"Why Professor Epper, I wantyou. "

Wizard frowned. He hadn't expected that answer.

Mao stepped forward, gazing at the grand chamber around them. "Great times are upon us, Professor. In the coming months, empires will rise and nations will fall. In times such as these, the People's Republic of China needs knowledgeable men, men like you. Which is why you work for me now, Professor. And I'm sure that with the right kind of persuasion-in one of my torture chambers-you are going to help me find the Six Ramesean Stones."

GREAT SANDY DESERT.

NORTHWESTERN AUSTRALIA.

DECEMBER 1, 2007, 0715 HOURS.

ON THE DAY his farm was attacked with overwhelming force, Jack West Jr. had slept in till 7:00A.M.

Normally he got up around six to see the dawn, but life was good these days. His world had been at peace for almost eighteen months, so he decided to skip the d.a.m.n dawn and get an extra hour's sleep.

The kids, of course, were already up. Lily had a friend over for the summer holidays, a little boy from her school named Alby Calvin.

Noisy and excited and generally up to mischief, they'd played nonstop for the past three days, exploring every corner of the vast desert farm by day, while at night they gazed up at the stars through Alby's telescope.

That Alby was partially deaf meant little to Lily or to Jack. At their school in Perth for gifted and talented students, Lily was the star linguist and Alby the star mathematician and that was all that mattered.

At eleven, she now knew six languages, two of them ancient and one of them sign language-it had been easily acquired and was actually something that she and Jack had done together. Today the end tips of her beautiful long black hair were colored electric pink.

For his part, Alby was twelve, black, and wore large thicklensed gla.s.ses. He had a cochlear implant, the miraculous technology that allowed the deaf to hear, and spoke with a slightly rounded inflection-signing was still necessary for those times when he needed to understand extra emotion or urgency in a matter-but deaf or not, Alby Calvin could rumble with the best of them.

West was standing on the porch with his shirt off, sipping a mug of coffee. His left arm glinted in the morning sun-from the bicep down, it was entirely made of metal.

He gazed out at the wide desert landscape, hazy in the morning light. Of medium height, with blue eyes and tousled dark hair, he was handsome in a rugged kind of way. Once upon a time, he had been ranked the fourthbest special forces soldier in the world, a lone Australian on a list dominated by Americans.

But he was no longer a soldier. After leading a daring tenyear mission to acquire the fabled Golden Capstone of the Great Pyramid from the remains of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, he was now more a treasure hunter than a warrior, more skilled at skirting b.o.o.bytrapped cave systems and deciphering ancient riddles than killing people.

The adventure with the Capstone, which had ended atop the Great Pyramid, had forged West's relationship with Lily. Since her parents were dead, Jack had raised her-with the help of a truly unique team of international soldiers. Soon after the Capstone mission had concluded, he had formally adopted her.

And since that day nearly two years ago, he had lived out here in splendid isolation, away from missions, away from the world, only traveling to Perth when Lily's schooling required it.

As for the Golden Capstone, it sat in all its glory in an abandoned nickel mine behind his farmhouse.

A few months back, a newspaper article had troubled West.

An Australian special forces trooper named Oakes had been killed in Iraq, shot to death in an ambush, the first Australian battle casualty inany conflict in nearly two years.

It bothered West because he was one of the few people in the world who knew exactly why no Australian had been killed in battle these past eighteen months. It had to do with the Tartarus Rotation of 2006 and the Capstone: thanks to his performance of an ancient ritual back then, West had a.s.sured Australia invulnerability for what was supposed to be a very long time.

But now with the death of that soldier in Iraq, that period of invulnerability appeared to be over.

The date of the man's death had struck him: August 21. It was suspiciously close to the northern autumnal equinox.

West himself had performed the Tartarus ritual atop the Great Pyramid on March 20, 2006, the day of thevernal equinox, the spring day when the Sun is perfectly overhead and day equals night.

The vernal and autumnal equinoxes are twin celestial moments that occur at opposite times of the year.

Opposites but the same,West thought.Yin and yang.

Someone, somewhere, had done something around the autumnal equinox that had neutralized Tartarus.

West was disturbed from his reverie by a small brown shape cutting across his view to the east.

It was a bird, a falcon, soaring gracefully across the dusty sky, wings wide. It was Horus, his peregrine falcon and loyal companion. The bird landed on the railing next to him, squawking at the eastern horizon.

West looked that way just in time to see several black dots appear in the sky there, flying in formation.

About three hundred miles away, near the coastal town of Wyndham, military exercises were under way, the biennialTalisman Sabre exercises that Australia held with America.

Large in scale, they involved all sections of both nations' armed forces: navy, army, and air force.

Only this year,Talisman Sabre came with a twist: for the first time ever, China was partic.i.p.ating. No one was under any illusions. Under the chaperoning of neutral Australia (it had significant trade links with China and longstanding military links with the US), China and America, the two biggest kids on the block, were sizing each other up. At first, the US hadn't wanted China's partic.i.p.ation, but the Chinese had exerted some considerable trade pressure on Australia to be involved, and the Australians had begged the US to allow it.

But happily, West thought, these weren't matters that concerned him anymore.

He turned to watch Lily and Alby scamper around the barn, kicking up matching dust trails, when the computer in his kitchen pinged.

Ping, ping, ping, ping.

Emails.

Lots of them.

Jack stepped inside, still gripping his coffee, and checked the monitor.

Over twodozen emails from Max Epper had just come in. Jack clicked on one, and found himself staring at a digital photo of an ancient carved symbol. Chinese by the look of it.

"Oh, Wizard." He sighed. "What's happened now? Did you forget to take your extra hard drive again?"

Wizard had done this before. He needed to back something up but had forgotten to take a second hard drive, so he'd emailed his photographs to Jack for safekeeping.

With a groan, Jack clicked over to the Internet and brought up aLord of the Rings chat room, punched in his ID tag:STRIDER 101.

A littleused notice board came up. This was how he and Lily communicated with Wizard: through the anonymity of the Internet. If Wizard was sending a bulk block of e mails, then he'd probably also sent an explanatory message via the chat room.

Sure enough the last message left on the notice board was fromGANDALF 101: Wizard.

West scrolled down to view the message, expecting to see the usual bashful apology from Wizard...

...only to be surprised by what he saw.

He saw numbers.

Lots of numbers, interspersed with parentheses and forward slashes: (3/289/5/5) (3/290/2/6) (3/289/8/4) (3/290/8/4) (3/290/1/12) (3/291/3/3) (1/187/15/6) (1/168/9/11).

(3/47/3/4) (3/47/4/12) (3/45/163) (3/47/1/5).

(3/305/3/1) (3/304/8/10).

(3/43/1/12) (3/30/3/6).

(3/15/7/4) (3/15/7/3).

(3/63/20/7) (3/65/5/12).

(3/291/14/2) (3/308/8/11) (3/232/5/7) (3/290/1/9) (3/69/13/5) (3/302/1/8).

(3/55/4/1113) (3/55/3/1).

Jack frowned, concerned.

It was a coded message from Wizard, a special code known only to the members of their trusted inner circle.

This was serious.

Jack quickly grabbed a paperback novel from the nearby bookshelf-the same novel that Wizard had used to compose the message in China-and began flicking pages, unraveling the coded communication.

He jotted down words underneath each numerical reference until at last he had the full message and his blood ran cold: (3/289/5/5) (3/290/2/6) (3/289/8/4) (3/290/8/4) (3/290/1/12).

GET OUT GET OUT NOW!.

(3/291/3/3) (1/187/15/6) (1/168/9/11).

GRAB FIRE STONE.

(3/47/3/4) (3/47/4/12) (3/45/163) (3/47/1/5).

AND MY BLACK BOOK.

(3/305/3/1) (3/304/8/10).

AND RUN.

(3/43/1/12) (3/30/3/6).

NEW EMERGENCY.

(3/15/7/4) (3/15/7/3).

VERY DANGEROUS.

(3/63/20/7) (3/65/5/12).

ENEMIES ARE COMING.

(3/291/14/2) (3/308/8/11) (3/232/5/7) (3/290/1/9).

WILL MEET YOU AT.

(3/69/13/5) (3/302/1/8).

GREAT TOWER.

(3/55/4/1113) (3/55/3/1).

THE WORST IS COMING.

"Holy s.h.i.t..." Jack breathed.

He snapped to look back out the kitchen window, saw Lily and Alby still playing out by the barn. Then he saw the hazy orange sky beyond them, glorious in the morning sun- -as it began to fill with falling figures, dozens and dozens of them, figures that issued blooming parachutes above them, slowing their falls.

Paratroopers. Hundreds of paratroopers.

Coming for his farm.

THE ATTACK ON JACK'S FARM WEST BURST OUT of the farmhouse, calling, "Kids! Get over here! Quickly!"

Lily turned, perplexed. Alby did too.

West motioned in sign language as he spoke: "Lily, pack a suitcase! Alby, get all your stuff! We're leaving in two minutes!"

"Leaving? Why?" Alby said.

Lily, however, knew the look on West's face.

"Because we have to," she said/signed. "Come on."

West rushed back into the farmhouse and pounded on the doors of the farm's two guest rooms. "Zoe! Sky Monster! Wake up! We're in trouble again!"

Out of guest room No.1 stepped Sky Monster, a hairy New Zealander who was West's good friend and resident pilot.

With his great black beard, potbelly, and overgrown eyebrows, Sky Monster wasn't exactly pretty first thing in the morning. He had a real name, but no one except his mother seemed to know it.

"Not so loud, Huntsman," he growled. "What's up?"

"We're being invaded." West pointed out the window.

Blearyeyed, Sky Monster looked out through it and saw the swarm of falling parachutes filling the morning sky. His eyes sprang wide."Australia is being invaded?"

"No, just us. Just this farm. Get dressed and then get down to theHalicarna.s.sus. Prep her for immediate liftoff."

"Gotcha." Sky Monster hurried away, just as the door to guest room No.2 opened, revealing a far more pleasant sight.

Zoe Kissane emerged from her room, dressed in a spare pair of West's pajamas. With skyblue eyes, short blond hair, and a lightly freckled face, she was a true Irish beauty.