The Secret of Atlantis (Joe Hawke Book 7)

by Rob Jones

  “I cannot believe you crushed his giggleberries like that,” Ryan said. “It’s just not right.”

  “Anything goes when you’re over a barrel,” she said.

  “Said the archdeacon to the understudy,” Ryan replied.

  “Reasonably amusing for you, but don’t think it makes you funny. You’re not.”

  “Gotcha.”

  A second man stormed over to Hawke and drew back a knife ready to attack. Hawke stumbled over an unconscious man and fell on his back. The man seized the advantage and jumped on him, raising the knife. Hawke strained against the man’s arm as he plunged the knife down and inched the tip of the blade closer to his eye. He grunted with the effort of stopping the knife from plunging into his eye, and he felt the blood pound in his ears as he pushed himself to the max to fight off the heavier man.

  With the blade now less than an inch from his eye, and above it the grinning, sweating face of the Serbian merc as he mocked him, Hawke was starting to think he was in trouble, when suddenly a startled, frozen look of surprise flashed on the Serb’s face and he released the knife before collapsing in a heap on the floor beside the Englishman.

  The man rolled off him to reveal Lexi standing behind him, this time holding not a lampshade but a fist-sized rock.

  “Thanks. I owe you.”

  “You know how you can pay me back.”

  Hawke gave her a look, rolled over and leapt to his feet. “Give it a rest, Lexi.”

  “You can’t blame a girl for trying.”

  Hawke looked up to see Kruger and Korać fleeing from the cave. They had what they wanted and were evacuating as fast as they could.

  “He’s getting away!” he yelled, his mind racing. He ran over to the alcove and saw the bomb now had less than seven minutes. “Jack – try and get this bomb defused and save this place if you can. Ryan – work out what Kruger was up to if possible and then everyone get the hell out of here. I’m going after that son of a bitch.”

  “And I’m right there wit’ ya!” Lea said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Alex Reeve was taking a break in the Elysium headquarters building. With Hawke and the others damn near getting themselves killed like a bunch of amateurs on the Dadès River, Kruger slipping the net once again with his hired thugs and her father’s first televised presidential debate coming up in just a few hours she could feel the pressure rising. One glance down at her wheelchair sealed the deal and she pulled a Coke from the fridge and rolled herself out into the tropical breeze for some important Time Out.

  The Coke was bad which is why it tasted good, and she took a long drink before setting the can down on the low wall which separated the compound’s north lawn from the beach. To say she had fallen in love with this place was an understatement but she could already feel the long, cold shadow of Washington DC approaching her.

  She could be accused of many things but naivety wasn’t one of them. She knew what fate awaited the immediate family of a President of the United States and it wasn’t good. The United States Secret Service was charged with protecting the First Family and there was a persistent fear among them of something happening to a member of the President’s family.

  The Constitution was amazingly prescient in its content, and there was provision built into it in case of a crisis. That provision was the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, used several times in the past, including the succession of Gerald Ford to the Presidency after Nixon’s resignation and the appointment of Nelson Rockefeller to the Vice Presidency, both in 1974. Most recently, and dramatically it was invoked after President Grant was kidnapped by the madman Klaus Kiefel on his rampage across America during the Medusa attacks. That had put the traitor Teddy Kimble in the Oval Office.

  The concern was if any of the President’s close family were kidnapped they could be used as leverage to blackmail the Commander-in-Chief, and that was why the Twenty-Fifth was necessary. But the fear of an attack against the President’s family never went away, and that meant a big change was coming in her life if her father won the race to the White House.

  She knew they would demand her return to the United States and when there put her under the protection of a USSS detail and she dreaded it. Sure, she could refuse – but what if something happened to her. She didn’t exactly lead the life of a shrinking violet, wheelchair or not. She didn’t want to be responsible for annihilating her father’s entire career and endangering the vital national security of her country to make a point and settle an old grudge against her dad.

  But it would be hell. When Chelsea Clinton was at Stanford she was trailed around everywhere by a Secret Service detail dressed casually but always carrying handguns under their shirts, and always within sight of her. They wouldn’t be much use anywhere else, she thought glumly. They also had her dorm windows replaced with bulletproof glass and had her carry a panic alarm. Imagine that, she thought – having two or three strangers following you from room to room for eight years.

  Despite her doubts, part of her wondered if she had spent long enough with the ECHO team, hidden away on Elysium. Not that she had ever told anyone this, but her presence on the island base wasn't entirely altruistic. The truth was she had felt something for Joe Hawke since the day she had saved his life back in Serbia, and when he had walked back into her life during the Poseidon adventure, she had begun to harbor secret thoughts about the two of them getting together. It was innocent enough, she told herself, but she knew it was unlikely. First, she was back in the wheelchair after the elixir had given her a newfound freedom, and while she had no idea what Hawke felt about that, she knew his lifestyle was as fast and hard as they came. Would he give that up for her now? The other problem was Lea.

  She like Lea a lot and counted her as one of her closest friends. They had been through so much together that she could hardly bring herself even to think about betraying her so badly. It was here where the conflict between her head and her heart raged like a wildfire. Could she sacrifice her friendship with Lea for a relationship with Joe Hawke? She wasn’t even sure if the Englishman had ever had any feelings about her. During the only time they had spent together in her father’s mountain cabin she had been too nervous to bring the subject up, and then the Medusa disaster kicked off and she had missed her chance.

  She thought no, in which case, maybe being here on the island was just causing her too much pain. Maybe she could use a fresh start, and just maybe… renewing the relationship with her father might be the answer. It felt like the hand of fate was intervening in her life once again, and who was she to fight it? It was all so confusing, and the time to make a decision was racing upon her. The presidential election was almost here, and her father was the favorite to win. She sighed and closed her eyes for a few moments. Somewhere deep inside her, a voice from her younger days told her life wasn’t supposed to be this complicated.

  She opened her eyes and raised the can to her lips, taking another sip of the Coke. She winced as she swallowed it and set the can back down. The Caribbean sun had worked its magic on the drink and it was already too warm to enjoy.

  And that was when she saw them

  In the sky were several black smudges. Obviously aircraft, she thought. She focussed on them and saw the sun flash on their bodies as they began vectoring toward Elysium.

  What the hell? she thought.

  She had never seen anything like this before in all her time on the island. The occasional tourist plane that went off course, sure, but Eden had various arrangements with local ATC that Elysium was a no-fly zone except for his small fleet of Gulfstreams and that was respected.

  Worse than that, she now saw they were helicopters. Black Helicopters. That meant military – she counted three of them now closing fast on the private island. As they approached she saw they were Boeing AH-64s, and behind them at a safe distance what looked like a Sikorsky Black Hawk.

  “Why the hell are three Apaches making a low pass over this island?”

  She felt her stomach turn and spu
n around in the wheelchair.

  She began pushing the wheels forward as fast as she could, the hot rubber burning her hands with the sunlight and friction and she powered herself forward as fast as she could go.

  Now the sound of their dual GE T700 Turboshaft engines was reverberating ominously around the area, bouncing off the surface of the sea and the mountains rising grandly above the compound.

  She wanted to warn Eden, but her phone was inside and there was nothing she could do but push the wheels hard and fast.

  And then the monstrous killing machines swooped even lower and the shooting started. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the grim, heavy clunking of the 30 mil chain gun started up, firing the lethal bullets along the shore and up the beach directly behind her at a terrifying six hundred rounds per minute.

  They tore through the warm, turquoise water in seconds and were quickly shredding their way up the sand and racing up behind her. My God, she thought – they’re actually aiming at me!

  She thought she was dead when Richard Eden burst out of the compound and ran toward her with all his might. Behind him she saw the figure of Kim Taylor making a panicked call on her cell phone.

  Eden grabbed the handles on the back of the chair and pushed her ahead of him as he sprinted back to the headquarters buildings only seconds ahead of the savage gunfire.

  They both knew their only hope was to get inside and go to the bunker. It was an original feature of the compound back when it was built and operated by the French Navy, and Eden had kept it up just in case of an emergency just like this. In all the years he’d worked here they’d never needed it until now.

  And now they needed it almost as much as they needed oxygen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  When they reached the entrance to the cave, Kruger was already long gone. His pickup was racing off down the slope. Korać, Luk and Van Zyl were climbing into the Kaman, with the Serb at the controls, and Kamchatka was clambering into a 4Runner but stopped to swing around with a machine pistol.

  Scarlet raised her gun. “Drop it like it’s hot, motherfucker!”

  Kamchatka laughed. “The only thing’s I’m dropping is you, bitch!” He fired a burst from the gun and forced them to the deck. They fired back and kept Kamchatka pinned down around the front of the 4Runner to stop him getting to the door.

  “Where’s Khatibi?” Lea yelled.

  “Tied up in that Silverado!” Hawke said.

  “Take the Silverado and go after Kruger!” Scarlet yelled, aiming at the 4Runner. “I’ll keep this twat tied up.”

  Hawke swung open the door of the Silverado and started the engine. “Quick – he’s not getting away this time.”

  Hawke and Lea piled in and they started down the hill. With Hawke at the wheel, the Silverado skidded along the gravel path and down the slope after Kruger. As Lea untied Khatibi, the Englishman checked the mirror and immediately saw Scarlet firing on Kamchatka. Somehow he had gotten into the 4Runner and was now skidding down the hill. They were getting smashed again.

  “He’s getting away!” Lea said.

  Hawke stamped on the throttle to kick the automatic transmission down into third. The extra torque made the revs roar and the pickup surged forward but just as they were gaining they heard something that changed everything.

  The sound of the intermeshing rotors of the Kaman K-MAX thundered above them but before anyone could react they all felt the heavy blow of the carousel smashing down on the roof of the Silverado.

  “Shit!”

  “What is it?”

  A metallic crunching sound gave the answer first and then they saw the claws of the four-hook carousel as they tightened around the cab’s roof.

  “Cover your faces!”

  The hydraulics whined as the hooks tightened on the roof and then punctured through the windshield and side windows, spraying a lethal shower of shattered glass all over them at high velocity.

  “They’re not going to try and lift us up?” Lea said.

  “Surely impossible!” Khatibi replied.

  Hawke shook his head and grimaced. “The good news is that this Chevy probably weighs about five thousand pounds, and the K-MAX can lift six thousand as I recall, and probably around five thousand at this altitude, so absolutely no problem.”

  Lea looked at him. “Okay, right. Hang on – if that’s the good news, what’s the bad news?”

  “The bad news is because it has twin-intermeshing rotors, that means there’s no need for a tail rotor… and destroying tail rotors is my patented method to bring down a chopper.”

  *

  A grim silence filled the tomb as their eyes fixed on the time bomb Korać had left in the sarcophagus. Scarlet returned from her failure to stop Kamchatka, and saw the American CIA man studying the bomb. He turned to face his friends, shaking his head as he did so. “No way.”

  “And what does that mean, darling?”

  “It means I was right. It has a motion sensor on it, right there,” he leaned in and pointed at what looked like a small battery neatly attached to the side of the bomb. “Touch that or any other part of this thing and it’s going up in half a heartbeat.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly.”

  He turned to Ryan. “This means you have precisely four minutes to get what you need out of this place before we’re running for our lives.”

  “Oh joy.”

  “Hurry up, Ryan,” Camacho said. “Three minutes, forty seconds.”

  Ryan looked more closely at the temple layout and saw at once what Kruger had seen – there were twelve alcoves, and in front of each one was a constellation carved into a flagstone.

  “These must correspond to the twelve labours of Hercules,” he said with confidence. “And these constellations are the clue. To open the alcoves and find what Kruger saw, we have to stand on the stones bearing the relevant constellation.”

  Scarlet stood on one and nothing happened. “Idiot.”

  “No – it has to be in the right order! We have to stand on the stones in the order of the twelve labours!”

  Camacho looked at the bomb timer. “So let’s get on with it then, shall we? Three minutes.”

  *

  The Silverado lurched up nose first and at high speed as the Kaman began to lift the pickup into the air. They grabbed on to anything they could to steady themselves but they were trapped and had nowhere to run. Ahead of them they watched the taillights of Kruger’s pickup disappearing into the distance.

  Lea sighed. “Whatever happens, he’s long gone.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Hawke said.

  “This is a very precarious situation!” Khatibi said, peering out the shattered window as the Rif Mountains flashed by in a blur.

  “No shit,” Lea said.

  “And they’re taking us higher,” Hawke said. “Something tells me this is a one-way journey.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Lea said.

  “Only one thing we can do,” Hawke said, craning his neck to look up at the chopper. “Someone has to climb up that load chain and take out the crew of the Kaman.” He pulled his head back into the cab a paused a beat. “Professor?”

  “What!?”

  “He’s just kidding,” Lea said, turning to Hawke. “Right?”

  “Right. You two stay here. I’ll be back in a sec.”

  *

  Ryan turned to Scarlet. “So what was the first labour of Hercules?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “No, of course not! I’m just talking to myself out loud. The first labour was to slay the Nemean Lion – Leo!” Ryan ran over to the alcove with the Leo constellation in front of it and stood on the stone. Slowly the rock partition slid down to reveal the first symbol. It was similar in style to the ones that had led them here from Tanit’s tomb. Ryan nodded his head and snapped a picture of it. “That’s the first coordinate. Sweet.”

  “Two minutes and thirty seconds,” Camacho said.

  “What was the second
labour?” Maria asked.

  “The Lernaean Hydra,” Ryan said without hesitation. “Everyone search for the Hydra Constellation!”

  Scarlet looked from Reaper to Lexi and then to Camacho. “Who does he think we are?”

  “You must have learned them for your camping or whatever it is you do in the SAS,” Ryan said.

  “Camping?”

  “You know.”

  “Well, sure… but that was a long time ago,” Scarlet said defensively. “Besides, I’m not a fucking sailor.”

  “No, that’s your hobby not your vocation,” Lexi said with a wink.

  “Ah! Here it is,” Ryan said. He repeated the process, standing on the correct stone and revealing the next symbol. “That’s the second coordinate.”

  “Two minutes,” Camacho said.

  “Third labour was the Ceryneian Hind. Look for the… oh, forget it.” Ryan searched and found Scorpio. “The Constellation of Hercules was a stag in the Greeks’ eyes.”

  He repeated the process again, activating the alcove partition and taking the picture.

  “One minute and forty seconds, Ryan.”

  “Fine… fine… I can do this!” He worked his way speedily through the other Twelve Labours – the Erymanthian Boar, the Augean Stables, the Stymphalian Birds and the Cretan Bull.

  “Sixty seconds, boy.”

  “Mares of Diomedes next then… that just has to be Equuleus, Latin for little horse…” he mumbled and chuckled to himself. “Who knew they had such a good sense of humor?”

  Scarlet peered over Camacho’s shoulder and saw the clock down to seconds. “Ryan, just to let you know that I’m going to start edging towards the entrance now, and I think it’s a safe bet Camo, Reap and Lexi will be joining me although perhaps Maria might stay.”

  He looked up. “Eh?”

  Maria grabbed his shoulders. “For fuck’s sake hurry up!”