Atlantis Found

  "I beg to differ," Pitt said, his tone purposefully neutral. "All systems were shut down ten minutes before they were to be set in motion. I'm sorry to disrupt your plans, Karl, but there will be no cataclysm.

  There will be no New Destiny, no Fourth Empire. The world will go on spinning around the sun as before, far from perfect, with all its man-made weaknesses and frailties. Summer and winter, blue skies and clouds, rain and snow, will continue uninterrupted until long after the human race has ceased to exist.

  If we become extinct, it will be from natural causes, not from some outlandish scheme by a megalomaniac bent on world domination."

  "What are you saying?" Elsie snapped in growing alarm.

  "No need to panic, dear sister," said Karl, his tone a shade less than congenial. "The man is lying."

  Pitt shook his head wearily. "It's all over for the Wolf family. If anyone deserves to be indicted by a world tribunal for attempted crimes against humanity, it's you. When seven billion souls find out how you and your family of ghouls tried to exterminate every man, woman, and child on the planet, you're not going to be very popular. Your giant ships, wealth, and treasures will be seized. And if any of your family members do escape a lifetime in jail, their every move will be closely watched by international intelligence and police agencies to ensure that they won't have any ambitions for a Fifth Empire."

  "If what you say is true," Karl said with a sneer, only slightly diminished by uncertainty, "what do you plan to do with my sisters and me?"

  "Not my call." Pitt sighed. "Sometime, someplace, you'll be hanged for your crimes, for all the murders you've ordered of those who stood in your way. My satisfaction will be sitting in the front row and watching you drop."

  "A most provocative illusion, Mr. Pitt, and most intriguing. A pity it's pure fantasy."

  "You're a hard man to convince."

  "Give the order to fire, brother," Elsie demanded. "Shoot the vermin. If you don't, I will."

  Karl Wolf stared at the weary and battle-exhausted veterans of Cleary's command. "My sister is right.

  Unless your men surrender within the next ten seconds, my people will cut them down."

  "Never happen," said Pitt, his voice hard and abrupt.

  "One hundred guns against twenty? The battle will not last long, and there can only be one conclusion.

  You see, Mr. Pitt, too much is at stake. My sisters and I will gladly sacrifice our lives in the name of the Fourth Empire."

  "It's stupid to waste lives for a dream that's already dead and buried," Pitt said casually.

  "The hollow statement of a desperate man. At least I will have the gratification of knowing you'll be the first to die."

  Pitt stared at Wolf for a long moment, then glanced down at the automatic rifle in the madman's hands.

  Then he shrugged. "Have it your way. But before you get carried away with blood lust, I suggest you look behind you."

  Wolf shook his head. "I'm not taking my eyes off you."

  Pitt turned slightly to Elsie and Blondi. "Why don't you girls explain the facts of life to your brother?"

  The Wolf sisters turned and looked.

  Every neck in the hangar turned and every pair of eyes looked toward the rear wall and the entrance of the far tunnel. If there was one thing the hangar was lacking, it wasn't an arsenal of automatic weapons.

  Another two hundred had joined the drama being enacted around the wrecked aircraft. Two hundred nasty-looking Eradicator rifles all aimed at the backs of Destiny Enterprises engineers and scientists and held in the hands of men whose faces were hidden by helmets and goggles. They were ranged in an orderly semicircle, the front row kneeling, the back row standing, dressed in Arctic battle gear similar to that worn by Cleary and his team.

  One of the figures stepped forward and spoke loudly with authority. "Lay down your weapons very slowly and back away! At the first sign of hostility, I will order my men to open fire! Please cooperate and no one will be hurt!"

  There was no sign of hesitation or resistance. Far from it. The men and women who made up the scientific team for Destiny Enterprises were only too happy to rid themselves of weapons few of them knew how to operate properly. There was an almost universal sigh of relief as they backed away from the Bushmaster rifles and raised their hands in the air.

  Elsie looked as if she had taken a knife in the heart. She stood with a stunned, uncomprehending look on her face. Blondi, her eyes stricken and bewildered, looked as if she was going to be sick. Karl Wolf's face went tense and hard as stone, more angry than fearful at the certainty of seeing his grand plan to launch a new world order suddenly evaporate.

  "Which one of you is Dirk Pitt?" inquired the leader of the newly arrived Special Forces.

  Pitt slowly raised his hand. "Here."

  The officer strode up to Pitt and gave a slight nod of his head. "Colonel Robert Wittenberg, in charge of the Special Forces operation. What is the status of the Ross Ice Shelf operation?"

  "Terminated," Pitt answered steadily. "The Valhalla Project was shut down ten minutes short of the ice-cutting system's activation."

  Wittenberg relaxed visibly. "Thank God," he sighed.

  "Your timing could not have been more perfect, Colonel."

  "After making radio contact with Major Cleary, we followed your directions through the opening in the ice you smashed with your vehicle." He paused and asked as if in awe, "Did you see the ancient city?"

  Pitt smiled. "Yes, we saw it."

  "From there it was a routine run with full battle gear," Wittenberg continued, "until we arrived at the hangar and assembled before anyone turned and noticed us."

  "It was touch and go, but Major Cleary and I managed to keep everyone's attention focused away from your end of the tunnel until you took up your battle position."

  "Is this all of them?" asked Wittenberg.

  Pitt nodded. "Except for several of their wounded back at the control center."

  Cleary approached, and the two warriors saluted before shaking hands warmly. Cleary's smile was tired, but the teeth showed. "Bob, you don't know how happy I am to see your ugly old face."

  "How many times does this make that I saved your tail?" Wittenberg said, humor in his eyes.

  "Twice, and I'm not ashamed to admit it."

  "You didn't leave much for me to do."

  "True, but if you and your men hadn't shown up when you did, you'd have found half an acre of dead bodies."

  Wittenberg stared at Cleary's men, who stood gaunt and weary but still vigilant, watching every move made by the Wolf personnel as they dropped their rifles on the ice floor and gathered in hushed groups near the wrecked aircraft. "It looks like they whittled you down some."

  "I lost too many good men," Cleary admitted grimly.

  Pitt gestured to the Wolfs. "Colonel Wittenberg, may I introduce Karl Wolf and his sisters Elsie and. .

  ." Not knowing Blondi, he paused.

  "My sister Blondi," Karl intervened. He was a man in the middle of a nightmare. "What do you intend to do with us, Colonel?"

  "If it was up to me," growled Cleary, "I'd shoot the whole lot of you.

  "Were you given orders concerning the Wolfs after you captured them?" Pitt asked Wittenberg.

  The colonel shook his head. "There was no time to discuss political policy regarding prisoners."

  "In that case, may I ask a favor?"

  "After all you and your friend have done," replied Cleary, "you have but to name it."

  "I'd like temporary custody of the Wolfs."

  Wittenberg gazed into Pitt's eyes, as if trying to read the mind behind. "I don't quite understand."

  But Cleary did. "Since you were given no orders concerning the disposition of prisoners," he said to the colonel, "I think it only fitting and proper that the man who saved us from unimaginable horror have his request honored."

  Wittenberg thought a moment before nodding. "I quite agree. The spoils of war. You have custody of the Wolfs until such time as they can
be transported under guard to Washington."

  "No one government has legal jurisdiction over any individual in Antarctica," said Karl arrogantly. "It is unlawful for you to hold us as hostages."

  "I'm only a simple soldier," said Wittenberg, with an indifferent shrug. "I'll leave it for the lawyers and politicians to decide your fate after you're in their hands."

  While the newly combined Special Force teams secured the mining facility and rounded up the captives, eventually placing them in confinement in a workers' dormitory, Pitt and Giordino unobtrusively herded Karl, Elsie, and Blondi Wolf along the huge doors that covered one wall of the hangar. Seemingly unnoticed, they suddenly forced the three Wolfs through a small maintenance door that opened onto the aircraft runway outside. The sudden surge of cold air came as a shock after the sixty-degree temperature inside the hangar.

  Karl Wolf turned and smiled bleakly at Pitt and Giordino. "Is this where you execute us?"

  Blondi seemed as if she were in a trance, but Elsie stared at Pitt scathingly. "Shoot us, if you dare!" she spat savagely.

  Pitt's face was masked by disgust. "By all that is holy in this world, you all deserve to die. Your whole despicable family deserves to die. But it won't be me or my friend here who will do the honors. I'll leave that to natural causes."

  The revelation suddenly struck Wolf. "You're allowing us to escape?"

  Pitt nodded. "Yes."

  "Then you don't see my sisters and me standing trial and going to jail."

  "A family of your wealth and power will never step into a courtroom. You will use every means at your command to cheat the gallows or a life behind bars and go free in the end."

  "What you say is true," said Karl contemptuously. "No head of government would dare risk the consequences of indicting the Wolf family."

  "Nor incur our wrath," added Elsie. "There isn't a high official or national leader who doesn't owe our family. Our exposure will be their exposure."

  "We cannot be imprisoned like common rabble," said Blondi, her voice having regained a measure of insolence. "The family is too spirited, too strong-willed. We will rise again, and next time we will not fail."

  "I, for one," said Giordino, his black eyes filled with scorn, "think that is a bad idea."

  "We'll all rest easier knowing you won't be around to have a hand in it," said Pitt coldly.

  Karl Wolf's eyes narrowed, and then he stared out over the icy landscape. "I believe I see your motive," he murmured in subdued tones. "You are turning us loose to die out on the ice floe."

  "Yes." Pitt nodded his head slightly.

  "Not dressed for frigid temperatures, we won't last an hour."

  "My guess is twenty minutes."

  "It seems I underestimated you as an opponent, Mr. Pitt."

  "I have this theory that the world can get along just fine without the chief director of Destiny Enterprises and the family empire."

  "Why don't you simply shoot us and get it over with?"

  Pitt gazed at Wolf with the briefest of pleasure in his green eyes. "That would be too quick. This way you'll have time to reflect on the horror you attempted to inflict on billions of innocent people."

  There was a slight flush on Wolf's temples. In a supportive gesture, he put his arms around his sister's shoulders. "Your lecture bores me, Mr. Pitt. I'd rather meet death by freezing than listen to more of your philosophic drivel."

  Pitt looked thoughtfully at Karl Wolf and his sisters. He wondered if it was possible to make a dent in this incorrigible family. The loss of their empire shook them, but the threat of death didn't unnerve them in the least. If anything, it maddened them. He looked from one face to the other. "A word of warning.

  Don't bother attempting to double back into the tunnels or the mining facility. All entrances and exits will be guarded." Then he made a gesture with his old Colt. "Start walking."

  Blondi looked resigned to her fate, as did Karl. Already she was shivering violently from the biting cold. Not Elsie. She lunged at Pitt, only to receive a backhand from Giordino that knocked her to her knees. As she struggled to her feet, helped by Karl, Pitt had rarely seen such a look of pure malevolence on a woman's face. "I swear, I'll kill you," she snarled through bloody lips. Pitt smiled ruthlessly.

  "Goodbye, Elsie, have a nice day." "If you walk fast," said Giordino cynically, "you'll stay warmer." Then he slammed and locked the door.

  >

  Forty-eight hours later, the mining facility was crawling with scientists and engineers, who began studying the Wolfs' nanotechnology systems while making dead certain the network to break off the ice shelf could not be reactivated. They were followed by an army of anthropologists and archaeologists, who descended on the ancient city of the Amenes. Almost all were former skeptics who denied the existence of an Atlantis-type culture before 4000 B.C. Now they stood and walked amid the ancient ruins in reverent awe, gazing at the grotesque shape of the pillars under ice, unable to believe what they were truly encountering. Soon they were cataloging the artifacts found in the damaged aircraft and the storage rooms in the tunnels spreading from the hangar. After being carefully crated, the artifacts were flown to the United States for conservation and in-depth study before being placed on public display.

  Every university in every country with a dedicated archaeology department sent teams to study the city and begin removing the ice that had shrouded it for nine millennia. It would be a massive project that would continue for nearly fifty years and would lead to other undiscovered Amenes sites. The incredible magnitude of artifacts would eventually fill museums in every major city of the world.

  His face repaired by a medical team flown in to tend and evacuate the wounded, Pitt, along with Giordino, greeted Dad Cussler when he and his crew arrived to disassemble the remains of the Snow Cruiser for shipment back to a restoration shop in the States. They accompanied him to the control center and then stood back with heavy misgivings as he examined the vehicle for the first time since it had left Little America VI.

  The old man stared solemnly and sadly at the great red vehicle that was battered to a pulp, riddled with bullet holes, tires shredded and flat, the windows in the control cabin shot to shards. Nearly three full minutes passed as he walked around the wreckage, examining the damage. Finally, he looked up and made a crooked grin.

  "Nothing that can't be fixed," he said, pulling at his gray beard.

  Pitt stared at him bleakly. "You really believe it can be rebuilt?"

  "I know so. Might take a couple of years, but I think we can put her back together as good as new."

  "It doesn't seem possible," said Giordino, shaking his head.

  "You and I aren't seeing the same thing," said Cussler. "You see a pile of junk. I see a magnificent machine that will one day be admired by millions of people at the Smithsonian." His blue-green eyes gleamed as he spoke. "What you don't realize is that you took a mechanical failure and turned it into an astonishing success. Before, the Snow Cruiser's only distinction was that it was a fiasco and didn't come close to achieving what it was designed to do. And that was to carry a crew in comfort five thousand miles over the ice of the Antarctic. It floundered almost immediately after coming off the boat in 1930 and lay buried for seventy years. You two not only proved her a triumph of early-twentieth-century engineering by driving her sixty miles across the ice shelf in the middle of a blizzard, but you used her brute size and power to prevent a worldwide cataclysm. Now, thanks to you, she's a priceless and treasured piece of history."

  Pitt gazed at the huge mutilated vehicle as if it were a wounded animal. "But for her, none of us would be standing here."

  "Someday, I hope you'll tell me the entire story."

  Giordino looked at the old man oddly. "Somehow, I think you already know it."

  "When she's put on display," said Dad, slapping Pitt on the back, "I'll send you both invitations to the ceremony."

  "Al and I will look forward to it."

  "That reminds me. Could you point out
whoever is in charge here. During our crossing from the ice station, my crew and I ran across three frozen bodies about a half a mile from the runway. It looked like they were trying to cross over the security fence before the cold caught up with them. I'd better report it so the remains can be recovered."

  "A man and two women?" Pitt asked innocently.

  Dad nodded. "Funny thing. They were dressed more like they were going to a football game in Philadelphia than to survive the Antarctic."

  "Some people just don't respect the hazards of frigid climates."

  Dad lifted an eyebrow, then reached in his pocket and pulled out a red bandanna half the size of a pup tent and blew his nose. "Yeah, ain't it the truth."

  Aircraft were landing with frequency, unloading scientists and military personnel, then loading Cleary's wounded along with the injured Wolf security guards and airlifting them to hospitals in the United States.

  Not to be left out, the nuclear submarine Tucson navigated her way through the cavern into the ice-enclosed harbor and moored next to the old Nazi U-boats.

  Captain Evan Cunningham was a bantam cock of a man, short and wiry, who moved his arms and legs as if jerked on strings. He had a smooth face with a sharp chin and Prussian blue eyes that seemed constantly in motion. He met with Colonel Wittenberg and General Bill Guerro, who had been sent to Okuma Bay from Washington to take command from Wittenberg and oversee the growing complexity of the discovery. Cunningham offered the services of his ship and crew as authorized by the naval chief of staff.

  Wittenberg had described Pitt to Cunningham, and the commander had sought out the man from NUMA. He approached and introduced himself. "Mr. Pitt, we've talked over the radio, but haven't actually met. I'm Evan Cunningham, captain of the Tucson."

  "A privilege to meet you, Captain. Now I can properly express my thanks for your timely rescue of the Polar Storm and everyone on board."

  À lucky case of being in the right place at the right time." He grinned broadly. "Not every sub commander in today's navy can say he sank a U-boat."