Tom looked at the predicted maximum duration of his life support system. A simple number on the side of his mechanical left forearm.
It read: 47 hours and 5 minutes.
“So, now we’re below a manmade fake lake bottom constructed of sediment and some sort of polyurethane, which in itself is below more than a foot of frozen ice… and we want to go down there?”
“It’s either that, or you can explain to Billie why we didn’t follow her direction to Atlantis and save her?”
Tom didn’t reply.
“I think your girlfriend would be pissed off.”
“Billie’s not my girlfriend. But you’re right, she’d be pissed — let’s go find whatever the hell she sent us here to get and then get as far away as possible from this place.”
Sam shifted his ADS into a controlled dive, and then asked, “Billie’s not your girlfriend?”
“No.”
Sam was going to say something and then thought better of it.
They descended another hundred feet, and the place had the dark appearance of another world. Yet, unlike many other places in which Sam had dived, this one seemed to be entirely lacking in any marine life.
At three hundred feet Tom said, “Billie’s amazing. I’d marry her tomorrow if she’d let me. The trouble is, she has no interest in it. She’s focused on something else, which she has no desire to tell me about. But like the Master Builders and yourself, she can’t truly commit to anything or anyone, until she finds the answer to whatever question seems to have eluded her since she was a child.”
“I understand…” Sam began to respond, but stopped.
“Because you know how you get when you’re studying a lead to the Master Builders?”
“No, because despite all those muscles, you’re really quite an unattractive guy.”
Despite their distance, Sam could hear the sound of Tom’s deep laugh inside his ADS machine. Tom ignored Sam’s joke, and then continued. “You know Billie a lot better than I do. Do you have any idea what she’s looking for?”
“No idea,” Sam lied. He would have told Tom the truth, but it wasn’t his to tell. Besides, it was because of what Billie was searching for that their lives had become entangled. It had killed her grandfather. Her own father had the good sense to leave it alone, while she had become obsessed, and that obsession had very nearly got him killed alongside her. No, it had disappeared since they had last gotten close to finding it — retreating like a wounded snake, into an unobtainable region from whence it had come. Wherever it was, he hoped that it remained hidden, at least for the rest of their lifetimes.
“How about you and Aliana?” Tom asked, changing the subject.
“What about us?” Sam replied. His mind instantly returned to the girl’s exquisite face. With her blond hair, and striking grey eyes, Aliana’s beauty was surpassed only by her intense intelligence. He’d met her while searching for the Magdalena, an airship filled with rich Jewish families escaping during World War II that never reached its destination. Aliana’s father had tried to kill him, but in the end had given his blessing.
“Are you going to marry her?”
Sam thought seriously about it for a moment. Did he love her? Yes, with all his heart. Would he marry her? Of course he would marry her, if their lives were different. If they had been normal people, who worked nine to five, enjoyed weekends off, and generally spent time together. But Aliana and he were both driven by something far more important than love.
He needed to find answers — who were the Master Builders really, and where had they gone? She needed to win a battle against some virus that hadn’t yet evolved. They were different questions, but both of them needed the answers more than anything else in life. Yes, for the time being, they loved each other, and for every free moment that he had, Sam wanted to spend it with Aliana. But he very much doubted they would be happy married.
“No, I don’t think we will.”
Yes, I know why Billie would never marry Tom, despite the obvious affection that she has for him — because I’m driven toward something that I can’t explain too.
Sam wanted to tell Tom that he should enjoy his time for what it was, but couldn’t come up with the right way to approach it. In the end, he did what he always did, and focused on the task at hand.
“We’re approaching 500 feet.”
“Copy that,” Tom replied. “So, I guess the tourist brochure forgot to move the decimal one place?”
“Guess so.”
Each man adjusted his ADS so they were now horizontally sinking, allowing for a clear view of the ground below them. It, too, was covered in sediment. But not enough to cover the markings of early man.
And then they saw it.
A series of rings, surrounding more rings, cut ever deeper into the earth’s crust, like a series of moats, culminating in a giant dome at the center. There was a slight ooze of sediment, most likely from a hundred years of settlement, which covered it. But even so, the glow was unmistakably dark orange. At this depth, it almost looked red.
“Tom, I think we just found Atlantis.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Billie watched as the mercenaries responded immediately, with every bit of efficiency that one would expect from professional killers. They formed a defensive circle to the right hand side of the glowing temple, which had drawn the searchers toward their trap like flies.
Each person in their party used the Kevlar pack off his shoulder to build a mediocre defensive barrier. Billie had no doubt that each man was worth the price Edward had paid, in skill and efficiency. She looked at their M60 machine guns pointed up at their attackers. Even with superior weaponry and a lifetime worth of training, they would only be able to take out a few dozen pygmies each. But, even the most optimistic of equations showed they simply did not have enough bullets to win.
“Remain steady gentlemen,” Mark said. “Choose your targets, and keep your bursts of fire short.”
The men grunted in acknowledgement.
Their eyes were large with adrenaline, their weapons drawn and focused. Without exception, each one of them appeared to be grinning like a demon. Billie wondered how it could be that trained soldiers had failed to see what she knew to be fact — they did not have the ability to win this fight, despite superior weaponry.
A single pygmy — most likely the tribe’s warrior chief, screamed something in an unrecognizable language. Without ever having heard the sound before, Billie instantly knew what it meant. The continuous sound of thumping weapons ceased.
And then the onslaught of spears rained down upon them.
Billie, surrounded by the team, was the most protected, as she heard the continuous thump of spears striking their barrier of backpacks. Hope rose as each one snapped upon striking the Kevlar.
Before the next set was thrown, Mark yelled, “Fire!”
The sound of M60 machine guns being eagerly released by the mercenaries from their restraints echoed through the giant circles of dams, like an amphitheater, in short bursts. The first set of pygmies died instantly, their pale white flesh ripped apart as the large 7.62 caliber bullets traveled through unhindered.
Billie looked up and Mark winked at her. “I told you we’d be all right.”
“That’s not all of them,” Billie replied, as another hundred or more men took the place of their injured or killed tribal brothers.
Whosh!
A second set of spears were thrown at them. Again, each person grabbed a backpack to form a shield. This time one of the British SAS soldiers had the small head of a spear slide clear through his right hand.