Return to Atlantis: A Novel (40 page)

“We’re on emergency power,” said Matt. “If you hear that, it means if you’re not on the surface in five minutes, you’re not getting there at all!”

“You built this bloody thing,” said Eddie. “Couldn’t you have used a less annoying alarm noise?”

Matt huffed and switched it off. “Next one I build’ll have songbirds and heavenly choirs, just for you. If I get the chance.” He looked down through the viewport. They were now about twenty feet above the ground. “Okay, that’ll have to do.”

Eddie released the arm, and Matt took the sub back down, inching it sideways to move beneath the Mako as it hung motionless in the water. The spotlights picked out its ventral docking port. “Okay, here we go.” He switched one of the monitors to show a view looking directly upward from their own hatch. “Just got to line it up properly …”

“Can we do anything to help?” asked Nina.

“Yeah—wait by the hatch, and when I tell you, pull the yellow lever down as far as it’ll go. That’ll lock the docking clamps. Soon as they’re secure, I can drain the collar and we should be able to open the other sub’s hatch.”

There was an edge to his voice that suggested he was far more worried about the operation than he was letting on. “Matt, is something wrong?”

“There’s a lot of things wrong!” On the screen, the Mako’s hatch came in sight. He slowed to line up with it. “You just get ready on that lever.”

Eddie and Nina exchanged concerned looks but moved to the hatch as requested. The
Sharkdozer
stopped beneath the other vessel. “Okay, it’s lined up. Here we go …”

A brief blip of the throttle, and the
Sharkdozer
wobbled upward. A shrill of metal against metal was overpowered by a louder
thunk
that reverberated through the hull. More power, then: “Pull it!”

Eddie and Nina grabbed the lever and hauled on it with all their combined weight. It moved a few inches—then jammed. “Matt!” Nina shouted. “It’s stuck!”

Matt didn’t reply, eyes fixed on the monitor. He turned the sub a few degrees before sharply bringing it upward. The vessel shook with another impact. “Now!”

This time, the lever moved all the way. A dull clunk came from above the hatch as the clamps locked into place, holding both submersibles tightly together. Matt gasped. “Ah, Christ! I wasn’t sure that was going to work.”

“Now he tells us!” said Nina, releasing her own sigh of relief.

A loud hiss of compressed air as the water was forced out told them that the docking collar was clear. Matt double-checked a gauge to make sure the seal was holding, then cautiously unlocked the hatch and pushed it open. Nina jumped as seawater gushed over the edge of the opening, but it was merely the last undrained dregs. Matt raised the hatch higher. The ASM-DT clattered down into the crew compartment, Eddie catching the rifle before it hit the deck.

The Mako’s belly hatch was visible at the top of the docking collar, cold drips falling from the white-painted steel. “Can we get in?” Nina asked. “Is it locked?”

Matt climbed the ladder and pulled the other hatch’s release latch before turning the wheel to unseal it. “Submarine theft’s not exactly an everyday problem, so no.”

“Just because you saved our lives, that doesn’t give you the right to be a smart-ass.” But she managed to smile at him.

He opened the hatch. There was a rush of air as the two vessels equalized their internal pressures. Matt was about to ascend the second ladder when Eddie stopped him. “Better let me go first,” he said, holding up the gun. “Just in case.”

He clambered up, stopping below the top of the shaft and peering warily into the cabin. No movement. Gun ready, he climbed the rest of the way.

The only sound was the low hum of the ventilation system. The cabin was almost infinitely more luxuriously appointed than the
Sharkdozer
’s pure utilitarianism, leather loungers arranged to give each passenger a view through a personal porthole. But Eddie’s eyes were fixed on one seat in particular: the pilot’s.

Its back was to him, but he could see an arm hanging limply over one side. Fixing the gun on the chair, he advanced to find the pilot alive, but out cold, face bloodied.

One of the monitors, he noticed, showed what looked like a navigation chart. At its center was what he took to be the Mako’s current position, a red line weaving away from it. A record of its course?

“Is it safe?” Nina called, head poking over the top of the hatchway like Kilroy.

“Yeah,” Eddie answered. He jabbed the pilot with the rifle. The man moaned faintly. Nina ascended, followed by Matt. “Matt, what do you make of this?” He pointed at the map screen.

“It’s an inertial navigation system.”

“Is that line its route?”

The Australian took a closer look at the display. “Yeah, it came from …” He looked back at Eddie. “The start point’s less than four kilometers from here! And it’s not on the surface—there’s a depth tracker as well. The mother ship’s another submarine.”

“A sub that keeps smaller subs inside it?” Nina asked,
skeptical. “Does anyone even
make
submarines like that? We’re not in a Bond movie!”

“Yeah, they exist. If a mega-yacht’s not showy enough for you, there are companies that build them—if you’ve got the money. There’s the Phoenix 1000, and I know that a Russian firm had a couple on the stocks a few years ago.”

“Glas would have the money,” said Eddie.

“Maybe,” said Nina. “But what do we do now?”

“We should get you back to the surface,” said Matt. He headed down the cabin.

“Where are you going?” Eddie asked.

“Got to detach the
Sharkdozer
, mate! It’s way too big and heavy for this thing to drag along.” He dropped into the other submersible.

Again, Nina picked up on something in his voice—a forced lightness, cheer covering concern—and this time Eddie noticed it too. “Matt, what’re you doing?” he called as metallic clunks came from below. He and his wife exchanged worried looks, then rushed for the docking port. “Matt!”

They reached it just in time to see the
Sharkdozer
’s hatch slam shut. The latches closed. “Christ, what’s he up to?” Eddie said, jumping down. He tried to reopen the hatch; the handle moved fractionally before sticking. The Australian had wedged it with something. He thumped a fist on the steel. “Matt!”

Matt’s voice crackled from the
Sharkdozer
’s underwater PA system. “Sorry, mate, but I’ve got to do this. The only way I can release the docking clamps is from in here—and the moment I do, the collar will flood. So you need to shut that hatch so you can get out of here.”

“No!” said Nina in horror. “We can’t leave you! There—there’s got to be another way!”

“There isn’t. Like I said, the Mako can’t haul this thing with it.”

“But you’ll …” Her breath caught. “Matt, you’ll
die
.”

“Not necessarily. I got a load of fresh air in here when we docked, and since there’s only one person aboard
now, it might last long enough for me to reach the surface.”

“Bullshit!” said Eddie. “You said it was about to run out of power!” He yanked at the handle again, but it still refused to move.

“For Christ’s sake,” Matt said, “will you two listen to me and do what I tell you for once?
Someone
has to release the clamps from in here. The
Sharkdozer
’s my sub, I designed it—and now I’ve found out that not having a remote release is kind of a serious design flaw! So, ah … it’s my responsibility.”

“No way.” Eddie started to climb back into the Mako. “I’ll wake up that twat in the driver’s seat and make him do it.”

“Yeah? How’s that going to work? You going to threaten to shoot him through a thick steel hatch?” A resigned sigh came through the speaker. “Eddie, you’re a great mate, but you’re really not as smart as you think you are.”

Eddie stopped. “Would you have ever said that to my face?”

“Why do you think I waited until there was a thick steel hatch between us?” Both men were trying to sound jocular, but their attempts fell very flat.

“Matt, please,” begged Nina. “You can’t do this.”

“If I don’t,
none
of us’ll get out of this. So please, just … just shut the hatch.” A tremble entered his voice. “I’m going to release the clamps in twenty seconds, so if you don’t want to get very wet, that’s how long you’ve got.”

“You can’t—”

“Nina, I have to. You never know, maybe the batteries will last, maybe the dome’ll hold up. There’s always a chance. Hey, I’ve survived everything else I’ve been through with you, right?” The last few words were almost choked by barely contained emotion.

Nina’s feelings were more open, tears running down her face. “Oh God, Matt …” With deep reluctance, she
put her hands against the hatch and began to push it shut.

Eddie joined her. “This is wrong,” he muttered, face tight. “It’s fucking wrong.”

“Twenty,” came the Australian’s voice over the intercom. “Nineteen. Eighteen …”

The hatch closed with a hollow bang, muffling Matt’s countdown. Eddie stonily closed the latch mechanism and turned the wheel to seal it. A red light on the cabin wall turned green.

Both hatches were secured.

They faintly heard Matt say “Ten,” followed after a pause by “Well. No point dragging it out, eh? Good luck to you both.”

Nina gripped Eddie’s wrist with one hand, the other clenched into a fist over her mouth. “Good luck, Matt,” she whispered.

Eddie’s voice was barely louder. “Fight to the end, mate.”

Metal scraped below—then the Mako shook as water slammed against the bottom of the hatch. The
Sharkdozer
had separated, the ocean surging back into the docking collar.

Trailing bubbles, the stricken submersible drifted away into the darkness.

T
he Mako’s pilot slowly woke to a throbbing pain across his face.

A mushy splat of blood on the control panel revealed the cause. What had happened? Memories groggily returned. He had been chasing the IHA sub, about to unleash the last torpedo—then it had unexpectedly angled upward, and …

The rest was a blur. Something had hit the Mako, throwing him forward in his seat … then nothing. He had been knocked out. But he thought he had heard voices. How was that possible?

He squinted through the windows. No sign of the other sub—or the diver who had been with him. But something wasn’t right.

It took him a few seconds to work out what. There were reflections in the Plexiglas … of people behind him.

He spun his chair around in alarm—to find the menacing barrel of an ASM-DT pointing at him. It fired, the single shot earsplitting in the confined space. A nail round stabbed into the seat between his legs, the metal spike less than an inch from his groin.

The man holding the gun gave him a nasty look. “If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, the next one turns your bollocks into a shish kebab.”

The Mako powered through the blackness.

Eddie and Nina had debated—more accurately, argued—over their next action while waiting for the pilot to wake up. Eddie’s first thought had been to try to help Matt. But the pleasure submarine lacked manipulator arms, so had no way to release the
Sharkdozer
’s ballast. And by the time the pilot recovered and was coerced at gunpoint into getting under way, the other submersible had disappeared. Whether Matt was making a genuine attempt to return to the surface or had merely moved off to deter them from going after him they had no way of knowing: The Mako had no sonar beyond a very basic depth finder.

So, extremely reluctantly, they had turned to other options. The most obvious was returning to the surface. But the track on the inertial navigation system ultimately swayed the argument in Nina’s favor. Their attackers had come from a mother vessel, a submarine … and it seemed likely that Glas was aboard it. Wanted internationally for multiple crimes, and with the Group’s agents hunting for him, where better for the errant billionaire to hide? It explained the intermittency of his communications with his “partner,” Dalton: Something as simple as making a phone call was impossible hundreds of feet beneath the sea.

The architect of everything that had happened—the man responsible for all the lives that had been lost—was just over two miles away. As Nina pointed out, it seemed a waste not to pay him a visit while they had a chance … and a torpedo.

“So, is your boss on this sub?” Eddie demanded, poking the rifle against the pilot’s side to encourage a truthful answer.

“Yes, yes,” he replied, dry-mouthed. “Herr Glas is there.”

“How many others?”

“About ten.”

“
About
ten, or
exactly
ten?” The gun pushed harder against his ribs.

“Okay, okay! More than ten. Ah … twelve.”

“Sure?”

“Yes, yes, twelve! You killed two others.”

“I’ll make it three if you piss me about again.” Eddie gave him one final jab with the barrel, then moved back to join Nina. “You sure about this?” he asked her quietly.

She shook her head, but said, “It’s the only chance we’ve got to end this. Otherwise Glas’ll just keep sending people after us. After
me
. Even if I manage to stay alive, other people will still get killed in the crossfire. People like Matt, and Lewis, and the other people on that sub.”