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“That’s part of his writings. Taken as a whole, they were a guidebook for how to rule. He believed that a prince who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”
“And you fancy yourself a prince?”
“Why not? For a century, my predecessors have been protecting a secret that they never truly understood. Yes, they knew it was a destructive force the likes of which the world has never seen. But I alone saw its potential. I alone set about to harvest and refine it into a weapon. With it, I can obliterate whole nations in the blink of an eye. Who would dare to stand in my way?”
“How many innocent people have died because of your quest for power?” Riley asked.
Bart Young shrugged. “Immaterial. A prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how to be ruthless, and to use that knowledge as necessity requires.”
“You’re no prince,” Riley said. “You’re just a thug in a thousand-dollar suit.”
“Time will tell. Was Napoleon a thug? Was Alexander the Great? Was Genghis Khan?”
“Yeah,” Riley said. “Those guys were thugs.”
Bart Young shook his head. “You’re not seeing the big picture. The winners write the history books. Only two things stand in my way. Emerson Knight and the Penning trap he stole.”
“Why?” Riley asked.
“That particular trap contains a little more than a third of my supply of strange matter, and I need it to complete Armageddon.”
Riley leaned forward. “?‘Armageddon’?”
“The weapon my troops will carry into battle.”
“You don’t have enough from your other collection sites?” Riley asked.
“In microscopic quantities, it isn’t stable enough to do any significant damage. The larger the mass of strange matter, the more stable it becomes.”
“How much do you need?”
The director turned around in his seat and stared directly at Riley. “If I want to conquer the world, I need enough to instill fear in every man, woman, and child. I need the ability to threaten the planet Earth with annihilation. Unfortunately, without that Penning trap, I barely have enough to destroy North America.”
“Right,” Riley said. “That would be unfortunate if you couldn’t destroy the entire world.”
Riley sat in silence as the SUV drove around South Point and continued north on Highway 11 toward the Kilauea Crater. Riley stayed alert as they entered Volcanoes National Park. Vast fields of jagged lava ran from the road down to the ocean, ten miles away. The SUV drove past the turnoff to the visitor center and continued on along Highway 11, out of the park and toward the little town of Volcano.
“I thought we were heading to Kilauea,” Riley said.
“We are, and we aren’t,” Bart Young said, smiling. “It’s nice to know there are still some secrets that we’ve managed to hide from you and Knight. I just might keep you around for a while. Where we’re going, nobody will ever find you.”
—
“How the Sam Hill are we going to find her?” Vernon asked.
Emerson was pacing in his living room. He’d phoned Alani minutes after Riley was kidnapped and told her to bring everyone to the ranch. They now had the task of rescuing Riley without sacrificing the Penning trap.
“Tin Man won’t try to arrange an exchange until morning. That gives us twelve hours,” Emerson said.
Alani leaned forward in her chair. “We have absolutely no idea where they took her. Hawaii might be an island, but it’s a really big island.”
“Well, we can’t give up the Whatsamadoodle either,” Vernon said. “I don’t like the idea of handing over a doomsday machine to those maniacs.”
“We have it stashed away in the storage locker at the Keck Observatory,” Alani said. “It’s hooked up to power and there are two backup generators, so it should be safe. I told my assistant it was part of an experiment I was conducting and not to touch it but to call if there were any problems.”
Emerson g
ot out a map of the Big Island. “Every riddle has an answer. It’s somewhere here on this map.”
