David Golemon - Ancients

The vision on the other side of the river was what caught their attention. Placed at the very water's edge on the far shore was a small temple of marble and sandstone that gleamed in the flare's false light. Inside, they could see a giant bronze bull, head and right leg bent as it pawed the ground, just as if it were frozen in time while in the act of attacking.

"Now that is something," Everett said, gazing at the incredible sight.

Mendenhall took Collins by the arm and leaned close.

"I didn't want to tell the doc this earlier, Colonel, but we weren't the first ones here."

"I figured as much. I saw some heavy-equipment tracks in the desert. That, coupled with the fact that the Coalition hit so fast and hard, tells me they were nearby, just waiting to spring their ambush."

Everett heard the last of the conversation as he stepped up.

"If we recovered the plate map, how in the hell did they get here first?" Will asked, looking from Jack to Carl.

"I don't know. After searching for it for thousands of years, they suddenly pop up out of nowhere. Did we miss something in Hawaii?"

"No one from Leekie's group entered before you, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir; I and two Special Ops men were the first."

Leekie and Ryan joined the group.

"What are we waiting for? Let's get what we came to get," she said as she looked at the serious faces of the three.

"I'm the strongest swimmer, Jack; I'll get a rope across and tie it off," Everett said.

"Yeah, just don't end up in Cairo in that current."

Ten minutes later, after Everett had given them all a scare by not coming up for six minutes, they saw him break the surface of the river a hundred yards downstream of the temple. He rested for only a moment before he worked his way back along the slim shore. He tied the rope off to the first pillar in line and made it fast. He then waved the others into the water.

Everett looked around the base of the temple for anything that resembled the trough that Leekie had ignited, but found none. He did, however, find torches, last lit when the foul place had its secret first placed there. Carl pulled his Zippo lighter out of his pocket and reached for the first of the ancient torches. He placed the flame next to it, then hesitated as he saw that it was made from a human arm. The skeletal hand of it held a small bowl. Carl hit it with the flame and it sprang to life with the same awful smell as the trough across the way. He lit all the torches that lined the walls of the temple.

Leekie and Ryan, tied together, were the first to traverse the rope hand over hand. Mendenhall and Collins followed. Everett was at the shore's edge to assist each out of the water.

They rested for only a moment and then made their way to the temple steps. The men allowed Leekie to examine the marble steps first so that they wouldn't make the same mistake as the sergeant had made back in the first cave. Then, she waved them forward. It was Jack who noticed that, for having been buried for close to fifteen thousand years, the temple was in remarkable shape.

Leekie was the first to enter the temple. Everett had retrieved a torch and Jack lit off one of their last flares as they looked on with amazement at the work that had gone into building such a thing beneath the earth. Spaced around and in front of each pillar, lifelike statues of men stared out at them with blank eyes. Some were dressed in ancient armor, others in the flowing robes of a politician. Most were impressive in looks but small in stature. The largest was of a bearded man, a soldier perhaps, with a battle helmet in the crook of his right arm and in his left a bronze spear, which stood out brightly against the white marble of his body. The statue was only five foot seven inches high, much taller than its adjoining companions.

"If these were men of Atlantis, they weren't all that impressive in size," Ryan said, feeling even taller as he stood next to the largest statue. He had no way of knowing that the statue was once of Talos, the last of the great Titans.

"Well, ancient man was a very small creature compared with humans today. Even in biblical times men rarely, if ever, topped a height over five-eight," Leekie said, looking at Ryan.

"Jack," Everett called as he and Mendenhall stood in front of the giant bronze bull.

Collins joined them as Everett shone the torch over the lowered horns of the beast. Jack saw two notches about fifteen inches wide on each of the horns.

"Professor, could you look at this," he called. "Could these notches have held something?"

"Dammit!" Leekie said as she looked at the horns. "The blue diamond was more than likely cradled by the two horns."

"Maybe they were just--"

"It was very difficult removing the diamond from its locked base on those horns, I assure you." The female voice, raised over the sounds of the river, caught them off guard.

Collins, Everett, Ryan, Mendenhall, and Leekie took cover behind the pillars. Jack ventured a look across the river and saw fifty men slowly coming down the slope. The blond-haired woman was behind them, walking slowly with the use of a cane. The soldiers stood silhouetted in the light of the fire ring. She gestured right and then left as her men took up positions in various places on the slope.

Jack looked at his watch and saw that he desperately needed to stall the woman.

"I was hoping you drowned at Pearl Harbor," Jack called out.

"Almost, Colonel Collins, almost," Dahlia said as she paced to her left behind the wall of soldiers. "The Atlantean Key is safely where it should be. We recovered it only ten hours before your arrival here."

Collins did not respond as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a second transmitter, which he had hoped not to use. He looked at the excavated ceiling, hoping that it was mostly earth and not rock. He needed a ground-penetrating signal to pierce through to the surface. As he thought about how he was going to put the transmitter in the right spot, Everett joined him, after sneaking behind the temple.

"We're trapped like rats--there's no way out in the back--"

He went silent when he saw what Jack held in his hand.

"Oh, shit."

Everett recognized the small electronic marker that had a counterpart: one attached to a thousand-pound ground-penetration bomb called a bunker buster.

"I take it you alerted the air force already?"

"Just before we broke cover in the dunes. Niles insisted we have a failsafe."

"It would have been nice if the diamond was still here," Everett said, not taking his eyes off the remote signal.

"It would have been, swabby, but what the hell."

"Yeah, what the hell."

Collins walked to the front of the temple.

"Where did you take it, if you don't mind me asking?"

Dahlia smiled as Collins walked slowly down the steps of the temple. The man's arrogance was beyond anything she had ever seen. She came close to laughing at the bravado of this bastard.

"This isn't the movies, Colonel. I do not tell all even though I am sure you're living the last moments of your life. Just rest assured that because of your failure at the Arizona, the world will--"

Collins raised his weapon and fired as fast as anyone could have thought possible. The first bullet tore through one man's ear and struck Dahlia. It grazed her left shoulder just outside the protection of the vest she was wearing. The rest of the rounds struck men and dropped at least five of them. The commotion gave Jack the time he needed as he reared back and threw the designator across the river. The laser was broadcast on both sides, front and back, so he knew that it didn't need to land upright to work. The device landed about twenty feet up the slope.

"What are you waiting for?" Dahlia screamed, angered almost to the point of hysteria. "Kill that son of a bitch, kill them all!"