by Rob Jones
“There’s that smile again.”
“What smile?”
“The one that makes me feel safe and nervous at the same time.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.”
She turned around and leaned on the cold metal rail, facing into the center of the small tower and toward him, the sea at her back. “Mostly a compliment. It’s just that whenever I see you smile like that, it usually means something crazy is about to happen in my life.”
“A seasoned adventurer like you?” he said.
She hesitated.
“What?” he asked.
“There’s something you need to know about us. We’re not quite the adventurers I made us out to be. We work for the FBI, true. We chase down stolen artifacts, true. We’ve even brought several smugglers to justice, true. But the rest of the truth is a little different. This is the biggest mission we’ve ever done, and by far the most dangerous. None of us has ever risked our lives like this before.”
“Sal and Ben were in the military.”
“Yeah, and that’s true, too. They’re very brave men with a lot of combat experience, but I’m talking about now, in this team. We’re not like you, leading some crazy Indiana Jones lifestyle. We’re very… bureaucratic.”
“I’m sure you’ll be just fine. Look at what you did in Cuba and El Salvador or Egypt. Hell, look at what you all did in Germany!”
She looked down at the metal floor. “I just hope we don’t let you down.”
“Are you crazy? These have been the best few days of my life! And I’m no bloody Indiana Jones, Amy. I’m just an archaeologist doing what most people would consider dry, boring academic work.”
“Yeah, right. You were on the cover of the New York Times after your discovery of Nefertiti’s tomb. Stop being so modest.”
“Well…”
“Wait, look!”
He followed her hand to an alcove above a large fjord. Wispy parings of pale blue smoke circled up from a freshly blown hole in the rock. “Looks like they beat us to it.”
Captain Evans climbed up and joined them. “All good up here?”
“Not really,” Amy said.
Evans looked at the cliffs. “I see what you mean. A large transport helicopter on the top of the cliff just above the coordinates… not good.”
Hunter walked over to Evans “Looks like an AW101,” he muttered. “Capable of carrying around thirty seriously armed troops.”
“Then they outgun us,” Evans said. “In terms of a landing party, we have the six men on the Strike Force, plus you, Sal Blanco and Ben Lewis makes nine men with military experience. I recommend we wait until we can be sure they have no backup.”
“What about your crew?” Hunter asked. “Any landlubbers?”
Evans sucked his teeth. “Mr Rorschach was very clear about my duty to defend the Seawolf at all costs. I can’t let it fall into enemy hands and that means leaving a substantial force on board while you go ahead to Atlantis. I can spare no more than four, but they’re all good men with combat experience. There’s Borten, Norwegian army; Blocher, Swiss Air Force militia; Salter, a former Royal Marine commando and Alvarado who was on the US Navy’s SWCC Special Boat Team.”
“I understand you need to defend the Seawolf, but you must be able to spare more than four men, Captain! We’re looking down the barrels of at least thirty men and if they’re anything like the other disciples we’ve fought, they’re going to be highly-trained, well-armed and bloody lethal. Can’t you take the Seawolf out to sea and dive?”
Evans shook his head. “There is no way I’m prepared to leave any of my crew, or you, up here while we go out to sea and submerge the boat. You’ve seen the geography of this part of the coast! Adler’s team had to fly in on a transport chopper and abseil down into the cave because there’s no other way in. That means there’s no way out either. If something goes wrong and you need to pull out, the Seawolf is going to be sitting in the inlet waiting for you all.”
Hunter nodded reluctantly. “You’re the captain of this boat, Evans, and that means you’re making the call.”
“I’m not doing it any other way, Hunter. I hope you can see why.”
Hunter backed down. “I understand, Captain.”
“In that case, Lieutenant Borten and his men will prepare you for the swim to the coast.” He raised his hand and pointed at the rugged cliffs. “Because somewhere behind those rocks is Atlantis and you have to get there first.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Karl Adler watched with an increasing sense of apprehension as McCabe directed the disciples into the tunnel. The prospect of discovering the unimaginable treasures of Atlantis was now more real than ever. “Our destiny awaits us, Klara.”
She reached out and touched his arm lovingly. “I know how long you have waited for this day, Teacher. The Magus will be very proud.”
Ahead of them, the Creed disciples had uncovered the old Nazi submarine pen where the German sailors had found the first Winged Guardian during their wartime excavations. As they dug and hacked their way through tons of ice and rubble, more of the earlier expedition began to reveal itself.
Old Kriegsmarine equipment was lying around in the tunnel’s mouth. Tarpaulin Zeltbahns were draped over coconut canteens and aluminum cups. A ski cap had been slung over the handle of an ice pick still sticking out of the cave wall. Shovels leaned up against the ice walls, exactly where sailors had propped them nearly eighty years earlier.
Adler surveyed the abandoned field equipment with unveiled delight. “After a lifetime of hunting, I have found it at last. This is the exact location where Lieutenant-Commander Reinhard Schultze found the Acassuso Idol. The Map Room in Ramesses’s Royal Cache has led us directly to our destiny, my darling. The path to Atlantis is before us at last.”
The disciples were at the end of the ice passage now. Those at the end hacked with the picks and shovels while a team working behind them shovelled the ice into barrows and ran them back to the entrance where they dumped it into the inlet. Then, they broke through the ice and one of the disciples screamed. “We’re in!”
*
Hunter watched Borten and his men lower their swimmer delivery vehicles into the water and slide down after them. He and Amy’s team, all in wetsuits to keep out the cold, watched what they did and copied them. He was impressed when he saw Quinn slip down into the icy water. They had told her she could stay on board the Seawolf but she had stepped up to the plate and demanded to join them.
With everyone in the water off the portside of the submarine, Borten led the way, gripping hold of the grab handles at the back of his SDV and allowing the motorized propulsion vehicle to pull him toward the coast. Hunter followed the Norwegian commando’s lead and drove his SDV toward Greenland. The rest of the team followed in his wake.
Halfway along, Hunter caught glimpses of the coast through his mask. Cold saltwater lashed at him as the SDV ploughed forward, but every second he was one step closer to fulfilling his lifelong dream of discovering Atlantis.
*
“The Gate of the Gods,” Adler said. “I always knew one day I would walk through it.”
He leaned forward through the ice hole like a dumbstruck child, staring up at the colossal stone archway stretching over his head. It seemed to reach almost to the very top of the ice cave, held in place by two gargantuan stone piers.
“They’re carved into the bedrock,” Steiner said.
“They’d have to be,” McCabe said. “Looking at the size of this archway, I’d say each one of these piers is supporting thousands of tons of granite, not to mention the tremendous pressure that must be being exerted on those voussoir stones at the very top.”
“It’s a miracle of engineering,” Steiner said, staring up at the arch with wonder sparkling in her cold blue eyes. “Surpassing anything done by the ancient Egyptians. It’s exactly what we knew it would be – the greatest ancient construction anywhere on earth. The true home of the gods. The Mag
us will be overjoyed.”
“Not if we let this slip from our grasp,” Adler said impatiently. Turning to the disciples, he raised his voice to an angry growl. “Hurry up and clear the last of this ice away so we can get through the gate!”
*
On the shore inside the ice cave, Hunter unzipped his waterproof kitbag and changed into the Arctic warfare gear they had stowed back on the Seawolf. Guns, knives and even a small Ruger pistol in an ankle holster – he was ready for action. Beside him, the Strike Team and Borten and his men were already waiting, guns in their hands and breath pluming from their nostrils in thick smoky columns.
Hunter pulled down the front of his balaclava to speak. “We all owe Oskar Rorschach a cold beer. If it weren’t for the Seawolf we’d be abseiling down those sodding cliffs by now just like Adler. Bollocks to that.”
“It’s bad enough they beat us to it,” Amy said. “I guess we should have taken the idea of them flying through the storm in a chopper and abseiling out of it a bit more seriously. They’re crazier than we thought.”
“Crazy they might be,” Borten said. “But they’re also ahead of us, and judging by these tracks, our guess about his manpower was about right. It looks like a herd of cattle has trampled into the cave system at the bottom of this slope.”
Hunter agreed, but there was no turning back now. They made their way down the icy slope, knowing that an attack could come at any moment. The Apostle was down here somewhere with Steiner and McCabe and an army of disciples, all searching for the fire lance.
Deeper inside the strange subterranean network of tunnels and caverns, they began to see evidence of the lost civilization all around them. Abandoned like the Nazi relics nearer to the entrance, they found broken pottery and weapons partially sticking out of the ice. The Apostle’s army had also left its own mark – cigarette butts and empty drink containers – strewn along the floor of the tunnel like trash.
“Judging by the cigarettes we can’t be far behind them,” Hunter said. “This one here still has ash on the tip.”
They marched on with their boots crunching on the ice. Breath plumed in the freezing air and noses grew numb. Anticipation was building fast, and when they turned a bend in the tunnel and found the hole the disciples has smashed in the ice wall, they were all stunned into silence.
They stepped through and moved forward until they were standing on a ledge overlooking a frozen city. A broad river, frozen solid for millennia cut the great metropolis in two sections joined by a colossal stone archway. High above it all, a sky of dark black ice hung ominously above them like the vaulted ceiling of a magnificent medieval church.
“Bloody hell!” Hunter gasped. “The Gate of the Gods… we found it.”
“Look at all this ice,” Lewis said. “That flood theory might just hold water.”
Hunter turned and looked at him. “I’ll forget you said that.”
Amy looked up at the ice-sky. “I don’t get why the ice sheet didn’t just crush the entire city. What kept the city inside this giant cavern? Why wasn't it swallowed up by the ice sheet, Max?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. C’mon – and keep your flashlights down. We don’t want to alert the Creed.”
Flanked by the soldiers, they followed a crumbling rock path twisting down from the ledge and reached the city’s street level. Walking farther along the street, the darkness gradually revealed more detail all around them.
“It looks like there are constellations in the ice above,” Amy said. “Something’s sparkling.”
Hunter looked up and squinted. “It’s not stars sparkling, but ice melting. That explains why this place never got crushed by the ice sheet. Something down here is melting the ice and keeping it off the city.”
“The fire lance?” Blanco said.
Hunter’s heart quickened with fear. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”
At the end of the street, they turned and found they were looking down on a lower section of the city, in a valley where the river turned into a vast frozen lake. Beside it, they saw something else that left them breathless.
“My God!” Amy stared up at the pyramid. “Is that thing bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza?”
“It looks like it,” Hunter said. “And by a large margin as well. I’ve never seen anything like it before in all my life.”
Quinn raised her flashlight beam, but Hunter grabbed her wrist and pushed it back down. “Are you insane?”
“Sorry.”
“Adler and his men are around here somewhere!”
“I said I’m sorry!”
“I think maybe we got away with it,” Amy said. “If they…”
Hunter hushed her. “Get down!”
They crouched, and the English archaeologist glanced across to their right along a street which ran along the edge of the rise just above the valley. When he saw the first disciple he thought this eyes were playing tricks on him. He moved like a lizard, vaulting out of the darkness and swinging his gun up into the aim. Behind him, he saw at least six more armed men and was quickly dissuaded he wasn’t going crazy.
“Looks like the main group is in the wrong part of the city,” he said.
“Here they come!” said Lewis.
“Take cover!” Hunter called out. “They’ve seen us!”
“No!” Borten screamed. “You must get to the fire lance. We’ll cover you!”
“And we’ll back them up,” said the leader of the Strike Team.
Hunter made the decision to head down into the pyramid; Borten’s men and Gates’s Strike Team would work better without having to look after them as well. He gripped his gun and looked at the others. “Ready?”
A round of anxious nods.
“Then let’s get into that pyramid.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
With Borten and his men covering them, Hunter led the team down the slope toward the bottom of the giant pyramid. They reached a bricked-up entrance in the vast stone base and took cover behind a row of polar bear statues. They drew their weapons and a moment of eerie, absolute silence filled the vast underground city.
“The calm before the storm,” Amy said. “I don’t like this at all.”
The silence ended when they heard Borten ordering his men to pull back to another position closer to the pyramid. Seconds later, another violent barrage of gunfire opened up in the tunnel at the top of the slope. The muzzle flashes of Borten’s small team lit the icy-blue darkness like fireworks, but they all knew what the retreat meant.
Looking ahead, they saw Borten ordering his men into a new defensive position.
“I don’t see the Strike Force,” Blanco said.
Amy scanned the top of the slope. “Me neither.”
Then, they heard Borten’s voice crackling over the radio. “Strike Force terminated by the enemy. Get into the pyramid. Not sure how long we can hold them.”
“They killed the Strike Team?” Blanco said, bringing the heel of his gloved hand down on the pyramid’s base with a hefty smack. “Those men gave their lives for us! I’m not going to let these freaks get away with their murder.”
“Take it easy, Sal,” Jodie said. “Remember what you always tell me – don’t get mad, get even.”
“But I am mad about it. They cut them to ribbons like they were wild dogs!”
“Adler’s not playing around,” Hunter said. “This isn’t just his life’s work, but the culmination of hundreds of years of searching, first by the Illuminati and then the Creed. This is the endgame and he’s not going to pull any punches.”
“That feeling when the word psycho just isn’t enough,” Quinn said drily.
A tense silence hovered over the team as they stood alone at the base of the Great Pyramid of Atlantis. Up at the crest of the gradient, Borten and his team were unleashing hell on Adler’s army of disciples, but there were just too many of them. Slowly, the warriors of the Magus’s Creed were overwhelming Captain’s Evans’s tiny force.
&nbs
p; “Not sure we’re getting out of this alive,” Lewis said.
Hunter had enough combat experience to know that you always felt camaraderie strongest at the bleakest times. When hope was almost gone and the end loomed over you like a monster bearing its teeth at you, only then could true friendship be known. He felt that now. But who were these people standing alongside him in this frozen, lost city, ready to face death with him?
Ben Lewis.
Jodie Priest.
Quinn Mosley.
Sal Blanco.
Amy Fox.
From the looks on their faces, he knew they all felt the same sense of belonging together, and just as the darkest moment comes right before dawn, now Borten and his men were finally pinning the disciples down. They had their chance and Hunter seized it.
“We need to blow a hole in this thing,” he said.
Blanco already had the explosives in his hand and was packing them around the bricked-up entrance. When he detonated them, they blasted a massive hole in the side of the pyramid.
The freshly blown hole created a vacuum and a gust of icy wind raced across the city, blowing the fireball over the disciples’ position. Dozens caught in the explosion were killed instantly, and tumbled down from their positions, cartwheeling to the icy temple floor like dolls.
Quinn looked down and saw one of them dead, crashed on the floor at the bottom of the slope with a broken neck. The look of horror on his face would haunt her for the rest of her life. She took a step back away from the ridge and moved closer to Blanco. “That’s not nice.”
“In this life, you get what you pay for,” he said. “And it looks like there are no exceptions, not even for the Apostle’s army of devotees.”
“Hurry!” Hunter said. “We have to get inside.”
Making their way inside the Great Pyramid, they all felt a strangely warm current of air washing over them.
“How come I feel warm air?” Jodie asked. “We’re in Greenland.”
