The answer …
Chase frowned, desperately trying to recall the memory. Nina had told him the answer after figuring out how the numbers worked. What was it, what was it?
Forty-two—
No, that was the fucking Hitchhiker’s Guide!
Forty!
“We need to put forty of those balls in there!” he said, pointing to the scale as he scooped up a handful of the heavy pellets. “Two lots of ten each! Fast!”
Starkman obeyed. “What if we fuck up the count?”
“We die!” Chase counted ten of the pellets and dropped them into the cup before grabbing another handful.
Starkman did the same as Chase counted off another ten. Twenty, thirty …
Forty!
He grabbed the lever, paused for a fraction of a second to hope that Nina’s math had been correct, then pulled it—
Clink.
The stone door moved slightly as the catch was released.
“I love brainy women!” Chase whooped. “Give me a hand!” They forced the door open.
Starkman was right behind him as they entered the last passage. “Now just run like fuck!” Chase yelled.
He couldn’t even spare a moment to check his watch, but he knew they were almost down to their last thirty seconds.
Into the main chamber of the temple, gold and orichalcum glittering all around them. But none of it mattered except the huge statue of Poseidon at the far end, and the flight of stairs behind it.
He hoped that removing the hidden switch in the last challenge was the only change the architects had made.
“Up here!” he gasped, taking the steps three at a time. The muscles in his legs burned, sweat stinging the deep cut in his calf, but he couldn’t stop now. “Back of the room, there should be a shaft!”
“Should be?” panted Starkman.
“If it’s not, sue me!” They reached the top of the stairs, the riches of the altar room shining around them, but the only thing of value to Chase was the shaft—
The bomb exploded.
The fuel-air explosion swept through the cavern with earth-shattering force. Temples fell, palaces were smashed as the shockwave expanded. And behind it came a swelling fireball, a fury that seared and melted everything it touched.
Even the ancient walls of the Temple of Poseidon were unable to withstand the full force of modern weaponry. Blocks weighing tons were pulverized in the blink of an eye.
The cavern itself succumbed to the devastation just as quickly. A million tons of stone plunged downwards as the ceiling collapsed, obliterating the citadel.
Chase could hear the shockwave approaching like an express train, a wind rushing through the altar room ahead of the blast itself.
The “priest hole” was just feet away—
He dived into it. There was no time to worry if it was blocked. Because if it was, he would be dead either way in a few seconds.
Unlike the vertical shaft in Atlantis, this one was slanted, a steep slope of at least sixty degrees. Starkman was right behind him as he slid down it.
The wind rose to a gale …
The helicopter pilots had received a garbled radio message to prepare their aircraft for a rapid takeoff. Now, Nina and Kari watched in horror as Frost—and only about half his men—charged out of the cave and raced through the snow towards the choppers.
“Oh my God!” Kari cried as Frost and Schenk jumped into the cabin. Outside, two of his men practically threw Philby into the second helicopter. “What happened?”
“Go! Go!” Frost yelled at the pilot. “Qobras got loose, started the timer again! Couldn’t stop it!”
“Where’s Eddie?” Nina shouted.
“He’s dead! They shot him!”
Her breath stuck in her throat. “What? No!” Kari looked shocked.
“Faster! The bomb’s going to—”
A colossal jet of smoke and dust and rubble erupted from the cave entrance with an unbelievably deep thump like the pounding of a mile-wide drum. Nina felt the detonation in her chest cavity.
The pilot threw the ascending helicopter sharply sideways to get out of the path of the avalanche charging towards it. An avalanche not of snow, but of stones, loose rocks knocked free by the explosive pulse, sweeping others away as they cascaded down the cliff.
The second helicopter followed suit. Flying stones pounded its hull like hail as the avalanche smashed down, causing a huge chunk of rock to shear away from the side of the mountain, the ledge disintegrating in an enormous cloud of dust.
The Path of the Moon was gone forever, the road to the last outpost of Atlantis swept away.
Nina pressed her hands against the helicopter’s window as she watched the destruction below. Other rock slides tumbled down the mountain, the Golden Peak of Tibetan legend shaken to its core.
And everything within … lost.
“Eddie …” she whispered. Losing him once had been bad enough. Twice was almost too much to bear. Her eyes filled with tears.
Chase screamed as the blast wave ripped past, dust and grit and fragmented stone scouring his exposed skin. The noise was unimaginable, a roaring thunder shaking every bone, every organ in his body as he was swept helplessly down the shaft.
Light in the tunnel, a rising brightness …
Not daylight ahead, but fire behind, the burning fuel-air mix superheating as the collapsing cave compressed it and drove it after them.
And all he could do was skid down the slope towards the darkness ahead, while the glow from behind went from red to orange to yellow as the fire rushed after him—
A rectangle of daylight suddenly burst open before him, the snow covering the exit blown away. Chase had no time to reflect on his luck. Instead he acted entirely on reflex as he shot out of the end of the shaft onto a snow-covered pile of scree, throwing himself sideways to avoid the tongue of flame.
Snow flashed to steam as a fireball erupted from the shaft behind him. He hit the ground hard, the layer of snow doing little to cushion the impact as he slammed against the rock beneath.
But there wasn’t even time to feel the pain, because a hissing rattle from above warned him that a wave of loose stones was careening down the mountainside—
He rolled and flattened himself against the rock face, praying that the vestigial overhang was large enough to deflect the falling stones over him rather than crushing him flat.
Rocks ranging in size from a clenched fist to a man’s torso blew apart like grenades above him. Chase shielded his head as the rest of him was pounded by flying fragments. He yelled, barely hearing his own voice over the noise of colliding stones.
Eventually the tumult died down. Painfully Chase forced himself onto his knees, chunks of debris clattering off him, and took in his surroundings.
The slight lip on the rock face had saved him—less than a foot away was a boulder, split cleanly in two by the impact, which would have crushed his skull like a watermelon had it landed on him. Beyond that was a random mass of broken dark stone. Through the dust, the snowy peaks of the Himalayas stretched into the distance.
Looking down, he saw he was on a ledge overlooking a wide valley. The slope seemed shallow enough to descend without climbing gear.
Which was lucky, because the sum total of his equipment now amounted to whatever he had in his pockets. He’d even lost his flashlight.
An odd, out-of-place smell reached him: steam. Misty swirls where the fire had evaporated the snow coiled past, carried on the breeze. He looked around, and saw Starkman partly buried under lumps of stone. He ran to him. “Jason! Come on, stay with me,” he said as he threw the larger pieces aside. “Can you hear me?”
“Eddie?” Starkman’s voice was dazed. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Are you hurt? Can you move?”
“I dunno, let me … ow, shit!”
“What?” Chase asked. “What is it?” If Starkman were seriously injured, there was practically nothing he could do to get him off the mountain.
“I landed on my keys …”
Chase stared at him, then started to laugh. “Oh, you bastard, you funny fucker,” he finally spluttered. Starkman joined in, wheezing. “Come on, get your lazy American arse off the ground.”
Starkman pushed himself upright. His eyepatch had been torn off, exposing a sunken eye socket behind the discolored, closed lid. “Son of a bitch,” he groaned. “That hurts …”
Chase looked up at the mountain. Smoke and dust drifted from its flanks. “Well, your boss got what he wanted,” he sighed. “The place’s been blown to buggery—nobody’ll ever get anything out of there again.”
“Yeah, but your boss got what he wanted too,” Starkman reminded him.
“He stopped being my boss the second he tried to kill me,” Chase said coldly. “Think I’ll have to have words with the bastard about that.”
“You never did take betrayal very well, did you?” said Starkman pointedly.
Chase regarded him silently for a long moment. “Not really.”
“Still not the forgiving type?”
“No. But,” he added, “there’s some things I can forget a bit more easily than others. Temporarily.”
Starkman’s good eye watched him warily. “I never touched her, Eddie. Whatever she may have told you, I never screwed around with your wife. I’d never do that to a friend.”
“You know, Jason,” said Chase, holding out his hand, “I actually believe you.”
“You offering a truce, Eddie?”
“For now.” Starkman took his hand; Chase pulled him up. “I think we both want the same thing—to get that bastard Frost for what he’s done. And I’ve got to rescue Nina.”
“You stopped being paid to protect her at the same time Frost stopped being your boss.”
“Money stopped being the reason I was protecting her a while ago,” Chase told him, getting a raised eyebrow in response.
They both looked around at a new noise. Early morning light glinting from their windows, Frost’s helicopters rounded the mountain, rotor noise booming down the valley as they sped into the distance. Chase stared after them, then turned back to Starkman, holding out his hand again. “Even with Qobras dead, do you still have access to the Brotherhood’s resources?”
“Some of them,” replied Starkman. “What do you have in mind?”
“I fancy a trip to Norway. You interested?”
“Definitely.” They shook hands. “Fight to the end, Eddie?”
“Fight to the end.”
Starkman looked around. “Just one slight problem—we’re stuck in the Himalayas with no transport and no equipment.”
Chase managed a half-smile. “Good thing I looked at a map before coming here.” He pointed down the valley. “If you’re up for a yomp, there’s a village that way. We should be able to reach it by tonight.” The half-smile became a full one. “I know a girl there …”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Norway
The stark beauty of Ravnsfjord stretched out below her as the Gulfstream descended, but Nina barely noticed it.
Her mind was elsewhere, thinking back over the events of the past days. Despite all Kari’s efforts to help, she still felt a sadness, an underlying core of loss. The resurgent grief she’d felt on seeing the bodies of her parents, Chase’s death … and the destruction of Atlantis itself, every last trace of the civilization finally wiped out by Qobras. All buried, irretrievable, the search that had defined her existence brought to an abrupt end.
In a way, her life as she had known it was over. Everything in her world had changed.
“Are you all right?” Kari asked.
“Hmm? Yes, I’m fine. Why?”
“You looked a little … distant.”
“Did I?” Nina considered it. “I suppose I did. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“About how I found what I’d been looking for all these years, I found Atlantis … but now it’s gone. Everything’s different. And I don’t… I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
Kari smiled. “What you’re going to do, Dr. Nina Wilde, is take your place with us. You’re one of us, and we always look after our own.”
“I haven’t really thanked you for that. For everything you’ve done.”
“You don’t need to thank me. And you haven’t lost Atlantis.”
“How so?”
“Because now we can build a new Atlantis. We don’t have to look to the past anymore, because we’ll be creating the future.”
Nina cocked an eyebrow. “Just out of interest, when are you going to tell me exactly how you’re going to be creating this future? I still don’t see how a sample of eleven-thousand-year-old DNA can change the world.”
“It will, trust me.” Kari leaned closer. “I think you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“It’s time I showed you what we’re going to do. How we’re going to remake the world.”
The plane made its final turn, dropping towards the long runway.
Chase gave Starkman a dubious look. “If you had this operation planned all along, why didn’t you just bloody do it and save everyone a lot of trouble?”
“We didn’t know for sure what Frost was doing. And Giovanni didn’t want to risk an attack unless it became absolutely necessary,” Starkman explained. “It would have exposed the Brotherhood—there would have been no way to keep the organization secret anymore.”
“I think the time for sneaking about’s over.” Chase rose from his seat and walked across the aircraft’s hold to peer out of a porthole. The plane, a twin-prop C-123 Provider cargo aircraft, had crossed the Norwegian coast a few minutes earlier, and was now cruising north over the snow-streaked landscape.
They would soon be making a steep descent, however.
Chase looked back at the other passengers in the hold. Twelve of Qobras’s—now Starkman’s—men, all members of the Brotherhood, assembled following the four days it took the two survivors of the Golden Peak to return to Europe.
He just hoped twelve men was enough.
“Far,” said Kari, entering Frost’s office above the biolab with Nina at her side. Frost was at his desk, the vista of Ravnsfjord spread out behind him through the windows. “I think it’s time. Nina’s ready.”
Frost’s expression suggested to Nina that he wasn’t himself sure, but he said nothing.
“What is it you want to tell me?” she asked. “What’s the big secret? Kari’s been very mysterious about it.”
“The big secret, Dr. Wilde …” Frost began. Kari gave him a look. “I mean, Nina. If that’s all right with you?”
“Fine by me,” Nina said with a grin.
Frost smiled back, then stood up. “The big secret, as you say, is that… well, today we are going to change the world. Forever.”
“That’s quite a big challenge.”
“Indeed it is. But it’s a challenge I have been working on all my life—and thanks to you, it can now be accomplished. Your discovery of Atlantis made it possible.”
“But everything was destroyed,” said Nina. “Maybe we can recover some relics from under the sediment at Atlantis itself, but all the intact structures we found, all the artifacts they contained … they’re gone.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Frost said.
“It doesn’t? But…”
“The DNA samples I recovered from the bodies of the last king and queen are worth more than any amount of gold or orichalcum. They are what will change the world. Save the world, even.”
“How?” Nina asked. “Are you using them to create some sort of vaccine or something?”
“Something,” replied Frost, smiling again, this time with an air of mystery. “Come with me and I’ll show you.” He rounded his desk, and was about to join Nina and Kari when his intercom beeped. Clearly irritated at the interruption, he pushed a button to answer the call. “What is it?”
“Sir,” said Schenk’s voice from the speaker, “the cont
rol tower just informed me that a plane has requested permission for an emergency landing. They have engine trouble, and can’t make it to Bergen.”
“Where are they now?”
“About ten minutes out, coming from the south.”
Frost’s lips tightened. “Very well, give them permission to land. But… watch them.”
“Yes, sir.” Schenk closed the line.
“Sorry about that,” said Frost, joining Nina and Kari.
“No problem,” Nina told him. “I mean, if you’re going to save the entire world, you might as well start with just one plane, right?”
“Indeed.” Frost smiled. “Come, follow me. I’ll show you how.”
“They’ve given us emergency landing permission,” Starkman told Chase over the noise of the engines. “Ten minutes.”
“Any problems?” asked Chase.
“Norwegian ATC keeps wanting to know why they don’t have our flight plan. The pilot’s stalling them, but I think they’re getting suspicious.”
“So long as they don’t get suspicious enough to send fighters after us, it won’t matter.” Chase turned to the other men in the cabin. “All right! Ten minutes, lads! Better get ready to jump!”
Frost led the two women into the containment area, passing through another airlock and proceeding deeper into the underground facility.
“In here,” he said. The door at the end of the corridor was solid steel with no view of the room beyond, unlike the transparent aluminum entrances to the other labs. The logo of a trident was painted on the metal. He pushed his thumb against a biometric reader beside it. The heavy door slid open. “Please, you first.”
Nina wasn’t sure what she was looking at as she entered. A few pieces of scientific equipment she vaguely recognized, but most of the gleaming hardware was a mystery. The banks of supercomputers at the rear of the large lab were among those that were easy to identify, towering blue cabinets hooked up to liquid cooling systems. In one corner of the lab was an isolation chamber; it had windows, but they were blacked out.
The Hunt for Atlantis Page 38
