by Rob Jones
“And what’s that glowing up ahead?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t know, but keep going,” Amy said. “This, I have to see.”
With the sound of submachine guns and grenades behind them, Hunter led the team down the passageway until they reached a large altar room filled with statues, each one recognizable as a god from various cultures through world history.
“Holy crap,” Jodie said, brushing the stone thigh of Zeus. “Your insane theories were right after all, Hunter.”
“I knew they would be,” he said, marvelling at the ornate masonry all around them. “But that’s eclipsed now. We’re here to find the fire lance.”
Blanco pointed to an area behind the shrine. “In that case, shouldn’t we follow the glow?”
They walked slowly around the towering stone altar and were shocked into silence by what they saw. Nestled on top of a concave marble dais was a perfect sphere glowing with a rich amber light. They felt its warmth and when they moved closer it seemed to get hotter.
“What the hell is that thing?” Amy said.
Hunter dropped to his knees.
“What are you doing?” Jodie said. “Worshipping it?”
He turned and looked up at her. “Are you crazy? I’m trying to translate these glyphs.”
She looked closer and saw dozens of small hieroglyphics carved into the floor where they were standing. Hunter was running his hand over them and muttering to himself.
“Some of these glyphs are an equivalent of binary code,” he said, shocked. “This civilization was incredibly advanced.” After a few tense seconds, he passed his hand over his forehead and sighed.
“Oh no…”
“What is it?” Amy said.
“I was wrong about the comet.”
“What do you mean?” Blanco said, nervously looking over his shoulder at the entrance.
“I mean it was no comet that wiped out Atlantis, and we’re in much deeper shit that we thought.”
The realization struck them at the same time, but Amy spoke first. “My God… it was no comet that destroyed Atlantis, but the fire lance!”
Hunter nodded. “Uh-huh – it was their own technology.”
“Are you sure you’re translating these hieroglyphics correctly?” Lewis asked.
Hunter stared at the vast wall of hieroglyphics in disbelief. Nothing in his years of experience could have prepared him for what had just confronted him. “Dead sure. They vary slightly in form from the Egyptian glyphs I’m more used to, but they’re fundamentally the same, plus with the stuff I worked out from Julian’s recent translations, there’s no doubt.”
“Great,” Quinn said.
Hunter said, “Whoever wrote these glyphs was making sure the madness that overtook their culture was never forgotten. They were leaving a warning to future generations not to make the same mistakes they made. This sphere is part of the fire lance, part of the monster that destroyed their world.”
“Isn’t there any mention of the comet strikes at all?” Lewis asked. “After all, we know they hit Greenland.”
Hunter took a step back and swept his eyes across the long lines of carved glyphs one more time, line by line, until he reached the bottom again. “Here, they describe something like the wrath of the gods, a fire raining down from the black vault of heaven. This is undoubtedly the night sky. It says the gods hit them three times and brought a great flood over their lands, but they survived. Yet more evidence of the so-called flood myth!”
“So they survived the comet impacts,” Blanco said.
Hunter traced his finger along the white granite. “And according to this, they developed the fire lance weapon to try and defend themselves from future strikes. I think that’s how you’d translate this glyph – fire lance.”
Quinn leaned in closer. “That glyph right there looks a lot like the statues we found.”
Hunter looked at her, wide-eyed with uncertainty, and angled his beam across to where she was pointing with her gloved hand. “Bloody hell, she’s right. I don’t like this.”
Amy shared an anxious glance with Blanco. “And what don’t you like it about it?”
“I might be wrong, but remember how we commented that the statues were an odd shape, the way they curved outwards with their arms outstretched and their wings spread out behind them like angels in flight?”
“Sure, it was only a few days ago,” Quinn said. “We’re not goldfish.”
“Ignore it,” Jodie said. “And please tell us what the hell is going on. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”
“That makes two of us,” Hunter said. “I think Quinn is right and that this glyph portrays the statues.”
“So what’s the problem?” Lewis said.
“The problem is that this glyph is a picture of the fire lance.”
Amy gasped. “Then Adler and Steiner were telling the truth – the statues really are part of the fire lance.”
Hunter nodded solemnly. “Yes, I think the statues we’ve been hunting for are actually a part of the weapon that destroyed Atlantis. They called them the Winged Guardians because they were supposed to protect the civilization from another strike from the Taurid Meteor Shower. Instead, they wiped themselves out with their new weapon.”
“You think right, Dr Hunter.”
He spun around and saw Adler. He was standing in the entrance with Klara Steiner and Brodie McCabe. Several disciples were moving into view behind them, cut and bruised and wounded but armed and strong enough to fight.
“Where’s Borten?” Hunter yelled.
“With the rest of his men,” Steiner called back. “Dead.”
“You bastards.”
“Your security guards turned out to be no impediment to my plans at all.” Adler laughed. “Crixus! Gannicus! Take them prisoner. Castus and Oenomaus will come with me and secure the statues to the sphere. We will bring the fire lance to life after being dormant for millennia!”
“You can’t activate it, Adler!” Amy said. “Don’t you understand? The Atlanteans created a weapon so powerful they destroyed their own civilization with it!”
“And the Magus will destroy Western civilization with it. Now, drop your weapons and raise your hands.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Amy stared at the Apostle with a burning contempt in her eyes that Hunter never thought was possible. “You can’t be serious, Adler! Don’t you realize what happened here? If you try and use that thing you could wipe out millions of people.”
“Millions?” Adler repeated. “There’s no need to be so pessimistic. This has the potential to reap a much higher harvest than millions of human dead. If we activate it in the right place, we should be able to create the same climate havoc that annihilated Atlantis in the first place. The conductivity of the orichalcum in the statues is unlike anything else on earth.”
“You mean you knew about this all along?”
The Apostle laughed. “The destruction of Atlantis by the fire lance is written in the Creed’s Holy Scriptures. It is to us, as your Bible is to you. The consummation by fire of this cradle of humanity is an important part of our origin story.”
“Sounds like a laugh a minute,” Hunter said.
“You wouldn’t be laughing if you knew what that origin story was.” The Apostle sneered at him and turned to watch his men, now loading the sphere into a metal trunk beside the three winged statues. They secured the lid and waited for the next command.
“Why don’t you enlighten us?” Jodie said. “Instead of just waving your junk in our faces.”
The Apostle looked at her with derision. “You’re too small to receive enlightenment.”
Hunter had been watching the disciples move the sphere. They looked nervous but in control, and when the Apostle told them to take it back to the entrance cave by the inlet and secure it to the transport chopper’s lashing chain, he knew this was their last chance.
“You must feel pretty pleased with yourself,” he told the Apostle. “To su
cceed where so many of your forebears failed. To find the fire lance, the weapon that the Atlanteans destroyed themselves with. That brought their civilization to its knees.”
“What I feel is irrelevant,” he said. “I serve the cause of an ancient society, the ancient Egyptian and Greek Mysteries, the Freemasons, the Illuminati and now the mighty Creed. That is what I am; a humble servant to the cause of something much greater than I. The Atlantis Covenant is a sacred agreement made by all members of the Creed to safeguard this knowledge, the inherent truth about mankind’s origin, the existence of this very place. It is the fulcrum of our civilization and I am the servant of this cause.”
“And here I was thinking you were something special,” Hunter said with a dismissive shrug. “I thought you were the man, but you’re nothing, are you? Who’s pulling your strings, Adler? Who is the Magus?”
Quinn took a step closer to Blanco. “What’s he doing?”
“Get ready,” Blanco whispered. “He’s trying to get him to lose his cool.”
“I’m saying he’s nothing but a marionette,” Hunter said, catching Amy’s eye.
“I am no one’s puppet!” he said. “I am the Apostle. I hold knowledge handed down direct from Akhenaten! If anything, I am more powerful than even he! Do you hear that, Akhenaten?”
“I’ve hear of speaking truth to power but this is ridiculous,” Hunter said.
“Silence! How dare you speak to me in this way. You will drop to your knees and beg me to make your death swift! Bring him to me!”
Disciples marched forward, but it was too late. Amy knew what he was doing, and now she slipped out of McCabe’s arms and jerked her elbow into his face, pulping his already smashed nose across his face. He teetered back on the ice and brought his hands up to his re-broken nose just as the disciples flanking the Apostle drew their weapons and fired on Hunter’s team.
“Take cover!” Hunter yelled, reaching down for his ankle holster. He drew the Ruger and fired on the Apostle three times, striking him in the chest and throat and spraying a cloud of blood out over the ice wall behind him.
Chaos erupted, and Crixus turned his gun on Hunter. The Londoner dived for the protection of one of the pyramid’s enormous ice-caked cornerstones. The rest of the team scattered in all directions, ducking down behind rocks and walls and anywhere else they could find to shield themselves from the barrage of bullets.
Crixus had seen Hunter take cover behind the cornerstone and chased him all the way with his gun, splintering the ice in his wake as he dived for cover. Hunter landed face-down, spinning around on the slippery ice and firing on his pursuer. The bullets buried into Crixus’s stomach and chest and sent him straight down to the icy floor.
Hunter peered over the cornerstone and saw a fire fight had exploded across the pyramid’s plaza. Blanco was firing on Gannicus and Lewis was brawling with Castus. It looked like Jodie had killed Oenomaus and Amy was firing on Steiner and McCabe as they tried to push the wheeled trunk up the slope toward the tunnel. Steiner saw Quinn tucked down in the shadows of one of the statues in the plaza, and stopped pushing the chest.
“What are you doing?” McCabe asked.
“I can’t let her live!”
Steiner slipped her MP5 off her shoulder and aimed it at Quinn, but Hunter was ahead of her, with the Ruger already raised into the aim. He squeezed the trigger and the bullet ripped right through her throat, blasting half of it to pieces and spraying blood and tissue all over the ice behind her. When she fell, she hit the ice slope like a dead deer and rolled all the way back down to the bottom, the look of surprised terror still etched on her still, white face.
McCabe saw what had happened and bolted, screaming at the disciples to cover him as he sprinted up the slope toward the tunnel. Hunter fired on him, his rounds drilling into the ice a few inches behind his nemesis as he scrambled up the slope and slipped around the corner, leaving nothing but a shadow receding on the wall.
“Damn it,” Hunter said, jumping when he registered the report of a gunshot across the plaza. He turned to see Lewis walking back over to him. Castus was dead, as was Gannicus. Blanco and the former US Marine had easily overcome the two men and the rest of the stray disciples. Now, the team gathered around the metal trunk containing the sphere. Chests rising and falling, adrenaline pumping through their veins.
“We did it,” Jodie said.
“So much blood…” Quinn’s young voice was a hoarse, terrified whisper. “All this death.”
“It’s over.” Amy put her arm around her shoulder. “You did great.”
Blanco and Lewis were walking cautiously around the plaza, making sure the disciples were all dead. Jodie was sitting on one of the cornerstones, staring at the trunk with a strange, unfocussed look in her eyes. For a long time, no one said anything.
The low amber glow seeping through the trunk’s hinges focused their concentration too much. No one knew what the sphere was, or what it meant. No one had ever seen anything like it. They knew that when it was combined with the winged statues it formed some sort of weapon the Apostle had called the fire lance. They knew it had destroyed Atlantis, and for now that was enough.
A radio crackled, making everyone start. It was Amy’s. She reached down to her belt and raised the microphone to her mouth. “Go ahead.”
“This is Evans,” he said. “Was the mission target achieved?”
The cold static hiss of the radio echoed eerily across the plaza at the base of the Great Pyramid, high in the Arctic. Amy looked over at Adler and Steiner, both dead, and then to the strange glowing trunk. “Yes,” she said, collapsing down on the cornerstone beside Jodie and lowering her head. “Mission target achieved. We’re on our way back to you.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
An ordinary office in Washington DC one week later. Neutral-shade wool carpet, cream walls and vinyl-faced ceiling tiles. Long laminate conference table and a dead projection screen on the far wall. James Gates pushed opened the door and led the rest of the team into the warm room, taking up position at the head of the table.
“Welcome to HARPA’s first briefing.”
“HARPA?” Blanco asked.
Amy smiled. Hunter saw she already knew what it meant. Just her and the Director, though. They were close.
Gates said, “The Heritage, Artifacts and Relics Protection Agency. It’s a new department I’ve been tasked with directing, formed out of the ashes of our previous incarnation. We work for the government but at the same time we don’t, if you catch my drift. Think of us as kind of like privateers. Amy is my 2IC and if the rest of you want a job then I guess you’re in, too.”
“Seems fair enough,” Jodie said.
“Quinn?” Amy asked.
She shrugged. “I have nothing else in my calendar for this year, so fine. Count me in.”
“Ben?” Gates asked.
“You know I’m in.”
“Great, and how’s Megan?”
“Baby’s due in two weeks, sir.”
Gates’s face broke into a reluctant smile. “Good luck with that.”
“What about Hunter?” Jodie asked.
Hunter was surprised she had asked.
“Dr Hunter is not on the team,” Gates said, turning to the Englishman. “If you want to join, then you can make a formal application and I’ll consider it.”
“Thanks, but I’m happy where I am.”
“That’s your decision.”
Hunter thought he saw a flash of disappointment on Amy’s face, but the moment was already past. Gates had moved on. “First, you did a good job on the Atlantis mission. The fire lance’s component parts, both the sphere and the winged statues have been catalogued and removed to a secure location for analysis.”
“When will we be briefed about what they find?” Amy asked.
“If and when my superiors tell me, I’ll tell you. Suffice it to say, if this weapon is anything to go by, parts of the Atlantean civilization were much further ahead than our current technology. This c
ould present big problems for the world if the wrong people get hold of it. That is why we will be sending a covert military team to the site to secure it.”
“It needs to be studied by archaeologists,” Hunter said. “There’s a hell of a lot to learn about Atlantean culture and technology over the coming months and years and we need to start right now. It should be a UNESCO site.”
“I’m not able to discuss it further, Dr Hunter,” Gates said, ending the debate. They all saw his face change.
“What is it, Jim?” Amy asked.
“There’s just more one thing I have to tell you. After your successful storming of the Black Rock Castle in Germany, the authorities moved in and took the place over. They treated it as a crime scene and they found something alarming in the dungeon.”
“What did they find?” Amy asked.
Gates brushed his jaw with his knuckles, nervous and stalling for time. Unsure what to say. “They found human bones in some kind of animal pit. They were broken and smashed and looked like they had been gnawed.”
“My God,” Blanco said. “What are we talking about here – a bear, a wolf?”
Gates shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it, no. They also found tooth and claw marks in the pit, none of which resemble any animal we know of. Whatever killed the people in there was considerably larger than a grizzly bear and stronger than a Siberian tiger.”
Amy was stunned. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re saying, Jim.”
He looked at her, an old friend with no more answers. “The authorities were looking into it, and then they were ordered to stop and the castle was made off-limits by the very top of the German government. It looks like the Creed shut down the investigation. We don’t know what was in that dungeon, but it’s gone now.”
“What the hell did those sick bastards do down there?” Jodie asked.
“You know what I know,” Gates said.
“And the Magus?” Hunter asked, his voice loud in the stunned silence.
He shrugged. “No sign of the Magus, either.”
Another long, tense silence as they thought about what he had just said. When he spoke, his voice seemed frailer. “Moving on, it looks like we’ve had another alert.” He pushed a button on the desk and a plasma screen slowly descended from the ceiling. “And this one’s promising to be even more significant than the mission you just closed.”
