“Mister Krueger,” she began, “I’m not a crackpot conspiracy theorist. I don’t believe in Bigfoot or Nessie.”
“Don’t let Bones hear you say that,” Willis interjected.
Sofia rolled her eyes and continued. “I’ve already found two cities that we believe were part of the Atlantean civilization. We’ve seen the devastation wrought by a single Atlantean weapon, and the codex hints that the mother city holds an even deadlier weapon. We must get there before the Dominion.”
“Why do you need me?” Krueger asked weakly.
“You know why.” Avery looked him hard in the eye and he seemed to melt under her gaze.
“I suppose I do. If Atlantis was real, and it seems that it is.” He glanced at Sofia’s iPad. “That means it’s likely that the Great Library contained information about it.”
“Can you help us find it?” Avery held her breath while Kruger looked at the three of them in turn, a lingering look of disbelief in his eyes. Finally, the last remnants of skepticism appeared to fall away.
“I think I can.”
Chapter 27
“Mexico.” Matt looked down at the fresh stamp on the fake passport Tam had provided for him. “This wasn’t what I expected when they invited us on a camping trip.”
“Not much to see out here.” Despite the situation, Joel managed to sound bored.
Matt gazed out the window of the van in which they rode. The dull brown of the hilly landscape was speckled with a touch of green here and there, but there was no forest to be seen. Since they’d left the Villalobos Airport in Chihuahua, they’d seen little more than dust and dirt.
“I’m told the camping isn’t the best.” Bill glanced at them in the rear-view mirror. “But the caving is supposed to be out of this world.”
“Caving, huh? Sounds like fun.” Joel’s eyes widened and his voice held a tone of forced bravado.
“Claustrophobic?” Matt whispered, but his friend didn’t answer.
“I don’t care for it myself. I don’t fit too well into small places.” Bill barked a laugh and Matt and Joel joined in. “I’ll be staying back at the campground, running things.”
“What’s there to run?” Matt asked. He didn’t miss the glance Bill stole at Greer, another member of the men’s group, who was seated in the passenger seat. It was just the four of them, and a ton of equipment. The remaining seven members of their party rode in a second van.
“Just camping stuff,” Bill said. “Planning the meals and the Bible study and stuff.”
“Has your group done much caving?” Matt asked, more to alleviate boredom than out of any interest.
“This is the first time. The mother church is sending a man down from Utah to be our guide. He’ll have special equipment for us.”
Matt perked up at the mention of Utah. “What’s the name of the mother church?”
“The Kingdom Church.” Bill looked like he was about to say more, but Greer silenced him with a tiny shake of his head.
Matt considered this new information. According to Tam, the Kingdom Church, led by Bishop Hadel, was believed to be, if not the headquarters of the Dominion in America, one of its strongest outposts. She had been trying for some time to gain evidence of Hadel’s connection to the organization, and hinted that she was coming closer by the day.
They rode in silence through a small town called Naica, and stopped in the foothills to the west of the city. They climbed out and looked around. There was nothing to distinguish this flat patch of brown dirt from the rest of the landscape, but Bill called it a “campground,” and began unloading the van. By the time a forest green jeep bounced up the dirt road and parked alongside the van, they had set up camp. Matt and Joel, as the new guys, had been tasked to dig the latrine, and both were coated in dust and sweat by the time they finished.
The newcomer, who introduced himself as Robinson, had them pile back into their vans and follow him to a mining operation. While everyone milled around the vans, Robinson went to speak with someone. Pretending to look at the mountains, Matt wandered out of sight of the group and fired off a quick text to Tam.
Caving in Naica, Mexico. Man from Kingdom Church is here.
As soon as he’d sent the text, he deleted it from his Sent Messages folder, pocketed the phone, and returned to the group. Robinson emerged from a dilapidated-looking office building a few minutes later and led them into the worksite.
A man in a hardhat, who introduced himself as Rivera, with a light on the front led them down through the mine until they finally stopped in a hollowed-out chamber of gray stone. Conduit ran along the walls and down the middle of the ceiling above, where lights hung every twenty feet or so. When Bill had said they were going caving, Matt had expected cool, even chilly caverns, but it was hot in here. Uncomfortably hot.
Rivera stopped in front of a metal door and turned to face them. He was a tall, thin Latino man with a wispy mustache and a thin beard that didn’t quite cover his pockmarked face.
“On the other side of this door is the Crystal Cave of Giants,” he began in lightly accented English. “It was discovered by accident during mining operations in the year 2,000. Inside, more than three hundred meters below the surface, you will find the largest crystals known to mankind. The largest more than ten meters long and weigh up to fifty five tons.” He paused to let that sink in.
He went on to describe the makeup and formation of the crystals, and give them a brief description of the caverns, including the dangers.
“Footing can be treacherous inside, and many of the crystals are razor sharp. If you slip, you can find yourself impaled on a razor sharp selenium spike. In fact, one of the chambers is called the Cave of Swords because the walls are coated with dagger-like crystals. But that is not the greatest danger the cavern poses.”
The group members exchanged glances. A cave brimming with crystal swords ready to slice you apart seemed dangerous enough to them.
“Because the cave rests above a magma chamber, the air temperature is more than fifty degrees celsius, or more than one hundred-twenty degrees Fahrenheit. The relative humidity of ninety percent makes the air feel more than double those temperatures. Without proper protection, you will quickly lose your higher brain functions, which increases the chance of a fatal fall.” He smiled, as if pleased by the thought. “In as few as fifteen minutes, your body will begin to shut down, and death follows soon after. No one lasts more than thirty minutes.”
The words scarcely registered with Matt. As soon as Rivera said the word “crystal,” he knew why they were here. Somewhere in these caverns, the Dominion believed they would find crystals that could power the Atlantean machines, and they’d sent the more than expendable members of the men’s group into this deadly environment. He looked at Robinson, who wore a revolver on his hip and an expression of calm determination. He wondered if the man had any intention of letting the men leave here alive. He thought about messaging Tam, but he knew he’d get no signal so far below the earth’s surface.
They were on their own.
Chapter 28
“We need to know what this thing does.” Bones looked like a kid on Christmas morning as he looked over the Atlantean weapon. “Let me and Maddock take it out into the middle of the Gulf and give it a shot. Pun intended.”
“I don’t like it. What if it you set off some sort of natural disaster?” Tam gritted her teeth. She hated not knowing what this device could do, but was averse to the risks inherent in testing it.
“Why didn’t you interrogate the old man and learn from him how it worked?”
“You didn’t meet him,” Maddock said. “I can read men, and this one was as stubborn as they come. We would have had to torture the information out of him, and he didn’t deserve that.”