The Secret of Atlantis

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Ryan Bale received Alex’s text with a mixture of happiness and frustration. She was replying to his earlier email and as usual she’d got right on it. She’d even come up with some stuff about the raised arms being a symbol of the Egyptian Ka — another reference to eternity. He was happy that they had a good lead but irritated that she had once again beaten him to it, but that was the way things went with Alex Reeve. She was sharper than a serpent’s tooth, as someone once wrote, and he was proud to work with her.

Scarlet poked him in the ribs. “So what does HQ say?”

“Alex is of the view that the key Kruger stole is supposed to unlock something to do with the Pillars of Hercules… I just knew this had something to do with Hercules!”

“Hercules?”

“Or Heracles — same dude so take your pick.”

With Chabat’s men guarding the tomb and waiting for backup, they were making their way down the track toward the river in the hope of meeting up with Hawke and the others. Instead, they saw something altogether different — a number of men flying through the sky toward them at speed.

“What the hell are they” Maria asked.

“Paragliders,” Camacho said, his tone indicating trouble ahead.

“Could just be tourists,” Scarlet said.

Camacho shook his head and took a closer look. “Tourists aren’t usually armed.”

Maria took a step forward and shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked into the sky. “What?”

“They’re carrying weapons of some kind,” Camacho said.

“And if they’re here on their way to us, then where the hell is Joe?” Ryan said.

“Just what I was thinking,” Maria said. “Maybe something happened to them.”

Scarlet slid the bolt-action on her gun and rolled her eyes. “All right, no need to turn into a bunch of big girls’ blouses,” she said sharply. “We have an enemy engaging with us so get into defensive positions.”

“You’re not the boss of me, lady,” Camacho said with a grin.

“You can’t possibly believe that, can you Camo?”

Now the enemy was close enough for them to hear the buzzing hum of the paramotors and then they saw the red dots of the laser sights.

“I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” Ryan said as he watched the crimson-colored dot racing along the track toward them.

“Whatever they’ve got is laser-guided,” Camacho said.

“Which means our day just got really shit,” said Scarlet.

“And that little red dot is getting closer,” Maria said. “Only twenty meters.”

A puff of smoke from one of the paragliders and a cracking sound a second later was the opening shot of the attack.

“Run for cover!” Scarlet screamed, and they scattered over the side of the mesa as the laser-guided missile raced toward them at seven hundred miles per hour.

They took cover in the sagebrush as the paragliders deftly swung the airborne fighting machines away from the river and toward their enemy. The out-of-synch buzzing of the motors was now much louder as Kruger and his men approached rapidly from the east.

Ryan watched with unconcealed terror as the laser dots danced around on the ravine floor, snaking and hopping over the sandstone boulders as they closed in on them. “This is not good,” he mumbled, but no one else heard.

The red dots were closer now, flicking like fire through the canopies of the jujube trees and canary grass a few yards from their defensive position.

Ten meters to his right, he watched Scarlet Sloane take a calm, measured aim with her gun, and then there was a puff of smoke and a cracking sound. A second later one of the airborne goons was dead, slumped forward in his harness and his Pike tumbling out of his hands. It landed on the rocky slope with a metallic smack, followed a moment later by a handful of the small missiles.

“I’ve got to get that bastard weapon,” he heard Scarlet say.

“Why?” he called out to her. “Is it more effective or something?”

“Without a doubt,” she called back. “But I just want to play with it.”

And with that she was gone, kicking up dust as she scrambled through the juniper and esparto grass on her way to the weapon. Above her, the dead man in the paraglider was spinning around out of control as he lost altitude.

He raced toward the slope, his corpse still slumped in the harness, and rammed into the side of the canyon at speed. A terrible crunching sound echoed down the canyon as the paraglider dropped from the sky and smashed into the river’s rocky shore a hundred feet below.

Not fifty yards west, Scarlet was snatching up the weapon and turning to get back to cover. Camacho was firing with his pistol to keep the paragliders busy, but it wasn't enough, and now Scarlet was running with all her might as several little red dots chased her along the rocky shore.

Another goon fired, and a Pike rocket raced toward the former SAS woman faster than the speed of sound.

“Hurry up!” screamed Maria.

“Show us what you’re made of!” Camacho yelled.

“She’s made of vodka and bullets,” Ryan called back, shaking his in disbelief at the indescribable act of courage he was witnessing as Scarlet leaped into the air. She dived for the cover of a juniper pine just as the rocket slammed into the ground at her feet and exploded.

The force of the explosion propelled her through the hot, desert air and she crashed into a clump of acacia before cursing loudly and rolling into the cover of an almond tree a few yards away. A cloud of gritty dust blasted up into the hot Moroccan air and the desert breeze whirled it all around her. “Is that all you’ve got?” she screamed as she loaded the Pike and aimed it at the man who had shot at her. “Pathetic!”

She fired the laser-guided missile at the man and grinned as he struggled to manoeuvre the paraglider out of the way. Below in her defensive position, Scarlet Sloane casually kept the laser dot on his body as he twisted and turned in the harness in a desperate attempt to shake it off.

“What’s the matter?” she screamed up at him. “Want to cancel our date already?”

The man fumbled to unstrap himself from the harness, the idea presumably being to drop into the river which he could use for some kind of cover, but he couldn’t extricate himself from the harness anywhere quick enough, and a split second later the rocket blasted through him and detonated. The man, the paramotor and the rig above him were consumed by an enormous white-hot fireball and plummeted down through the blue sky into the river like a dead bird.

When the others saw Scarlet had secured one of the Pikes, they knew their advantage was gone, and quickly turned in the sky. They gained altitude and seconds later disappeared over the ridge line of the canyon high above. Scarlet and everyone else knew it would take half an hour to hike to the ridge, and accepted the enemy had gotten away.

She didn’t have much time to think about it because as soon as she got up from her cover and began dusting herself down Camacho noticed a beleaguered Joe Hawke and the others from the team marching in their direction along the south bank of the Dadès River.

“What the hell happened to you?” Ryan asked.

“You’ll never guess,” Lea said.

Ryan smiled. “Um — you were shot at by a bunch of psychopaths in paragliders holding laser-guided missiles?”

“Don’t tell me…” Hawke began.

“All right, we won’t,” Scarlet replied curtly. “We need to get out of here anyway, so there’s no time.”

“You mean you don’t want to brag about how you saved all our asses just now?” Camacho said, giving Scarlet a tight shoulder-squeeze.

“Perhaps later,” the Englishwoman said coolly. “When you’re all paying attention.”

Hawke rolled his eyes. He didn’t need to be told what had happened — he already knew just by knowing Cairo Sloane. They had obviously come under attack by the same men who had fired at them in the river, and Cairo had gone above and beyond to fight them off and save the day. It was a habit of hers and he was glad she was on his side.

“So if we need to get out of here in a hurry,” Lea said. “Where are we going?”

“No idea, darling,” Scarlet said. “The boy here and Alex are nerding their way through various ancient clues and think it might be something to do with the Pillars of Hercules. I think not letting Kruger slip the net might have been a better…” without warning she stopped talking and pulled her gun, firing a shot into the gravel between Ryan’s legs. A cloud of rock dust flew into the air and Ryan nearly jumped out of his skin.

“What the fuck was that for, you nutter?” he yelled.

“Cobra, boy — about to crawl up your trousers and bite your nuts.”

He spun around and searched for the offending creature. “You’re kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. I shot him to spare him the disappointment of what he might find.”

“Oh, very drole,” Ryan replied.

“I have a sneaking admiration for snakes you see, and I think letting him endure the inside of your trousers only to discover the contents of your Y-fronts would constitute animal cruelty.”

They all fell about laughing, including after a few seconds even Ryan, and turned to march back up the track on their way to the chopper. Back on board the mood soon sobered when they realized they were once again well behind Dirk Kruger and had only the vaguest reference to the Pillars of Hercules to point them on their way. Alex had contacted them again to explain there was no runway where they were headed so they decided to take the chopper north. As they flew away from the canyon, Hawke’s mind began to focus on how he was going to end Kruger’s quest for Atlantis if their luck didn’t change.

It looked like some early snow was more than likely judging by the look of that sky, and the wind had already started to strip a lot of the leaves off the ash trees outside Davis Faulkner’s office in Langley, Virginia. Such was life, he considered mildly. A circle, from birth to death to rebirth. It went around and around treating some a lot better than others. But idle metaphysical speculation would have to wait because he had his orders.

He had thought carefully about the Oracle’s words since their last conversation, and he knew his loyalty was being weighed for quality like gold with an unknown provenance. He couldn’t let the Oracle down. It simply wasn’t done, but then he had sworn loyalty to something else — what was it called now? Ah yes, he remembered — the United States of America.

It was impossible to divide loyalty. That was obvious and the truth was any indecision he felt was his conscience playing tricks on him. He knew where his heart belonged and it was with the greater force. His work as Director of the CIA was child’s play compared with the Oracle’s divine vocation. In his mind there was no question about who he served.

He snatched the cell phone off his desk and spun around in his leather swivel chair as he waited for the other end to pick up.

“Yes, sir?”

Faulkner smiled. This particular number was only ever called by him so there was no need to waste time with introductions and how-d’ya-dos. He lit his cigar and blew a vast cloud of silvery smoke into the confines of his plush corner office. “Agent Kelly I have some wetwork to put your way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need a small package put together in the Caribbean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re looking at maybe a couple of Apaches and a small ground force of, say, a dozen specialists. It’s a covert invasion of a small private island down there. Called Elysium. Leave the infrastructure if possible but kill anyone and everyone you see. I’ll send more details later but start putting it together right now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Davis Faulkner hung up and recalled one of Aesop’s fables that his mother used to read to him when he was a child. The Fisherman used to play his pipes by the water to catch the fish, but none appeared. One day he threw his net into the water and hauled it to shore full of fish, and then he played his pipes again. This time they danced and hopped in the net. Faulkner knew that he was dancing to the Oracle’s tune, but the promise he held in his hand was irresistible.

He glanced outside as he slipped his phone in his pocket. Yes, certainly snow was a possibility.