David Golemon - Ancients

"Very good. That should create quite a headache in the financial district, wouldn't you say?"

"It should, yes," Engvall answered as he turned and slowly walked away.

Tomlinson looked up, but all he saw was the professor's backside as he moved into the shadows of the Empirium Chamber. Then he lowered his head and stared at the arm and hand again. He tilted his head and seemed to be somewhere else.

The Atlantean Wave equipment with the five massive fifty-thousand-watt generators had been placed inside a natural bowl surrounded by solid rock. The hole, it was surmised, must have been a manmade lake fifteen thousand years before. A 180-foot statue of Poseidon had once sat in the middle of the lake, rising a 100 feet into the air. Poseidon, the Greek god of the seas, now lay in a crumpled heap around the sides of the dry lake with only his island pedestal still in the center.

Technicians were working at a hundred monitoring stations inside the bowl and another twenty sat at stations on the hundred-foot tower. They all knew that the power they were about to unleash could not be calculated in normal terms because of the added power of the Key; with its intricate tone grooves and strange properties, such power usage was unknown.

After studying the Key's grooves, Engvall knew that the decibel level they had used before paled in comparison to what the Ancients had accomplished. They had duplicated only 3 percent of what the Atlantean Key had in its etched surface. The power of the diamond was awesome. They had placed the blue diamond in its cradle for only a moment in the initial test; when they had all felt the strength of the device as it started emitting a tone that they could not hear. So far, thirty men and women had reported to the makeshift field hospital where some of the troops from above were being treated, which upset Tomlinson no end, due to the fact he had wanted the cowards, as he called them, kept separate from the scientists, lest they cause doubts about their security.

The way in which the tones would be taken from the magical diamond was far different from the stylus method used in ancient times. Engvall had come up with an ingenious design that would flood the rotating diamond inside its chamber with plasma, which would ensure that there were no impurities on the surface of the grooves. Then the chamber would be flooded with ozone and electrified. The tones would then commence, carried electrically from the diamond chamber through the connecting lines and onto their long journeys to their target cities.

Each section of the diamond had been broken down into smaller sections by the Ancients. Each one was designed for a specific stratum of different tectonic plates; in other words, they had a section of tone grooves for the granite and sandstone base for Long Island Sound and the same for the paneurasian plate, comprised of compacted granite, slate, marble, and sandstone. Depending on the density of these materials, the Ancients had calculated the specific tone-groove-decibel level for that attack area. An electronic cable, the type that was found on every PC in the world only larger by a 100 percent, was running from the diamond's cradle to their coordinated continental cable.

Engvall now knew that the blue diamond was the only substance on earth that would hold up to the tones themselves without cracking. Amazing , he thought as he watched the chamber from a distance. This was why the grand experiment at Krakatoa had failed so spectacularly, when a large crystal was used instead of the blue diamond.

As Engvall watched from his perch high above the emptied lake where he and his special assistants would monitor the Wave as it radiated outward, he felt just as Tomlinson had said he would feel--like one of the gods of old with the power of the earth at his fingertips.

However, as he looked out at his creation, the thought of the destruction of Atlantis, Krakatoa, and the innocent deaths in China, Russia, and Iraq registered in his mind that he wasn't a god at all, just a man following another man. As he watched Tomlinson slowly leave the Empirium Chamber far below, he could not help but think that the man he was following was slowly becoming unbalanced, as were the many men who had come before him who had dreams of subjugating the world.

The president was taking many different routes in trying to explain to the Russians and Chinese what the plan was for rooting out the Coalition, members who had burrowed deep into the ground. Because of a solid argument from Niles, the president had not included the information regarding the discovery of Atlantis. So far, what they had come to terms with was the fact that the 650,000 inhabitants of Crete would have to be evacuated immediately. NATO and Russian warships and every passenger liner and ferry in the Mediterranean were being utilized to this end.

The situation in Korea had stabilized to the point where the Second Infantry Division with reinforced armor of the Fourth ID had reoccupied the border, and the North Korean army had recalled the surviving elements of the three-pronged attack into the South, though most of them wouldn't be coming home.

American airpower, without the added element of China to cope with, had manhandled and mauled North Korean airpower and artillery units so badly that his generals had persuaded Kim that they had no friends left at this point, and the only thing to do was end this thing. The Chinese still had not sent official word through diplomatic channels that they fully bought the American explanation, but they would assist in stabilizing the region until things could be made clear.

A tone sounded and a small light went on in the corner of the laptop Niles had placed on the table before him. Virginia's image from Nellis flashed on the screen.

"Niles, Pete Golding is on the line. I'm going to conference his monitor in with yours."

The screen was split so that Niles could see both Virginia and Pete from the Event Group Center at Nellis Air Force Base.

"Niles, we have a very bad situation," Pete stated flatly with no emotion in his voice. He was crumpled-looking, with part of his white shirt collar pointing up.

Niles closed his eyes. "What have you got, Pete?"

"We have deciphered some of the scrolls that Jack recovered. Niles, it's not the power of the blue diamond that is flawed, it's the great chart--the map the Ancients created that depicts the fault lines and tectonic plates. We've advanced in most areas since the Atlanteans' time. They were amazing to be sure, but one area they failed at was that these plates are conjoined, they are connected, some just below the crust, some as deep as the mantle. It took us a while to figure this out because the Atlantis language is some parts hieroglyph and what we call Linear B and--"

"Pete, for God's sake, what in the hell are you saying here? Forget the damn linguistics lesson!" Niles said irritably.

"Niles, if they use the Wave with the added power of that diamond and its tone design, it will set off a chain reaction that could bring this planet to its knees. We could lose entire continents, crack them wide open, flip whole continental shelves, crack the world down to its core. Whatever you consider hell to be, this damn device could make it happen!"

"Jesus," Niles said.

"We now know that the Atlanteans, for whatever reason, tried this once, fifteen thousand years ago, and look what happened: the entire world was changed."

"Get me Europa's model and your figures."

"What are you thinking, Niles?" Virginia asked.

"What am I thinking, Virginia? I'm thinking the president may have no other choice than to bow to world pressure and smash Crete and everything under it, including Jack, Carl, and those young marines."