Atlantis Found (15 page)

Keeping a tight eye on his decompression computer, Giordino listened as Pitt read off the air pressure remaining in each tank. Only when they went beyond the safety level did he unstrap and push them aside. The prisoners did not become belligerent. They’d come to realize that to resist was to die. But Pitt didn’t let down his guard for a second. He knew well they were two ticking time bombs, waiting to explode at the first opportunity that presented itself for them to escape.

Time passed as if mired in glue. They used up the last of their air and went on the reserve tanks. When the prisoner’s tanks were dry, Pitt and Giordino began to buddy-breathe with them, exchanging their mouthpieces between breaths. After the prescribed wait, they lazily swam up to the next decompression stop.

They were scraping the bottom of the reserve tanks when Giordino finally gave the “surface” sign and said, “The party’s over. We can go home now.”

Pitt climbed the rope ladder thrown into the shaft by Marquez. He reached the rim of the tunnel floor and handed Sheriff Eagan his air tanks. Then he passed up the skull and camera bag. Next, Eagan took Pitt’s outstretched hand and helped him onto firm rock. Pitt rolled over on his back, removed his full face mask, and lay there for a minute, thankfully breathing in the cool damp air of the mine.

“Welcome home,” said Eagan. “What took you so long? You were due back twenty minutes ago.”

“We ran into two more candidates for your jail.”

Giordino surfaced, climbed up, and then knelt on his hands and knees before hauling the smaller prisoner into the tunnel. “I’ll need help with the other,” he said, lifting his face mask. “He weighs two of me put together.”

Three minutes later, Eagan was standing over the intruders, questioning them. But they glared menacingly at him and said nothing. Pitt dropped to his knees and removed the dive hood covering the smaller man’s head and chin.

“Well, well, my friend the biker. How’s your neck?”

The constrained killer lifted his head and spat at Pitt’s face, narrowly missing. The teeth were bared like a rabid dog’s; eyes that had seen more than one death glared at Pitt.

“A testy little devil, aren’t we?” said Pitt. “A zealot of the Fourth Empire. Is that it? You can dream about it while you rot in jail.”

The sheriff reached down and gripped Pitt’s shoulder. “I’ll have to let them go free.”

Pitt stared up, his green eyes suddenly blazing. “Like hell you will.”

“I can’t arrest them unless they’ve committed a crime,” Eagan said helplessly.

“I’ll press charges,” Marquez cut in coldly.

“What charges?”

“Trespassing, claim-jumping, destroying private property, and you can throw in theft for good measure.”

“What did they steal?” Eagan asked, puzzled.

“My overhead lighting system,” Marquez replied indignantly, pointing down at the electrical cord binding the divers. “They’ve snatched it from my mine.”

Pitt placed a hand on Eagan’s shoulder. “Sheriff, we’re also talking attempted murder here. I think it might be wise if you held them in custody for a few days, at least until a preliminary investigation can make an identification and perhaps uncover evidence of their intentions.”

“Come on, Jim,” said Marquez, “you can at least keep them under lock and key while you interrogate them.”

“I doubt whether I’ll get much out of this lot.”

“I agree,” said Giordino, running a small brush through his curly hair. “They don’t look like happy campers.”

“There’s something going on here that goes far beyond San Miguel County.” Pitt peeled off his dry suit and began dressing in his street clothing. “It won’t hurt to cover your bases.”

Eagan looked thoughtful. “All right, I’ll send a report to the Colorado Investigation Agency—”

The sheriff broke off as every head turned and stared up the tunnel. A man was shouting and running toward them as if chased by demons. A few seconds later, they could see that it was one of Eagan’s deputies. He staggered to a halt and leaned over until his head was even with his hips, panting for breath, exhausted after running from the hotel wine cellar.

“What is it, Charlie?” Eagan pressed. “Spit it out!”

“The bodies . . .” Charlie the deputy gasped. “The bodies in the morgue!”

Eagan took Charlie by the shoulders and gently raised him upright. “What about the bodies?”

“They’re missing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The coroner says they’ve disappeared. Somebody snatched them from the morgue.”

Pitt looked at Eagan for a long moment of silence, then said quietly, “If I were you, Sheriff, I’d send copies of your report to the FBI and the Justice Department. This thing goes far deeper than any of us imagined.”

PART TWO

IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE ANCIENTS

9

 
CAPTAIN DANIEL GILLESPIE STOOD on the huge glass-enclosed bridge of the
Polar Storm
and stared through tinted-lens binoculars at the ice that was building around the eight-thousand-ton research icebreaker’s hull. Lean as an aspen tree and prone to moments of anxiety, he studied the ice while plotting a course in his mind for the easiest passage to take the
Polar Storm.
The autumn ice had formed early in the Ross Sea. In some places, it was already two feet thick, with ridges rising to three.

The ship trembled under his feet as its great bulbous bow rammed the ice and then heaved up and over the white surface. Then the weight of the forward part of the ship crushed the pack into piano-size portions that tore at the paint on the hull as they groaned and scraped against the steel plates until they were chopped to small chunks by the ship’s huge twelve-foot propellers and were left bobbing in the ship’s wake. The process was repeated until they reached a part of the sea a few miles off the continent where the ice pack had been slow to thicken.

The
Polar Storm
incorporated the capabilities of both an icebreaker and a research vessel. By most maritime standards, she was an old ship, having been launched twenty years earlier, in 1981. She was also considered small alongside most icebreakers. She had an 8,000-ton displacement, a length of 145 feet, and a 27-foot beam. Her facilities supported oceanographic, meteorological, biological, and ice research, and she was capable of breaking through a minimum of three feet of level ice.

Evie Tan, who had joined the
Polar Storm
when it had stopped at Montevideo in Uruguay on its way to the Antarctic, sat in a chair and wrote in a notebook. A science and technical writer and photographer, Evie had come onboard to do a story for a national science magazine. She was a petite lady with long, silky black hair, who had been born and raised in the Philippines. She looked over at Captain Gillespie and watched him scan the ice pack ahead before asking him a question.

“Is it your plan to land a team of scientists on the pack to study the sea ice?”

Gillespie lowered his binoculars and nodded. “That’s the routine. Sometimes as many as three times an Antarctic day, the glaciologists march out on the ice to take samples and readings for later study in the ship’s lab. They also record the physical properties of the ice and seawater as we sail from site to site.”

“Anything in particular they’re looking for?”

“Joel Rogers, the expedition’s chief scientist, can explain it better than I can. The primary goal of the project is to assess the impact behind the current warming trend that is shrinking the sea ice around the continent.”

“Is it a scientific fact the ice is diminishing?” asked Evie.

“During the Antarctic autumn, March into May, the ocean around the continent begins to freeze and ice over. The pack once spread out from the landmass and formed a vast collar twice the size of Australia. But now the sea ice has retreated and is not as thick and extensive as it once was. The winters are simply not as cold as they were in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Because of the warming trend, a pivotal link in the Antarctic sea chain has been disrupted.”

“Beginning with the single-cell algae that live on the underside of the ice pack,” offered Evie, knowledgeably.

“You’ve done your homework.” Gillespie smiled. “Without the algae to dine on, there would be no krill, the little shrimplike fellows, who in turn provide nourishment for every animal and fish in these southern waters from penguins to whales to phocids.”

“By phocids, you mean seals?”

“I do.”

Evie gazed out over Okuma Bay, which divided the great Ross Ice Shelf and the Edward VII Peninsula. “That range of mountains to the south,” she said, “what is it called?”

“The Rockefeller Mountains,” answered Gillespie. “They’re anchored by Mount Frazier on this end and Mount Nilsen on the other.”

“They’re beautiful,” said Evie, admiring the snow-covered peaks that blazed under the bright sun. “May I borrow your binoculars?”

“Certainly.”

Evie focused the glasses on a complex of large buildings set around a large towerlike structure only two miles to the south in a sheltered part of Okuma Bay. She could distinguish an airfield behind the buildings and a concrete pier leading into the bay. A large cargo ship was moored to the pier, in the process of being unloaded by a high, overhead crane. “Is that a research station there at the base of Mount Frazier?”

Gillespie peered in the direction the binoculars were aimed. “No, it’s a mining facility, owned and operated by a big international conglomerate based in Argentina. They’re extracting minerals from the sea.”

She lowered the binoculars and looked at him. “I didn’t think that was economically feasible.”

Gillespie shook his head. “From what I’ve been told by Bob Maris, our resident geologist, they’ve developed a new process for extracting gold and other precious minerals from seawater.”

“Odd I haven’t heard about it.”

“Their operation is all very secret. This is as close as we can come without one of their security boats coming out and shooing us off. But it’s rumored they do it through a new science called nanotechnology.”

“Why in such a remote area as Antarctica? Why not on a coast or port city with easy access to transportation?”

“According to Maris, freezing water concentrates the sea brine and forces it into deeper water. The extraction process becomes more efficient when the salt is removed—” The captain broke off and studied the ice pack beyond the bow. “Excuse me, Ms. Tan, but we have an iceberg coming on dead ahead.”

The iceberg loomed up from the flat ice pack like a desert plateau covered by a white sheet. Its steep walls rose well more than a hundred feet from the sea. Brilliant white under a pure radiant sun and a clear blue sky, the berg seemed pristine and unblemished by man, animals or rooted plant life. The
Polar Storm
approached the berg from the west, and Gillespie ordered the helmsman to set the ship’s automated control systems on a course around the nearest tip. The helmsman expertly shifted the electronic controls on a broad console and nudged the icebreaker on a seventy-five-degree turn to port, scanning the echo sounder for any underwater spurs that might have protruded from the berg. The icebreaker’s stout hull was built to withstand a hard blow from solid ice, but Gillespie saw no reason to cause even the slightest damage to its steel plates.

He skirted the berg from less than three hundred yards, a safe distance but still near enough for the crew and scientists on the outside deck to stare up at the icy cliffs towering above. It was a strange and wonderful sight. Soon the palisades slipped by, as the ship circled the huge mass and turned into the open pack beyond.

Suddenly, another vessel sailed into view, having been hidden behind the berg. Gillespie was astonished to identify the encroaching ship as a submarine. The undersea craft was sailing through an open lead in the ice and passing on a course that took it directly across the icebreaker’s great bow from port to starboard.

The helmsman acted before Gillespie’s orders issued across the bridge. He sized up the situation, judged the submarine’s speed, and threw the icebreaker’s big port diesel engine into Full Reverse. It was a wise maneuver, one that might have saved the White Star liner
Titanic.
Rather than reversing both engines in a futile effort to halt the momentum of the big icebreaker, he kept the starboard engine on Half Ahead. With one propeller thrusting the
Polar Storm
forward and the other pulling it backward, the ship began turning far more sharply than a simple rudder command. Everyone on the bridge stood mesmerized, as the big bow’s direction slowly angled from the sub’s hull toward the wake behind its stern.

There was no time for a warning, no time for communications between the two vessels. Gillespie hit the great horn on the icebreaker and shouted over the intercom for the crew and scientists to brace for a collision. There was a cloud of restrained frenzy on the bridge.