by David Wood
“Good.” A forty foot ladder descended into the pit where the excavation was ongoing. She climbed down, almost losing her footing once as she wondered what they would find inside.
Several people were gathered around the entrance to the temple. They had cleared the entire front of the temple and back through the pronaos, the covered area that led back to the naos, the temple’s enclosed central structure, and now waited for her to give the word. She could almost fee their excitement as she mounted the steps and approached the doorway. This was the moment!
“The door is weird,” Patrick said. “It’s not really a door at all. It’s more like a patch.”
She didn’t need to ask him to explain. The exposed portion of the naos was solid marble. The entryway, by contrast, looked like it had been sealed with loose stones and mortar.
“Looks like they wanted to keep something out,” she said. “Maybe they knew the flood was coming?”
“Or they wanted to keep something in.” Patrick made a frightened face, eliciting a giggle from a plump, female grad student.
“Clear it out. Try to keep it on one piece, if you can. And be careful.”
The crew didn’t need to be told twice. Clearly, this is what they’d been eager to do since uncovering the entryway. They worked with an efficiency that made her proud and, sooner that she would have thought possible, they worked the plug free.
“Ladies first.” Patrick made a mocking bow and motioned for her to enter the temple.
Sofia paused on the ambulatory and took a deep breath. Was she about to make one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time? Heart racing, she fumbled with her flashlight, turned it on, and shakily directed the beam inside.
The cella, the interior chamber, hadn’t been completely impervious to the disaster that befell the city. A foot-deep layer of silt covered the floor, and signs of leakage were all about, but it could have been worse. Much worse. This place had been sealed up tight and must have been covered by dirt and sand fairly quickly, at least by geological standards, to have kept it in such pristine condition. Mother Earth had wrapped it in her protective blanket, protecting it against the ravages of time.
She played her light around the room, and what she saw took her breath away. Twin colonnades, the columns shaped like the twisting tentacles of a sea serpent, ran the length of the room, framing a magnificent sight.
“What do you see?” Patrick had hung back, like he knew he was supposed to, but his anxious tone indicated he wouldn’t wait much longer.
“Poseidon!” A twenty-foot tall statue of the Greek god stood atop a dais in the middle of the temple. Like the image on the pediment outside, this was an angry god, driving furious waves before him. Unlike so many modern interpretations, he was not a wise, grandfatherly figure, gray of hair and beard, but young and virile, with black hair and sinuous muscles. Wait… black hair?
“You can still see some of the paint!” she exclaimed. Through the use of ultraviolet light, researchers had determined that the Greeks had actually painted over their sculptures, sometimes in bright primary colors, other times in more subdued, natural tones. This sculpture appeared to have been done in the latter style. Besides the traces of black in the hair, she could see hints of bronze skin and flecks of silver on his trident, and the waves beneath his feet were coated in aqua tones with streaks of white at the crests of the waves. Had leaks in the roof eroded the paint, or had the pigments merely faded over time? One of the many questions they would doubtless try to answer as they studied this fabulous place. She
Her crew could wait no longer, but crowded in behind her, adding their own flashlight beams to the scant light hers provided.
“Whoa.” Patrick, focused on the Poseidon statue, stumbled on the soft, uneven dirt. “It’s just…” Words failed him, so he shook his head, continuing to gaze at the sculpture of the god of the sea.
“What’s the Stonehenge thing?” The girl who had laughed at Patrick indicated a circle of altars that ringed the statue. Though they were marble, and their lines sharp, the thick bases and circular arrangement did suggest Stonehenge in miniature.
“And there’s an obelisk where the heel stone should be.” Patrick rounded the statue, kicking up a cloud of dust as he went. “Hey, wait a minute.” He froze. “Sofia?”
“What is it?” She joined him on the far side of the statue and immediately saw what had stopped him in his tracks. The back wall that divided the cella from the adyton, the area to which only priests were admitted, sloped away from them, and each layer of stone grew progressively smaller, giving the illusion of…
“A pyramid,” Patrick whispered.
“Why not? We’ve got an obelisk here. Perhaps Atlantis was, in some way, a cultural forerunner to the Greeks and the Egyptians.” She wanted to kick herself. Such speculation was unscientific and unprofessional. She turned the beam of her flashlight into the adyton and almost dropped it.
The light gleamed on a contraption of silver metal supported on four stone pillars. It was a pyramid-shaped frame made of a metal that looked like Titanium. Suspended beneath it was a metal bowl shaped like a satellite dish. The pyramid was capped by a grasping silver hand. Only the hieroglyphs running around the cap just below the hand looked like something from the ancient world. Otherwise, its appearance was thoroughly modern…
…and thoroughly alien.
ATLANTIS
A Dane Maddock Adventure
Coming Summer, 2013!
Dedication
If you love Dane and Bones, this book is dedicated to you.
From the Author
Readers often tell me they’d love to know more about how Dane and Bones got their start. What were they like “back in the day?” Did they have adventures in the SEALs? And what about these characters from their past whose names we’ve heard, but we’ve never met? If you’ve ever asked any of those questions, here’s your answer.
Within these pages, you’ll learn how Dane and Bones became friends, you’ll meet characters you’ve only heard of (or heard on the telephone… Hint! Hint!) and join them on their first mystery. As with any Dane Maddock adventure, there’s a little history, a lot of action, and a generous dose of humor. And, as always, we’ve played with a few historical details for the sake of the story.
I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as we enjoyed writing it, and I look forward to delving deeper into our favorite characters’ past in future novellas.
David
Books by David Wood
The Dane Maddock Adventures
Dourado
Cibola
Quest
Icefall
Buccaneer
Atlantis (forthcoming)
Dane and Bones Origins
Freedom (with Sean Sweeney)
Stand-Alone Works
Into the Woods (with David S. Wood)
Dark Rite (with Alan Baxter)
Callsign: Queen (with Jeremy Robinson)
The Zombie-Driven Life
The Dunn Kelly Mysteries (Young Adult)
You Suck
Bite Me (forthcoming)
Writing as David Debord
The Silver Serpent
Keeper of the Mists
The Gates of Iron (forthcoming)
Books by Sean Sweeney
The Agent Series
Model Agent
Rogue Agent
Double Agent
Federal Agent
Promises Given, Promises Kept (forthcoming)
The Alex Bourque Mysteries
Cold Altar
Voir Dire
The Obloeron Prequels
The Rise of the Dark Falcon
The Shadow Looms
Stand-Alone Works
Zombie Showdown
Royal Switch
Eminent Souls
Freedom (with David Wood)
Redeemed (forthcoming)
Writing as John Fitch V
The Obloeron Trilogy
A Galaxy At
War
Turning Back the Clock
Table of Contents
- Freedom- A Dane and Bones Origins Story
Praise
Copyright
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
About the Authors
Enjoy this sneak preview of Atlantis
Dedication
From the Author
Books by David Wood
Books by Sean Sweeney
