The Belial Stone (The Belial Series) (23 page)

CHAPTER 55

Beaver Creek, MT

L
aney woke up late the next morning, if the sun streaming through the cracks in the blinds was any indication.  She stared at the ceiling for a moment, wishing she could go back to sleep.  She felt like she’d been run over by a car.  Since all this began, she had yet to wake up without at least three parts of her body aching in pain. 

She’d fallen asleep on the couch late last night waiting for Jake and Yoni to return.  A blanket had been placed over her, so she knew they were back, even though the house was quiet. 

She was surprised she hadn’t woken up when they’d come home.  Apparently, she had been so tired that she had slept through not only two men entering the house, but one covering her with a blanket.

Annoyed with her nonexistent sentry skills, she stretched and headed to the kitchen to put on some coffee.  After the coffee was set, she started pulling food out of the refrigerator for breakfast.  She had bacon grilling and a second egg-white omelet finishing up when Yoni stumbled into the kitchen and took a seat at the table.  She sat an omelet in front of him. 

“Ah, Laney.  If I were not a happily married man, I would propose to you.  Perhaps in the next lifetime, hmm?”

She laughed.  “Does your wife know how big a flirt you are?”

“Of course she does.  That is why she loves me.  She knows that as much as I love women, I love her the most.”

Skillfully scooping out the omelet, Laney poured in more egg whites to start the third.  Jake walked in just as she was adding the tomato, onion, and spinach.  He sat across from Yoni and smiled at Laney as she placed an omelet in front of him. 

He raised an eyebrow.  “I thought you didn’t cook.”

“I don’t.  Breakfast isn’t cooking.”

Jake took a bite.  “Well, it tastes great. Thanks.”

Laney smiled.  She tried to imagine what it would be like, if it was just her and Jake.   A quiet romantic breakfast.

“Hey, you two want to be alone?” Yoni asked.

Laney rolled her eyes at him.  Reality:  A romantic breakfast with her, Jake, and Yoni, the destroyer of moments.

Jake slapped Yoni on the back of the head and Yoni chuckled.  

Jake caught her eyes and gestured to the laptop.  “I downloaded the pictures from last night.  Take a look.” 

Laney started to sit down when a knock sounded at the front door.  Jake grabbed her and pulled her behind him, while simultaneously pulling his gun from its holster.  Yoni was already positioning himself to the side of one of the front windows with his gun out. 

Yoni peered through the blinds.  He turned around and smiled.  “It looks like we have a few more joining us for breakfast.” 

He walked to the door and opened it.  Henry and Patrick walked through the front door with large duffle bags slung over their shoulders.   

Laney let out the breath she’d unconsciously held when Jake had pressed her against the wall.  She forced her heartbeat back to a normal rhythm before crossing the room to envelope her uncle in a warm hug. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jake give Henry that half-handshake, half-hug  greeting guys tended to use.

“Not that we mind the company, but couldn’t you guys have given us a heads-up that you were coming?”  Jake asked.

“I thought you guys could use the sleep.”  Henry replied.  He turned to Yoni with a grin.  “You need to work on your trip wires a little, Yoni.” 

“You’re the only one who’s ever gotten through them.”  Yoni grumbled, kicking at the carpet like a kid.  “How do you do that?”

Laney released her uncle and looked past the two men.  “Did you two come alone?  Is Danny with you?”             

“Danny’s with Dom.  We thought it’d be better for him to stay there.” Henry gestured back towards the front door.  “But we did bring along five extra men.  They’re setting up a patrol on the perimeter. More will be flying in later today.”

Jake nodded.  “Good.  I’ll coordinate with them after breakfast.”

Laney headed back to the kitchen and flipped the omelet she’d left on the stove top.  “Why are you two here?”

Patrick looked at Henry as he answered.  “We thought you might need some help with the next part of the plan.”

“Next part of the plan?” Laney stopped and looked from Patrick to Henry.  “We have a next part of the plan?”

“Not yet.  But I have some ideas," Jake replied.

Patrick glanced past her to the breakfast on the table.  "Are those your egg-white omelets?  Any chance Henry and I could snag one?” 

She linked her arm with his.  “Absolutely.  Have a seat.”

Ten minutes later, she’d scooped the last omelet onto her plate and placed a couple of pieces of bacon next to it. 

Taking her seat, she ate with one hand while scrolling through the pictures on Jake’s computer with the other.  “Is that a landing strip?”

Jake nodded.  “Yes.  And we were there for the delivery.”

A chill went through Laney.  “Are those men bound?”

“Yeah.  And they were brought to some sort of structure.  We couldn’t get a look inside.  But it’s safe to say we’ve found the missing men.”

A startled gasp escaped Laney as she clicked onto the next image.  “What is that?”

Jake leaned over to look at the monitor.  “We couldn’t tell until we got home and brightened it up a bit.  It appears to be where they put the bodies.”

“Bodies?”  Patrick asked, paling.

Yoni gave Jake a look of apology.  “It looks like when someone dies at the enclosure, they don’t bury them.  They place them in a pit just outside the wall.”

Laney clicked on a different picture, not wanting to look at the macabre scene any longer.  “How many men are in there?”

“We couldn’t tell,” Jake said, his voice strained.  “But there were a lot.”

Laney shook her head.  “I know we thought this was what was happening.  Somehow, though, seeing the pictures makes it more real.”  She hesitated.  “Did you see any sign of Tom?”

“No,” Jake said.  “It was too dark.  And the enclosure is huge.  He could have been anywhere.” 

Laney reached over and squeezed his hand.  “Okay, so now we know where they are.  What’s the next step?   Do we call the cops?”

Yoni shook his head, but Jake was the one who answered.  “No.”

Laney looked between the two of them.  “Why not?  We have proof now.”

Yoni gently took her hand.  “Laney, Kensington has enough political power to get planes re-routed.  He’s going to be able to squash any search warrant or, at least, postpone it long enough to remove any evidence of the missing men.  Do you know what the easiest way for him to do that is?”

“To kill them all,” she replied in a small voice.

Yoni nodded. 

Despair weighed her down.  “So what do we do?”

Jake's determined voice answered her.  “We get them out ourselves.”

CHAPTER 56

T
om was worried.  Ever since the fight, Seeley had struggled.  Tom was pretty sure he’d only fractured a couple of ribs and not broken them, as he’d originally feared.  He also had some cuts and bruises and Tom couldn't be sure there wasn't some internal bleeding. 

But his physical injuries weren’t the main problem.  He hadn't spoken since right after the fight.  

“It’s not your fault, man,” Tom had said.  “You didn’t have a choice.  You’d have died if you didn’t take him out.”

Seeley had looked at him, but his face had been absent of expression.  “But I did have a choice, man.  These guys are monsters and they turned me into one.  I could have chosen not to fight.  If I died, at least I’d have died a man, not a patsy for these guys.”

Tom didn’t know what to say.  His brain couldn’t come up with a logical response.  He’d just sat next to Seeley and thrown his arm around his shoulder.  They’d slept like that, sitting up.  Tom had grabbed some bedrolls and used them as blankets.  Seeley’s clothes were shredded and Tom was afraid if he let him lie down alone, he wouldn’t get up again.

Seeley hadn’t spoken since.  In the morning, Tom had stripped one of the dead men of his clothes before he was carted to the pit.  Seeley had let him dress him like he was a doll

Seeley seemed to have caved in on himself.  His eyes were lifeless.  At work, he worked silently.  Tom would glance over at him, to make sure he was all right.  Occasionally, he’d see hot tears burning their way through the dirt on his face.  At night, he watched Seeley lie curled around himself, staring off into space.  Every time Tom would wake, he’d see Seeley, staring out at nothing. 

Tom didn’t know what to do.  He’d tried talking to him, yelling at him.  In the end, he just looked out for him.  Made sure he ate, made sure he got his work done, made sure the guards didn’t notice him.  But he was getting worse.  His ribcage was a mass of dark bruises and he was getting weaker every day. 

Tom knew the only reason he’d survived this long was because of Seeley.  He couldn’t imagine trying to get through this hell without him.  They say that when soldiers went to war, they became brothers for life.  Seeley was his brother.  If he died, Tom knew he’d be following him into the body pit soon after.

CHAPTER 57

L
aney and Jake finished cleaning up the breakfast dishes as Patrick and Henry got settled.  Yoni was outside coordinating with the men. 

Handing Jake the last pan, she leaned against the counter, drying her hands on a towel.  “So, now we plan a raid on the castle?
"

Jake gave her a small smile.  “That’s the idea.”

“Can’t say they covered that in my doctoral program.”

“No worries, Doc,” Yoni said as he walked in the kitchen with a large duffel bag.  “We got you covered.”  He held it up.

Laney looked at the bag, which was almost bursting at the seams.  She knew it was one of the bags her uncle and Henry had brought, filled with weapons.  “Like I said, not really my area.  But I’m in.” 

She put away the last of the dishes and joined the rest in the living room.  She took a seat on the couch, her uncle next to her.  Yoni and Henry took the two club chairs, while Jake leaned against the wall across from her. 

Her eyes kept drifting over to him and she forced herself to focus on Henry.  Okay, quit acting like a teenager.  Life and death issues here.

Henry leaned forward.  “We have two goals.  First, we need to get the men out of there.  Second, we need to make sure that if the Belial Stone is there, it doesn’t fall into Gideon’s hands.”  

Jake interrupted.  “But how realistic is the existence of a Belial Stone?  Isn’t this all myth?”

“Well, we’re in a time when many myths are being proven to be more fact than fiction,” Henry said.  “The city of Troy was believed to be a myth until its discovery in the late nineteenth century. Even the Iliad is beginning to be viewed as potentially a recounting of an event rather than a work of fiction.

Patrick jumped in.  “For generations, the people of India have spoken of a highly advanced civilization that existed in antiquity just off the coast.  It had been written off as a myth by Western academia.  But then side scan sonar in the Gulf of Khambhat revealed underwater structures and subsequent dives uncovered artifacts dating to before 5500 BC.  The dates place an ancient civilization in that area earlier than the civilization at the Fertile Crescent.”               

“And they found the hobbits.” Yoni interjected, taking a handful of grapes from a bowl on the coffee table.

Everyone turned to stare at him. 

“What?” he said.  “You didn’t hear about the hobbits?  Some cave on this island in the South Pacific.  They found all these skeletons of little, tiny people.”

Laney smiled.  “Actually, Yoni’s right.  They did find skeletons of about a dozen dwarves who existed at the same time as modern man, about 18,000 years ago.  They only reached about three feet tall at their full height.  Their discovery has thrown our understanding of the development of modern man into a bit of a tailspin.  We didn’t make any allowances for different species of man coexisting.  Myths, it seems, may actually hold kernels of truth.” 

“But an ancient weapon of mass destruction?”  Jake asked skeptically.

Patrick nodded.  “Drew made a good case with his interruption of the mass fossil beds found in caves across the globe.   They all disappeared at the same time.”

“And all civilizations have flood myths.  From the Bible to the tales of Gilgamesh, there are stories of floods that destroyed civilizations.  So, why not a cause?”  Laney said.

Patrick leaned back against the couch, his hand on his chin.  Laney stifled a grin. It was his ‘thinking man look’.  “My readings on the stone seem to be suggesting it’s some sort of acoustic weapon.”

“You mean like LRAD?” Yoni asked.

“What’s LRAD?” Patrick turned to look at him.

“LRAD stands for long range acoustic device.  It’s a sonic weapon used by law enforcement and the military for cro
wd control, among other uses.”

Laney couldn’t keep the surprise off her fac
e.

Yoni winked at her.  “H
ey, I’m not just a pretty face."

Henry grinned.  “Yoni’s right, at least about LRAD.  It was first used against the protesters at the G20 Summit in 2009 in Pittsburgh.  But now it’s being employed across the globe: against pirates off the coast of Somalia, whale activists in Japan.  It’s even been reported to be have been used in China.”

Jake nodded.  “And it’s been modified so that it only affects those under twenty, for use against loitering youth.”

“It can be made age-specific?” Laney asked.

Jake nodded.  “As you age, your hearing range becomes more limited, even as early as twenty.  The sonic blast they’ve developed targets those who can hear at the lower range of the scale. It causes discomfort, nausea. But I’ve never heard of it being used in as a WMD.  It’s just not powerful enough.”

“Theoretically, it’s possible,” Henry mused, his large frame making the wingback chair he was sitting in look like a child's. “The idea is that by creating strong enough acoustic waves, you can create such extreme resonance that a structure will be destroyed.   There’s been rumors that the military is working on just such a weapon, although I don’t believe we’re anywhere near that capability yet.”

“But we may have had that capability thousands of years ago,” Patrick said thoughtfully. All heads turned towards him.

“The horn of Jericho.  The Book of Joshua describes how, after walking around Jericho six times, David blew the horn and the walls crumbled.  Archaeology backs up the story to a certain extent: In 1997, an Italian team found that parts of the wall of Jericho did indeed collapse around 1,400 BC.  Of course, they don’t attribute it to a sonic weapon, but to earthquake activity in the area. Who’s to say they’re not both right?  Maybe a sonic weapon triggered an earthquake that collapsed the walls.”

“I’m afraid my science background is a little lacking.  How can sound destroy walls?” Laney asked.

Henry looked around the group.  “Resonance as a destructive force works by matching the resonant frequency of a target.  For example, we’ve all seen a high note shatter a glass.  For that to happen, the glass is forced to absorb more and more energy at its natural frequency.  The end result is that it shatters.”

Jake shook his head.  “But there’s a big difference between being able to shatter a glass and create an earthquake.”

Henry nodded.  “True.  But the idea of creating an earthquake is not that far out there.  Tesla was rumored to have created an earthquake-producing machine called the Tesla oscillator back in 1898.  So we know that, in theory, others have embraced the idea that you can utilize resonance for destructive purposes, even on a large scale.”

Patrick nodded his head.  “I wonder if the stone works as some sort of acoustic tuning fork, for lack of a better term.  Something that focuses, directs, and shoots out sound at a level equal to the natural frequency, the result being the destruction of the object.”

“A sound weapon,” Laney said.

“Exactly,” Patrick said.

“But wouldn’t it only damage the immediate area?”  Yoni asked.

Henry shook his head.  “Not if you chose the right area.  The Western seaboard of the States is littered with quake sites.  If you set those off, you would have a domino effect of earthquakes.  A strong enough one could even force the super-volcano under Yellowstone to finally blow.  That could take out the whole United States.”

“And the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan have horribly demonstrated the vulnerability of nuclear plants to natural disasters,” Laney added.  A meltdown at one or more of those would set the world on a slow, agonizing downward spiral.”

“Great,” Yoni grouched.  “So if this guy sets this thing off, we either have an immediate death by volcanic eruption or a slower death by radiation poisoning.  Good times.”

“But,” Jake said, “that might not be a concern.  Kensington is in all likelihood viewing the stone as an energy source.  It would help him cement his political ambitions. Any weaponized goals would probably come long after that.  And we don’t know for sure our fallen angel friend would set it off, do we?”

Laney and Henry shared a look.  She hadn't mentioned Gideon to them yet.   And apparently neither had Henry.

“Okay you two, spill it.  What do you know?”  Patrick demanded.

“We found out the identity of Paul’s companion,” Henry said.  “His name is Gideon Wright.  From all reports, he goes just by Gideon.”

Jake pushed himself away from the wall.  “Gideon.  Are you sure?”

Laney looked up in alarm.  Jake’s tone’s was urgent.  “Jake?  Do you know him?”

“No.  But I know of him.”  He looked at Henry.  “He’s linked with a spate of international terrorist incidents, including the attack on the school in Chechnya.  Right?”

Henry nodded.

Jake closed his eyes.  “He was dangerous even without any supernatural abilities.  But I haven’t heard anything about him since 2004.  Where’s he been?”

“He was working with the Syrians.  But he began showing up in the background of pictures with Senator Kensington a few years ago.”

“An international terrorist with super-human abilities.  This just keeps getting better and better,” Yoni said.

“And according to Dom’s database, his real name is Azazyel,”  Laney said. 

Jake frowned.  “I’m not up on my fallen angels.  Was he a really bad one?”

“Actually, he was the worst,” Henry said.  “Suffice it to say, there are strong indications that he has a suicidal streak.”

“Suicidal?  Can’t he just find a way to kill himself that doesn’t take the rest of us with him?”  Yoni grumbled.   

“Apparently, he also has a grandiose view of himself.” Henry said.  “If Gideon gets ahold of the stone, he will try to destroy the world.  So we need to keep that from happening.”

“Yes,” Laney said slowly.  “But what I don't get is why Kensington would work with him.  And why keep the site secret?  I mean, this is something the whole world would be intrigued by.”

“That’s easy,” Jake interjected. “The military is always looking for the next great weapon.  And the less your enemy knows about it the better.  Plus, think about the political windfall for Kensington.  He could announce that he already has a plan to keep America safe.”

“Not to mention the knowledge.  As we get more and more advanced, we’re always looking back to the past to regain the knowledge that we’ve lost.  And now we’re talking about an incredibly advanced ancient civilization.  Think of what knowledge they might be able to share,” Patrick added.

Henry leaned forward.  “And don’t forget that we’re talking about a stone of incredible energy.  Since the 1970s, the United States has been dependent upon foreign oil.  Oil is the basis for our transportation, our machinery.  As a result, we’ve been embroiled in numerous wars. We’ve been the target of terrorists with apocalyptic agendas.  And we’ve had to turn a blind eye to horrific human rights abuses in countries that provide us with oil.  It’s safe to say that while oil allows us to live our lives as we currently do, it also endangers our lives on a global scale and makes us vulnerable to the influence of other countries." 

“But if someone were to find an incredibly powerful renewable energy source?  It would be a golden ticket.  It would be worth billions.  And the political windfall that would result from being the individual who reveals it?  There’s not an office that they couldn’t get elected to.”

“But what about all the people killed to achieve that end?  Won’t that cast Kensington in the role of the villain?” Laney asked.

Henry turned to Laney.  “It depends on whether it gets out or not.  He’s done a pretty good job of keeping a lid on his activities so far.  The only reason we’re here is because Jake went looking for Tom.  Otherwise, we’d be none the wiser.  And who’s going to look too closely at the how, when Kensington is viewed as the savior of the United States?”

“And I’m betting Kensington has no idea who he’s really dealing with,” Jake said.  “He thinks he’s in control.  He doesn’t know he’s just a pawn.”