As the docks grew smaller, the wind whipped up, and they neared their destination in the middle of the Taiwan Strait, Drake held on tight and caught the leader’s attention.
“One thing bothers me,” he shouted. “Well, more than one thing, but this the most. Something’s down there. We all know that. But how can anyone be certain it’s Mu?”
Kearns made a noise. “Shit, how the hell do I know? Miss Jaye, though, she explained a lot of this whilst we were waiting for you guys.” He stressed the word “waiting” just a little. “First, like you say, something’s down there. Second, they now have these ancient, once undecipherable tablets to back ‘em up. Third, can anyone in government ever afford to be wrong?”
Dahl laughed knowingly.
“Nah, didn’t think so. Fourth, let’s tip their hand and see what gives. Fifth, they also have the Peking Man fossil on the table and that boy’s as real as they come. It all adds to the credibility, see? Add to that the fact that these tricky bastards inside the Chinese government all seem to want to go to war with Taiwan then you can see why the US is worried. Any excuse, Miss Jaye said.” He spread his hands. “And here we are.”
“Reconnaissance and verification,” Dahl said. “Nothing ventured nothing gained.”
“Easy in, easy out. Nobody loses,” Kearns said.
“Can we stop with the clichés?” Alicia moaned. “Friggin’ Navy Seals.”
“Pride of the Navy,” one of the men — Sims — spoke up.
A sudden explosion shook the skies, making Drake almost tip out of the boat. When he looked up he saw a streak of silver flying overhead, a jet fighter with loaded missiles.
“What the hell?”
“That’s a Taiwan military jet,” Kearns said. “Now I don’t believe in coincidence and they can’t have spotted us, so I’m guessing the Taiwan government have figured something out. Maybe they were tipped off. But when they start doing flyovers like that — the Chinese see it as a threat and a challenge. We’d best make this quick, guys.”
Drake sat up straighter as the boat slowed. A blue horizon stretched ahead, China so far away its coastline appeared only as a haze. Blue seas lay to all sides, empty of marine traffic and seemingly deserted. He assumed that would not actually be the case. If the Pythians were laying claim to this find they would be keeping it under a twenty-four-hour watch. Kearns was wasting no time, already strapping into his air tanks and readying his face mask. The Seals checked their rebreathers.
“We’re using the buddy system,” Kearns said. “We’re all shipmates here, so Drake you’ll be mine. Now pair off.”
Moments later the group were tipping themselves into the water. Drake breathed through the mouth, employing a deep and slow breathing technique to help cope with the extra demands on his lungs. The divers limited their descent, allowing their ears and other senses to adjust as the underwater environment slowly darkened. Drake equalized his ears as the pressure built, seeing Dahl and Alicia do the same. He decided to check the comms unit.
“All well over there?”
Alicia’s head turned in slow motion. “Be better once I get you outta my head. First in Kobe and now here.”
“Not what you used to say,” Drake reminisced.
“Don’t slow the ascent,” Kearns’ voice interrupted.
Drake’s flippered feet fell further, drifting down at negative buoyancy. The world around him was a brilliant blue and above the light was bright white and suffused. Descending was a truly different world. Bubbles rose all around his colleagues, racing each other toward the surface and certain expiration. A shoal of silver fish flicked past. Darkness beckoned below and Drake fell into the heart of it.
“We’re dead on the coordinates.” Kearns checked a waterproof device. “Passing forty meters.”
Drake again equalized his ears, slowing his descent. This wasn’t exactly a technical dive but nevertheless still had to be conducted by the book as they were exceeding the recommended scuba diving depth. The Seals, he noted, carried numerous bits of equipment around their waists, including torches, cameras, sediment-hoovers and weapons. None of them ever stopped checking equipment and observing their surroundings.
At last the darkness enveloped them and finally they reached their depth at seventy meters. Kearns’ feet brushed the sediment at the bottom, not landing too fast, and Drake was soon to follow, feeling an odd sensation as he set foot on flat ground far below the surface of the sea.
Alicia wobbled, drifting before setting herself straight.
“Bit out of your depth, love?” Drake quipped with a laugh.
“Har, har, your one-liners used to be as good as DATY, now they’re about as funny as VD.”
“Oh aye? What the heck are you on about?”
“And you can stop your Yorkshire-ishness right there. It ain’t cute. And you’ve never heard of Dining At The Y? No wonder Mai’s become a frustrated bitch.”
“Hey!”
Alicia kicked off the bottom and tilted, waving her flippered feet at his face. Kearns swam to the right and Drake followed. The Seal team leader spoke. “A few miles that way,” he indicated China, “and you would reach the Yonaguni Monument, a popular tourist attraction for divers. Who’d have thought this would end up being so close to it?”
“Makes sense to me,” Alicia muttered.
“Nothing to see yet,” Drake observed.
“Then you’re not looking.” Kearns surprised him and slowed. He reached out a gloved hand, brushing at a slab-like, moss-covered object on the sea bottom. “See that? Now look here.” He scissored his legs, swimming around the side of the slab.
Drake followed, now seeing the stone staircase cut into the black rock. Six risers high it rose, each descending step wider than the other, ending at the sea bed. Kearns swam lower and brushed at the accumulated sand and sediment. Drake saw sharp little flakes drifting away.
“Goes deeper,” Kearns said. “See?” As his fingers cleared the silt more of the staircase became apparent.
“How much sediment is there likely to be?” Drake asked.
“At the bottom of the sea? That’s like asking if you’d like to live one, one-thousand-year life or ten one-hundred-year lives, but in a storm-tossed, windy environment like the one we have above it could be a meter a year, maybe more.”
“And they reckon this place is about ten thousand years old.”
“Big dig, eh?”
Drake began to understand now why the Pythians might be ransoming the lost kingdom to China. He didn’t understand how, but the why was clear. The task of uncovering it was impossible, even the task of exploration practically unthinkable. Having said that, China was the world’s most influential emerging superpower.
“Castle walls.” Kearns swam even further. “See the red walls? An ancient castle already discovered in the 1980s. And yet — nobody knows. Did you know?”
Drake shook his head, then realized Kearns probably couldn’t see the gesture behind his mask. “No. Why?”
“They’re pretty much unexplainable. Six- to ten-thousand-year-old, mortar-laced castle walls under the South China Sea? Thirty to seventy meters deep? At least five discovered by sonar graph? According to Miss Jaye the sonar graphs also showed many protrusions near the walls, indicating alleys, staircases and other walls.”
Drake saw where the man, through Hayden, was going. Back to the old “out of place” artefact impasse. Ten thousand years had passed since this place became submerged. But none of that mattered now.
Through the others they began to get a feel for the size of the area, the depth and width of the walls and what other objects lay in the vicinity. Kearns noticed that several silt piles had been recently built.