The Last Odyssey: A Thriller

by James Rollins

  Gray looked up as one of the massive heads dipped low and snaked over the surface toward him. “Everybody up here! Now!”

  Kowalski got everyone moving.

  But where then?

  8:17 P.M.

  Two minutes . . .

  Perched on top of the bronze fish, Gray discovered a lever along its spine, the end pointing toward the tail. He grabbed it and hauled it around toward the nose. As he did so, he heard a pressure seal pop and the dorsal fin of the fish hinged open, revealing it to be a hatch. He shoved it up and over.

  Mac climbed up behind him, his eyes wide.

  “Get in,” Gray said.

  Mac swung his legs to a ladder inside and slid down, landing with a pained groan. Maria followed behind. Then Bailey and Seichan, who still cradled Aggie.

  “Move it!” Gray yelled down to Kowalski.

  The big guy balanced his AA-12 on one shoulder and hopped his way up the bronze flank. When he reached the top, he looked over Gray’s shoulder, and his eyes snapped wide.

  “Down!” Kowalski hollered and swung his weapon over.

  Gray tried to stop him, but Kowalski fired a burst of rounds past Gray’s shoulder. The shells exploded behind him.

  Cringing, he looked back.

  One of Scylla’s heads sat low on the water, its lower jaw gone. Flames shot from cracks and seams. The neck spasmed and contorted, spraying more fire as it pulled the blasted head back across the lake.

  “Get your ass in there!” Gray ordered.

  Kowalski obeyed, obviously unaware of the damage he had wrought, and jumped inside.

  Gray followed, pausing for a breath on the ladder.

  Across the water, the five remaining heads of Scylla writhed in fury. Fire and smoke wreathed its form—then it began to climb into the lake.

  Uh-oh.

  Gray leaped down, pulling the hatch with him. As it clanked shut, he spun a bronze wheel on the door’s underside to seal it tight. The group quickly found seats along benches to either side.

  Gray headed to the nose of the sub, glaring at Kowalski.

  “What?” the big guy asked.

  “Scylla’s a guardian,” Gray informed him. “Intended to protect the populace while they escape. As long as there’s no aggression toward it, it’ll leave you alone. But now . . .”

  “How was I supposed to know that?”

  Gray scowled. “Think before you shoot.”

  Kowalski sulked. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Gray reached the front, where Bailey was seated in one of two bronze seats.

  The priest twisted toward him. “According to Homer, the Phaeacians’ ships were self-guiding.” He pointed to a single control, an upright bronze hand crank. “I think this must—”

  Despite his earlier words, now was not the time for thinking. Gray dropped into the other seat and hauled the crank down.

  The entire fish rocked forward, the nose dropping, then slid off its perch and dove into the water. The impact with the lake jarred everyone, but they kept their seats.

  Kowalski straightened. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  Then lake water hit green oil. Fire exploded behind them, burning fuel and the seas behind them. Their bronze fish jetted through the water, throwing them all back.

  Gray fought to lean forward. The two bulbous eyes of the fish were made of glass or polished crystal. Through them, he spotted Scylla’s bronze legs as the beast waded into the maelstrom of Charybdis. He held his breath as the little sub sped through the pylons of the beast’s legs, darting and rolling, reminding Gray of what Bailey had just mentioned.

  Self-guided.

  Then they were in the tidal pull of the swirling current at the lake’s center. It caught them and spun their little sub around the bowl of the lake, faster and faster, tighter and tighter. As they flew, Gray caught a brief glimpse of one of Scylla’s fiery heads, aflame in the depths, reaching for them.

  Kowalski yelled from the back, “I always wondered what it would feel like to be a goldfish flushed down a toilet.”

  Don’t have to wonder any longer.

  The fish tipped its nose straight down.

  Gray braced himself against the walls to keep his seat, discovering a handgrip on one side. “Hold tight!”

  The sub plummeted into the throat of the lake’s drain.

  A Stygian darkness closed around them. It became impossible to judge up from down, especially as the fish rocked back and forth, sometimes rolling fully around in a stomach-churning spin.

  “Lights ahead!” Bailey yelled above the rush of water.

  Gray saw it, too, through one of the fish’s eyes. A murky brightness in the far distance. He sighed with relief. We’re going to make—

  There was no warning.

  An immense force struck the stern of the sub. It blasted the vessel forward, tossing it end over end, throwing them all around its bronze cabin. Worst of all, the sub crashed repeatedly into the rock walls with clangs of a rung bell.

  Water burst into the sub as a seam cracked.

  As he fought to hold his seat, Gray pictured what had happened behind them. That mother of all air-fuel bombs must have gone off, powerful enough to drive all the water out of the sea tunnel, like Zeus blowing soda out of a straw.

  Then brightness burst in through the fish’s eyes. The tumbling roll of the sub evened out, becoming a smooth glide that headed upward. The spray of water through the broken seam slowed. Finally, the sub shot out of the waves. Watery sunlight streamed inside as the vessel rocked in the sea.

  Gray sat back and let out a breath.

  Their little fish had escaped Tartarus.

  He said a silent prayer of thanks and stared back at the crew, all battered and bruised but alive.

  “How about some fresh air?” Kowalski said. “I may still throw up.”

  Gray slid out of his seat and shifted back. He boosted himself on the ladder, spun the lock to free the hatch, and tossed the finned door open. Fresh air and brighter sunlight filled the cabin.

  Gray hopped down. “Let’s get bailing.” He retrieved his satellite phone. “I’ll see if I can raise some help.”

  He climbed back up and sidled out of the way, straddling the fish like a wild bronco on the high seas. He speed-dialed Commander Pullman, the closest ally who could help them.

  As it rang through encrypted channels, a wide-belled gray jet sped low overhead. He stared up, recognizing it. It was Pullman’s Poseidon, appearing as if summoned by thought alone.

  The plane continued past them, gliding across the sea—then swept higher, jettisoning a long black tube attached to a red parachute. Gray recognized the weapon.

  A Mark 54 torpedo.

  Gray searched ahead. The intended target was evident. The only ship out there was a large hydrofoil speeding across the waves.

  Then Pullman came on the line, sounding exasperated and rushed. “Commander Pierce?”

  “What are you doing?” Gray asked.

  “Sort of busy.”

  “I can see that. But why?”

  “Long story. But I was told to tell you Elena Cargill says hello, and Charlie Izem wanted to know if you have her monkey.”

  Gray struggled to make sense of all of this.

  “Maybe I got the last part wrong,” Pullman admitted. “The call was dispatched to me through Director Crowe, from a shipboard radio of a riverboat.”

  Gray rushed to catch up. So, Charlie must have escaped, got word out, and somehow managed to rescue Elena. That was a story he wanted to hear—but later.

  “What about the hydrofoil?” Gray asked.

  “According to Dr. Cargill, bad guys. That’s all I need to know.”

  As Gray watched, the torpedo hit the water and blasted off in the direction of the fleeing ship. It struck one of the yacht’s twin foils and blew it clean off. Running at full speed, nearly thirty knots, the ship skated along atop its one foil—then slowly tipped over. It crashed sideways into the sea, and nosedived hard into the water.<
br />
  From the coast, a fleet of Royal Moroccan Navy ships steamed toward the site.

  Pullman signed off, after getting Gray’s fix from his sat-phone’s GPS.

  Gray stared back toward the mountainous coast. In the distance, a thick cloud of dust and ash swirled into the sunset skies. While it wasn’t a new volcano, Gray pictured the little ruby on the gold map.

  In the past, Hunayn had done his best to hide this location, to protect his own era—a time of the Crusades and holy wars—against the horrors and hellfire of Tartarus. It seemed history was destined to be repeatedly tested, to be balanced on the precipice of Armageddon over and over again. Sadly, all too often, it was an apocalypse of our own making. It took men like Hunayn—who fought against the darkness—to pull us back from that brink, who were willing to sacrifice all to this cause.

  Gray remembered Kowalski’s blind swim across that toxic lake. He pictured the bones of Hunayn’s shipmate, marking the grave of a man who had made the same deadly crossing. Both men—separated by millennia—had been willing to pay the ultimate price for the greater good of all.

  Maybe such brave souls were the world’s true messiahs.

  Maybe we didn’t need to wait idly by for heavenly salvation.

  Maybe we were always our best hope.

  Gray watched the hydrofoil settle crookedly into the water and pondered the old quote from Edmund Burke. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

  He stared toward the setting sun, making a silent promise, picturing his young son.

  I will always keep fighting against the darkness.

  For you.

  For all our bright futures.

  48

  June 26, 8:24 P.M. WEST

  Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Morocco

  In the flooded stern hold of the Morning Star, the forty-eighth Musa swore a litany of curses. The yacht foundered on its side. Multiple fires raged throughout the ship. Klaxons rang continuously.

  Firat waited atop a bobbing jet-ski, seated behind one of his Sons.

  Across the drowned hold, a team freed the ship’s four-man submersible, armed with dual mini-torpedo launchers. The sub’s motors started and the craft burbled in reverse toward him. On the other side, the hold’s sea doors were already open, facing away from the coast. He heard the engines of approaching military ships, the occasional scream of a jet overhead. The wreckage of the yacht would be seized and overrun at any moment.

  I must not be here.

  In hindsight, he should have followed Senator Cargill’s example. The man had left the yacht at the Strait of Gibraltar, summoned back to the EU summit, needing to address some state matter in person. At the time, Cargill had ranted, disappointed not to be able to make this journey south and rendezvous with the strike team.

  But the bastard had gone and lucky he did.

  Or maybe the senator’s God smiles upon him more than Allah does upon me.

  Back at Gibraltar, Firat had been happy to see the man leave. It opened a range of possibilities, including dealing with the senator’s insufferable daughter. As if buoyed by his good spirits, the Morning Star had made good time, racing along the Moroccan coast. Firat had planned to rendezvous with Nehir’s team—or at least, get updated—when he arrived at Agadir by sunset.

  He stared through the stern door at the setting sun.

  I kept my word.

  Unfortunately, by the time the yacht had reached here, he had become worried. Hour after hour had passed without a new update. Finally, off Agadir, with still no word, worry grew to suspicion. He had ordered the ship’s captain to speed north as fast as the engines could manage.

  His instinct had been right, but his timing poor.

  The Morning Star had just gained full speed when it was torpedoed from the air and brought down. Now his only hope was to escape. Nothing else mattered.

  The submersible finally drew abreast of the jet-ski. He climbed from one watercraft to the other, dropping heavily into a seat behind the two sub operators, two trusted Sons. Firat had the back of the sub all to himself.

  Once everything was sealed tight, he pointed ahead. “Go.”

  The sub’s engine rumbled, and the craft glided smoothly across the hold and out to sea. Firat had a moment of claustrophobic panic as water rose up and over the sub’s Lexan glass shell. But as the submersible sank deeper, leaving the brighter sunlight for the blue twilight, he relaxed.

  He closed his eyes.

  The plan was to strike for the coast, where allies would meet him and whisk him to safety. Only then would he contemplate his revenge.

  Still, he enjoyed some thoughts of what he would do to Elena Cargill.

  Perhaps I’ll tape it. Eventually send it to her father.

  Still, even such pleasant daydreams failed to dim his worries, his anxieties about what had happened to Nehir’s team.

  The sub jolted sharply, shocking him out of his reverie.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “We were struck from underneath,” the pilot reported. “Maybe a shark. Drawn by the commotion in the water back there. They can do us no harm.”

  Firat nodded and leaned back, irritated that the pilot felt the need to reassure him in such a condescending manner. The sub bumped again—hard—driving a surprised yelp out of him.

  He braced his arms wide to either side and turned to the twilight seas. He caught a flash of fire in the deep below. Was the sub under attack again? Had another torpedo exploded?

  He checked the other side—just as something monstrous rose into view. He scrambled back from the sight of it. Its crocodilian head was half the size of the sub. Its unblinking eyes glowed in the darkness. Impossibly, golden flames wreathed its head and traveled in brilliant cascades down its long, snaking neck.

  He wanted to believe it was some fever dream, some nightmare that he had yet to wake from. But the crew spotted it, too. Yelling, gasping. The pilot sped away, but it chased them.

  “Shoot it!” he yelled.

  The crew regained their wits, spun the sub like a skipped stone, and fired both torpedoes. One missed, but the other struck the beast in the neck. The explosion rocked the sub. The seas burst with fire, bright enough to see the decapitated head of the monster fall away and get dragged toward the bottom.

  The two Sons cheered their success.

  Then on the other side, another of the fiery apparitions appeared, then another, and two more. They surrounded the sub, their eyes burning hotter, their flames writhing and coiling across their forms.

  Then they attacked.

  The sub was batted, ripped. Huge jaws lined by three rows of shark’s teeth crunched into the Lexan bubble. The glass cracked under the pressure. Then the entire canopy was ripped off.

  Water pounded into him, flushed him out of the sub into darkness. Pressure popped his ears, crushed his lungs. Then his body was grabbed, pierced by teeth, dragged deeper.

  But that was not the worst.

  Flames erupted all around him, burning away his clothes, searing his skin, setting his hair on fire. His eyeballs boiled in his skull. He was being burned alive—in water.

  He writhed at the pain, at the impossibility, knowing only one certainty.

  Rather than finding Tartarus . . .

  Hell found me.

  49

  July 24, 10:15 A.M. WGST

  Tasiilaq, Greenland

  A month after events in Morocco, Elena stood in the bitter sunlight of an Arctic summer morning. She wore a goose-down parka but felt no need to zip it up. From this mountaintop she enjoyed the cold wind, the frigid bite on her cheeks, the ice in each breath. It made her feel new again, reborn in some way.

  Which maybe is appropriate.

  Ahead of her, a cliff dropped into the fjord far below. The view looked out across the water to the frozen, cracked surface of Helheim Glacier, a river of ice slowly spilling into the ocean. The bright morning sunlight reflected off it, refracting into rainbows, polis
hing sections of ice to a dazzling cerulean blue.

  It was a perfect spot.

  A group of locals from Tasiilaq gathered to pay their respects. Candles were lit, some in hands, more flickering along the cliff’s edge. John Okalik stood with his palm resting on his grandson’s shoulder. Nuka stared out to sea. Even Officer Jørgen had come to say good-bye.

  The village had lost two men who had guarded the tunnel into the heart of the glacier, cousins of John. Their bodies had never been recovered, but she had learned that many found it fitting. According to old Inuit customs, they did not burn or bury their dead, but gave them back to the sea.

  Another had also never been found.

  Mac returned from the cliff’s edge, where he had placed a candle for the lost man. He limped over to her, his foot still in a boot splint, but he was recovering well from his injuries.

  “Nelson would hate all this fuss,” Mac said, sniffing hard, trying not to let Elena see his damp eyes. “He was the least sentimental man I ever knew.”

  But you aren’t.

  Elena took Mac’s hand in her own. She squeezed, feeling the heat of his hard palm and fingers, better than any glove. She leaned into him. They had grown closer during the tumultuous aftermath of events in the Mediterranean and Morocco. She knew Mac had been dragged into all of this because of his concern for her. But over the past weeks, something warmer had grown. Who knew where it would lead? But she wanted to find out.

  Mac blew out a breath, his voice cracking. “Nelson could argue a mouse out of its cheese. And we certainly didn’t agree on most things . . .”

  She looked up at him. “But he was your friend.”

  He sniffed and nodded.

  She had come to Greenland, both out of respect for the dead and also to be here for Mac. Still, she hadn’t needed much persuading. She had already been here a few days, enjoying the quiet pace of Tasiilaq, away from the cameras, the interviews, the screaming tabloid news.

  Her father had been arrested in Hamburg, dragged out of the EU summit in handcuffs and surrounded by a cadre of armed German police and Interpol. The video had played for weeks. Her father now sat in a federal prison, negotiating for leniency, to avoid the death penalty by being cooperative. He had already exposed the upper echelon of the Apocalypti, who were either arrested or driven into hiding. The global hunt continued for the rest, and it would likely take years, if not decades, to truly stamp out every fanatical ember of that apocalyptic cult.