Lucy nodded and turned, heading to their right. The tunnel climbed upward slightly, the ceiling a low crevice that offered little comfort and appeared to be glistening with moisture. The fact that it was standing at all was a miracle, and Ethan knew that countless tons of material could plunge down upon them at any moment.
Lucy led the way, her flashlight beam slashing through the darkness, and then it caught upon something half buried in the silt. As Lucy advanced upon it so Ethan saw the shape of some kind of ornate vase glinting in the harsh light beam. Lucy crouched down alongside it and examined the surface, which was decorated with ornate images of bare–chested warriors wielding spears and shields.
‘Andokidean amphora,’ she identified it, ‘red figurines, so around the fifth century BCE. This would have been a valuable item at the time.’
Ethan peered ahead into the gloom and saw more similar artefacts littering the silt around them. Lucy eased forward, crouching down as the silt passageway narrowed further to a slim crevice, beyond which her flashlight beam penetrated a larger area that Ethan could not see from where he was. As she moved, she saw another item in the silt at her feet and picked it up.
The object looked like a pitcher of some kind, and was wrapped in geometric patterns dominated by the same arrangement of three concentric circles and a central line extending from the bottom.
‘It’s Cypriot,’ Lucy identified it, ‘probably more than three thousand years old and covered in icons that historians normally identify with the so–called Holy Grail, the cup of Christ.’
‘Yeah,’ Lopez replied, ‘we got that lecture back in India. The cup is the real myth, and the icon represents the layout of Atlantis.’
‘Tartessos,’ Lucy corrected him again, and then turned and walked for a few more yards before she slowed again. ‘There’s an opening up here,’ she whispered back to them, getting down onto her belly and slithering through the gap.
Ethan and Lopez exchanged a reluctant look and then wriggled through the same opening and promptly slid down a bank on the far side. Ethan tumbled down and found himself sitting alongside what looked like a row of long, low buildings buried deep into the walls of the cavity, and then he heard Lucy’s gasp.
‘There!’
Ethan turned to their right and his flashlight beam reflected off what looked like old wood. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he realized that he was looking at the stern of a vessel that was almost completely concealed within a wall of ancient silt and dried mud. Ethan got to his feet as Lucy bounded across to the vessel and ran her hand along the base of her hull.
The ship was lodged at an angle in the debris, her rudder long gone and her stern high. Ethan could already see that she had been crushed by the immense weight of the debris that had been deposited on top of her and compacted over millennia. However, her angle had protected the stern from the flood waters that must have regularly swirled through the cavity and her timbers did not look quite as rotten as others they had seen down here. Even so, she was black with age and he could smell that rotting wood from where he was on the far side of the subterranean cavern.
‘You think there’s anything still aboard her?’ Lopez asked.
‘Only one way to find out,’ Lucy replied as without hesitation she clambered up the side of the ship’s stern and carefully climbed over shattered beams and onto her deck.
Ethan followed Lopez up and onto the deck, and instantly he could see the gaping, jagged hole hacked into her upper decks where Pytheas and his crew had attempted to salvage what they could from the wreck. Much of the ship was rotting away and he didn’t trust any of the beams to hold his weight.
‘They left most of it behind,’ Lucy said as she peered down into the interior.
Ethan placed his flashlight in his teeth and then crouched down as he grabbed the lip of the deck and gently lowered himself into the darkness, trying to spread his weight as much as possible to avoid snapping the timbers as he stretched his arms and felt the briefest touch of a deck beneath his boots.
Ethan released his hand hold and landed softly on the lower deck. The scent of ancient wood and dislodged dust wafted around him as he crouched down and used the flashlight to peer into the ship’s interior.
The ship’s middle deck had been where the rows of oarsmen had been sat or chained, hauling the vessel through the water by force of combined effort when the winds had not been favorable. Ethan could see rows of benches where they would have been seated, several men to an oar, in rows that ran the length of the hull.
The interior was intact to almost the hull’s mid–section, but beyond that Ethan could see that the ship was crushed flat by the debris, her timbers snapped and twisted like the gruesome fangs of some ancient beast bared in the darkness.
Just ahead of where he squatted Ethan could see another opening in the deck, this one square and uniform. Pytheas and his men must have accessed the trireme’s holds through it and relayed the contents out until the build up of debris became too dangerous and they were forced to abandon the wreck.
Ethan slid downward toward the deck hatch, and saw Lopez drop down behind him and follow until they were either side of the hatch.
‘Ladies first?’ he suggested.
‘Who said chivalry was dead?’
‘You’re lighter,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘Plus I can pull you up again more easily than you’d be able to lift me.’
Lopez winced but she could not deny the logic as she shuffled into position and then turned and lowered herself down. Ethan readied himself to lift her at a moment’s notice as Lucy joined him at the edge of the hatch.
‘You see anything yet?’ she asked.
Ethan heard Lopez land on the hold deck and then there was a long pause before he heard Lopez utter something from the darkness.
‘Whoa.’
‘What do you see?’ Lucy demanded.
Ethan peered down, and then Lopez reappeared with a bright smile on her face as she held something up to them. In the glow of the flashlights Ethan saw it reflect pure gold at them, a bracelet of some kind that was thick and heavy and glittering for the first time in countless centuries.
‘Is there any more down there?’ Ethan asked as Lucy carefully lowered herself down into the hold.
‘Are you kidding?’ Lopez called back. ‘I think we hit the mother lode. There’s no way the three of us could get all of this out of here!’
Ethan ducked his head down into the hold and saw Lopez’s flashlight reflecting off a dazzling array of gold, silver and other materials that were haphazardly piled amid countless broken wooden crates and thick mounds of silt that had entered the rear of the hold when the ship had been consumed by the waves.
‘We’re gonna need the flotation bags,’ Ethan said as he scanned the array of priceless golden artefacts. ‘I want all of this out of here as quickly as possible.’
Lucy nodded eagerly and with Lopez began lifting the gold out of the ship’s hold as Ethan scrambled back up the deck toward the jagged entrance. If he could get just a half dozen bags out of the ship and away to safety, he and Lopez would become independent once again and could start thinking about building a new life somewhere far from the US Government, the DIA and the damned Russians.
Driven by excitement, Ethan hauled himself up out of the ship and stood up to come face to face with the barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle.
‘Greetings, Mister Warner.’
Konstantin Petrov stood on the ground below the ship with fifteen or so heavily armed men, four of whom were surrounding Ethan and keeping their weapons trained upon him.
***
XLV
Ethan said nothing as Petrov and his men climbed up onto the trireme’s slanted deck and four of them descended into the ship. He knew that there was little point in calling out a warning as there was nowhere for Lucy or Lopez to run.
Petrov came to stand face to face with Ethan and smiled.
‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ he said. ‘I’d so like to get to know
you better, but unfortunately I’m in something of a hurry so we’ll have to dispense with any formalities.’
Petrov stepped past Ethan and called down into the ship.
‘How many are there down there and what’s the cargo?’
The reply came up from the depths of the ship. ‘Two women, and the cargo is priceless, just like you said!’
Petrov nodded in satisfaction. ‘Have the women pass the cargo up to us.’
Lopez’s voice echoed through the cavern.
‘Petrov, get down here and come unload this stuff yourself, you lazy son of a bi…’
‘Bit touchy, aren’t we?’ Petrov cut her off with a smile as he glanced at Ethan. ‘You two make quite the couple. I don’t have time for any heroics though, so this is the deal. For every ten seconds that you delay in unloading those goods, I will slice off a piece of Ethan Warner.’
Ethan was instantly grabbed by two of Petrov’s men and forced to his knees on the deck as Petrov drew a combat knife from a sheath on his belt. The Russian grabbed Ethan’s hair and yanked his head to one side as with the other hand he pressed the edge of the blade against Ethan’s ear.
Ethan grinned up at the Russian. ‘Go ahead, it’ll mean I won’t have to listen to you, or them.’
Petrov laughed, then turned and saw one of his men place a solid gold statuette of what looked like an ancient Olympian on the deck of the ship, followed swiftly by more items as Lucy and Lopez began emptying the holds of their cargo.
‘There,’ Petrov said as he released Ethan’s head, ‘many hands make light work, no?’
Ethan said nothing as he watched the Russians packing the artefacts into flotation bags that Ethan had brought with them and handing them down to Petrov’s men below the ship. They worked for almost a full half hour, until all thirty of the bags were full to bursting with the precious cargo and one of Petrov’s men turned to him.
‘That’s all we can carry,’ he reported. ‘There’s as much again inside there but we’ll have to come back again.’
Petrov shrugged. ‘That is not a problem. Our ship will be here soon and we will be able to take everything with us. I would suggest, Anatoly, that you and your men grab something for yourselves before we leave. It would not be prudent to hand over everything to the Kremlin, agreed?’
Anatoly’s features lit up and he bellowed to his men in Russian.
‘Two objects to a man, no more. Move, now!’
The soldiers dashed up onto the deck and began filling their jackets with the artifacts being passed up from below. Petrov turned to Ethan and offered him an apologetic look.
‘I’m afraid that your delightful companion Nicola declined my offer to share in the wealth that we’ve found here, Ethan,’ he lamented. ‘Therefore there won’t be enough for you, and besides, you won’t be leaving here now anyway.’
Petrov lifted his pistol to point at Ethan’s head as he smiled down at him.
‘It’s been a pleasure hunting you all down,’ he said. ‘Rest assured that before being shot, your companions below decks will be given to my men before they leave. I’m sure they’ll show them all of their Russian hospitality.’
Petrov’s men sniggered in grim delight as Petrov pressed his pistol to Ethan’s forehead and squeezed the trigger.
A deafening gunshot rang out and Ethan’s vision blurred as the air around his head seemed to explode. Petrov staggered to one side as a hail of bullets plowed into the Russians and cut them down as they struggled to bring their weapons to bear.
Ethan hurled himself away from the Russians and rolled off the deck as he glimpsed shadowy figures dressed in black fatigues pouring toward the ship, their rifles firing in controlled bursts as they advanced.
‘American!’ Ethan yelled at them, his hands in the air. ‘Allied aboard!’
The advancing soldiers appeared not to hear him and Ethan threw himself back into cover as bullets splattered the silt wall near his head. He ducked down alongside the ship’s hull as a Russian toppled over the edge of the ship’s deck and landed with a thud at his feet, his skull punctured with two bullet wounds. A pair of grenades rolled beside his body and Ethan grabbed one and pulled the pin as he hurled it out toward the advancing soldiers.
‘Grenade!’
The warning echoed above the clatter of gunfire and Ethan covered his ears and ducked down as the grenade detonated with a thunderous blast and the advancing soldiers hurled themselves into cover. Ethan heard a new noise even as the soldiers recovered from the grenade attack and began firing again, and he felt the earth shift beneath his feet and saw veils of material spilling like falling curtains from the vault ceiling.
The shockwave from the grenade blast, confined within the cavern, had destabilised the area and Ethan realized that they had only moments to escape before the entire place came down upon them.
He turned and grabbed the fallen man’s Kalashnikov and the second grenade, but this time he turned and tossed the grenade under the ship as he yelled at the top of his lungs.
‘Lopez, fire in the hole!’
Ethan threw himself clear of the ship and up against the buildings embedded in the wall of the cavern and lay flat on the ground as the grenade detonated. The ship’s timbers groaned under the blast as the weakened and rotting hull shattered, the grenade opening a four–foot wide hole from which poured a stream of dusty silt and ancient gold relics. Right behind the dirty pile of material tumbled Lopez and Lucy, Lopez dragging the scientist behind her and running for cover as the Russians opened up on the soldiers now pinned down inside the cavern.
The trireme shuddered as more of her broken hull collapsed, and the wall of silt and debris in which she was half–buried trembled as the delicate balance of support was disturbed and the wall began to fail.
‘Where’s Petrov?!’ Ethan yelled above the din.
‘I didn’t see him go down!’ Lopez snapped as she joined him. ‘We were inside the damned ship, in case you hadn’t noticed!’
Ethan turned and saw the row of buildings had doorways, some filled with silt but others open and accessible. He could see that they ran down the length of the cavern and that they could possibly represent another way out.
‘Let’s go!’
Ethan took aim and fired over the heads of the advancing soldiers, who were moving by sections toward the boat in orderly fashion that betrayed them as well trained troops. Ethan could see that they were carrying M–16 rifles as Lucy and Lopez dashed to the nearest open doorway and plunged inside.
Ethan backed up, firing as he went not at the soldiers but at the Russians atop the stern of the trireme. The bullets smacked into two of the men and they dropped as the rest fought for their lives, and Ethan saw the advancing soldiers change their aim and start focussing only on the Russians. The soldiers’ bullets impacted the ship in a hail of deadly fire, the ship’s ancient timbers no defense against modern ammunition, and as Ethan backed up he saw two of the soldiers switch to their underslung grenade launchers.
‘No!’
Ethan’s warning was lost in the din of battle as the grenades were fired. The two weapons rocketed across the cavern and smacked into the trireme’s stern and exploded with brilliant flares of orange light and tongues of flame. Ethan ducked aside as the shrapnel cut through the Russian gunmen like a scythe but it was the ceiling of the chamber that drew his attention.
The entire subterranean cavern seemed to shudder and then Ethan saw the hull of the ship twist sideways. Russian gunmen fell to either side and he saw the entire edifice of the rear wall of the cavern subside downward across the ship’s decks. Even as the vast tide of silt and debris came crashing down so Ethan saw in the darkness a black jet of dark water blast down from the rear of the cavern and crash across the trireme.
Ethan whirled and sprinted down the front of the buildings as Lopez and Lucy emerged two doors down and ignored the remaining gunfire as they sprinted for the narrow fissure that led back out of the cavern to the surface. Ethan glanced sideways and
saw the American soldiers turning to flee as the single jet of water became a sudden and terrifying wall of filthy dark water that poured toward them, consuming the entire trireme once again and rushing with a deafening roar of thousands of tons of force.
Lucy and Lopez wriggled through the gap as Ethan leaped and rolled through behind them and they started running down the uneven tunnel outside, reaching the fork and turning left to start climbing toward the surface.
‘Keep moving!’ Lopez yelled.
Ethan heard the wall of the tunnels behind them collapse as the force of the breach hit it and the tunnels flooded with millions of gallons of water. The silty earth beneath his boots trembled as the water rushed up behind him and he saw the soldiers sprinting to get clear, the water rushing past them and swallowing them whole.
‘We’re not going to make it!’
Ethan could see the rising tunnel before them in the near–darkness, and in the distance the faint beam of sunlight illuminating the temple they’d used to get down into the tunnels, and then the water hit him from behind and he stumbled and fell as it rushed past and swallowed them all.
Ethan fought to keep his head above the surface of the frigid, filthy water as it carried him in a tumbling vortex through the tunnel and then into the temple. He swam hard for the side, seeking in the darkness some sign of the stone steps they had used to descend from the temple gantry to the lower levels.
‘Over here!’
Lopez yelled to him and he saw her and Lucy clambering out of the water and staggering up the stone steps, their clothes drenched and muddy as Ethan swam to join them and pulled himself out of the churning water. His legs felt suddenly weak and a chill enshrouded him as he staggered in pursuit of Lopez, the deluge behind them losing its impetus as the level of the water equalized and settled.
Ethan could see several of the American soldiers swimming toward the side of the temple and looking up at him as he forced himself upward toward the small square of brilliant light that was their only escape. Lucy and Lopez reached it first and climbed through as Ethan staggered after them, stunned by how cold the water had been and how he was shivering now as though on the verge of hypothermia, and then his legs ceased to function and he collapsed to his knees.
The Atlantis Codex Page 30
