Back in Poseidon’s temple, Sam smiled as he slowed his breathing, gaining control, as he had always been able to, of his friend, his constant companion, claustrophobia. It was always there, but instead of his enemy, he had made it his ally. Something to make him focus.
Tom grabbed him. “You okay Sam? You looked like you were a thousand miles away.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, I suppose I was. Just thinking of the past.”
“Well, I hope it gave you some sort of insight about our future. Because I’ve made three circuits of this temple, and I can’t see anything that leads to the fourth room.”
“As a matter of fact, I think it may have.”
“Really?”
“What do you do when you see exactly what you want?”
“You focus on it. You get tunnel vision, and that’s all you see.”
“That’s right.”
Sam then showed Tom the passage that described Poseidon’s temple.
In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple, they placed statutes of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot – a charioteer of six winged horses – and at such as size that he touched the roof of the building with his head…
It carried on for a while, but Sam stopped reading.
“Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“Poseidon wasn’t just a giant, with his head almost touching the room. Poseidon was looking at the true wealth of the room. It was stored above his head.”
“But there was nothing above his head.” Tom looked up at the ceiling. The rest of the entire room was covered in precious metals, ivory and gemstones, but directly above him was simply wrought iron.
“That’s it! It’s tunnel vision. Whether it was the Russians or our scientists who actually reached here first, they stripped the entire room of everything of value, but never once did they consider what was above that piece of iron!”
“Okay, so then what’s above that piece of iron?”
“I think there’s another room – with answers!”
“That’s great Sam.” Tom looked around. “In case you haven’t noticed, that ceiling’s about thirty feet high. And unless you’re seeing something that I don’t, I have no idea how you’re planning on reaching it.”
Sam stared at the water fountain and replied, “I might just have a solution.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
“The water won’t enter here because Poseidon’s temple is in the shape of a half dome,” Sam noted. “Therefore, when Atlantis flooded originally, everywhere became submerged except this point. But what if we break the dome?”
“How do you plan to do that from down here?”
“With this.” Sam lifted his right mechanical arm, and the head of a rocket appeared.
“Wow, what have you got there?”
“Given our previous problems, I wasn’t convinced I wanted to enter Atlantis without superior firepower. Consequently, I had an armorer friend of mine redesign an RPG 27 so that it could be retrofitted into our ADS machine.”
“Ah, Sam… have you really thought this through? If we blow apart the ceiling, what do you think the pressure difference is going to do to us?”
“I’d say we have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. Maybe twenty-five to seventy-five. Why – have you got a better idea?”
Tom shrugged his massive mechanical shoulders. “Guess not.”
“Then that answers it,” Sam said and fired the RPG directly at the ceiling, above where Poseidon was supposed to stand.
The entire roof exploded, revealing the entrance to another temple.
Sam looked around, “I told you there was a room behind it!”
“That’s great, but I don’t see any water flooding in here?”
“No, neither do I. Let’s check out the cave-in again. Is it possible the boulders have blocked the water from coming in?”
“Yes, that could be it.”
“Do you want to go check it out while I work on plan B?”
“What’s plan B?”
“You don’t want to know yet…”
Tom returned ten minutes later. “Yep, the cave-in has blocked any water getting in here. So, unless you can jump about thirty feet, I have no idea how we’re going to get to the next level.”
“That’s where plan B is going to have to come in.”
“What’s plan B?”
“We’re going to flood this room using Poseidon’s own bath water.”
“The fountain of the Gods?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“That’s great, but it’s still draining at hundreds of cubic feet of water per minute.”
Sam grinned. “That’s why we’re going to have to block the drain.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
Four red marble columns, each nearly ten feet tall, adorned the room. Resting on top of each, like a pedestal, was a ball made of blue green marble, all a different shade of light. Sam imagined each one served some type of symbolic references to the seasons of the year. If he’d had more time, Sam would have liked to examine them better, but the value of archeology always came second to those still living.
“Help me knock this thing over,” Sam said.
Sam rested the massive shoulder of his ADS machine against the solid column and pushed. Nothing happened. Tom then stepped in and locked their two ADS machines together so that their combined hydraulic power could push the column over.
“Okay, try now,” Tom said.
The column moved, but only slightly. Not enough to knock it over.
Sam gritted his teeth and said, “Let’s try pushing it back and forth until it moves.”
By the fifth go, the entire column tipped to the floor – sending the marbled earth rolling.
Built into the side of Poseidon’s temple, the fountain of the gods flowed miraculously as it had done for thousands of years. Still remarkably flowing into a drain which dispersed the water somewhere. It was like a flood of hot and cold water. But where did it come from, and where the hell was it going?
Sam lifted the large marble ball and placed it on the drain pipe, blocking it. Instantly the magical water began spilling out and covering the room. Within minutes they were standing knee deep. The two turned and swam back to the entrance fast.
The level rose rapidly until Sam and Tom were once more in the water their ADS machines were designed for. Capable of movement outside of water, the machines were built to perform highly sophisticated underwater tasks, and were capable of much higher speeds and maneuverability in it than out.
Despite being massive, Poseidon’s temple filled with water quickly. They decreased their buoyancy so that they rested on the temple’s floor instead of the ceiling, where powerful currents were forming as the water tried to squeeze through the little opening.
“We’ll give it another twenty minutes to fill the room above with water, and then we go!” Sam said.
“Sounds good to me.”
After waiting for the current to settle, a good indicator that the next room had filled with water, Sam moved toward the opening. Attached to Tom’s ADS machine via a tether, in case the current became dangerously strong, his quad propulsion unit whirred into life as he shot through the opening he’d made.
No more than a few feet inside the second room Sam said, “It’s safe to come up. And I think you’re going to want to see this!”
The room was relatively small compared to Poseidon’s temple and almost entirely barren, with the exception of a massive picture on one wall. Etched into a solid piece of glowing red orichalcum, fourteen feet tall and equally wide, was a depiction of an island, and its surrounding coastline.
“So that’s orichalcum?” Tom asked.
“It appears so.”
“I don’t understand. If all that wealth underneath us was merely a ruse to stop people fi
nding this image, what the hell is so valuable on that island?”
“The code to Atlantis.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Sam stared at the painting as though he were mesmerized by it somehow. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Tom look around the rest of the room trying to see where the water had gone. If the water came into the room, that meant the air had gone out, and for that to happen, there had to be an exit. And he was going to find it.
Sam gave it little thought. He knew he was right about the Atlanteans. They needed redundancy in their systems, and that meant escape routes. If he was right about the greatest wealth of Atlantis being hidden inside this room, then he just assumed he was right about the next part.
Right on cue, Tom said, “Look at this. I think we just found your priest hole.”
It was a large tunnel leading downwards. The water could be seen where it had been flooded and Sam hoped that it hadn’t been destroyed by the torpedo.
“I just wonder where it leads now that Atlantis is nowhere near where it was supposed to be when that thing was built?”
“No idea, but I’m sure it will get us out of here. Of course, I’m not too sure where we’ll go from there. If Andrew Brandt and his goons are smart, they’ll be waiting for us on the surface.”
“And even if they aren’t, it’s unlikely they’re just going to have left our Snow Cat there waiting for us. Which means we’re going to have a mighty long, cold, walk.”
Sam remained staring at the wall for another ten minutes before Tom interrupted him again. Like a map, the place depicted a coastline, and in the middle a small island. At the center of the island were those five rings Sam was starting to associate with Atlantis.
Above them, he noticed that the ceiling of the cavern was surrounded by celestial markings. There were notes, which appeared like an ancient almanac, with the image of shooting stars next to it. The math and the astronomy were too much for Sam to make any useful sense of. He took a dozen photos of the ceiling as well as a three-minute digital video. With the exception of a few stars he recognized, the entire ceiling was beyond him, but one thing appeared obvious – the code to Atlantis was somehow tied with stars.
He studied the map for a few more minutes, mesmerized by the detail. How a land based population could gather such detail without the aid of satellite imaging, he would never understand.
Tom interrupted his concentration. “If we take a few pictures of it, we could get Elise to run it with every coastline in the world for its closest match. It would have changed substantially in the past eleven thousand years, but if we run all known images of coastlines with a plus or minus variance of water levels, we might just get lucky.”
Sam grinned. “I already know where that is.”
“Really? Then what are you trying to work out?”
“How the hell I’m going to convince the Mayor of New York that we have to dig one heck of a hole in Manhattan.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
The Andre Sephora slowed to an idle along the Congo River. They were getting close to where the pygmy king had told them it would be.
Billie looked at the little pygmy, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his own adventure as their guide to the real temple of Poseidon. “You’re certain it’s here?”
“Yes.”
Billie looked up. “Jason, what’s our depth sounding at here?”
“There’s a lot of water below us, Dr. Swan.”
“How deep, exactly?”
“Seven hundred feet. Much too deep to dive.”
“Okay, keep us here.”
“You can’t dive to that sort of depth. It may as well be the bottom or the Mariana Trench for all its accessibility.”
“Leave that problem to me,” Billie said, frustrated. “Zanzibe, how certain are you this is the place?”
“It’s here Dr. Swan. I promise you. My father took me to this place to worship as a boy, as did his father, and his father’s father, since the great Congo River first swallowed the temple.”
She studied his face. He was certain. That was enough for her. “Okay, we stay here.”
Billie laughed at the irony of it all.
“What’s so funny Dr. Swan?” Edward asked.
“The temple of Poseidon lies at the river bed below us at a depth of nearly 720 feet! As though that’s not impossible to dive on its own, the river is one of the most powerful and turbulent on the planet. And the only two people in the world who are not only dumb enough, but possibly skilled enough to have a chance of reaching it, I sent to Siberia on a wild goose chase!”
Edward looked at her. “Are you finished with your rant yet?”
“I think that pretty much sums it up.”
“Good, because there’s still work to be done. We have less than two weeks to save the world, and I intend to do so.”
“Did you happen to bring a deep sea submarine with you?”
“No, Dr. Swan I did not. But don’t worry, I did bring two submersible ROVs.”
“Of course! We don’t need to bring anything up with us. All we need is to see the inside of that temple and the first half of its code!”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Billie sat in the computer room, watching the live feed from the camera mounted at the nose of their submersible remotely operated vehicle, or ROV for short. Even from the safety of their sports cruiser, the water below appeared turbulent. Edward struggled to maintain the little ROV in position, while the river constantly attempted to force it to run away.
The ROV was connected to the neutrally buoyant tether which ran from the back of the Andre Sephora like a giant spool of wool. At the base of the monitor a number of instrumental readings were displayed, including depth, water speed, and temperature.
Sinking past the six-hundred-foot depth marker, Edward suddenly felt his controls become more stable. The water speed increased and the temperature warmed.
“What just happened?” Billie asked.
“We seem to have entered a small eddy,” Edward said, his fingers tapping rapidly over the controls.
The ROV began to rise quickly. Releasing more air, Edward tried to reduce its buoyancy and then powered forward at full speed.
Nothing happened.
The ROV was stuck in an upward spiral. Billie watched at the submersible became helpless to the whims of the deep river eddy.
“Can you do anything about it?” she asked.
Edward took his fingers off the controls. “Nothing that I haven’t already tried. Now I just get to watch and see what happens.”
A moment later the image on the screen showed the ROV had punched through the upwards spiraling eddy and was now on the other side. Edward’s fingers continued to work the controls in fast, specific motions.
“We’re out of it.”
“Hey, you’re increasing your depth again – fast!” Billie said noticing the sounder showed the ROV had dropped another 50 feet since penetrating the spiraling wall of the eddy.
Edward looked toward the depth gauge. “You’re right, too fast! We must be caught in a deep river waterfall.”
The spool of tether, hanging on the back deck, began running as though a giant marlin had taken the bait.
“Mark, get out the back will you,” Edward said. “I need you to secure the tether and make sure we don’t lose it!”
“Understood, sir.”
Billie turned to stop Mark. “Don’t bother.”
“Why not?” Edward asked.
“Because we just snapped the ROV’s tether line.”
Chapter Seventy
The second ROV was ready to launch twenty minutes later. It was slightly larger, and Edward explained that he was worried the submersible may have trouble accessing the temple of Poseidon, especially if some of the challenges were still intact. Zanzibe had assured them that the temple of their Gods was left unarmed while it sunk into the river so they could study it and try to replicate it as best they could.
Lowered into the
water by a load-carrying umbilical cable, the second ROV remained in its tether management system, known as a TMS, until it reached the bottom of the river. The TMSwas a garage-like device, which housed the ROV during the lowering process through the splash zone and then worked to lengthen and shorten the tether so the effect of cable drag where there were underwater currents was minimized.
The TMS stopped just short of the bed of the river, so that no additional silt was stirred up by the ROV’s propellers.
“Well, that’s something at least,” Billie said. “Can you turn the main LEDs on?”
“As you wish,” Edward replied and flicked the powerful lights on.
The place was completely lacking in environmental light, and reminded Billie of the time not so long ago when Sam Reilly had dragged her from her research in the Antarctic to help his friend, Tom Bower, explore a Mayan Pyramid nearly half a mile under the ocean.
Surreal in its isolation, the place where the ROV now explored was more distant than nearly every other place on earth. At first it appeared devoid of all marine life, but when Edward displayed the view of the downward camera, the riverbed seemed to be swarming with giant fresh water-crayfish. Although what they were eating to sustain themselves, she had no idea.
“Any sign of our temple yet?” she asked.
“Not yet. I’m just waiting for the sonar to come into view.” Edward grinned. “There she is!”
Zanzibe sat still and watched the computer screen. Although he said nothing, his face depicted bewilderment and awe at the first sight of his God’s true temple, a sight which no one had seen for nearly eleven thousand years.
The ROV began moving toward the temple. Its powerful electric motor propelled it at a speed upwards of 30 knots. The TMS was attached to the rear deck of the Andre Sephora via a full umbilical system, and then the TMS ran a separate tether to the ROV, making it much more versatile, while providing it with infinite power to exhaust.
Atlantis Stolen (Sam Reilly Book 3) Page 20
