The Tomb Of Hercules

PROLOGUE. The Gulf of Cádiz

One hundred miles off the southern coast of Portugal was hidden one of the greatest secrets in human history.

For now, it would remain hidden, guarded by another secret of much more recent origin.

Officially, the giant six-legged floating platform was listed as SBX- 2, a sea-based X-band radar station. Nicknamed the Taj Mahal for the huge white radar dome dominating its upper deck, the high-tech U.S. Navy behemoth swept the skies to the east for thousands of miles, its stated purpose to monitor North Africa and the Middle East for ballistic missile launches. In function and application, it was what it claimed to be.

But that was not the real reason for its presence. The truth lay eight hundred feet below.

Fifteen months earlier, the citadel at the heart of the lost civilization of Atlantis-long believed to be nothing more than a legend-had been discovered directly beneath where the SBX was now anchored. Though the only visible structure, the huge Temple of Poseidon, had been destroyed, radar surveys had revealed many more buried beneath the silt covering the seafloor. Since the discovery of Atlantis had ultimately turned out to be part of a conspiracy to exterminate three-quarters of humanity with a biological weapon, the Western governments that stepped in after the plot was foiled decided that not only the circumstances of the ancient city’s discovery, but also the mere fact of its existence should remain a secret. At least, until a more benign story of its finding could be concocted-and any danger of someone repeating the genocidal plan eliminated.

So while the SBX stood vigil over the skies, beneath it scientists and archaeologists explored the site in secrecy under the auspices of the International Heritage Agency, a United Nations organization established a year earlier with the mandate of locating and securing ancient sites such as Atlantis. The central leg on the starboard side of the giant radar platform had been converted into a submersible pen, a section of the pontoon at its base now open to the sea. Shielded by concrete walls six feet thick, the IHA scientists were normally able to conduct their explorations with no interference from the outside world.

But not tonight.

“Jesus,” muttered Bill Raynes, the IHA’s expedition director, clutching a handrail as the rig swayed again. The SBX was so massive and securely anchored that normally even an Atlantic storm did little more than gently rock it.

This was clearly a much bigger storm than usual.

One of the bright yellow two-man submersibles swung on its chains as it was winched out of the water. Raynes watched it anxiously. Its twin was already secured over the dock, but if conditions got much worse there was a danger that the loose sub could become an uncontrollable pendulum.

“Get a line on the damn thing!” he ordered. Two of his men hurried to obey, staggering around the edge of the moon pool as the floor lurched beneath them. They waited for the sub to swing back towards them, then snagged one of the chains with a boat hook, damping its motion. The dangerous swaying reduced, the winch operator raised the submersible fully into position above the dock, where more chains were quickly attached to secure it.

“Okay! Good work, guys,” Raynes called, letting out a relieved breath. Both subs were now safely in place, which meant the day’s operations were concluded. On most evenings, that would have been the cue for him to go up to the main deck and enjoy a cigar.

Not tonight, though. He wasn’t going to set one foot outdoors if he didn’t have to. He felt a brief stab of pity for the Marines stationed aboard the platform, who had guard duty no matter what the conditions. Poor bastards.

The unexpected weather aside, it had been a good day. The high-resolution sonar mapping of the citadel was ahead of schedule, and the excavation of the first site had already produced results, an exciting haul of Atlantean artifacts valuable in both historical and monetary terms. He may not have discovered Atlantis, but Raynes had already decided that he was damn well going to be the person famous for exploring it.

The actual discoverer of Atlantis was Dr. Nina Wilde, fifteen years Raynes’s junior and-on paper at least-his IHA superior. He wondered if the red-haired New Yorker had any idea that by accepting a senior post in the IHA she’d effectively ended her archaeological career before even turning thirty. Probably not, he decided. While she was certainly cute to look at, Nina also came across to Raynes as naive. It seemed to him that she’d been given the position of director of operations as a way to keep her-and her bodyguard-turned-boyfriend, Eddie Chase, whom Raynes regarded as little more than a sarcastic English thug-quiet and out of trouble while more experienced hands got on with the real work.

He made his way to the elevator cage running up the inside of the support leg, glancing at the dark void overhead. The SBX’s main deck, the size of two football fields, was twelve stories above sea level. Carrying the case of artifacts, Raynes slammed the gate closed and pushed the button to ascend.

Water sprayed up into the dock below as waves slapped noisily against the sides of the pool. He had never seen conditions inside the sub pen so bad before. Normally, the ocean surface inside the moon pool did little more than ripple. If it was this bad inside, he didn’t even want to think about what it would be like outside.

Spray blasted almost horizontally over the surface of the Atlantic, waves pounding explosively against the forward leg on the rig’s port side. The metal staircase that rose from the submerged pontoon to a ladder stretching up the towering structure rattled and moaned under the onslaught. It was not a place where anyone in his right mind would choose to be.

But someone was there.

The man was a giant, six feet eight inches tall, with every hard-packed muscle in his athlete’s body picked out by his skintight black wet suit. He emerged from the water and made his way up the stairs, hands clamping around the railings with the force of a vise, even the thunderous impact of the waves barely throwing him off his stride.

Once clear of the churning ocean, he paused to remove the scuba regulator from his mouth, revealing perfect white teeth-one inset with a diamond-surrounded by ebony skin, then began his climb up the ladder. Considering the distance and the conditions, most men would have been lucky to make it in under five minutes, and exhausted by the time they reached the top.

The intruder made it in two, and was breathing no more heavily than if he’d climbed a single flight of stairs.

Just below the top of the ladder, he stopped and carefully raised his head above the edge of the deck. The blocky gray superstructure of the SBX was three floors high, catwalks running along each level at the platform’s bow. Sickly yellow lights made a feeble attempt to illuminate them. Rain spattered on the man’s diving mask, obscuring his view. He frowned and pulled it from his face, revealing calculating black eyes before he flipped down another pair of goggles from the top of his head.

The weak yellow lights disappeared, replaced by shimmering blobs of video-game-vivid red and orange. Almost everything else was either blue or black. Ther-mographic vision, the world represented by the heat it gave off. The metal walls of the rig, lashed by freezing rain, were visible only as shades of blue.

But there was something else that stood out against the electronic darkness, even in the storm. A glowing shape in green and yellow and white moved closer, gradually taking on human form through the false-color fuzz.

One of the platform’s U.S. Marine guards, on patrol.

The intruder silently lowered himself so that he was poised just below the edge of the deck, barely moving even as the storm pummeled him.

The Marine came closer, boots clanking on the metal as he reached the end of the catwalk. One hand holding the railing, the other on his gun, he peered down the ladder-

Fast and fluid as a snake, the intruder’s hand snapped up and seized him by his gun arm. Before the startled Marine could react, the giant almost effortlessly yanked him over the edge of the platform and flung him to his death in the spume over a hundred feet below.

The killer flipped up his thermographic goggles and looked along the catwalk to see his next target only a few meters away. An electrical junction box, protruding from the metal wall. He hurried to it.

The rat’s nest of wires and cables inside seemed impenetrably complicated, but the man already knew exactly where to find the main feed for the rig’s security cameras. He tugged one particular skein of wires clear of the others, then sliced a combat knife straight through them. A few sparks popped, but the blade was insulated. He returned the knife to its sheath and reached down to click the key of the radio on his belt.

Go.

In the submersible dock, a man’s head broke the surface of the sloshing water. Eyes glinting behind his mask, he turned in a full circle to survey the surroundings. Two of the rig’s crew were on the dock, backs to the moon pool as they secured their equipment.

He sank back under the dark water and took a gun of unusual design from his belt. Then he resurfaced, raising the weapon out of the water. Trickles of seawater ran out of the drainage holes along its barrel as he took aim. Another man emerged next to him, doing the same.

Two flat thuds, so close together that they could almost have been the same sound, echoed around the concrete chamber. The guns were gas powered, compressed nitrogen blasting the darts they fired across the dock to slam into the backs of the two crewmen. They gasped in pain, hands clutching behind them… then collapsed to the floor, unable to move. The dart guns were designed to fire tranquilizers. But these were loaded with something else.

Something deadly.

The men in the water swam for a ladder leading out of the moon pool. Other divers appeared, following them onto the deck. Seven men in all. They quickly shed their scuba gear and crossed the dock to the elevator.

The two crewmen lay nearby, frozen, helpless. Only their eyes, bulging in fear and pain, could move. Paralysis of the voluntary muscles had occurred almost immediately.

Paralysis of the involuntary muscles, specifically the heart, would soon follow.

One of the intruders bent down to pull out the darts, which he tossed into the moon pool. They sank out of sight. His companions dragged the paralyzed crewmen to the rim of the pool and unceremoniously dumped them into the sea.

The team entered the elevator cage and closed it. A security camera looked on uselessly with its dead eye. With a rattle, the elevator started its ascent.

The black-clad giant cautiously raised his eyes just above the level of the rain-lashed top deck. The flat metal expanse was dominated by the giant radar dome. It was illuminated from within, a colossal lantern glowing through the wind-whipped deluge. Everything else on the deck was indistinct, lost in the storm.

He lowered his goggles again. The view sprang to gaudy life. At the stern, beyond the dome, was a swirling red haze-exhaust from the platform’s power plant, and heat pumped out by the banks of container-size air-conditioning units cooling the electronics of the enormous radar array.

But other shapes stood out brightly. Two more Marines flared in his thermal sights as distant amorphous blobs, shambling through the cutting rain towards each other. They were following a set path, meeting up to confirm that all was well before turning back along their patrol routes.

They would never make it.

The intruder raised a weapon. Unlike the dart guns used by his team in the submersible dock, this was a rifle, a telescopic sight mounted above the grip.

Flipping the goggles back up, he brought the sight to his right eye. Without the thermographic enhancement the Marines were little more than gray silhouettes, flapping rain capes outlined in yellow by a nearby light. He fixed the crosshairs on his target, the closer of the two men, waited for them to meet, to stop-

The indistinct figure in the scope spasmed, then fell to the deck. The other man reacted in surprise, dropping to his knees to help him.

Saw the dart protruding from his back. Looked up-

The assassin had already reloaded. He barely needed the sights, the rifle almost an extension of his body as he fired again. He didn’t need to see an impact to know that he had hit.

He ran to the second downed Marine, ignoring the man’s desperate, twitching eyes as he checked where his shot had landed. The dart had caught the man square in the chest, an inch below his heart. The sniper made a noise of annoyance. He’d been aiming for the heart itself. Sloppy.

But only his pride was affected. The result was what mattered here. He tugged the dart out of the man’s flesh and threw it across the deck, then did the same for the first victim. The darts would be swept away into the sea, lost. And nobody would pay any attention to the tiny puncture wounds when there would be a far more obvious cause of death.

The radio on his belt clicked, twice. A signal. The second team was in position.

Right on time.

The deck was clear. He returned the signal, clicking the key three times.

Take the platform.

The seven men had already shot the pair of surprised Marines in the cabin at the top of the support leg, immobilizing them with darts as soon as the elevator emerged. Then they waited for the signal from their leader. As soon as it came they split up into three groups-one of three men, two of two-and headed into the superstructure.

The group of three quickly made their way towards the platform’s stern and the power plant section. While the SBX resembled a stationary oil rig, it was actually a vessel in its own right, able to move under its own power. It carried a crew of around forty, not counting the platoon of Marines and the IHA contingent. With the radar station itself being highly automated, most of the crew actually performed the same tasks as sailors on a warship: running and maintaining the vessel.

Which meant the majority of the crew were concentrated in one area.

Dart guns raised, the trio advanced through the gray corridors, one man checking at each junction before signaling the other two to move on. They went up a steep flight of stairs to B Deck, listening for any sounds of activity around them.

A door opened ahead. A bearded petty officer carrying a toolbox stepped out, froze in surprise as he saw the three men-

A dart stabbed into his throat, instantly delivering its toxic payload. The sailor let out a choking gasp, his killer already rushing forward to catch him and his toolbox before they crashed noisily onto the deck.

The other two men checked the label on the door-an engineering storeroom-and flung it open, guns up as they checked that it was empty.

It took only a few seconds for the paralyzed sailor to be dumped inside the storeroom and the hatch closed again. The men moved on, ascending more stairs to arrive at their target.

A hatch was set into one of the bulkheads, the low thrum of machinery audible behind it. Warning signs told the intruders what they would find within.

The primary ventilation shaft for the aft section.

The SBX’s superstructure was essentially a sealed metal box. There were only three windows on the entire vessel, in the bridge at the bow, and even those didn’t open. The only way to get air inside the rig was to pump it through the vents beneath the giant intakes on the upper deck.

The assault team forced open the hatch, exposing an access panel into the shaft. A huge fan whirled behind it. The three men donned insectile respirator masks before taking a cylinder that one carried on his back and manhandling it through the access panel. A twist of a valve and the cylinder began to pump cyanogen chloride gas into the vent. Colorless, odorless-and deadly within seconds.

They jogged back to the stairs and slid down the steep banisters to B Deck, heading forward. They ignored the strangled, agonized gasps from dying men and women in the rooms they passed.

One of the two-man teams stealthily made its way to the platform’s accommodation section. The SBX’s small crew worked on a two-shift system: twelve hours on, twelve hours off. Right now, those on the second shift would probably be asleep.

Including half of the Marines.

The long room serving as the Marines’ barracks had two doors, one at each end. One of the men waited by the first door until his comrade reached the other entrance. Then he took a small cylinder of cyanogen chloride from his harness and opened the door.

Most of the twelve Marines inside were asleep, though one man looked up at him. A moment of hesitation, replaced by trained response as he saw the black breath mask-

“Marines!” he yelled, before a dart fired from the open door at the far end of the room thudded into his back. Other men jumped upright in their bunks, startled into life by the shout of alarm.

Then they slumped back down as the two gas cylinders rolled through the room, spewing invisible death.

The second team of two headed for the front of the rig and the command section on A Deck. This area was always guarded, four Marines stationed at the entrance.

Poison gas was not an option in this part of the rig; there was one man who needed to be kept alive at all costs, and gas was too indiscriminate and unpredictable a killer. The dart guns were also unusable, too slow to reload and carrying the risk that a dart might embed itself uselessly in a target’s equipment. At this critical stage of the operation, instant kills had to be guaranteed.

So the two men simply walked around the corner and shot each of the Marines in the head with silenced pistols before any of them had a chance to respond.

The corpses would have to be removed when the attackers left the rig-a body with a bullet wound would give everything away. But that had been planned for.

One of the men clicked his radio. In position.

A single click came from the huge man’s radio. He nodded to himself, then cautiously looked around the edge of the rain-streaked window.

There was only one person on watch in the bridge, a young female lieutenant. Since the SBX was stationary and the Command Information Center behind the bridge acted as the vessel’s nerve center, there was no need for anyone else. He could see more people through the glass doors to CIC, including the platform’s commander.

It was time.

Lieutenant Phoebe Bremmerman looked up from her console at the bridge windows. There had been a noise, something other than rain pounding against the glass.

And there was something on the glass itself, a dark gray object the size of a large coin.

She stood, about to call out to her commander in CIC-

The window exploded.

Fragments of glass sprayed into the bridge, the muffled rumble of the storm outside instantly rising to a howl. The lieutenant screamed as a chunk of the broken window slashed her cheek.

A huge black man in a wet suit leaped through the window, a pistol aimed at her. Simultaneously, more wet-suited men burst into CIC, weapons raised. One of the radar operators jumped up, only to fall back over his chair, a dart protruding from his neck.

The giant grabbed Bremmerman and dragged her into CIC, the noise of the storm dropping as the bridge door thumped shut.

“Commander Hamilton,” he said to the SBX’s commander, shoving the woman to join the other occupants of the room in a group surrounded by four armed men. “Sorry for the intrusion.” He smiled, the diamond glinting in his flawless teeth. His Nigerian accent was smooth and sonorous. “My name is Joe Komosa, and I’m here for one thing only.” The smile reappeared, but with menace behind it. “Where is Dr. Bill Raynes?”

The remaining crew of the platform were taken to the large lab on B Deck assigned to the IHA team and forced to kneel in the center of the room.

None of the Marines had survived the assault. The navy crew had also suffered severe losses; aside from Hamilton himself, there were now only ten alive, including the five others from the CIC. Of the ten members of the IHA contingent, three were missing.

The attackers had been joined by another three men, who had brought in the other survivors at gunpoint. Whoever they were, Hamilton realized, they were utterly ruthless; another sailor had protested when he’d been shoved into the lab-not even fighting back, just shouting-and been shot in the chest at point-blank range, dying on the deck right before Hamilton’s eyes.

And there had been nothing he could do.

Komosa pulled off the headpiece of his wet suit, revealing a gleaming shaven head with a row of piercings, silver studs, running back from each temple. Then he pulled down the zip to expose his bare chest, which was marked by lines of more glittering piercings. Pausing for a moment to admire his reflection in a glass partition, he slowly strode back and forth before the prisoners without a word, arousing nervous glances, then rounded on Raynes with his dazzling smile.

“Dr. Raynes,” he said, “as I told Commander Hamilton, I have come here for one thing only. Do you know what this is?” He held up a small white object he had taken from a waterproof pouch.

Raynes peered uncertainly at it as if being asked a trick question. “It’s… a USB flash drive?”

“It is indeed a flash drive.” Komosa went to one particular computer in the corner of the lab-Raynes’s own workstation. “And I would like you to fill it for me.”

Raynes swallowed, voice dry. “With-with what?”

“With certain files held on the IHA’s secure server in New York. Specifically, those concerning the lost works of Plato held in the archives of the Brotherhood of Selasphoros.”

For a moment, confusion almost overcame fear on Raynes’s face. “Wait, you did all this to access our server? Why?”

“That’s my concern. Your only concern right now is to do what I tell you.”

“And if I refuse?”

Komosa’s arm snapped up. Without taking his eyes off Raynes, he fired a dart into the heart of one of the other IHA scientists. The man clutched weakly at his chest before collapsing.

Raynes flinched, eyes wide with fear. “Okay, the server, okay! I’ll-I’ll-whatever you want.”

“Thank you.” Komosa nodded, and one of his men led Raynes to the computer.

“Don’t do it, Doctor,” Hamilton warned. “You know we can’t let anyone else reach Atlantis.”

“Atlantis!” said Komosa with a dismissive laugh. “I don’t care about Atlantis!”

“I don’t believe you. Dr. Raynes, under no circumstances whatsoever are you to give this man access to that computer.”

Komosa sighed. “You will give me access, Doctor.” He crossed to the prisoners, taking Bremmerman by the arm and pulling her to her feet. She gave Hamilton a fearful look, unsure what to do.

“Leave her alone,” Hamilton barked.

Komosa moved behind the lieutenant, towering over her as he slipped one thick arm around her waist and the hand of the other to her neck. “Dr. Raynes.” He turned away from Hamilton, moving Bremmerman with him as he faced the scientist. “I’m sure you noticed this young lady around the rig before. She is very pretty.” He lowered his head, stroking her hair with one side of his chin. Despite her fear, she slammed an elbow into his stomach.

He barely flinched. The diamond smile widened. “And very spirited.” His thumb moved slowly up her neck, stopping an inch below her chin-And pressed.

Something inside her throat collapsed with a sickening wet crunch. The young woman’s eyes bulged, her mouth opening in a desperate attempt to draw a breath that could never reach her lungs. Komosa released her. She reached up to her face, fingers twitching. A drop of blood ran from the corner of her mouth as she convulsed.

“And very dead,” said Komosa, voice like stone.

“You bastard!” roared Hamilton. He tried to charge at Komosa, but one of the other wet-suited men viciously clubbed him down with the butt of his gun. The commander dropped to the floor. Bremmerman fell too-but, unlike Hamilton, she didn’t get back up.

Komosa turned back to Raynes. “I will kill one of your shipmates every minute until you give me what I want. Their lives are entirely in your hands. Are your computer files really so valuable that you’re willing to let your friends die to protect them?” He aimed his gun at the head of one of the IHA scientists. “Fifty-eight seconds.”

Sweat beaded on Raynes’s face. “B-but even if I wanted to, there’s no way I could now! The security system, it-”

“I know about the security system, Doctor. Forty-nine seconds.”

Frantic, Raynes sat down at the computer and began working, his hand so slick with frightened perspiration that it slipped off the mouse. A password box popped up. He typed a string of characters and stabbed at the return key. The box vanished, replaced by an alert: THUMBPRINT VALIDATION REQUIRED. With a worried glance back at Komosa, he pressed his thumb against a black square set into the top right corner of the keyboard. A red light pulsed. The alert disappeared, replaced by another.

VOICEPRINT VALIDATION REQUIRED.

“Seventeen seconds to spare,” said Komosa, lowering the gun. “Well done.”

“I can’t get you any further. I can’t!” Raynes pleaded. “The voiceprint ID, it’s got a-”

“It has a stress analyzer, I know.” The giant moved over to the desk, his free hand reaching for something on his belt. “It denies access even to authorized users if they seem to be under duress. But don’t worry-in a moment, you’ll be perfectly relaxed.”

And with that, he jabbed a syringe into Raynes’s arm and pushed the plunger.

Raynes stared at the syringe in horror, opening his mouth to cry out… before a tremor ran through his entire body. He sagged, bones turning to jelly. What had started as a cry emerged as a long, almost orgasmic sigh.

Komosa leaned closer. “Now, Doctor, I know you can hear me, and I know you’re still lucid. There were seventeen seconds left on the clock. That is how long you have to enter the final code before I shoot your friend. Do you understand?” Raynes nodded, the muscles in his face slack. “Your time starts now.” Komosa aimed the gun back at the other scientist, taking Raynes by his shirt collar and lifting him closer to the computer.

Raynes cleared his throat, then spoke, voice low and dreamlike. “In this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire.” A small microphone icon flickered, acknowledging that the computer had heard.

Nothing happened. The man Komosa was aiming at whimpered. Then-

The screen lit up with a directory window. The satellite data link had been established. A few of the prisoners let out relieved sighs.

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Komosa, plugging the drive into a port on the computer. “I’ll take it from here.”

That was the signal.

The flat hissing thuds of dart guns filled the lab. Those people who weren’t hit by the first volley started to shout-only to fall silent within seconds as the guns were reloaded and a second round fired. Outside the main group, Hamilton jumped up with a roar of fury.

Komosa fired. The dart slammed deep into Hamilton’s right eye socket, unleashing a welter of blood. The commander instantly fell to the swaying deck, dead even before the toxins took effect.

Turning back to the computer as if nothing had happened, Komosa copied files to the drive before accessing a different directory. Even through the influence of the powerful muscle relaxant, Raynes managed a look of surprise when he saw the directory name.

Komosa caught his expression. He grinned. “Yes, IHA personnel records. Don’t worry, we’re not going to kill them.” The grin hardened as he selected two particular files and copied them to the drive. “Yet.”

The files transferred, Komosa pulled the drive from the computer and returned it to its pouch. He straightened, turning to his men. “Disperse the bodies throughout the command section-it needs to look as if they were on duty when the rig capsized. I’ll go to the bridge and flood the starboard pontoon-once the pumps start, we’ll have five minutes to get back to the sub.” They acknowledged and hurried out, dragging the paralyzed navy personnel after them.

Komosa tugged the zip of his wet suit back up to his neck and followed his men out of the lab, stepping over the slumped, helpless civilians.

All Raynes could do was stare at the computer screen as he waited to die. The names of the last two files Komosa had copied were still highlighted. He knew both of them.

CHASE, EDWARD J.

WILDE, NINA P.