Return to Atlantis: A Novel (55 page)

“Yes?”

“We definitely didn’t. Remember what that geologist, Bellfriar, told us about the statues before we went to South America? He said the meteorite they came from had a lot of metal in the rock—and that’ll make it really, really tough. There’s no way these charges’ll be enough to destroy it. Best they’ll do is split it into smaller bits, but they’ll still be too big for us just to chuck ’em into the lava.” He looked back at the entrance. “We need a Plan B.”

“What kind of Plan B?”

“My usual kind—blowing something up.”

“But that’s Plan A as well!”

He smiled, then collected one of the explosive charges and a detonator and headed for the lava tube. “Get all your photos—soon as I come back, I’ll set the bombs on the rock and then we’ll get out of here.”

“Where are you going?”

“To make sure nobody gets through that tunnel after we leave.” He jogged away, leaving Nina alone with the Atlantean gods.

She photographed the whole of the temple, then turned her attention to the statues around the meteorite. Whatever Eddie was doing, it was taking a while; he still had not returned by the time she had captured all of the Olympians. She considered taking a closer look at the temple, but curiosity about a more natural wonder won out and she made her way up the slope to the lip of the ledge.

The heat grew more intense the closer she got. Away from the fresh air coming through the lava tube, she
found it harder to breathe as well. Coughing, she nevertheless climbed the last few yards to the edge and looked down.

It was like peering directly into hell. The volcano’s conduit dropped dizzyingly down for hundreds of feet, a searing red eye at its end glaring back up at her. The level of the lava below had at some point sunk, leaving a seething molten lake churning in the subterranean magma chamber. The temperature was so great that she could only bear it for a few seconds before withdrawing, but she had seen more than enough. Even at its lowest level of activity, a volcano was still terrifying close up; she tried to imagine what it would have been like when Nantalas unwittingly released the full fury of the earth beneath Atlantis. It was almost too frightening to think about.

What made it more worrying was that she might be able to unleash a similar disaster—or be forced to do so. The sooner the meteorite was destroyed, and with it any chance of the Group’s using its destructive potential, the better.

The thought of the Group made her look back at the entrance, from which Eddie was finally reemerging. Still coughing, she hurried back down to the much cooler center of the bowl. “Are you done?”

He nodded. “I’ll show you on the way out. You got all your pictures?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t mind getting some close-ups of the temple. Do you need me to help with the explosives?”

“I can manage. You go and get some more photos.”

“It’s a shame they’ll probably be all that’s left of this place,” she said glumly. “How long?”

“I’ll need to find weak spots, so … fifteen minutes, maybe.”

“Okay.” Camera at the ready, Nina went to the temple as Eddie prepared the last three charges.

From the air, the volcano stood out from dozens of miles away, the column of steam at its peak standing tall in the sky like a marker flag.

An aircraft was heading straight for the beacon. Powering over the desert was an AgustaWestland AW101 helicopter, a civilian version of the military Merlin transport. The hold of this particular example had been fitted out with seats, all of which were occupied.

Alexander Stikes, seated directly behind the pilot, would have much preferred the twenty-four places to be filled with mercenaries under his command, but the surviving members of the Group had decided they wanted to witness the discovery of the meteorite firsthand. They had arrived in the Ethiopian capital the previous day and waited in Addis Ababa’s most luxurious hotel, such as it was, for the ongoing search to produce results. It was a harsh irony: one of the world’s poorest countries being visited incognito by a small group of people whose personal net worth outstripped that of the entire nation.

He turned to speak to Warden. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Are you sure this is the place?” the Group’s chairman demanded.

“Not one hundred percent, but considering the circumstances it seems highly likely. A volcano would fit nicely with the Atlantean priestess’s reference to the forge of Hephaestus. Benefits of a classical education,” he added at Meerkrieger’s raised eyebrow. “And our aerial reconnaissance drone spotted a vehicle crossing the desert toward it some hours ago; it’s still there.”

“Wilde and Chase?” said Warden.

“Who else?” Sophia said from beside Stikes.

The former officer nodded. “Considering that there’s absolutely nothing in this part of the desert that would be of value to man or beast, they’re the only people I can think of who would have a reason for coming out here.”

“But we don’t know they’re in the country,” Brannigan said from behind Meerkrieger.

“And we don’t know they’re not. Chase has proved very adept at getting around the world unnoticed.”

“Good for him,” said Larry loudly. Eddie’s father was seated toward the back of the cabin with the mercenaries, under guard. The man next to him had standing orders from Stikes if the prisoner made a nuisance of himself, and he carried them out by driving an elbow hard into Larry’s stomach. The older man curled up in pain, gasping for breath.

“We know they left Switzerland,” Stikes continued, dismissing the interruption, “and they didn’t return to the States, so it’s highly probable that they’re here. Wilde apparently has some sort of in-built direction finder, after all. And they have a very strong incentive to find the meteorite before we do.”

“You’d better hope they haven’t,” Warden said, with an undercurrent of threat.

Stikes concealed his look of derision until he had turned away to check the view ahead. The volcano was rapidly growing. His cold eyes scanned it, searching for anything standing out against the barren rock …

“There,” he said. “There they are!” He pointed, indicating his find to the pilot, who turned the helicopter toward it.

Warden leaned forward to look. A small block of color was visible on the mountainside: a vehicle. “Land as close to it as you can,” he ordered, then addressed Stikes. “Will you be able to find them?”

“Tracking is one of my specialties,” the Englishman told him smugly.

The pilot brought the helicopter into a hover over the small plateau, its downwash whipping up a storm of dust and grit that buffeted the parked four-by-four. He brought the aircraft down with a bump. “Right,” said Stikes, addressing the members of the Group, “I think it will be best if you all wait in the chopper until my men and I find Chase and Wilde and locate the meteorite. It should—”

“We’re not going to sit here baking in this thing,” said
Warden firmly. The pilot was in the process of shutting down the engines; once the cabin’s air-conditioning was switched off, the temperature in the enclosed space would quickly become intolerable. “I want to be there to see the stone the moment it’s found.”

“So do we,” said both the Bull brothers simultaneously. The others agreed, even the elderly Meerkrieger undeterred by the prospect of negotiating the rough terrain.

“As you wish,” Stikes said. “In that case, if you’ll follow me …” As Warden picked up the case holding the statues, the mercenary leader made his way down the narrow central aisle to his eight men at the rear. “Everyone arm up and move out. Remember that in no circumstances is Dr. Wilde to be killed. Anyone else who might be there is fair game—except Chase. He’s mine.” He reached past several parachutes on a rack to push a button, and the broad rear ramp lowered to the ground. “All right, let’s go.”

He strode down the ramp, the Group members—looking obviously out of place in the raw natural environment despite their newly bought expedition clothing—and Sophia following. The mercenaries pulled back tarps and collected their weapons and survival gear from behind the ranks of seats, then marched after their leader, two of them pushing Larry between them.

Gleaming Jericho drawn, Stikes checked that the Land Rover was empty, then surveyed the steep and barren landscape. There was nobody in sight.

But he spotted a small depression in the blanket of stones covering the ground. On its own it would have meant nothing, but near it was another, and another …

A trail of footfalls, leading away from the four-by-four up the volcano’s side. Two trails, in fact, one lighter than the other.

Sophia recognized his curling smile of triumph. “You’ve found them?”

“I have,” he replied. He called out to the others, “This way!”

They set off up the slope, Stikes leading the pack like a foxhound.

Eddie had eventually found two promising spots on the meteorite to plant his charges, and was now carefully traversing the top of the great rock, looking for a third. If the explosives shattered it along its natural fault lines, the combined blasts might have more chance of pulverizing the separate pieces.

It was a long shot, though. So Plan B would have to come into effect, and even that had a major flaw—one that he only had to look up to see. If worse came to worst, people could descend on lines from the top of the crater. Considering the Group’s resources, if they found the place it wouldn’t take long for them to realize that.

And he was increasingly thinking there was no
if
about it. They had already triangulated the meteorite’s general position based on the bearings taken in Japan and Switzerland, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the plane he had seen was carrying out reconnaissance. Finding the Temple of the Gods was a matter of money, matériel, and manpower, and the Group had all three in abundance.

He dismissed the grim thought as he spotted a wide crack in the meteorite’s surface, deep enough to swallow his entire arm. That should do the trick.

It would take a few minutes to rig the detonator and place the explosive. He glanced at the towering temple, seeing the flash of Nina’s camera from the second tier. “Might have bloody known she’d wander off,” he grumbled before raising his voice to a shout. “Oi! I’ll only be a couple more minutes—come back down!”

On the temple, Nina heard him, and reluctantly waved to show her agreement. There was still so much more to see. As well as the statues, the walls were inscribed with more Atlantean texts: accounts of the builders’ journey across Africa and how they had constructed the temple despite the extreme conditions.

But now nobody would ever know their story. The temple was well within the fifty-yard blast radius Alderley had mentioned, so blowing up the meteorite would bombard it with debris, smashing the statues and shattering the ancient records behind them. She would be the only person ever to see the hidden wonder of the lost civilization close up.

She knew the sacrifice had to be made, though. Taking one last picture of a statue, whom she took to be Eupraxia, the goddess of well-being, she headed back to the narrow flight of stairs.

By the time she returned to the ledge, Eddie was out of sight on top of the meteorite, lying down to push the primed explosive as deeply into the rock as possible. She aimed her camera upward, trying to get as much of the temple as she could into the frame with the mouth of the crater high above …

A sound caught her attention. A soft scuff, like someone stepping on gravel.

She moved across the temple’s front to the tunnel entrance. Nothing but darkness was visible. She listened for several seconds, but the noise didn’t recur. Dismissing it as just the breeze shifting grit on the floor, she turned away, lining up her photograph again—

Crunch
.

The same noise, louder, closer.

She whirled—and saw Stikes emerge from the lava tube, his gun pointed at her. Behind him, other faces came out of the shadows, all equally unwelcome: Sophia, Warden, the other members of the Group. And Larry, held at gunpoint by an unsmiling mercenary in desert combat gear.

“Dr. Wilde!” said Stikes with malevolent brightness. “We can’t go on meeting like this.”

“Eddie!” Nina yelled. “They’re here, they found us! Set off the—”

Sophia rushed past Stikes and slammed a gloved fist against Nina’s jaw. The blow knocked the redhead to her knees. She spat out blood and whipped up one leg,
trying to plow a retaliatory strike into the other woman’s stomach, but Sophia neatly sidestepped the attack and drove a boot into her chest. Nina let out a choked gasp of pain.

“What’s the
matter
, Nina?” Sophia snarled as she delivered another savage kick, this time to her abdomen. “Eddie not been
keeping
”—a third impact—“up with your
training
?” She stamped on Nina’s stomach, leaving her writhing and struggling to breathe.

“That’s enough!” ordered Warden. “We need her alive!”

With evident reluctance, Sophia withdrew. Ignoring Nina’s moans, Stikes surveyed the ledge. “Chase!” he called, his voice echoing off the temple. “Show yourself or I’ll kill your father!” The mercenary forced Larry forward, gun pressed hard into his back.