The Hunt for Atlantis (28 page)

“Exactly!” The section of wall before Chase was sheathed in orichalcum like the rest of the chamber, but it was blank, the inscribed text stopping abruptly halfway down. “The whole chamber, it’s a record of Atlantis—but that’s where it ends! Which means whatever’s written there is the final record of the Atlanteans! Get closer, let me read it!” She hurriedly checked that the video feed was being recorded.

“Or you could let me unhook this rope from my arse and fix it to something so Hugo and Kari can climb up here as well,” said Chase. “You remember Kari? Attractive blonde, tall, has a camera?”

“Well, yeah, that might work too,” she replied, slightly deflated but still desperate to get the first look at what was written on the wall.

The first look. Nobody had set eyes on the text for over eleven thousand years …

She waited impatiently as Chase set things up. Finally he announced that Kari was on her way. “Okay, while we’re waiting, can you please go back to the final record?”

“You’re so domineering. I like that in a woman… sometimes,” he quipped, directing the camera at the text.

Nina looked across at Trulli. “Matt, is there any way to get a freeze-frame from the video?”

“Sure. The recorder’s digital, got a terabyte of storage—it’ll keep on recording. What screen do you want it on?”

“My big one.”

“It won’t be in 3-D.”

“I can live with that.” A few seconds later, the screen came to life with a frozen still of the last section of text.

The image was fuzzy, the colors smeared, but it was clear enough for her to make out the letters. She stared at it, deep in thought.

One of the crew hurried into the control room. “Captain Matthews? There’s a ship approaching.”

“What?” Matthews snapped. “How far?”

“About five miles. It was on a course for Lisbon when we first saw it on radar, but it turned towards us a couple of minutes ago.”

“Speed?”

“At least twelve knots, sir.”

“Is it Qobras?” The name caught Nina’s attention. She looked around at Matthews, worried.

“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.