The Atlantis Covenant

by Rob Jones

  Amy screamed as terror coursed through her veins. “Get off the damn track, Max! Now!”

  Hunter steered to the left and ploughed the truck into the jungle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Brace! Brace! Brace!”

  The engine roared like a scalded pig as the truck bounced and swerved down a long muddy slope. Hunter’s sweaty hands held the wheel tight and steered the truck to the right to try and keep it from flipping.

  “Quinn!” Amy yelled. “My bag’s in the back! Get it quick – it’s got the satphone in it.”

  Quinn turned and looked. “I can’t see it!”

  Ripping through the undergrowth, the truck’s battered grille ate up vines, orchids, and ferns like it was a hungry panther. When they hit a patch of moss, it skidded wildly and finally tipped, crashing over onto its side and sliding uncontrollably down the rest of the slope. It came to a rest on a ledge overhanging a large valley.

  Quinn spoke first. “Is it just me, or does this place suck?”

  After a long silence, Lewis groaned. “It’s not just you.”

  Slowly, they felt the truck tip forward and then come back again.

  Jodie reached out and grabbed the back of a seat. “What the hell was that?”

  Hunter stared out of the windshield in horror. “We’re hanging over the edge of a cliff.”

  “What the hell?” Quinn said, panicked. “How far down is it?”

  “Very far,” Fidel said.

  “How far?!”

  “You don’t want to know,” Hunter said. “Everyone just stay calm.”

  “I’m calm in a fucking bath, Hunter!” Jodie said, her voice gradually getting louder. “Not hanging over the edge of a cliff in the middle of the damn jungle!”

  “We have to get out of here,” he said. “This is not good at all. The good news is, I don’t think we’re in immediate danger of an explosion because I can’t smell petrol – but we might still have broken a fuel line.”

  “Gas,” Amy said.

  “Petrol.”

  “Gas.”

  “Let’s go,” Blanco said, punching open the door now above his head. “Whatever you want to call it, if it ignites, all that’s left of us is seven black skeletons. Plus, this thing could go over the edge at any time. We can climb out through what is now the top and get away before anything unpleasant happens. Start at the front and work backward to keep the center of gravity at the back.”

  Hunter opened his door in the same way, threw his bag up through the hole and then pulled himself up. When he got up on top he moved to the back and waited for the others. Blanco was next.

  “Where did you learn to drive, Max?”

  “Who says I ever learned?”

  Blanco laughed and helped pull Lewis and Quinn up out of the truck. Fidel climbed out on his own and Hunter reached down and pulled Amy and Jodie up. One by one they climbed down over the back of the truck and stepped down onto the jungle floor. The radiator was steaming and the blown out tire was still spinning around from the velocity of the crash.

  Quinn checked her bag. “Laptop’s okay. I know that’s all I care about.”

  “Everyone else all right?” Amy asked.

  A round of dazed nods was the answer as they pulled the last of their packs off the back of the truck and swung them over their shoulders. The area was still covered in the thick mist that made the cloud forest so unique, and the humidity was rising.

  Jodie kicked a clump of mud and it struck the back of the truck. “Could today get any worse?”

  The truck creaked and groaned. When it tipped forward they all expected it to swing back again, but it just kept on going until it went right over the edge, disappearing from sight in a haze of dirt and shredded plants and steamy mist.

  In the long silence that followed, no one knew quite what to say.

  Except Quinn. “Awkward.”

  “It was finished anyway,” Blanco said. “Right?”

  “For sure,” Hunter said.

  “Damn it,” Amy said. “My bag looks like it got crushed by the damn truck! The satphone is in there!”

  She pulled her squashed bag out of the mud but the phone was obviously wrecked. Undeterred by its condition, she tried to bring it back to life by desperately drying it off and wiping the mud and silt away from the speaker. When she turned it on, it made a sad squealing noise, crackled for a few seconds and then died. “It’s no good. We’re on our own now.”

  “Damn it,” Blanco said. “And that means we’re really on our own. This is pretty unforgiving terrain and I’d say we’re at least three days’ hike back to anywhere with a phone.”

  “We can do without the phone,” Hunter said. “My army training included some time in the jungle in Belize. That’s not too dissimilar from this. I’m guessing the US Army trains you guys in jungle warfare, am I right, Sal?”

  “Schofield Barracks,” he said. “Near Honolulu in Hawaii. That’s where the Jungle Operations Training Center is located and yes, I spent some time there. I even learned how to rub two sticks together to make an annoying noise and make a pretty veil out of a mosquito net.”

  “Good job, soldier,” Hunter said. “I knew there was more to you than meets the eye.”

  “And Ben here was a marine,” Amy said. “So the odds are in our favor.”

  Behind them, Quinn sighed and turned away from the group, visibly deflating.

  Hunter and Amy exchanged a look, and he walked over to her. Putting his arm around the goth’s shoulder, he wheeled her around so they were facing away from the ledge. “You’re not to blame for this, Quinn.”

  She frowned and kicked a pebble into the undergrowth. “Whatever I do, I always just screw it up. I can do computers, but that’s it. I get asked to find a bag with a satphone in it and I screw it up, just like I screw everything up. Just like I screwed up all my jobs and just like how I screwed up college. I’m just a damn screw-up, Max. That’s me. If you want something screwed-up then give me a call. I work twenty-four seven at very reasonable rates.”

  Hunter watched her young face scrunch up as she fought hard to stop crying. She was trying to deal with some serious issues deep down inside and he wanted to help her if he could, but this wasn’t the time or the place.

  “The truck was flying around all over the place,” he said. “No one could have found the bag in those conditions.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but beside him, Lewis spoke up.

  “How far do you reckon we came?” He was staring up the slope, squinting.

  “Easily five hundred meters,” Hunter said.

  “Yards,” Amy said.

  “Meters.”

  “Either way,” Blanco said, picking up his bag and hoisting it over his shoulder. “Whatever you want to call it, I doubt McCabe and his men are coming down the same way. For now at least, I’d say we’re safe from the threat they pose.”

  “Agreed,” Amy said. “But which way to the coordinates from here?”

  Hunter had walked away from the group and was standing on the edge of the cliff with his map and compass. “The lost city,” he announced proudly, raising his right arm and pointing out across the misty valley, “is right over there. Am I right Fidel?”

  He handed the photo of the Nazi map to the surviving guide. Fidel studied it for a few moments, then looked up at the undulating ribs on the far side of the ravine. “Si. If this map is right, then it is where you say it is.”

  “In that case, we’d better get going. Not long till dark and McCabe is already ahead of us. He now has two of the three Winged Guardians and the Nazi map.”

  “Where is this place we’re heading to?” Jodie asked.

  “If you look over there,” Hunter said. “You can see where the track we were on bends around and then dips down into the ravine. To be honest, we’d have been leaving the truck behind at some point and hiking the rest of the trip anyway.”

  “Which is great until we sta
rt talking about how we’re getting out of here after we find the place,” Jodie said.

  Amy picked up her bag. “And we’ll talk about that when it’s time to talk about it.”

  One by one, the dejected team followed Hunter back down into the jungle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They made their way down the slope and after a while, their humor returned. Chatting and laughing, Hunter started to feel like part of the team. After a few miles, Amy brought up the subject she had been sitting on for so long.

  “So that was McCabe, huh? Just what the hell’s the deal between you and him?”

  They were alone at the front of the team, sharing some warm water from his canteen in the humid heat. Hunter took in her no-nonsense face and decided honesty was the best policy. “We were in the army together.”

  “Uh-huh, and?”

  He shrugged. “And he’s an arsehole.”

  Amy watched him for any sign there might be more. “Don’t play games.”

  “It’s ancient history.”

  “Coming from an archaeologist, that’s cute.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She pulled up to a stop. The rest of the team were only minutes behind them. “Not an option, soldier. It’s obvious the waters between you two run deep and he just tried to kill all of us, not just you, so now you’re going to talk about it, whether you like it or not.”

  “Hey, I’m not in your little team yet, so you don’t get to order me around.”

  “Yet? That’s a tad presumptuous.”

  “You brought me into this little escapade when you hired me for Rorschach, not the other way around. Try and remember that.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Are you going to tell me what’s up with you and McCabe, or keep avoiding the subject like you are right now?”

  “Fine, but you asked for it,” he muttered. “McCabe and I go way back to the very beginning. We went to Sandhurst together, which is the British equivalent of West Point.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine, then.

  “Keep talkin’, Max.”

  “We both applied for the Grenadier Guards, which is the most senior guards regiment in the British Army Order of Precedence. They were established in 1656 to protect King Charles II when he was in exile in Bruges.”

  “Is there a reason for the military history lecture?”

  He fought back a smile. “Yes. McCabe also applied to join it, but he didn’t get in. He got his second choice, the Scots Guards. A fine regiment, but not the one he wanted. That was when things started to go sour, and they got worse from there. We met again in Afghanistan when our regiments were deployed there during the war, and some things happened that I don’t want to talk about right now. The point is, those things drove us further apart.”

  “You really do have a history with this guy, then.”

  Hunter watched the team as they made their way through the jungle. Blanco was up front with his machete, but Jodie was no slouch with a blade either. She hacked at the undergrowth like it was personal.

  “After a few deployments, he left the army and studied archaeology at Cambridge. We’d spoken about our shared love of the subject at Sandhurst, and I’d told him I might study it if I left the army. When I quit the Guards and did just that at Oxford, he accused me of copying him and we fell out all over again. That’s when the real rivalry started.”

  “How so?”

  “An arms race developed between us, each trying to best the other with our academic research, each trying to organize the most exciting excavations and each of us more determined to make the biggest discovery. It got crazy, and dangerous.”

  “Ah yes, the lethal dangers of the academic staff room.”

  “I’m serious,” he said, but unable to resist a grin. “I’m talking about hiring local thugs to trash digs out in the sticks of some pretty lawless countries, accusations of faking evidence, you name it.”

  “You did that?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “But he did it to me.”

  “He sounds kind of insane.”

  “We’re from very different backgrounds. Brodie is from a very old and wealthy family. They expected a lot of him, and never shied away from telling him so. His father was a Brigadier in the SAS and his mother was in the House of Commons for many years. It was different for me. My background was pretty ordinary, and I had to work like the devil to get whatever I wanted. It wasn’t just handed to me on a silver platter because of family connections.”

  “You’re right about the weight of family expectations.”

  “You have experience of this?”

  “Forget about it,” she said, backtracking. “Go on.”

  “Anyway, that’s why McCabe was so enraged about not getting his choice of regiment. He presumed his family connections would pull the right strings and get him in and they didn’t. Not that time, at least, and they didn’t do him any favors at Cambridge, either. Then, his mother was caught up in a major parliamentary scandal involving fiddling her expenses and the family name was ruined.”

  “I remember reading about that in the papers, but it didn’t get much coverage in the US.”

  “It was a major shitstorm in the UK,” Hunter said. “And Abilene McCabe was right in the middle of it. She resigned from the Cabinet and left Government in disgrace. I’m guessing it would have been about that time that Brodie started stealing artifacts from his digs and selling them to fences to sell on to smugglers.

  “What an asshole.”

  “At some point, he graduated and cut out the middlemen, becoming a full-on thief of ancient artifacts. I guess under so much pressure, the rage finally hammered him into the ground like an old twisted nail. Exactly how he ended up working for a man like Gaius is anyone’s guess.”

  “It’s our guess, you mean,” she said. “We need to know who Gaius is working for, and whether that’s Rorschach or not. Right now, McCabe is our only serious lead.”

  “I know, I know...” he paused. “Anyway, now you know the deal between me and Brodie McCabe.”

  “Thanks, Max,” she said. “And thanks for what you did earlier today back at the crash site.”

  “What did I do?”

  “When you spoke to Quinn. I know how she comes across but she’s really fragile. She’s totally out of her depth here. It was nice of you to say what you did.”

  “She’ll be fine,” he said. “Just some dented pride, that’s all.”

  “Still, you didn’t have to say it.”

  “Forget about it.” He looked at her, took his pack off his shoulder and dropped it on the floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling it a day. It’s getting late and we’re not hiking through this jungle at night, so this is where we make camp.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  As evening fell over their makeshift camp, the temperature dropped down to ten degrees Celsius, surprising Jodie. She slipped her denim jacket over her shoulders and shivered. “I thought the rainforest was supposed to be hot.”

  “It is,” Hunter said. “But we’re over six thousand feet up, hence the mist.”

  She looked unimpressed by the explanation. “If we’re going to be here all damn night, maybe one of you big tough army types could build a fire? I can break into any car or apartment you dare me to, but there’s no way I’m rubbing sticks together.”

  “We don’t do that anymore,” Hunter said. “Not since Uncle Zippo joined the party.”

  “Whatever. Just make something that’ll warm my hands up.”

  “I hear that,” Quinn said. Like Jodie, she pulled a jacket out of her bag and threw it over the top of her Stone Temple Pilots t-shirt. “I thought these places were supposed to be hot, too. What’s so funny, Hunter?”

  “I thought you were some kind of know-it-all genius.”

  “I know about computers. After that, I don’t know
squat and I don’t care.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Any word on something to eat?” Jodie asked.

  Blanco looked serious as he rummaged around in his pack. “Coming right up.” He balanced a pan on rocks around the fire and tipped some beans inside it. When they began sizzling, he pulled a pack of crackers from his pack and opened them up. “Nothing like cooking over an open fire.”

  Jodie was still warming her hands, and peered down at the beans suspiciously. “If you say so.”

  “Trust me,” the New Yorker said as he spooned out some portions of beans and some crackers into some tin bowls. “After the day we just had, this is going to taste better than anything you ever ate before in your whole life.”

  They ate the modest meal in the glow of the fire’s embers. The aroma of the beans mingled with the smell of mosquito repellent and burning charcoal. Above them, the moon rose over a tropical canopy thick with flying insects.

  “I’m almost starting to enjoy myself,” said Lewis.

  “Is that you, or just the crackers talking?” Blanco said.

  Fidel laughed. “That’s funny.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  Jodie gave him a sideways glance. “Have you been smoking the sofa stuffing again?”

  “No, I always loved camping. I was a marine, remember. It kind of helps if you like camping. I love it.”

  “Me too,” Quinn said to a host of shocked faces.

  Lewis poked the fire. “Really?”

  “Sure,” she shrugged. “Just us and the cicadas and the starlight. Oh yeah, and an army of psychos trying to kill us with machine guns. Truly delightful.”

  “Talking of which,” Hunter said. “I’m bothered by how McCabe got in the park in the first place.”

  Amy warmed her hands on the bowl of beans she was holding. “How so?”

  “For one thing, getting in this park isn’t like visiting any of the other parks in El Salvador,” Hunter said. “And staying overnight is usually a big no-no. I bet it took your director some serious high-level trading to get us in so fast, right?”