"Sir, what about this dome structure? One stray round looks like it would do it in."
Collins looked around him and didn't have an answer for the major.
"Let's look at it this way: if that happens, we win."
As Collins moved off, the major mumbled to himself so that only Sarah caught his words: "I was hoping for something a little more inspirational than that."
THE BLACK SEA
Twelve thousand years before, the Black Sea was nothing more than a freshwater lake, a large lake to be sure, that supported a medium-size pre-Bronze Age civilization. This civilization of fishermen and hunter-gatherers was crushed by the Atlantean Wave when the waters of the Mediterranean rolled into the basin that is now the Black Sea. The beaches of pure white sand and the ruins of stone walls now lay at the bottom, over a thousand feet down. The Wave that had destroyed these long-dead people was rising again, this time from the very seafloor where they had once struggled to survive.
The next link in the chain was Russia. The attack was coming from the south, the closest the Coalition could get into that closed country. The fault line that the amplifiers lay over was one of the oldest in the world and had lain dormant since the last great quake of the area, in 1939. These were known to science as the most dangerous faults and plates in the entire world, capable of triggering earthquakes on other continents.
The amplifiers at the bottom of the sea started to vibrate and then the tone was sent out with the force of a nuclear weapon. The sound struck the first of the shallowest faults and started the chain reaction as that smaller fault led into a larger one and so on. The stresses involved and the cracking wide open of the faults started a continental shift of earth-changing dimensions.
The Black Sea lurched in its bed. When the waters retreated and then started their return, like a child dropping recklessly into a bathtub, the separated sea met in the middle and a plume of water shot straight up over a half a mile into the air. As the seabed continued to crack, a crazy zigzag pattern emerged outward from the sea toward Turkey and the Ukraine. The Urals actually started to crumble; their rocky strata were the first to succumb to the enormous movement.
The cities of Sevastopol and Odessa were the first to die. The mass populations were crushed in their homes without warning as the earth flew up six feet, moving as if a blanket had been shaken out. The next was the Romanian city of Bucharest. As one of the oldest cities in Europe, she didn't stand a chance; buildings shook once and then their foundations gave way after centuries of water rot. The rivers that flowed into and past the city changed course in a matter of moments and drowned those who had escaped the falling stone. The fires would burn out of control for two weeks due to a lack of water and men to fight them.
In Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, spires and ancient walls started to rock and fall. Two thousand people were lost in the first few minutes as they panicked and ran.
A thousand-mile-long strip of the richest soil in the Ukraine, the European breadbasket, split and rolled over to reveal a bloody-looking new landscape of molten rock as it was forced to the surface. It would leave a long and ugly scar for many thousands of years.
The last to feel the movement was Moscow. The cobbled roadways split and the air was filled with the smell of sulfur as long-dormant volcanoes erupted under the city. Mounds and vents that had been dead for a million years suddenly sprang to life as the forces of the Wave made for the paths of least resistance. Air-raid warnings sounded for the first time since the practiced drills in October 1963. Only this time it was no drill.
OVAL OFFICE THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, D.C.
The president held on to his large desk as the Secret Service made to assist him out of the White House and into the underground shelter. He shrugged them off angrily. He knew there was no place to hide.
Niles closed his eyes and tried to think about the tectonic structure in Washington, but he found that for the first time in years, his mind was blank. The only thing he could think of was his request to allow Jack the time to end this, and that was what was hurting him.
"Sir, Moscow is being hit hard. The Ukraine is a ruin and Turkey is flying to pieces. The effects are now starting to be felt in the lake region outside of Beijing," the national security Adviser said as he read from the latest NSA dispatch. "The Black Sea was the focal point of the Wave. It's now gone!"
Suddenly the shaking stopped. They heard a picture fall off the wall not far from the office and a woman scream, then all was silent.
"What in the hell is happening, Niles?" the president asked, his body still shaking even though the room was still.
Niles picked up the phone in front of him and called the Event Center.
"Pollock."
"Virginia, what are our people saying?"
"This is to be expected. We have maybe twenty minutes to a half hour. The initial forces have been spent, but, Niles, the worst is yet to come."
The president was staring at the speaker box as if it were a person, until the chairman of the Joint Chiefs handed him a phone. "The Russian president."
"The buildup will continue with fresh materials from deeper in the earth that will replace those sent upward in the first forced strike. In laymen's terms, Niles, the earth is getting itself ready for a fight-ending punch and we don't know what's going to happen. We're still picking up the audio wave from the Long Island Sound, the navy is depth-charging the area in hopes of smashing their amplifiers, but our geology people are saying it may be too late."
"Thank you. Keep monitoring."
"Nothing from Jack and our ground team?" Virginia asked.
"Nothing."
The president and Niles hung up their phones simultaneously and looked at the fifteen faces in the Oval Office.
"The Russian president has just informed me that they have an attack submarine in the Med and he has ordered her to assist us."
"Inform the captain onboard the Cheyenne that a Russian attack boat is nearby and to allow it to stand by with them."
ATLANTIS
After the long climb up the lava wall, Collins and his eight-man fire team reached the aqueduct without being see. The vantage point gave them a clear view of the entire area below. They set up two M-60 machine guns and the rest took up stations to fire down into the Coalition forces below.
Jack looked at his wristwatch. One minute. He raised his night-vision glasses and looked around. The marines were spread out and had made it to the assigned assault positions he had picked out for them, and he hoped that with a lot of luck, they wouldn't be noticed until it was too late. The darkness of the city hid them well. He shifted his view and saw Everett and his SEAL team right where they needed to be. Their outlines, due to their Nomex clothing, were far harder to see than were the marines.
Jack raised his radio. "Thirty seconds," he said softly. The transmission required no response.
Down below, he had assigned Mendenhall, Sarah, Ryan, and ten marines the job of stopping that centrifuge when the marines made their attack. He roamed the area where they were supposed to be but failed to pick them up. "Damn," he said under his breath. There was nothing he could do. If they had found difficulty in their route through the lava field to the center of the city, he knew he couldn't wait for them to do so.
"Sir, this position is starting to make me a little nervous," a young lance corporal said. "The shaking is getting stronger, and look at this," he said as he pointed to his right.
Collins looked over and saw what the corporal was talking about. A small waterfall had developed in the last few minutes, meaning that the Crystal Dome above them had started to fracture somewhere above. The ancient aqueduct was starting to run with seawater.
He turned and looked at the nineteen-year-old and held out his hand. "We don't have a lot of time here, so make 'em count, son," he said as he slapped the boy on the shoulder. With that, Collins aimed his MP-5 at the closest group of mercenaries firing from the side of one of the pyramids two hundred yards from the aquedu
ct.
Everett heard the thirty-second call and then looked out over the city. He saw the three massive electrical lines coming out of the dry lake at the center of the city. They were exposed for only ten feet before some paranoid engineer had sent them down through a crack in the cobbled roadway and then had covered them with cement. As he looked on, he knew that they would have precious little time to lay the explosives on the leads that led to thousands of miles of cable and ended at the sound-amplification modules in three different parts of the world.
Suddenly there was a loud crack and rumble as one of the remaining upright pillars of marble fell from its base. Carl winced as the twenty-five-ton pillar crashed into the center of the city, making a hundred or so Coalition troops run for cover. He looked over at the SEAL lieutenant.
"I don't know if that's good or bad. It cleared out part of our sector of responsibility, but this whole damn place could start coming down around our ears, and I don't think our little tiny skulls could handle the pressure this deep in the Med if that shaky-ass dome suddenly collapses."
Everett looked at his watch and waited. Three, two, one. Off in the distance Everett thought he heard the soft thump-thump-thump of the marines' mortar pits opening up. He turned and trained his glasses on the dry lake bed and the huge tower rising from its center. As he zeroed in on the tower's occupants, he saw one man in heavy clothing turn at the strange sound to his rear. He stood stock-still for a moment and then suddenly turned and ran for the scaffolding.
"Damn, that son of a bitch has a survival instinct to end all instincts."
Suddenly, flame and debris erupted out of the dry lake bed. One mortar round caught the tower and destroyed half of it and killed most of the observers there.
"Damn, that's good shootin'," Everett said as more 40-millimeter mortars fell into the dry lake bed. He ventured another look up and saw four more people run from the tower, one of whom he could swear was a well-dressed woman.
More rounds started targeting the heavy machine-gun emplacements throughout the destroyed city. Here and there eruptions of flame and shrapnel tore through men and old marble. But added to the fierceness of the marines' mortar attack was the power of the Wave as it started to add its weight to the fight. In a hundred different places the dome started to leak all at once. The already cracked and damaged ruins around them started to move in a frighteningly furious way. But still, Everett heard the shrill whistle coming from halfway around the ancient city.
The U.S. Marines came storming out of the natural darkness around Atlantis, screaming and firing their weapons at anything that moved to their front.
The assault was on, and the marines had just added one more verse to the corps hymn: the continent of Atlantis.
20
Sarah, Mendenhall, Ryan, and the ten marines were caught between the lava mound and the dry lake bed. Mortar rounds were still going off, but their allotted number intended for the equipment in the dry lake bed had been expended. Now, the mortar teams concentrated on the Coalition positions; after their initial shock, the Coalition troops started to return fire in an amazing response time.
As they ran, tracers found them just before they ducked behind an ancient lava flow that had frozen in time. One marine cried out and hit the broken roadway. Machine-gun fire concentrated on the spot where they had vanished, and the soft stone didn't absorb the concussion all that well.
As they ducked and took stock, another of the stone-and-marble buildings leaned, and then it rolled over as easily as an animal in death.
Suddenly they heard machine-gun fire coming from somewhere above them, and he knew that Jack and his team had opened up from the aqueduct. They started laying a large volume of fire in the direction of their unseen attackers.
"Well, it looks like someone's paying attention up there," Ryan said as he started forward again and the others quickly followed.
Everett and the SEALs were having a much harder time of it. They faced about a hundred heavily armed Coalition mercenaries. As he ventured a peek up above a fallen pillar, Everett saw the three power lines; they were shaking with the earthquake but were still very much intact. He lowered his head and checked the magazine in his MP-5, then he straightened and fired ten rounds into the mass of soldiers hidden behind a solid stone covering.
"Come on, Jack, now's not the time to dawdle," he said to himself. With that, Everett stood and fired again, and this time he heard a satisfying yelp from a hundred yards away.
"One down, about ninety-nine to go."
Collins ordered one machine gun to continue firing into the area of the lake bed to cover Sarah and her team, while splitting his firepower and opening up against the mercenaries penning Everett and his men down. All the while the aqueduct was filling with water from above. The volume was increasing every second and he and his men had to hold on to keep from being washed away to the broken end, where it fell off three hundred feet straight down.
Collins pulled the pins on three hand grenades and tossed them as far as he could into the Coalition lines. Ten of the men never heard their death knell as the grenades exploded behind them.
Suddenly, the sound hit Jack's ears. The crack came from above as a large section of the dome caved in. Thousands of tons of seabed and water cascaded and struck the aqueduct a hundred feet behind Jack and his men. It tore through the old stone, tearing their section away from the rest. The men felt the waterway beneath start to tremble, but it still held firm.
Sarah was the first to reach the side of the lake. She looked up at the mangled corpses of the people who had been on the high platform. She had no sympathy for them as she looked into the devastation of the lake. Equipment lay shattered; even the generators had been hit. But she saw and heard the centrifuge as it was spinning out of control.
"Carl hasn't cut the power lines yet--that damn thing's still broadcasting!"
Ryan and Mendenhall didn't hesitate. With five of the marines, they started down into the lake bed. Enemy fire increased a hundredfold and Mendenhall was singed by a round that knocked his Mylar helmet off his head. Sarah picked it up and tossed it to him.
"A little hot down here!"
"You can say that again," Will said as he turned and started to follow Ryan down the scaffold.
Sarah heard a loud crack somewhere to their rear and then felt the stone through her boots as the floor above them split in two. Then a rush of water started cascading from a crack in the great dome. The water from the Mediterranean struck one of the superhot generators and it exploded, sending out a thick wave of steel and sparks. As she traversed the scaffold, the crack in the floor reached them and she had to jump a five-foot crevasse, barely making it over to the far side. The platform above them started to wobble as the stabilizing cables started snapping like overtaxed guitar strings. It fell over, twisting as it did so. Ryan and the others ran quickly as the tower crashed into the scaffolding and tore it free from the rock, then both crashed into the lake bed.
All around the city, water was penetrating the dome at an alarming rate as the world started shaking once again, and this time it was like the death throes of a wounded beast, as the groan and bark of solid stone announced that Atlantis had started to crack apart.
The ancient city was dying for the second time.
USS IWO JIMA
The sudden rise of the sea ripped two U.S. Marine Sea Harriers from their moorings and tossed them into the churning ocean. All hands had been ordered belowdecks as the attack carrier's bow sank below the water as she slowly moved way away from the quay. She had taken on four thousand civilians, who huddled inside her hangar decks and screamed every time the carrier rolled one way or the other. Three miles away, the attack carrier Nassau, with a full load of refugees, had taken a massive wave strike that ripped all her antennas and close-in weapons from her superstructure. She was taking on water as she headed for Greece at all possible speed.
The surface waves were breeching at twenty-five feet as the Iwo was sent headlong into a gi
ant trough. She dipped below the water once more as her superstructure and stern were the only visible portion of the ship above water. The admiral feared that they might not make it clear this time. But, as he held on to his chair tightly, the massive warship slowly started to rise out of the sea.
The last report had the seafloor erupting for five hundred miles from the now plotted epicenter, directly in the middle of the Mediterranean. Satellite photos had the Eurasian and American eastern coastlines sustaining heavy damage after the hour's lull. Detectors had picked up the Wave once more growing in intensity.
The world was coming apart.
ATLANTIS
Sarah was feeling sick to her stomach and as she looked at the faces of the men in her group, she realized that wasn't the only one. The invisible wave struck them as soon as they gained the floor of the dry lake bed. Several of the marines and Mendenhall had already vomited, and she herself was having a hard time keeping her feet as her inner ear started to give her problems.
From their location, they had pumped everything they had into the protective titanium shielding of the centrifuge. Three grenades had gone off right under the raised module, and they were stunned when the shrapnel had just bounced off. Ryan had emptied a full magazine into the large round chamber, with no effect whatsoever other than causing a spectacular light show with the bounding tracers. Now they were under heavy fire once again from above. The Coalition forces nearest the pyramids had them in their sights.
"Everett must be having trouble getting his team to the cables," Ryan said as he fell next to Sarah. "Is there something we've overlooked here?"
Sarah sat back against the stone pedestal of the statue of Poseidon and thought. They couldn't break the connection from there. The lines were too thick to cut through. They couldn't knock out the reinforced centrifuge and they couldn't shut down the power. The diamond was drawing self-sustaining electricity from the earth's magnetic field somehow, and there was nothing they could do to shut that off.
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