“Absolutely positive,” he said.
“Sounds plausible,” she said.
“I don’t suppose we have any APS rifles on board?” Hawke asked.
Bekri shook his head. “What are they?”
“They’re Russian rifles designed for underwater penetration.”
Ryan raised his head. “Did someone say something about Scarlet in a bath with a Russian sailor?”
“Drop dead, boy.”
Ryan laughed. “Is it true you think about sex every five seconds?”
“Yes,” she replied coolly. “But never with you.”
A howl of laughter went up and Lea high-fived Scarlet.
“We should have left you in that Serbian fort,” Ryan said grumpily.
“All right,” Hawke said, suddenly all business. “This is serious. Kruger’s here and now his crew know we’re here, so we need to get on. They will have radioed down to Kruger and alerted him of our position.”
“Then to the Batscooters!” Ryan said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Hawke peered over the edge of the VCSM and stared down into the dark gray sea as it heaved up and down in the building storm. SBS frogman training was the most extensive in the world and even though it had been a while, a raging, black ocean didn’t unnerve him in the least.
“If you think you’re going down there without me you can forget it, boyo.”
He turned to see Lea standing by his side. She had wandered down from the bridge and was zipping up a heavy duty waterproof jacket.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
The ship rose with a violent swell and tipped several degrees to port as a new wave of rain lashed over the deck. They grabbed on to the rail and waited for the vessel to stabilize for a few seconds before making their way back inside.
Hawke, Lea and Ryan put on foamed neoprene wetsuits and prepared to make the journey to Atlantis. The bubbles in the neoprene helped its wearer float but at lower depths the increased pressure squashed them, allowing a neutral buoyancy for underwater swimming. Hawke didn’t know what to expect down there, but he didn’t want to waste time coming all the way back up to the surface for wetsuits, weapons or explosives if he didn’t have to.
“What if we have to go deeper?” Ryan asked as he zipped up his suit.
“The scooters are only designed for the depth we’re going to, and you’re designed that way too,” Hawke replied. “So unless you want collapsed lungs, nitrogen narcosis and to be suffocated while simultaneously getting crushed to death, then no, I wouldn’t recommend going any deeper, however…”
“There’s just no way a sentence like you just said can end in the word however,” Lea said.
“However,” he repeated slower, “if we find an actual complex down there — a citadel, or whatever — we can always come back up and use the minisub to investigate further.”
“Christ almighty,” Lea said, shaking her head as she watched Ryan complete the task of putting on the suit. “You had to ask, didn’t you?”
“There’s no such thing as a stupid question,” Ryan said. “Only stupid…”
“Wankers,” Lea replied instantly. “I know, yeah — thanks, Ry.”
Once in their wetsuits the crew lowered the scooters into the water off the back of the ship and the three ECHO members climbed aboard.
“So what do we do now?” Ryan asked.
“Pretty much the same as any expedition to an underwater site,” Hawke said. “We dive down, check it out, and then come back again.”
They sank beneath the violent waves and seconds later the calmness under the storm-lashed surface fell upon them.
“What’s it like down there?” Scarlet asked over the comms. “Has Ryan’s personality reached crush depth yet?”
“What does that even mean?” Ryan asked. “It makes no sense.”
“Much like you, boy.”
“It’s just fine, Cairo,” Hawke replied over the comms. “We’re passing twenty feet.”
Hawke checked the depth gauge as he steered his scooter toward Khatibi’s coordinates. “You still have us on radar?” he muttered.
“Why? You’re not thinking of running out on us, are you darling?”
“As a matter of fact,” Hawke said, enjoying the banter, “there’s a great little bar down here I wanted to try.”
The three of them continued to push down into the depths, turning on their headlights. Now, a trio of white arcs shone into the darkness of the ocean and lit their way as they cruised down to the sea floor.
Hawke took a few moments to search around for Kruger and his men but saw no one. According to the latest report from Bekri, Kruger’s ship was now half a kilometre to the north but they had clearly not found the place with their sonar yet or they would already be here. Peering into the gloomy water from behind the safety of his scooter’s windshield, he thought he saw an arc of light that might indicate a headlamp belonging to Kruger’s crew, but it was nothing, so he returned his attention to their mission and pushed onwards.
Unrestrained by his lack of fitness thanks to the scooter, and motivated by sheer enthusiasm, Ryan was now in the lead and so far ahead he was almost out of sight. If it weren’t for his headlight Hawke would never have been able to make out in the gloom.
“Slow down, mate,” He said over the comms.
“Yeah, take it easy, Ry,” Lea added. She was in between the two men and slightly higher in elevation.
“I’m fine,” the young man replied. “But I can’t see a thing yet — not even those sodding circles. There’s nothing here!”
Lea shook her head with frustration. “What a waste of frigging time!”
“No, wait,” Hawke said, steering his scooter to the right and heading toward a ridgeline running north-south. “I see something over there!”
They made their way north for a few seconds, and he got the feeling they were being watched and turned to check over his shoulder once again. Kruger and the rest of his monkeys hadn’t come all the way out here for the swimming, and it was only a matter of time before their survey led them to this exact spot.
But for now, they were still alone.
“Holy crap in a bucket,” Lea said. “Check that out!”
Another hundred yards ahead of them was a long fissure in the seabed. At first it looked like one of the countless splits and cracks in the ocean floor, but as they got closer they recognized the same oddly shaped features the sonar had picked up earlier back on the ship.
“That’s it!” Ryan said, increasing the power to his scooter and speeding up in a bid to get there first.
“You’re not trying to be the first man to set foot on Atlantis, are you, mate?”
“Of course I bloody am!” came the reply.
Hawke and Lea accepted the challenge and also increased their revs. Both scooters shot forward, their headlamps shining three pale white arcs onto the ocean floor ahead of them. As they headed for what was looking more and more like the steps the sonar had revealed, Hawke thought he saw a flash of light in his peripheral vision but dismissed it so he could focus on the more important task ahead of him.
He was no archaeologist, and neither were Lea or Ryan, but he thought there had to be some kind of rules about maintaining the integrity of a newly discovered site, especially one as incredible as Atlantis. This had to be the greatest discovery of all time, after all.
“It’s the steps all right,” Ryan said. “And I’m going in!”
“Just take it easy, mate,” Hawke said, now a hundred yards behind and closing. “We don’t know what’s down there, or where it goes.”
Up ahead, Ryan Bale was buzzing like a swarm of wasps. All those years he’d spent drinking in front of a computer and getting keyed on dope all day and night seemed like an eon ago now, as he raced on an underwater scooter down a smashed-up stairwell beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. If it hadn’t been for Lea calling him that day none of this would be happening.