The Secret of Atlantis

CHAPTER TWO

Mendoza pulled Franz Huber roughly through the lobby door and dragged him down the building’s stone steps. He pressed the tip of the switchblade against the professor’s jugular and whispered frantically in his ear. “Tell them to get back, or you die!”

Huber hesitated, not wishing to collude in his own kidnapping, but a rough jab of the blade into his neck hurried him along. “Get back!” Huber said in German. “He says get back or he will kill me!”

“Now tell that one to throw me his gun, or you die right here.”

“Er will eine Waffe!” Huber screeched at the police. “Oder er wird mich töten!”

Anxious glances between the leading officers were followed by a sentence of rapid German.

Huber twisted his neck towards Mendoza. “He says no way.”

Mendoza said nothing but flicked the knife over in the air so he was holding it by the blade. He threw it at great velocity and the next time anyone saw it, it was sticking in the neck of a police officer. The young man fell to the floor, clutching his throat and screaming in panic as blood pumped from his artery.

Mendoza pulled a second knife from a holster around his leg.

“The gun, or more death.”

Huber repeated the command, and this time the order was given. Another young officer reluctantly kicked his weapon across the cobblestones. Aurora picked it up and they began to walk backwards while continuing to use the terrified professor as a human shield.

Aurora lifted the police-issue Glock 19 into the aim and fired one two three rapid shots at a police VW Touran. The short recoil action delivered the goods when the nine mil parabellums punctured the gas tank and a shower of sparks ignited the fuel. The explosion was ferocious in its intensity, bursting out from the detonated tank and propelling a deadly burst of shredded steel across the street.

The force blasted men from the Federal Police and the anti-terror units into the air like a storm whipping dead leaves through a park. They tumbled in cartwheels and landed hard on the ancient cobblestones. Most survived, but several of the men were dead, their broken bodies sprawled on the street as a terrible testament to the gangsters’ ruthless brutality.

What was a serene picture of Viennese charm and calmness just a few moments ago, was now a warzone. Noxious black smoke billowed from the gnarled corpse of the Touran and piercer sirens rebounded off the Baroque architecture and drifted high above the chaos.

Huber was crazed with confusion and fear, but he watched with something resembling hope as the surviving law enforcement men regrouped and fanned out in a new tactical assault formation. They pushed closer to him and his kidnapper, but they were more cautious now and moving slower. Officers in riot helmets and body armor spoke into palm mics and waited for orders through their earpieces.

With Aurora’s Glock still pointed at the men, Mendoza was still holding the switchblade at Huber’s throat. “Which way out of here?”

With fear pounding in his heart, Huber knew he had to delay the madman’s escape but couldn’t risk enraging him further. “I don’t know what you mean…” he blathered.

Aurora’s reply was a sharp pistol-whipping. “Don’t play games, professor. If you want to live then get us out of here.”

Huber’s mind raced. He did want to live yes — he had three grandchildren and he wanted to see them grow up. Something told him the Mexicans weren’t bluffing either, so he decided not to aggravate them with lies and delays. “In St. Michael’s Church around the corner… you can access a network of tunnels that go all over the city.”

“Do you know them?”

Huber shook his head. “Access is very restricted for everyone’s safety.”

“Take us there!”

With the police keeping a safe distance but never letting him slip from their sight, Huber led the Mexicans past the café terraces of Herrengasse until a magnificent Romanesque church came into view.

“Die Michaelerkirche,” Huber said, with not even the terror around him diminishing the lifelong pride he felt for the eight hundred year-old church. “Go into the crypt here and you can disappear forever.”

They crossed the expansive Michaelerplatz and drew closer to the church. Normally buzzing with tourists snapping pictures of the neoclassical architecture or lining up to ride on the famous horse-drawn carriages, the explosion of the Touran and the presence of a hovering police helicopter had cleared the area of civilians.

Huber led Mendoza and Aurora inside St. Michael’s Church and along the impressive nave as he walked them toward the famous Michaelergruft, the enormous crypt which lay beneath the ancient building.

It was noticeably colder now as they hurried past the numerous marble tombs, each holding the bones of a different aristocratic dynasty. Except for the four thousand corpses, they were now alone inside the church, but the sound of the police above gave Huber a shred of hope that he would live to see another day.

“Where?”

“That door.”

Aurora raised the pistol and blasted the lock open.

“Open the crypt door,” Mendoza shouted.

Huber obeyed, heaving the old door open, and it wasn’t until this moment that he realized his error in telling Mendoza that he had no knowledge of the tunnels. Then, as if he could read his mind, the Mexican cartel boss closed in on him.

“Wait!” Huber cried desperately, raising his hands in a pathetic attempt to stop the horror unfolding.

But it couldn’t be stopped, and Mendoza rammed the switchblade up into the base of Huber’s ribcage. The old man gasped and fell forward closer to Mendoza. For a depraved moment they almost looked like two old friends embracing, but then blood bubbled out of Huber’s mouth and Mendoza pushed him to the floor. “There can be no witnesses to this, Herr Huber. Please accept my most profound apologies, and gratitude.”

Mendoza took the gun from Aurora and slipped it into his jacket pocket, tightening his scarf around his neck and then they descended into the crypt. He lit their way with the light on his phone and hoped the battery would last long enough to see them to safety in the world above. He’d read stories about people getting lost and dying in the famous Catacombs of Paris, but they surely couldn’t be any more labyrinthine and disgusting than the tunnels beneath Vienna.

No wi-fi down here in the sewers and crypts, but Mendoza had saved the map of Vienna, and knew from his childhood in the jungles of Mexico how to count the turns and keep track of north. They trudged through the slime of the tunnel network, a left meant south so the next right was west… a gentle bend in the tunnel meant he was now walking southwest… good.

What was that noise? It sounded like it was coming from behind him. No, he was just imagining it — but there it was again. A sewer rat, maybe… trailing him in case he fell and knocked himself unconscious… He had no choice but to push on, looking for exits as he went. A few hundred meters would put them beyond the area that the police must surely have cordoned off by now. If they could reach the station all they would have to do was get on a train to Munich and then make contact with Dirk Kruger, the man who sold relics.

He stared at his phone. “Two hours until the next train to Munich.”

“Two hours in these tunnels?” Aurora asked, looking into the darkness and shivering.

Mendoza looked over his shoulder and illuminated a sewer rat as it scuttled away into the darkness.

“Let’s go,” he said firmly.

They emerged from the tunnel system an hour later and killed more time hiding behind newspapers before boarding the train to Munich. Now, as the train rocked comfortingly back and forth on its western journey, Silvio Mendoza followed the woman’s hand as it snaked up his thigh and made its way to his waistband. He gripped it by the wrist, pulled it out of his trousers and pushed Aurora Soto away. “You think now is the time for that?”

She pouted, and a look of contempt flashed in her obsidian black eyes. “A man like you should take what he can get, mi cielo.”

Mendoza flashed into action, pulling his ejector knife from his jacket pocket and spinning around in the train seat. Less than half a second after her comment, he was pushing the tip of the knife into her carotid artery. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She flinched as he twirled the blade around and pushed it against her skin harder, pricking open the surface and drawing blood. “Nothing… lo siento, Silvio.”

A grin spread on his face as he watched her squirm under his power. He nodded in self-satisfaction and retracted the blade. “Good. We don’t know where they are — never forger that. Remember how easily they took Wade’s empire apart and killed my brother, Jorge.”

Aurora watched the black light of revenge play in his eyes. She had been there on Alcatraz, hiding in the crawlspace when Juana Diaz had murdered his brother. Better he believed that ECHO had done it, and so she kept the truth locked in her heart.

They crossed the border at Salzburg and watched the Bavarian landscape slip by. Not long after, the train stopped for a few moments at Rosenheim Station and then pulled away again onto the final northbound stretch to Munich and their final destination.

Mendoza saw the tiny towns and hamlets flash past the window before gradually melting into the suburbs of southern Munich — Zorneding, Vaterstetten, Haar. High above them in the sky a savage storm was gathering on the horizon and he watched as a bolt of forked lightning ripped down from the cloud base and struck somewhere in a forest to the east.

Lightning was his oldest enemy.

He was only young man when it struck him, blasting through the pungent ozone of the stormy air and tearing down his body. Using him as a conductor to reach the earth and almost killing him. He’d seen it coming — flashing down into the sugarcane fields with explosive fury. He and Jorge were out walking when the storm struck. They both ran for the cover of a barn but Jorge had all the luck that day because the gods had decided to punish Silvio.

It felt like someone had smashed him around the back of the head with a baseball bat and when he woke his body was numb. It wasn’t until Jorge ran to him and gasped in horror that he knew something had changed. Jorge carried him home and that was when he saw the scarring on his face, the Lichtenburg figure, a shower of scars like electrical sparks running all over his face and neck.

Another bolt of lightning flashed on the horizon and a few seconds later a tremendous roar of thunder.

“The storm is getting closer,” Aurora said, bringing him back from the sugarcane fields of his mind.

“In more ways than one,” he said absent-mindedly.