“What is it?” Hawke asked.
“I’m thinking this could be another source of the elixir.”
Ryan nodded. “I think that’s a pretty good guess. A floating city like that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to construct. It must be here for a very specific reason, and considering we know that Atlantis is over a thousand miles away and totally destroyed, the logical conclusion is that whoever built it must have had a very good reason to do so. A source of eternal life would fit the bill, and a Seastead would be the perfect way for anyone who wants either to guard it or access it with the minimum of effort.”
“By building a whole city over it?” Scarlet said, her tone heavy with scepticism.
“Easier than sailing a ship all the way out here every time you want to get to it, and if you have the money then why not?”
Hawke stared at the vast rig on the horizon, trying to steady himself as the chopper turned to land above the increasingly choppy waves far below. He’d read about Seasteads a long time ago but all he could recall was they could be towed around by a tugboat. This thing was far too big for that and must have been constructed on the site somehow, presumably with the assistance of a couple of large container ships.
It was literally like a small city on the horizon, but in the middle of the ocean. As they got closer he saw the residential buildings Lea had seen but in greater detail now, and there was even a marina and palm trees dotted along its perimeter. More interesting that that was what looked like some kind of refinery on the north edge, which he pointed out to the others.
“When I read about Seasteads I always visualised something a little more industrial, like an oil rig,” he said.
“Maybe in the early days,” Ryan replied. “But the architects’ imaginations soon ran wild and it wasn’t long before these things were being cooked up. It’s a classic start-up city but instead of being for normal people, apparently it’s full of psychopathic maniacs guarding sources of eternal life.”
“When you put it like that, I wish this bloody chopper would hurry up so we can get there!” Scarlet said, peering down at a large white yacht moored at a marina jutting out of the platform’s support structure. Beside it was a small container ship.
“We can’t be more than a few seconds away,” Hawke said, but then the chopper turned suddenly to port and their view of the Seastead was gone, replaced with nothing but an unbroken horizon and a dark gray sky.
“I’m not digging the look of that storm,” Lea said.
“Could be to our advantage,” Hawke said.
“Here we go again…”
“Just saying.”
He felt the chopper descend and then it landed on the platform’s Helipad. A few minutes later, the door opened and one of the men opened the door. He was holding a submachine gun in his hands, pointing it menacingly in their direction. “Get out.”
The storm had risen in power by the time they stepped out of the chopper, and they had to hold on to rails at the edge of the Helipad to stop getting blown over. The guards kept well back in case any of them tried anything funny, and moments later they were standing on the platform in the blasting rain and wind at least a hundred feet above the ocean.
Close up, the construction looked even more incredible. Hawke took the opportunity to study its design, and recalling Ryan’s words about the three main kinds of Seastead he could see by the gargantuan substructure that this was a platform based on semi-submersible columns.
Ships always had the choice of avoiding storms by setting a new course and using their radar to sail into calmer weather, but a Seastead had to be designed to withstand the most savage of storms. Looking at the sheer size of the semi-submersible columns at work in the rising storm, Hawke could see up close how they worked to stabilize the immense construction they supported.
The man with the C8 carbine was joined by several others and they gathered around the chopper in the blasting wind. He stepped up to them and raised his weapon. Behind him, two men dragged another man from the complex. He had been badly beaten and was barely conscious. He was dressed the same as the other men and had the same tattoo on his wrist.
“You’re just in time to see Lazarus here meet his maker,” yelled the man.
He raised the gun and aimed it at Lazarus, who said nothing, and merely closed his eyes.
“All traitors die for their crimes in the end,” the man said, raising the carbine.
A bolt of lightning burst from the sky and struck the conductor at the top of the Seastead. The armed guards looked up for a second and Hawke knew if he ever had one second to save his life and those of his friends, then this was it. Without hesitation, he burst into action.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Hawke seized the muzzle of the carbine and forced it down so it was pointing at the platform. The man’s reaction was fast, squeezing the trigger and loosing a savage burst of rapid fire into the deck where the bullets pinged off the riveted steel sheeting in all directions. The Englishman heaved the weapon up into the air and directed an arc of bullets at the welcoming committee and made everyone run for cover. The noise of the gunfire was deafening but the magazine was empty in seconds and left only smoke and the smell of gunpowder, soon whipped away by the howling wind.
Hawke wrenched the carbine from the man’s hands and whirled around in an arc to bring the stock of the heavy weapon smashing down on the back of his head. His collapse onto the platform ignited a chain reaction and within seconds chaos had spread around the Helipad. The ECHO team darted behind the chopper for cover while the men in black retreated to the relative safety of what looked like some kind of heating installation unit. The man they had called Lazarus was gone, into the shadows like a frightened lizard with one chance to save its life and Kruger, Korać, Luk and Kamchatka slipped down a ladder leading to the substructure.
The men returned with an M2 machine gun, a serious piece of kit requiring a two-man crew, just as they had faced in their assault on the Temple of Huitzilipochtli. It started firing at them and seconds later its crew was backed up by another man holding an M203 grenade launcher. The breech-loaded, single-shot launcher was a lightweight piece of kit attached to an M4 carbine and fired standard low velocity forty mil grenades from the handheld weapon.
Its operator was solemnly loading and firing the grenades on them and one of the rounds landed inside the Mil which the ECHO team were using for cover.
“Run!” Hawke yelled, and they scattered away from the helicopter before the round detonated. It exploded inside the chopper causing an enormous fireball to engulf the area. The fuel tank ignited and then the whole machine was blasted into dozens of pieces and black smoke belched up into the sky above the platform.
Hawke was now using a hangar behind the helipad for cover, and everyone was with him except for Lea and Camacho. He scanned the helipad zone but there was no sign of them. The thought of the explosion getting them and blasting them off the Seastead into the ocean crossed his mind for a bleak second but then he saw them.
In the chaos, Lea and Camacho were trying to get up after a grenade blast on the far side of the helipad. Athanatoi swarmed like ants and soon overwhelmed them. One man grabbed Lea roughly and yanked her down to her knees. In a heartbeat he had the muzzle of a Browning pushed into her throat and was dragging her back into the shadows.
Hawke’s eyes flicked from the terrible image of her getting snatched to the scene a few yards away where Camacho was struggling to his feet after the blast, but the Athanatoi man got to him first, planting a heavy boot in his ribs. The kick was so hard it propelled the heavy American into a half roll, forcing him onto his back and leaving him stranded like a turtle on its back.