“Must you see the silver lining in every cloud, Joe Hawke?”
“Sorry — is it annoying?”
“A little.”
“When life gives you lemons…”
“Yeah, yeah — make lemonade, I know.”
“I was going to say throw them back and get some apples.”
She laughed. “All right, you and your damned optimism win again.”
“All I’m saying is look for the advantage to every situation.”
“In every disaster, there is opportunity,” Lexi said. She walked over to them in the cabin and leaned against the wall. “Old Chinese proverb.”
“So what’s the opportunity for us being stuck out here for so long?”
“Simple,” Hawke said. “We have longer to plan our attack.”
“You always have an answer…”
“Plus, we have other things we could do to pass the time.” He moved to her and put his arms around her waist.
“Oh God,” Lexi said, and walked back outside the boat.
Lea smiled. “I like where this is going.”
Another long hour passed until then they reached their destination — two hundred and thirty miles off the coast of southern Morocco — and then Bekri began a systematic sonar survey of the ocean floor, following Khatibi’s coordinates precisely. For a long time, it was just two men speaking in Arabic as the sea slowly grew less peaceful with the gathering storm.
“There’s nothing here!” Bekri said. “Just as I told you.”
“But the coordinates must be right!” Lea said. “They have to be.”
“They are right,” Ryan said. “I’ve just been a total idiot.”
“Hallelujah!” Scarlet said.
“So why can’t we see anything?” Lea asked.
“Plate tectonics,” Ryan said. “The Mid-Atlantic ridge moves at around two and half centimetres a year and the coordinates are derived from the constellations!”
“But the entrance is hundreds of metres out of place,” Lea said.
“Which means it sank to the ocean floor a very long time ago indeed,” Hawke said, nodding with satisfaction at yet more proof of their theories.
They moved the ship in line with Ryan’s theory and a few moments later things changed fast.
“My God…” Bekri said. “This can’t be real. There must be a problem with the survey instruments.”
Hawke took a step forward and frowned. “What’s the matter?”
“This part of the seabed here,” Bekri said, pointing at the screen. “It’s registering as less than seventy feet deep in some places.”
“So what’s the problem?” Maria said.
“The ocean floor has been mapped here many times and the Dacia Seamount is at least two hundred feet below the surface of the sea according to all previous oceanographic surveys.”
“So what’s going on then?” Scarlet said.
“There are three options,” Hawke said. “First, the Dacia Seamount has got a hundred and thirty feet higher since the last survey, second, there has been some kind of cover-up concerning the true depth of this part of the ocean floor, or third, the instruments are wrong.”
Bekri shook his head vehemently. “They’re not wrong. They’re properly calibrated — I checked them before we left, before we started and I’m doing it a third time now.”
“And something tells me the Dacia Seamount hasn’t grown by a hundred feet since the last survey,” Lea said.
“Which leaves the Nixon Option,” said Ryan.
“We can’t get caught up in who’s covering this up, or why,” Hawke said. “That’s strategic stuff for later. Right now the mission is to locate Atlantis, and I think this means we’re getting closer.”
“There!” Khatibi said. “Those look like concentric circles.”
“It can’t be,” Ryan said, peering into the screen at the survey information. “My God — you’re right! There is no way they are natural formations.”
“So what are they then?” Hawke asked.
Ryan and Khatibi shrugged simultaneously. “Could be anything,” Ryan said. “The remnants of some kind of temple or public space… anything. And this here looks like a wall — and is that some stairs?”
“So this means we found Atlantis?” Lea said, looking at the others. They all heard the excitement in her voice.
“I guess we made it,” Scarlet said, turning to hug Camacho. She looked up into his eyes.
“I guess we did,” he said.
Without saying another word, Scarlet laced her arms around Camacho’s waist and kissed him hard on the mouth. The American didn’t resist, but moved his hands up to the small of her back and squeezed.
“Oh God,” Ryan said, and lowered his voice to an Attenborough whisper. “And here we see the female Mantis as she cannibalizes her mate…”
Without breaking from the kiss, Scarlet reached out and slapped the back of Ryan’s head.
“I can’t believe we discovered Atlantis!” Maria said.
“And about time too,” said Lexi, and the two women high-fived each other.
Khatibi tutted and shook his head. “It’s far too soon to tell. We must launch an exploration of the ocean floor. That is the only way we can be sure.”
Hawke sighed. “We don’t need a full sub at this depth, just regular wetsuits and then dive down.”
“We have some scooters,” Bekri said.
Hawke faced him. “Scooters?”
Bekri nodded. “Yes — underwater scooters. They are used for scientific purposes along the coast. They go a little over three miles per hour so will be much faster than diving.”
“It’s not just Dirk Kruger who has all the luck,” Hawke said. “How many have you got?”
“Three.”
“Fine, I only want two or three of us going down at first anyway. We can’t be sure what we’re going to find down there and if there are any booby-traps we don’t want the whole team getting wiped out. I’ll take Lea and Ryan, unless you’re desperate to go, Cairo?”
“Me?” Scarlet shrugged her shoulders. “Absolutely no fucks given over here, darling. If I’d wanted to piss about underwater I’d have joined you and the other girls with the white polo-necks back at SBS HQ.”
“That’s good then.”
“Very good,” Ryan said. “Much better if just the three of us get wiped out.”
“Exactly,” Hawke said, getting the sarcasm but not taking the bait. “We need to make sure we keep a good force on deck for when our friends show up. We know they have the coordinates and they left before us so they must be around here somewhere.”
“Too late,” Reaper said, lowering his binoculars. “Kruger’s already here — looks like an old tuna boat but fishermen don’t usually walk around the deck with submachine guns… and it looks like Kruger’s already dived — no sign of any minisub.”
Hawke looked through the binoculars and immediately saw what he was talking about. Somewhere approaching the horizon around three miles away was a stationary tuna boat. “He must have deployed a drift anchor,” Hawke said. “Or that thing would be all over the place in this weather.”
“How deep is it here again? Lexi asked.
Bekri answered. “According to the radar, the ocean floor beneath that tuna boat is around five hundred meters down.”
“Anchor chains are that long?” Lexi looked amazed.
Hawke suppressed a laugh and hid his smile. “No they’re not. A drift anchor doesn’t attach the ship to the seabed with a chain like a regular anchor. It’s designed to stabilize boats in rough weather like this by creating a lot of drag. It works a bit like a brake and slows the boat down.”
“Are you sure you’re not making that up?” Lexi asked with a sideways glance.