The Hunt for Atlantis (30 page)

“Assuming your bomb doesn’t bring the whole roof down.”

Chase shrugged as best he could inside the suit. “Well, what’s life without a bit of risk?” He aimed the flashlight beam at the exposed stones, examining the joins between them. As in Brazil, they had been carved so precisely that there was no mortar holding them together, their own weight supporting the structure. Probing one of the joins with his knife, he found that the tip only penetrated a few millimeters. “We need to find the weakest spot to plant the charges.” He pushed away from the wall, turning around to look up at the statue of Poseidon. “So big that he touched the roof with his head…”

Kari looked impressed. “Have you been reading Plato?”

“Thought I ought to give it a shot. But, see? If we climb onto old bighead there, we can stick the charges right under the top of the roof. The blocks lower down the walls have the weight of all the other stones on top of them keeping them in place, but at the top there’s nothing holding them except gravity.”

“And twenty-five atmospheres of water pressure,” Kari pointed out. “If you make a hole at the very top, you’ll flood the entire temple. You’ll destroy it—and probably us too!”

“If we’re not out of here in an hour, it’s not going to matter either way. We don’t have time to clear the tunnel. Come on.” He leaned forward, using his thrusters to propel himself across the water to the statue. With deep reluctance, Kari did the same.

Castille continued his circuit of the temple, coming around the southern end. So far he had seen no sign of any holes, the great stepped curve of the roof as solid as a turtle’s shell.

On some impulse, he touched down on the building itself. The stones might be thick, but if he was close enough, radio waves should be able to penetrate.

“Edward?” he said. “Kari? Can anyone hear me?”

He stood in silence, not even breathing so that the hiss of his suit’s regulator wouldn’t drown out any faint reply. But nothing came.

“Merde.” Kicking off, he headed back up the temple’s western side.

The Evenor’s lifeboats bobbed in the water as their occupants rowed clear of the survey ship. Nina watched the sight with fearful resignation from the bridge of Qobras’s vessel, flanked by a pair of armed guards. The last of his men jumped back aboard, others untying the ropes holding the two ships together.

Starkman entered the bridge. “Giovanni. The explosives are all in place.” He handed Qobras a pair of radio detonators. “This one’ll set off the charges at the bow, this one the engine room.”

“Are the hatches open?” Qobras asked.

“Yeah—everything up to the engineering bulkhead. Blow the bow, and the front two thirds of the ship’ll fill up with water. Then once the bow’s submerged, blow the other charges, and pow! Three thousand tons, going straight down.”

Qobras examined the detonators. “A sword of Damocles …”

“Very clever,” Nina said bitterly. “Pity you couldn’t put that kind of ingenuity into something constructive.”

“You have no idea how much time and effort I have put into being constructive, Dr. Wilde.”

“Well, why don’t you enlighten me?”

“Maybe I will. Who knows, you might even come around to my point of view.”

“I doubt that,” she snorted.

“Unfortunately,” Qobras sighed, “so do I.” He addressed the captain. “Move us to a safe distance, then turn the ship about to face the Evenor. I want to watch this.”

The builders of the statue had obviously never meant for anyone to stand on top of it, Chase thought. Plato hadn’t been entirely accurate; Poseidon didn’t literally touch the ceiling, although from ground level it would look that way. There was actually a small amount of clearance, into which he was now awkwardly wedged on his back. The gold-plated statue was sculpted with hair and a crown of what he guessed was supposed to be seaweed, none of which made a stable platform for the inflexible shell of his deep suit.

“How are you doing?” Kari asked.

“Nearly there.” He had connected both his charges so they would go off simultaneously. The detonator was a simple mechanical timer, designed to be foolproof even in hundreds of feet of water. Once activated, he would have one minute to reach a safe distance. In open ocean, with the help of the suit’s thrusters, that wouldn’t be a problem.

In the confines of the temple, on the other hand …

“I still think this is a bad idea.”

“If it doesn’t work, you can sack me. Okay, I’m done.” The explosives were somewhat precariously stuck to the ceiling, wedged above one of the ivory ribs. The rib would be reduced to splinters within a millisecond of the charge detonating—the question was, how much of the explosive force would be directed upwards at the ceiling?

He had years of demolitions experience, but on this occasion, Chase was trusting to luck. It was all he could do.

“Get clear,” he told Kari, waving a hand at the far end of the temple. “And get as deep underwater as you can.”

“Okay.” She rolled and disappeared beneath the rippling surface, the lights on her suit fading like a departing spirit as she descended.

Chase looked back up at the detonator. “All right,” he said, psyching himself up. Activating the timer was a two-stage process: a pin had to be turned and removed before the detonator switch could be pressed. After that, a basic but effective clockwork mechanism counted down the sixty seconds. “Here goes …”

He twisted the steel pin through a half-turn, then pulled it out. The bomb was now armed. As soon as he pressed the button, there was no going back.

“Okay, Kari,” he said, not even sure if the signal from his suit radio would reach her through the water, “get ready. Sixty seconds starts … now!”

He pushed the switch and rolled off the statue’s head—

And jerked to a halt.

His equipment belt had snagged on the crown! “Oh shit,” he gasped, trying to kick himself free. To no effect. “Oh shit!”

The timer ticked down relentlessly.

“Five hundred meters, sir,” announced the captain.

“Good,” said Qobras, looking through the bridge windows. Ahead, the gleaming white Evenor was almost directly side-on, the bright yellow bulk of the Sharkdozer swaying gently from its crane at the bow. The lifeboats had dispersed, trying to get as far from the doomed ship as they could.

“Please,” Nina begged, “you don’t have to do this …”

Qobras didn’t look at her, his eyes fixed on the ship. “I’m afraid I do.”

He raised the first radio detonator and pushed the trigger.

Castille released the thruster control, drifting to a halt just above the temple roof. He had just heard something in his headphones, a brief crackle that sounded like a truncated obscenity.

“Edward?” he asked, swimming closer to the expanse of stone below. “Edward, is that you? Can you hear me?”

Then he heard something else.

Not in his headphones this time, but transmitted through the sea. A dull, echoing boom.

A sound he recognized all too well. An explosion in the water directly overhead.

There was only one thing it could mean.

Nina had expected a huge fireball to consume the bow of the Evenor, but the actual explosion was oddly anticlimactic. A vaporous blast coughed from the open hatches, small pieces of debris and fluttering papers flying out behind it. A white froth surged from beneath the waterline before rapidly dying away.

The full destructive effect, however, instantly became clear.

The ship’s bow almost immediately tipped downwards into the water, listing to starboard. Loose items slid across the decks and dropped into the sea, the Sharkdozer swinging violently out over the water. On the aft deck, the helicopter lurched, straining against the lines securing it to the pad.

The speed of the sinking amazed Nina. She watched in horrified fascination as the bow dropped into the ocean, gusts of compressed air blowing more debris out of the hatches. At this rate, it would take less than a minute before the foredeck was completely submerged.

Chase struggled to pull his belt from the crown, but, hampered by the shell of the deep suit, he couldn’t get a proper grip.

Forty seconds.

“Shit!”

A noise, a dull thud somewhere outside the temple. An explosion!

And then a muffled crackling in his headphones, someone’s voice fighting to pierce the static. Kari…

No! Castille!

“Edward! Can you hear me? Edward!”

If the radio was working without the relay, then he was close, very close. “Hugo!” Chase yelled. “Get out of here! I’ve set a bomb! Get out!”

“Edward! Say ag—”

Thirty seconds.

“Bomb!” screamed Chase. He fumbled for his knife. The equipment belt was pulled taut around his suit’s waist; he hacked desperately at it, trying to drive the point of the blade under the plastic-coated cord.

Castille’s eyes widened. Most of Chase’s transmission had been too distorted to make out, but the final word came through almost too clearly.

He kicked hard off the temple roof and propelled himself into open water at full power.

The Evenor’s list became a roll, the deck now tilted at almost forty-five degrees as the tip of the bow dropped beneath the waves. The helicopter broke free of its ties and skidded across the pad to smash against the water. Its tail sank first, air in the cockpit keeping the nose above the surface for a few seconds before the weight of the aircraft dragged it under.

On the foredeck, one of the cables supporting the Sharkdozer tore loose, the heavy craft swinging like a pendulum and hitting the water in an enormous burst of spray. Stressed past its limits, the crane sheared away at its base, plunging down the sloping deck to impale the stricken sub. Water surged through the gaping wound, and the Sharkdozer sank within seconds.

More debris plummeted from the ship as it capsized. Its stern rose out of the ocean, water streaming from the propellers.

Qobras held up the second detonator and, his face expressionless, pressed the trigger.

Twenty seconds—

“Come on, you bastard!”

Chase pushed the knife upwards like a lever, the point digging into the casing of his suit. Something cracked, and the belt snapped.

He dropped the eight feet to the water, landing flat on his back and banging his head against the inside of his helmet. But there was no time to think about the pain, because he had less than fifteen seconds to get clear.

With a final jet of steam and fumes from the fantail, the Evenor disappeared into the Atlantic, the last echoing sound from the dying ship like the cry of a wounded animal. A churning whirlpool of bubbles spewed up in its wake, hundreds of pieces of flotsam too light to sink swirling around in the maelstrom.

Its generators failed as water surged through the aft compartments, but its emergency lights were still aglow, battery-powered units all over the ship automatically activating as the main power went off. Trailing a jetstream of air bubbles behind it, the survey ship began its rapid, nose-first descent towards the seabed.

Towards Atlantis.

Qobras turned to his captain. “Take us back to port. Full speed.”

“Aye, sir.” The captain issued orders to his bridge crew. Ignored in a corner, Nina held a hand to her mouth as she tried to stop herself from sobbing.

She failed.

Chase jammed his thrusters to full power, not having time to do anything more than aim away from the statue and dive.

Five seconds, four, three …

He glimpsed a faint light below him—Kari!—and twisted towards it—

The explosives detonated.

The head of the statue of Poseidon, which had withstood the sinking of Atlantis and stood lonely vigil over the temple for over eleven thousand years, was blasted to pieces. The ivory ceiling disintegrated, razor-edged shards raining into the flooded chamber.

But the stone block above the charges also took the full force of the blast.

Under the immense pressure of the water, the block barely rose more than a foot.

But that was enough.

After waiting patiently for hundreds of centuries, the Atlantic finally found a way into its oldest prize. Frigid seawater surged through the gap, the colossal force clawing at the ancient stones. A hole over twenty feet wide ripped open as the ceiling gave way. Thousands of tons of water plunged like a piledriver to smash what was left of the statue of Poseidon into golden rubble.

The impact sent a massive shockwave through the water already in the temple. Statues were snatched from the floor and tossed around like toys.

Chase felt as though he’d been hit by a truck. His flashlight was ripped from his grasp, spinning into the churning vortex. He slammed against a wall. Hard. He couldn’t move, pinned like a butterfly to a board by the horrific force.

Then the noise subsided. As did the pressure grinding him against the wall, the whirling currents dying away. A fierce burning pain rose in his left wrist. He dimly remembered his arm smashing against the wall, but only now was his mind actually able to process the sensation.

His suit lights were still working, but they would be useless for some time. Sediment that had lain undisturbed on the temple floor since the flooding had been stirred up by the fury of the deluge, making the water as opaque as milk.

But now that the temple was completely flooded, the influx of water had stopped. Which meant he could get out through the hole in the ceiling …

Kari!

There was no way she could have been fully prepared for the unimaginable onslaught of the ocean. She would have been hit just as hard as he had been.

He tried the radio. “Kari! Kari, can you hear me? Are you there? Kari!”

No answer.

She might be out of radio range—or injured, even dead.

He dropped towards the floor and swam forwards, wincing at the pain in his left arm. Using the thrusters would have been faster, but he didn’t want to risk running into anything before he could see it.

He felt debris beneath his feet, broken statues and stones. It was like the aftermath of a bombing.

A faint light ahead. Distances were deceptive in the silt-laden water; it looked to be forty or fifty feet away, but in the current conditions it was probably more like five.

“Kari!” he called as the lights took on form. It was the spotlights on her suit—spotlight, rather, as one of them was dead.

And for all he could tell, so was she, hanging motionless just above the floor.

He pulled her upright. Their helmets clunked together as he tried to see her face through the murk. Her eyes were closed, and he couldn’t tell if she was breathing. The deep suit was a closed system, with no telltale release of air bubbles. “Kari!”

Her eyelids flickered.

“Oh thank Christ!” Chase gasped. “Kari, come on, wake up. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Her eyes opened, regarding him blearily. “Eddie? What happened?”

“Short version? Bang! Splash! Hole. Are you all right?”

Her face tightened in pain. “My leg hurts …”

“This place could still collapse. We need to get out—if we go straight up, we can follow the roof until we get to the hole.”

“It worked?”

“Oh yeah. It worked.” He took her hand. “Use your thrusters and go up.” He reached for his thruster control. “On three. Ready?” Kari nodded, and he counted down to zero—

Kari took off vertically. Chase stayed put.

“Whoa, whoa, stop!” he cried, jumping off the temple floor after her. The whirring of her thrusters cut out.

“What’s wrong?”

Chase pushed the control wheel back and forth with his thumb. Nothing happened. “Houston, we have a problem. My thrusters aren’t working.”

“Is your suit damaged?”

“Well, yeah, kind of. The whole ‘not working’ thing was my first clue.”

She banged a hand on his chest. “I’m serious! These suits are tough—if it was hit hard enough for one of the systems to be damaged, it might not be the only one. Is your air supply working?”

“Seems fine, but—” He stopped. “Wait a minute. Either I just pissed myself… or I’ve got a leak.” He shifted uncomfortably. There was a cold, clammy sensation at the top of his legs, inside the suit. “Shit! Water’s coming in.”

As if on cue, a tiny air bubble rose up between them, touching the glass of Chase’s helmet before disappearing upwards. “Grab onto me, and whatever you do, don’t let go,” Kari ordered.

Chase took hold of her equipment belt, seeing that most of her gear was missing, ripped away by the torrent. She fired her thrusters, which strained under the extra load as they ascended.

“Slow down,” Chase warned as they approached the roof. “You don’t want to bang into it.”

“And you don’t want to drown!” But she eased off, raising her free hand over her head until it touched something solid. “We’re here. There’s still an air pocket, I can feel it.” She rose until the top of her helmet bumped against the ivory ceiling. There was just enough of a space for her to put her eyes above the waterline.

To her surprise, there was light. The glow sticks were still there, bobbing on the surface.

“What can you see?” Chase asked.

“The roof’s sagged about ten meters away, that’s how there’s still air.” She turned in the water. “I can see one of the end walls.”

“That’s the south wall, where we were. We need to go the other way.”

“Okay.” She dropped back down a few feet, pulling Chase with her, then tilted forward to propel herself along the apex of the roof. The soft orange light of the glow sticks guided her to the sagging section of ceiling.

“Watch out, the stones could be loose,” Chase cautioned.

“High explosives might do that, yes.” Her probing of the ceiling became more tentative when she realized the explosion had shattered the ivory, leaving sharp talons jutting out.

Unexpectedly, she felt a faint current ahead. The swirling particles suspended in the water thinned out. “Eddie! I think we found it!”

“Great! Be care—”

With a crack like breaking bone, one of the huge stone blocks succumbed to gravity and dropped from its resting place, tearing great chunks of ivory with it. It slammed against the back of Kari’s deep suit, knocking her aside.

Chase grabbed her arm and pulled her upright. “Shit! Are you okay?” He checked her suit. The top of the bulbous casing housing the air tanks and rebreather system was flattened, cracked like an eggshell. “Your suit’s fucked—can you still breathe?”

Kari drew in a worried breath. “Something’s wrong—I’m still getting air, but it’s harder to breathe. I think the regulator’s damaged!”

Chase gripped her hand to reassure her. “Kari, stay calm. We’re almost out of the temple. Once we’re out, we can find Hugo and head back to the surface. Fifteen minutes, that’s all it’ll take. Just conserve your air and breathe slowly. Okay?”

“Okay.” She nodded, her face betraying her concern.

They reached the gash in the ceiling. Kari used her thrusters to rise out of the temple, pulling Chase with her. The water rapidly cleared. Chase looked around for lights. He spotted some almost immediately—but they weren’t familiar.

“Another submersible,” said Kari, looking at the wreckage of the vessel. Even though its crew compartment had imploded, its battery section was still watertight, uselessly feeding power to the spotlights. “Qobras.”

“Hugo’s here somewhere.” Chase swam clear of the hole. “Hugo? Do you copy? We’re outside the temple, I repeat, we got out. Can you hear me?”

Silence, then: “Edward!” The voice was faint, shrouded in static, but it was unmistakably the Belgian’s. “I can hear you! Where are you?”

“Above the north end of the temple. You?”

“I’m descending from the southwest! Can you see me?” Chase looked up. Sure enough, he saw Castille’s suit lights approaching. “Are you okay?”

“Kari’s suit’s damaged—and mine’s screwed as well. I’ve got a leak and no thrusters. We need to get to the surface, fast.”

Castille shone his light over Chase’s suit. “There’s your leak,” he said, pointing at its waist. Chase realized the cause. When he’d used the knife to cut his equipment belt, its sharp tip had pierced the polycarbonate shell. Even as he watched, another tiny air bubble popped out and shot upwards.

“You got anything we can use to patch it?”

Castille shook his head. “Edward, listen, something’s happened on the surface. I heard—”

Clank.

“What the hell was that?” Chase asked. The unexpected noise sounded like metal tapping against stone. He turned. Something gleamed faintly, an object lying nearby. He moved closer to examine it. A spanner.

Clong!

Another noise, much louder and sharper. They all whirled to see a long pole standing upright on the stone roof. It keeled slowly over and skittered away down the temple’s sloping side.

Castille swam after it, stopping when he realized what it was. “It’s a boat-hook,” he said. “Why is—”

In his peripheral vision, Chase became aware of other objects falling around them, a metal rain. He looked up—

“Hugo! Move!”

Too late.

The Evenor’s helicopter crashed down tail-first onto Castille like a javelin. The Belgian was hammered down onto the temple roof.

One of the rotor blades stabbed through his deep suit.

“No!” Chase roared. He tried to swim towards his friend, but the shockwave as the rest of the helicopter’s fuselage smashed against the stones knocked him back.

A dark, swelling cloud obscured Castille’s spotlights.

Blood.

“Hugo!” The wave subsided; he swam again, kicking furiously, ignoring the pain in his arm.

Kari grabbed his suit, using her thrusters to pull him back. “He’s gone!” she cried. “We’ve got to get out of here! Now!”

Chase rounded on her, full of anger and despair. “I can’t leave him behind!”

“You have to! Look!” She pointed upwards—

More debris was raining down. Tools, hatch covers, pieces of railing, even a section of the Evenor’s radar dome.

And something larger, a hulking yellow shape charging at them through the gloom—

Kari blasted away at full power, dragging Chase with her as the Sharkdozer plummeted past and punched straight through the temple roof, barely missing them. A chain trailed behind it, its links rasping hideously over the stones. The crane at the other end crashed down onto the temple, then scythed down the slope right behind Kari and Chase. They both felt its passage through the water as it passed just inches from their feet.

Kari leveled out as she cleared the temple. More debris fell around them, slow-motion explosions erupting as objects smacked into the seabed.

Chase looked up. “Oh, fuck! Go right! Go!”

She obeyed, turning her head to look—and her heart jumped in terror.

It was a constellation of falling stars, a pattern of lights racing to engulf her.

The Evenor!

Emergency lights still ablaze, monstrous groans of metal echoing through the ocean, the ship was a three-thousand-ton missile dropping straight at them!

Kari jammed her thumb even harder on the thruster control as she pulled herself and Chase out of the path of the plunging vessel—

The Evenor hit the seabed like a bomb.

The bow was crushed flat on impact, the force of the water driven back through the ship’s interior ripping apart seams and welds as destructively as any explosive. What little air was still trapped inside gushed from the hundreds of new rents in the hull. Rivets, portholes, even doors blew outwards like shrapnel from a grenade.

Caught in the shockwave and almost deafened, Kari and Chase could do nothing except be carried along as pieces of the wrecked ship whirled around them, smacking against their suits.

Another awful screech of tortured metal moaned through the depths as the Evenor slowly but inexorably toppled over, falling sideways and slicing through the temple like a guillotine blade, no amount of architectural precision able to withstand the sheer destructive force of thousands of tons of steel.

The temple roof blew outwards as the Evenor displaced the water inside the main chamber. Support gone, the walls collapsed, crushing everything within.

The Temple of Poseidon, the very heart of the citadel of Atlantis, was now truly lost forever.

The noise subsided. Head ringing, Chase was almost startled to realize that he was still alive.

Kari…

They had lost their grip, become separated. He turned, trying to catch sight of her. “Kari! Where are you?” There was no sign of her lights in the darkness.

“I’m here,” she said weakly through the distortion. “Behind you, about five meters below. I’m coming up.”

Chase looked down. Still nothing. “I don’t see you!”

“My lights have gone. Hold on.” A moment later, an orange glow appeared, the ghostly outline of her suit rising behind the small glow stick in her right hand. “My air system’s failing—it’s getting harder to breathe.”

“Are your thrusters still working?”

“Yes. What about your leak?”

Chase squirmed inside the suit. The coldness had spread. “Shit. I think it’s getting worse.”

“It can’t be a big hole, or you’d be dead already—but it’s only going to deteriorate.” Kari reached him, holding the glow stick in front of the damaged area.

“Is there anything you can do to plug it?”

“No. But there’s something you can do.”

“What?”

“Put your thumb over it.”

“Oh.” Chase felt oddly embarrassed for not thinking of that himself. He looked down at the temple. A few of the Evenor’s lights still burned amid the wreckage. “Hugo …”

“It’s Nina I’m worried about,” said Kari. “For all we know, she was in the ship. Qobras doesn’t leave witnesses.” Even right next to him, the radio interference at a minimum, her voice was still weak.