Ancients

20

Sarah, Mendenhall, Ryan, and the ten marines were caught between the lava mound and the dry lake bed. Mortar rounds were still going off, but their allotted number intended for the equipment in the dry lake bed had been expended. Now, the mortar teams concentrated on the Coalition positions; after their initial shock, the Coalition troops started to return fire in an amazing response time.

As they ran, tracers found them just before they ducked behind an ancient lava flow that had frozen in time. One marine cried out and hit the broken roadway. Machine-gun fire concentrated on the spot where they had vanished, and the soft stone didn't absorb the concussion all that well.

As they ducked and took stock, another of the stone-and-marble buildings leaned, and then it rolled over as easily as an animal in death.

Suddenly they heard machine-gun fire coming from somewhere above them, and he knew that Jack and his team had opened up from the aqueduct. They started laying a large volume of fire in the direction of their unseen attackers.

"Well, it looks like someone's paying attention up there," Ryan said as he started forward again and the others quickly followed.

Everett and the SEALs were having a much harder time of it. They faced about a hundred heavily armed Coalition mercenaries. As he ventured a peek up above a fallen pillar, Everett saw the three power lines; they were shaking with the earthquake but were still very much intact. He lowered his head and checked the magazine in his MP-5, then he straightened and fired ten rounds into the mass of soldiers hidden behind a solid stone covering.

"Come on, Jack, now's not the time to dawdle," he said to himself. With that, Everett stood and fired again, and this time he heard a satisfying yelp from a hundred yards away.

"One down, about ninety-nine to go."

Collins ordered one machine gun to continue firing into the area of the lake bed to cover Sarah and her team, while splitting his firepower and opening up against the mercenaries penning Everett and his men down. All the while the aqueduct was filling with water from above. The volume was increasing every second and he and his men had to hold on to keep from being washed away to the broken end, where it fell off three hundred feet straight down.

Collins pulled the pins on three hand grenades and tossed them as far as he could into the Coalition lines. Ten of the men never heard their death knell as the grenades exploded behind them.

Suddenly, the sound hit Jack's ears. The crack came from above as a large section of the dome caved in. Thousands of tons of seabed and water cascaded and struck the aqueduct a hundred feet behind Jack and his men. It tore through the old stone, tearing their section away from the rest. The men felt the waterway beneath start to tremble, but it still held firm.

Sarah was the first to reach the side of the lake. She looked up at the mangled corpses of the people who had been on the high platform. She had no sympathy for them as she looked into the devastation of the lake. Equipment lay shattered; even the generators had been hit. But she saw and heard the centrifuge as it was spinning out of control.

"Carl hasn't cut the power lines yet--that damn thing's still broadcasting!"

Ryan and Mendenhall didn't hesitate. With five of the marines, they started down into the lake bed. Enemy fire increased a hundredfold and Mendenhall was singed by a round that knocked his Mylar helmet off his head. Sarah picked it up and tossed it to him.

"A little hot down here!"

"You can say that again," Will said as he turned and started to follow Ryan down the scaffold.

Sarah heard a loud crack somewhere to their rear and then felt the stone through her boots as the floor above them split in two. Then a rush of water started cascading from a crack in the great dome. The water from the Mediterranean struck one of the superhot generators and it exploded, sending out a thick wave of steel and sparks. As she traversed the scaffold, the crack in the floor reached them and she had to jump a five-foot crevasse, barely making it over to the far side. The platform above them started to wobble as the stabilizing cables started snapping like overtaxed guitar strings. It fell over, twisting as it did so. Ryan and the others ran quickly as the tower crashed into the scaffolding and tore it free from the rock, then both crashed into the lake bed.

All around the city, water was penetrating the dome at an alarming rate as the world started shaking once again, and this time it was like the death throes of a wounded beast, as the groan and bark of solid stone announced that Atlantis had started to crack apart.

The ancient city was dying for the second time.

The sudden rise of the sea ripped two U.S. Marine Sea Harriers from their moorings and tossed them into the churning ocean. All hands had been ordered belowdecks as the attack carrier's bow sank below the water as she slowly moved way away from the quay. She had taken on four thousand civilians, who huddled inside her hangar decks and screamed every time the carrier rolled one way or the other. Three miles away, the attack carrier Nassau, with a full load of refugees, had taken a massive wave strike that ripped all her antennas and close-in weapons from her superstructure. She was taking on water as she headed for Greece at all possible speed.

The surface waves were breeching at twenty-five feet as the Iwo was sent headlong into a giant trough. She dipped below the water once more as her superstructure and stern were the only visible portion of the ship above water. The admiral feared that they might not make it clear this time. But, as he held on to his chair tightly, the massive warship slowly started to rise out of the sea.

The last report had the seafloor erupting for five hundred miles from the now plotted epicenter, directly in the middle of the Mediterranean. Satellite photos had the Eurasian and American eastern coastlines sustaining heavy damage after the hour's lull. Detectors had picked up the Wave once more growing in intensity.

The world was coming apart.

Sarah was feeling sick to her stomach and as she looked at the faces of the men in her group, she realized that wasn't the only one. The invisible wave struck them as soon as they gained the floor of the dry lake bed. Several of the marines and Mendenhall had already vomited, and she herself was having a hard time keeping her feet as her inner ear started to give her problems.

From their location, they had pumped everything they had into the protective titanium shielding of the centrifuge. Three grenades had gone off right under the raised module, and they were stunned when the shrapnel had just bounced off. Ryan had emptied a full magazine into the large round chamber, with no effect whatsoever other than causing a spectacular light show with the bounding tracers. Now they were under heavy fire once again from above. The Coalition forces nearest the pyramids had them in their sights.

"Everett must be having trouble getting his team to the cables," Ryan said as he fell next to Sarah. "Is there something we've overlooked here?"

Sarah sat back against the stone pedestal of the statue of Poseidon and thought. They couldn't break the connection from there. The lines were too thick to cut through. They couldn't knock out the reinforced centrifuge and they couldn't shut down the power. The diamond was drawing self-sustaining electricity from the earth's magnetic field somehow, and there was nothing they could do to shut that off.

"We have to interfere with the Wave signal somehow, defuse it. Inject something that will break it up and make the tones meaningless," she thought out loud as a line of machine-gun bullets stitched the pedestal that covered them.

"What?" Ryan asked as Mendenhall edged around to the side of the stone bulwark and emptied the magazine of his MP-5 toward the upper edge of the lake bed.

"Your radio, give it to me," she ordered Ryan.

Ryan reached for the radio at his belt and pulled it out. Both of their hopes deflated immediately when they saw the bullet hole in the casing. Ryan tried it anyway but nothing happened.

"Well, at least the damn thing saved you from taking a bullet."

"What else can you use?"

"What have you got in that bag you're carrying?" she asked, eyeing Ryan's satchel.

"Well, nothing but a few of the colonel's old CDs and a Walkman. That's about--"

Mendenhall tumbled at their feet. "I don't mean to be a pest here, but we have Coalition forces lining up to take pot shots at us and we don't have the best defensive position here."

Just as Will's words were out of his mouth, the giant stone pedestal cracked and the forward half sank into the earth.

"Give me the Walkman and the headphones," Sarah shouted.

Ryan was about to hand over the satchel when a round from above caught Sarah in shoulder and spun her around. Mendenhall reacted quickly, reaching out and pulling her back to the cover of the remaining piece of stone.

Above, the Coalition troops had found the range and cut loose with a withering fire. Then, all at once, the wall of the lake bed cracked and the men at the top came tumbling down with a thousand tons of stone. The rocks and debris smashed into the centrifuge and knocked it askew of its mountings, but still the Wave continued to build.

Sarah was clenching her eyes closed with the pain of the bullet wound. She had been hit in the same shoulder the year before, in Brazil, and she couldn't believe that it had happened again.

"You've got to learn to duck, goddammit!" Mendenhall admonished.

"Jason," Sarah said as she tried to sit up. "Take the headphones and rip the wires out. Hurry!"

Ryan did as he was told.

"You've got to somehow connect the wires to the casing of the centrifuge and ... and turn on ... the ..."

"What will that do?"

"Anything will break up the Wave, any ... interference at all will destroy the tone."

Ryan reacted quickly, deciding to place his bet on her knowledge. He looked at Mendenhall as he laid Sarah's head onto the lap of the nearest marine.

"I'll need cover, Will. My ass is going to be hangin' in the wind out there."

Mendenhall inserted a fresh magazine into his MP-5 and nodded. He gestured for the eight remaining marines to take up firing positions to his left and right.

Ryan swallowed and tried to keep his stomach in check as the Wave effect was getting stronger.

"Damn thing is making me feel like a rough night in Singapore," he said as he blindly reached into the bag, pulled out a CD, and ripped it from its case.

"When you're ready," Mendenhall said, looking at Ryan. "Most of the assholes tumbled down when that ledge broke free, but we'll pick off what we can."

"Okay," Ryan said. "Don't miss, buddy."

Ryan stood and on wobbly legs broke for the center of the lake bed. Mendenhall and the marines rose as one and placed a withering fire onto the ledge above, the first few rounds catching the first five Coalition men and dropping them.

Ryan had gone only ten feet when another large quake shook the ground. As the floor around him erupted in steam and gas, Ryan vomited and tried to get to his knees, but he fell over onto his back. As he looked up, another rush of cascading stone rolled free of the top, and he had to force himself to roll and keep rolling. As the stones crashed by him, he swallowed and came to his knees. Taking a deep breath, he ran the forty yards to the centrifuge. His head felt like it was going to explode out of his ears as he approached. Blood started trickling down from the eruption of his eardrums as the Wave penetrated his skull. He stumbled forward and fell flat on his face. He shook his head, the pain almost unbearable as he crawled the remaining few feet to the screaming centrifuge. As he rolled over and rested his head on a stanchion, he removed the small Walkman and just stared at it. His mind was fuzzy and he had to think hard on the instructions Sarah had given him. He tried to focus all his concentration on her words as they flooded into his mind:

"Attach the wires to the casing."

Ryan looked at his right hand and saw the portable CD player and the dangling wires and he had a quick flashback to the Blue Nile and what he had done there to attract the bad guys. Now he remembered, and he sucked up the pain and leaned toward the red-hot centrifuge. Then he realized that he didn't have anything with which to attach the wires to the titanium casing. He rolled over again as nausea hit him so hard that his stomach cramped and he felt bile rising in his throat.

Medenhall looked over and grimaced as he saw Ryan flat on his back. The ground shook and he heard a large crack from far above his head and he looked up just in time to see a large panel of the Crystal Dome separate from its frame. The eight-foot-thick piece of crystal was followed by a torrent of seawater and sand, mud, and rock, which struck the ruins a thousand feet away. As he looked on, steam shot up as the cold water came in contact with the hot ground of the dead city.

The earth around them shook again and a crack appeared not far from Ryan's supine position. Steam rose as if shot out of a fire hose and magma bubbled to the surface. The very sick Ryan rolled away quickly but not before his pant leg caught fire. He slapped at it until the flames were snuffed and then he looked at Mendenhall's position and shook his head again. Now he remembered what Sarah had told him to do. He reached the centrifuge once more and raised the Walkman to the carriage. He pulled his knife from its scabbard, reached down, and plucked up a knife tip full of magma. The blade started to melt as another convulsion shook the ground. Ryan steadied himself and placed the knife blade against the two wires and then against the titanium shield. He pressed as hard as he was able and then released the melting knife and saw that his makeshift weld had held.

Mendenhall watched as Ryan stupidly looked his way and smiled. Will shook his head as the wobbling naval pilot swayed and almost fell over, but he managed to reach out and push the Play button on the small device.

Collins and his men were almost out of ammunition, but it no longer mattered. The sea was falling as if ten Niagara Falls had opened up above them. The remains of the aqueduct rocked and spun with the weight of the water striking it. The men could no longer sustain their precarious hold on the high walls. The water washed them away.

Jack was under water for a hundred feet before he managed to bob above the torrent. He knew that soon they would fly off the broken end and smash into the ruins below.

The fall of seawater increased as more of the Crystal Dome gave way and slammed into the trembling remains of the aqueduct. The pressure was so great that it spun the waterway on its columns of stone. It rotated to the left and fell.

Everett and his SEALs were no closer to the Wave lines than they had been when he had started shooting. He jumped as men came screaming from their rear as he fed his last belt of ammunition into the M-60. He turned and saw that it was the fifteen marines of the mortar crew.

"Glad you boys could make it," he said.

"We're out of rounds, sir; thought you could use a hand."

Everett heard a tremendous stone-on-stone crack. He looked up in time to see the aqueduct turn to the left and collapse. Water was streaming from its broken end as it fell toward the centermost pyramid. He cursed, knowing that Jack had had it.

Collins and his fire team slid down the moss-covered stone as the aqueduct impacted with the largest of the three pyramids. The water that was carrying Jack and his men ran so fast that it spilled them down slippery sides As luck would have it, the aqueduct had collapsed and tilted just enough to slam against the pyramid, saving the team from a fall that would have crushed them all to death.

Collins found himself on a waterslide from hell as he careened down the stone pyramid. Water hit the bottom and splashed up so high that it covered Jack again as he hit the growing lake of water below. The Coalition men who had used the pyramids for cover were drowned and crushed.

Jack tried to fight his way to the surface as he was hit with the waterfall from high above. Giant stone blocks hit and narrowly missed him as he finally broke the surface of the building sea that covered the ruins.

Everett fired a few rounds and then ducked as return fire drove him backward. His team was down to twelve men. Ten were dead and the others had been wounded either by enemy fire or falling debris. The water was rising at an alarming rate, covering their legs.

Suddenly, Everett felt his head lighten, and he grabbed for the rock wall to steady himself. The feeling of lightness filled his head and he looked around him. The SEALs were as confused as he was. The sickness they had been feeling because of the Wave effect was now gone. The headache that Carl thought was robbing him of any sense he had to take control of the battle before him was also dwindling, and what had taken its place was something he couldn't begin to believe.

"What the hell?" he said.

" 'Sweet home Alabama,' " one of the SEALs said.

Suddenly, overpowering the sound of music in their heads was a scream from above, and Everett looked up. Coming down the lava hill in a headlong charge were fifteen marines.

"This has got to be the strangest day of my life," Carl said as he yelled for the SEALs to follow him. "Let's go blow something the fuck up!"

The SEALs charged in tandem with the marine assault.

Suddenly, from behind, the marine lieutenant and fifty other marines saw what was happening and followed suit. At once, the Coalition forces arrayed against them were caught off guard and a professional fighting force was coming at them screaming for blood, and the defenders panicked and started to break apart.

To the sounds of Lynyard Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" thumping in their ears, the U.S. Marine Corps, led by a navy captain from a department of the government no one had ever heard about, the Atlantis expeditionary force made their fanatical charge.

A million and a half people had fled to Central Park in the hope of dodging tons of falling glass and masonry. The ground was shaking so violently that most could not stand and were sitting and looking at the panicked people around them. The ground had split open in several areas and steam was rising from the wounded earth. In the distance, the buildings were caught in a warbling wave of displacement that made them appear to snake back and forth.

Without warning, the shaking stopped and the world became silent. People shook their heads in disbelief as the strains of the rock-and-roll song from the 1970s filled their ears. Those who were closest to the splits in the Central Park grass could have sworn that it was coming from the ground.

The USS Cheyenne broke the surface of the reeling Mediterranean at the same time as the Russian Akula-class Gephard did. The waves washed over the two vessels and rocked them left to right. The captain didn't believe they would ever be able to see, much less rescue, any survivors. But he had his orders.