Ancients (event group thriller)

by David L. Golemon

  "We just received word that the first element of Morning Thunder cleared the runway at 0345 hours," the captain said.

  General Hamilton sipped his coffee and looked out at the calm Mediterranean. He did not respond at first, only nodded. He knew that if their ploy didn't work, the landing force would not only have to deal with a stiff land defense, they would have to dodge an attack from the air.

  "Thank you, Captain." He placed his coffee on the arm of the large chair. "Signal Nassau, Casper the Friendly Ghost has levitated."

  "Aye, sir. Should we also signal Backdoor that Morning Thunder is off the ground?"

  "If Colonel Collins started out on time and they're where they should be, he and my marines won't be able to receive you." He looked at the captain and shook his head. "Backdoor is on its own. No message."

  The captain saw that the general was off in his own world, worrying over the time-worn problems of how to kill your fellow man without losing too many of your own, or of your enemy. The captain knew that very few men in the violent history of the world had ever found out how to do that.

  USS CHEYENNE (SSN 773)

  LOS ANGELES-CLASS ATTACK SUBMARINE

  The third piece of the surprise was the Cheyenne. The Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine had entered the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar three hours before and had run at flank speed until she reached her initial point. The captain of the Cheyenne, Peter Burgess, had received his orders the night before and was baffled as to why his boat was ordered to the relatively quiet Mediterranean when the world was getting ready to tear itself apart on the other side of the planet. Then he read the coded orders and his anger became an uneasy self-rebuke. The Cheyenne was ordered to launch all twelve of her Tomahawk cruise missiles at the island of Crete at exactly 0600. All twelve Tomahawks would be air-burst HE (high explosive) shots.

  As he brought the Cheyenne up to periscope depth, he knew that whatever enemy was at those coordinates when the cruise missiles arrived was in for a major hurt.

  "XO, open doors on vertical tubes one through twelve and spool up the birds."

  125 MILES INSIDE THE ATLANTIAN ACCESS TUNNEL

  The second element of Operation Backdoor was cooling its heels. For the past thirty minutes they had been at a standstill, since Everett had called Jack and told him that they had a major blockage of the passage and would have to blow an ancient magma flow from the tiled roadway.

  While they waited, Sarah took pictures of the tunnel and its ornate wonders that depicted Atlantis in mosaic relief throughout the gateway. There were scenes of teachers instructing the young. Some depicted great battles fought with barbaric people; most brutal of all were the scenes showing the barbarity toward the lesser people of the world.

  "Looks like these people were a little harsh on their neighbors," Mendenhall said as he saw the mosaic of slaves as they went about harsh work in the fields and buildings of Atlantis.

  "It was a different world for those people. To be as advanced as they were, they had to have existed for at least ten or fifteen thousand years. As for their obvious brutality ..." Sarah remembered that Mendenhall always looked at such things this from a base point of view. Either you were good or you were bad. There was never, ever anything in between.

  "What do you suppose those are?" Collins asked, coming up from behind.

  Sarah saw where he was pointing. She walked over to Collins, bent down, and placed her hand over one of many crystals about two feet in diameter placed into the tiled walls about five feet up from the cobbled floor.

  "They look like lights," Collins ventured.

  "Hey, the colonel is brighter than I thought," Sarah quipped.

  Collins looked at her expressionlessly.

  Sarah cleared her throat and then took out a small hammer and chipped away at the clay tile around the crystal. She finally managed to pop it free and held it in her hands.

  "See, it's been beveled into this shape--very efficient for amplifying light. It would have taken very little electricity to ignite this filament here." She probed a small copper wire attached to a larger one running through the tiled wall.

  "Electricity again?" Jack asked.

  "Yes. These people were as active as ConEd."

  "If they were so smart, how come they didn't have a train running down here?"

  Sarah didn't answer Jack's question because she was thinking. Suddenly she pushed the light crystal into his hands and then ran to the back of one of the two-ton trucks and removed a spare battery from the back. She relieved Jack of the crystal and ripped free the thicker copper line, part of which was so old that it crumbled in her hand. She laid the crystal aside, opened up her battery-operated flashlight, and emptied the batteries out, then unscrewed the lens cap. She easily popped free the two small wires and then attached them to the copper line that ran chainlike to the other crystals embedded in the walls. Then she kneeled by the battery and hesitated. She split the flashlight wires farther apart until each end could reach a battery post and then she attached them.

  Jack was amazed when the crystals in line lit up like a row of Christmas lights until they disappeared down the long tunnel.

  "Uh, did someone trip the house alarm?" Everett asked over the radio.

  Jack smiled and raised his radio. "Advance one, that's a negative. We had one of our electricians just throw a breaker switch," Collins answered, just as they heard and felt a rumble from below.

  "Understood. Get your team moving. We just cleared the road down here, continuing on."

  Jack clicked his radio twice and ordered everyone to the vehicles. Then he looked at Sarah with his left brow raised.

  "Think you're pretty smart, don't you?"

  She batted her eyelashes, smiled, and then moved off.

  Jack shook his head and ran to his vehicle. He raised his radio. "Captain, we have to push it. Things are going to start going boom pretty soon."

  ATLANTIS

  "You think this is a waste of time?" Tomlinson asked Caretaker without turning around to face him.

  They watched the engineers clearing the last of the debris from the entrance to the Empirium Chamber.

  "I have no comment one way or the other, sir."

  "Then why don't you go eat some cheese and drink a glass of wine with the others?"

  "I have no taste for such things."

  "Mr. Tomlinson, we are through the outer wall of the Empirium Chamber," the lead engineer said as he removed his hard hat and wiped sweat from his brow. "We have four men inside setting up some klieg lighting; we still may have a very unstable situation in there. In addition, we may have found another extensive cave system under the building. My echo-sound people tell me it goes down at least a mile and a quarter."

  Tomlinson looked from the engineer to the set of twenty-foot-tall bronze doors that had bowed when the Empirium had collapsed. He could wait no longer. He ducked his head and entered the fifteen-thousand-year-old structure.

  "Is he crazy? I told him it may be unstable," the engineer said to Caretaker as he approached the Empirium.

  Caretaker's face was neutral as he looked into the blackness beyond the doorway. He had been watching Tomlinson closely ever since he had demolished his home in Chicago. The signs were small and had not been noticed by the others, but he had seen a change in the usually unflappable Tomlinson. When he spoke, his eyes moved too quickly from person to person, as if he was waiting for the first sign of disagreement from them. Caretaker believed that the pressure was mounting for the new Coalition leader. This seemingly obsessive desire to enter the old seat of the Atlantean government was just the latest. He smiled and looked at the engineer.

  "Unstable may be the operative word," he said to himself as he followed Tomlinson inside.

  The large lights cast eerie shadows on the broken columns and marble that lay crushed beneath most of the collapsed ceiling. A few of his archaeologists and paleontologists started filtering in to look at this marvel of history.

 
Tomlinson had to smirk when Caretaker ran one of his hands across an overturned marble table and grimaced at the millennia of dust.

  "I always said you could never trust a man that didn't like getting dirty once in a while."

  Caretaker did not bother to look at Tomlinson. "Is that what you say? Well, here is what I say: I believe you should be working on finalizing this last assault of yours and not out sightseeing."

  "Can't you feel it? Where else but here could the power of this civilization be governed but the Great Empirium of Atlantis?"

  "If we don't use the Wave soon, this just may be the only place you are allowed to govern."

  Tomlinson knew that Caretaker was right. With his new feeling of rejuvenation, he looked around one last time at the Empirium Chamber, not noticing the skeletal form at his feet or the broken marble tile that hid the secret entrance to the underground world beneath.

  THE ATLANTEAN ACCESS TUNNEL

  Fifteen thousand years of leakage had formed long stalactites that hung from the high ceiling, each dripping with water that found a way in through course rock and magma from the Mediterranean, two miles above their heads.

  Sarah and the other scientists back at Group had been right: in the three hours they had been in the great tunnel, Carl and his SEAL teams had come across numerous parts of the outer islands--the three great rings that had guarded the capital. There were large and small pieces of great columns, bathhouses, petrified trees, and roadways, all interspersed with giant deposits of ancient molten rock that made the landscape they had come across look like vast lakes of rippling water. The upheaval and death throes of this civilization had been of such violence that Everett could only imagine.

  The inefficient lights provided them with horrific views of the cataclysm. Skeletal remains were everywhere, half buried or crushed by the very island they had lived on. It was as if the place had folded up and over the capital, and then the whole mass had sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean.

  "Captain, you have to see this," the SEAL lieutenant said as he approached. "This operation is done."

  Carl quickly saw the reason for his dire comment. Standing in front of them, blocking their way, were the entire outer edges of the city of Atlantis rising four hundred feet into the air. Their way was blocked.

  THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The president was watching the C-SPAN coverage of the special UN meeting. He watched the Russian ambassador to the United Nations present their case.

  As photos of the aircraft parts from the downed Boeing 777 were shown from an easel, he was reminded of the Cuban missile crisis, only this time it was the Russians who had the sympathy of the body politic. The president winced at the way his government had been set up.

  "Our pull-back didn't convince anyone. All it did was corner our men into a tighter situation than before. Now we have a million refugees on the roads south from Seoul, clogging up reinforcements, and at the first sign of an offensive move, which I am compelled to order, the Chinese will rush across the border just like in 1947."

  "We have to invite the Russians and Chinese in," Niles said, looking at the president.

  "What?"

  "Our KH-11 is over the Med; when we hit Crete, we have to get the Russians and Chinese to watch what's going on."

  "What makes you think they don't have a spy bird over right now and just don't care what we're doing?"

  "Because if they did, they would know our evidence is linked to what's going on. They're smart enough to see what is happening if it's right there before their eyes. Mr. President, if the Russians and Chinese really wanted to believe Kim or the evidence they have, they wouldn't wait, they would have hit us already. They want to believe us."

  The president snapped off the television.

  "You know what's happening better than anyone. If I can get you into a room with the Russian and Chinese delegations and get a live feed to you, can you convince them? I mean really convince them?"

  Niles removed his glasses and shook his head. "I can sure as hell try."

  205 MILES INSIDE THE ATLANTEAN ACCESS TUNNEL

  Jack looked at the mountain of rubble before him strewn with giant boulders, parts of the island and most of a city or small village comprising its bulk. As he examined the wall before him, he even saw three of four ancient wooden ships.

  "Before you ask, Jack, we don't have enough explosive for a quarter of that thickness," Everett said as he joined him at the blockage.

  Collins looked at his watch. Forty-five minutes until the attack commenced. That meant that his element would not be able to relieve any of the pressure on the marines at the front door.

  "I'm at a loss," Jack finally said.

  Sarah was staring at the massive roadblock. She examined the rubble that lined the tunnel from top to bottom, where most of one section of the island had crashed through the crust and into the bedrock of the seafloor. She then noticed one of the giant stalactites that hung from a massive broken column. She tilted her head as she watched the runoff of seawater from above as it added to the mineral deposit.

  "I know that look. It says either you have to go to the bathroom or you have a serious thought," Mendenhall said.

  "Smart-ass," she answered as she continued to watch the runoff above her. Her eyes went to the roadway and then followed the water as it disappeared somewhere ahead. "Come on, funny man."

  Mendenhall followed Sarah until they came to the inside wall of the tunnel. Sarah bent over, then went to her knees as she ran her hand over the broken cobblestone of the roadway thirty feet from the start of the blockage.

  "These were a highly advanced people," she said.

  "Yeah, advanced enough to blow their continent to hell."

  "These tunnels were designed to run under the Med. What would they have to have installed to control the leaking? I mean, no matter what, if you tunnel under a body of water, you are going to have leaks. Just look at the Chunnel; the French and the British have major flood control built in."

  "Yeah, but I don't get what you're driving at."

  "Jack!" she stood and called out.

  Collins saw Sarah thirty feet away and he and Everett trotted over.

  "Make it quick, Lieutenant. In case you hadn't noticed, we have a major problem here."

  "I think I'm aware of that. Carl, we have shape charges, correct?"

  "No, but we have the training to create some conical charges, or directional explosions if that's what you need."

  "Can we blow straight down?"

  "Easy; but why would we want to?" he asked.

  "I want to because I have faith in the engineering of the Ancients," she answered, looking from face to face of the men standing around her. "What does every major city, every highway, have that controls water runoff?"

  Jack smiled and Carl slapped his forehead.

  "A sewer! These smart bastards had to control the leakage you have whenever you tunnel under a body of water. Jack, we go through the sewers! We don't go through but under the blockage!"

  Everett slapped the SEAL lieutenant on the shoulder and got him moving to bring up the explosives they would need.

  "I guess we'll have to thank the Atlantis Department of Water and Power," Mendenhall said.

  "Not bad, shorty, not bad at all," Jack said to Sarah.

  CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST THIRTY THOUSAND FEET OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN

  The two B-2 stealth bombers made a wide turn to the south after their five-hour flight from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Their part of the mission would look as if the opening phases of the attack had originated in Aviano, Italy, a vital, imperative deceit.

  "Casper One Actual to Casper Two, thirty seconds to launch point."

  "Casper Two, copy, starting the music at five, four, three, two, one, bomb-bay doors opening on automatic."

  Their bom-bay doors of the two giant aircraft, which resembled bats, opened to reveal a darkened interior. The automatic carriage that held each of the twelve Tomahawk cruise mis
siles started turning like a rolling lottery drum. At the bottom of each cycle, a BGM-109 Tomahawk Special radar-manipulation weapon fell free. As each engine ignited, the stubby wings and tailfin popped free of the outer body. A split second later, a strong signal started to pulse through the dark sky ahead of them. In all, twenty-four weapons shot through the thin air on a course for Crete.

  "Casper One to Thunder One Actual, Heckle and Jeckle flight is now airborne. Casper One and Two, RTB at this time, good luck, Thunder One."

  USS IWO JIMA

  Marine General Pete Hamilton received the message from the lead B-2 and watched the night sky around the Iwo. The ship was coming to life in the early-morning hours. Tilt-rotor craft abovedecks along with sixteen Seahawk helicopters were spooling up their engines and the marine assault force was in the process of loading.

  Belowdecks, the sea-assault force was loading onto the Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC). This would be a lightning strike. The LCAC was loaded with four fully manned armored assault vehicles, while the four M1 Abrams tanks would be deployed from the USS Nassau.

  The general looked from his wristwatch to the captain of the Iwo.

  "Order Cheyenne to attack," he said far more calmly than he felt.

  One hundred feet below the surface of the Mediterranean, Captain Burgess received the extremely low-frequency message (ELF) from the Iwo.

  "Weapons officer, you have permission to launch vertical tubes one through twelve, empty 'em out. Diving officer, after launch, take us down to four hundred feet, heading two-three-zero at six knots."

  CATAPULT FLIGHT

  Flying at wave-top level, the flight of ten F-22A Raptors from Aviano, Italy, screamed over the Mediterranean at Mach 1.5. The internal weapons bay of each stealth fighter was full of air-to-ground munitions.

  ATLANTIS

  Tomlinson was personally overseeing the placement of the Atlantean Key. He was so excited that he could barely contain his feelings. He even looked kindly upon Caretaker and the other Coalition members as they watched the final parts being calibrated. His smile faded when he was handed a topside report.