Рик Чеслер - Atlantis Gold

Slowly and surely, Hunt lifted the artifact from the rocky wedge until it was cradled only in his arms. As he prepared to turn toward Jayden so as to get some support from him, he glanced down through the crack now that it was easier to see down into it without the bronze head being there.

A human skeleton lay sprawled out on a stone slab about twenty feet down. He put his face mask as far as he dared into the crevice and peered down into the crevasse, but he saw nothing else besides the skeleton. He held the statue head in the crook of one elbow while grabbing his camera and holding it up to Jayden. They would definitely want a snapshot of that skeleton. Jayden took the camera and then looked down into the opening. He looked back up once at Hunt, eyes wide, and then snapped off a photograph.

That done, Jayden pushed himself up away from the crevasse and helped Hunt hold the stone head while Hunt added air to his buoyancy vest to overcome the additional weight. Both divers knew that another option would be to ditch his weight belt, with the head itself more than replacing that, but should he then drop the head, he would rocket to the surface with disastrous ill-effects to his health. So that would remain a last resort.

Hunt inflated his vest almost to full capacity before he was able to tread water without sinking while holding the head. Then he and Jayden began a slow and cautious ascent to the surface, which shimmered and sparkled far above their heads when they aimed their dive lights at it. They skirted their way around an overhang of pyramid slabs before resuming their vertical ascent. Jayden stared at his air pressure gauge a lot. It was in the red. He hated to think where Hunt’s was, burdened as he was with the heavy stone, causing him to breathe even heavier and faster.

The thing that kept both of them going was seeing the work lights set up on the edge of the water up above. They seemed so close, like they were within reach, and watching them grow larger was a great comfort. Hunt focused on them so much that he almost didn’t notice the cone of light coming from below.

When he glanced down to make sure he wasn’t too close to the jumble of rock slabs, he saw it. Without a doubt. A piercing cone of light barreling up from the depths, seemingly out of nowhere.

What was that ? He almost dropped the stone head out of surprise, and then also out of the urge to have more bodily freedom, but he had the discipline not to do that. He looked over at Jayden and saw his dive buddy staring up toward the work lights. He kicked his right leg out and knocked him in the leg with a fin tip. Jayden looked over at him immediately. Hunt jerked his head downward until Jayden directed his gaze into the deep.

Hunt could tell from his friend’s reaction alone, by simply watching his face, that something was going on. He looked back down again, even though it was difficult to do while carrying the artifact, but the light, whatever it was, was moving fast, It had already travelled beyond his field of vision so that he had to spin around in order to see it. When he did, he felt a pang of adrenaline assault his guts.

An underwater scooter.

The torpedo-shaped vehicle featured, in addition to a nose-mounted halogen light, a single propeller used to drag a diver through the water. Hunt couldn’t see the diver since the headlight blinded him, but he could tell by the speed and sharp upward trajectory of the scooter that this was not a research diver, even if Madison had neglected to mention that she already had divers with equipment on site. And she hadn’t mentioned that, Hunt thought, so then who was this guy?

Make that guys, plural, he thought, as a second scooter-diver rocketed into view from behind a mound of stacked boulders. And how did they get in here? There’s no way they’d entered after them, they would have heard the splashes as they entered the water, and seen the lights as they made their descent. No, they must have come in another way. He tried to visualize the LiDAR imagery he’d seen back in the tent, but with everything going on he couldn’t conjure a detailed enough image to be useful.

And right now, anyway, he supposed it didn’t much matter, because both scooters were heading right for them at what had to be at or near their maximum speed, about five knots. Who were they and what did they want? Hunt had no idea, but underwater in an Egyptian pyramid with a tank running dry of air was no time to stop and chat, so he continued his ascent.

Fortunately, Hunt thought, a decompression stop wasn’t needed on this dive or he’d have to stop at ten or fifteen feet and breathe air for a few minutes before completing the ascent in order to avoid the bends, so he was clear to ascend. Which was a good thing, since his air already seemed like it was getting harder to pull. Probably a good thing my hands are occupied with holding the head or else I’d be staring at the needle on my air gauge drop , Hunt thought.

But as he eyed the surface, which looked to be about thirty feet or so away, Hunt saw that there was something to keep him from getting there after all. The two scooter-divers zoomed in on his position without slowing until one of them stopped a couple of feet above Hunt’s head. But the other wasn’t stopping. Its nose cone was pointed right at Hunt’s midsection. It was going to ram him.

Hunt wanted to stiff-arm the scooter away but knew if he took one arm off of the bronze head that he’d risk losing it to depths of piled slabs. So did the best thing he could come up with and turned sideways to the scooter, presenting his right elbow while still cradling the head.

In spite of Hunt’s readiness, Jayden was the one who thwarted the underwater scooter. The ex-navy man bashed the nose of the underwater vehicle with the closed fist of his right hand, sending it off course to the right, where it glanced off Hunt’s body without serious impact. Hunt still had possession of the metal head while the diver brought the scooter around in an arc to come back again.

Hunt continued his ascent while Jayden continued to fend off the marauding craft. But soon Hunt was butting his head into the bottom the other diver’s legs. That man — and Hunt could tell it was in fact a man by the strength in the legs when he kicked him — ditched his scooter in favor of hand-to-hand combat with Hunt. He swiped a gloved hand at Hunt’s regulator hose in an attempt to dislodge his mouthpiece, but Hunt’s quick head movement caused the assailant to swipe at nothing but water.

Taking a chance on dropping the precious artifact, Hunt gripped the bronze head with both hands and shoved the heavy weight into his opponent’s side. He felt ribs crack and took great satisfaction in the grunt of pain that reached his ears through the water.

He also got the first look at the attacker’s face as he whipped his head to the side in pain. White male, mustache, approximately forty years of age, Hunt ascertained. That’s all he could tell through the face mask. He noted it was the full facemask variety with embedded electronics that allowed him to communicate underwater with his dive partner. As if in confirmation of this fact, Hunt saw the man’s lips moving behind his mask, and then the second scooter’s nose cone was ramming into Hunt’s back.

He bobbled the bronze head but regained control of it before losing his grip on it completely.

But then the gleam of a dive light reflecting off of metal temporarily blinded Hunt as a serrated dive knife was plunged at his neck from above. Hunt dodged the blade and then he saw Jayden’s wetsuit-clad arm gripping the gloved hand holding the knife. No longer could Hunt pass this off as a case of mistaken identity, or losing control of the scooters, or anything like that at all. This was a deliberate attempt to kill them.