The Secret of Atlantis

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The former Commando and SBS man had seen many insane things in his life, but this was new even to him, and now he watched with an overwhelming sense of rage and frustration as a red and white canopy burst into view and blossomed into fully formed airwings above Kruger’s jet boat. “I don’t believe it.”

“What the hell is going on?” Lea asked again.

“I see Korać is a professional after all,” Hawke said. “Our enemy is going airborne.”

“Now I understand,” Reaper said, nodding his head with admiration for the idea.

“That’s a sodding paraglider wing,” Hawke said.

“And that’s another one,” Lexi added, jutting her chin at Kruger’s boat. “And those things on their backs are paramotors. They use them to provide power to take off and steer.”

Hawke pushed the throttles forward but they were already at max and he knew he wasn’t going to make it on time. Now he watched helplessly as first Korać took off from the back of the jet boat, with Kruger following a few seconds later. Van Zyl, Luk and Kamchatka soon joined them, flying up into the narrow canyon after the others. The last two remaining Serbian mercs on the team jumped off the boat and flew up behind the others.

Hawke shook his head in disbelief and began to scan the area for cover. A boat-to-boat fight was one thing but being attacked by an airborne force while they were stuck down on this river made them the proverbial sitting ducks. “Do we have any in the back of this thing?” he yelled.

Lexi looked in the rear of the boat. “Yes! But only one.”

“If one of us can get airborne we stand a better chance of getting out of this,” Hawke shouted over the roar of the engine. The enemy’s boats were now out of control, and raced wildly toward the rocks at the canyon’s southern wall. Korać’s was first to hit, exploding in a savage fireball and spitting twisted shrapnel all over the surface of the river.

Hawke’s jet boat was too far away to be damaged, but then Kruger’s boat followed suit, ploughing into the cliff just west of the burning heap of junk that used to be Korać’s jet boat. Accelerated by the burning fuel all over the surface of the Dadès River, the South African’s jet boat exploded with even more fury than the first one and this time the ECHO team were closer.

They ducked as best they could as the flaming shrapnel rained down over them but the shockwave of the blast tipped their boat hard to port and threw them out into the river. “There goes the paraglider,” Hawke thought as he flew through the air.

They landed in the burning hell of oil, gas and water and Hawke screamed at everyone to dive and swim away from the wreckage. He felt the burning heat of the boats as he dived under the surface and struggled to see Lea, but the water was too murky and disrupted with the disaster all around them.

He swam a few dozen yards before resurfacing and broke the surface of the water to see the others pop up all around him. He saw Lea was alive, swimming for the relative safety of their capsized jet boat. He breathed a sigh of relief, but it didn’t last long. High in the sky, in the narrow slit at the top of the canyon, he saw the paragliders change direction and start flying toward them.

Then he saw the tiny red dots of their lasers dancing on the surface of the water like little devils.

“They’re coming back!” he yelled, and pointed at the paragliders.

The others twisted around in the sloshing water and saw them, now much closer and just in time to see Kruger at the front, laughing as he prepared to fire another Pike at them.

Bobbing about in the rushing water like drowned rats, Hawke knew they stood zero chance against an airborne enemy armed with laser-guided missiles. All they had were a few waterlogged handguns and nowhere to hide.

Then his heart skipped a beat when he followed the path of one of the lasers. It crossed the river and ran up over the hull of their upturned jet boat — just as Lea was clambering and slipping up the other side of it.

“Lea! Get off the damned boat!”

She turned to see what he was shouting about. “What?”

“Get off the boat! Kruger’s got a laser on it!”

High above their heads, Kruger, Van Zyl and Kamchatka circled them like hungry vultures, while Korać and Luk were rising on a therm behind them.

“I can’t hear you, Joe.”

“Get off the damned…” He gave up. He knew she would never hear him. He pointed up at the sky in the direction of Kruger and the others, only to see both Korać and Luk racing lower and loading their own Pikes. “Oh, Jesus…”

He wiped the water from his eyes and saw Reaper was closer to Lea. “Reaper — get her off the damned boat!”

But the Frenchman had already seen what was happening and had begun a hefty freestyle stroke across the rushing torrent in a bid to get to her. “Lea!” he yelled, but the sound of the paraglider motors and the white water crashing over the rocks drowned out his voice. He pointed to the sky. Lea finally noticed the red laser crawling up the hull of the boat. Then she looked up to see a puff of smoke as Kruger fired the Pike.

“Holy Mother of God!” she screamed, and dived into the water just as the missile ripped into the hull of the jet boat. A meaty explosion blasted the tourist boat into dozens of pieces and Hawke strained to raise himself out of the rushing river to see if Lea had made it.

Before he got the confirmation he needed, he saw a red light moving rapidly along the surface of the water toward him and followed its path to see Kruger now racing ever closer. They were nothing more than fish in the proverbial barrel, at the mercy of these men who were now hunting them for sport.

“What are we going to do?” Lea screamed.

Hawke’s mind raced, but then he had an idea. “Over in the northern cliffs is a small cave — they can’t follow us in there. Everyone dive and swim to the cave!”

Hawke pushed himself underwater and began to swim toward the small cave he’d seen in the base of the cliff. Its ceiling looked only a foot or so above the waterline from out on the river but when he emerged inside it he realized it was bigger than it looked and more than enough to give them cover while they figured out what their next play was.

“What now?” Lea said, wiping the water from her eyes and sweeping her long hair back. The others looked at him for a decision.

Hawke swam over to the entrance and looked up into the sky. “They’re giving up and moving on. We wait till they’re out of sight and then we go back to the tomb.”