Sacred Stone of-2 Read online

  In the year A.D. 1000 he set out to see what lay inland to the west.

  Eleven men accompanied him at the start, but some five months into the expedition, with spring coming, there were but five remaining. Two had slipped into crevasses in the ice, their screams still coming to Eric as he slept. One had slipped on ice and bashed his head on a rocky outcropping. He had twitched in tormented pain for days, unable to see or speak until he blissfully died one night. One had been taken by a large white ursine when he ventured away from a campfire one evening in search of a freshwater stream he swore he’d heard nearby.

  Two had been taken by disease, suffering racking coughs and fevers that convinced the remaining survivors that evil forces were lurking nearby and stalking. As the expedition party thinned, the mood greatly changed. The elation and sense of wonder that compelled the men at the start had faded, replaced with a sense of doom and fatalism.

  It was as if the expedition was cursed and the men were paying.

  “Hoist the ball,” Eric ordered the youngest man in the expedition, the only one to have been born on island soil.

  The teenager, Olaf the Fin, son of Olaf the Fisherman, was apprehensive. The strange gray orb rested on a rocky outcropping as if placed there by the hand of God. He had no way of knowing that the object had descended from the sky some forty-eight thousand years before. Olaf approached the orb cautiously. Everyone in the party knew of Eric’s penchant for violence; in fact, everyone on the icy island knew his legend. Eric was not asking—he was demanding—so Olaf did not attempt to disagree or argue. He merely swallowed hard and bent down.

  Olaf’s hands touched the object and he found the surface cold and smooth. For the briefest of instants he felt his heart miss a beat—but he continued on. He attempted to lift the orb but found it too heavy for his expedition-weary arms.

  “I’ll need help,” Olaf said.

  “You,” Eric said, motioning to another man with his staff.

  Gro the Slayer, a taller man with light yellow hair and pale blue eyes, took three steps forward and grabbed one side of the orb. Both men used their back muscles and lifted the orb to hip level, then stared at Eric.

  “Make a sling from the tusked one’s skin,” Eric pronounced. “We will take it back to the cave and build a shrine.”

  Without another word, Eric set off across the snow, leaving the others to tend to the discovery. Two hours later the orb was safely inside the cave. Eric immediately began planning an elaborate enclosure for the object he now believed had come directly from the gods in the heavens above.

  ERIC LEFT OLAF and Gro to guard the heavenly body while he returned to the settlement on the coast for more men and material. Once there, he learned that a son had been born to his wife in his absence. He named him Leif in honor of the spring season, then left him with his mother to raise. With eighty more men and tools to excavate the cavern where the orb was hidden, he set off north toward the distant mountain. Summer was near and the sun was visible around the clock.

  GRO THE SLAYER turned on his pelt bed then spat some loose fur from his mouth.

  Rubbing his hand across the bearskin, he watched in surprise as the fur balled up in his palm. Then he stared at the orb in the dancing light of a torch placed in the wall.

  “Olaf,” he said to the teenager sleeping a short distance away, “it is time to rise and face the day.”

  Olaf rolled over and stared toward Gro. His eyes were red and bloodshot and his skin blotchy and flaking. He coughed lightly, sat upright and stared at Gro through the dim light. Gro’s hair had been shedding and his color was all wrong.

  “Gro,” Olaf said, “your nose.”

  Gro raised the back of his hand to his nose and saw the red of blood. More and more often he had found himself with a bloody nose. He reached down and tugged on a painful tooth. It came out in his fingers. He tossed it aside and rose to his feet.

  “I’ll cook the berries,” he said.

  Stirring the fire, he added a few sticks from their dwindling supply then retrieved a sealskin bag containing the red berries they boiled to make a bitter morning drink. Walking outside the cave, he filled a dented iron pot with water from the stream of a nearby melting glacier, then stared at the marks scratched on the wall outside the cave.

  Two or three more marks and Eric the Red was due to return.

  By the time Gro returned inside the cave, Olaf was standing, dressed in his lightweight leather pants with his shirt laid on a rock nearby. He was scratching his back with a stick, and the skin was flickering to the ground like the first light snow of a new winter season. Once the itching had subsided he slid his leather shirt over his head.

  “Something is amiss,” Olaf said. “Both of us are becoming sicker as each day passes.”

  “Maybe it is the foul air inside this cave,” Gro said quietly, placing the pot on the fire.

  “I think it is that,” Olaf said, pointing to the orb. “I think it is possessed.”

  “We could move outside the cave,” Gro said, “and erect a tent for living.”

  “Eric ordered us to stay inside the cave. I fear if he returns and finds us outside we will feel his wrath.”

  “I looked at the marks,” Gro said. “He is due to return in three sleeps—no more.”

  “We could take turns watching for his return,” Olaf said quietly, “then hurry back inside before he catches us.”

  Gro stirred the berries in the boiling water. “Sudden death or slow sickness—I think it best we avoid what we know will happen for what might or might not.”

  “A few more days,” Olaf said.

  “A few more days,” Gro said as he placed an iron dipper into the pot. He filled a pair of iron bowls with the berry liquid and handed one to Olaf.

  FOUR MARKS ON the entrance of the cave later, Eric the Red returned.

  “You have the racking cough,” he said as soon as he saw the condition of the men. “I do not want you to infect the others. Return to the settlement but take up residence in the log house to the north.”

  Olaf and Gro set off to the south the following morning—but they never reached home.

  Olaf went first, his weakened heart simply giving out three days after the start of the journey. Gro didn’t fare much better, and when he could walk no more he made camp. The furry beasts came soon after. What wasn’t consumed immediately was spread about by the carnivores until it was as if Gro had never existed at all.

  AFTER WATCHING HIS two men disappear into the distance, Eric gathered the miners, engineers and laborers he had brought from the settlement. He cleared a spot in the dust on the floor of the cave and began sketching his plans with a stick.

  The plans were ambitious, but a gift from heaven should not be treated lightly.

  That day the first parties began to map out the cave. In time it would be learned that the cave stretched nearly a mile into the mountain and the temperature increased as the cavern ran downward. A large pool with freshwater was located deep inside, with stalactites descending from the ceiling and stalagmites rising from the floor.

  Groups were sent to the coast to locate long poles of driftwood to construct a series of ladders up and down the passages, while others carved steps into the rock. Intricate doors were fashioned from slabs of rock that pivoted on balanced hinges to hide the object from others who might seek her power. Runic carvings and statues were hewn from the rock, and light was reflected from the few openings where fresh air entered the cave. Eric supervised the work from the settlement on the coast. He visited the site rarely, letting the vision in his mind be his guide.

  Men came, worked, became sick and died, only to be replaced by others.

  By the time the cavern was finished, Eric the Red had decimated his population base and the settlement would never recover. Only once did his son, Leif, see the glorious monument.

  Eric ordered the entrance sealed, and the object was left for those yet to come.

  PART ONE

  1

  LI
EUTENANT CHRIS HUNT rarely talked about his past, but the men he served with had gathered a few clues from his demeanor. The first was that Hunt had not grown up in some backwoods hillbilly haven and used the army to see the world. He was from Southern California. And, if pressed, Hunt would volunteer he was raised in the Los Angeles area, not wanting to disclose that he grew up in Beverly Hills. The second thing the men noticed was that Hunt was a natural leader—he was neither patronizing nor put on an air of superiority, but neither did he try to hide the fact that he was competent and smart.

  The third thing the men found out today.

  A chill wind was blowing down from the mountains into the Afghanistan valley where the platoon under Hunt’s command was breaking camp. Hunt and three other soldiers were wrestling with a tent they were folding for storage. While the men were bringing the ends together longways, Sergeant Tom Agnes decided to ask about the rumor he had heard. Hunt handed him the side of the tent so Agnes could fold it into halves.

  “Sir,” Agnes said, “rumor has it you graduated from Yale University—that true?”

  All the men were wearing tinted ski goggles but Agnes was close enough to see Hunt’s eyes. A flicker of surprise, followed by resignation, flashed quickly. Then Hunt smiled.

  “Ah,” he said quietly, “you’ve found out my terrible secret.”

  Agnes nodded and folded the tent in half. “Not exactly a hotbed for military recruiting.”

  “George Bush went there,” Hunt said. “He was a navy pilot.”

  “I thought he was in the National Guard,” Specialist Jesus Herrara, who was taking the tent from Agnes, said.

  “George Bush Senior,” Hunt said. “Our president also graduated from Yale, and yes, he was a National Guard jet pilot.”

  “Yale,” Agnes said. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up here?”

  Hunt brushed some snow from his gloves. “I volunteered,” he said, “just like you.”

  Agnes nodded.

  “Now let’s finish breaking down this camp,” Hunt said, pointing to the mountain nearby, “and head up there and find that bastard who attacked the United States.”

  “Yes, sir,” the men said in unison.

  Ten minutes later, with fifty-pound packs on their backs, they started up the mountain.

  IN A TOWN where beautiful women abound, at age forty-nine Michelle Hunt still caused men to turn their heads. Tall, with hazel hair and blue-green eyes, she was blessed with a figure that required neither constant dieting nor endless exercise to appear trim. Her lips were full and her teeth straight, but it was her doelike eyes and flawless skin that gave the strongest visual impression. And while she was a beautiful woman, that was as common in Southern California as sunshine and earthquakes.

  What drew people closer to Michelle was something that cannot be created by a surgeon’s knife, honed through dress or manicure, or developed through ambition or change. Michelle had that thing that made both men and women like her and want to be around her—she was happy, content and positive. Michelle Hunt was herself. And people flocked to her like bees to a flower in bloom.

  “Sam,” she said to the painter who had just finished the walls in her art gallery, “you do such nice work.”

  Sam was thirty-eight years old and he blushed.

  “Only my best for you, Ms. Hunt,” he said.

  Sam had painted her gallery when it had opened five years before, her Beverly Hills house, her condo in Lake Tahoe and now this remodel. And every time she made him feel appreciated and talented.

  “You want a bottle of water or a Coke or something?” she asked.

  “I’m okay, thanks.”

  Just then an assistant called from the front of the gallery that she had a telephone call, and she smiled, waved and began to walk away.

  “That’s a lady,” Sam said under his breath, “a lady.”

  Walking to the front of the gallery, where her desk faced out onto Rodeo Drive, Michelle noticed that one of the artists she represented was coming through the front door. Here her amiability had also paid off in spades—artists are a fickle and temperamental lot, but Michelle’s artists adored her and rarely changed galleries. That and the fact that she had started her business fully funded had contributed greatly to her years of success.

  “I knew today was going to be good,” she said to the bearded man. “I just didn’t know it would be because my favorite artist would be paying me a visit.”

  The man smiled.

  “Just let me take this telephone call,” she said, “and we’ll talk.”

  Her aide corralled the artist toward an area with couches and a wet bar off to one side. As Michelle slid into her desk chair and reached for the telephone, the aide took the artist’s drink order and a few seconds later began packing ground espresso into the machine to draw him a cappuccino.

  “Michelle Hunt.”

  “It’s me,” a gravelly voice said.

  The voice was one that needed no introduction. He had swept her off her feet when she was a young woman of twenty-one, freshly arrived from Minnesota, seeking a new life of fun and sun in 1980s Southern California. After an on-again, off-again relationship, necessitated both by his inability to be bound to a relationship, as well as his frequent absences for business, she had borne his son at age twenty-four. And though his name never appeared on the birth certificate—nor had Michelle and he actually lived together before or since—the pair had remained close. At least as close as the man allowed anyone ever to come.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I’ve been okay.”

  “Where are you?”

  It was the standard question she asked him to break the ice. Over the years the answers had ranged from Osaka to Peru to Paris to Tahiti.

  “Hang on,” the man said easily. He stared at a moving map on a forward wall near the cockpit of his jet. “Six hundred and eighty-seven miles from Honolulu on the way to Vancouver, British Columbia.”

  “Going skiing?” she asked. The sport was something they had enjoyed together.

  “Building a skyscraper,” he answered.

  “You’re always up to something.”

  “True,” he noted. “Michelle, I called because I heard our boy has been sent to Afghanistan,” he said quietly.

  Michelle had been unaware—the deployment was still secret and Chris had not been able to disclose his destination when he’d been dispatched.

  “Oh my,” she blurted, “that’s not good.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  “How’d you find out?” Michelle asked. “I’m always amazed by your ability to ferret out information.”

  “It’s not magic,” the man said. “I have so many senators and other politicians in my pocket I’ve had to buy larger pants.”

  “Any word on how it’s going?”

  “I guess the mission is proving harder than the president envisioned,” he said. “Chris is apparently leading a hunter-killer squad to locate the bad guys. Limited contact so far—but my sources claim it is cold and dirty work. If he doesn’t contact you for a while, don’t be surprised.”

  “I’m afraid for him,” Michelle said slowly.

  “Do you want me to put in a fix?” the man asked. “Have him pulled out and sent stateside?”

  “I thought he made you agree never to do that.”

  “He did,” the man admitted.

  “Then don’t.”

  “I’ll call you when I know more.”

  “Are you going to be down this way soon?” Michelle asked.

  “I’ll call you if I am,” the man said. “Now I’d better go—I’m starting to get static on the satellite line. Must be sunspots.”

  “Pray our boy is safe,” she said.

  “I might do more than that,” the man said as the call ended.

  Michelle replaced the receiver in its cradle and sat back. Her ex-beau was not one to show worry or fear. Still, his concern for his son had been palpable and personal.
She could only hope his worry was misplaced, and that Chris would come home soon.

  Rising from the desk, she walked toward the artist. “Tell me you have something good,” she said easily.

  “Outside in the van,” the artist said, “and I think you’ll like it.”

  FOUR HOURS AFTER sunrise, one thousand feet higher up the ridge from the camp where they had spent the night, Hunt’s platoon met a determined enemy. The fire came from a series of caves just above and to the east. And it came all at once. Rifle fire, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, handgun fire rained down. The enemy dynamited the mountain to create rock slides, pelting the ground below, and they had mined the ground where Hunt’s troops sought refuge.

  The enemy’s goal was to wipe out Hunt’s team all at once—and they would come close.

  Hunt had taken refuge behind a series of boulders. Bullets were ricocheting off the rocks to all sides, sending chips flying through the air and striking his men. There was nowhere to hide, no way to advance, and their retreat had been cut off by a rock slide.

  “Radio,” Hunt shouted.

  Half his team was twenty yards ahead, another quarter ahead and to the left. Luckily, his radio operator had stayed close to the lieutenant. The man edged toward Hunt on his back to protect the radio. For his effort he received a wound to his kneecap when a bullet grazed his raised knee as the man pushed himself closer. Hunt dragged him the rest of the way.

  “Antencio,” Hunt shouted to a man a few feet away, “take care of Lassiter’s wound.”

  Antencio scurried over and began cutting away the radio operator’s pants. He found the opening was not deep and began to wrap a bandage around the knee as Hunt flicked on the radio and adjusted the dial.

  “You’re going to be okay, Lassiter,” he said to the radio operator. “I’m going to get us some help in here posthaste. Then we’ll have you medevaced.”