Mark interrupted her. “I don’t give a fuck. Just work out a way to get around them!”
She quickly circled the dome, only to be disappointed that there was no entrance.
No matter. It was only a question of time. There were answers inside that dome, and she intended to find them.
The annoying background hum of beetles increased in volume until it sounded more like an earthquake.
Billie looked up. “That can’t be good!”
Surrounding them from above were more than four hundred men no more than four feet tall and wearing nothing whatsoever. The white pygmies stared down at them, the butts of their spears thumping the ground in a continuous and haunting staccato.
Billie cursed.
They had walked straight into a trap.
Chapter Forty-Three
Sam Reilly’s Gulfstream landed on the Podkamennaya Tunguska Airport — Siberia. His pilot taxied to the outer edge of the southern arm of the airport. He looked out the side windscreen. All he could see was white.
“Welcome to Siberia,” Tom said.
Sam sighed. “Yeah, not my first choice for a diving holiday. But let’s see if we can make it a rewarding one.”
A series of Russian police cars approached the plane from the runway.
“Look — they’ve come to welcome us,” Tom said.
“Apparently so.” Sam pressed an intercom direct to his pilots. “Have they told you what they want?”
“No, sir,” the pilot replied. “They’ve just advised me to stop so they can board us. It might be a routine inspection of a private jet.”
“I doubt it.”
Two minutes later, a small complement of men in thick black coats climbed the steps to Sam’s Gulfstream. He pressed the intercom to the pilot again. “Bring them into my office. If we’re going to have a meeting like this, I want it to be on my terms.”
“Understood, sir.”
Sam sat down in his office and closed the door. His private Jet, a loan from his father that he really never intended to give up, was armed more like a Lockheed Martin/Boeing F22 Raptor. Although nowhere near as agile, it had a weapons system that would send shivers into the commanders of most Air Forces around the globe. On the inside, Sam had spent a fortune having the small office built to repel boarders. In fact, behind his office, a secret room held the ability to remotely pilot the jet in the event that his pilots were killed. Also, his office had its own air supply, so that he could vent toxic gas into the main cabin if he really wanted to protect himself from unwanted boarders.
He sat down comfortably in his office. His father worked closely with a number of oil and gas suppliers throughout Russia, and for the most part, he was treated nearly reverently when he arrived in the country. Still, Russia was well known for the pettiness of some of its officials, particularly in the outer areas.
And Tunguska was an outer area.
There was a knock at the door. Sam stared at the video screen where the feed from a secret camera displayed his unwanted guests. There were five in total. Underneath his desk, he kept his hand on a Glock with a silencer. He wasn’t taking chances.
Then he saw her face.
If she was here, and had taken the risk of entering Russian through unofficial means, it meant that they were all in much worse danger than he’d realized.
He opened the door and stood at attention.
She walked in and closed the door, leaving Tom to look after her bodyguards. Pulling the dark hood off her face, she revealed the most exquisite deep red hair. Her hazel eyes had a rich opaline ring to them. And years of hard work in a dangerous world had left her with a smile that bordered on a permanent scowl.
“Madam Secretary, are you on holiday too?”
The Defense secretary’s scowl tightened, if that was even possible. “You know damn well what this about.”
“The Tunguska event,” Sam replied.
“Officially, we were never there, and I have no idea what happened in Tunguska. From what I’ve read, it was a dirty meteor, made up of predominantly gas and small fragments of stone, which allowed it to penetrate the world’s atmosphere, whereby it then broke up about five miles above the Tunguska River. The powerful downward projection of air blew more than an estimated ten million pine trees to the ground.”
Sam listened impatiently and then said, “And unofficially?”
“We sent a team of researchers to investigate something in that region. They never came back. So, we sent a team of soldiers in to find out what happened.”
“And what had happened?”
“Nearly ten million pine trees were knocked to the ground.”
“With all due respect Ma’am, a friend of mine is missing, and I’m pretty certain it’s tied in with the Tunguska event.”
“Really? So that’s why I was sent halfway around the globe for you this time? You’ve lost that girlfriend of yours, Dr. Swan?”
“She’s been kidnapped. And the only clue about where she’s gone is her own note, leading with the GPS coordinates of Tunguska.”
“Kidnapped, Mr. Reilly?” Her voice was patronizing in its sympathy. “You let her get kidnapped? How very careless of you.”
“Yes, well it was a mistake letting her out of my sight. Especially after she told me what she knew.”
“And what does she know?”
“The location of Atlantis.”
She paused for a few seconds. Her normally abrupt nature softened.
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yes. If she knows the coordinates of Atlantis, then someone’s about to have a really bad day. Sam, you need to find her before she tells anyone else. It’s a matter of national security.”
“Oh no, you don’t get to send me on an assignment just because I’ve now found something to keep you interested. First, you have to give me something. Tell me, what do you really know about Tunguska, and what does it have to do with Atlantis?”
“I have no idea what it has to do with Atlantis, but I can tell you what I do know about Tunguska.”
“So tell me.” She didn’t have to ask for his secrecy. He’d pledged that with his life when he’d been recruited and joined her secret taskforce years ago.
“In 1906 a team of explorers attempted to cross the Canadian and Siberian Seas, and travel through to Moscow. On their way, they uncovered something.”
Sam would have liked to know what they’d uncovered, but if she didn’t tell him, he wasn’t going to ask.
“So, we sent a second team. This one was full of researchers. The Russians got wind of our operation and they wanted to be involved. When we no longer heard from the teams, Washington became concerned and sent a third team. This one was a mixture of scientists and soldiers. When they got there, they did something… and the effect of what they did resulted in what appeared to be the destruction of millions of pine trees, uprooted and lying on their sides. Local accounts talked of a strange blue light for about ten minutes emanating from the sky.”
“Okay, and what about the original discovery?”
“It was gone. All evidence of the structure had disappeared.”
The word ‘structure’ wasn’t lost on Sam. She was letting him know what was really there in 1906, before the Tunguska event.
“So, the Russian delegate and our own at the time, signed a contract. Agreeing to never speak of it again, until it no longer mattered. So, all the documents about what happened were buried in a top secret archive, not to be opened for more than a hundred years.”
“It must be close to opening? It’s been more than a hundred years. You should have access to it?”
“Well Sam, that’s just it. The Tunguska File is set to be released in exactly two weeks from now. I don’t know what it was really about, but given the date, I would strongly advise you find Dr. Swan and Atlantis before that file becomes public knowledge.”