Atlantis jh-1

by David Gibbins

  Jack watched dispassionately as the Werewolf executed a crazy dance in ever diminishing circles, the blades snapping off one by one under the increasing air pressure until the fuselage plummeted into the sea and exploded.

  Without lingering any further, he veered south on his original course and twisted the throttle to maximum. Dalmotov would have relayed an automated Mayday and position fix, and the technicians in Aslan’s control centre would be redirecting the SATSURV to the slick of oil and debris where the helicopters had gone down. The sight would only stoke Aslan’s rage, already incandescent after the damage to Vultura. Jack knew any value he had as a hostage would now be eclipsed by Aslan’s need to exact retribution.

  To his alarm he saw the fuel gauge was flickering dangerously close to empty. When he had last checked ten minutes before, it had read three-quarters full, and there was no way the ensuing action could have expended half the tank. He remembered the hit aft from Dalmotov’s sniper rifle as he left the helipad. If the bullet had struck a fuel line, the jolting as they passed through the thermal could have exacerbated the damage, severing the connection and causing massive fuel loss.

  He had no time for confirmation. He cut back on the throttle to minimize fuel consumption and dropped to thirty metres. The distant form of the island appeared out of the morning haze, the twin peaks with their distinctive bull’s horn shape just as he had first seen them from Seaquest three days before. His only hope now was that the Hind would last long enough to get him within swimming distance of the northern shore.

  As the twin turboshafts began to splutter and gasp, Jack’s view was momentarily obscured by a pall of black smoke. He recoiled from the smell, an acrid reek of cordite and burning plastic. Seconds later it cleared and he was confronted by the hulk of Seaquest less than two hundred metres in front of him.

  The satellite images were no preparation for the shocking reality. IMU’s premier research vessel was wallowing with her foredeck nearly awash, her superstructure smashed beyond recognition and her starboard side rent with cavernous holes where Vultura’s shells had splayed open the plating as they tore through. It seemed a miracle she was still afloat, but Jack could tell that the forward bulkheads would soon be breached and she would be dragged under.

  The Hind barely hung in the air as it shuddered over the ravaged hulk. Almost immediately it began to descend, the rotor no longer able to provide lift. As the engine coughed out its death throes, Jack only just had time to act.

  He quickly unbuckled his safety harness and jammed the cyclic forward as far as it would go. By tilting the helicopter down he raised the stub wings behind the compartment out of his way, but in so doing he had also aimed the machine to nose-dive. With only seconds to spare, he threw off his helmet, ducked behind the cockpit and hurled himself out, his legs tightly crossed and his arms pressed hard against his chest to prevent them from ripping upwards as he hit the water.

  Without his helmet he reduced the risk of whiplash but even so the impact was bone-jarring. He sliced into the sea feet first and plummeted deep enough to feel the thermocline. He splayed his limbs to halt his descent. As he swam back towards the surface, he felt a stabbing pain where the wound in his side had torn open. Partway up there was a tremendous concussion that sent a shock wave coursing through the water. He broke surface and saw the burning remains of the Hind a short distance away, a scene of devastation that could easily have been his own funeral pyre.

  He cracked the CO2 cartridge on his lifejacket and made for Seaquest. He was suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue, the adrenaline rush having taken its toll on his already depleted reserves.

  Seaquest was so far down on her bow that he was able to swim over the submerged forecastle and haul himself on the sloping deck in front of the gun emplacement. It was the scene of York and Howe’s last stand the day before. After grimly surveying the scene, Jack stripped off his lifejacket and picked his way cautiously towards the remains of the deckhouse. Just before reaching the hatch into the hold, he lost his footing and fell heavily. He realized with dismay that he had slipped on congealed blood, a crimson splatter that trailed to the starboard side of the hull.

  Jack knew there was nothing to be gained from dwelling on the final moments of his crew. He sank back for a moment’s respite beside the hatch while he summoned all his remaining willpower and strength.

  Almost too late he saw the helicopter out of the corner of his eye. It was far away, just off the corner of the island, and the sound of its rotor was drowned out by the noise of Seaquest breaking up. He knew from the vacant pad at the heliport that Aslan had a fourth attack helicopter, and he guessed this was a Kamov Ka-28 Helix flown off Vultura. He squinted into the morning sun and saw the helicopter low over the water, aimed directly at him. Jack had been at the receiving end of enough helicopter attacks to know what to expect, yet rarely had he felt so vulnerable.

  There was a distant flash as a telltale halo dropped and began to enlarge with horrifying speed. It was a heavy anti-ship missile, probably one of the feared Exocet AM.39 warheads he had seen stockpiled at Aslan’s headquarters. Jack hurled himself through the hatch and tumbled to the lower deck, literally falling into the command module. Just as he spun the locking wheel, there was an immense crash. He was thrown violently back against a bulkhead and the world went dark.

  CHAPTER 26

  The door slammed behind Costas as he flew into the bulkhead. It was a jarring impact, the protruding ridge of metal taking him full in the chest and leaving him fighting for breath. The blindfold had been ripped off but all he could see was a crimson blur. He rolled back slightly, his whole body convulsed with pain, and slowly raised his arm to feel his face. His right eye was swollen and closed over, numb to the touch. He moved his fingers to his left eye and wiped away the sticky sheen before opening it. Gradually his focus improved. From where he was lying he could see whitewashed piping running along the bulkhead, the front stamped with symbols and letters he could just make out as Cyrillic.

  He had no sense of time or place. His last clear memory had been Jack collapsing inside the audience chamber. Then there was blackness, a hazy memory of movement and pain. He had come to strapped in a chair with a blinding light thrust in his face. Then hour after hour of torment, of screaming and agonizing blows. Always the same black-clad figures, always the same question shouted in broken English. How did you get from the submarine? He guessed he was on Vultura, but all powers of analysis had shut down as his mind focused on survival. Again and again he was hurled into this room, then dragged back just when he thought it was all over.

  And now it was happening again. This time there had been no respite. The door crashed open and there was a violent blow to his back, forcing up a slurry of blood and vomit. He was hauled to his knees retching and coughing and the blindfold was yanked on again, so tight he could feel the blood squeezing out of his swollen eye socket. He thought he could never feel another type of pain, but this was it. He concentrated his whole being on his one lifeline, that he was taking the punishment and not Jack. He had to hold on whatever it took until Seaquest arrived and the discovery of the warheads was made known.

  He came round facedown on a table with his hands tied behind the chair he was sitting on. He had no idea how long he had been there and could only see a nauseating speckle of stars where the blindfold pressed against his eyes. Through the throbbing of his head he could hear voices, not those of his tormentors but a man’s and a woman’s. Earlier he had gathered from snatches of overheard conversation that his captors were expecting the return of Aslan by helicopter from their headquarters complex. Even the worst of them seemed apprehensive. There had been some kind of crisis, a downed helicopter, an escaped prisoner. Costas prayed it was Jack.

  The voices seemed to be some distance away, in a corridor or an adjoining room, but the woman’s was raised in anger and he could hear them clearly. They switched from Russian to English and he realized it was Aslan and Katya.

  “These are personal ma
tters,” Aslan said. “We will speak in English so my mujahedin do not hear this blasphemy.”

  “Your mujahedin.” Katya’s voice was full of contempt. “Your mujahedin are jihadists. They fight for Allah, not Aslan.”

  “I am their new prophet. Their loyalty is to Aslan.”

  “Aslan.” Katya spat out the word with derision. “Who is Aslan? Piotr Alexandrovich Nazarbetov. A failed professor from an obscure university with delusions of grandeur. You do not even wear the beard of a holy man. And remember I know about our Mongol heritage. Genghis Khan was an infidel who destroyed half the Muslim world. Someone ought to tell that to your holy warriors.”

  “You forget yourself, my daughter.” The voice was icy.

  “I remember what I had to learn as a child. He who will abide by the Koran will prosper, he who offends against it will get the sword. The faith does not allow the murder of innocents.” Her voice was a ragged sob. “I know what you did to my mother.”

  Aslan’s heavy breathing sounded to Costas like a pressure cooker about to explode.

  “Your mujahedin are biding their time,” Katya continued. “They are using you until you become expendable. That submarine will be your tomb as well. All you have done by creating this terrorist sanctuary is hasten your own demise.”

  “Silence!” The demented scream was followed by the sounds of a scuffle and something being dragged away. Moments later there were returning footsteps. They halted behind Costas. A pair of hands jerked his shoulders back against the chair.

  “Your presence is polluting,” the voice hissed against his ear, still breathing heavily. “You are about to make your final journey.”

  Fingers snapped and two pairs of hands wrenched him upright. In his world of darkness he was unaware of the blow when it came, an instant of pain followed by merciful oblivion.

  Jack seemed to be in a living nightmare. He saw only pitch-blackness, a darkness so complete it eclipsed all sensory points of reference. All around him was an immense rushing noise punctuated by creaks and groans. His mind struggled to make sense of the unimaginable. As he lay contorted against the bulkhead he felt oddly lightweight, his body almost levitating as if he were caught in the grip of some demonic fever.

  He now knew what it felt like to be trapped inside the bowels of a sinking ship as it plunged into the abyss. His salvation was Seaquest’s command module, its fifteen-centimetre-thick walls of titanium-reinforced steel protecting him from the crushing pressure that would by now have burst his eardrums and collapsed his skull. He could hear rending and buckling as the remaining air pockets imploded, a noise that would have spelled instant death had he failed to make it into the module in time.

  All he could do now was brace himself against the inevitable. The fall seemed interminable, far longer than he had expected, and the noise increased in a shrieking crescendo like an approaching express train. The end when it came was as violent as it was unheralded. The hull crashed into the seabed with a sickening jolt, generating a G force that would have killed him had he not been crouched with his head in his arms. It took all his strength to keep from being thrown upwards as the hull rebounded, the surge accompanied by a horrific tearing sound. Then the wreckage settled and silence descended.

  “Activate emergency lighting.”

  Jack spoke to himself as he felt his body for further injury. His voice sounded strangely disembodied, its cadences absorbed by the soundproof panelling on the walls, yet it gave a measure of reality in a world that had lost all waymarkers.

  As a diver Jack was used to orienting in utter darkness, and now he brought all his experience to bear. After his tumble through the hatch the missile impact had blown him past the weapons locker towards the control panels on the far side of the module. Fortunately Seaquest had come to rest upright. As he rose uncertainly to his feet he could sense the slant of the deck where the bow had ploughed into the seabed. He dropped back to his knees and felt his way across the floor, his intimate knowledge of the vessel he had helped design guiding him past the consoles that lined the interior.

  He reached a fuse box in the wall to the left of the entry hatch and felt for the switch that connected the reserve battery in its protective lead housing to the main circuitry. His hand found the lever that activated the emergency lighting. Not for the first time that day he shut his eyes tight and prayed for luck.

  To his relief the room was immediately bathed in fluorescent green. His eyes quickly adjusted and he turned round to survey the scene. The module was below the waterline, and the shells which had skewered Seaquest had passed through the hull above. The equipment and fixtures seemed shipshape and battened down, the module having been designed to survive precisely this kind of attack.

  His first task was to disengage the module from the hull. He made his way unsteadily to the central dais. It seemed inconceivable that he had assembled the crew here for the briefing less than forty-eight hours before. He slumped heavily in the command chair and activated the control panel. The LCD monitor scrolled through a series of password requests before initiating the disengage sequence. After the third password a drawer sprang open and he took out a key which he slotted into the panel and turned clockwise. The electronic propulsion and atmosphere control systems would kick in as soon as the module was a safe distance from the wreckage.

  Without Seaquest’s sensors, Jack would have no data on depth or local environment until the module was clear of the hull and had activated its own array. He guessed he had fallen into the chasm recorded by Seaquest to the north of the island, a gash ten kilometres long and half a kilometre wide that Costas had identified as a tectonic fault on the same line as the volcano. If so, he was mired in the dustbin of the south-eastern Black Sea, a collecting point for silt and a reservoir of brine from the Ice Age. With every passing minute the wreckage would be sinking further into a slurry of sediment more intractable than quicksand. Even if he managed to disengage, he might simply drive the module deeper into the ooze, entombing him with no hope of escape.

  He strapped himself in and leaned back on the headrest. The computer gave him three chances to abort and each time he pressed continue. After the final sequence, a red warning triangle appeared with the word disengaging flashing in the centre. For an alarming moment the room reverted to darkness as the computer re-routed the circuitry to the internal battery pod.

  A few seconds later the silence was broken by a dull staccato noise outside the casing to his left. Each muffled concussion represented a tiny explosive charge rigged to blow out the rivets in Seaquest’s hull and create an aperture large enough for the module to pass through. As the panel sheared off, the space surrounding the module filled with seawater and the bathymetric sensor came online. Jack swivelled towards the exit trajectory and braced himself as the water jets came to life, a low hum that increased in a crescendo as the engines bucked against the pivots that secured the module to the hull. A series of detonations erupted behind him as the module separated from its retaining bolts. Simultaneously the locking clamps retracted and he was thrown back violently in the seat, the compression as the saucer ejected equalling the multiple G force of a rocket launch.

  The module had been designed to blast from a sinking ship beyond the suction vortex as the hull plummeted to the sea floor. Jack had experienced a simulation at IMU’s deep-water test facility off Bermuda, when the saucer came to a halt a hundred metres away. Here, the G force was followed by an equally violent jolt in the opposite direction, the module stopping only a few metres beyond the wreckage.

  He had pitched his head forward in the standard safety posture and his only injuries were a series of painful welts where the straps dug into his shoulders. After taking a deep breath he unbuckled the harness and swivelled towards the workstation, his right hand pushed against the control panel to stop him sliding forward where the module had angled into the seabed.

  To the left was a smaller monitor for the display of bathymetric data. As the numbers began to flicker he saw the de
pth gauge read a staggering 750 metres below sea level, a full hundred metres below the official maximum operating depth of the module. The base of the fault was far deeper than they had imagined, more than half a kilometre below the submerged ancient shoreline.

  Jack switched on the sound navigation and ranging system and waited while the screen came to life. The active sonar transducer emitted a high-frequency narrowband pulse beam in a 360 degree vertical sweep to give a profile of the sea floor and any suspended objects up to the surface. During Seaquest’s run over the canyon two days previously they had established that the fault lay north-south, so he fixed the sonar trajectory east-west to give a cross-section of his position within the defile.

  The speed of the beam meant the entire profile was visible on the monitor at once. The mottled green on either side showed where the canyon walls rose some four hundred metres apart. Near the top were jagged protrusions that narrowed the profile further still. The canyon bore all the characteristics of a horizontal tear fault, caused by plates in the earth’s crust wrenching apart rather than grinding sideways. It was a geological rarity that would have delighted Costas but was of more immediate concern to Jack because it compounded the gravity of his situation.

  He realized his chances against surviving this far had been truly astronomical. If Seaquest had sunk only fifty metres west she would have impacted with the lip of the canyon, smashing him to oblivion well before the wreckage reached the sea floor far below.

  He turned his attention to the base of the fault where the profiler showed a mass of light green, denoting hundreds of metres of sediment. Partway up was a horizontal line level with the apex of the sonar, a compacted layer which was the resting place for Seaquest. Above it a lighter scattering of colour denoting suspended sediment continued for at least twenty metres until the screen became clear, indicating open water.