Emerald

by Brian January

  Something in his gut lurched.

  Instead of swimming to the aft end of the ship to be hauled out by the crane, she was staying in place, hanging onto the side of the ship. Inside her helmet, her head was tilted up, her face rigid.

  A shadow fell over him and he looked up.

  Two men in black stood above him, aiming their assault rifles at him over the gunwale.

  Jaz’s men.

  A thought flashed through his brain: he could fire the thrusters, dropping down into the depths of the sea before the men let loose with a barrage of slugs.

  But he stayed frozen in place.

  Because Jaz was standing there, too, her mouth split wide by her evil grin.

  And she was jamming the barrel of a Colt ACP into Flinders’ mouth.

  FORTY-SIX

  WITH a shiver of pleasure, Jaz drove the gun barrel deeper down Flinders’ throat, causing her to choke and gag.

  “You love it, don’t you, cutie?” she cooed in her ear.

  Flinders squirmed, desperately trying to back her head away from the pistol.

  Snarling, Skarda tried to step forward to swing his arm at her, but the heavy suit, no longer buoyed by the water, was almost immobile. Having dragged them out of the water, Jaz’s men had removed their helmets, but their bodies were still encased in the bulky ADS suits.

  His face purpled in frustration. “Get your hands off her!”

  With a violent wrench, Jaz threw Flinders to the deck. Immediately, rifles covered her. She marched up to Skarda and grinned in his face. “I’ve got to say, handsome, you are good! You just keep staying alive. I’m actually impressed.”

  Up close, he could see the slabs of muscle bulging on her neck and the black hairs sprouting from her nose and ears. It made his stomach roil.

  “You’re a freak,” he snarled.

  Jaz threw her head back and laughed. “You better believe it, handsome! Freaky!…freaky!…freaky!” She wiggled her butt back and forth. “Just ask your little girlfriend over there.”

  Sprawled on the deck, Flinders stared up at him, close to tears.

  His eyes bored holes into Jaz’s face. Past her shoulder he could see a Bavaria Yachtbau Sport 33 rocking hove-to on the starboard hull, the pilot still at the wheel. Skarda realized what had happened: Flinders would have thought they were just pleasure boaters. They would have boarded the dive ship completely by surprise.

  Jamming the Colt into her waistband, Jaz uncoupled the video camera from Skarda’s shoulder, then attached it to a laptop and downloaded the files of the U-boat’s interior. When she saw the bars resting inside the open cases, she barked out a triumphant laugh. “Sweet!”

  The sound of an approaching boat engine reached Skarda’s ears. He looked north, seeing a big yacht plowing through the light chop toward them, an eighty-foot Feretti, its bright white fiberglass hull gleaming in the sunshine.

  As the yacht slowed and drew closer, Skarda could make out the figure of a man, dressed in a business suit, standing on the flying bridge. A moment later he disappeared. Then a black-and-red Hov Pod hovercraft shot out from the stern of the yacht, bouncing over the wavelets towards the dive boat, its polyethylene body gliding effortlessly over the flat surface of the sea. The man sat in its bow section, while a pilot in a white epaulet shirt steered.

  Jaz swung around, unperturbed by the approach of the newcomer. Shakily, Flinders climbed to her feet, throwing a fearful glance at Skarda. Then she turned, watching the Hov Pod swing hove-to against the hull of the boat. The man clambered on deck.

  Flinders stared, her jaw sagging open. “Daddy?” She ran toward the man, but a commando grabbed her, throwing an arm around her shoulders and pinning her in place. “Daddy!”

  Paying no attention to her, Jonathan Belisarius strode forward, walking across the deck as though he’d been born on a ship.

  “Daddy!” Flinders struggled, but her guard kept her pinned in place. “I thought you were dead!” Her face was the color of ashes.

  Belisarius ignored her. As the man got closer, Skarda could see the horrible red and purple scars that had mutilated his face. The skin on the ends of his fingers was black.

  The older man crossed the deck to Jaz, who stuck out her tongue and licked his cheek like a cat. “Hello, lover,” she purred.

  “What’s going on?” Flinders asked. Her voice was a choked scream. “Daddy? It’s me, Flinders!

  “Keep her quiet,” Belisarius ordered.

  Jaz sprang at Flinders, grabbing her jaw and forcing her mouth closed. Then again she threw her to the deck.

  Belisarius indicated Skarda and April. “These are the two that have been causing us all the trouble?”

  “You got it. But they found the bars. You were right. They’re on the U-boat.”

  “You have proof?”

  She indicated the laptop screen. Belisarius peered at it, then gave a cold nod.

  “All right. We have what we want. Get rid of them.”

  Jaz jabbed a finger at Flinders. “What about her?”

  “Her, too.”

  Flinders gaped. “Daddy! Daddy! Why are you doing this?”

  The older man had moved to the gunwale, looking down at the sea.

  “Daddy!”

  With sudden fury he whirled on her. “Shut up!”

  She took a step back, the words hitting her like a slap.

  April spoke up, her voice quiet and level. “He shot your mother.”

  The blood drained from Flinders’ face, her expression stunned, incredulous. “What—?”

  For a few long seconds Belisarius glared at her, his eyes drained of any trace of humanity. Then he spoke. “I traced the route of the U-boat to Ostrov Gukera, figuring the Nazis would have used the base Byrd recorded in his diary to experiment with the energy potential of the Vril. But the war ended and they decided to sink the bars here until the time the Third Reich would rise again. But for some reason, they weren’t able to transport all the bars, so they left a large number of them on the island, which we found.” His lips drew back in a savage snarl. “Your mother was a fool. She wanted to turn the bars over to the government. She didn’t see that we could make millions selling them.”

  “So you killed her?”

  “I carried the bars by hand to an abandoned hangar at Tikhaya Station. It took me days. In twenty-five degrees below zero temperature. This is what it cost me.” He stabbed a finger at his ruined face. Then he held up his blackened fingers. “And these!”

  “You killed my mother?”

  Belisarius just stared at her with his glacial eyes, bleak and desolate.

  Finally he turned his back on her. “Get rid of them,” he ordered Jaz.

  With the fury of a sudden storm, the expression on Flinders’ face changed from stunned shock to unrestrained rage. “You bastard!” she spat at her father, erupting from the deck and lunging at him, screaming and kicking.

  But Belisarius stepped out of her path and made a motion. Jaz grabbed her roughly, spinning her around and shoving her at Skarda and April.

  Her chest heaving, Flinders glared at the blonde woman with cold fury.

  Jaz ran a hand over her face, considering. “Now…what would be a fun way to send you three off?” she wondered aloud.

  From the northeast came the pulsing throb of a helicopter rotor. Jaz spun around, squinting into the sun.

  Belisarius turned, seeing the chopper flying low over the surface of the water and approaching fast, directly at them. He swung around to Jaz. “Who are they?”

  “That’s the Mi-25 that’s been dogging us.”

  April glanced at Skarda. He saw the look in her eyes and flashed her a half-grin. Any enemy of our enemy is our friend.

  “Do we have any more firepower?” Belisarius asked.

  Jaz shook her head solemnly. “Nope. They outgun us a million to one. We’re going to have to play it by ear.”

  With an angry snarl, Belisarius watched the attack helicopter charge toward the ship.

  T
he Mi-25 zoomed closer, growing bigger and more menacing, the storm of its rotor wash beating down the surface of the sea in an exploding wall of spray. Finally the pilot hovered over the bow deck, tilting the nose to aim its full load of armaments at the dive ship. The fuselage door slid open, and two men tossed out a pilot ladder that unfurled, jerking spasmodically in the downdraft. At the top of the ladder Zandak appeared, climbing down quickly. Then he stood on deck, holding the ladder in place while another man descended.

  Tomilin.

  The Senator walked briskly across the deck toward Belisarius. “Hello, Belisarius,” he said.

  Surprise twitched across the older man’s face. “You. I know your voice.”

  “Me,” the Senator affirmed. “Senator Austin Tomilin. It’s better to finally meet in person rather than talk through a secure line in the back of a limo, don’t you think?”

  Belisarius stared. “Don’t tell me I’ve been selling my bars to the American government!”

  “Hardly.”

  “Daddy?” Flinders gaped at him. “You’ve been selling the orichalcum to these people?”

  The Senator regarded her, showing her a condescending smile. “Of course he has. In fact, I just paid him to sink a cache of them on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.”

  More men in red jumpsuits were climbing down from the helicopter, including Pakosz and Macek, fanning out in a semi-circle when they hit the deck, with Zandak at point. He gestured at Jaz with his AK-47. She and her men threw their weapons to the deck.

  At this Belisarius eyed Tomilin coldly, tossing a hand in the direction of the Mi-25. “You’re in this with the Russians? You really think they’re going to let an American get his hands on their oil? They’re greedy fools, but they have a rather impressive army to back them up.”

  That earned a loud laugh from Tomilin. “Oil? This isn’t about oil! It’s about drowning the world, the same way our ancient homeland was inundated thousands of years ago. What myth has come to call Atlantis.”

  The older man stared. “You can’t be serious.”

  Tomilin’s gaze was implacable. “I couldn’t possibly be more serious. The ancient gods punished the people of Atalatarte for their greed and corruption, drowning them in a great deluge.” He waved a hand at Zandak and his men. “Like me, all these men are descendants of the survivors of the Atlantean flood, as evidenced by their DNA. It will be their descendants who will repopulate the world after the new flood. But this time it won’t be the gods who cause the world to drown. It will be us. We are the new gods of this world.”

  “You’re insane.”

  The Senator shrugged. “I’m practical. The Earth as we know it today is doomed. Human beings are nothing but cockroaches, multiplying at an unstoppable rate and consuming all the resources of this planet. The human species is an evolutionary dead end, on the fast track for extinction. Someone has to stop the process and start over before it’s too late. Before the Earth is stripped of all its resources.”

  “Melting the polar ice isn’t going to flood the entire world,” Skarda said.

  Tomilin turned to him, lifting a supercilious eyebrow. “Not by itself, no. That’s why we’ve already sunk bars—kindly supplied by Mr. Belisarius—in all the major oceans, plus the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, the Nile, the Ganges…” He broke off, flourishing at the water surrounding them. “And now, thanks to you, the Black Sea as well. Just imagine…Britain, the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards of America, the coasts of mainland Europe, Africa, South America, Japan, China, India—all hit by hundred-foot-tall tsunamis and submerged under two hundred feet of water. The farmlands of middle America and central Europe flooded out as the land surface is drowned. Volcanoes chain-reacting all over the globe, which will themselves trigger massive earthquakes. Disease and famine will be widespread.”

  Flinders stared at him, her jaw dropping. “You’re talking about murdering millions of innocent people!”

  Skarda fixed him with a cold stare. “You still have to set the bars off,” he pointed out. “You’re going to need powerful lasers.”

  “That’s why I set up the DRO,” the Senator said. “The United States government funded the building of four modified NROL-14 satellites, each equipped with a COIL laser. Lasers that I control. The Atlanteans should be positioning them into the correct orbits now. Ironic, isn’t it? The American taxpayers paid for the gallows that will hang them all.

  “So while the rest of the world disappears under the waves, we, the hand-picked chosen survivors, will be safe in a fortress on Mount Tavrida, high above the Crimean Peninsula. On a neighboring mountain, Roman-Kosh, there will be food stores and women selected for their Atlantean DNA, so when the waters subside, the repopulating of the Earth can begin.”

  Skarda’s face set in grim lines. “You are insane.”

  The Senator’s laugh was chilling. “I’m a realist. And I like to be on the winning side.”

  Skarda’s eyes narrowed to blue slits. “We’re going to stop you,” he said quietly.

  Tomilin dismissed him with an indifferent shrug. “No one’s going to stop us. At any rate, it certainly isn’t going to be you.” He turned to Zandak and nodded. “I guess there’s no reason not to start the extinction process right now.”

  Zandak lifted his rifle. At his gesture, his men stepped forward, bringing their Kalashnikovs to bear on the captives.

  “I have more bars,” Belisarius said in a flat voice.

  For a moment, Tomilin studied him curiously, his cold gaze shrouded with distrust. “I think you’re lying,” he said finally. “You sold us the last of your bars.”

  Belisarius’ lips drew back in a greedy smile. “That’s what I wanted you to think. Scarcity puts a premium on any remaining bars. Besides, I have the Emerald Tablet.”

  Tomilin’s head snapped up. “You have the Tablet?”

  Skarda saw an emotion skitter across the man’s face and vanish just as quickly.

  It looked like raw greed.

  Narrowing his eyes, Belisarius judged the man’s reaction. “I have it. If you let me join you, I’ll give it to you as a gesture of good faith. But I’ll keep the location of the bars secret as a bargaining chip.”

  Again the Senator studied him. At last his face set in decision. “Done. But when the flood subsides, you leave.”

  Belisarius nodded his assent. “Fair enough.” He gestured at Jaz. “My associate comes along, too.”

  Tomilin took in her bloated, acne-pocked face, making no effort to disguise his revulsion. “She won’t be allowed in the breeding population.”

  Jaz threw her head back laughed out loud. “I’m in no shape to breed with anybody, honey!” She took a step toward Belisarius as Tomilin dropped his hand in a slicing motion.

  Zandak’s men raised their rifles, stitching a line of bullets across the chests of Jaz’s crew, the heavy slugs punching through their body armor at close range. Their corpses slammed against the gunwale and flopped to the deck.

  Watching in horror in the Sport 33, the pilot reacted instantly, ramming the throttle forward and spinning the wheel. The boat surged forward, its bow lifting out of the water.

  The Mi-25 pivoted around. Its four-barreled Gatling gun stuttered, letting loose a fusillade of 12.7mm rounds that exploded into the stern, shredding it to pieces. The pilot’s body danced, jerking left to right as the bullets cut his torso in half. Thirty seconds later the motor yacht was a shattered hulk listing to starboard in a spreading pool of marine fuel.

  A rocket zoomed from the chopper’s wing pod. The remains of the Sport 33 exploded in a gush of flame and black smoke, the stench of burning fuel thick in the air.

  Jaz swung around to Skarda.

  He fought down a surge of panic. Flinders was free, but he and April were encased in the nearly immobile diving suits. There was no escape.

  He glanced over at April, but her face was impassive, her eyes locked on Jaz.

  Zandak stepped forward to Tomilin, gesturing at Flinders. “She can t
ranslate the ancient language. She might be useful.”

  “All right,” he agreed.

  Belisarius turned to Jaz. “We go back to the castle, then we’ll join them in Crimea in a few hours.”

  “Can I take her with us?” Jaz purred, her voice thick with lust as she contemplated Flinders. “There’s still a lot of time for fun. You don’t care what I do to your daughter, do you?”

  “I couldn’t possibly care less,” Belisarius said in an emotionless voice.