Atlantis

Chapter 29

“We’re going to go inside the caves without protective gear. We will only stay for fifteen minutes. The purpose is to impress upon you just how dangerous the heat and humidity are.” The guide turned, unlocked the door, and opened it.

Matt didn’t need any convincing. It seemed like common sense. But, he followed the others inside.

The heat assailed him immediately. His knees trembled the moment he hit the wall of hot, damp air. His discomfort, though, was immediately forgotten when his eyes took in his surroundings.

The cave was magnificent. The giant crystals, gleaming in the dim light, were so huge as to give the experience a dreamlike quality. They were everywhere, jutting up at angles like countless, miniature Washington Monuments. He glanced at Joel, who appeared immune to the magic of the caves. His eyes flitted from one member of the group to the next, his face set in a look of concentration.

“What’s up?” Matt kept his voice low.

“Just keeping an eye on things. I don’t trust any of these men.”

His words reminded Matt that they weren’t here for sightseeing. He searched out Robinson, who stood off to the side, his expression bored and detached.

There was nothing memorable about Robinson; nothing to make him stand out in a crowd. To an ex-military man like Matt, however, subtle clues named the newcomer a fellow veteran: his posture, the way he walked, his general bearing. Of course, a military background wasn’t a crime, but knowing he was associated with the Kingdom Church made him someone upon whom Matt and Joel would want to keep a close eye. Matt and the rest of Maddock’s crew had run afoul of the Dominion’s paramilitary elements too many times not to be on his guard around someone like Robinson.

“This place gets to you, doesn’t it?” Bill came staggering up to Matt. “I’m feeling a little…” His legs gave out and Matt grabbed him before he collapsed.

“I think he needs to get out of here.” Matt, aware of how weak he, too, felt, looked at Robinson, whose face remained impassive.

“All right.” Robinson motioned to Rivera, who ushered the group back out through the door.

The temperature in the tunnel outside the crystal cave was probably more than ninety degrees, but stepping through the doorway felt like being immersed in a cool bath. Rivera opened a cooler and passed around bottles of water.

Robinson moved to the center of the circle of men, his presence commanding their immediate attention. “We’ll take a ten minute breather,” he began, “after which, we’ll suit up and get to work.”

“We’re starting right now?” Bill sat with his back against the wall, clutching his water bottle like a lifeline.

“We have work to do, and it needs to be done quickly.”

No one in the group seem surprised at this. Apparently, only Joel and Matt had been led to believe this was a recreational trip.

“Do the rest of us need to be armed?” Matt asked.

“What?” The question had caught Robinson off guard.

“I notice you’re carrying, though I can’t imagine what we might encounter in there. Some kind of underground dwellers?” He forced a grin and the others chuckled.

Robinson’s face turned to stone, but softened in an instant. The smile he directed at Matt didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Just a habit. I won’t be carrying inside.”

Matt doubted that very much, but he didn’t say so.

“Are you trying to put him on the alert?” It was amazing how well Joel could enunciate without moving his lips. “We’re already the new guys. Why call attention to us?”

“I don’t know,” Matt admitted. “I guess I don’t want him thinking he can bully us. Besides, isn’t it the new guy’s job to ask stupid questions?”

“Only if the new guy is stupid. You might want to let me take the lead until things get physical.”

Matt set his jaw. He knew he was clueless as a spy, but he always trusted his instincts, and right now, his gut told him that Robinson needed to know that not all the men in this group were sheep.

“Time to suit up!” Robinson announced.

The suits they donned had two layers — an outer layer fitted with refrigeration tubes connected to a backpack filled with a cooling agent, and an insulating interior layer to protect the skin from the icy tubes. Each man was also equipped with breathing apparatus and a futuristic-looking helmet with a light on the forehead.

“I feel like a space marine,” one of the group, a man named Davis, said. The others chuckled, except for Robinson and Greer.

Robinson explained that these suits would keep their body temperatures in the normal range for over an hour, and were an improvement over older models that were good for no more than forty-five minutes. “You might milk an hour and a half out of it if you’re lucky, but I don’t recommend it. You’ll be exerting yourselves, which will raise your body heat and exhaust the cooling agent faster than if you were at rest. Exercise caution and good sense.”

“Gentlemen, let us take a moment to reflect on our work today.” Brother Bill had recovered from his bout of fatigue, and seemed ready to launch into a sermon. A stern look from Robinson nipped that in the bud, and he settled for a reminder that they were about the work of the church, which meant they were doing God’s work, and that they numbered twelve, which assured His blessing upon them. When he had finished, they headed back into the cave.

That neither Bill nor Robinson had told them what, exactly, their work would entail, was not lost on Matt. Nor was the lump inside Robinson’s suit. Evidently, he’d lied about leaving his weapon behind.

The journey into the caves quickly turned from fascinating, to laborious and, finally, to perilous. Several men slipped on the slick surface and just missed impaling themselves. They navigated several passageways, the way tight due to the forest of giant crystals in their path.

At one point, they climbed a sheer face seventy five feet high and crawled through a tiny passageway into a new set of caverns, an effort that left Bill gasping for breath and whispering prayers to Jesus.

No telephone pole-sized crystals filled this next system of caves. Instead, the floor, walls, and ceilings bristled with tiny crystal daggers, with the occasional head-high pyramidal-shaped selenite blocks. They navigated the treacherous caves slowly, knowing what would happen if one were to fall on the carpet of sharp crystal.

“How long do you think we’ve been in here?” Joel finally asked as they exited a winding chamber of white and blue crystal and entered a narrow crevasse.

Matt consulted his mental clock and conservatively estimated they’d been moving for at least thirty minutes.

“Long enough that we’ll have to turn back soon if we want to make it back alive. Which means, wherever we’re going, we must be almost there.”

He was half-right. In the next chamber, they found a large tent into which several air conditioners pumped a steady stream of cool air. Here, the tired men rested and replenished lost fluids while Robinson outlined the next stage of the excursion.

“This is what we are looking for.” He held up a tiny spike of transparent crystal. “As you saw on the way here, the crystals so far have all been opaque and white in color. Somewhere beyond this point is a single, tiny cavern filled with crystal of different sort. I won’t go into detail about what makes this,” he brandished the crystal, which, Matt noticed, flickered blue in the glow of the bare bulbs hanging over Robinson’s head. “In fact, I don’t understand it myself, but that isn’t our concern.”

He turned to a dry erase board where the cave system had been sketched out. “We’ve had time to explore and completely eliminate this passageway.” He marked a red X over a tunnel that branched out like the limbs of a tree. “These others,” he tapped two more lines, “remain unexplored. That’s why the map is open-ended in these places. We will divide into two groups and scout them out.”

Matt raised his hand. “What if the cave we’re looking for is farther than we can go with our cooling suits?”

“Fair question. A caver using the old-style suits managed to reach the cavern, recover this crystal and another, larger one, and make it back safely. That means it should be well within our reach.”

“He couldn’t tell you where the cave was?” Bill asked.

“Obviously not.” A shadow passed over Robinson’s face, but he quickly donned another of his phony smiles. “His cooling suit, which relied on ice and chilled water, lost its cooling capacity long before he made it out. He was disoriented and suffering from heat exposure by the time he reached the surface. He remembers the way to this cavern, but gets foggy after that.” Robinson paused. “Any more questions?” Robinson’s tone indicated that questions would be tolerated, but nothing more than that.

A rangy, sandy-haired man named Perkins raised his hand. “Why does the church need crystals? Aren’t they part of the new-age heresy?”

“Imagine the rarest, most valuable mineral in the world.” Robinson smoothed his gruff voice. “Now imagine the church owned it all. How much would it be worth, and how much good could we do with the proceeds?”

“And imagine how far down the road toward our aims we would be,” Greer added. The others nodded, their expressions ranging from solemn to beatific. Once again, Matt realized that he and Joel, as newcomers, were out of the loop on something important.

They donned fresh cooling suits and Robinson divided them into groups of six, putting himself in charge of one of them, and placing Greer at the head of the other. He also handed out small backpacks containing rock hammers, in case they found the cavern quickly and had time to get to work. Matt and Joel found themselves in Robinson’s group, along with Perkins, Brother Bill, and a red-haired man named Logan. Before they entered the tunnels, Robinson pulled Matt aside.

His senses on high alert, Matt tensed to fight should Robinson reach for his weapon. Instead, Robinson laid a hand on Matt’s shoulder and whispered in a conspiratorial tone.

“Keep an eye on Bill. He’s not in good shape, and I can tell you know how to handle yourself.”

Matt nodded once but remained silent.

“You served,” Robinson said. “I can tell. Army?”

Matt nodded again.

“Rangers?”

“Kicked out,” Matt lied. No need to reveal too much.

“It happens.” Robinson thanked him in advance for keeping an eye on Bill, and led the way into the passageways.

The final pieces were falling into place in Matt’s mind. The Dominion believed these crystals would power the Atlantean machines. But what did they plan to do with them when they got their hands on them? And, more immediately, what would Robinson do once they found the cavern?

He spied a dagger-sized spike of crystal. Slowing, he let the others get ahead of him, hastily used his rock hammer to break it free, and then tucked it into his bag. It might serve as a weapon later.

He caught up with Bill, who was already flagging.

“Are you going to be okay?” Matt asked.

Bill nodded.

“I’m curious. What are these ‘aims’ Greer mentioned? I realize I’m new to the group, but I’d like to know what I’m working toward.”

“It’s more than I can tell you right now,” Bill huffed. “For the short term, let’s just say I wouldn’t be buying any real-estate in Savannah if I were you.”

Matt’s heart lurched. So the Dominion planned to continue destroying cities. The loss in human life and damage to infrastructure aside, should a Tsunami strike the Savannah River nuclear plant, it could be an unmitigated disaster.

“But that’s small potatoes. Wait until we find the Revelation Machine.”

Matt swallowed hard. “What’s that?” He tried to keep his tone casual.

“Can’t say, exactly. I’m not even supposed to know about it, but I heard talk. When we get ahold of it, we’ll make sure the world is a whole lot better than it is today.”

Matt forced a smile. Whatever this Revelation Machine was, it didn’t sound like something the Dominion ought to get his hands on. Somehow, he had to get word to Tam.