Mark was the first one to reach him. Immediately climbing down onto the branch directly above Zelig, he stretched his arm down and grabbed his fallen soldier.
“You okay?” Mark asked.
“Yeah, but I’ll be happier to be out of this damn swamp.”
“You and me both.”
Three other members of his team quickly attached a rope to Mark in case he fell in too. Zelig began pulling himself up.
It was the eyes of the creature that got Edward’s attention. They glowed almost golden in the darkness of the forest. Zelig, the poor man in the water, saw them too! And almost climbed out of the water on his own.
But he was too late.
The crocodile reached his leg.
It didn’t need anything else. Zelig was pulled deep under the water by the massive and ancient reptile. The soldier’s large figure looked more like a child compared to the monster that had dragged him under.
“Fucking shoot it!” Mark cried out.
Instantly, every member of the team out of the water aimed their weapons at the two creatures that were now too deep in the water for their weapons to be effective.
Zelig was obviously alive.
Several feet below the water, Edward could see the man using a knife to fight the animal, which thrashed and spun him like a ragdoll in a drier. The force was so great that Zelig lost his weapon.
Both man and beast seemed to keep thrashing. There was nothing any of them could do.
And then the thrashing stopped.
Zelig lay lifeless in the water. The crocodile let him go for a second and then snapped its huge teeth on the man’s head with a gut-wrenching crunch.
The monster moved toward the surface to eat its meal, unaware or indifferent to the fact it had an audience.
Edward had seen a lot of men die over the years, but this was the first time he’d personally witnessed one being eaten by a monster. It somehow made the reality of what they were doing stick home more significantly. As though until now, he’d been playing a game.
The sound of machine gun fire interrupted his thoughts.
He looked up. Mark had raked the crocodile with the entire contents of his magazine, and then attached a second, only to be stopped by another one of his men.
“It’s dead mate!” The Australian commando said. “I’m really sorry.”
Mark said nothing. Instead, he reached down and dragged the remains of Zelig toward him. By himself, he pulled the man’s corpse up into the tree.
A second crocodile then made its attack.
Snatching Zelig’s leg, it dragged the corpse into the swamp and disappeared for good. Edward had seen enough. “All right gentlemen. No one goes in the water. Let’s keep going, and see if there is any solid ground in this damn jungle!”
Chapter Forty-One
Billie was surprised by her own strength. She had seen death before, but somehow the crocodile attack appeared more brutal. Like Edward, she knew there was a lot more at stake than one man’s life. It forced her to increase her awareness of her surroundings and carry on.
Twenty minutes later, the arrow on her necklace began to move. At first she thought her movement was causing the arrow to spin. Then, when she stopped and took it off her neck so that she could look at it level, it pointed constantly in a westerly direction.
“We’re getting close,” she said.
Edward leaned in over her shoulder, so that she could feel his breath as he translated the direction to magnet west. “It didn’t do that last time?”
“No, last time it was lot more sluggish. Maybe we’re getting close?”
“But even when we were in the Tibetan temple, it didn’t move like that?”
Billie thought about it for a minute.
“I wonder if it responds differently to the amount of orichalcum. You know, like a weak metal will barely interfere with a magnetic compass, whereas a large steel object like a boat will wreak havoc on it.”
“So what you’re saying is that we’re either very close or that the Temple of Poseidon is covered with several million dollars’ worth of orichalcum?”
“That’s my guess.”
At the front of their group, Mark called for both of them. “Mr. Worthington! Dr. Swan! You’re gonna want to see this.”
Billie was the fastest to respond, and Edward followed quickly behind her. The area had become dense with papyrus reeds as much as ten feet high. Their team were literally hacking a tunnel through the stuff.
The place was thick with spider webs the size of which could engulf a house. Billie shook her head. “Great. So we’ve left the Heart of Darkness in exchange for one of Tolkien’s man-eating spider worlds.”
Ben, the American SEAL, gently touched the massive web with his hand. It was thick, sticky and elastic. He failed to rip it with his hand. Then, yanking his hand back he picked up his machete, undeterred and hacked at it. He stepped through the opening and became covered by literally hundreds of small spiders.
He swayed with his machete and hacked away, before pulling his machine gun out and firing a burst of rounds toward the bulk of them, sending them scattering.
Billie laughed. “Wow, Ben. I didn’t know you were afraid of spiders. You know they’re not dangerous, don’t you?”
In the background, there was a constant hum, like the sound of a thousand beetles flapping their wings, or chewing on something clicking. “What the fuck is that?” Mark asked, irritated.
“I have no idea. But it’s starting to grate on my nerves,” Edward replied.
They reached another wall of ten-foot high papyrus reeds.
Mark pulled a large section of the papyrus to the side, revealing the most amazing sight he’d ever seen. He swore.
“What is it?” Billie was the first to ask.
“Unless I’m mistaken, I think we just found the second temple.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Through the papyrus reeds, Billie stared into the opening. A series of circular dams withheld the ever-present water from the swamp. Each one cut deeper into the land, until the final one was more than fifty feet below the height of the crocodile filled water.
At the very center was a giant dome — which glowed orange and red.
Billie smiled. “That’s it! Poseidon’s temple!”
Edward patted her back. “I never doubted you for a minute.” With a warm smile, he said, “Come on, let’s go get the first half of the code to Atlantis.”
There was a strong sense of achievement and success that carried through their team. From Edward, as the financier, through to the mercenaries, all of them felt the joy of discovery. The soldiers quickly made their way down the circular dams until they reached the large dome at its bottom.
The thing glowed orange. “It’s called orichalcum,” Billie advised the men. “And it’s said to be more valuable than gold. If we survive this, you can imagine what sort of monetary share will be yours.”
It was surrounded by a moat.
In between each dam, a thin layer of water, nearly black, formed a natural moat. It was no more than seven feet wide, and the party easily crossed it using a carbon-fiber extendable ladder. Billie slowly walked around the dam until she circled it, without finding any entrance. Any inclination to wade into the murky water was immediately extinguished by the piercing golden eyes of the temple’s protectors — crocodiles, in the hundreds.
“More alligators!” Edward said, frustrated.
“Technically, those are crocodiles, not alligators. You see, the crocodiles have more of a V-shaped jaw, and tend to be more predatory…” Billie began to explain.