Clive Cussler - Atlantis Found

When they finished, it was late afternoon. After crawling back through the opening at the cave-in and entering the room with the bones of the castaway, Gunn noticed Giordino wasn't with him. He returned to where the ceiling of the tunnel had collapsed and found Giordino furiously lifting rocks back into the hole, effectively sealing it.

"What are you doing that for?" he asked.

Giordino paused to stare at him, sweat-streaked with dust running down his face. "I'm not about to give the next guy a free ticket. Whoever wants to get into the tomb next will have to work for it the same as we did."

The two men made surprisingly good time on the return trip to the aircraft. Although the rain and wind had eased considerably and most of the trip was downhill, only the final fifty yards dictated a climb. They were only a short distance from the tilt-rotor, negotiating a narrow ledge, when suddenly an orange column of flame blossomed and streaked up into the damp air. There was no great thunderclap or earsplitting crack. The sound of the explosion sounded more like a firecracker exploding inside a tin can. Then, as quickly as it burst, the ball of flame blinked out, leaving a pillar of smoke spiraling toward the dark clouds.

Giordino and Gunn watched helplessly and in shock as the tilt-rotor burst open like a cantaloupe dropped from a great height onto a sidewalk. Debris was hurled into the air, as the shattered and smoldering remains of the aircraft toppled over the ledge and crumpled down the slope, scattering a trail of metal scraps before plunging past the cliffs and splashing into the breakers that crashed against the island.

The tearing grind of metal being shredded against rocks died away, and the two men stood rooted, neither talking for nearly a minute. Gunn was stricken, his eyes staring in disbelief. Giordino's reaction was just the opposite. He was mad, damned mad, his hands clenched, his face white with fury.

"Impossible," Gunn mumbled at last. "There is no boat in sight, no place for another aircraft to land. It's impossible for someone to have put a bomb in the plane and escaped without us knowing."

"The bomb was placed inside the plane before we took off from Cape Town," said Giordino, his tone like ice. "Set and timed to detonate on our return trip."

Gunn stared at him blankly. "Those hours we spent examining the crypt…"

"Saved our lives. Whoever the killers are, they didn't count on us finding anything of great interest or spending more than an hour or two looking around, so they set their detonator four hours early."

"I can't believe anyone else has seen the chamber since the castaway."

"Certainly not our friends from Telluride, or they'd have destroyed the first chamber. Somebody leaked our flight to St. Paul Island, and we showed them the way. Now it's only a matter of time before they arrive to study the inscriptions in the first chamber."

Gunn's mind struggled to adjust to a new set of circumstances. "We've got to apprise the admiral of our predicament."

"Do it in code," Giordino suggested. "These guys are good. Ten to one they have a facility for listening in on satellite conversations. It's best that we let them think we're being eaten by fish on the bottom of the Indian Ocean."

Gunn raised his Globalstar phone and was about to dial, when a thought occurred to him. "Suppose the killers get here before the admiral's rescue party?"

"Then we'd better practice throwing rocks, because that's the only defense we have."

Almost forlornly, Gunn gazed around the rocky landscape. "Well," he said woodenly, "at least we don't have to worry about running out of ammunition."

The Polar Storm with her scientists and ship's crew had worked its way around the Antarctic Peninsula and across the Weddell Sea when Sandecker's message came in, ordering Captain Gillespie to shelve the expedition temporarily. He was to leave the ice pack immediately and sail at full speed to the Prince Olav Coast. There he was to heave to and wait off the Syowa Japanese research station until further orders. Gillespie called on his chief engineer and the engineer room crew to push the big icebreaker research ship to her maximum. They nearly achieved the impossible by gaining twenty knots out of her. Quite impressive, when Gillespie recalled that her top speed as specified by her builders twenty-two years before was eighteen knots.

He was pleased that his old ship had reached the rendezvous area eight hours earlier than expected. The water was too deep to drop anchor, so he ran the ship onto the outer edge of the ice pack before he ordered the engines shut down. Gillespie then notified Sandecker that his ship had arrived on station and was awaiting further orders.

The only reply was a succinct "Stand by to receive a passenger."

The respite gave everyone time to catch up on unfinished work. The scientists busied themselves analyzing and recording their findings into computers, while the crew went about making routine repairs to the ship.

They did not have long to wait.

On the morning of the fifth day since leaving the Weddell Sea, Gillespie was studying the sea ice through his binoculars when he saw a helicopter slowly emerge from an early-morning ice mist. It flew on a direct line toward the Polar Storm. He ordered his second officer to receive the aircraft at the landing pad on the stern of the ship.

The helicopter hovered for a few seconds, then descended onto the pad. A man carrying a briefcase and a small duffel bag jumped from an open cargo door and spoke to Gillespie's second officer. Then he turned and waved to the pilot who had flown him to the ship. The rotor blades increased their beat and the helicopter rose into the cold air and was heading for home when Pitt stepped onto the Polar Storm's bridge.

"Hello, Dan," he greeted the captain warmly. "Good to see you."

"Dirk! Where did you drop from?"

"I was flown from Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan by Air Force jet to the airstrip at the nearby Japanese research station. They were kind enough to give me a lift on their helicopter to the ship."

"What brings you to the Antarctic?"

"A little search project farther down the coast."

"I knew the admiral had something up his sleeve. He was damned secretive about it. He gave me no idea you were coming."

"He has his reasons." Pitt set his briefcase on the chart table, opened it, and handed Gillespie a paper with a set of coordinates. "This is our destination."

The captain looked at the coordinates and studied the appropriate nautical chart. "Stefansson Bay," he said quietly. "It's near, on the Kemp Coast not far from the Hobbs Islands. Nothing there of interest. It's as barren a piece of property as I've ever seen. What are we looking for?"

"A shipwreck."

"A wreck under the ice?"

"No," said Pitt with a half grin. "A wreck in the ice."

Stefansson Bay looked even more desolate and remote than Gillespie had described it, especially under a sky filled with clouds as dark as charcoal and a sea sullen with menacing ice. The wind bit like the needle teeth of an eel, and Pitt began to think of the physical effort required in crossing the ice pack to reach the continent's shore. Then the adrenaline began to pump as he thought of discovering a ship whose decks hadn't been trod since 1858.

Could it still be there, he wondered, just as Roxanna Mender and her husband had found it nearly a century and a half before? Or had it been eventually crushed by the ice or bulldozed out to sea where it finally sank deep in icy waters?

Pitt found Gillespie standing on a bridge wing, peering through binoculars at an unseen object far back in the spreading wake of the icebreaker. "Looking for whales?" he asked.

"U-boats," Gillespie answered, matter-of-factly.