The Sam Reilly Collection

by Christopher Cartwright

  His older brother, Danny, had taken him cave diving for the first time. He was only ten years old, but his entire family had been mad keen divers, and he’d been diving all around the world since he was six. Sam laughed when he thought about it – child protection services would have had a field day if they knew what risks his father’s adventurous spirit had brought him.

  Being the youngest in the family, he was always the most motivated to keep up and prove his ability. It was that inspiration that made him beat his brother, who was nearly three years older than him, at a freediving competition in the Blue Hole, Belize. His brother was so mad that later that day Danny asked him to go for a dive to the most amazing cave – that was, if he wasn’t too scared to swim through a few tunnels first? Eager to please, and knowing a challenge when it was being set, Sam had been quick to accept.

  They had gone on the dive, and his brother had led him through a series of underwater caverns and tunnels. Presumably Danny had made the dive a number of times with his father, and confidently knew that there was only one way in and one out. But despite the appearance of multiple directions, it was fundamentally a very simple cave dive. To Sam, however, it was the scariest thing on earth.

  By the second tunnel, the place became quite dark, and by the third, only their hand held flashlights provided them with any light. And even that was extremely inadequate for the conditions. Then, feeling only just on top of his nerves, Sam watched in horror when Danny turned off his own light and began swimming at full speed. Sam tried to follow, but couldn’t keep up and soon lost him. To this day, he could still remember the sensation of panic as it built up in him – he was forty feet below the surface of the water, lost in a labyrinth of caverns and tunnels, his light barely showed what was three feet in front of him, and now, his brother had disappeared.

  He began to hyperventilate – the gravest of diving mistakes, because it’s the surest way to waste all of your valuable air. And then he stopped. What am I afraid of? If Danny can navigate through here, so can I. Almost as suddenly as the fear overtook him, Sam forced himself to slow his breathing. Work the problem, not make it worse. Soon, the terror of claustrophobia turned to euphoria as he empowered himself to take control of the situation.

  Soon, he turned around and slowly navigated his way back to where he started. He looked at his dive watch – only five minutes had passed since his brother had intentionally lost him in the tunnel. An act tantamount to killing him if he hadn’t maintained control.

  Sam was about to swim to the surface, when he had an idea. He swam to the side of the cave’s entrance, and found a sinkhole – the entrance to a tunnel that disappeared deep below the rock wall. He dived deeper until he was resting several feet inside and then switched off his flashlight.

  After ten minutes Danny came swimming out the original tunnel’s entrance, swimming faster than Sam had ever seen him go. He watched as his brother swam to the surface, and then returned to the tunnel in a panic.

  Sam recalled that feeling so well. He had bested his big brother, who thought he’d got the best of him by trying to scare him.

  He waited at the entrance to the cave system, laughing, like the ten-year-old child that he was. And then he looked at the air supply. There was less than 50 BAR remaining. His brother was now risking his life to save him from being trapped. Sam’s laughter turned to fear as he realized that he might now have killed his brother.

  Looking at the remaining 50 BAR Sam quickly swam into the tunnel again.

  He shined his flashlight on his brother who immediately turned to swim toward him. The two turned and swam back to the entrance fast. Danny, who’d been exerting the most effort attempting to find him, reached Sam holding his dive gauge – and gave it to him.

  The gauge was empty.

  Danny made the signal indicating he was out of air. Sam handed Danny his own emergency regulator, and the two began buddy breathing, as they slowly ascended to five feet.

  Sam looked at his own gauge – 20 BAR. It wasn’t much. Especially when two people were breathing it. Maybe three to four minutes. No more.

  The surface was just above them, but both had already overstayed their No Decompress Time, which meant that they would have to spend time decompressing. Sam might get away with it, but Danny had already swum to the surface and back again looking for him – an event akin to shaking up a coke bottle. He needed to remain underwater for at least another ten minutes.

  Sam wrote on his dive slate – Dad’s emergency air tank!

  Danny nodded, and began swimming toward the boat. Their dad, although a risk taker, had always insisted on leaving a full tank of air, on a line, at the five-foot mark below his boat when they were diving. They had been here for nearly a week, but his father never brought it in.

  Sam followed his brother in awe as Danny managed to expertly navigate to their father’s boat four hundred feet away. To an expert diver who’d been paying attention it was simple, but to 10-year-old Sam Reilly, Danny’s ability paralleled mythical wonder.

  Their air tank gave out thirty-odd feet away.

  And the two continued to paddle their fins with slow, strong movements until they reached the tank. Each of them immediately grabbed the tank’s regulator, and began taking giant breaths of fresh air in turn.

  Danny smiled at him.

  And Sam watched him mouth the words, “Thank you.”

  In front of him, Danny held up his diving slate with the words, “I’m sorry.” Sam took it, and wrote something else, “It was an accident.”

  Both boys knew it was a lie. Sam had proven himself to his older brother, and more importantly, he’d proven his ability to himself. The two boys became men, and neither ever spoke about that incident while Danny was alive. But his older brother always knew the truth, and until the day he died, he respected Sam and did everything he could to look after him.

  Back in Poseidon’s temple, Sam smiled as he slowed his breathing, gaining control, as he had always been able to, of his friend, his constant companion, claustrophobia. It was always there, but instead of his enemy, he had made it his ally. Something to make him focus.

  Tom grabbed him. “You okay Sam? You looked like you were a thousand miles away.”

  Sam laughed. “Yeah, I suppose I was. Just thinking of the past.”

  “Well, I hope it gave you some sort of insight about our future. Because I’ve made three circuits of this temple, and I can’t see anything that leads to the fourth room.”

  “As a matter of fact, I think it may have.”

  “Really?”

  “What do you do when you see exactly what you want?”

  “You focus on it. You get tunnel vision, and that’s all you see.”

  “That’s right.”

  Sam then showed Tom the passage that described Poseidon’s temple.

  In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple, they placed statutes of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot – a charioteer of six winged horses – and at such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head…

  It carried on for a while, but Sam stopped reading.

  “Do you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “Poseidon wasn’t just a giant, with his head almost touching the room. Poseidon was looking at the true wealth of the room. It was stored above his head.”

  “But there was nothing above his head.” Tom looked up at the ceiling. The rest of the entire room was covered in precious metals, ivory and gemstones, but directly above him was simply wrought iron.

  “That’s it! It’s tunnel vision. Whether it was the Russians or our scientists who actually reached here first, they stripped the entire room of everything of value, but never once did they consider what was above that piece of iron!”

  “Okay, so then what’s above that piece of iron?”<
br />
  “I think there’s another room – with answers!”

  “That’s great Sam.” Tom looked around. “In case you haven’t noticed, that ceiling’s about thirty feet high. And unless you’re seeing something that I don’t, I have no idea how you’re planning on reaching it.”

  Sam stared at the water fountain and replied, “I might just have a solution.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  “The water won’t enter here because Poseidon’s temple is in the shape of a half dome,” Sam noted. “Therefore, when Atlantis flooded originally, everywhere became submerged except this point. But what if we break the dome?”

  “How do you plan to do that from down here?”

  “With this.” Sam lifted his right mechanical arm, and the head of a rocket appeared.

  “Wow, what have you got there?”

  “Given our previous problems, I wasn’t convinced I wanted to enter Atlantis without superior firepower. Consequently, I had an armorer friend of mine redesign an RPG 27 so that it could be retrofitted into our ADS machine.”

  “Ah, Sam… have you really thought this through? If we blow apart the ceiling, what do you think the pressure difference is going to do to us?”

  “I’d say we have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. Maybe twenty-five to seventy-five. Why – have you got a better idea?”

  Tom shrugged his massive mechanical shoulders. “Guess not.”

  “Then that answers it,” Sam said and fired the RPG directly at the ceiling, above where Poseidon was supposed to stand.

  The entire roof exploded, revealing the entrance to another temple.

  Sam looked around, “I told you there was a room behind it!”

  “That’s great, but I don’t see any water flooding in here?”

  “No, neither do I. Let’s check out the cave-in again. Is it possible the boulders have blocked the water from coming in?”

  “Yes, that could be it.”

  “Do you want to go check it out while I work on plan B?”

  “What’s plan B?”

  “You don’t want to know yet…”

  Tom returned ten minutes later. “Yep, the cave-in has blocked any water getting in here. So, unless you can jump about thirty feet, I have no idea how we’re going to get to the next level.”

  “That’s where plan B is going to have to come in.”

  “What’s plan B?”

  “We’re going to flood this room using Poseidon’s own bath water.”

  “The fountain of the Gods?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “That’s great, but it’s still draining at hundreds of cubic feet of water per minute.”

  Sam grinned. “That’s why we’re going to have to block the drain.”

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Four red marble columns, each nearly ten feet tall, adorned the room. Resting on top of each, like a pedestal, was a ball made of blue green marble, all a different shade of light. Sam imagined each one served some type of symbolic references to the seasons of the year. If he’d had more time, Sam would have liked to examine them better, but the value of archeology always came second to those still living.

  “Help me knock this thing over,” Sam said.

  Sam rested the massive shoulder of his ADS machine against the solid column and pushed. Nothing happened. Tom then stepped in and locked their two ADS machines together so that their combined hydraulic power could push the column over.

  “Okay, try now,” Tom said.

  The column moved, but only slightly. Not enough to knock it over.

  Sam gritted his teeth and said, “Let’s try pushing it back and forth until it moves.”

  By the fifth go, the entire column tipped to the floor – sending the marbled earth rolling.

  Built into the side of Poseidon’s temple, the fountain of the gods flowed miraculously as it had done for thousands of years. Still remarkably flowing into a drain which dispersed the water somewhere. It was like a flood of hot and cold water. But where did it come from, and where the hell was it going?

  Sam lifted the large marble ball and placed it on the drain pipe, blocking it. Instantly the magical water began spilling out and covering the room. Within minutes they were standing knee deep. The two turned and swam back to the entrance fast.

  The level rose rapidly until Sam and Tom were once more in the water their ADS machines were designed for. Capable of movement outside of water, the machines were built to perform highly sophisticated underwater tasks, and were capable of much higher speeds and maneuverability in it than out.

  Despite being massive, Poseidon’s temple filled with water quickly. They decreased their buoyancy so that they rested on the temple’s floor instead of the ceiling, where powerful currents were forming as the water tried to squeeze through the little opening.

  “We’ll give it another twenty minutes to fill the room above with water, and then we go!” Sam said.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  After waiting for the current to settle, a good indicator that the next room had filled with water, Sam moved toward the opening. Attached to Tom’s ADS machine via a tether, in case the current became dangerously strong, his quad propulsion unit whirred into life as he shot through the opening he’d made.

  No more than a few feet inside the second room Sam said, “It’s safe to come up. And I think you’re going to want to see this!”

  The room was relatively small compared to Poseidon’s temple and almost entirely barren, with the exception of a massive picture on one wall. Etched into a solid piece of glowing red orichalcum, fourteen feet tall and equally wide, was a depiction of an island, and its surrounding coastline.

  “So that’s orichalcum?” Tom asked.

  “It appears so.”

  “I don’t understand. If all that wealth underneath us was merely a ruse to stop people finding this image, what the hell is so valuable on that island?”

  “The code to Atlantis.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Sam stared at the painting as though he were mesmerized by it somehow. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Tom look around the rest of the room trying to see where the water had gone. If the water came into the room, that meant the air had gone out, and for that to happen, there had to be an exit. And he was going to find it.

  Sam gave it little thought. He knew he was right about the Atlanteans. They needed redundancy in their systems, and that meant escape routes. If he was right about the greatest wealth of Atlantis being hidden inside this room, then he just assumed he was right about the next part.

  Right on cue, Tom said, “Look at this. I think we just found your priest hole.”

  It was a large tunnel leading downwards. The water could be seen where it had been flooded and Sam hoped that it hadn’t been destroyed by the torpedo.

  “I just wonder where it leads now that Atlantis is nowhere near where it was supposed to be when that thing was built?”

  “No idea, but I’m sure it will get us out of here. Of course, I’m not too sure where we’ll go from there. If Andrew Brandt and his goons are smart, they’ll be waiting for us on the surface.”

  “And even if they aren’t, it’s unlikely they’re just going to have left our Snow Cat there waiting for us. Which means we’re going to have a mighty long, cold, walk.”

  Sam remained staring at the wall for another ten minutes before Tom interrupted him again. Like a map, the place depicted a coastline, and in the middle a small island. At the center of the island were those five rings Sam was starting to associate with Atlantis.

  Above them, he noticed that the ceiling of the cavern was surrounded by celestial markings. There were notes, which appeared like an ancient almanac, with the image of shooting stars next to it. The math and the astronomy were too much for Sam to make any useful sense of. He took a dozen photos of the ceiling as well as a three-minute digital video. With the exception of a few stars he recognized, the entire ceiling was beyond him, but one thing app
eared obvious – the code to Atlantis was somehow tied with stars.

  He studied the map for a few more minutes, mesmerized by the detail. How a land based population could gather such detail without the aid of satellite imaging, he would never understand.

  Tom interrupted his concentration. “If we take a few pictures of it, we could get Elise to run it with every coastline in the world for its closest match. It would have changed substantially in the past eleven thousand years, but if we run all known images of coastlines with a plus or minus variance of water levels, we might just get lucky.”

  Sam grinned. “I already know where that is.”

  “Really? Then what are you trying to work out?”

  “How the hell I’m going to convince the Mayor of New York that we have to dig one heck of a hole in Manhattan.”

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  The Andre Sephora slowed to an idle along the Congo River. They were getting close to where the pygmy king had told them it would be.

  Billie looked at the little pygmy, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his own adventure as their guide to the real temple of Poseidon. “You’re certain it’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  Billie looked up. “Jason, what’s our depth sounding at here?”

  “There’s a lot of water below us, Dr. Swan.”

  “How deep, exactly?”

  “Seven hundred feet. Much too deep to dive.”

  “Okay, keep us here.”

  “You can’t dive to that sort of depth. It may as well be the bottom or the Mariana Trench for all its accessibility.”

  “Leave that problem to me,” Billie said, frustrated. “Zanzibe, how certain are you this is the place?”

  “It’s here Dr. Swan. I promise you. My father took me to this place to worship as a boy, as did his father, and his father’s father, since the great Congo River first swallowed the temple.”