Approximately thirty miles up the ancient river, the Andre Sephora struck a sandbar and came to a slow, grating, halt.
“That’s the end of the line, folks.”
“Can you get us off again?” Billie heard the authority back in Edward’s voice.
“Don’t worry. I can get us off, but there’s no way we’re going any further up river.”
“Why’s that?”
Jason pointed up ahead. “Because someone up there sure doesn’t want any visitors.”
A hundred feet upriver Billie suddenly saw what Jason had seen. Three T 72 battle tanks were lined through the river, forming an artificial barrier to any ship. In the shallow water, only their turrets and canons were above water, like the malicious eyes of a crocodile, watching its prey. Each cannon aimed alarmingly downriver, toward them.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The battle tanks looked like they’d seen better days, but their intention was no less significant. Someone had gone to great lengths to place them as a deterrent for unwanted visitors. More concerning yet were the three severed heads, which rested on spikes like flags at the back of each battle tank.
Their still fleshy faces, aghast in abject horror, portrayed a very recent incursion of the otherwise clear message.
Stay the fuck out!
“You look pensive, Dr. Swan?” It was Edward who spoke, as he lit an expensive cigar next to her. For a man in his eighties, he seemed keen to be constantly inclined to speed up the inevitable.
“Look at this place!” Billie said without removing her gaze from the wretches in front of her. “It looks exactly like something out of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness!”
Edward looked blank.
“You haven’t read The Heart of Darkness?”
“No, but I watched the film Apocalypse Now.”
“Look at those poor wretches.” Billie pointed toward more heads on spikes outlining the water’s edge. They appeared white. None of the local people would be stupid enough to enter the area. “Who do you think those people were?”
“I have no idea, but if we’re lucky, we might just find the people who did it.”
“The Makan pygmies were cannibals?”
“Some of my previous research has suggested so.”
“You’ve been here before? I thought you only knew about the Atlantean Archives in Tibet?”
“Before I discovered the other temple, I asked myself the simple question, ‘where could you hide the remnants of an ancient civilization for eleven thousand years?’” Edward took a satisfyingly deep puff of his cigar and then continued. “I came up with a list of several places, but the heart of the Congo River was certainly at the top of my list, due to its remoteness. Even if people could reach it, few would get through the plethora of terrorists, unstable governments, dictatorships, and children armed with AK47s to tell the tale.”
“Did you know about the Makan people?”
“No, but I hypothesized that the pygmies, who were the native inhabitants of the land for at least fifty thousand years, must have seen the Atlanteans if they built a second temple here eleven thousand years ago.”
“Why not examine what lies below the rainforest canopy using helicopters equipped with LIDAR?”
“I’ve already tried that. Here and in South America to be exact. We spent a fortune on aerial reconnaissance last time using LIDAR via low level flying aircraft. The remote sensing technology created a high resolution digital elevation model of the topography below the thick rainforest vegetation. Tens of thousands of hours of the reconnaissance. Found some interesting old ruins, wrecked planes decades old, and some ancient tribes who really didn’t want to be seen by white people from the outside world. But none of it ever revealed another temple of Atlantis.”
“So then, what are we doing here, Edward?”
“I’m counting on you changing my luck, but I’m beginning to have my doubts.”
“Why’s that?”
“Look around Dr. Swan. Do you real think that any of these people derive from the ancient Atlantean people?”
“I don’t know what I think. But whatever we’re after, it will have to be underground to remain hidden for so long. And that means we’re going to have to enter the dark forest.”
“You’re certain it’s here?”
“You were in Tibet. You saw the image I found. This was definitely the same point along the river. There were no other images. We now have to head north of the river. If there’s something there, we’ll find it. I just hope we find it before the pygmies find us,” Billie said.
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Edward replied, cheerfully.
“And if they do?”
Edward drew in the last of the cigar before throwing its remains in the water. “Then we see if my elite soldiers are worth anywhere near the million dollar a year retainer I’m paying them.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sam’s father’s Gulfstream stood waiting for them at Sikkim’s Pakyong Airport, its pilots preparing a route to Siberia. Opening his laptop, which he’d left aboard when they first arrived in Nepal only a week earlier, he looked up the GPS coordinates Billie had left for them. It instantly came up with another reference. He opened up the document and stared at the name of the location.
Tunguska.
“That’s not possible…”
“What?” Tom asked.
“The Tunguska event occurred in Siberia on the morning of 30 June 1908 at approximately 7:30 a.m. The explosion over the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian Taiga flattened 800 miles of forest and caused no known casualties. The cause of the explosion is generally thought to have been a meteor. It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found; the meteor is thought to have burst in mid-air at an altitude of 3–5 miles rather than hit the surface of the Earth. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the super bolide’s size, on the order of 600 feet, on whether the meteor was a comet or a denser asteroid. It is considered the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history.”
“And that’s where Billie sent us?”
“Right.”
“That’s one hell of a coincidence isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I’d say so — if I believed in them.”
“What about Elise? Did she find anything in the Dark Net?”
“According to Elise the CIA went to great effort to cover up whatever it was the Russians found back in 1908. In fact, the CIA and the Russians signed an agreement to cover up whatever they found there. If you look closely at the images online, they don’t match the ones taken in 1908. But the reason for the cover up was sealed — not to be released until…” Sam scrolled through Elise’s secret files a little further, and then swore.
“Not to be released until when?”
Sam looked up at him, the slightest hint of fear in his eyes. “Not to be released until next month. Just under three weeks to be exact.”
“Now, that is a coincidence, isn’t it?” Tom said cheerfully.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Edward looked at Jason. “Are you coming with us, or staying on the boat?”
“Are you kidding me? There’s no amount you can pay me to enter that place. No thank you. I’ll stay aboard my fortress, and provide aerial firepower if you need it.”
“All right. We’ll see you in a few days.” Edward climbed on board the rubber Zodiac. He wore a bullet proof, and more importantly, spear-proof vest. With a handgun holstered to his side and a Mills 12-gauge shotgun in his arms, he looked back at Jason. His voice was slow, and brutally honest. “If you leave us here, I will personally drag you back here to let these local pygmies deal with you. Do you understand me?”