Atlantis Gate

CHAPTER 1

A little old lady was walking across a flat stony plain in Peru, an umbrella held in one hand to protect her from the sun, the other carrying a folding canvas seat. She had a faded leather backpack looped over one shoulder. Her skin was tanned and leathery, etched with lines from many years in the harsh sun.

Cresting a small hill in the middle of the plain, Dr. Leni Reizer opened the stool and sat down, giving a sigh of relief as she did so. She’d lived in the valley of the Nazca for over fifty years and the combination of heat, sun, dryness and age was beginning to wear on her.

She was in the exact center of a high plain between the Inca and Nazca valleys. The plain was almost fifty miles long and several miles in width. To the east, the high peaks of the Andes were visible, white capped and wreathed with clouds. The ground was hard packed, littered with small stones.

She had walked every foot of that plain and knew every stone, and more importantly, every line cut into the surface of the plain where there were no stones. She was seated in the midst of what some called the world’s largest work of art. For its size, covering almost five hundred square miles, it was also the least visible work of art as the complex patterns cut into the surface of the plain could only be truly appreciated with an aerial view, an enigma given that the lines had been cut well before the birth of Christ.

Reizer knew all the designs by heart. She came to this spot, a small knoll where she had first realized the magnitude of the complex so many years earlier, for solitude. Several lines originated on the knoll, radiating outward at various lengths. Also, what she called the master line, terminated here. The master began with a huge wedge cut into the plain five miles due south of her position. The wedge was almost a mile long, and at the small end a line extended which stretched five miles to this location.

The few tourists who came to the site, when they found out vehicles were forbidden to enter the plain, went to the nearest large town, Ica, and took the small plane tour, looking down on the site. The tour plane only flew once a week as this site was very remote and difficult to get to. She’d camped for days in the middle of the complex and not seen another human being.

The Nazca lines had first been noted in the 1930s when planes surveying for water had spotted them. A person walking on the ground might note a line when they crossed it, the ever-present small stones removed, a gouge cut in the hard earth, but the magnitude of the lines and the designs many of them formed would escape the person on the ground. The lines and geoglyphs were well preserved given the dryness of the climate, the lack of rainfall — less than twenty minutes a year- and the remoteness of the site.

There were over three hundred designs cut into the plain, and almost as many theories about why they were built and by whom. In 1969 Erich Von Daniken had proposed that they were ancient runways for extraterrestrials, but Reizer had never heard of a monkey shaped runway. There were indeed quite a few large wedge-shaped patterns besides the master, some more than twenty-five hundred feet long with lines extending from them for over five miles, but the lines dwindled to less than a foot in width, hardly space for any decent sized craft to land upon. And even the straight lines went over knolls such as this one, or into small gulleys, which precluded a level landing field if they were just markers.

Others had postulated that the lines were astronomical designs, keyed to various stars. But a close examination of the designs, even regressing star-fields to the time they were supposed to have been built, found that less than twenty percent had any connection to stars, certainly not a significant number, well within the range of statistical chance. Reizer had even projected out all the lines to see if they lined up with specific peaks in the mountains that surrounded the plain, but had had little success. In her younger days she had traveled to the few peaks that she had come up with but found nothing of significance on them.

Some said the lines were the work of an ancient cult, but where had the people who made up the cult come from? Reizer had questioned. Pottery from the Nazcas and other people who had lived in the area held designs, but nothing similar to the Nazca lines. Wouldn’t it have made sense that there would be similarities? She had argued.

Another thing she took issue with was the dating of the lines. The best guesses had come from radiocarbon dating of ceramic and wood remains in the area. But that simply proved the people who used those artifacts lived or passed across the plain at that time, not that those people made the lines. She felt that would be like dropping her backpack on the plain and a thousand years from now someone radiocarbon dating it and announcing that the lines were made in the twentieth century.

Reizer felt the lines were much older than anyone realized. And she had always believed that their existence was the result of something no one had ever considered. Given the events of the last several months, with the proof of the reality of Atlantis and the existence of an ancient enemy, the Shadow, that attacked the world through gates, she had come to believe that the lines were somehow connected to these recent revelations. How, though, she wasn’t quite sure. She had come here today to ponder possibilities.

She spent most of the day in quiet contemplation, occasionally pulling out a sketchbook and jotting down thoughts as they occurred to her. She shifted the umbrella to keep in the shade as the sun arced overhead. Having emigrated from post-World War II Germany, she still savored the quiet and solitude of the plain.

As dusk approached, she saw a dust cloud to the west, near the edge of the plain. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a small set of binoculars and brought them to her eyes. Twisting the focus, she zoomed in on the solitary figure walking across the plain toward her, the truck that had brought him already heading back to the village.

He wore new khakis, she could still make out the store creases, and of all things a pith helmet. She had a good idea who he was — she’d had correspondence from an Englishman named Davon several times in the past year. She had always thought from what he wrote that he was, as the English would say, a bit daft. After recent events, though, she was viewing his theories in a different light. His last fax, yesterday, had indicated he was en route to Peru.

“Hello!” he called out when he came within fifty feet, his voice carried by the slight breeze.

Reizer simply waited. Years walking these plains had given her immeasurable patience. The young man was perspiring when he finally arrived even though the sun was almost down and it was at least ten degrees cooler in the past hour.

“Doctor Reizer, I presume?”

Reizer shifted her umbrella, keeping her face in the shadow. “You expected someone else?”

“I’ve sent you several queries, but you never responded. I’m Davon. From the Dragon Project.” He was looking about. He could see the nearby lines, several of which extended to the horizon and beyond. “Amazing. To actually see them.”

“To see what exactly?”

“The lines. They’re all over the world, you know. But here, you can see them on the surface.”

Reizer had entertained many so-called experts over the years. “And you think they are?”

“Lung mei. That’s Chinese for dragon paths. Lines of power.” He raised his arms and turned slowly while Reizer watched with an amused smile. “Can’t you feel it?”

Reizer did grant him that — the first time she had come here so many years ago she’d felt something, a power in the atmosphere, like the way the air felt before an approaching thunderstorm, but the power came not from above, but from below, from the belly of the Earth itself, she felt.

“Is it a good power, though?” she asked.

Davon shrugged. “It’s power. That’s neither good nor bad. It’s who uses it, and how they use it that determines good or bad.”

“Tell me more about lung mei,” she said.

“I think the gates that are opening now are nodes for the dragon paths,” Davon said. “Where major lines intersect.” He frowned. “This though—” he pointed at the nearest line, a two foot wide etch in the surface of the planet, the main channel—“is different in some way.” He turned to her. “Is there a gate of the Shadow near here?”

“I’ve never seen one nor heard any reported anywhere close by.”

“Strange. There’s nothing like this anywhere else in the world. We have the cliff drawings in England, but that’s not at all similar. I’ve been there. No sense of it like here. I’ve felt something like this at nodes near standing stones and megaliths. But lines, no, I’ve never seen lines even though I knew they were there.” The words were coming out of him like water rushing down a mountain stream.

“There’s Avebury, the Rollright Stones, Carnac, and of course Stonehenge. Massive stones aligned in circles or lines. Along the leys of power. The ancients knew something, didn’t they? Or did they even make them? Maybe the stones are something else?”

Reizer remained quiet, letting the words pour out of him.

“I was visited by a woman a couple of days ago. In England. She was American. Ariana Michelet. She wanted to know about the dragon paths. The nodes. The stones. She said they were connected to the gates, but I already knew that. I took her to the Rollright Stones. I camped in the center of the stones one night. A year ago. And I heard the screams of the damned. And saw the creatures come out of a dark circle in the center of the mist. White, hard skin. Red, glowing eyes. Others who have been in the circles have seen people from other times, did you know that?”

Reizer listened to his manic litany and didn’t interrupt or answer. Everyone had their cross to bear in life and she realized his was his own mind, skittering between lucidity and mania, not completely under his control. His body mimicked his mind, moving about, unable to stay still.

“Tell me about this place.”

Reizer was almost startled by the change in his voice and demeanor. He was still, his tone level and rational, his body still.

She quickly related the various theories and why she didn’t believe them.

“What do you believe?” Davon asked.

“There’s something very important that most people don’t take into account about the Nazca lines,” Reizer said. She paused, finding it strange to be talking here on the plain where she had spent so many years in solitude.

“Go on, please?” Davon pressed.

“I think there are two sets of lines on the plain made at two different times. The geoglyphs, or forms—, which are primarily animal forms- made at a very ancient time, and then the lines and wedges made after that.

“There are many places where the lines or wedges cross the various forms and take supersedence. I think ancient people who lived in this area and sensed the power made the forms. They drew the figures as a means of worship.”

“And the lines and wedges?”

“I don’t think men — or women—” she added with a smile—“ made them.”

“Who then?”

“I think those came from below,” Reizer said. “From the power inside the planet.”

“The Shadow?”

“Seems likely given all that has happened recently.”

Davon looked around at the barren plain. “Why here?”

Reizer hesitated, and then answered. “I don’t know.”

Davon nodded. “Inside the planet — you know scientists really don’t know what’s far inside, at the core.”

“I know.”

Davon looked at her oddly. “Why have you stayed here for so many years?”

For the first time Reizer was uneasy.

“The driver of the truck I hired to bring me here,” Davon continued, “said you were a witch.”

Reizer laughed. “That is because of the brooms.”

“‘The brooms’?”

“When I first arrived here after the war, the lines weren’t clean. Dust and small stones covered many of them. So I swept them.”

Davon looked around. “All of them?”

“All of them. It took me four years. And many, many brooms. And brooms are linked with witches. The people didn’t understand why I came into town every so often and bought more brooms.” She laughed once more. “Perhaps they thought I was flying about.”

“You’ve been here since just after the war, right?”

Reizer nodded.

“And you were born in Germany in 1903.”

Reizer didn’t immediately respond. She’d known there was always the chance someone would find out the truth. “That’s not right. I was just twenty when I came here.”

“Now I know you’re lying.”

Reizer sighed.

“I did some checking on you,” Davon added. “You were born in 1903. To Maria and Klaus Reizer in Dusseldorf. You were married once; your husband was drafted and died on the Eastern Front. I believe his name was Eugen.”

Reizer closed her eyes. She could still see her husband’s face, peering out through a dirty, cracked window near the rear of the train, his hand raised in a farewell as he went back to the war from a short furlough. She had felt in her heart that she would never see him again. She had felt his despair and hopelessness throughout the short five days they’d had together. He’d wanted to leave her with child, but she had taken steps to avoid that. To bring a child into the future that

Germany faced? It would have been insane.

Davon’s voice intruded on her memories. “I am correct?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t look your age.”

“The desert air is—” she began, but he cut her off.

“That’s why you stay, isn’t it?” Davon pressed. “The power of the lines. They keep you from aging as quickly, don’t they? You hardly look fifty, yet you’re twice that.”

“I am not sure that is exactly it,” Reizer said. “I think over a hundred years has passed in the rest of the world, but not here.”

“What do you mean?”

Reizer was about to respond when the hairs on the back of her neck tingled, the sensation spreading into her body, racing along her nerve endings. She stood so suddenly the chair fell backward. It was dusk, the sun low on the western horizon, it’s rays almost horizontal.

“Oh, my,” she murmured as a glow appeared due south of them, emanating up from the surface.

“What the hell is that?” Davon demanded, taking an unconscious step toward the glow, which was getting brighter.

“I think you should move,” she said to Davon, who was now straddling the main line.

But either he didn’t hear her, or he ignored her words. She could see that the glow was getting stronger because it was coming closer. She’d never seen the like before, but her heart pounded in anticipation. After all these years waiting for something to happen!

Then she saw it, coming up the main channel line. Like a line of fire ten feet high from the earth itself. She turned to Davon, to warn him, but he saw the danger and began to move, but he was too slow, the fire too fast. It caught his right leg as he tried to jump free.

Davon screamed as he stared at the stump where his leg had cleanly been severed at mid-thigh. He collapsed to the ground, blood pulsing out.

Reizer was frozen, not by Davon’s wound, but by the sight of every line and wedge on the plain ablaze.

In Japan, three miles below the surface of the planet, in an abandoned mine, was a much larger version of the muonic transceiver mounted on the FLIP. The super-kamiokande was a 50,000-ton ring-imaging water Cerenkov detector. The tank holding the detector was forty meters in diameter by forty meters high. It was filled with purified water and the walls were lined with over thirteen thousand photo multiplier tubes that were sensitive lights detectors.

It worked under the principle that any charged particle traveling through water produced Cerenkov light, which was light generated by a particle moving faster than the speed of light in water, which was slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. The particle of light produced a shock wave, similar to the sound wave set off by a supersonic aircraft. The wave hit the tubes and formed a ring, which when analyzed, could tell the type of wave, the strength, and to a certain extent the location.

The super-kamiokande had been Professor Nagoya’s brain-child, funded by both the Japanese and American governments ostensibly to do pure research in physics, but in reality to try to find a way to track the actions of the gates. The public had been told it was located this far underground to prevent interference from human sources on the surface, but while that was true, it was also oriented into the planet.

The control center for the S-K was linked to Ahana on board the FLIP via real-time satellite feed. Thus those in Japan only had about half-a-second to consider the data that exploded across their screens before Professor Nagoya saw it aboard the FLIP.

“What is it?” Foreman was hovering over Professor Nagoya’s shoulder, trying to make sense of the information being forwarded from the super-kamiokande.

Nagoya turned to Ahana. “Put it on the main screen.”

The young woman quickly typed the command into her keyboard. The western hemisphere appeared in outline form. And along the meeting lines of tectonic plates, which they had all grown so familiar with in the past year, were lines of extreme muonic activity, flowing, moving toward a spot in South America as if a vortex had opened on the surface of the planet and was drawing all into it.

“What does it mean?” Foreman asked.

Ahana answered. “The Shadow is drawing power from all the tectonic lines. There must be a gate in South America that it’s being funneled into.” She tapped the screen where there was a crimson red dot. “There.”

“I’ll get us satellite imagery of that spot,” Foreman said. He pulled out his SATPhone to dial the National Reconnaissance Office when he paused. “How much power is being drawn?”

“Off the scale.”

“And?”

Nagoya knew what Foreman meant. “At this rate, the tectonic plates will become unstable soon.”

Foreman seemed to have aged a decade in just a few seconds. “How much time do we have?”

“We’ll have to run the numbers.”

“Do it.”

The top edge of the sun creased above the horizon, sending horizontal rays just above the blue Pacific cutting toward Dane. He looked to the west from the deck of the FLIP, at the black wall that delineated the edge of the Devil’s Sea gate. It absorbed the rays of the sun as if eating them. He felt a chill ripple across his skin, the smell of death and destruction in his nostrils, although whether the odor was real or a figment of his sensitive brain, he couldn’t really tell. He knew that smell was the strongest of the five senses and any time he was near a gate the odor was sickening.

He could sense something was happening in the control center, but he had no desire to go in there and find out. He knew bad news would be brought to him soon enough. And regardless of what it was, he would be going back into the Devils Sea gate at least once more.

His first foray into a gate, had been done out of ignorance at the command of Foreman. Dane had been a member of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam- Studies and Observation Group) a rather innocent sounding name for teams of elite Special Forces soldiers and their indigenous counterparts that conducted clandestine missions into Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam and even into China during the Vietnam War.

Foreman had sent Dane’s team — Recon Team Kansas- on a mission far into Cambodia to recover the black box of a downed U-2 spy plane. What Dane hadn’t known was the U-2 was part of an experiment Foreman had run to check if there was a connection between the Angkor gate and the Bermuda Triangle gate on the other side of the world where he sent the submarine Scorpion. The two had managed to make communication with each other before the Scorpion disappeared and the U-2 went down. They had proved there was a connection that defied conventional physics, but at a high cost.

In the end, Dane was the only member of his team who made it back. Several members of the team had been killed outright, and his team leader Flaherty had disappeared. Dane had gone into other gates since, including a return into the Angkor gate thirty years later where he briefly met Flaherty once more, the man appearing not to have aged at all since his disappearance and telling Dane of the battle between the Shadow and the Ones Before, the latter indirectly helping mankind against the darkness. Dane shivered as he felt the lurking presence of death and terror close by.

He looked down at the water as a dorsal fin cut the water forty feet away. Dane stripped off his shirt, kicked off his shoes and dove into the warm water. He swam forward, the Pacific water cleansing him of the oppressiveness given off by the gate.

He felt warm skin against his and rolled as Rachel swam by. The dolphin rose halfway out of the water, and then flipped over, splashing Dane’s face. He reached out and rested his right hand on the lower front edge of the dorsal fin. He felt a wave of emotion and thoughts flow over him from the dolphin. There was so much, he couldn’t make sense of anything. He focused on the vision he had had the previous night, and ‘sent’ that to Rachel in return.

He felt it come back to him like an echo, which confused him. Kennedy, Frost, Cuba, the freighter, Washington destroyed, jumbled and confused as if it had been taped by a faulty machine and was being played back.

Dane let go of the images and focused on the feel of Rachel’s skin, her warmth, and the water sliding over his body. Rachel pushed him up, above the surface and he took a deep breath, then she dived, pulling him down with her. Dane remembered Rachel’s handler, Dr. Marsten saying a dolphin could dive to six hundred meters and stay down for over fifteen minutes, but he felt no panic, no worry as they descended. He swallowed, equalizing pressure on his ears as they went down, then relaxed as Rachel leveled off at about fifty feet.

Dane began to feel faint as the oxygen in his lungs was absorbed. Still there was no feeling of panic. He realized he’d almost welcome the oblivion of death. It was all he had known. From his time in Special Forces in Vietnam, through battling the Shadow in the past year. The list of those who had gone before into darkness was long. His recon team in Cambodia in the Angkor Gate; Sin Fen in the Bermuda Triangle Gate; the Viking warrior he’d met inside the ‘wall’ between Earth and the Shadow’s world, along with the Romans and Amelia Earhart; Ariana Michelet killed while trying to stop the detonation of Mount Erebus in Antarctica and the destruction of the Pacific Rim by the Shadow. All gone. And the Shadow only halted once more, paused, not defeated. And the riddle of what was on the other side of the gates, beyond the wall, in the unknown place where the Shadow came from, still as great. They’d only discovered that the portals led to a strange space — inside the wall- a staging area between Earth and the Shadow’s world, where some humans who had disappeared into the gates, such as Amelia Earhart, eked out a timeless existence. There were also two graveyards deep under the Atlantic and Pacific at each ocean’s deepest trench.

Starved for oxygen, stars flickered in his eyes as the blood vessels constricted. His mind was fluttering between conscious and subconscious. Then he ‘saw’ an object, a sphere, glittering as if made of gold and other precious metals, the surface uneven, covered with twisted cords that seemed to be moving and pulsing with power. The image was too faint for him to make out more detail. A man in armor was stepping up to the sphere, a staff in his hand. Dane recognized the weapon — a Naga staff. Sharp blade on one end, the only thing that could cut the white skin of a Valkyrie — and seven headed snake figure on the other. The man lifted the Naga staff above the sphere, prepared to bring it down. Dane felt a terrible sense of dread and he tried to call out through the vision, but he knew it was another place, another time and there was nothing he could do. But floating on the edge of his consciousness was an awareness that he knew what he was seeing, that he had heard or read of it, but he couldn’t pin down exactly when or where.

Then he saw Ariana Michelet. She was standing on a white surface, ice covered with drifting snow, and she was looking right at Dane. She was yelling something but he could hear nothing, only see her mouth moving, trying to get a message to him. She moved her arms in a gesture, but Dane couldn’t figure out what it was. Then behind her the ice began buckling, cracking, a tidal wave of hard white death. Dane reached forward, letting go of Rachel, trying to get to Ariana but she faded as his brain slipped further into darkness.

Then Rachel turned her nose up and put her wide forehead under his back, pushing him upward. Dane broke the surface and gulped in a deep breath, letting go of Rachel and rolling onto his back, hacking and coughing to get water out of his lungs. The blue sky was cloudless, unmarked. Dane floated, rising and falling with the slight swell, regaining his breath and consciousness.

He’d ‘drowned’ before. It had been a part of the training at the Special Forces scuba school at Key West, which he had gone to over three decades previously. The instructors kept students in the water, pushing them hard, until inevitably the body broke down and the student passed out. The instructors would haul the student out and resuscitate him and then tell them to get back in the water. It was brutal but effective training — as all the training Dane had experienced in the Special Forces had been. He had truly only understood that when he was in his first firefight in Vietnam and he had reacted, his body and mind honed by the brutal repetition, keeping him alive while others with lesser training died. The bonds he had forged with those he had served with had been greater than anything he’d experienced before or since.

But his experience in the Angkor Gate had broken him. Upon his return to Vietnam, after months of barely surviving the long trek through the jungle, his account of what had happened to his team had been met by disbelief. And he had had no desire to ever again be in the situation where the orders of another man would put him in a life-threatening situation. He had let his hitch run out and then come back to the States.

He’d bought a Harley and rode. For five years. All over the country. Working when he needed money. Many times making his living playing poker, his special sense of emotions and thoughts allowing him a definite advantage over the others he played.

Then he’d found a puppy, a stray eating out of a dumpster, and picked it up. He stayed in that town for two months, feeding and taking care of the puppy, a mixed breed — mostly German Shepherd with something else mixed in- until it had its strength back. Then he realized he didn’t want to ride any more. He sold the Harley and took the puppy to a training academy where they both learned search and rescue. Twenty-five years of doing that, and three dogs — Chelsea being the most recent — later, here he was. Drawn back into a role he didn’t want, in a situation he hated. He was no longer a rescuer, but back to being a warrior.

Gradually, Dane became aware someone was calling him. He looked to the right and saw Foreman on the deck of the FLIP, indicating for him to come over. Reluctantly, Dane began kicking with his legs until he reached the side of the ship. He climbed up a rope onto the deck. He knew it was bad news time.

“Enjoy yourself?” Foreman asked, the tone indicating his disapproval.

“I had another vision,” Dane said.

“Of?”

Dane quickly explained the sphere and the man in armor holding the Naga staff.

“These visions aren’t very useful,” Foreman said.

“A vision saved the world when I was in the Angkor Gate,” Dane reminded the CIA agent. “It showed me how to stop the Shadow’s propagation. I think they’re sent by the Ones Before to help us. And what I saw—“ Dane paused, not sure how to continue. “I’ve seen that image of the man in armor before or something very much like it. Maybe in a book or a movie. I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was a vision of something that didn’t happen,” Foreman said, “like your vision of Robert Frost and Kennedy.”

“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Dane said.

“And?” Foreman prompted.

“In the vision Frost was saying that his poetry wasn’t his, but rather the voices of the gods, which Sin Fen first told me about. The same voice I heard in Angkor that showed me how to destroy the Shadow’s power propagation.”

Foreman’s patience was running thin. “And?” he repeated.

“Maybe there’s more messages in Frost’s poetry,” Dane said.

Foreman’s face was tight. “Good. Real good. You go read some poetry.” He slapped his hand on the railing. “In the meanwhile, would you mind sitting in on something that might actually be worthwhile?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Professor Nagoya has picked up high levels of muonic activity along the edges of all the tectonic plates terminating in South America.”

“And?”

“The Shadow is attacking us once more. He and Ahana are crunching the numbers right now but it doesn’t look good.”

Foreman led the way and Dane followed. They entered the control center where Professor Nagoya and Ahana were seated in front of their computers. The elderly Japanese scientist turned in his seat and scooted over to a small conference table, Ahana following, her hands full of reports.

“What do you have?” Foreman demanded, taking the seat at the head of the table. Nagoya’s face was pale. “It is most serious.” Ahana passed out a series of pictures. “I have the satellite imagery of the site in South

America being forwarded to us.” Dane looked at the picture and frowned. Lines, wedges and animal outlines, etched in fire

spread over many miles. He handed it to the CIA man. “What the hell is that?” Foreman demanded. Ahana had the coordinates. “It is called the Nazca Plain.” “What’s happening there?” Dane asked, the name of the location somewhat familiar to

him, but he couldn’t quite place why. “We’re not exactly sure,” Ahana said. “But the muonic activity is world-wide, all the

power being drawn toward that spot.” “Time,” Foreman slapped a hand on the tabletop. “How much time do we have?” “Two days, maybe three.” Ahana said. “That’s a lot of variance,” Foreman said. “I need a tighter prediction.” “No sooner than sixty hours, no later than seventy-two,” Ahana said firmly. “And then?” “When it reaches critical levels, everything we’ve seen so far — Iceland being destroyed,

the tsunami in Puerto Rico, Mount Erebus erupting — will seem like child’s play. There will be

massive destruction all along the tectonic lines.” “The bottom line?” Foreman asked. “The end of the world.”