Raising Atlantis

30

It was a few minutes past five in the morning when Zawas stepped out of his chambers to have a smoke on the promontory and take another look at the blueprints of the Shrine of the First Sun he had obtained from Serena. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he only needed to know where to look.

Sucking on his unlit Havana under the stars, he noticed the skies were lightening. Soon the sun would be up and his window of opportunity to find the Shrine of the First Sun gone. He then saw one of his guards-it looked like Yasser - by one of the falls and walked over. Yasser stiffened to attention in the dim light as he approached.

“At ease, lieutenant,” Zawas said, and Yasser relaxed. “We don’t see a sunrise like that often, do we?”

Yasser grumbled something that Zawas took to be a no. He realized most of his men were showing the effects of exhaustion and stress.

Zawas sighed and patted his pockets in search of some matches when Yasser’s hand came up with an old-fashioned Zippo lighter. Zawas touched the tip of his Cuban cigar to the flame and inhaled. It felt wonderful.

“Carry on,” Zawas said and walked back to his command quarters.

Halfway back, however, he realized there was something familiar about his hand-rolled cigar. No, it wasn’t the cigar. It was the old silver Zippo lighter Yasser flashed. It was just like the one his grandfather had. Only Zawas wasn’t aware of Yasser or any of his other men possessing such an artifact. He would have to ask Yasser where he found it.

But when Zawas turned to find Yasser, the guard was missing from his post. Zawas swore softly to himself and walked back to the promontory. Peering over the ledge down the falls, he could see nothing. It was as if Yasser had disappeared into thin air. Could he have actually fallen? Yasser was no such fool.

Zawas grabbed his radio from his belt. “Jamil!” he barked. “Round up your men. Conrad is here!”

But Jamil wasn’t answering.

“Jamil,” Zawas repeated when he heard a blast behind him.

Debris rained down, and Zawas looked up to see flashes of light from the top of the step-pyramid. Suddenly the flaming shell of a Z-9A chopper came tumbling down the east face, steel scraping against stone in an ear-splitting scream. Zawas dove back inside as it crashed onto the promontory and exploded in a ball of fire.

“The scepter!” he cursed.

He ran inside to the chamber where the obelisk was kept under guard. But the two guards were on the floor, dead, and the scepter was gone.

Conrad hit the water at the base of the Temple of the Water Bearer with such force that he thought he died. But a minute later he surfaced for air with a gasp and realized his splash from space went unnoticed by the guards below, thanks to the roar of the falls.

He swam over through the dark to the Zodiac inflatable, cut it loose, climbed on board and hit the motor. By the time the guards saw what was happening and started shooting, he was a hundred yards down the channel and racing away.

He glanced back over his shoulder to see the distant explosions coming from the top of the Temple of the Water Bearer. He also saw a big shadow coming down on him fast-one of Zawas’s choppers. Its lights were out and it was flying low, practically on top of him, blocking out the stars. Conrad kicked the onboard motor into high gear but couldn’t shake it.

The chopper then moved overhead and passed him by, landing a few hundred yards ahead on the banks of the water channel. As Conrad neared the bank, he could see a figure waving him down.

It was Yeats. And in his hand was the Scepter of Osiris.

“How did you get here?” Conrad asked as he pulled up to the bank.

“Followed the gunfire,” Yeats said, stepping into the Zodiac. “You find the location of the shrine?”

Conrad looked in amazement at the helicopter. “Whatever happened to slipping in and out undetected?”

“I had to create a diversion and leave Zawas a clue at the same time.”

Conrad felt the familiar pang of betrayal from his childhood. “You took the scepter and left Serena behind?”

“I didn’t have much of a choice once I saw you and that goon, son,” Yeats said matter-of-factly, in clipped military speed. “I knew the plan was blown. I grabbed what I could and took off. Now did you find the shrine or not? Zawas is pissed as hell and coming after us.”

Conrad wiped a wet flop of hair from his forehead. “I found it. It’s just ahead.”

“That’s my boy,” Yeats said with an approving nod. “Let’s go.”

They followed the waterway into a tunnel. Conrad’s GPS marker took them to a small dark corridor that branched off the subterranean waterway. At the end of it was some kind of stone grating.

“That’s the door to the Shrine of the First Sun,” Conrad said. “It’s down there. About a thousand feet.”

They ditched the Zodiac, sending it on its way down the tunnel as a decoy.

Conrad watched the boat disappear into the dark and then checked his GPS watch. They were running out of time. It was almost 5:15A.M., and the first faint hint of dawn was falling across the city above.

They dug out the grating to find a manhole-size shaft. They slid down into another labyrinth of subterranean corridors, going deeper and deeper into the earth. A half hour later they reached a long dark tunnel that ended in a blue light.

“That’s it,” Conrad said.

Yeats pulled out his flashlight. Its beam revealed a door. As soon as they passed under the blue light, the door slid open, and they stepped inside a dark cavern. This chamber felt like the largest they had stood in yet.

“I’m sending out a flare,” Yeats said. “Thirty-second delay.”

Conrad shielded his eyes as Yeats flung the little cylinder into the chamber. He counted down to two seconds when everything exploded with light. For an instant he saw the unbelievable spectacle of a towering obelisk much like the one from P4. Only this one was cradled in some fantastic cylinder and stood at least five hundred feet tall. And at its base was some sort of great rotunda that had to be its entrance.

All around them, the terraced slopes of the cylinder rose up until they merged into a homelike ceiling. And Conrad realized they stood only halfway down this cavity by the time the light went out.

“Incredible!” he said, his voice echoing loudly.

They descended the steps that spiraled alongside the interior of the cylinder to the bottom and stood at the base of the giant obelisk and looked up. He could see no more than twenty feet overhead, except the blinking of red lights around the cylinder-the remote switches to the C-4 bricks Yeats had set on the way down.

“What the hell are you doing?” Conrad said.

“Setting a trap for Zawas,” Yeats said.

“Who’s got Serena, remember?”

“Don’t worry, they’re not on timers. I’ve got the detonator right here.”

If that was supposed to comfort Conrad, it didn’t. But he was too engrossed with their discovery to be distracted by an argument he couldn’t win. Instead he followed Yeats through the rotunda to what appeared to be a doorway at the base of the giant obelisk.

Conrad wondered if it was even possible to enter at this point. Then he noticed a square shaft next to the door. It looked about the size of the base of the Scepter of Osiris.

“We might need the scepter to open this.”

“Here you go, son,” Yeats said, handing it over.

Conrad inserted the scepter into the square display and felt a small vibration. The door opened, and they stepped inside the giant obelisk.

Zawas clenched his jaw as he surveyed the wreckage outside. He cursed the name of Conrad Yeats, a man whose face he’d never even seen but who had managed to steal the Scepter of Osiris from under his nose.

Zawas shook his head as he looked down the waterfall to the burned-out shell of the Z-9A jammed into the basin, breaking off into bits as the water carried it down the river. With the other one gone too, he now had only one bird left to fly.

Zawas followed a chunk of windshield as it floated down the canal out toward the horizon, where the first rays of dawn were breaking as the stars began to fade. Something about the pattern of those stars caught his eye. And then he jumped back as he found himself staring at the constellation of Aquarius. Suddenly everything about the map made sense.

He ran into his quarters and looked at the Sonchis map. He stared at the Temple of the Water Bearer, his present location. Then he looked at the “key” symbols in the corner-the constellations of Aquarius, Capricorn, and Sagittarius. He was sweating slightly as he picked up the Sonchis map with shaking hands and stared at it as if for the first time.

He then rushed over to Serena’s chamber and began to untie her.

“Things going awry, Zawas?”

“Au contraire,Doctor Serghetti,” he said and pushed her outside to the promontory.

As they neared the ledge, she resisted, fearing he would throw her over. But instead he told her to follow the water canal with her eyes to the horizon with its first glint of dawn. And then she found herself staring face-to-face with the constellation of Aquarius.

“I’ve found the Shrine of the First Sun,” he told her, “and that means I’ve found Conrad Yeats.”

Part Four

Doomsday