Atlantis Stolen (Sam Reilly Book 3)

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Go ahead. What do you want to know?”

  “If we find the symbols that we’re looking for – the code to Atlantis, do you have any idea what we’re going to do with them?”

  “I have my ideas.”

  “That’s it? We’ve traipsed right around the world to find them, and you’re telling me that you simply have an idea what to do with them once we get them to Atlantis!”

  “Yep, that’s it. You’re a pretty bright young lady. If you happen to stumble upon a better idea, be sure to let me know. Until then, let’s first see if we can find them in time.”

  “Agreed. Which brings me to the now…” Billie stopped walking, and looked at him.

  “Yes?”

  “How confident are you that you’ve brought enough people to ensure we don’t end up becoming a warning to others not to trespass? Because frankly, I’d rather not have my head on a spike.”

  Edward smiled reassuringly. “These ten men are a team of highly paid mercenaries. Experts in their chosen profession. Strategically recruited from around the world to avoid any concerns about patriotism. I have NAVY Seals from the U.S., Commandos from Australia, SAS from Great Britain, and even a German GSG 9.” He was forced to put his shotgun on his shoulder while he tried to climb across the next swamp. Having made it, he grinned warmly and said, “So, you see Dr. Swan, we are very well equipped to deal with any natives who wish to interfere with our mission.”

  “And what about the other person who wants what we know?”

  “Andrew Brandt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you kidding me? The man’s a moron. He’ll still be following Sam Reilly to Siberia!”

  “And if he already knows that the Russians destroyed everything of value there back in 1908, and comes looking for us instead? Then what?”

  “Then I see if the million dollars per head that I’m paying my men to look after us has been well spent.”

  He was surprised to see that Billie wasn’t afraid. She was simply finding out more about the men he’d employed to look after them.

  She stopped suddenly.

  “What is it?”

  “My orichalcum compass started to work again.”

  She took it off her neck and stood still as she could until the needle stopped again. Taking out his real compass, he noted that her device pointed to the west, on a bearing of 285 degrees.

  “So, we’re on the right track,” Edward said. “Okay gentlemen. We have a compass bearing of 285 for our target. We’re on a deadline here, so let’s get a move on.”

  The small party of explorers continued on, into the jungle – the pygmies’ jungle. The canopy became thicker if that was possible, and despite the time being 2 p.m. the light disappeared completely, so that each member of the team had to switch on their shoulder lights just to continue.

  With the exception of Dr. Swan, all members of the team were grown men, not inclined to be afraid of the dark. And yet, even Edward, who at his age no longer feared death, felt it was a sign of the evil of the jungle itself.

  He heard the splash first.

  Followed by the loud German words, “Fick mich!”

  Chapter Forty

  It was the German member of their team and ex-GS9 Officer, who had fallen into the water below. Carrying his heavy equipment, the man sunk so that his head was below the water for a moment until he was able to pull himself back to the surface using a branch.

  Mark was the first one to reach him. Immediately climbing down onto the branch directly above Zelig, he stretched his arm down and grabbed his fallen soldier.

  “You okay?” Mark asked.

  “Yeah, but I’ll be happier to be out of this damn swamp.”

  “You and me both.”

  Three other members of his team quickly attached a rope to Mark in case he fell in too. Zelig began pulling himself up.

  It was the eyes of the creature that got Edward’s attention. They glowed almost golden in the darkness of the forest. Zelig, the poor man in the water, saw them too! And almost climbed out of the water on his own.

  But he was too late.

  The crocodile reached his leg.

  It didn’t need anything else. Zelig was pulled deep under the water by the massive and ancient reptile. The soldier’s large figure looked more like a child compared to the monster that had dragged him under.

  “Fucking shoot it!” Mark cried out.

  Instantly, every member of the team out of the water aimed their weapons at the two creatures that were now too deep in the water for their weapons to be effective.

  Zelig was obviously alive.

  Several feet below the water, Edward could see the man using a knife to fight the animal, which thrashed and spun him like a ragdoll in a drier. The force was so great that Zelig lost his weapon.

  Both man and beast seemed to keep thrashing. There was nothing any of them could do.

  And then the thrashing stopped.

  Zelig lay lifeless in the water. The crocodile let him go for a second and then snapped its huge teeth on the man’s head with a gut-wrenching crunch.

  The monster moved toward the surface to eat its meal, unaware or indifferent to the fact it had an audience.

  Edward had seen a lot of men die over the years, but this was the first time he’d personally witnessed one being eaten by a monster. It somehow made the reality of what they were doing stick home more significantly. As though until now, he’d been playing a game.

  The sound of machine gun fire interrupted his thoughts.

  He looked up. Mark had raked the crocodile with the entire contents of his magazine, and then attached a second, only to be stopped by another one of his men.

  “It’s dead mate!” The Australian commando said. “I’m really sorry.”

  Mark said nothing. Instead, he reached down and dragged the remains of Zelig toward him. By himself, he pulled the man’s corpse up into the tree.

  A second crocodile then made its attack.

  Snatching Zelig’s leg, it dragged the corpse into the swamp and disappeared for good. Edward had seen enough. “All right gentlemen. No one goes in the water. Let’s keep going, and see if there is any solid ground in this damn jungle!”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Billie was surprised by her own strength. She had seen death before, but somehow the crocodile attack appeared more brutal. Like Edward, she knew there was a lot more at stake than one man’s life. It forced her to increase her awareness of her surroundings and carry on.

  Twenty minutes later, the arrow on her necklace began to move. At first she thought her movement was causing the arrow to spin. Then, when she stopped and took it off her neck so that she could look at it level, it pointed constantly in a westerly direction.

  “We’re getting close,” she said.

  Edward leaned in over her shoulder, so that she could feel his breath as he translated the direction to magnet west. “It didn’t do that last time?”

  “No, last time it was lot more sluggish. Maybe we’re getting close?”

  “But even when we were in the Tibetan temple, it didn’t move like that?”

  Billie thought about it for a minute.

  “I wonder if it responds differently to the amount of orichalcum. You know, like a weak metal will barely interfere with a magnetic compass, whereas a large steel object like a boat will wreak havoc on it.”

  “So what you’re saying is that we’re either very close or that the Temple of Poseidon is covered with several million dollars’ worth of orichalcum?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  At the front of their group, Mark called for both of them. “Mr. Worthington! Dr. Swan! You’re gonna want to see this.”

  Billie was the fastest to respond, and Edward followed quickly behind her. The area had become dense with papyrus reeds as much as ten feet high. Their team were literally hacking a tunnel through the stuff.

  The place was thick with spider webs the size of which could engulf a house. Billi
e shook her head. “Great. So we’ve left the Heart of Darkness in exchange for one of Tolkien’s man-eating spider worlds.”

  Ben, the American SEAL, gently touched the massive web with his hand. It was thick, sticky and elastic. He failed to rip it with his hand. Then, yanking his hand back he picked up his machete, undeterred and hacked at it. He stepped through the opening and became covered by literally hundreds of small spiders.

  He swayed with his machete and hacked away, before pulling his machine gun out and firing a burst of rounds toward the bulk of them, sending them scattering.

  Billie laughed. “Wow, Ben. I didn’t know you were afraid of spiders. You know they’re not dangerous, don’t you?”

  In the background, there was a constant hum, like the sound of a thousand beetles flapping their wings, or chewing on something clicking. “What the fuck is that?” Mark asked, irritated.

  “I have no idea. But it’s starting to grate on my nerves,” Edward replied.

  They reached another wall of ten-foot high papyrus reeds.

  Mark pulled a large section of the papyrus to the side, revealing the most amazing sight he’d ever seen. He swore.

  “What is it?” Billie was the first to ask.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, I think we just found the second temple.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Through the papyrus reeds, Billie stared into the opening. A series of circular dams withheld the ever-present water from the swamp. Each one cut deeper into the land, until the final one was more than fifty feet below the height of the crocodile filled water.

  At the very center was a giant dome – which glowed orange and red.

  Billie smiled. “That’s it! Poseidon’s temple!”

  Edward patted her back. “I never doubted you for a minute.” With a warm smile, he said, “Come on, let’s go get the first half of the code to Atlantis.”

  There was a strong sense of achievement and success that carried through their team. From Edward, as the financier, through to the mercenaries, all of them felt the joy of discovery. The soldiers quickly made their way down the circular dams until they reached the large dome at its bottom.

  The thing glowed orange. “It’s called orichalcum,” Billie advised the men. “And it’s said to be more valuable than gold. If we survive this, you can imagine what sort of monetary share will be yours.”

  It was surrounded by a moat.

  In between each dam, a thin layer of water, nearly black, formed a natural moat. It was no more than seven feet wide, and the party easily crossed it using a carbon-fiber extendable ladder. Billie slowly walked around the dam until she circled it, without finding any entrance. Any inclination to wade into the murky water was immediately extinguished by the piercing golden eyes of the temple’s protectors – crocodiles, in the hundreds.

  “More alligators!” Edward said, frustrated.

  “Technically, those are crocodiles, not alligators. You see, the crocodiles have more of a V-shaped jaw, and tend to be more predatory…” Billie began to explain.

  Mark interrupted her. “I don’t give a fuck. Just work out a way to get around them!”

  She quickly circled the dome, only to be disappointed that there was no entrance.

  No matter. It was only a question of time. There were answers inside that dome, and she intended to find them.

  The annoying background hum of beetles increased in volume until it sounded more like an earthquake.

  Billie looked up. “That can’t be good!”

  Surrounding them from above were more than four hundred men no more than four feet tall and wearing nothing whatsoever. The white pygmies stared down at them, the butts of their spears thumping the ground in a continuous and haunting staccato.

  Billie cursed.

  They had walked straight into a trap.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Siberia – One Week Remaining

  Sam Reilly’s Gulfstream landed on the Podkamennaya Tunguska Airport – Siberia. His pilot taxied to the outer edge of the southern arm of the airport. He looked out the side windscreen. All he could see was white.

  “Welcome to Siberia,” Tom said.

  Sam sighed. “Yeah, not my first choice for a diving holiday. But let’s see if we can make it a rewarding one.”

  A series of Russian police cars approached the plane from the runway.

  “Look – they’ve come to welcome us,” Tom said.

  “Apparently so.” Sam pressed an intercom direct to his pilots. “Have they told you what they want?”

  “No, sir,” the pilot replied. “They’ve just advised me to stop so they can board us. It might be a routine inspection of a private jet.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Two minutes later, a small complement of men in thick black coats climbed the steps to Sam’s Gulfstream. He pressed the intercom to the pilot again. “Bring them into my office. If we’re going to have a meeting like this, I want it to be on my terms.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Sam sat down in his office and closed the door. His private Jet, a loan from his father that he really never intended to give up, was armed more like a Lockheed Martin/Boeing F22 Raptor. Although nowhere near as agile, it had a weapons system that would send shivers into the commanders of most Air Forces around the globe. On the inside, Sam had spent a fortune having the small office built to repel boarders. In fact, behind his office, a secret room held the ability to remotely pilot the jet in the event that his pilots were killed. Also, his office had its own air supply, so that he could vent toxic gas into the main cabin if he really wanted to protect himself from unwanted boarders.

  He sat down comfortably in his office. His father worked closely with a number of oil and gas suppliers throughout Russia, and for the most part, he was treated nearly reverently when he arrived in the country. Still, Russia was well known for the pettiness of some of its officials, particularly in the outer areas.

  And Tunguska was an outer area.

  There was a knock at the door. Sam stared at the video screen where the feed from a secret camera displayed his unwanted guests. There were five in total. Underneath his desk, he kept his hand on a Glock with a silencer. He wasn’t taking chances.

  Then he saw her face.

  If she was here, and had taken the risk of entering Russian through unofficial means, it meant that they were all in much worse danger than he’d realized.

  He opened the door and stood at attention.

  She walked in and closed the door, leaving Tom to look after her bodyguards. Pulling the dark hood off her face, she revealed the most exquisite deep red hair. Her hazel eyes had a rich opaline ring to them. And years of hard work in a dangerous world had left her with a smile that bordered on a permanent scowl.

  “Madam Secretary, are you on holiday too?”

  The Defense secretary’s scowl tightened, if that was even possible. “You know damn well what this about.”

  “The Tunguska event,” Sam replied.

  “Officially, we were never there, and I have no idea what happened in Tunguska. From what I’ve read, it was a dirty meteor, made up of predominantly gas and small fragments of stone, which allowed it to penetrate the world’s atmosphere, whereby it then broke up about five miles above the Tunguska River. The powerful downward projection of air blew more than an estimated ten million pine trees to the ground.”

  Sam listened impatiently and then said, “And unofficially?”

  “We sent a team of researchers to investigate something in that region. They never came back. So, we sent a team of soldiers in to find out what happened.”

  “And what had happened?”

  “Nearly ten million pine trees were knocked to the ground.”

  “With all due respect Ma’am, a friend of mine is missing, and I’m pretty certain it’s tied in with the Tunguska event.”

  “Really? So that’s why I was sent halfway around the globe for you this time? You’ve lost that girlfriend of yours, Dr. Swan?�
�

  “She’s been kidnapped. And the only clue about where she’s gone is her own note, leading with the GPS coordinates of Tunguska.”

  “Kidnapped, Mr. Reilly?” Her voice was patronizing in its sympathy. “You let her get kidnapped? How very careless of you.”

  “Yes, well it was a mistake letting her out of my sight. Especially after she told me what she knew.”

  “And what does she know?”

  “The location of Atlantis.”

  She paused for a few seconds. Her normally abrupt nature softened.

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Yes. If she knows the coordinates of Atlantis, then someone’s about to have a really bad day. Sam, you need to find her before she tells anyone else. It’s a matter of national security.”

  “Oh no, you don’t get to send me on an assignment just because I’ve now found something to keep you interested. First, you have to give me something. Tell me, what do you really know about Tunguska, and what does it have to do with Atlantis?”

  “I have no idea what it has to do with Atlantis, but I can tell you what I do know about Tunguska.”

  “So tell me.” She didn’t have to ask for his secrecy. He’d pledged that with his life when he’d been recruited and joined her secret taskforce years ago.

  “In 1906 a team of explorers attempted to cross the Canadian and Siberian Seas, and travel through to Moscow. On their way, they uncovered something.”

  Sam would have liked to know what they’d uncovered, but if she didn’t tell him, he wasn’t going to ask.

  “So, we sent a second team. This one was full of researchers. The Russians got wind of our operation and they wanted to be involved. When we no longer heard from the teams, Washington became concerned and sent a third team. This one was a mixture of scientists and soldiers. When they got there, they did something… and the effect of what they did resulted in what appeared to be the destruction of millions of pine trees, uprooted and lying on their sides. Local accounts talked of a strange blue light for about ten minutes emanating from the sky.”