“Let’s not wait to find out.”
The river ran through a valley. Large trees lined the bank. Without any clue where they were, Sam knew instinctually they were at the start of a great river. But that didn’t help him locate themselves, because rivers ran in all directions around Kanchenjunga.
“Do you have any idea where we are?”
“It looks like we’ve reached the bottom of the mountain. Only, I wouldn’t have a clue which side we’re now on. Kangchenjunga is limited in the west by the Tamur River, in the north by the Lhonak Chu and Jongsang La, and in the east by the Teesta River.”
“The only question is, which one?”
“Yeah, we’d better find out so we can get ourselves extracted from here.”
“And probably not be too vocal about it. Given our past number of friends in the area, I doubt there are too many people we can trust.”
“That’s great, but where shall we go from here?” Tom said. “We still have less than three weeks to rescue Billie and save the world.”
A well-worn path ran above the river’s waterline. “Shall we follow it?”
“It beats the hell out of taking our chances in those rapids without anything to help.”
Three hours later, the two had descended to another clearing, where the water settled into a sandy bank. A white-water raft was tied up to a tree on the sandy bank. The name on the raft was Tamur River Adventures.
Several tourists were gearing up, ready to take the challenge of the river.
“I guess that answers the question of where we are.”
“How about we take that?”
Sam looked at the tourists getting ready for their adventure.
“They’re going to be pissed, but I’d say our need is greater.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Dr. Swan stood on the bridge of the sports yacht.
Ahead of her, she could clearly see that the river’s cataracts looked navigable on an inflatable boat, such as a Zodiac, but would be impossible in such a large vessel as the Andre Sephora.
What kind of pirates am I involved with?
Edward Worthington and Billie shared a common goal out of necessity, but the man at the helm only served to remind her that she’d been kidnapped.
She said nothing.
Billie had chosen her course of action when she sent Sam Reilly to Siberia. She was on her own. Now she just had to trust that she had chosen the right villain.
In the distance, despite the clear blue sky, she heard the rumble of thunder. Jason noticed it, too. She studied his face. The man’s face, which ordinarily displayed his overconfidence in all things, especially women, now looked suddenly serious and focused. His eyes were watching the river as though something dramatic was about to change. He started to speak a prayer in another language, most likely his native Afrikaans.
Jason tapped at his throttle. The strain of concentration became obvious on his face, as he was judging the right time to perform a task.
The volume of the sound increased abruptly.
Jason turned the boat to the left and pushed the throttle to full. Billie gripped the side of the railing to stop herself being thrown off under the pressure. Edward took another deep puff from his cigar, and stood confidently using only his sturdy feet to balance him with the agility of a much younger man.
“What the hell is that?” Billie asked.
Jason smiled at her. “That, my dear lady, is the river flooding.”
“You blew up a dam?”
Jason laughed. “Nothing of the sort. I merely had a friend of mine open the emergency floodgates. It will close automatically in thirty minutes. By that time, the river will have risen enough to allow the Andre Sephora to reach the next level of the Congo.”
“Holy shit! Won’t that water hit us with the force of a tsunami?”
He brought the sports craft around in a giant arc until it faced the rapids head on once more. His grin more demonic and tyrannical than before, Jason pushed the throttle to full speed. The bow of the yacht quickly raised above the water as it began to skim across the top of the water. “It certainly will. At full speed, barely anything other than our water jets touch the water. If I’m right, we should be able to skim over the top of it.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Then, we’re all dead.”
Billie held on tighter, and reminded herself what was at stake. In front of them, a wall of rumbling water raced toward them. The rapids could no longer be distinguished from the rest of the turbid river.
“Hold on everyone.” Jason held his breath. “Here we go!”
Billie forced herself to meet the collision with her eyes open. If she was on a one-way ticket to meet her maker, she didn’t want to be the last to know.
And then the Andre Sephora struck the wall of water.
The collision sent them high into the air, the way a boat jump would have. Jason touched the helm just lightly enough to maintain a perfectly straight direction. The water jets propelled them just above the frothy water, as though they were flying.
Less than a minute later, the water settled and the sports craft became more controllable in the water. Jason exhaled and then took a long, slow, deep breath in.
“Well everyone, I think we made it.”
“You could have given us a little more of a heads up that you were about to try and kill us!” Billie shouted.
Jason smiled. “Yes, I could have. But would it have made a difference? We still need to get further up the river.”
Billie ignored him and walked to the deck of the bow.
Soon, she noticed that the river was no longer traveling fast, and then it slowed completely. The emergency floodgates must have been closed again. Their intrepid skipper slowed the boat down to a crawl. Without the gate open, the height of the river quickly diminished, and their risk of striking a sandbar increased.
Traveling slowly into the much narrower river, Billie noticed the dense forest now threatened to swallow the banks with them inside. The sunlight all but disappeared as the surrounding canopies of the massive trees dwarfed their vessel.
Approximately thirty miles up the ancient river, the Andre Sephora struck a sandbar and came to a slow, grating, halt.
“That’s the end of the line, folks.”
“Can you get us off again?” Billie heard the authority back in Edward’s voice.
“Don’t worry. I can get us off, but there’s no way we’re going any further up river.”
“Why’s that?”
Jason pointed up ahead. “Because someone up there sure doesn’t want any visitors.”
A hundred feet upriver Billie suddenly saw what Jason had seen. Three T 72 battle tanks were lined through the river, forming an artificial barrier to any ship. In the shallow water, only their turrets and canons were above water, like the malicious eyes of a crocodile, watching its prey. Each cannon aimed alarmingly downriver, toward them.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The battle tanks looked like they’d seen better days, but their intention was no less significant. Someone had gone to great lengths to place them as a deterrent for unwanted visitors. More concerning yet were the three severed heads, which rested on spikes like flags at the back of each battle tank.
Their still fleshy faces, aghast in abject horror, portrayed a very recent incursion of the otherwise clear message.
Stay the fuck out!
“You look pensive, Dr. Swan?” It was Edward who spoke, as he lit an expensive cigar next to her. For a man in his eighties, he seemed keen to be constantly inclined to speed up the inevitable.
“Look at this place!” Billie said without removing her gaze from the wretches in front of her. “It looks exactly like something out of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness!”
Edward looked blank.
“You haven’t read The Heart of Darkness?”
“No, but I watched the film Apocalypse Now.”
“Look at those poor wretches.” Billie po
inted toward more heads on spikes outlining the water’s edge. They appeared white. None of the local people would be stupid enough to enter the area. “Who do you think those people were?”
“I have no idea, but if we’re lucky, we might just find the people who did it.”
“The Makan pygmies were cannibals?”
“Some of my previous research has suggested so.”
“You’ve been here before? I thought you only knew about the Atlantean Archives in Tibet?”
“Before I discovered the other temple, I asked myself the simple question, ‘where could you hide the remnants of an ancient civilization for eleven thousand years?’” Edward took a satisfyingly deep puff of his cigar and then continued. “I came up with a list of several places, but the heart of the Congo River was certainly at the top of my list, due to its remoteness. Even if people could reach it, few would get through the plethora of terrorists, unstable governments, dictatorships, and children armed with AK47s to tell the tale.”
“Did you know about the Makan people?”
“No, but I hypothesized that the pygmies, who were the native inhabitants of the land for at least fifty thousand years, must have seen the Atlanteans if they built a second temple here eleven thousand years ago.”
“Why not examine what lies below the rainforest canopy using helicopters equipped with LIDAR?”
“I’ve already tried that. Here and in South America to be exact. We spent a fortune on aerial reconnaissance last time using LIDAR via low level flying aircraft. The remote sensing technology created a high resolution digital elevation model of the topography below the thick rainforest vegetation. Tens of thousands of hours of the reconnaissance. Found some interesting old ruins, wrecked planes decades old, and some ancient tribes who really didn’t want to be seen by white people from the outside world. But none of it ever revealed another temple of Atlantis.”
“So then, what are we doing here, Edward?”
“I’m counting on you changing my luck, but I’m beginning to have my doubts.”
“Why’s that?”
“Look around Dr. Swan. Do you real think that any of these people derive from the ancient Atlantean people?”
“I don’t know what I think. But whatever we’re after, it will have to be underground to remain hidden for so long. And that means we’re going to have to enter the dark forest.”
“You’re certain it’s here?”
“You were in Tibet. You saw the image I found. This was definitely the same point along the river. There were no other images. We now have to head north of the river. If there’s something there, we’ll find it. I just hope we find it before the pygmies find us,” Billie said.
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Edward replied, cheerfully.
“And if they do?”
Edward drew in the last of the cigar before throwing its remains in the water. “Then we see if my elite soldiers are worth anywhere near the million dollar a year retainer I’m paying them.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sam’s father’s Gulfstream stood waiting for them at Sikkim’s Pakyong Airport, its pilots preparing a route to Siberia. Opening his laptop, which he’d left aboard when they first arrived in Nepal only a week earlier, he looked up the GPS coordinates Billie had left for them. It instantly came up with another reference. He opened up the document and stared at the name of the location.
Tunguska.
“That’s not possible…”
“What?” Tom asked.
“The Tunguska event occurred in Siberia on the morning of 30 June 1908 at approximately 7:30 a.m. The explosion over the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian Taiga flattened 800 miles of forest and caused no known casualties. The cause of the explosion is generally thought to have been a meteor. It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found; the meteor is thought to have burst in mid-air at an altitude of 3-5 miles rather than hit the surface of the Earth. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the super bolide’s size, on the order of 600 feet, on whether the meteor was a comet or a denser asteroid. It is considered the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history.”
“And that’s where Billie sent us?”
“Right.”
“That’s one hell of a coincidence isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I’d say so – if I believed in them.”
“What about Elise? Did she find anything in the Dark Net?”
“According to Elise the CIA went to great effort to cover up whatever it was the Russians found back in 1908. In fact, the CIA and the Russians signed an agreement to cover up whatever they found there. If you look closely at the images online, they don’t match the ones taken in 1908. But the reason for the cover up was sealed – not to be released until…” Sam scrolled through Elise’s secret files a little further, and then swore.
“Not to be released until when?”
Sam looked up at him, the slightest hint of fear in his eyes. “Not to be released until next month. Just under three weeks to be exact.”
“Now, that is a coincidence, isn’t it?” Tom said cheerfully.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Edward looked at Jason. “Are you coming with us, or staying on the boat?”
“Are you kidding me? There’s no amount you can pay me to enter that place. No thank you. I’ll stay aboard my fortress, and provide aerial firepower if you need it.”
“All right. We’ll see you in a few days.” Edward climbed on board the rubber Zodiac. He wore a bullet proof, and more importantly, spear-proof vest. With a handgun holstered to his side and a Mills 12-gauge shotgun in his arms, he looked back at Jason. His voice was slow, and brutally honest. “If you leave us here, I will personally drag you back here to let these local pygmies deal with you. Do you understand me?”
“I certainly do Mr. Worthington. You’ve paid very well for an exceptional experience. I can assure you that money was well spent, and I will remain to provide those services.”
“Good man.” Edward tapped one of the mercenaries on his shoulder. The man turned the throttle of the outboard and the Zodiac jumped into life, moving toward the bank of the river.
There was no bank to the river on which to drag the two rubber boats. Definitely no visible one anyway. Mark, who’d been his bodyguard for nearly ten years now, and now acting as the team’s official leader, made the decision to tie the boats to the branch of one of the million trees that blurred the line of the river’s bank.
It was difficult to even enter the jungle.
With no documented exploration by Westerners, there were no roads, paths, or maps to suggest what they should expect to find. No way to have known they had entered a giant swampland. A mesh of water and jungle – its vegetation was so dense that each of his team were soon forced to sling their M60 machine guns in exchange for a machete.
Their movement inside the jungle was slow. And no sooner had they entered it, than the thick jungle coverings seemed to swallow them, removing all view of the outside world from which they came. As though the jungle itself had a desire to keep them.
Edward could immediately see why this was one of the most unexplored regions on earth. The impenetrable rainforest canopy made satellite imaging useless, while the watery ground below rendered an armored vehicle useless.
His mind returned to the three ruined T72 Tanks blocking the river. They must have been driven up the river when it was shallow. If this place was still inhabited by the ancient pygmies, he could only imagine what they had done to the previous owners of those battle tanks.
Ahead of him, Dr. Swan jumped from one branch to another with the agility of a gymnast. She alone, he noticed, kept her finger confidently fixed next to the trigger of the M60.
He admired her fondly. She was beautiful in every sense of the word. By far the most intelligent person he’d ever met, and had an attractive smile with an exotic and sporty figure to match. Although he could hardly fail to recognize her physical
attributes, he cared little for them. Instead he looked at her with the fond pleasure a father might his daughter.
Billie looked up, her intelligent, almond shaped eyes, actively avoiding his stare, before her smile broke the awkward tension. Edward smiled warmly in response, and wished he’d found her years earlier – before their time had nearly run out completely. That was, unless they found the temple, and the second half of the code to Atlantis.
“Are you still confident it’s here, Dr. Swan?”
“You saw the image as well as I did. The river must have changed unrecognizably over the last 11,000 years, but there was no mistaking it – that was The Congo River. And it was about a thousand miles inland. Obviously the jungle has engulfed more of the river, and the river, in turn, has drowned some of the jungle, but I’m certain we’re heading in the right direction.”
He smiled warmly. She was right – he knew it. He didn’t even know how he knew it. But somehow Edward was certain.
Billie stopped and removed her pendant from her neck. It was made of orichalcum she’d found at Atlantis. When she entered the Atlantean Archive in Tibet, she discovered an interesting fact about orichalcum – the alloy was attracted to itself. Therefore, you could take a piece of orichalcum and place it in water, and like a compass, it would guide you to more orichalcum.
He watched her study her pendant again.
Its needle remained motionless. There was no sign they were on the right track at all.
She tapped it several times, but still the needle remained motionless.
“Any idea what the range of that thing is?”
“How the hell should I know? All I know is that the orichalcum has a high affinity with itself. It was strong enough that it got us this far, but now it doesn’t seem to be showing us much.” Frustrated, Billie replaced the device around her neck like a necklace, for safe keeping.
“Well, I believe you’re heading in the right direction. I don’t know why. I just feel it for some reason that I can’t explain.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Billie said, before jumping to another branch. “Now, it’s my turn to ask some questions.”
Atlantis Stolen (Sam Reilly Book 3) Page 12