Thomas Greanias - The Atlantis Prophecy

Seavers took the elevator down from his office to the other sixth floor-the one six stories below the building's underground parking garage. The Meat Locker on sublevel 6, as it was called, was built by his predecessor General Yeats to house an astounding discovery. The Griffter had kept it a secret even from the Pentagon. Seavers learned of its existence only upon taking over the old man's job, and its revelations affirmed in a thousand ways his choice to heed the Alignment's call and leave SeaGen for DARPA.

Seavers walked down a long tunnel to a thick metal vault. He swiped his right index finger on the scanner next to the door. He heard a lock thud and then a series of clicks as bolts moved inside. The two-foot-thick door opened to reveal a contamination room and another vault beyond.

Seavers put on a protective germ "bunny suit" and opened the second vault. Inside was a secret prison that housed one of the most unique enemy combatants America had ever captured.

His code name was HANS, and he was discovered by American troops in Antarctica in the 1940s during Operation Highjump, which was the massive U.S. invasion of Antarctica based on information gleaned from the Nazis in the waning days of World War II. Almost every major American base on the ice continent could trace its origins back to Highjump.

Hans was a corpse, the frozen corpse of a German officer who was part of a secret Nazi base in Antarctica established by the "Baron of the Black Order" himself, SS General Ludwig von Berg. It was at this base that Hitler's "Last Battalion" apparently stored biotoxins. These biotoxins had been smuggled out of the collapsing Third Reich on U-boats, along with senior Nazis, who then went on to establish new identities in Argentina.

Hans didn't talk much, but his diseased lung tissue had provided Seavers with the second most important discovery of his life: the Nazis had weaponized the 1918 Spanish flu that had killed more than fifty million humans. In the end, it also killed the Nazis safeguarding their ultimate doomsday weapon. But it breathed new life into Seavers' research and set him on his present course.

Specifically, Hans's frozen lung tissue had given Seavers the perfectly preserved live bird flu virus itself. The trouble had been converting it into an easily dispersible aerosol version. In the process Seavers also discovered a prion mutation in the corpse's brain cells. One drop of fluid drained from the tissue could create a dozen lethal injections. A simple prick by syringe or dart gun caused instant death from apparently natural disease. But it had to be used within 24 hours of extraction or it would lose its effectiveness. Hence his periodic visits to the Meat Locker.

Seavers smiled at his frozen friend. "We're going to have to make this one fast today, Hans," he said, looking forward to extracting some cells from Conrad Yeats.

IT WAS A THREE-HOUR car trip for Conrad and Serena, and Conrad could tell she had grave doubts about meeting this Master Mason known as Sentinel. But dressed in her traditional nun's attire, she said nothing as they walked through the front entrance of the Mission Springs Nursing Home. The home specialized in scooping up the half-dead human leftovers from the nearby VA hospital, keeping their juices and benefits going for a few weeks, and then dumping them in the grave.

The administrator at the nursing station, seeing clergy had come to visit, directed them down the hall to 208. They came to a room with the door partially open. Conrad gave it a rap with a knuckle. It opened wide and a big nurse with the name tag Brenda came out with a bottle of urine.

"We're all done, Father," Nurse Brenda said, noticing the white collar Conrad sported under his trench coat, courtesy of Serghetti Couture.

They entered the room and there was Reggie "Hercules" Jefferson, who had gone by the name Sentinel for as long as Conrad could remember. Herc, short for Hercules, was one of his father's few true friends from the Air Force, maybe his only one. Born in New Orleans, Herc's father was a bricklayer who became a Tuskegee Airman, one of the first African-Americans to fly for Uncle Sam.

Herc wanted to do even better and aspired to be an astronaut. But NASA wasn't ready for an African-American Apollo pilot, so he ended up flying Hercules C-131 transports on black ops missions for General Yeats. In time he, like most anybody associated with Conrad's old man, literally crashed and burned in an impossible landing that snapped his spinal cord and left him crippled for life at the age of 40.

That was thirty years ago.

Before Conrad could say a word, Herc said with a low, gravelly voice, "Took you long enough, son."

"I finally figured out that it was you who carved my father's tombstone."

"Just like your daddy wanted."

Herc was an unlikely Mason, not of the dead white male variety. His family claimed to have descended from a line of slave Masons since the Revolution. General Yeats believed it, having witnessed both Herc's encyclopedic knowledge of Masonic esoterica and his advanced skills as a stonecutter and site planner for forward-based military ops. As for Herc's claim that his family had blood ties to Founders like Washington and Jefferson, who allegedly had had affairs with female slaves, that seemed like wishful thinking to Conrad when he heard it from Uncle Herc as a boy. Looking at him in bed it seemed even more fanciful now.

Conrad said, "The globe's not in the cornerstone of the Capitol building."

"Of course not. Casey moved it after the War of 1812. I could have told you that, boy."

Conrad sighed. "You could have come to the funeral."

"On these legs? Besides, your old man and I never thought I'd make it this far. We thought you'd be on your own. Had to build a message into the tombstone and hope you'd be smart enough to figure it out. Guess you ain't."

"So how long have you been waiting for me?"

"How long since the Griffter died?"

Four years, thought Conrad, ashamed for having not even thought of Uncle Herc until now. Conrad could see that Herc had expected him to pay a visit as soon as his dad died. But Conrad had been wrapped up in his own worries following the death and destruction in Antarctica. Little did he know that poor Herc had been waiting here all this time, scratching sores in the bed his father had put him in.

There wasn't much Conrad could say, so naturally Serena said it for him, getting directly to the business at hand. "Hello, Uncle Herc. I'm-"

"I know who you are, Sister Serghetti," old Herc said. "Pleased to meet you."

"We figure the globe is buried beneath the Library of Congress," she said. "Casey and his son Edward, who was responsible for the interiors, appear to have left clues in the form of zodiacs as a map. But Doctor Yeats can't crack the secret, and we hoped you could."

Her bold Australian accent immediately perked up old Herc, and he smiled at Conrad approvingly. "She's a handful, ain't she?"

Conrad glanced at Serena. "That she is. Now, about the globe-"

But Herc asked Serena, "So you think we Masons are all devil worshippers?"

"I think you worship knowledge," she said without batting an eyelash. "The danger comes in ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of truth."

"We ain't a religion, Sister Serghetti. We promote enlightenment, not salvation."

"Thereby making an idol of enlightenment," she countered. "The very temptation that Lucifer offered Eve in the Garden of Eden."

"So you do think we worship the devil."

She smiled. "In a roundabout way, yes."

Conrad said nothing as a heavy silence filled the room.

"You know, Yeats, your girl reminds me of another lady named Anne Royall," Hercules finally said. "She was America's first prominent female journalist, a real rabble-rouser screaming about government corruption and all in the 1800s."