Raising Atlantis (12 page)

“Moot point now,” said Yeats. “I doubt the Vatican wants her to talk. But for all we know, she’s right. Her presence may even be necessary for what’s ahead.”

“And your son, sir?”

Yeats looked at O’Dell. “What about him?”

“I’ve seen the DOD report.” O’Dell looked concerned.

“Your boy’s been in therapy since kindergarten. Nightmares of cataclysmic doom. Visions of the end of the world. With all due respect, sir, he’s a lunatic.”

“So he had a traumatic childhood,” Yeats said, wishing O’Dell would put a lid on it. “Didn’t we all? Besides, the DOD doesn’t have his complete file. Trust me, I wrote it.”

Yeats was about to turn his attention back to the monitor when Lieutenant Lopez, one of his communications officers, walked up. Besides Sister Serghetti, young Lopez was the only other woman at Ice Base Orion.

“General Yeats,” she reported. “I think you better see this.”

Yeats followed her to the big screen and saw the U.S.S.Constellation on TV with a CNN logo in the lower right corner.

“Warren,” Yeats cursed under his breath. He stared at the intrepid Greenpeace vessel juxtaposed on-screen with the mightyConstellation . Goddamn that sausage in a sailor suit!

O’Dell said, “How did they know, sir?”

“Take a wild guess, Colonel.” Yeats pointed to Sister Serghetti in her cell on the little monitor. “She’s been stalling the whole time, waiting for the cavalry to arrive.

It’s only a matter of time before an army of U.N. weapons inspectors comes knocking at our door.”

Which meant the insertion team had to be in and out of P4

before then, Yeats concluded, and he mentally began to make the calculations. P4 would have to be wiped clean of significant technology or data before any internationals reached the site.

“It gets worse, sir,” Lopez said. “McMurdo reports that Vostok Station intercepted our communications with Flight six-nine-six. They’ve already dispatched a UNACOM team.”

Yeats groaned. “I knew it. Who’s leading the team?”

“An Egyptian air force officer,” she said, handing him a report. “Colonel Ali Zawas.”

“Zawas?” Yeats looked at the photo of a handsome man in uniform with dark, thoughtful eyes and black wavy hair. “Holy shit.”

O’Dell said, “He wouldn’t be related to—”

“He’s the secretary-general’s nephew,” Yeats said. “And he’s a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. Flew with the Allies during the first Gulf War and downed two Iraqi jets for us. Damned fine officer and gentleman.” Yeats handed the report back to Lopez. “What kind of backup does Zawas have, Lieutenant?”

“Well, there are the Russians at Vostok under the command of a Colonel Ivan Kovich. And the Aussies are offering support from Mawson Station.” She paused. “So are some of our own American scientists from Amundsen-Scott who have been kept out of the loop.”

“Damn it!” Yeats growled. “The whole world’s going to be here in a few hours.”

“Not with this storm kicking up again, sir,” O’Dell said.

“ETA six hours. WX Ops says this thing is going to slam us hard. Might pin everybody down for three weeks.”

Yeats looked out the window. The skies had darkened. Snow pelted the glass like bullets. “The storm might stop the Aussies, but it will only slow down Zawas and his UNACOM

team.” Yeats turned to O’Dell. “You hold off the barbarians here on the surface while I take the insertion team down to P4.”

O’Dell said, “And how am I going to explain holding Mother Earth against her will?”

“You won’t have to,” Yeats said. “I’m taking her with us.

Now.”

Part Two

Descent

11

Descent Hour One

The Abyss

THE SKY OVER THE CHASMturned an ominous deep black, and Serena felt the wind pick up with a sudden chill. If this was supposed to be a lull in the polar storm, she didn’t want to stick around for the real deal. Mist boiled up from the abyss below, where the nearest shelter, the so-called P4 Habitat, was a one-mile drop.

“You sure you’re up for this, Sister?”

It was Yeats, sliding down the icy wall above her in his white freezer suit, grinning like the devil under the blinding light of his headtorch. Back on the surface, he had detailed the risks to her about coming down with the insertion team. But what other choice did she have? To wait back at the base with the rest of the world until the team resurfaced would be to remain in the dark.

“Technically, it’s Doctor Serghetti, General,” she said, digging the crampon attached to her plastic boot into a toehold. “And I climbed Everest with my first Mother Superior.”

“She give you the garter?”

Yeats was pointing to Serena’s harness. It actually did look like a red garter belt with two loops around her thighs.

In case of a fall it would spread the shock evenly throughout her lower body.

“No, just this.” Serena pulled out her ice ax and hammered an ice screw into the frozen wall before attaching a new line with a carabiner. She wanted to show Yeats she was more than up to the challenge. But in fact she was feeling strange. Her heart was pounding and she was breathing rapidly. “Do you smell something?”

“Yeah,” said Yeats. “Your story.”

She had never met the infamous Griffin Yeats until Ice Base Orion, only heard about him from Conrad. But she didn’t trust him. Like Emerson said: “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.” The guy was a rogue at heart, just like this expedition. He simply did a better job of hiding it than Conrad, who was refreshingly honest and even charming about his shortcomings. She also concluded that Yeats hadn’t agreed to let her join the team out of the kindness of his heart or even because he valued her for her expertise as a linguist.

“Tell me again why you changed your mind and let me tag along?”

“If anything, I learned from NASA that women are always a pleasant addition to astronaut crews.”

She had expected something sexist like that coming from him. “Gee, I thought it was because women are actually better with precision tasks, more meticulous, and more flexible at multitasking than men.”

“Whenever they’re not too emotional or easily upset,”

Yeats replied and dropped out of sight just as Conrad rappeled alongside her.

“Anything wrong?” Conrad asked.

Serena sighed and shook her head. “Your father never stops, does he?”

“It’s not in his nature,” Conrad answered without feeling. “Once he’s programmed, he keeps going and going until he finishes the job.”

“And leaves a trail of bodies behind him.”

“Then we better not let him get too far ahead of us,”

Conrad said, rappeling down.

She went after him. He was an expert climber in tropical climates. But overconfidence could be fatal in icy conditions like this. And she was worried for him. For his soul. For her own too. Because in trying to save him once before she felt she had condemned them both.

Conrad was within reach now, and she dropped down a few feet and found a hold. The color of the ice was a beautiful blue and almost seemed to glow. “Pretty,” she said.

“Don’t stop, Serena. Keep going.” Conrad spoke rapidly.

Serena continued to ease up on her line. But Conrad’s physiology concerned her. Was he hyperventilating? Serena didn’t know and could feel her own breathing quicken to an unnaturally fast pace. Her heart too. The pounding was regular but fast.

She eased up a bit more when Conrad motioned with a gloved hand. “Down there,” he said. “See it?”

Serena peered into the mist below. A hole parted and she could see a grid of lights, like a landing pad. “I see.”

“No, do you see it?”

Suddenly Serena could see that the landing pad was in fact the flattened summit of a gleaming white pyramid rising sharply through the floor of the abyss. She had to shade her eyes from the glare of the lights off the pyramid’s surface.

“P4,” she heard herself saying under her breath.

“Don’t ask me how it got here,” Conrad said, now sporting his sunglasses. “I can’t explain it yet. But I will.”

The conviction in his voice inspired confidence. His excitement was pure, unadulterated, and moving. Not a trace of fear, she thought with envy, just genuine curiosity and enthusiasm. She had almost forgotten what that felt like.

She slipped on her sunglasses. The flat summit, brighter than the whitest snow, was blinding. So this was why the pope had sent her down, she realized. She had suspected something spectacular, but she was completely unprepared for the sight or dimension of this monument. It was gigantic.

She was staring at it in wonder when she heard her line creak.

“Just some slack,” Conrad assured her. “No worries.”

She heard a sharp crack and the ping of metal. The piton holding her line in the ice popped out, and she thought she was falling.

“Conrad!” she shouted as she buried her ice ax into the wall and hung on.

But Conrad said nothing. She looked to her side. He was gone. It was his piton that had popped out.

She looked down in time to see Conrad fall into the mist.

“Conrad!” she screamed.

Yeats rappeled down beside her.

“You couldn’t wait until afterward to bury him?” he asked, scanning the billowing mist below. Yeats flicked Conrad’s line with the back of a gloved finger. “He’s still floating.”

She heard a crack and looked up to see the ice screw on her own line start to slip. She instinctively pulled out her ice ax and swung it at Yeats, who put up a defensive arm.

“Hold this,” she said and suddenly felt herself plunging into space.

She fell through the cloud a few seconds later, hurtling toward the lights below when her line snapped tight and she stopped with a jolt. For a moment she feared she had shattered her pelvis. But her harness had done its job.

She caught her breath and could hear her windproof parka squeaking against the nylon rope as she swung back and forth.

“Conrad?” she called.

“Over here,” he replied. “I found something.”

She swung her head in the direction of his voice, and her headtorch found him swinging ten feet from the wall, unable to get a hold.

“Hang on,” she said as she swung over.

It took three tries before her arc was wide enough to reach him. As she swung toward him, she held out her hand, and he gripped it tight, holding her next to him. They swung together in space for a few seconds, clinging to each other.

“Finished bungee jumping, Conrad?” she asked, trying to mask her anxiety with sarcasm.

“Look!” he said.

She turned in the darkness and her headtorch bathed the wall with light. There was something in the ice. Then her eyes focused and Serena found herself face-to-face with a little girl, frozen in time.

“Dear Jesus,” she whispered.

“Remember when you told me the only way we’d get together again was when hell freezes over?” he told her. “Well, here we are.”

The mist lifted and the light from below flooded the entire wall. In an instant Serena could see hundreds of human beings, their faces frozen in fear. All of them seemed to shout out at once. Serena covered her ears, only to realize that she was the one screaming.

12

Descent Hour Three

Habitat Module

AN HOUR LATER,inside the warm P4 habitat module, Conrad was concerned as he looked at Serena on the fold-out surgical table. Her eyes blinked rapidly beneath the high-intensity lights, an oxygen mask over her mouth and several EKG

electrodes attached to her chest. Her hair was brushed back from her face and the belt around her cargo pants loosened.

Conrad pointed out the fogged-up porthole at the American flag Yeats had planted atop the pyramid summit.

“Focus on the flag and breathe deeply,” he told her as he administered the oxygen from a heavy yellow canister.

Her parka and outerwear were gone, and he tried not to gaze at her full breasts rising and falling beneath her wool undershirt. She had been hyperventilating since they reached the bottom of the ice gorge, spooked, it seemed, by the frozen graveyard that entombed them. Conrad glanced at the EKG monitor. Only now was her heart rate returning to the upper register of the normal range.

“Better?” he asked her after a minute.

She looked at him like he was a lunatic for asking.

Conrad looked around the cramped habitat perched atop P4’s flat summit at the bottom of the gorge. It was a single module, fifty-five feet long and fourteen feet in diameter.

Yeats was huddled with the three technicians by the monitors.

One was Lopez, a female officer Conrad recognized from Ice Base Orion. The other two were fair-haired steroid freaks who answered to the names of Kreigel and Marcus. They were clearly Yeats’s muscle down here.

Conrad turned to Yeats. “Was there any particular reason why you forgot to mention the frozen bodies?”

“Yeah,” said Yeats. “I wanted to see your reaction.”

Conrad gestured at Serena and glared at Yeats.

“Satisfied?”

“Quit whining.” Yeats stood up, a hypodermic in hand. He flicked the syringe with his finger, and a clear liquid squirted into the air. Serena squirmed.

Conrad watched in alarm as Yeats grabbed hold of Serena’s arm. “What are you doing to her?” he demanded.

“Giving her a shot of the stimulant eleutherococcus,”

said Yeats, injecting it into Serena’s arm before Conrad could stop him. “It’s a plant extract of the ginseng family.

Deep-sea divers, mountain rescuers, and cosmonauts take it to resist stress while working under inhospitable conditions.

About the only damn usable thing the Russians ever contributed to our space program.”

The drug seemed to be working. Conrad looked at Serena, who was breathing more evenly now, although there was anger in her eyes. Clearly this wasn’t a woman who was used to being taken care of.

“She’ll be fine,” said Yeats. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to check my drill team’s search for that mythical shaft of yours.”

“As mythical as P4,” Conrad called out as Yeats opened the hatch and stepped outside. Subzero polar air whooshed inside.

“You seem to be holding up just fine, Conrad,” Serena said, catching him off guard. She had removed her oxygen mask. “I take it this isn’t the first time you’ve seen frozen bodies at least twelve thousand years old?”