Atlantis

CHAPTER 24

There was little sensation of speed as the shuttle accelerated down one of the tubular passageways, the air pocket beneath cushioning it like a hovercraft. Jack and Aslan sat on opposite seats, the other man’s girth occupying the entire width of the compartment. Jack guessed they had descended to the valley floor and were now approaching the central hub he had seen from the Pantheon room.

A few moments earlier they had stopped to pick up another passenger who now stood motionless between them. He was an immense bear of a man in a tight-fitting black overall, with sloping forehead, flattened nose and pig-like eyes that stared out blankly under a pronounced brow ridge.

“Allow me to introduce your bodyguard,” Aslan said good-naturedly. “Vladimir Yurevich Dalmotov. A former spetsnaz commando, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, who defected to the Chechen freedom fighters after his brother was executed for garrotting the officer who sent his platoon to their deaths in Grosny. After Chechnya he hired himself out to the al Qaeda holy warriors for the liberation of Abkhazia. I found him by following the trail of bodies. He believes in no god yet Allah forgives him.”

As the shuttle drew to a halt the door slid open and two attendants entered to help Aslan to his feet. Jack had been biding his time since guessing that Costas and Katya were still on the island. As Dalmotov hustled him out Jack noted he had an Uzi slung over his back but wore no body armour.

The space they stepped into was in stark contrast to the opiate splendour of the living quarters. It was a giant hangar, its door retracted to reveal the helipad Jack had seen earlier. On the tarmac was the bulky form of the Hind; a maintenance crew was scurrying around the airframe and a fuelling tender stood waiting.

“Our transport from the island last night,” Aslan said. “Now about to fulfil the purpose for which it was built.”

The view outside was partly obscured by a flatbed truck parked just outside the door. While they watched, a team of men began offloading crates and stacking them against the wall beside a rack of flight suits.

Dalmotov muttered something to Aslan and loped across. He picked up one of the crates and prised it open with his bare hands, extracting and slotting together the components it contained. Even before he raised it to test the sights, Jack had identified the Barrett M82A1, probably the most lethal sniper rifle in the world. It was chambered for the Browning Machine Gun BMG 50 calibre round or the Russian 12.7 millimetre equivalent, firing a high-velocity slug that could penetrate tank armour at five hundred metres or take a man’s head off at three times that distance.

“My modest contribution to the jihad.” Aslan smiled widely. “You must have spotted our sniper training school beyond the runway. Dalmotov is our chief instructor. Our clients include the Irish Republican Army’s New Brigade as well as al Qaeda, and they have never been less than entirely satisfied.”

Jack recalled the spate of high-profile sniper attacks earlier that year, a new and devastating phase in the terrorists’ war against the west.

While Dalmotov oversaw the assembly of the weapons, Jack followed Aslan to a warehouse on the opposite side of the hangar. Inside, crates were being hammered shut and audited by figures in maintenance overalls. As a forklift passed by, Jack caught sight of the word stencilled in red letters on the side. One of Jack’s first assignments with military intelligence had been to intercept a freighter from Libya carrying identical crates. It was Semtex, the deadly plastic explosive from the Czech Republic used by the IRA in their campaign of terror in Britain.

“This is our main transit facility,” Aslan explained. “Normally the bay is sealed off to contain biological and chemical weapons, but I have just routed our last batch by transport helicopter to another satisfied customer in the Middle East.” Aslan paused, his hands clasped over his belly and his fat thumbs slowly revolving. His eyes narrowed and he stared into the middle distance.

Jack was beginning to recognize the warning signs of Aslan’s volatile temper.

“I do have one unhappy customer, someone whose patience has been sorely stretched since 1991. When we tracked Seaquest from Trabzon we knew there could be only one possible destination, the place Olga had pinpointed from her study of the ancient text. We made our way to the volcano under cover of darkness. You have provided me the perfect screen to go where politics had denied me access for years. In the past any visit to this island would have provoked an immediate military response. Now if the satellite picks up any activity they will assume it is you, a legitimate scientific project. This was to have been our rendezvous point with the Russians, if that fool Antonov had not sunk his submarine and my merchandise through his own incompetence.”

“Captain Antonov would have delivered his cargo,” Jack replied bleakly. “There was a mutiny led by the political officer. It was probably the only good thing the KGB ever did.”

“And the nuclear warheads?” Aslan cut in sharply.

“We saw only conventional weapons,” Jack lied.

“Then why did my daughter threaten nuclear holocaust when she negotiated with my men?”

Jack was silent for a moment. Katya had not revealed this detail of her parley in the submarine’s control room.

“My men will keep you out,” he replied quietly. “Your fundamentalist friends are not the only ones willing to die for a cause.”

“They may decide otherwise once they hear the fate that awaits you and that Greek if they do not capitulate.” Aslan smiled humourlessly, his serenity briefly returned. “I think you will find our next stop most interesting.”

They left the hangar by a different passageway, this time in an open-topped car on a conveyor belt. They were heading towards the central hub about a kilometre closer to the sea. After a five-minute journey they stepped onto an escalator that took them to a lift door. An attendant punched a key that took them to the highest level.

The scene was straight from a NASA space launch. The room was identical in dimensions to the Pantheon but filled with a mass of computer and surveillance equipment. As they stepped out Jack saw they had ascended inside a drum that rose in the centre like a truncated column. It was like the arena of a latter-day amphitheatre, surrounded by concentric tiers of workstations that faced them in continuous ripples of colour. On the wall behind, giant screens displayed maps and televisual images. The whole complex seemed like Seaquest’s control module but on a massive scale, with enough monitoring and communications equipment to run a small war.

Aslan was helped into an electronic wheelchair by two assistants. The rows of shadowy figures hunched behind the monitors seemed scarcely to have noticed their arrival.

“I prefer the excitement of Vultura. More hands-on, you might say.” Aslan settled back in his chair. “But here I can control all my operations simultaneously. From the command chair I can view any screen in the room without moving.”

An attendant who had been waiting nervously on the sidelines leaned over and whispered urgently in his ear. Aslan’s face remained impassive but his fingers began drumming the arms of his wheelchair. Without saying a word he pressed a button on his wheelchair and shot off towards a console where a group of figures were congregating. Jack followed with Dalmotov close behind. As they neared the console Jack noted that the screens immediately to the right were security monitors, similar to the type used in the Carthage Museum showing interior views within the complex.

The figures silently parted to allow Aslan access to the screen. Jack moved up until he stood directly behind the wheelchair and the operator who was working the console keyboard. Dalmotov stood at his elbow.

“We’ve finally made the link,” the operator said in English. “SATSURV should be coming online now.”

The man was of Asian appearance but wore jeans and a white shirt rather than the black overalls that were standard issue in the place. From his accent Jack guessed that he had been educated in Britain.

The operator looked first at Jack and then questioningly at Aslan. The big man nodded languidly, a gesture not of indifference but of supreme confidence that his guest would never be in a position to divulge anything he saw or heard.

A mosaic of pixels resolved into a view of the Black Sea, the south-eastern corner still partly obscured by cloud from the storm. The thermal imaging transformed the scene into a spectrum of colours, the coastline emerging clearly as the satellite picked up infrared radiation from below the cloud base. The operator traced out a small square and magnified it to fill the screen. He repeated the process until the screen was dominated by the island, the centre a shifting halo of pinks and yellows where the core was emitting strong heat radiation.

On the sea nearby was a sliver of colour that signified a surface vessel. The operator increased magnification until it filled the entire screen, the imagery now at sub-metric resolution. The vessel was dead in the water, the hull careened to port with the bow submerged and its starboard screw dangling above the smashed remains of the rudder.

To his horror Jack recognized Seaquest, her lines still clear despite the appalling damage. The heat radiation showed where armour-piercing shells had slammed into the hull and left gaping exit wounds like high-velocity rounds through a human body. Jack felt gripped by anger as he surveyed the destruction. He swung the wheelchair round and confronted Aslan.

“Where are my people?” he demanded.

“There do not appear to be any human heat signatures,” Aslan replied calmly. “Two of your crew were foolish enough to engage Vultura in a firefight yesterday morning. A somewhat one-sided battle as you might imagine. We will shortly be sending the Hind to dispose of the wreckage.”

On Seaquest’s shattered foredeck Jack could see the gun turret deployed and elevated. The barrels were at a crazy angle, evidently the result of a direct hit. Jack knew that York and Howe would not have abandoned her without a fight. He silently prayed they had managed to escape afterwards with the rest of the crew in the submersible.

“They were scientists and sailors, not fanatics and thugs,” Jack said coldly.

Aslan shrugged and turned back to the screen.

It transformed to show another ship, this one hove close in to the island. As the image magnified, all eyes were glued on the stern. A group of figures could be seen dismantling two large tubes which showed irregular patterns of thermal radiation as if they had been on fire. Just as Jack realized he was looking at battle damage to Vultura, Aslan snapped his fingers and a hand gripped Jack’s shoulder like a vice.

“Why was I not told?” Aslan screamed in rage. “Why was this kept concealed from me?”

The room went silent and he pointed at Jack. “He is not worthy of ransom. He will be liquidated like his crew. Get him out of my sight!”

Before being hustled away Jack made a quick mental note of the GPS co-ordinates on the SATSURV screen. As Dalmotov pushed him he pretended to trip up against the security monitors. Earlier he had recognized the approach passageway and the hangar entrance on the two nearest screens. As he stumbled against the control panel he pressed the pause key. Other CCTV cameras would chart their progress, but with all eyes diverted to the image of Vultura there was a chance they might go unnoticed.

Ever since he had woken that morning Jack had been determined to act. He knew Aslan’s moods were fickle, that the rage of his last outburst would again revert to apparent conviviality, but Jack had decided to gamble no more on the whims of a megalomaniac. The shocking image of Seaquest and the uncertain fate of her crew had hardened his resolve. He owed it to those who may have paid the ultimate price. And he knew the fate of both Costas and Katya lay in his hands.

His opportunity came as the shuttle was speeding them from the control hub back to the hangar. Just beyond the halfway point Dalmotov stepped forward to peer at the docking bay as it came into view. It was a momentary lapse in vigilance, a mistake he would never have made had his instincts not been blunted by being too long in Aslan’s lair. With lightning speed Jack drew back his left fist and slammed it into Dalmotov’s back, a crushing impact that threw Jack off balance and left him clutching his hand in pain.

It was a blow that would have killed any ordinary man. Jack had brought his full force to bear at a point just below the ribcage where the shock of an impact can stop the heart and diaphragm simultaneously. He watched in disbelief as Dalmotov remained immobile, his huge physique seemingly impervious. Then he muttered something unintelligible and sank to his knees. He remained upright for a few seconds, his legs shuffling feebly, then toppled forward and lay still.

Jack heaved the recumbent form out of sight of any surveillance camera. The docking bay was empty and the only figures he could see were on the helipad outside the hangar entrance. As the shuttle drew to a halt he stepped out and pressed the return button, sending the carriage and its unconscious occupant back in the direction of the control hub. He was buying precious time and knew every second must count.

Without hesitating he marched brazenly towards the helipad entrance, praying his confident gait would allay suspicion. He reached the rack of flight suits, selected the longest and pulled it on. He tightened the lifejacket and donned a helmet, closing the visor so his face was concealed.

He snatched a duffel bag and picked up one of the Barrett sniper rifles. He had observed Dalmotov assembling the weapon and quickly found the locking pin. He detached the stock from the receiver and slid them both into the bag. Stacked alongside were cartons labelled BMG, the 50 calibre Browning Machine Gun round. Jack took a handful of the massive 14 millimetre cartridges and shoved them in beside the weapon.

After zipping up the bag he continued resolutely towards the hangar entrance. Once there he squatted down to survey the scene while pretending to adjust an ankle strap. The tarmac was hot to the touch, the summer sun having burned away the rainwater from the night before. In the glare the buildings of the compound seemed scorched and overburdened with heat like the surrounding hills.

He had already decided which helicopter to go for. The Werewolf was the most sophisticated, but was parked with the Havoc at the far edge of the heliport. The Hind was only twenty metres in front and being prepared for flight. It had been a workhorse of the Russian war machine and the snout with its stepped tandem cockpit exuded reliability.

He straightened up and walked over to a crew chief who was feeding a belt into the ammunition loading port.

“Priority orders,” Jack barked. “The schedule has moved forward. I am to leave at once.”

His Russian was rusty and heavily accented, but he hoped it would pass muster in a place where many of the personnel were Kazakhs and Abkhazians.

The man looked surprised but not unduly taken aback.

“The weapons hardpoints are still empty and you have only four hundred rounds of 12.7, but otherwise we are ready to go. You are cleared to mount up and begin pre-flight checks.”

Jack slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and climbed through the starboard door. He ducked into the cockpit and manoeuvred into the pilot’s seat. He stashed the bag out of the way. The controls did not look as if they would present too many problems; the overall configuration differed little from other military helicopters he had flown.

As he strapped himself in, Jack looked out through the canopy. Over the bulging Plexiglas of the gunner’s nacelle he could see a group of fitters wheeling two flatbed trolleys, each laden with tube launchers for the Spiral radio-guided anti-armour missile. The Hind was being loaded up for the final assault on Seaquest. At the same moment he glimpsed two men in flight suits coming towards him from the hangar entrance, evidently the Hind’s pilot and gunner. The instant he saw the crew chief pick up his cellphone and raise his eyes in alarm, Jack knew his cover was blown.

The giant five-blade rotor was already vibrating, the twin 2,200 horsepower Isotov TV3-117 turboshafts having been warmed up as part of the pre-flight routine. Jack scanned the dials and saw the tank was full and oil and hydraulic pressures were up to mark. He prayed fervently that Aslan’s anti-aircraft defences had not yet been briefed to shoot down one of their own. He gripped the two control sticks, his left hand pulling hard on the collective and twisting the throttle and his right hand pulling the cyclic as far back as it would go.

In seconds the beat of the rotor rose in a mighty crescendo and the Hind lurched into the air with its nose angled down. For a few agonizing moments there was no movement as it strained and bucked against the force of gravity, its efforts drummed out in a deafening cacophony that reverberated off the buildings around the helipad. As Jack skilfully worked the pedals to keep the machine from sliding sideways he caught sight of a great bear of a man running out of the hangar and roughly pushing aside the two dazed airmen. Dalmotov did not even bother with his Uzi, knowing the 9 millimetre rounds would splatter harmlessly off the helicopter’s armour plating. Instead he raised a much more lethal weapon he had grabbed on his way through the hangar.

The first 50 calibre BMG round smashed straight through the forward gunner’s nacelle, a position Jack would have taken had he known the helicopter was dual-control. As the machine suddenly sprang forward, a second round hit somewhere aft, a jarring impact that swung the fuselage sideways and forced Jack to compensate with an extra burst to the tail rotor.

As he wrestled with the controls, the helicopter rose over the hangar and clattered with increasing speed towards the southern seawall. To his left he could see the futuristic complex of Aslan’s hillside palace and to the right the sleek lines of the frigate. Moments later he crossed the perimeter and was over the open sea, the undercarriage skimming the waves as he kept low to minimize his radar profile. With the throttle at maximum and the cyclic jammed forward, he soon reached the helicopter’s maximum sea-level speed of 335 kilometres per hour, a figure he was able to boost slightly after finding the lever that retracted the undercarriage. The shoreline was now receding rapidly to the east, and ahead lay only the cloudless morning sky merging into a blue-grey haze on the horizon.

Fifteen nautical miles out, Jack pressed the pedals that controlled the tail rotor and pushed the cyclic to the left, gently easing the helicopter round until the compass read 180 degrees due south. He had already worked out how to activate the radar and GPS unit and now programmed in the co-ordinates for the island he had memorized on Seaquest three days previously. The computer calculated the remaining distance at just under 150 kilometres, a flight time of half an hour at present velocity. Despite the high fuel consumption, Jack had decided to maintain low altitude and maximum throttle, the fuel tanks over this distance providing ample margin.

He activated the autopilot and opened the visor on his helmet. Without pausing he lifted the duffel bag and began to assemble the rifle. He knew he could not afford to let his guard down for one moment. Aslan would do all in his power to bring him back.