the sound of water running off the flanks of a—

Bam!

A spotlight lanced out of the darkness, exposing Jack and Alby on their step, illuminating them in a circle of harsh white light. They had to shield their eyes, the light was so bright.

A Russian-made Kilo -class submarine loomed in the water in front of them, dark and immense.

A hatch opened beside the external spotlight and out of it stepped J. J. Wickham, the Sea Ranger, Jack’s longtime friend and captain of the Indian Raider . With him were the Adamson twins, Lachlan and Julius, Jack’s mathematical and historical experts.

“Jack!” the Sea Ranger said. “And you must be Alby—Jack’s told me all about you. Well, come on! Get in! We were in the middle of a perfectly good escape when you called us back. You can tell us all about how you escaped certain death when we’re out of here. Now, move!”

Jack could only smile. He grabbed Alby’s hand and they leaped down into the water and clambered aboard the submarine.

An hour later, the sub emerged from the ancient tunnel and powered out into the Indian Ocean, barely beating a South African Navy frigate sent to investigate the waters off the Cape of Good Hope.

Once they were safe and clear, the Sea Ranger sought Jack out in his quarters. He found him sitting with Alby, re-dressing the little boy’s bullet wound.

“You’re lucky the bullet went right through,” Jack was saying. “Took a little chunk of your shoulder with it. You’ll have full range of motion again in about six weeks.”

“What’ll I tell my mom?” Alby asked.

Jack whispered conspiratorially, “I was kinda hoping you’d let me put a cast on your arm and we’d tell your mum you broke your arm falling out of a tree.”

“Done.”

“Er, Jack,” Wickham interrupted. “What do we do now?”

Jack looked up.

“We regroup. As soon as we’re in safe radio space, call the others on the Halicarnassus and tell them to rendezvous with us at World’s End.”

“World’s End? I thought it’d been abandoned.”

“It was abandoned, which is why it’s perfect for us right now. Zoe and Wizard know the coordinates.”

“I’ll get on it.” Wickham left.

Jack watched him go, lost in thought.

Alby was eyeing Jack. “Mr. West?”

“Yeah?” Jack came out of his reverie.

“That Wolf guy has the first two Pillars, fully charged, plus the Firestone and the Philosopher’s Stone. That English lady, Iolanthe, has the Fourth Pillar. We have no sacred stones, no Pillars, no nothing. Have we lost this fight?”

Jack looked down at his feet. Then he replied, “Alby, we’re playing a different game to them: they want power and strength and riches. We just want to keep the world turning. And while we’re still breathing, we’re still in the game. No fight is over till the last punch is thrown.”

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

DECEMBER 17, 2007, 0600 HOURS

The South African Navy patrol boat came alongside a military dock in the shadow of Table Mountain.

As soon as its gangway hit the dock, Jack West Sr.—Jack’s father and bitter rival in this quest—strode off the boat and stepped straight into a waiting limousine. Known as Wolf, in his late fifties, he was burly and strong, and he looked just like Jack West Jr., with a creased face and ice blue eyes, only twenty years older.

With Wolf was his five-person entourage, a mixed group that represented the coalition of nations and organizations backing Wolf’s participation in the quest to lay the Six Pillars at the Six Vertices: China, Saudi Arabia, the Royal Families of Europe, and his own American military-industrial cabal, the Caldwell Group.

Representing China was Colonel Mao Gongli. Known as the Butcher of Tiananmen, he’d supplied Chinese weapons and manpower to the cause. His dead eyes hardly ever registered emotion, not even when he shot someone in the back of the head.

Representing the Caldwell Group along with Wolf was Wolf’s second son, a cold-blooded CIEF operator, formerly of Delta, who went by the call sign Rapier.

Representing Saudi Arabia was the man who had betrayed Jack West’s team earlier in the mission: thin and skeletal, with a long ratlike nose, he was an agent of the notorious Saudi Royal Intelligence Service known as Vulture.

Accompanying Vulture was a handsome young captain from the United Arab Emirates named Scimitar. The first son of its chief sheik—and thus the older brother of Pooh Bear—Scimitar had joined Vulture in his betrayal of Jack and Pooh Bear, even going so far as to leave his younger brother to die in an Ethiopian mine.

The last member of Wolf’s entourage was a woman, a beautiful and poised young lady in her thirties: Ms. Iolanthe Compton-Jones, the Keeper of the Royal Records of the House of Windsor.

As the six of them sat in the limousine bound for Cape Town’s military airstrip, Wolf pulled a glittering Pillar from his pack and handed it to Vulture.

“As per our bargain, Saudi,” Wolf said. “Once I got the Second Pillar, fully charged, you became entitled to the First, also charged.”

Vulture took the First Pillar, charged at the First Vertex at Abu Simbel, eyeing it with barely concealed delight.