Atlantis
( Atlantis - 1 )
Robert Doherty
By NY Times Bestselling Author Bob Mayer writing as Robert Doherty (author of the bestselling Area 51 series)
What if the Shadow that destroyed Atlantis 10,000 years ago, comes back to threaten our present world? A war beyond time. An enemy beyond space. A thriller beyond your wildest dreams.
Three areas on the Earth’s surface defy explanation: the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Sea of Japan, and a small region of Cambodia. Inside these realms, planes have disappeared, ships have vanished, and, in Cambodia, an entire civilization has been lost leaving behind Angkor Wat. In 1945, Training Flight 19 disappears in the Bermuda Triangle. In 1963, the USS Thresher, a nuclear submarine, is lost under unusual circumstances, part of a secret government investigation into mysterious gates.
Near the end of of the Vietnam War, Green Beret Eric Dane led a team of operatives deep into Cambodia and encountered a strange fog near the legendary city of Angkor Kol Ker. His entire team disappears, attacked by strange creatures out of the fog. Only Dane survives to return. Now a plane goes down. In the same area Dane lost his team. He’s called back. To find out who is the darkness behind these gates to our planet. What does this Shadow force want? It is a threat that will take on the world’s greatest military forces and defeat them. A power that will overwhelm our science and technology. A merciless enemy that will lead Dane — and the whole planet — into the final desperate battle for survival.
If you enjoyed LOST, you’ll love this book and be amazed at the similarities in concept (although this book was published before LOST).
Robert Doherty
Atlantis
About the Author
NY Times bestselling author Bob Mayer has over 50 books published. He has sold over four million books and is in demand as a team-building, life-change, and leadership speaker and consultant. Bob graduated from West Point and served in the military as a Special Forces A-Team leader and a teacher at the JFK Special Warfare Center & School. He teaches novel writing and improving the author via his Warrior-Writer program. He is the Co-Creator of Who Dares Wins Publishing. He lives on an island off Seattle and teaches at the University of Washington.
PART I: THE PAST
THE DROUGHT AD 800
ANGKOR KOL KER
It was well into the first month of the wet season but not a drop of rain had fallen. Concern in the first week had turned to fear by the fourth week. As the water level of the deep moat fell, so did the will of the occupants of the capitol city. Anxiety was spreading like a sickness from person to person and mother to babe.
The city had taken the people over five hundred years to build. Within its watery protection lay all their wealth, memories and the graves of ten generations of their ancestors. It was the most advanced and beautiful city on the face of the planet.
Thousands of miles to the west, Charlemagne was being crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the Eternal City, but this place deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia dwarfed even Rome in comparison. It was the center of kingdom extending south to about the Srivijayan Empire of Sumatra and the Shailandra Empire of Java. To the northeast, the Tang Dynasty of China ruled, while to the west, in the Middle East, the tide of Islam was rising. The capitol city of Angkor Kol Ker, the heart of the Khmer empire, held architecture the likes of which Europe would not see for half a century. But within the empire lay a Shadow-a dark place, which closed off all travel toward India and the world beyond.
The ancestors of the Khmer people had traveled halfway around the globe to avoid the shadow and for many generations they had seemingly foiled the force that had destroyed their original homeland. That place had birthed the Ones Before; the ones who knew the secrets of the Shadow. Secrets that their descendants had forgotten or remembered only as myth. But two generations ago, myth and legend reappeared in the lives of the Khmer. The Shadow had appeared in the mountainous jungle to the northwest, sometimes coming close, sometimes almost disappearing, but always stopping at the water. Now the water was disappearing.
The Emperor and his advisers gazed toward the mist-covered jungle beyond the evaporating moat knowing the Shadow had removed their choices as quickly as the sun took away the water. They spotted a fire from the guard tower on top of a northern mountain that poked above the mist. The fire burned for two nights, then went out and never came back.
The Emperor knew it was time. The Ones Before had written thousands of years ago of abandoning their home. He knew the cost of quitting the city. The Ones Before had chosen a hard thing to save the people. The next morning, the Emperor issued the order to evacuate the city.
Wagons were piled high, packs were placed on backs, and en masse, almost the entire population of the city crossed the lone causeway and trekked away to the south.
Fifty strong men remained. Warriors, standing tall, spears, swords and bows in hand, they had chosen to represent all the people of the Khmer. The would face the Shadow, so the city would not die alone. They destroyed the causeway and waited on the northern edge of the city, staring across at the dark mist that approached. It grew ever closer despite their prayers that the clouds would come overhead and rain would fall, filling the moats.
The men had been tested in battle numerous times. Against the Tang people to the northeast, and the people of the sea along the coast to the south, they had fought many battles and won most, expanding the kingdom of the Khmer. But the warriors of the Khmer had never invaded the jungle-covered mountains to the northwest. They had never within living memory gone in that direction, nor had any intrepid traveler from the lands on the other side come through.
The warriors were brave men but even the bravest's heart quavered each morning as the mist grew closer, and the water still lower. One morning they could see the stone bottom of the moat and only puddles were left, drying under the fierce sun. The moat was over four hundred meters wide and surrounded the entire rectangle of buildings and temples, stretching four miles north and south and eight miles east and west.
Inside the moat, a high stonewall enclosed the city. Over 200,000 people had called Angkor Kol Ker home, and their absence reverberated through the city, a heavy weight on the souls of the last men. The tread of the warriors’ sandals on the stone walkways echoed against the walls of the temples. Gone were the happy cries of children playing, the chants of priests, the yells of merchants in their stalls. And now even the jungle sounds were disappearing as every animal that could flee did so.
In the center of the city was the central temple, Angkor Ker. The center Prang of the temple was over five hundred feet of vertical, massive stone, a hundred feet taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza. It had taken two generations to construct and its shadow lay long over the city as the sun rose in the east, merging with the Shadow that crept closer from the west.
As the last puddle dried, tendrils of the thick mist crossed the moat. The warriors said their prayers loudly, so their voices would prove to the gathering Shadow that this was a city well loved. Angkor Kol Ker and the fifty men waited. They did not wait long.
FLIGHT 19 AD 1945
FORT LAUDERDALE AIR STATION
“Sir, I request stand-down from this afternoon's training flight.”
Captain Henderson looked up from the papers on his desk. The young man standing in front of him wore starched khakis, the insignia of a corporal in the Marine Corps sewn onto the short sleeves. On his chest were campaign ribbons dating back to Guadalcanal.
“You have a reason, Corporal Foreman?” Henderson asked. He didn't add that Lieutenant Presson, the leader of Training Flight 19 had just been in his office making the same request. Henderson had denied the officer's immediately, but Foreman was a different matter.
“What does that have to do with the flight?” Henderson asked.
Foreman paused and his stance broke slightly from the parade rest he had assumed after saluting. “Sir, I-”
“Yes?”
“Sir, I just don't feel good. I think I might be sick.”
Henderson frowned. Foreman didn't look sick. In fact his tan skin radiated health. Henderson had heard this sort of thing before, but only before combat missions, not a training flight. He looked at the ribbons on Foreman's chest, noted the Navy Cross and bit back the hasty reply that had formed on his lips.
“I need more than that,” Henderson said, softening his tone.
“Sir, I have a bad feeling about this flight.”
“A bad feeling?”
“Yes, sir.”
Henderson let the silence stretch out.
Foreman finally went on. “I had a feeling like this before. In combat.” He stopped, as if no further words were required.
Henderson leaned back in his seat, his fingers rolling his pencil end over end.
“What happened then, corporal?”
“I was on the Enterprise, sir. Back in February. We were scheduled to do an attack run off the coast of Japan. Destroy everything that was floating. I went on that mission.”
“And?”
“My entire squadron was lost.”
“Lost?”
“Yes, sir. They all disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No survivors?”
“Just my plane's crew, sir.”
“How did you get back?”
“My plane had engine trouble. The pilot and I had to bail out early. We were picked up by a destroyer. The rest of the squadron never came back. Not a plane. Not a man.”
Henderson felt a chill tickle the bare skin below his own regulation haircut. Foreman’s flat voice, and the lack of detail, bothered the captain.
“My brother was in my squadron,” Foreman continued. “He never came back. I felt bad before that flight, Captain. As bad as I feel right now.”
Henderson looked at the pencil in his hand. First, Lieutenant Presson with his feelings of unease and now this. Henderson's instinct was to give Foreman the same order he'd given the young aviator. But he looked at the ribbons one more time. Foreman had done his duty many times. Presson had never been under fire. Foreman was a gunner, so his presence would make no difference one way or the other. “All right, corporal, you can sit the flight out. But I want you to be in the tower and work the monitoring shift. Are you healthy enough to do that?”
Foreman snapped to attention. There was no look of relief on his face, just the same stoic Marine Corps stare. “Yes, sir.”
“You're dismissed.”
* * *
Lieutenant Presson tapped his compass, then pressed the intercom switch. “Give me a bearing,” he asked his radio operator, seated behind him.
“This thing's going nuts, sir. Spinning in circles.”
“Damn,” Presson muttered. He keyed his radio. “Any of you guys have a bearing?”
The pilots of the four other TBM Avengers reported a similar problem with their compasses. Presson could sense the irritation and underlying fear in some of the voices. Flight 19 had been experiencing difficulties from take off and the other crews were in training with little flight experience.
Presson looked out of his cockpit and saw only ocean. It was a clear day with unlimited visibility.
They should have been back at the airfield by now. Two hours ago they’d passed a small string of islands which he assumed were the Florida Keys. He wasn't as sure of that assumption now. This was his first training mission out of Fort Lauderdale Air Station. He had been recently transferred from Texas, and, as he stared at his wildly spinning compass, he wished he had paid more attention to their flight route.
He hadn't wanted this flight. He'd asked the Squadron Commander to replace him, but the request had been denied because Presson could give no good reason for his request. He hadn't voiced the real reason: to fly today would be a bad idea.
Well, it had been a bad idea, Presson thought to himself. And now he was beginning to question his judgment. Believing they had flown over the Keys, he'd ordered the flight to turn northeast toward the Florida Peninsula. But for the last 90 minutes, they had seen nothing but empty ocean below them. Could he have been mistaken? Could they have flown over some other islands and were they now well over the Atlantic, rather than the Gulf of Mexico like he had assumed? Where was Florida?
They had barely two hours of fuel left. He had to make an immediate decision whether to turn back, but now he couldn’t depend on his compass for a westerly heading. He glanced at the setting sun over his shoulder and knew that west was roughly behind them, but a few degrees off either way, and if Florida was behind them, they could pass south of the Keys and really end up in the Gulf. But if his original assumption had been right, then Florida should be just over the horizon ahead.
Presson bit the inside of his mouth, drawing blood but the pain was unnoticed as he struggled with the problem, knowing the wrong decision would put them all in the sea. Presson ordered his radio operator to make contact with someone, anyone, to get a fix on their position. As he waited, Presson checked his fuel gauge, the needle now on the negative downslope toward empty, and the sound of the plane's engine droning loud in his ears. He could almost sense the high octane fuel getting sucked into the carburetors and being burned, the fuel tanks growing emptier by the second.
“I've got someone,” the radio operator finally reported. “Sounds like Fort Lauderdale. Coming in broken and distorted.”
“Can they fix us?” Presson demanded.
“I'm asking them but I'm not sure they're receiving us clear, sir.”
Thirteen lives in addition to his own weighed on Presson's mind. It should have been 14, but Corporal Foreman had been excused from the flight. Presson wondered how the corporal had managed that.
Presson tried to concentrate on the present. “Come on. Get me a fix!” he yelled into the intercom.
“I'm trying, sir, but I'm not receiving anything now.”
Presson cursed. He once more looked out at the sea hoping to see something other than the endless water. And he did see something. A swirl of mist that had not been there seconds earlier. It was boiling out of the sky above the surface of the ocean several miles directly ahead, strangely bright in a sky that was turning dark with night. It was as if there was a glow deep within it. It was a yellowish white color with dark streaks running through, highlighted by the internal glow. It was several hundred yards across, billowing outward at a rapid rate.
At first Presson thought it might be a ship making smoke, but he had never seen such strange colored smoke produced by a ship before, nor had he ever seen smoke that was brighter than the surrounding sea. As the mist rapidly grew in size, Presson knew it was no ship. Whatever it was, it was directly across their flight path.
His instinct was to turn and fly around it, but with their compasses out, he feared he would lose the heading they were on. Of course he wasn't sure if their heading was taking them closer to land and safety or further away.
Those seconds Presson wasted on mental debate brought Flight 19 within a mile of the rapidly growing fog bank. It was now a wall in front of them, reaching their current flight altitude, growing at a rate that defied any man-made or natural phenomenon Presson had ever experienced.
Presson stared hard. The fog was swirling around its center. Inside of the glow, he could make out a pitch-black circle, darker than anything he had ever seen. It was like the center of a whirlpool, the mist spinning around, getting sucked in.
“Let's g
o over,” Presson called out over his radio, but he got no response. He looked around. The other four planes were in formation. He pulled back on his yoke, gaining altitude, hoping they would follow his lead, but a glance to the front told him it was too late.
He hit the edge of the mist, and then he was in.
* * *
At Fort Lauderdale, Corporal Foreman had watched Flight 19 on the radar since it had taken off. After crossing some of the western islands of the Bahamas near Bimini, the flight had inexplicably turned to the northeast, heading toward open ocean. The planes had threaded a needle, passing to the south of Grand Bahama and north of Nassau with nothing but open ocean ahead, the only land within flight range being the Bahamas to the far northeast.
At first, following the flight, Foreman had not considered that overly unusual. Perhaps Lieutenant Presson had wanted to give the other new pilots some more open ocean flying time. Flight leaders had a lot of latitude in how they trained the crews under their command.
But as the flight had strayed farther from land, neither turning back or heading directly for Bahama, Foreman had finally reacted, trying to contact them by radio. Occasionally he had picked up worried calls from the pilots but he couldn't establish contact. Foreman had radioed the Flight's location to orient them but the planes had continued heading northeast, away from land, indicating the aircraft were not receiving him.
“Flight 19, this is Fort Lauderdale Air Station,” Foreman said for the thirtieth time. “You are heading northeast. You must turn around now. Your location grid is-”
Foreman stopped in mid-sentence as the radar image of the flight simply disappeared. Foreman blinked, staring at his screen. They were too high to have crashed. He watched his screen while he kept calling out on the radio. With his free hand he picked up the phone and called Captain Henderson's office.
Within ten minutes Henderson and other officers were in the control tower, listening to silence play out the unknown fate of Flight 19. Foreman quickly brought them up to speed on what had transpired.
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