Andy McDermott - The Hunt For Atlantis

“What about the people in Atlantis?” Nina asked. “My friends are still down there.”

“And that is where they will stay,” Qobras replied.

“What? Wait, we agreed-”

Qobras grabbed her, pulling her close as he hissed into her face: “We agreed to spare the people on this ship, Dr. Wilde. They are not on this ship. If you object to that, then I will order the crew to be shot! Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Nina said, defeated.

“Dr. Wilde,” called Matthews, as one of Qobras’s men gestured with his gun for him to follow the rest of the crew, “do you have any family I should contact?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” she sighed. “Just… if you see Eddie, tell him I’ll send him a postcard.”

Matthews looked puzzled, but didn’t have time to say anything else before he was shoved away. Qobras waved a hand towards his own ship. “Now, Dr. Wilde, if you’ll step aboard my vessel… we can discuss the location of the last Atlantean temple.”

Even three-quarters filled with cold, dark water, the genuine Temple of Poseidon was even more impressive than its replica in South America.

“This is absolutely incredible,” said Kari, the danger of the situation overpowered by her awe at the sheer magnificence of the surroundings. Above her, ranks of slender ribs adorned with gold, silver and orichalcum rose to the peak of the curved ceiling. “Look at the roof! The whole thing is lined with ivory, just as Plato described it.”

“Incredible’s not the word I’d use,” said Chase, swimming to her. “It’s like being inside something’s ribcage. That bloke who did the Alien films’d love it in here.” He cracked another glow stick and tossed it across the chamber, where it bobbed on the water. Beyond the beams of their flashlights, the chamber was now illuminated with a soft orange glow. The head of Poseidon rose above the water, watching them balefully with blank golden eyes. “Did you find any way out?”

“No. What about you?”

Chase pointed down at the southern end of the chamber. “It’s just like the other temple, and I mean just like it. I bet if we went all the way down the passage, we’d find the same challenges.”

“There’s a passage? Can we get out that way?”

He shook his head. “It’s at ground level, remember? There’s thirty feet of sediment over the exit.”

“We might have to try it. Since the roof is intact, that must be how the water got in. We could still get out the same way.”

“There’s a quicker way out,” said Chase. He held up one of the explosive charges.

“No, it’s too dangerous,” she protested. “If you blow a hole through the ceiling, the whole thing might collapse!”

“I’m not planning on blowing the whole thing up. Look.” He swam to a section of wall where the decorative ivory had broken away, exposing bare stone. “We only need to make a hole big enough to fit through-even shifting one of those blocks would be enough.”

“Assuming your bomb doesn’t bring the whole roof down.”

Chase shrugged as best he could inside the suit. “Well, what’s life without a bit of risk?” He aimed the flashlight beam at the exposed stones, examining the joins between them. As in Brazil, they had been carved so precisely that there was no mortar holding them together, their own weight supporting the structure. Probing one of the joins with his knife, he found that the tip only penetrated a few millimeters. “We need to find the weakest spot to plant the charges.” He pushed away from the wall, turning around to look up at the statue of Poseidon. “So big that he touched the roof with his head…”

Kari looked impressed. “Have you been reading Plato?”

“Thought I ought to give it a shot. But, see? If we climb onto old bighead there, we can stick the charges right under the top of the roof. The blocks lower down the walls have the weight of all the other stones on top of them keeping them in place, but at the top there’s nothing holding them except gravity.”

“And twenty-five atmospheres of water pressure,” Kari pointed out. “If you make a hole at the very top, you’ll flood the entire temple. You’ll destroy it-and probably us too!”

“If we’re not out of here in an hour, it’s not going to matter either way. We don’t have time to clear the tunnel. Come on.” He leaned forward, using his thrusters to propel himself across the water to the statue. With deep reluctance, Kari did the same.

Castille continued his circuit of the temple, coming around the southern end. So far he had seen no sign of any holes, the great stepped curve of the roof as solid as a turtle’s shell.

On some impulse, he touched down on the building itself. The stones might be thick, but if he was close enough, radio waves should be able to penetrate.

“Edward?” he said. “Kari? Can anyone hear me?”

He stood in silence, not even breathing so that the hiss of his suit’s regulator wouldn’t drown out any faint reply. But nothing came.

“Merde.” Kicking off, he headed back up the temple’s western side.

The Evenor’s lifeboats bobbed in the water as their occupants rowed clear of the survey ship. Nina watched the sight with fearful resignation from the bridge of Qobras ’s vessel, flanked by a pair of armed guards. The last of his men jumped back aboard, others untying the ropes holding the two ships together.

Starkman entered the bridge. “Giovanni. The explosives are all in place.” He handed Qobras a pair of radio detonators. “This one’ll set off the charges at the bow, this one the engine room.”

“Are the hatches open?” Qobras asked.

“Yeah-everything up to the engineering bulkhead. Blow the bow, and the front two thirds of the ship’ll fill up with water. Then once the bow’s submerged, blow the other charges, and pow! Three thousand tons, going straight down.”

Qobras examined the detonators. “A sword of Damocles…”

“Very clever,” Nina said bitterly. “Pity you couldn’t put that kind of ingenuity into something constructive.”

“You have no idea how much time and effort I have put into being constructive, Dr. Wilde.”

“Well, why don’t you enlighten me?”

“Maybe I will. Who knows, you might even come around to my point of view.”

“I doubt that,” she snorted.

“Unfortunately,” Qobras sighed, “so do I.” He addressed the captain. “Move us to a safe distance, then turn the ship about to face the Evenor. I want to watch this.”

The builders of the statue had obviously never meant for anyone to stand on top of it, Chase thought. Plato hadn’t been entirely accurate; Poseidon didn’t literally touch the ceiling, although from ground level it would look that way. There was actually a small amount of clearance, into which he was now awkwardly wedged on his back. The gold-plated statue was sculpted with hair and a crown of what he guessed was supposed to be seaweed, none of which made a stable platform for the inflexible shell of his deep suit.

“How are you doing?” Kari asked.

“Nearly there.” He had connected both his charges so they would go off simultaneously. The detonator was a simple mechanical timer, designed to be foolproof even in hundreds of feet of water. Once activated, he would have one minute to reach a safe distance. In open ocean, with the help of the suit’s thrusters, that wouldn’t be a problem.