Atlantis Found (29 page)

“Those were the rabbits I was talking about,” announced Giordino, adding insult to injury.

“You will surely die,” said the helicopter pilot.

“As the old gangsters used to say to the cops, come and get us.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said the pilot.

“Duck down!” Giordino hissed to Gunn. “Here it comes.”

The pilot lined up the nose of his bird with the entrance of the tunnel and fired off one of his missiles. Then came a loud whoosh, as the rocket burst out of its pod attached to the fuselage of the helicopter. The rocket did not make it through the tunnel before striking against one wall and exploding. The force of the blast inside a rock-hard contained area was deafening. The concussion felt as though a grand piano had fallen on them from the tenth floor. Pulverized rock erupted in a deadly spray that sliced every object in the chamber into shreds. Smoke and dust compressed together in the small space, seethed and whirled with hurricane force, before taking the path of least resistance and funneling out the tunnel and into the atmosphere outside. Every combustible object inside the chamber immediately burst into flame.

Incredibly, neither the roofs of the tunnel nor the chamber collapsed. The main force of the explosion was blown back through the tunnel along with the smoke and dust. Giordino and Gunn felt as though huge fists had punched the air out of their lungs. Quickly reacting, they pulled the upper half of their coveralls over their faces to filter out the dust and smoke, before retreating temporarily into the inner tomb.

“I hope to God . . . they don’t send another rocket in here,” Gunn said, coughing. “That will spell our end for sure.”

Giordino could hardly hear him above the ringing in his ears. “I have a hunch they’ll think one was enough,” he rasped between hacks. Slowly recovering his numbed senses, he began pulling away the rocks and widening an opening. “I’m getting damned tired of moving rock, I’ll tell you.”

Once through, they groped through the smoke and dust for the extra weapons from their assailants’ bodies until they had five assault rifles and an equal number of automatic pistols between them. Struggling to breathe in the nonexistent air, and working blind, Giordino lashed three of the assault rifles together with cord from his backpack. The three guns were now wrapped parallel. Then he ran a cord around the triggers and tied it under the guards.

“The last thing they’ll expect is for us to rush out the tunnel shooting,” he said to Gunn. “You take Number Six. I’ll try for the helicopter.”

Gunn wiped his soiled glasses clean on his sleeve and nodded. “Better let me go first. You won’t have a chance at firing at the helicopter if Number Six isn’t eliminated.”

Giordino was hesitant to let the little deputy director of NUMA take on an almost suicidal job. He was about to voice a protest, when Gunn raised his weapon and disappeared into the fire and smoke.

Gunn stumbled and sprawled on his chest in the tunnel, staggered to his feet and ran forward again, fearing that bullets would cut him down the second he materialized from the residue still pouring from the tunnel entrance. But Number Six was incapable of believing anyone was still alive inside, and he had let down his guard while talking with the pilot of the helicopter.

Gunn’s disadvantage was that he could hardly see, and he had no idea where Number Six might be standing in relation to the archway. His glasses filmed with soot, his eyes running, he scarcely discerned a vague figure in black standing ten yards away and to the right of the archway. He squeezed the trigger and opened fire. His bullets flew wide around Number Six without striking flesh. The searcher spun around and snapped off five shots at Gunn, two missing but one striking him in the calf of his left leg, the others pounding into the body armor and sending Gunn reeling backward. Then, unexpectedly, Giordino burst through the smoke with all three guns blazing and nearly tore the head off Number Six. Without hesitation, he swung the barrels of the three guns skyward and opened up on the belly of the helicopter, sending nearly three thousand rounds a minute tearing into the thin metal.

Stunned at what he witnessed below, seeing two men in the same uniform as the searchers’ shooting at each other, the pilot hesitated before taking any action. By the time he set up to fire the machine gun mounted under the nose of the M-C Explorer, Giordino was pouring a startling volume of bullets into the unarmored helicopter. As if a sewing machine were stitching a hem, the constant stream of fire moved up the side of the fuselage and sprayed through the windshield into the cockpit. Then all went silent as the rifles’ ammo magazines ran empty.

The Explorer seemed to hang suspended, then it abruptly lurched, fell out of control, crashed into the side of the mountain three hundred yards below the archway, and burst into flames. Giordino dropped his rifles and rushed to the side of Gunn, who was clutching his wounded leg.

“Stay where you are!” Giordino ordered. “Do not move.”

“Merely a scratch,” Gunn forced through clenched teeth.

“Scratch, hell, the bullet broke your tibia. You’ve got a compound fracture.”

Gunn looked up at Giordino through the pain and managed a tight grin. “I can’t say I think a hell of a lot about your bedside manner.”

Giordino didn’t pay any attention to Gunn’s heroics. He pulled out a lace from his shoe and made a temporary tourniquet around the thigh above the knee.

“Can you hold that for a minute?”

“I guess I’d better if I don’t want to bleed to death,” Gunn groaned.

Giordino ran back into the tunnel, through the smoldering chamber, and from behind the cave-in retrieved his backpack, which contained a first-aid kit. He was back in a few minutes and worked swiftly, proficiently, disinfecting the wound and doing his best to stem the flow of blood.

“I’m not even going to think about setting it,” said Giordino. “Better to let a doctor do it in Cape Town.” He didn’t want to move the little man, so he made him as comfortable as possible and covered him from the drizzle with a plastic sheet out of his backpack. His next chore was to call the admiral, report on Gunn’s wound, and beg for a quick rescue.

When he finished his conversation with Sandecker, he put the phone in his pocket and stared at the burning helicopter on the mountain slope below.

“Insanity,” he said softly to himself. “Pure, unadulterated insanity. What cause can possibly motivate so many men to kill and be killed?” He could only hope the answers would come sooner rather than later.

20

“ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY feet to the bottom,” said Ira Cox, staring into the sinister hole in the ice that marked the grave of the smashed and sunken U-boat. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Repairs to the
Polar Storm
’s engine room and bridge by the Navy damage-control team won’t be completed for another two hours,” explained Pitt. “And since the ship carried Arctic diving equipment on board, I can’t pass up the opportunity to investigate inside the sub’s hull.”

“What do you expect to find?” asked Evie Tan, who had accompanied Pitt and a small crew from the ship.

“Logbook, papers, reports, anything with writing on it that might lead to who was in command and what hidden location she sailed from.”

“Nazi Germany in 1945,” Cox said with a little smile, but not trying to be clever.

Pitt sat on the ice and pulled on his swim fins. “Okay, but where has she been hiding for the last fifty-six years?”

Cox shrugged and tested Pitt’s underwater communication system. “Can you hear me okay?”

“You’re blasting my eardrums. Turn down the volume.”

“How’s that?”

“Better,” Pitt’s voice came over a speaker set up in an operations tent beside the opening in the ice.

“You shouldn’t be going alone,” said Cox.

“Another diver would only get in my way. Besides, I have more than twenty dives under Arctic ice under my belt, so it’s not a new experience.”

In the warmth of a generator-heater in the tent, Pitt slipped on a Divex Armadillo Hot Water Suit, with internal and external tubing that circulated warm water throughout the entire body, including the hands, feet, and head. The heated water came from a combination heater and pump that forced it through an umbilical hose into the suit’s inlet manifold that enabled Pitt to regulate the flow. He wore an AGA MK-II full face mask adapted to wireless communications. He elected to carry air tanks for ease of movement rather than rely on the surface support system. A quick check of his Substrobe Ikelite underwater dive light and he was ready to go.

“Good luck,” shouted Evie, to make herself heard through Pitt’s hood and face mask. She then busied herself shooting photos of Pitt as he sat on the edge of the ice before dropping off into the icy water. “You sure I can’t talk you into taking photos with a watertight camera down there?”

Pitt gave a brief shake of his encased head as his voice came over the speaker. “I won’t have time to play photographer.”

He gave a wave and rolled into the water, pushing off from the ice with his finned feet. He dove and leveled out at ten feet while he vented the air from his dry suit and waited to see if its heating element was compensating for the frigid drop in temperature. A cautious diver, in all his years of diving, Pitt had rarely encountered problems underwater. He constantly talked to himself, sharpening his mind to question and probe his surroundings, and monitoring his instrument gauges and body condition.

Beneath the ice pack, which was a little over three feet thick, he found a wildly different world. Staring upward, Pitt imagined the underside of the ice as looking like the surface of an unknown planet deep in the galaxy. Transfused by the light filtering through the ice, the flat white layer was transformed into an upside-down landscape of blue-green frozen mounds and valleys covered by rolling yellow clouds of algae that were fed on by an infinite army of krill. He paused to adjust the flow of hot water before looking down and seeing a vast green void that faded to black in the depths.

It beckoned, and he dove down to be embraced by it.

 
THE morbid scene slowly revealed itself as if a shadowy curtain had parted as Pitt descended to the bottom. No kelp or coral or brightly colored fish here. He glanced upward at the eerie glow drifting from the ice hole above to orient himself. Then he paused a moment to switch on his dive light and probe it into the wreckage while he equalized his ears.

The remains of the U-boat were broken and scattered. The center hull beneath the conning tower was terribly ruptured and mangled by the explosion from the missile. The tower itself had been blown off the hull and was lying on its side amid a field of debris. The stern appeared attached to the keel by only the propeller shafts. The bow section was twisted but resting upright in the silt. The soft bottom had embraced the wreckage, and Pitt was surprised to see nearly twenty percent of it already buried.

“I’ve reached the wreck,” he announced to Cox. “She’s badly broken. I’m going inside the remains.”

“Take great care,” Cox’s disembodied voice came back in Pitt’s earpiece. “Cut a hole in your suit from a sharp piece of metal and you’ll freeze before you reach the surface.”

“Now, there’s a cheery thought.”

Pitt did not attempt to enter the vessel immediately. He spent nearly ten minutes of precious bottom time swimming over the wreckage and examining the debris field. The warhead had been designed to destroy a much larger target and had left the submarine almost unrecognizable as a seagoing vessel. Pipes and valves and smashed steel plates from the hull lay as if thrown about by a giant hand. He swam over body parts, passing above the grisly remains as if he were a spirit floating over the horrendous aftermath of a terrorist bus bombing.

He kicked against the current and entered the crushed hull through the massive, torn opening below the mountings where the tower once stood. Two bodies were revealed under the dive light, wedged beneath the diving controls. Fighting the bile that rose in his throat, he searched them for identification, finding nothing of value, no wallets with credit cards or picture IDs sealed in Mylar. It seemed abnormal that members of the U-boat’s crew possessed no personal items.

“Eight minutes,” said Cox. “You have eight more minutes before you must ascend.”

“Understood.” The warnings usually came from Giordino, but Pitt was deeply grateful to the big bear of a seaman for his thoughtfulness. It saved him vital seconds when he didn’t have to perpetually stop and shine the light on the orange dial of his Doxa dive watch.

Moving deeper into the black of the hull, shining his light into the mass of tangled steel and pipes, he worked down a narrow passage and began examining the rooms leading off to the sides. All were empty. Ransacking the drawers and closets, he could find no documents of any kind.

He checked the air remaining in his tanks in preparation for his ascent and the required decompression stops. Then he swam into what had been the wardroom. It was badly crushed on one side of the pressure hull. The cupboard and chairs and tables attached to the deck were smashed and broken.

“Four minutes.”

“Four minutes,” Pitt repeated.

He moved on and found the captain’s quarters. With time running out, he frantically searched for letters or reports, even diaries. Nothing. Even the sub’s logbook was nonexistent. It was almost as if the wrecked sub and its dead crew were an illusion. He began to half expect it to fade and disappear.

“Two minutes.” The tone was sharp.

“On my way.”

Suddenly, without warning, Pitt felt a hand on his shoulder. He froze, and his slowly beating heart abruptly accelerated and pounded like a jackhammer. The contact was not exactly a tight grip; it was more like the hand was resting between his arm and neck. Beyond shock lies fear, the paralyzing, uncontrollable terror that can carry over into madness. It is a state characterized by a complete lack of comprehension and perception. Most men go totally numb, almost as if anesthetized, and are no longer capable of rational thought.