The Secret of Atlantis

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Alex Reeve was taking a break in the Elysium headquarters building. With Hawke and the others damn near getting themselves killed like a bunch of amateurs on the Dadès River, Kruger slipping the net once again with his hired thugs and her father’s first televised presidential debate coming up in just a few hours she could feel the pressure rising. One glance down at her wheelchair sealed the deal and she pulled a Coke from the fridge and rolled herself out into the tropical breeze for some important Time Out.

The Coke was bad which is why it tasted good, and she took a long drink before setting the can down on the low wall which separated the compound’s north lawn from the beach. To say she had fallen in love with this place was an understatement but she could already feel the long, cold shadow of Washington DC approaching her.

She could be accused of many things but naivety wasn’t one of them. She knew what fate awaited the immediate family of a President of the United States and it wasn’t good. The United States Secret Service was charged with protecting the First Family and there was a persistent fear among them of something happening to a member of the President’s family.

The Constitution was amazingly prescient in its content, and there was provision built into it in case of a crisis. That provision was the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, used several times in the past, including the succession of Gerald Ford to the Presidency after Nixon’s resignation and the appointment of Nelson Rockefeller to the Vice Presidency, both in 1974. Most recently, and dramatically it was invoked after President Grant was kidnapped by the madman Klaus Kiefel on his rampage across America during the Medusa attacks. That had put the traitor Teddy Kimble in the Oval Office.

The concern was if any of the President’s close family were kidnapped they could be used as leverage to blackmail the Commander-in-Chief, and that was why the Twenty-Fifth was necessary. But the fear of an attack against the President’s family never went away, and that meant a big change was coming in her life if her father won the race to the White House.

She knew they would demand her return to the United States and when there put her under the protection of a USSS detail and she dreaded it. Sure, she could refuse — but what if something happened to her. She didn’t exactly lead the life of a shrinking violet, wheelchair or not. She didn’t want to be responsible for annihilating her father’s entire career and endangering the vital national security of her country to make a point and settle an old grudge against her dad.

But it would be hell. When Chelsea Clinton was at Stanford she was trailed around everywhere by a Secret Service detail dressed casually but always carrying handguns under their shirts, and always within sight of her. They wouldn’t be much use anywhere else, she thought glumly. They also had her dorm windows replaced with bulletproof glass and had her carry a panic alarm. Imagine that, she thought — having two or three strangers following you from room to room for eight years.

Despite her doubts, part of her wondered if she had spent long enough with the ECHO team, hidden away on Elysium. Not that she had ever told anyone this, but her presence on the island base wasn't entirely altruistic. The truth was she had felt something for Joe Hawke since the day she had saved his life back in Serbia, and when he had walked back into her life during the Poseidon adventure, she had begun to harbor secret thoughts about the two of them getting together. It was innocent enough, she told herself, but she knew it was unlikely. First, she was back in the wheelchair after the elixir had given her a newfound freedom, and while she had no idea what Hawke felt about that, she knew his lifestyle was as fast and hard as they came. Would he give that up for her now? The other problem was Lea.

She like Lea a lot and counted her as one of her closest friends. They had been through so much together that she could hardly bring herself even to think about betraying her so badly. It was here where the conflict between her head and her heart raged like a wildfire. Could she sacrifice her friendship with Lea for a relationship with Joe Hawke? She wasn’t even sure if the Englishman had ever had any feelings about her. During the only time they had spent together in her father’s mountain cabin she had been too nervous to bring the subject up, and then the Medusa disaster kicked off and she had missed her chance.

She thought no, in which case, maybe being here on the island was just causing her too much pain. Maybe she could use a fresh start, and just maybe… renewing the relationship with her father might be the answer. It felt like the hand of fate was intervening in her life once again, and who was she to fight it? It was all so confusing, and the time to make a decision was racing upon her. The presidential election was almost here, and her father was the favorite to win. She sighed and closed her eyes for a few moments. Somewhere deep inside her, a voice from her younger days told her life wasn’t supposed to be this complicated.

She opened her eyes and raised the can to her lips, taking another sip of the Coke. She winced as she swallowed it and set the can back down. The Caribbean sun had worked its magic on the drink and it was already too warm to enjoy.

And that was when she saw them

In the sky were several black smudges. Obviously aircraft, she thought. She focussed on them and saw the sun flash on their bodies as they began vectoring toward Elysium.

What the hell? she thought.

She had never seen anything like this before in all her time on the island. The occasional tourist plane that went off course, sure, but Eden had various arrangements with local ATC that Elysium was a no-fly zone except for his small fleet of Gulfstreams and that was respected.

Worse than that, she now saw they were helicopters. Black Helicopters. That meant military — she counted three of them now closing fast on the private island. As they approached she saw they were Boeing AH-64s, and behind them at a safe distance what looked like a Sikorsky Black Hawk.

“Why the hell are three Apaches making a low pass over this island?”

She felt her stomach turn and spun around in the wheelchair.

She began pushing the wheels forward as fast as she could, the hot rubber burning her hands with the sunlight and friction and she powered herself forward as fast as she could go.

Now the sound of their dual GE T700 Turboshaft engines was reverberating ominously around the area, bouncing off the surface of the sea and the mountains rising grandly above the compound.

She wanted to warn Eden, but her phone was inside and there was nothing she could do but push the wheels hard and fast.

And then the monstrous killing machines swooped even lower and the shooting started. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the grim, heavy clunking of the 30 mil chain gun started up, firing the lethal bullets along the shore and up the beach directly behind her at a terrifying six hundred rounds per minute.

They tore through the warm, turquoise water in seconds and were quickly shredding their way up the sand and racing up behind her. My God, she thought — they’re actually aiming at me!

She thought she was dead when Richard Eden burst out of the compound and ran toward her with all his might. Behind him she saw the figure of Kim Taylor making a panicked call on her cell phone.

Eden grabbed the handles on the back of the chair and pushed her ahead of him as he sprinted back to the headquarters buildings only seconds ahead of the savage gunfire.

They both knew their only hope was to get inside and go to the bunker. It was an original feature of the compound back when it was built and operated by the French Navy, and Eden had kept it up just in case of an emergency just like this. In all the years he’d worked here they’d never needed it until now.

And now they needed it almost as much as they needed oxygen.