Atlantis Found

by Clive Cussler

  "Neither," said Pitt. "They're shrewder than we are."

  "All that we have, and it's fifty percent speculation," Helm admitted, "is that an executive jet belonging to Destiny Enterprises took off from an airport near Baltimore and set a course due south--"

  "To Argentina," Pitt finished.

  "Where else would they take her?" added Giordino. "Doesn't figure they'd keep her in the States, where they have little or no control over government investigative agencies."

  Ron Little of the CIA cleared his throat. "The question is why? At one time we were led to believe they wanted to eliminate Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino, and Dr. O'Connell because of their discoveries of the chamber in Colorado and its inscriptions. But now, too many people are knowledgeable about the messages left by the ancient people. So the effort to keep it secret becomes immaterial."

  "The only practical answer is that they need her expertise," suggested Helm.

  "When I asked Elsie Wolf how many Chambers the Amenes had built, she claimed there was a total of six," Pitt said. "We had found two and they had found one. Of the others, two were destroyed by natural causes. Only one remains unfound, and she said it was somewhere in the Andes of Peru, but the directions were vague. I'll bet that despite all the experts in their computer software division, they couldn't crack the code giving instructions on how to find the remaining lost chamber."

  "So they snatched her, thinking she could crack the code," said Sandecker.

  "Makes sense," Helm said slowly.

  Giordino leaned across the table. "Knowing Pat only a short time as I do, I have my doubts she'd cooperate."

  Little smiled. "They also have Dr. O'Connell's fourteen-year-old daughter. All the Wolfs have to do is threaten to harm her."

  "She'll talk," Helm said gravely. "She has no choice."

  "So we go in and get her out," said Pitt.

  Little looked at him doubtfully. "We have no way of knowing exactly where they're holding her."

  "Their shipyard in Chile. The Wolfs are so maniacal about a coming doomsday that I'm betting the family has congregated on the ships in preparation for the deluge."

  "I can provide you with satellite photos of the shipyard," said Little. "But I have to tell you, our analysts believe their security systems make the ships inaccessible and unapproachable by land, sea, or air."

  "Then we'll go in underwater."

  "You can expect underwater sensors."

  "We'll find a way around that problem."

  "I can't agree to this," Sandecker said quietly. "Too much is on the line for NUMA. This is a job for Special Operations Forces or a Navy SEAL team."

  "Finding and rescuing Pat O'Connell and her daughter is only part of our plan," explained Pitt. "No one is better qualified than Al and I to investigate Destiny Enterprise's immense shipbuilding project. Less than a year ago, we performed a clandestine search under the hull of the former liner United States in a submersible at a shipyard in Hong Kong. In this circumstance, there has to be a method to the madness behind the Wolf family spending billions of dollars to build ships that can't reach the sea."

  "The FBI can't help you on this one," said Helm. "It's half a world out of our territory."

  Little nervously folded and unfolded his hands. "Other than providing information, I'm afraid my agency's hands are tied. The State Department would squelch any involvement by the CIA to intervene."

  Pitt looked at Sandecker and smiled tightly. "It seems we're elected."

  Sandecker did not smile in return. "Are you sure there is a desperate urgency to penetrate the Wolfs'

  operation?"

  "I do," Pitt said heavily. "I also believe, and I can't tell you why, that there is a far more sinister purpose behind their undertaking. A purpose with horrible consequences."

  THE narrow ravine meandered for a hundred yards before opening onto the waters of the fjord. The western shoreline sloped upward onto a peninsula with the strange name of Exmouth. The eastern coast was split by channels gouged by receding glaciers. The bright lights of the Wolf shipyard and those of the four floating cities reflected across the water on the north end of the fjord.

  Giordino stopped and gestured for Pitt to stay in the shadows of a large rock. Two patrol boats running side by side on opposite sides of the channel moved across the black water, sweeping the surface and shore with searchlights. Giordino studied the patrol craft through his spectral imaging sensors, which turned darkness into a dusky daylight.

  "You're the powerboat expert," said Pitt. "Can you identify them?"

  "Thirty-eight-foot Dvichak Industries boat," Giordino replied easily. "Usually built as an oil spill response boat, but in this case they've loaded them with weapons. A good, tough, reliable boat. Not fast, about eighteen knots max, but the three-hundred-horsepower engine gives them enough torque to push and tow large barges. Serving as armed patrol boats is a new practice."

  "Can you make out the type of guns?"

  "Twin automatics, big millimeter, fore and aft," answered Giordino. "That's all I can recognize."

  "Speed?"

  "They seem to be loafing along at four knots, taking their time to look for intruders."

  "Slow enough for our Torpedo 2000s to keep pace," said Pitt.

  "What evil is swirling in your mind?"

  "We wait underwater until they turn and begin sweeping back toward the shipyard," answered Pitt.

  "Then, when the boat passes over, we follow astern of its wake. The prop wash will screen our presence from their underwater security sensors."

  "Sounds like a winner."

  While the patrol boats continued their sweep to the south, Pitt and Giordino checked their equipment for a final time before slipping on dry hoods over their heads and gauntlet-style quarter-inch neoprene gloves onto their hands. Next they pulled their swim fins over the attached boots of their dry suits. They wore full face masks over their hoods, with Aquacom underwater communicators. Lastly, they each clipped a thin umbilical line to their weight belts. This line ran from one man to the other to keep them from becoming separated and losing one another in the pitch-black water.

  After purging the air from his dry suit, Giordino gave a thumbs-up sign to indicate that he was ready.

  Pitt returned a brief wave and entered the water. The bottom near the shore was rocky and slippery with slimy growth. Loaded down by their equipment, they had to walk carefully to maintain their balance until the water rose to their waists and they could launch themselves forward and swim just beneath the surface. The bottom quickly fell away and Pitt descended to ten feet, where he paused and vented the last of the air out of his suit. He was breathing shallowly, and his descent gathered momentum until the water pressure compressed the suit and he added a small amount of air to maintain near-neutral buoyancy so he could hover motionlessly.

  After he had moved fifty yards from shore, Pitt surfaced and looked south. The patrol boats had reached the end of their circuit and were turning to come back. "Our escort is heading our way," he spoke through the communicator. "I hope you're right about them doing four knots. That's about as fast as our propulsion vehicles can pull us."

  Giordino's head slipped from the black water beside him. "It will be close, but I think we can hang with them. Let's hope they have no infrared underwater cameras."

  "The fjord is at least half a mile wide-- too large an area to be effectively covered by cameras." Pitt swung around and gazed at the lights to the north. "With three shifts working twenty-four hours, the Wolfs must be paying a king's treasury in wages."

  "What do you bet they don't tolerate employee unions?"

  "What do you figure the patrol boat's draft at?"

  "Less than two feet, but it's the prop we worry about. It's probably almost three feet in diameter."

  They watched closely as the patrol boat on their side of the fjord approached. Estimating its course, they swam out another ten yards and then curled over and swam down to twelve feet, before the searchlight could catch their head
s protruding above the surface. Underwater, the boat's engine and thrashing propeller sounded four times louder than they did in the air. They rolled onto their backs and waited. They stared at the fjord's surface from below, watching the searchlight beams come closer at they danced over the icy water.

  And then the boat's shadowed hull swept overhead, propelled by the big screw that churned past in a cyclone of froth and frenzied bubbles. Almost instantly, Pitt and Giordino pressed the magnetic speed switches against their stops, gripped the handles, and merged into the seething wake of the patrol boat.

  At four knots, the prop wash was not as extreme as it would have been if the boat had been speeding along at its maximum of eighteen. They easily maintained a stabilized course behind the patrol boat without being pitched and buffeted. Their most pressing dilemma was that it was almost impossible to see where they were going. Fortunately, a bright stern light was visible to Pitt through the agitated water, so he kept his eyes locked on it, his hands gripped around the handles of the propulsion vehicle as he manhandled its torpedo-rounded bow so that it maintained a steady course through the turbulent water.

  They trailed the boat for the next two miles, six feet below the cold surface water of the fjord, barely keeping pace, pushing their propulsion vehicles to their limits. They were draining the batteries at a rapid rate. Pitt could only hope they would have enough juice for the return trip to the ravine and the Skycar.

  His only consolation was that he and Giordino would not be easily visible so close to the surface under the brilliant lights from the shipyard. Though they were shielded by the wake and with their black dry suits blending into the freezing depths, a sharp-eyed crewman just might catch a glint of something suspicious.

  But no assault came. Pitt had correctly assumed that the crew had their eyes focused on the sweep of the searchlights forward.

  "Can you hear me okay?" asked Pitt through the communicator inside his full face mask.

  "Every syllable," replied Giordino.

  "My monitor shows we've covered almost two miles. The boat should be ready to begin a turn for its next pass down the fjord. The second we feel the wake cut either left or right, we head down to a safe depth for a few minutes before surfacing to get sight bearings."

  "I'll tag along," said Giordino, as calmly as if he were waiting for a bus to come around the corner.

  In less than three minutes, the patrol boat began a wide 180-degree turn. Sensing the wake begin to curve, Pitt and Giordino dove to twenty feet and hung in the water until the searchlight faded into the distance and could no longer be seen from underwater. Slowly, cautiously, they kicked their fins and ascended, not knowing exactly where they would surface in the shipyard.

  Both heads inched above the water surface, both pair of eyes scanning the surrounding water. They found themselves drifting only seventy-five yards from the first of four enormous docks that extended over a mile into the fjord. A colossal floating city was moored along the nearest dock, while the three other immense ships were tied beside parallel docks. They presented a dazzling sight as they glittered under the night sky. To Pitt and Giordino, staring up at the colossus from the water, its size was inconceivable. They could not conceive that such an unbelievable mass not only floated but could cruise the world's seas under its own power.

  "Can it be real?" Giordino murmured in awe.

  "Stupendous comes to mind," Pitt said, barely above a whisper.

  "Where does one begin?"

  "Forget the ships for now. We've got to find a place to get out of our dive gear before we hunt down the shipyard offices."

  "You think Pat is kept there?"

  "I don't know, but that's as good a place as any to start."

  "We can move beneath the dock until we reach the rocks along the shore," said Giordino, holding up a hand to gesture at the water between the great dock pilings. "There are some darkened sheds off to the right. Hopefully, we can gain entry and change into our work clothes."

  The work clothes were orange coveralls, similar to American prison uniforms, that had been custom-made from blown-up, enhanced photos of the workers. The pictures had been recorded by a spy satellite and given to Admiral Sandecker, along with detailed maps of the shipyard and a photo-analysis identification of the many buildings.

  Punching a program into his direction finder, Pitt then held the monitor against his face mask and saw the pilings of the dock materialize before his eyes as if he were standing on dry land under a bright sun.

  He felt as if he were swimming through an underwater corridor with shimmering lights filtering down from above.

  They moved over large pipes and electrical conduits that led from the shore to the end of the dock.

  Visibility had increased to over a hundred feet beneath the reflection of thousands of lights so bright it was as if they were along the Las Vegas strip.

  Pitt swam, with Giordino at his side and slightly behind, over a bottom layered with smooth rocks.

  Gradually, the rock-strewn bottom began to rise until the divers were pulling themselves along by hand.

  Stopping and lying in the shallows, they saw steps leading up from a small concrete quay not far from the dock pilings. A single light globe cast its paltry glow over the quay, in contrast to the galaxy of lights illuminating from the shipyard, lighting up the front of small buildings that Pitt had memorized from the satellite photo as tool sheds. Only the side walls away from the bright lights were lost in the shadows.

  "How does it look?" asked Giordino.

  "Deserted," Pitt answered. "But there is no way of telling if anyone is lurking out there in the dark." He had no sooner spoken than Giordino, who was peering through his spectral image scope, spotted movement along the side of the nearest tool shed. He gripped Pitt's shoulder as a warning, as a uniformed guard with an automatic weapon slung over one shoulder emerged into the light and briefly glanced down at the quay. They lay unmoving and half submerged, partially hidden by the dock pilings.

  As Pitt half expected, the guard looked bored, since he had never seen any suspicious person attempting to sneak into the shipyard. No burglar, thief, or vandal would have bothered to rob a facility over a hundred miles from the nearest town, and especially not one that was on the other side of several glaciers and the Andes Mountains. He soon turned and walked back into the gloom along the row of tool sheds.

  Even before the guard faded into the darkness, Pitt and Giordino were on the quay, fins in hand, propulsion vehicles under their arms, stealing up the steps and moving hurriedly out from under the glare of the lights. The door to the first shed was unlocked, and they thankfully stepped inside. Pitt closed the door.

  "Home at last," Giordino said blissfully.

  Pitt found a painter's canvas tarpaulin and hung it over the only window, stuffing the edges into any cracks. Then he switched on his dive light and beamed it around the shed. It was filled with marine hardware-- bins heaped with brass and chrome nuts, bolts and screws, shelves neatly arranged with electrical supplies consisting of coils and bales of wire, cabinets stacked with gallon cans of marine paint-- all precisely organized and labeled.

  "They certainly have a fetish for neatness."

  "It carries down from their German ancestry."

  Swiftly, they removed their dive equipment and dry suits. The orange uniforms were pulled from their chest packs and slipped on over their insulated underwear. Next, they removed their boots and replaced them with sneakers.

  "I just had a thought," said Giordino apprehensively.

  "Yes?"

  "What if the Wolf personnel have names or some kind of advertising on their overalls the satellite photos didn't pick up?"

  "That's not half our problem."

  "What can be worse?"

  "We're in South America," said Pitt mildly. "Neither of us can speak enough Spanish to ask directions to a toilet."

  "I may not be fluent, but I know enough to fake it."

  "Good. You do the talking, and I'll act as
though I have a hearing disability."

  While Giordino studied the photo map of the shipyard, figuring the shortest path to the Wolf corporate offices, Pitt dialed his Globalstar phone.

  THE atmosphere inside Sandecker's condominium at the Watergate was heavy with foreboding. A fire shimmered in the fireplace, a warm, restful kind of fire that looked comforting though it didn't throw off a wave of heat. Three men were seated on opposite sofas across a low glass table holding a tray of coffee cups and a half-emptied pot. Admiral Sandecker and Ron Little sat and stared spellbound at an elderly man in his middle eighties with snow-white hair, who related a story never told before.

  Admiral Christian Hozafel was a former highly decorated officer in the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. He'd served as captain aboard U-boats from June 1942 until July 1945, when he'd formally surrendered his boat in Veracruz, Mexico. After the war, Hozafel had bought a Liberty ship from the US. government under the Marshall Plan and had parlayed it over the next forty years into an extremely successful commercial shipping venture, eventually selling his interest and retiring when the Hozafel Marine fleet numbered thirty-seven ships. He'd become a U.S. citizen and now lived in Seattle, Washington, on a large estate on Whidbey Island, where he kept a two-hundred-foot brigantine that he and his wife sailed throughout the world.

  "What you're saying," said Little, "is that the Russians did not find the scorched remains of Hitler's body outside his bunker in Berlin."

  "No," Hozafel answered firmly. "There were no scorched remains. Adolf Hitler's and Eva Braun's bodies were burned over a period of five hours. Gallons of gasoline siphoned from wrecked vehicles around the Reich Chancellery were used to douse the bodies, which were lying in a crater that had been blown in the ground outside the bunker by a Soviet shell. The fire had been kept blazing until there were only ashes and a few tiny bits of bones. Loyal SS officers had then placed the ashes and bones in a bronze box. Nothing was left. Every bit of ash and every scrap of bone was carefully swept up and deposited in the box. Then the SS officers had placed the badly charred and unrecognizable bodies of a man and woman who had been killed during an air raid in the crater, where they were buried along with Hitler's dog Blondi, who had been forced to test the cyanide capsules later used by Hitler and Eva Braun."