Atlantis Stolen (Sam Reilly Book 3) (23 page)

“The water won’t
enter here because Poseidon’s temple is in the shape of a half dome,” Sam
noted. “Therefore, when Atlantis flooded originally, everywhere became
submerged except this point. But what if we break the dome?”

“How do you plan
to do that from down here?”

“With this.” Sam
lifted his right mechanical arm, and the head of a rocket appeared.

“Wow, what have
you got there?”

“Given our
previous problems, I wasn’t convinced I wanted to enter Atlantis without
superior firepower. Consequently, I had an armorer friend of mine redesign an
RPG 27 so that it could be retrofitted into our ADS machine.”

“Ah, Sam… have
you really thought this through? If we blow apart the ceiling, what do you
think the pressure difference is going to do to us?”

“I’d say we have
a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. Maybe twenty-five to seventy-five. Why –
have you got a better idea?”

Tom shrugged his
massive mechanical shoulders. “Guess not.”

“Then that answers
it,” Sam said and fired the RPG directly at the ceiling, above where Poseidon
was supposed to stand.

The entire roof
exploded, revealing the entrance to another temple.

Sam looked
around, “I told you there was a room behind it!”

“That’s great,
but I don’t see any water flooding in here?”

“No, neither do
I. Let’s check out the cave-in again. Is it possible the boulders have blocked
the water from coming in?” 

“Yes, that could
be it.”

“Do you want to
go check it out while I work on plan B?”

“What’s plan B?”

“You don’t want
to know yet…”

Tom returned ten
minutes later. “Yep, the cave-in has blocked any water getting in here. So, unless
you can jump about thirty feet, I have no idea how we’re going to get to the
next level.”

“That’s where
plan B is going to have to come in.”

“What’s plan B?”

“We’re going to
flood this room using Poseidon’s own bath water.”

“The fountain of
the Gods?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“That’s great,
but it’s still draining at hundreds of cubic feet of water per minute.”

Sam grinned.
“That’s why we’re going to have to block the drain.”

Four red marble
columns, each nearly ten feet tall, adorned the room. Resting on top of each,
like a pedestal, was a ball made of blue green marble, all a different shade of
light. Sam imagined each one served some type of symbolic references to the
seasons of the year. If he’d had more time, Sam would have liked to examine
them better, but the value of archeology always came second to those still
living.

“Help me knock
this thing over,” Sam said.

Sam rested the
massive shoulder of his ADS machine against the solid column and pushed.
Nothing happened. Tom then stepped in and locked their two ADS machines
together so that their combined hydraulic power could push the column over.

“Okay, try now,”
Tom said.

The column moved,
but only slightly. Not enough to knock it over.

Sam gritted his
teeth and said, “Let’s try pushing it back and forth until it moves.”

By the fifth go,
the entire column tipped to the floor – sending the marbled earth rolling.

Built into the
side of Poseidon’s temple, the fountain of the gods flowed miraculously as it
had done for thousands of years. Still remarkably flowing into a drain which
dispersed the water somewhere. It was like a flood of hot and cold water. But
where did it come from, and where the hell was it going?

Sam lifted the large
marble ball and placed it on the drain pipe, blocking it. Instantly the magical
water began spilling out and covering the room. Within minutes they were
standing knee deep. The two turned and swam back to the entrance fast.

The level rose rapidly
until Sam and Tom were once more in the water their ADS machines were designed
for. Capable of movement outside of water, the machines were built to perform
highly sophisticated underwater tasks, and were capable of much higher speeds
and maneuverability in it than out.

Despite being
massive, Poseidon’s temple filled with water quickly. They decreased their
buoyancy so that they rested on the temple’s floor instead of the ceiling,
where powerful currents were forming as the water tried to squeeze through the
little opening.

“We’ll give it
another twenty minutes to fill the room above with water, and then we go!” Sam
said.

“Sounds good to
me.”

After waiting for
the current to settle, a good indicator that the next room had filled with
water, Sam moved toward the opening. Attached to Tom’s ADS machine via a
tether, in case the current became dangerously strong, his quad propulsion unit
whirred into life as he shot through the opening he’d made.

No more than a
few feet inside the second room Sam said, “It’s safe to come up. And I think
you’re going to want to see this!”

The room was
relatively small compared to Poseidon’s temple and almost entirely barren, with
the exception of a massive picture on one wall. Etched into a solid piece of
glowing red orichalcum, fourteen feet tall and equally wide, was a depiction of
an island, and its surrounding coastline.

“So that’s
orichalcum?” Tom asked. 

“It appears so.”

“I don’t
understand. If all that wealth underneath us was merely a ruse to stop people
finding this image, what the hell is so valuable on that island?”

“The code to Atlantis.”

Sam stared at the
painting as though he were mesmerized by it somehow. Out of the corner of his
eye, he noticed Tom look around the rest of the room trying to see where the
water had gone. If the water came into the room, that meant the air had gone
out, and for that to happen, there had to be an exit. And he was going to find
it.

Sam gave it
little thought. He knew he was right about the Atlanteans. They needed
redundancy in their systems, and that meant escape routes. If he was right
about the greatest wealth of Atlantis being hidden inside this room, then he
just assumed he was right about the next part.

Right on cue, Tom
said, “Look at this. I think we just found your priest hole.”

It was a large
tunnel leading downwards. The water could be seen where it had been flooded and
Sam hoped that it hadn’t been destroyed by the torpedo.

“I just wonder
where it leads now that Atlantis is nowhere near where it was supposed to be
when that thing was built?”

“No idea, but I’m
sure it will get us out of here. Of course, I’m not too sure where we’ll go
from there. If Andrew Brandt and his goons are smart, they’ll be waiting for us
on the surface.”

“And even if they
aren’t, it’s unlikely they’re just going to have left our Snow Cat there waiting
for us. Which means we’re going to have a mighty long, cold, walk.”

Sam remained
staring at the wall for another ten minutes before Tom interrupted him again. Like
a map, the place depicted a coastline, and in the middle a small island. At the
center of the island were those five rings Sam was starting to associate with
Atlantis.

Above them, he
noticed that the ceiling of the cavern was surrounded by celestial markings.
There were notes, which appeared like an ancient almanac, with the image of
shooting stars next to it. The math and the astronomy were too much for Sam to
make any useful sense of. He took a dozen photos of the ceiling as well as a
three-minute digital video. With the exception of a few stars he recognized,
the entire ceiling was beyond him, but one thing appeared obvious – the code to
Atlantis was somehow tied with stars.

He studied the
map for a few more minutes, mesmerized by the detail. How a land based
population could gather such detail without the aid of satellite imaging, he
would never understand.  

Tom interrupted
his concentration. “If we take a few pictures of it, we could get Elise to run
it with every coastline in the world for its closest match. It would have
changed substantially in the past eleven thousand years, but if we run all
known images of coastlines with a plus or minus variance of water levels, we
might just get lucky.”

Sam grinned. “I
already know where that is.”

“Really? Then
what are you trying to work out?”

“How the hell I’m
going to convince the Mayor of New York that we have to dig one heck of a hole
in Manhattan.”

The Andre Sephora
slowed to an idle along the Congo River. They were getting close to where the
pygmy king had told them it would be.

Billie looked at
the little pygmy, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his own adventure as
their guide to the real temple of Poseidon. “You’re certain it’s here?”

“Yes.”

Billie looked up.
“Jason, what’s our depth sounding at here?”

“There’s a lot of
water below us, Dr. Swan.”

“How deep, exactly?”

“Seven hundred
feet. Much too deep to dive.”

“Okay, keep us
here.”

“You can’t dive
to that sort of depth. It may as well be the bottom or the Mariana Trench for
all its accessibility.”

“Leave that
problem to me,” Billie said, frustrated. “Zanzibe, how certain are you this is
the place?”

“It’s here Dr.
Swan. I promise you. My father took me to this place to worship as a boy, as
did his father, and his father’s father, since the great Congo River first
swallowed the temple.”

She studied his
face. He was certain. That was enough for her. “Okay, we stay here.”

Billie laughed at
the irony of it all.

“What’s so funny
Dr. Swan?” Edward asked.

“The temple of
Poseidon lies at the river bed below us at a depth of nearly 720 feet! As
though that’s not impossible to dive on its own, the river is one of the most
powerful and turbulent on the planet. And the only two people in the world who
are not only dumb enough, but possibly skilled enough to have a chance of
reaching it, I sent to Siberia on a wild goose chase!”

Edward looked at
her. “Are you finished with your rant yet?”

“I think that
pretty much sums it up.”

“Good, because
there’s still work to be done. We have less than two weeks to save the world,
and I intend to do so.”

“Did you happen
to bring a deep sea submarine with you?”

“No, Dr. Swan I
did not. But don’t worry, I did bring two submersible ROVs.”

“Of course! We
don’t need to bring anything up with us. All we need is to see the inside of
that temple and the first half of its code!”

Billie sat in the
computer room, watching the live feed from the camera mounted at the nose of
their submersible remotely operated vehicle, or ROV for short. Even from the
safety of their sports cruiser, the water below appeared turbulent. Edward
struggled to maintain the little ROV in position, while the river constantly
attempted to force it to run away.

The ROV was
connected to the neutrally buoyant tether which ran from the back of the Andre
Sephora like a giant spool of wool. At the base of the monitor a number of
instrumental readings were displayed, including depth, water speed, and
temperature.

Sinking past the
six-hundred-foot depth marker, Edward suddenly felt his controls become more
stable. The water speed increased and the temperature warmed.

“What just
happened?” Billie asked.

“We seem to have
entered a small eddy,” Edward said, his fingers tapping rapidly over the
controls.

The ROV began to
rise quickly. Releasing more air, Edward tried to reduce its buoyancy and then
powered forward at full speed.

Nothing happened.

The ROV was stuck
in an upward spiral. Billie watched at the submersible became helpless to the
whims of the deep river eddy.

“Can you do
anything about it?” she asked.

Edward took his
fingers off the controls. “Nothing that I haven’t already tried. Now I just get
to watch and see what happens.”

A moment later
the image on the screen showed the ROV had punched through the upwards
spiraling eddy and was now on the other side. Edward’s fingers continued to
work the controls in fast, specific motions.

“We’re out of
it.”

“Hey, you’re
increasing your depth again – fast!” Billie said noticing the sounder showed
the ROV had dropped another 50 feet since penetrating the spiraling wall of the
eddy.

Edward looked
toward the depth gauge. “You’re right, too fast! We must be caught in a deep
river waterfall.”

The spool of
tether, hanging on the back deck, began running as though a giant marlin had
taken the bait.

“Mark, get out
the back will you,” Edward said. “I need you to secure the tether and make sure
we don’t lose it!”  

“Understood,
sir.”

Billie turned to
stop Mark. “Don’t bother.”

“Why not?” Edward
asked.

“Because we just
snapped the ROV’s tether line.”