The Alpha Deception (31 page)

Blaine wasn’t really sure what he expected to find or what he was going to do with it if he found it. Clearly, even if he could locate the Atragon crystals, salvaging sufficient stores of them would require a professional team like the one Vasquez must have employed. At this point, with time increasingly of the essence, he questioned whether such an operation could be mounted, especially with him being temporarily cut off from forces in the government. Still, an attempt had to be made.

Natalya grasped his shoulder and pointed hurriedly down and to their right. There, almost directly beneath them on the ocean floor, lay the remains of a ship from centuries back. The wood frame had long since fossilized, providing an eerie, ghostlike appearance. McCracken could tell from his maritime background that it was a Spanish galleon dating back to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. A good chunk of the bow was missing, but otherwise the hull and masts looked reasonably whole.

It grew progressively darker as they swam lower for the wreck, necessitating the use of their flashlights. The beams made a neat dent in the blackness, enough for them to notice the corpses of more dead ships. The island’s reputation was well deserved. Calling its waters a graveyard was an understatement.

What made things even more eerie was the various levels of fossilization the wrecks had undergone. McCracken felt he could date each by the amount of the original frame that was visible. But many of the oldest ships had lain entombed beneath what had been the sea floor until the quake had changed the entire undersea structure. While they were entombed, fossilization had been arrested so some of the oldest relics in view had maintained the most original detail.

The graveyard stretched as far as Blaine could see. The sum of riches buried here would be enormous. No wonder Vasquez had staked a claim to these waters… .

They hovered over a partially fossilized frigate, rough on the outer edges with what looked like extensions of the reef above. Blaine guessed it was two centuries old, an escort to protect merchant ships from pirates as they sailed across the Atlantic. Blaine hesitated behind Natalya, as if the frigate were sleeping instead of dead and might stir if touched by human hands. There were plenty of cracks in her hull, but Blaine’s flashlight locked on one that he signalled Natalya to steer toward. Something set it apart from the others, something that didn’t seem right… .

Blaine reached the ship and felt first along its fossilized hull, kicking his flippers to hold his position in the water. Even through his glove he could feel its brittleness. He could easily have torn huge chunks away with a minimum of exertion. At last he came to the hole and felt along its perimeter. Totally smooth and unfossilized, the hole itself was, incredibly, a perfect circle. He looked to others for comparison. All were jagged and irregular, victims of the long years. This particular hole was obviously the victim of something else: man. The hole was large enough to allow passage for a diver and could have been carved by an underwater torch. That would explain the perfection of its shape, all of which led Blaine to an inescapable conclusion.

Someone had entered the frigate through this hole, in pursuit no doubt of the treasure it might well have contained. Probably it had been Vasquez.

Blaine stroked the inside perimeter of the hole and drew the flashlight up close to check the shading. It was significantly lighter than the remainder of the hull’s fossilized exterior, so Vasquez had been here fairly recently. Blaine did his best to convey his discovery to Natalya and she nodded her understanding, pointing to the next nearest ship to suggest they check that one out as well. This time she took the lead, and Blaine followed.

She swam for a ship thirty yards away buried up to the halfway point of its hull in the sandy bottom. McCracken saw it was a British clipper ship, much smaller than the frigate and younger by a century at least. The clipper fleet dated back to the time of the American Revolution and several ships like this had, in fact, been used by the British to transport arms, men, and the gold coins on which the colonies were based. Conceivably a great fortune had recently been claimed from her by Vasquez.

Blaine and Natalya probed closely about her fossilized sides with their flashlights. It was Natalya who found the hole, almost identical in size and design to the one they’d found on the galleon. Again, using the rest of the ship’s corpse for comparison, he was able to date Vasquez’s intrusion to the last several years. So the fat man had been busy in these waters well after the appearance of the Dragon Fish.

Blaine checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed, leaving forty-five minutes of air. No problem there. He felt Natalya grasp him suddenly with her free arm and point frantically ahead with her flashlight. McCracken looked in the beam’s direction and he saw in the darkness ahead of them a shape far bigger than any of the ships they had already passed. From a distance it looked like a circular pile of rocks and debris gathered high upon the ocean floor, but as they drew closer the shape gained definition and clarity.

It was some sort of sphere, also fossilized but with strange smoothness, a smaller version of what the top of an indoor sports stadium would look like if severed from its base. It could have been many things, all of them logical, but Blaine felt a gnawing inside his stomach which told him that they were seeing this thing for what it had always been.

Huge solar receptors placed in domed buildings …

Blaine recalled Professor Clive’s words, then blocked them out for the distraction they might cause. He and Natalya slowed up as they drew closer to the dome, as if to respect whatever it was they had happened upon. They saw now that the dome was actually sloped low for the ocean floor at its most distant point and rose at the point closest to them. Drawing still closer, they saw the cause of this to be some sort of support system at the dome’s front, a series of what looked to be pillars; two were whole, though fossilized, and a third, half the size of its neighbors, tilted precariously.

McCracken tried to form a logical explanation for the dome’s presence. Professor Clive had spoken of domed buildings scattered all over Atlantis which when opened drew the great power of the sun into crystals to create the raw energy. The fabled continent used this energy to reach incredible levels of technological proficiency.

The only way to prove whether this dome was part of the myth was to enter its structure and see what it held. Half of Blaine hoped to find great reserves of the scarlet crystal Atragon. The other half hoped that closer inspection would reveal the entire sight to be a trick of the dark, deep waters.

The problem soon became academic. Maybe if Blaine’s attention hadn’t been directed so intensely forward, he would have sensed sooner the pursuit coming from behind. He did catch the disturbance of a sudden cold sweep of water rolling upon him, and he turned around just as a dark shape fired its spear.

Blaine shoved Natalya to warn her. At the same time he kicked his legs upward and flipped his body into a somersault. The spear passed just beneath him.

By his count, five divers were coming forward, four passing the first as he pumped his flippers in a holding position to reload. McCracken pointed down at the huge corpse of a Spanish warship which was immediately to their left, and he and Natalya kicked for it desperately as the divers gave chase.

Two of the opposition stopped to fire but a moving target, especially a swimming one, is virtually impossible to hit. Distance is almost impossible to judge and by how much to lead the target is almost impossible to estimate. A hit can be accomplished at a fleeing target only by the best or luckiest shot.

The two shooters proved to be neither. One of their spears streamed over Blaine and the other beneath Natalya. By the time all five in the enemy’s party were giving chase again, Blaine and Natalya had reached the deck of the warship, where fossilized cannons were still in place behind their firing portals. There was clearly nothing that could provide sufficient cover here, leaving them no choice but to take their chances in the belly of the long-dead warship. Natalya found a large enough hole in the deck twenty feet from the cannons, and Blaine followed her through. Since their pursuers would have to come through this portal in single file, the advantage had swung temporarily to them. But they would still have to make their shots count.

Paddling backwards now, speargun in hand, Blaine saw the first black shape drop headfirst through the portal. He and Natalya moved as far into the darkness as they could while waiting for a second figure to appear. To make the most of their meager arsenal, they would have to eliminate two of the enemy here and now. But the wait, with one target easily in range, was agonizing. At last a second figure slid through the portal and joined the first in giving chase. Blaine and Natalya fired their spearguns at the same moment.

Natalya’s spear tore through the first man’s leg while McCracken’s ripped straight through the throat of the second. The first managed to get his spear off but the shot was hopelessly errant and lodged in the rotted wall behind Natalya. She swam for it, thinking she could use it herself. She had gotten her hand on it when Blaine saw her gesture to him. He swam to her and looked where she pointed, to an insignia printed on the shaft of the enemy spear. It was Russian.

Their attackers were Russians!

Blaine motioned for her to forget the spear and continue on. More figures were pushing through the deck opening now to give chase. Blaine and Natalya swam as fast as they dared through the serpentine corridors, the sensation reminding McCracken of his experience in Fass’s Labyrinth just days before.

Their luck held. A slight brightening up ahead signaled Blaine they had located another way out. The plan was obvious now. Climb back out of the warship and take their chances with a mad surface dash. If they could outswim their Russian pursuit and reach Captain Bob far enough ahead of them, they would have a chance.

Too many “ifs,” thought McCracken, none of which took into account that these Russians hadn’t swum all the way from the Biminis. They surely had a ship nearby with plenty more firepower than the single shotgun Captain Bob had brought along.

Natalya went up through the escape hole first, but her progress was arrested by an arm snaking around from behind her. She swung in time to stop the man whose leg still held her spear from cutting her throat but not her air hose. Bubbles lurched through the water and she knew the horror of having her breath taken from her. She fought against panic and turned the severed air hose on the man, blinding him with bubbles, which gave McCracken enough time to emerge from the portal with his own knife. The Russian turned toward him much too late, seeing only a glimmer as Blaine’s blade whipped across his throat. The blood gushed out in a sudden burst, then swirled slowly through the water.

Blaine paddled fast for Natalya, who had drifted away, and jammed his auxiliary regulator in her open mouth. She breathed gratefully and signaled him to start a rise to the surface. Blaine yanked the cord on his vest which inflated it all at once, then did the same to Natalya’s. To avoid an embolism, never rise faster than your air bubbles, went the popular scuba teaching, but now that seemed the least of their problems.

The remaining three Russians were already even with them fifteen yards to their left. Blaine and Natalya fought to rise faster but sharing air from the same tank proved cumbersome and slowed them up considerably. Blaine looked toward the Russians, and saw yet another shape beyond them coming fast. Oh no, not another one. This figure was not wearing a wet suit, and he moved through the water as gracefully as if it was his home. He might have moved even faster if not for the spearguns he held in both hands. He fired both from twenty yards behind the Russians.

The Russians were unaware of the figure’s presence until his spears sliced through two of their midsections. The two who’d been hit pawed around them as if to grab fistfuls of water, then sank toward the bottom. The third turned and aimed his speargun in the same motion. It would be impossible for him to miss from such close range. The spear leaped dead on target, and what Blaine saw next would have been unbelievable if he hadn’t watched it himself. At the last possible instant the figure reached out a hand and redirected the spear away from him without slowing his pace. Then the figure had his knife out and was upon the last Russian before the man could try anything else. McCracken didn’t see the rest from this distance but he didn’t have to. The sight of the final black-suited figure floating toward the bottom was enough to tell him the results.

Blaine turned his eyes back on the figure drawing closer to them and saw the long hair dangling free. The figure grasped a closed fist to his heart in an underwater signal not of the standard, but of the Indian, variety.

It was Johnny Wareagle.

McCracken steered for a dark shape on the surface with Natalya by his side. They surfaced not more than ten yards from the cruiser.

“We’ve got visitors,” Captain Bob shouted at them. He pointed off the stern of the cruiser.

Blaine started swimming for the boat while he looked where Captain Bob pointed, toward a fishing trawler about three hundred yards away. Now that its occupants had seen them surface, the results of the underwater battle would be obvious and they were certain to attack.

Johnny Wareagle surfaced just as Blaine pushed Natalya up to Captain Bob’s helping hand. A small powerboat lay a hundred yards off their bow, obviously the vehicle the Indian had miraculously steered to their rescue.

“Who the hell is that?” Captain Bob wondered as Blaine joined Natalya on the deck.

“Charlie the Tuna,” McCracken told him. “Starkist finally gave him the call.”

Captain Bob’s mind was elsewhere and he moved for the bridge. “I’d better get this heap moving ‘fore the shootin’ starts.”

“They’ve probably got enough firepower on board to sink another fleet of ships,” Blaine shouted at him grimly.

“Won’t do ’em no good nohow if I can run ’em onto the reef.” He gunned the engine and gazed up at the sky reflectively. “Night’s comin’ and we’s headin’ straight into the feedin’ waters of the Dragon Fish.”