The Hunt for Atlantis

  “Very possibly. The ship fits the description of the one that set out from Casablanca.”

  “Damn it!” Matthews rubbed his chin, thinking. “All right. Let everyone know that we have company, and to be ready. If it gets to within two miles, or they launch boats, break out the weapons. I’ll be on the bridge.”

  “Yes, sir.” The crewman left, Matthews following.

  “Eddie, did you hear any of that?” Nina asked. “They think Qobras is on his way!”

  “What? Shit!” On one of the smaller monitors, Nina saw him helping Kari out of the shaft. “What do you want to do?”

  “Record as much as you can, as fast as you can. As soon as I hear anything else, I’ll let you know. His ship’s still five miles away—Captain Matthews’s going to keep us updated.”

  “Only five miles? There’s no way we’ll be able to get back to the surface and recover the sub before he gets here!”

  “The submersible’s expendable, we can abandon it if we need to,” said Kari, ignoring the yelp of “What?” from Baillard. Out of the water, her transmission was much clearer. “We can build another, but the information in here is priceless. Video as much of it as you can—we can process it later if we need to enhance anything. I’ll take pictures.”

  “Hugo, did you get that?” Chase asked.

  The reply was barely audible, masked by static. “Most of it. What do you want me to do?”

  “No point you coming in here now. Stay at the entrance in case we need any help.”

  “Roger, mon ami. Don’t wait too long.”

  Nina watched as Chase returned to the inscription-covered walls, then looked back at the still image on her main screen, trying to decipher its secrets.

  Unseen by anybody aboard the Evenor, a head broke the surface of the ocean beneath the research vessel’s fantail. Then another, and another …

  Thirty feet below the gentle waves, more divers released their Manta tow sleds, fast, streamlined three-man vehicles. The abandoned minisubs dropped slowly away into the darkness as their passengers headed silently for the Evenor’s boat dock. The ship was using its thrusters to hold position; the propellers were still.

  The first man reached the ladder and carefully ascended, peering over the edge of the deck. One of the Evenor’s crew was about twenty feet away on the helipad, his back to him. Nobody else was in sight.

  The frogman ducked back down, unslinging his weapon—a Heckler and Koch MP-7—and popped the red rubber seal from the end of the fat silencer with his thumb in one easy move. That done, he crept silently back to the top of the ladder and took aim.

  There was almost no noise save the sharp metallic clack as the bolt cycled, the spent casing of the single 4.6-millimeter bullet caught in a mesh bag attached to the compact weapon before it could hit the deck. Even as the crewman fell, the frogman was already scrambling up onto the deck. He raced for cover against a bulkhead, listening for sounds of alarm. Nothing reached him but the slap of waves and the plaintive cries of gulls circling above.

  Other men quickly boarded the Evenor, spreading out. The first man removed his mask, revealing a black patch over one eye.

  Jason Starkman.

  “Take the ship,” he ordered.

  Chase continued around the altar room, scanning the texts on the walls. The video camera on his shoulder was fixed in one position, and his inability to bend inside the suit made it a cumbersome process.

  He reached the stairs. If the structure was like the one in Brazil, they would lead to the vast main chamber. He directed his flashlight down them. Water reflected the beam back at him, shimmering patterns rolling over the walls and ceiling.

  “Good thing we didn’t take off our helmets,” he said, crossing the top of the stairway to check the wall on the other side. “If the water pressure outside’s at twenty-five ATA, then the air in here and in the temple will be as well.”

  “You mean the temple itself isn’t flooded?” asked Kari.

  “Only partly. The floor in here’s higher than the temple, but the ceiling’s at about the same height. There must be air trapped in there as well.”

  Her voice filled with frustration. “If only we had time to investigate! It’s astounding that the temple survived the deluge.”

  “Guess they really built ’em to last back then. How are you doing?”

  Another flash from her camera. “About half finished.”

  Castille stood by the entrance, watching the slight shifts of the fiber-optic cable as Chase moved around inside. Of all the times for Qobras to show up! Chase was undoubtedly right: somebody had given their location away to the opposition. But who?

  At only a meter from the stone wall, the lights of his deep suit overpowered the stronger but more diffuse spotlights on the Atragon. So he didn’t notice as the glow slowly became brighter, the lights on Baillard’s submersible joined by another source …

  Up in the Evenor’s pilothouse, Matthews observed the approaching ship through a pair of powerful binoculars. It was now three miles away, and still heading for them.

  Definitely a deep-sea survey ship, a submersible crane on its foredeck, which meant it was almost certainly the one Qobras had chartered. Somehow he had found out about the true location of Nina Wilde’s discovery and directed it here at full speed. And in another few minutes it would reach the two-mile mark, at which point he would have no choice but to consider it a threat.

  No sign of any boats being launched, however, even though a group of men in a Zodiac could reach the stationary Evenor much sooner than the ship itself. It looked as though they meant to close right in.

  In which case, they were in for a surprise. The weapons Kristian Frost had provided—a P-90 submachine gun for each member of the crew, plus a pair of heavy machine guns and a number of rocket-propelled grenades and launchers—would be more than enough to drive off anyone who tried to take his ship.

  No boats …

  No boats being launched—for that matter, no boats even ready to be launched.

  And if that was the crane for a submersible … where the hell was the sub itself?

  Matthews realized with shock the significance of that fact, but too late to act upon it as the door of the pilothouse burst open.

  In the control sphere of the Atragon, Baillard drummed a tune on one of the control panels with his fingertips. On the 3-D screen, he could see Castille standing with his back to him, observing the entrance to the sunken temple.

  That was one disadvantage of the LIDAR system, he mused. The lack of color made it very dull to look at when nothing was happening. He glanced up at the monitor showing the feed from the submersible’s main video camera. The view wasn’t much better in color, the building obscured by too much light-sapping water for any real detail to be visible …

  What the hell?

  Something had just moved in the corner of his vision, outside the small porthole.

  A fish? No, there was something different about the view…

  It hit like ice.

  The lighting had changed!

  He hadn’t moved the exterior spotlights, and the sub was stationary …

  “Evenor!” he yelled into the radio. “Evenor, there’s another sub—”

  A loud crackle in his headphones, then silence. All the indicator LEDs on the communications console flicked from green to red.

  “Evenor! Do you copy? What’s happening?”

  The answer came a moment later. Something hit the top of the hull with a dull clonk. A long object snaked down in front of the LIDAR turret.

  The umbilical. Neatly severed.

  And now more light flooded through the porthole as his unseen attacker closed in.

  “Shit!” He grabbed the controls, bringing the motors to life and blasting the Atragon off the seabed in an explosive cloud of silt. “Hugo! I’m under attack! Get out of there!”

  Something plowed into his vessel, slamming him sideways against the steel wall.

  A harsh buzz in Chase’s ear
made him wince. His suit relay passed it on to Kari, who gasped in surprise. “What was that?”

  All the Evenor’s underwater feeds went blank simultaneously, some of the screens turning black, others bright blue with a “No Signal” warning.

  “What was that?” Nina asked.

  “That, Dr. Wilde,” said a new voice from behind her, “was the end of your expedition.”

  Nina whirled. “You!”

  Starkman stared coldly down at her, flanked by two of his wet-suited men. All three had their guns raised, covering the occupants of the room. “If you’d like to join the rest of the crew on the aft deck?”

  Castille spun at the garbled shout in his headphones, to see a second sub bearing down on the Atragon!

  Baillard’s vessel had just started to rise from the seabed as the intruder, a smaller conventional submersible with a thick steel cage around its bubble cockpit, rammed into its side. The Atragon was driven back down, almost disappearing inside a roiling cloud of silt.

  “Merde!” he gasped, before recovering his composure. “Edward! Edward, can you hear me? Kari!”

  There was no answer. The radio relay on the submersible was down, cutting him off from the other divers.

  The attacker rose from the cloud and made a sharp turn, thrusters swiveling and pumping out swirling toroids of bubbles in their wake. Its spotlights picked out white and orange metal within the billowing sediment.

  Castille thought it was going to ram the Atragon again, but instead it extended its manipulator arm. Something was clutched between the pincers, a blocky package that it placed almost delicately against the side of the command sphere …

  Baillard knew something bad was about to happen as he saw the shadow of the other sub’s outstretched manipulator arm move across the porthole. A second later, something rasped against the pressure sphere.

  The LIDAR was down—aside from the tiny portholes, he was blind. Pressing a palm against the deep cut on his temple and trying not to hyperventilate in fear, he worked the thruster controls.

  Nothing happened. While he and Trulli had designed their subs to be sturdy, they hadn’t been intended to resist a deliberate attack, and the electrical control board was flashing multiple warning lights.

  He quickly considered his options. He could either reset the affected circuits and try to restore thruster power—or just shut off the electromagnets holding the heavy steel ballast plates to the sub’s belly, an emergency system that would put him back on the surface in under three minutes.

  Doing so would mean abandoning the three divers. But he couldn’t help them if he couldn’t see, and the other sub was still out there, its spotlights driving a menacing beam through the porthole as it moved around.

  He made his decision, and pulled the red-painted lever beside his seat.

  Castille watched in horror as the Atragon released its ballast slabs, which dropped like bombs onto the sea floor, kicking up another huge rolling wave of sediment. The dull boom of their impact was strong enough for him to feel through the water.

  Freed of the weight, the submersible shot upwards, spotlights flickering. The fiber-optic line whipped upwards with it, snaking like a cracking whip.

  “No!” he yelled helplessly.

  As if hearing his shout, the enemy sub swiveled to face him, its banks of spotlights regarding him like glowing compound eyes. The manipulator arm reached back, expertly collecting something attached to a pannier on the steel sideframe before extending again.

  Another package, larger than the first. Castille knew instinctively what it was. A bomb!

  Baillard fought to restore power as the Atragon rose. Nothing he did seemed to improve matters—

  He froze at an unexpected sound. The sub was creaking and groaning as it ascended, but those noises were so familiar that they barely registered. This was something else.

  A rhythmic noise, mechanical, coming from the side of the sphere. Where the other sub’s arm had ground against it.

  A ticking …

  Baillard didn’t even have time to realize the full terror of the situation before the shaped charge exploded, ripping a foot-wide hole in the steel pressure sphere. A spear of water hit him with the force of a train, killing him instantly.

  Even through his helmet and the thick stone walls of the temple, Chase heard the low rumble. “Shit!”

  “What was that noise?” Kari asked.

  “An explosion.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Either someone dropped a thousand-pound bomb on the Evenor—or the sub just blew up.” He looked down at his suit. “Which means—oh shit, shit! Cut my coms line, quick!”

  “But we’ll be cut off!”

  “We’re already cut off! Do it!”

  Kari put down the camera and clumsily hurried to him, taking her diver’s knife from her belt. The fiberoptic cable attached to the back of Chase’s suit was sheathed in protective plastic. She grabbed it and sawed away with the knife.

  “Come on, come on!” Chase yelled.

  “I’m trying!” The line finally sheared in two, a blue pinpoint of light shining from the stub still attached to Chase’s suit. A moment later, the rest of the cable was snatched from her gloved hand. It shot across the chamber before disappearing over the edge of the shaft. “What the hell just happened?”

  “If the sub blew up, the ballast would’ve been dropped automatically when it lost power. That means the thing’s on its way to the surface like a fucking rocket—and it would have tried to take me with it.” He turned to face her. “Thanks. Sorry I shouted.”

  “No need to apologize, given the circumstances!” She looked at the shaft. “If the sub’s been destroyed, what are we going to do?”

  “Get the fuck out of here, for starters.” He moved back over to the shaft. “Hugo? Can you hear me? Hugo? Shit!”

  “I’m still getting you on the radio,” said Kari.

  “Yeah, but you’re standing five feet away in air, and he’s got to receive it through Christ knows how many feet of stone and water. Hugo!”

  Castille grabbed the control stick and pushed his suit’s thrusters to full power, shooting upwards in a spray of bubbles as the submersible swooped down at him. It was close enough for him to see the word Zeus painted on the control sphere and the pilot lying on his belly inside, face magnified and distorted into a leer by the glass bubble.

  The manipulator arm swung at him, but he rolled, using his fins to change direction and duck under it. He looked back, but the pilot was keeping hold of the explosive package, determined to deliver it before dealing with him.

  There was only one possible target.

  The entrance to the temple.

  “Edward!” he screamed, knowing there was no chance of being heard. “Get out of there! Get out!”

  The sub’s thrusters spewed out bubbles, the whirling propellers reversing to bring the vessel to a stop at the base of the wall. The arm extended, reaching smoothly into the narrow passageway before retracting again.

  The gleaming steel claw was now empty.

  Castille put his thumb on the thruster control. If he could get in there fast enough, he might be able to pull the explosives clear.

  The submersible pilot wasn’t going to give him the chance. The arm rising above its hull like a scorpion’s tail, the vessel swung around again, hunting for him.

  Spotlights dazzled him. Another burst of froth from the sub’s propellers, driving it forwards.

  Straight for him.

  “Very well…” he whispered. He released the control stick, reaching for his equipment belt.

  The submersible accelerated, its arm descending and stretching out ahead of it like a lance.

  Castille waited, holding still.

  And he whipped up his grappling gun and fired it straight at the cockpit bubble.

  The pointed steel tip of the grapnel hit the glass—and stopped dead, penetrating barely more than a centimeter before the force of the water swee
ping over the submersible tore it free. It clattered away beneath the sub, trailing its cable behind it.

  Castille had already dropped the gun and powered up his thrusters again, twisting to climb over to one side of the onrushing sub. The pilot, startled by the impact, couldn’t react quickly enough to catch him with the outstretched arm.

  But he was fast enough to pull the sub around in a sweeping turn, ready to pursue.

  Castille knew his suit didn’t have the power to outrun the sub. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to.

  In the cockpit, the pilot grinned savagely as he saw the bright yellow shell of Castille’s deep suit pinned in his spotlights. He brought the throttle to full power, preparing to ram him, an underwater hit-and-run …

  The tiny mark left by the grapnel suddenly grew. And kept growing, crazed tendrils sweeping outwards across the bubble with an awful, tooth-grinding screech of cracking glass. The immense pressure of the ocean bore down against the new flaw in the surface, expanding it—

  With a bang as loud as artillery fire, the submersible’s cockpit imploded. Huge shards of three-inch-thick glass hit the pilot at the speed of sound, reducing him to a red haze that bloomed through the churning air bubbles like a huge and gory flower. The sub nose-dived into the seabed, plowing up a huge swath of sand.

  Castille turned around. There might still be time for him to reach the explosives …

  There wasn’t.

  A shockwave burst from the end of the passage. Castille was slammed away by the deafening blast as if hit by a car, tumbling out of control, all vision obliterated by the enormous cloud of silt.

  But he didn’t need to see to know that the thunderous vibrations hitting him through the water after the blast were caused by massive stone blocks collapsing into the tunnel, sealing it forever.

  Inside the altar chamber, Chase was about to lower Kari into the shaft when a surge of water erupted beneath them, knocking them both onto their backs as it blasted into the chamber like a geyser. Chunks of debris rained down, hammer-blow impacts against their suits.