This was news to Dane. “What message?”
Foreman pulled a photo out of the file folder and pushed it across to Dane. It was an image of the sail of the Scorpion, the tower that held the periscopes and small bridge used when the sub was on the surface. Foreman slid a second picture, a close-up of the side of the sail. Something was etched in the metal, strange lines that Dane didn’t recognize. He had gotten off the submarine in the dark, cross-loading directly to a navy helicopter to be flown here. The etching must have been discovered the following morning. Below those lines was a drawing that Dane looked at for a while before he recognized that it was a map.
“What is this?”
“On top- runic writing,” Foreman said. “It took us a little while before Sin Fen saw it and was able to recognize the language and decode it. On the bottom, a map. It also took some time to determine exactly what the map was of, because the scale and details are not exactly correct- or what I should say is- correct today.”
Dane found the writing interesting and almost familiar. In between two horizontal lines, were a series of vertical and curved slashes. “What language is this?” he asked Sin Fen.
“Norse,” she answered. “The language of the Vikings.”
After all the strange things he had experienced in the past month, Dane didn’t even ask how Viking Runes ended up scratched into the metal on the side of a nuclear submarine that had disappeared for over thirty years. “What does it say?”
“This is the literal translation,” Sin Fen handed Dane a piece of paper:
HERE FIND THE SHIELD
TO DEFEAT THE VALKYRIES
AND THOSE WHO FOLLOW THE DARK ONES
I HAVE DONE MY DUTY
IT STOPS THE FORGE OF VULCAN
REVENGE ME
“Vulcan’s forge?” Dane asked.
“The power of the gods breaking through the crust of the earth,” Sin Fen said. “The Shadow might have used the instability of the Earth’s surface along the juncture of the tectonic plates to destroy Atlantis.”
“Who wrote this? Who has done his duty?” Dane asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine, but the important point is the Shield stops the power of the Shadow.”
“There’s not much more information about this Shield,” Dane noted, “as the writer.”
“The Valkyries,” Sin Fen said, “are part of Norse mythology. They were the hand-maidens of the gods and were reported to devour the flesh of the dead on the battlefield.”
“Monsters of legend,” Dane said out loud.
Sin Fen nodded. “You ran into the seven-headed Naga of Khmer legend in the Angkor gate. And other strange creatures. It appears there is more truth to the Valkyries than simply legend.”
Dane looked at the sheet. “‘And those who follow the dark ones’? Does that mean those who follow the Valkyries? Or humans who worship them?”
“That’s not clear,” Sin Fen said. “There are only sixteen characters in the runic alphabet. And it was not used very extensively so there isn’t a great body of work to draw upon to even be sure the translation is correct.”
“Great,” Dane said.
“According to legend,” Sin Fen added, “the runic alphabet was given to the Vikings by the god Odin. The word run means mystery, so even the Vikings might not have been too sure about their own written language. Modern scholars aren’t certain where or how it originated, but they have noted some similarities between Vikings runes and the runes used by other ancient cultures.”
Dane put two and two together. “So the runic language might have come from Atlantis?”
“That is possible,” Sin Fen said. “Of course, by the time of the Vikings, the original writing was probably greatly corrupted and simplified. The height of the Viking expansion was about 11,000 years after the great dispersion from Atlantis. That’s a long time for a language to survive, even in a bastardized form.”
“Where is the here’ the message refers to?” Dane asked.
“That’s the other strange thing,” Foreman said. “Someone went to a great deal of trouble to etch that map into the metal. God knows how long it took but it appears to have been done by hand with an edged tool.”
“Where was the crew of the Scorpion while this was being done to their ship?” Dane asked.
Foreman shrugged. “Where was the crew of the Scorpion for the past thirty-one years? To them no time passed between going into the Bermuda Triangle and coming out.”
“Maybe they weren’t on board the ship,” Dane wondered out loud.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly what happened,” Foreman said. “What is important right now is what they came back with- this map.”
“Are you sure that’s all they came back with?” Dane asked.
“The ship’s in quarantine at the Groton sub pens, being gone through with a fine-tooth comb to try to figure out what happened to it,” Foreman said. He tapped the photo, bringing attention back to the map. “It isn’t exact, at least according to what we know now, but it’s rather remarkable if it’s the work of someone who only could write in runes which means the message is probably over a thousand years old, but the ship is only thirty.”
To Dane’s eyes there was something wrong about the map, though. The proportions were off and he couldn’t get oriented on the continents.
Foreman reached into the file and pulled out another sheet of paper. “This is called Piri Reis’s map. It dates back to the sixteenth century. Compare the two.”
Dane slid the paper next to the photograph. “They’re almost identical.”
“Yes,” Sin Fen said. “Which raises another problem. The Piri Reis map was drawn at Constantinople in 1513 by an Admiral in the Turkish Navy. It emphasizes the west coast of Africa, the east coast of South America ending in the Caribbean and the northern coast of Antarctica. Which is intriguing given that Antarctica wasn’t discovered until 1818. Not only that, but the Piri Reis map and the map drawn on the Scorpion both show an Antarctica without ice covering it. The last time that Antarctica wasn’t covered by ice, as near scientists can tell is at the latest, four thousand BC and mostly likely much earlier than that.”
Dane leaned back in his seat and looked down at Chelsea. She pushed her head against his thigh, her golden eyes regarding him calmly in return. He envied the dog her ignorance and the innocence that stemmed from that. “How can that be?” he asked Sin Fen.
“Piri Reis, in his notes, readily admits that he didn’t survey the map himself, but rather copied it from other maps. It appears that the ancient seafarers had a much more extensive knowledge of the world than we have ever suspected. At least some of them did. Much of that knowledge was lost when the great library at Alexandria was burned and sacked.
“What is also strange,” Sin Fen continued, “is that the map shows the use of longitudinal coordinates, something that wasn’t invented- at least we thought wasn’t invented- until the 18th century.”
“Why Antarctica?” Dane asked. “Why would a map be centered around that continent?”
“Perhaps because that is where Atlantis was,” Sin Fen said. Before Dane could say another word she continued. “Albert Einstein had a theory about this- I know, you’ve never heard of it, but trust me, it is true. He believed that Antarctica was ice-free about 12,000 years ago because it wasn’t centered on the south pole as it is now. Rather it was further north in the center of the Atlantic.”
“You’re joking, right?” Dane asked. “How the hell did it move to its present location?”
“I’m not saying this is fact,” Sin Fen said. “But who am I to argue with a theory of Albert Einstein’s? He called the process by which it moved earth-crust-displacement’ and scientists we have consulted say there is something to his concept. It also ties in with the theory of plate tectonics- which is accepted by scientists as fact today- which ties together with the Shadow scanning the lines of tectonic faults.
“If Atlantis was originally located in the Atlantic, it
was over the juncture of four major tectonic plates. That meant it wasn’t solidly anchored to the planet beneath it. It would have taken a tremendous amount of energy, but it is possible that the land was ripped free, maybe even completely submerged, before drifting- and drifting is a rather weak word for what happened as we’re not talking about drifting on water, but rather on the magna of the planet below- to its current location at the south pole.
“Antarctica, the land itself, is now actually below sea level. Most of it is covered by a layer of ice several miles thick. It’s only recently that we’ve mapped what the land underneath the ice looked like and it looks a hell of a lot like what’s shown in this map.”
“Is this Shield in Antarctica?” Dane asked.
“No,” Foreman said. “Note the rune marking on the map right here. It is the Viking symbol for weapon.” He reached across the table and tapped the photograph. “We correlated that with the Piri Map and with current maps. That spot is right on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle gate. Just north of the western tip of Puerto Rico.”
“Then what is the connection between that site and Atlantis?” Dane asked.
“We don’t know that yet,” Foreman said. “Although it’s possible this site was between Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle gate which would be the logical location for a shield.”
“This site is in the water?” Dane asked.
“It appears so,” Sin Fen said.
“And?” Dane said.
“We think that spot is very important,” Foreman said. “It is along the line where the Caribbean tectonic plate intersects with the North American plate and close to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which is formed by the North American Plate meeting the Eurasian and African Plates.”
“Have you checked it out?” Dane asked.
“We’ve done satellite imagery of it,” Foreman said. “Just ocean on the surface. Nothing there. What we’re looking for must be below the surface. I’m having some other special checks run that might tell us something more, but there’s nothing like having someone put a set of eyeballs on it.”
“I ran a reconnaissance for you once before,” Dane said, “and everyone who went with me died or disappeared.”
“We have a better idea what we’re dealing with now,” Foreman said.
“Do we?” Dane retorted.
There was the buzz of a cellular phone. Foreman pulled one out of his pocket and flipped it opened. “Foreman.”
Dane studied the map wondering who would have taken the time and the energy to scratch it into the metal on the submarine.
After a terse acknowledgment, Foreman flipped the phone shut. “I have to go to the War Room immediately.” Foreman stood, abruptly ending the meeting. “Sin Fen will accompany you.”
Chelsea had gotten to her feet, her head pressed against Dane’s side. Dane ran a hand through her golden hair. “Accompany me where?”
Foreman was gathering up his files, stuffing them in the briefcase. “To the indicated spot, of course. To find this Shield.”
“But-” Dane began, but Foreman cut him off with a wave of the cell phone.
“That was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Tilson. A Trident II missile, obviously from the Wyoming, was fired out of the Bermuda Triangle gate twenty minute ago. The warheads impacted in the center of the Atlantic Ocean along the North Atlantic Ridge- where the tectonic plates meet. All eight warheads detonated. We’re still assessing what effect they had.”
“Is the Shadow attacking?” Dane asked.
Foreman shook his head. “We think it was a test.” He headed for the door. “Remember, they have twenty-three more Tridents with one hundred and eighty four nukes left to carry out an all out assault.”
Chapter 2
THE PAST
THE WORLD APPROACHING
THE FIRST MILLENNIUM
998 AD
A city that had taken an entire race of people five hundred years to build had been overrun in one night two centuries ago. Located in the northern highlands of Cambodia, Angkor Kol Ker had been the center of a magnificent kingdom extending south to about the Srivijayan Empire of Sumatra and the Shailandra Empire of Java. To the northeast, the Tang Dynasty of China had ruled, while to the west, in the Middle East, the tide of Islam had begun to rise.
The capitol city of Angkor Kol Ker, the heart of the Khmer empire, had held architecture the likes of which Europe would not see for half a century. In the center of the city, a massive temple had been built stone by stone, with a center Prang, or tower, over five hundred feet high. Around it, homes and businesses were constructed, all secure inside a fourteen foot high wall surrounding the entire complex, over eight miles long by four miles wide. Outside of the wall, a moat over four hundred yards wide added protection. But those noble efforts of man had not been enough to stop the enemy that came.
A Shadow had invaded through a strange gate in the very fabric of the planet. A dense fog covered the city and the surrounding terrain. No man had set foot inside that fog in almost two hundred years and those who had remained to defend the city against the Shadow had never been seen again by those who fled.
The survivors of the Khmer kingdom had reestablished to the south at Angkor Thom and tried to regain some of their former glory by building the great temple of Angkor Wat, but the reestablished kingdom was a remnant of its former self, already on the road to decay.
The ancestors of the Khmer people had once 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 until the new gate opened upon their city. Their home before Cambodia had been the legacy of the ancient ones; the ones who knew the secrets of the Shadow and the Ones Before. Secrets that their descendants had forgotten or remembered only as myth.
On the edge of the Shadow’s fog a lone woman named Tam Nok now stood in an abandoned guard house made of large blocks of finely fit stone. The guard house was high on a ridge-line overlooking the fog that delineated the edges of the gate. But the fog, normally a swirling grayish yellow mixture, was now very dark, almost black and more solid than anyone remembered since fleeing Angkor Kol Ker.
Tam Nok stared out over the jungle, at the unearthly fog, toward where she knew the city lay. She was a priestess from Angkor Wat, taught all the knowledge that remained in the Khmer’s collective memory of the Ones Before and the Shadow. Sadly, and dangerously, that knowledge was incomplete. She had traveled here on foot to see the Shadow for herself and because the first stop of her journey lay inside the darkness in front of her.
Tam Nok was tall and slender, wrapped in a finely woven black cloak with red trim. Her eyes were slanted, her skin dark brown. Her black hair was cut short for functionality rather than style. At her waist a dagger hung in a sheath and on her back was a leather pack, containing what she would need to begin her journey. A bamboo case stuck out the top of the pack, both ends corked with a piece of wood. Inside lay precious documents, handed down through generations of priestesses.
Looking at the darkness, the priestess accepted one thing: the end was coming. The end for every living thing on the planet. The writings of the ancient ones indicated that the signs they were now seeing indicated they were approaching the point where danger would come again. The presence of the Shadow, darker than ever before over Angkor Kol Ker backed up those writings. The Earth was rumbling every so often, giving warning that the gods underneath were disturbed. There had been a great explosion in the ocean to the southeast. Ash had fallen for days afterward and a dark cloud darkened the day. The sky was still red as the sun set every night.
The writings handed down about the Ones Before said there was a way to survive, to fight back against the Shadow. But again, unfortunately, the writings were not complete. There was a Shield that the ancient ones had been given by the Ones Before. A Shield that worked against the creatures and beings in a gate. That could even shut a gate. But the Shield had been lost in a great battle, lost whe
re the Khmer’s ancestors had come from. The ancient ones had won the battle but in the process lost their home and much of their knowledge and most especially, the Shield they had used to win the battle. Tam Nok would have to travel back the way they had come to search for it and the path was long and hard and she was uncertain of exactly where it was she was to go. She only knew where she was to start from.
On each corner of the guardhouse was a statue of a Naga- the seven-headed snake from the creation myth of the Khmer. The Khmer who did not honor the Ones Before. Who had lost the truth in the telling of the story over the years dissolving into legend. Even among the priests and priestesses, Tam Nok was aware that much of what she had been told had to be viewed warily to separate fact from fiction.
The inside walls of the guardhouse were covered with carvings and drawing. Some the scratchings of bored soldiers, but other markings obviously the work of skilled artisans. They told parts of the history of the Khmer, stretching back to the ancients’ ones and the Ones Before.
Tam Nok had been here four days studying the writing and drawings. According to the words, the Khmer had established Angkor Kol Ker, the city now abandoned in the fog, over five thousand years ago. The ancient ones had come from an island located in the sea beyond the sea. That had caused Tam Nok to sit and think. There was a great sea to the east, one that no sailor in known memory had ever crossed. To think there a sea beyond the land that no one had ever gone to caused her some concern, because she knew that her destination lay far away.
According to the writing, her ancestors left their island to escape the Shadow. They traveled far before settling here. And for many generations they thought they had succeeded in their evasion. And because of that feeling, much ancient wisdom had slowly been forgotten. And then the Shadow had come here.
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