Raising Atlantis

16

It was the vodka.

It had to be the vodka, Colonel Ivan Kovich swore, when he first beheld the pyramid at the bottom of the ice chasm. That or some experimental hallucinogenics the Americans had slipped into his drink at their base on the surface.

Whatever it was, he decided, it was part of an American plot to drive the Russian people insane. It had started with the imperialist capitalist bankrolling of the Communist revolution in 1917. It had moved into full gear with the installation of Stalin and the gulags, and then the slaughter of twenty million during World War II. It culminated in the humiliating disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 and rise of the golden arches of American hamburger stands in Moscow.

Now that the United States was the world’s undisputed superpower, Kovich was convinced, the Americans were simply keeping the Russians alive for their own cruel pleasure, starving their bodies of nutrients with Big Macs and their souls with TV shows like Baywatch.

It was from this hell that Kovich had sought refuge in the spare, unspoiled beauty of Antarctica, only to stumble across a veritable Four Seasons Resort in the snow in the form of Ice Base Orion. With state-of-the-art computers, plush sleeping quarters, toilets that flushed, and a stockpile of food, the only thing lacking was a swimming pool and health spa.

The concierge of Hotel Orion, Colonel O’Dell, was pleasant enough during the inspection. But the American grew increasingly nervous when Russian dosimeters detected radiation, and Kovich suggested a survey of the gigantic ice chasm over which the base was perched.

Kovich was convinced he was on the verge of discovering a rogue nuclear testing facility, mostly because Russia itself had one at the other end of the planet in the Arctic Circle.

Only after reaching the bottom of the abyss and beholding the protruding summit of a pyramid did Kovich realize that the Americans had pushed him and his twenty Russian comrades over the brink. And how could he ever forget the horror on his men’s faces when they saw the hundreds of human bodies frozen in the walls of this ice tomb?

Truly their commanding officer had finally led them down to hell.

The shiny white exterior of the pyramid didn’t even show up on their radio-echo scans from a few feet away. It was obvious the Americans had developed a super-secret, indestructible stealth material that could render their fleets and bombers both invisible and invincible.

As if that were not enough, a message played in Kovich’s head over and over again: “Wait, there’s more!” the voice repeated, like some terrible American infomercial. “Much, much more!” As a special bonus at the bottom of hell, the Americans had left what looked like an RV parked atop the pyramid summit along with another hole that beckoned them farther.

Here at this “habitat” Kovich left the two American observers who had accompanied them down, along with five of his men. He and the rest of his team proceeded down the seven-foot-tall shaft and didn’t reach the other end for a good half hour.

They emerged inside what seemed to be a massive stone oven the size of an Olympic stadium. And inside this chamber were four American soldiers-two men and two women-who surrendered their weapons but refused to say a word.

As a final bonus, there seemed to be no way out of this tomb. When attempts to reach Vlad and the rest of the crew at Ice Base Orion on the surface failed, Kovich feared the worst.

He had been duped, he concluded. This was a trap. They had been lured into this mass grave so they could be killed. Meanwhile, the Americans would monitor their slow descent into madness with hidden cameras and use the results in their training videos for new recruits.

Finally, one of his men found an open passageway.

Kovich left a few men to guard the Americans and took the rest down a low, square tunnel to a plateau overlooking what looked like a gigantic Moscow metro tunnel plunging toward the center of the earth. It was at least one hundred meters tall, he guessed, and could swallow Russia’s GUM retail mall, the biggest in the world. Running along its shiny walls and floor and ceiling were sunken channels about forty feet wide and twenty feet deep.

“Look, sir!” shouted one of his soldiers, pointing into the abyss. “There’s more!”

Peering over the ledge, Kovich could only rub his disbelieving eyes. For inside one of the channels were two lines daring him to descend even farther.

Something rose up inside Kovich’s bubbling psyche, bursting through the swirling images of fast food, bikinis, Ginsu knives, and self-improvement CDs. That something was the stark realization that he and his men were going to die. They would never make it back to the surface again.

With chilling clarity, Kovich made the last strategic decision of his life: if they weren’t leaving this tomb, then neither were the Americans.