Synopsis
The story starts with Jack's fall from the Vertex under Table Mountain with the suicidal Marine Switchblade, and his escape with the aid of Switchblade's Maghook, a staple of many of Reilly's works. He quickly reunites with the rest of his team at Little McDonald Island.
The dates for the placement of the six pillars sees a three-month window between the second and third placements. Jack and Zoe use the interim period to help Pooh Bear in the rescue of Stretch from the Israeli Mossad. In a Roman ruin located under Israel's most secret facility, they find Stretch subjected to a hellish treatment: kept alive in a tank of formaldehyde by General Muniz, a Mossad spymaster. Stretch was to be the latest addition in Muniz's private collection of "living trophies", a practice pioneered by a former KGB operative. Stretch is subsequently liberated and the party makes their escape.
Jack learns of The Five Greatest Warriors from Diane Cassidy, five key members of history who would influence the sacred stones and their whereabouts. They set about locating the third pillar and its matching Vertex. Following a connection to Genghis Khan, the party sets out for Mongolia. They locate the Khan's tomb under a false mound that covered a meteor crater. In the bowels of the fortress, they find a petrified dinosaur egg painted with images of the six temples that house the Verticies. The Japanese Blood Brotherhood attempt to stop Jack and Wolf from finding the next temple by destroying the egg, and Wizard is killed by Wolf in their escape. Realising that Genghis's shield also carries the images carved on the egg, Jack and his team race to the northern tip of Hokkaido.
Japan attempts to stop them from entering the temple - which can only be done so in the middle of a tsunami - but Jack and his father form an uneasy truce and agree to place the third pillar together. Negotiating a maze set above a lake of lava, they successfully place the pillar. Several Japanese snipers very nearly kill them, and in the firefight, Jack and his father receive a vision of Jack's death from the pillar: what appears to be a fiery accident involving a falling aircraft. Wolf decides to let Jack go free after Jack saves his life. Unfortunately, all involved are captured by a group of Russians. At the same time, Jack's friends are picked up from their various assignments around the world.
Everyone is taken to a dam in far eastern Siberia, where they meet Carnivore, General Muniz's friend and the creator of the "living tombs". Carnivore is the last of the House of Romanov, and the leader of the coalition of royal houses in Europe. Diane Cassidy is also revealed to be one of his agents. After forcing Jack to fight his half-brother to the death, the Carnivore subjects Jack's friends to his hellish prison cells to encourage him to place the fourth and fifth pillars. Without a choice, Jack agrees. The Carnivore makes a similar arrangement with Mao Gongli, Scimitar and Vulture, holding their loved ones hostage and sending them out to find the sixth and final pillar.
The fourth and fifth pillars must be placed simultaneously. Jack, Lily and Iolanthe make for Diego Garcia while Pooh Bear, Stretch and the Adamson twins go to Lundy Island. Shortly after they place their pillars, Carnivore and Cassidy abandon their Siberian base and their victims, leaving them to die. Wolf escapes and gives pursuit, heading for Easter Island. Meanwhile, Jack, Lily and Iolanthe return to Israel, where they locate the (occupied) Tomb of Jesus Christ, the bearer of the sixth and final pillar, in a salt mine near Ein Aradhim. After Pooh Bear is forced to kill Scimitar and Vulture, Jack himself makes for Easter Island aboard a heavily damaged Halicarnassus. Meanwhile, the Dark Sun enters the edge of the solar system and planet earth is subjected to extreme weather conditions.
Unable to land his plane, Jack crash-lands in the entrance to the Easter Island shrine. Unable to catch either Wolf or the Carnivore in the ten minutes remaining until the final pillar must be placed, Jack uses the remains of the Halicarnassus to cover the ground between himself and Carnivore. Jack kills the former KGB operative with the plane's sole remaining gun, which literally blasts him to nothingness. Lily, the only person Jack trusts - not least of all because she is the only one who can read the Word of Thoth - carries out the final placement. The reward for the sixth pillar is power, the ability to make one's thoughts a reality. Imbued with the power of the pillar, Lily goes on a murderous rampage, killing Cassidy and Mao Gongli in a grotesque fashion before Jack is able to stop her. As the Great Machine activates and the world is saved from the Dark Sun, Jack kicks the pillar into the void beneath the Vertex. Wolf gives chase, but the Halicarnassus causes the balcony overlooking the void to collapse, and he falls to his death as he chases the pillar. We learn that because it was Wolf's blood and not Jack's on the third pillar in Hokkaido, it was a vision of Wolf's death that Jack saw. Jack and Lily leave Easter Island, returning to Siberia in time to free their friends and the Carnivore's victims from the fomaldehyde tanks.
The epilogue sees Jack and Zoe married and living in Australia with Lily. The five surviving pillars remain hidden, with Jack reporting that they had been lost or destroyed over the course of their mission. Zoe discerns that the fifth Greatest Warrior - whose identity had gone unknown because of his role to play in the potential apocalypse - was actually Jack, and the story ends.
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