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  Costas looked grimly at Jack. “We have to assume the DSRV has been compromised.”

  “What do you mean, compromised?” Katya demanded.

  “I mean we’ve got visitors.”

  Jack pulled back the slide on his Beretta and checked that a round had been chambered. After satisfying himself, he let the slide spring forward to close the receiver and gently flicked the catch to the safety position. He would be able to empty the fifteen 9 millimetre Parabellum rounds within seconds should the need arise.

  “I don’t understand,” Katya said. “Is it our people?”

  “Impossible,” Costas said. “The storm will be raging until dawn tomorrow, another twelve hours from now. Seaquest is at least ten nautical miles north. That’s too far for an Aquapod insertion, and in this weather there’s no way the helicopter could get low enough to drop divers close to the site.”

  “If they were IMU divers they’d have made contact by now, even just tapping Morse on the casing,” Ben said.

  Katya still seemed mystified. “How could Seaquest have missed them? They must have arrived before the storm began, yet the monitors showed no surface craft within a fifteen-mile radius.”

  “In these conditions satellite surveillance is next to useless, but Seaquest’s radar should have picked up any surface anomaly in this sector.” Costas paused, his fingers drumming against the railing. “There is one possibility.” He looked at Jack. “A vessel could already have been in position on the far side of the volcano, hove in too close for its radar signature to be distinguishable. A submersible launched from there could have found Kazbek and mated with the DSRV, allowing an assault team to enter the escape trunk.”

  “That would account for the noise,” Ben ventured.

  “Already in position?” Katya wasn’t convinced. “How could they already be in position behind the island? No one else has the Atlantis text, no one else has the expertise to translate and interpret the directions.” She looked at the men. “I fear for the safety of Seaquest.”

  Jack held Katya’s gaze a moment longer than the others. In that split second he sensed something was amiss, that she was withholding more than just the apprehension they were all trying to suppress. Just as he was about to question her, another jolt rattled the submarine and ended all room for speculation. He thrust the Beretta into the holster on his chest.

  “Costas, you’re here with Andy. That hatch may be our only escape route. Ben, you’re with me.”

  “I’m coming too.” Katya spoke matter-of-factly. “We’ll need all the firepower we can muster. Akula submarines carry a reserve armoury in the wardroom on the deck above us. I know the location.”

  There was no time for argument. They quickly stripped off their SCLS backpacks and propped them against the casing.

  Jack spoke as they crouched together on the walkway. “These people haven’t come to dig up ancient relics. They’ll assume we’ve found their prize and are cut off from surface communication. Eliminate us and they can complete the transaction that went so badly wrong all those years ago. This is no longer just about Atlantis. Five metres away are enough nukes to end western civilization.”

  As Katya stepped onto the first rung of the ladder leading to the deck above, she leaned aside to avoid the flurry of white precipitate dislodged by Jack’s ascent. After cautiously climbing a dozen rungs she tapped his leg, at the same time signalling to Ben, who was following behind.

  “This is it,” she whispered.

  They had reached the level above the torpedo room where they had seen the crew’s quarters on their way down less than an hour before. Katya stepped through the hatch and pushed aside the debris scattered around the entrance. Jack followed close behind and Ben a moment later. As they huddled together in the gloom, Jack reached over and switched on Katya’s headlamp.

  “It’s on the lowest setting,” he whispered. “It should be OK as long as you don’t shine into the chute where it might reflect into the alleyway above us.”

  Katya traversed the narrow beam across to the far side of the room. Beyond a pair of mess tables a hatch was ajar. She gestured for them to remain put and made her way across the floor, taking care to avoid any noise and keeping the beam fixed ahead. As she crouched through the hatch, Ben leaned back into the chute to listen for any sound above.

  After several minutes of tense silence Katya reappeared, her headlamp switched off to avoid shining into the chute. As she made her way towards them they could see she was festooned with equipment.

  “An AKS-74U,” she whispered. “Also a nine-millimetre Makarov pistol, same as the Walther PPK. The weapons locker had mostly been emptied and this is all I could find. There’s also a box of ammunition.”

  “This will do nicely.” Ben unslung the weapon from Katya’s shoulder. The AKS-74U had similar dimensions to the Heckler & Koch MP5, the familiar arm of police in the West, but unlike most submachine guns it chambered a high-velocity 5.45 millimetre rifle round. The engineers at the Kalashnikov Arms Design Bureau had perfected a sound suppressor which did not compromise muzzle velocity and developed an expansion chamber which made the weapon more manageable on automatic than any other firearm of similar calibre.

  There was another muffled sound far away in the bowels of the submarine. Jack raised his head in alarm and they all strained to listen. What at first seemed a distant metallic clatter became steadily more distinct, a succession of dull thuds that continued for twenty seconds and then ceased.

  “Footsteps,” Jack whispered. “In the level above us back towards the escape trunk. My guess is our friends are in the control room. We must intercept them before they reach the loading chute.”

  Jack and Katya each took a Kalashnikov magazine and quickly pressed in rounds from the ammunition box. Katya passed her magazine to Ben, who placed it with the remaining loose rounds in a pouch on his belt. He attached the other magazine to the weapon, pulled back the bolt and flicked the selector to safety. Katya cocked the Makarov and slid it under the tool belt on her waist.

  “Right,” Jack whispered. “We move.”

  It seemed an eternity since they had stumbled on the horrifying spectre at the entrance to the sonar room. As they reached the final rungs of the ladder, Jack felt thankful for the darkness that concealed them from the sentinel’s baleful gaze.

  He reached down to help Katya up. Seconds later all three of them stood with weapons at the ready. Through the passageway aft they could see the glow of the emergency lighting in the control room.

  Jack led them in single file along the left side of the passageway with the Beretta extended. Just before the entrance he froze and raised one arm in warning. Katya huddled behind him while Ben seemed to melt into the darkness on the other side.

  From her restricted viewpoint all Katya could see was the mass of disarticulated machinery and smashed consoles. The shroud of precipitate lent a two-dimensional quality to the scene, as if they were viewing a painting too abstract to register any separate shapes or textures.

  She suddenly saw why Jack had stopped. Beside the twisted remains of the periscope a ghostly figure disengaged from the background, the form only discernible when it moved. As it advanced towards them it was clear the figure was oblivious of their presence.

  There was a deafening crack from Jack’s Beretta. Through the storm of white that shook from the walls she watched the figure stagger back against the periscope housing and drop awkwardly to the deck. Jack fired five more times in quick succession, each round sending up a hail of bullet fragments that shrieked and rattled around the room.

  Katya was stunned by the ferocity of the noise. To her horror she saw the figure slowly raise itself and level the Uzi submachine gun it was carrying towards the passageway. She could clearly make out the pockmarks where Jack’s bullets had bounced harmlessly off its Kevlar exoskeleton. Their opponent opened up with his Uzi, a savage ripping noise that sent bullets whining down the passageway and sparking off the machinery behind them.

 
From out of the darkness to the side came a staccato burst from Ben’s AKS-74U, the noise through the silencer less ear-rending than the Beretta but the effect more deadly. The rounds slammed into the advancing figure and hurled him back against the periscope housing, the bullets from his Uzi tracing a wild arc on the ceiling. Each impact punched him with the force of a jackhammer, his limbs jolting in a crazy rag-doll dance. As the Kevlar shredded, his torso slumped forward at a grotesque angle where his spine had been blown out of his back. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  Another automatic weapon from somewhere in the far recess of the room added to the shattering din. The reverberations sent a tremor through the submarine, the concussions sucking the air as the bullets snapped past.

  Jack crouched down and rocked on the balls of his feet like a sprinter before a race.

  “Covering fire!”

  Ben emptied the remainder of his magazine into the room as Jack broke cover and ran towards the central dais, the Beretta blasting into the space beyond the periscope array where the other gunfire originated. There was a scream and a clatter followed by retreating footsteps. Katya ran out behind Jack, her ears ringing from the gunfire. They were quickly joined by Ben and the three of them crouched side by side against the smashed base of the periscope housing.

  “How many more?” Ben asked.

  “Two, maybe three. We got one of them. If we can hold them in the passageway that’ll limit their field of fire.”

  The two men ejected their magazines and reloaded. While Ben pressed the loose rounds from his pouch into the magazine, Katya looked at the scene of carnage beside them.

  It was a sickening sight. Amid a slew of congealing blood and spent Uzi casings the man’s body sat bizarrely angled, his torso bent double and his head resting facedown. The bullets had torn apart his breathing pack, the cylinders and regulator array splattered with fragments of bone and flesh. In the space below was a ragged hole where his heart and lungs had been. A ruptured hose from his oxygen regulator had blown into the cavity, producing a bloody froth that hissed and bubbled in a grotesque parody of the man’s final breaths.

  Katya knelt down and lifted the man’s head. She shuddered and quickly let go. Jack felt sure she recognized him. He reached over to put a hand on her shoulder and she turned round.

  “There has been enough death in this boat.” She suddenly looked tired. “Now is the time to end it.”

  Before Jack could stop her she stood up and raised both arms in surrender. She stepped into the gap between the periscopes.

  “My name is Katya Svetlanova.” She spoke loudly in Russian, the words resonating through the chamber.

  There was an immediate commotion and the sound of muffled conversation. At length a male voice responded in a dialect neither Jack nor Ben recognized. Katya lowered her arms and began a heated dialogue which lasted several minutes. She seemed in complete command of the situation, her voice exuding authority and confidence, whereas the man was wavering and deferential. After a final curt sentence she slumped down and shoved the pistol into her belt.

  “He’s a Kazakh,” she said. “I told him we’d booby-trapped the passageways between here and the torpedo room. I said we’d only negotiate face to face with their leader. That won’t happen, but it’ll buy us time while they work out their next move.”

  Jack looked at her. She had twice been instrumental in averting disaster, first by preventing an attack by Vultura in the Aegean and now by negotiating with the gunmen. It seemed that as long as she was present, their adversaries would keep their distance and bide their time.

  “Those men,” he said. “I’m assuming they’re our friends from Vultura.”

  “You are correct,” she replied quietly. “And they are utterly ruthless.”

  “What do we do now?” Ben asked.

  There was a dull thumping noise from far off in the submarine.

  “There’s your answer,” Jack replied. It was a prearranged signal from Costas that the operation to cut through the hull was complete. Jack got up and led the other two out of the control room, skirting round the slick of blood still seeping out of the corpse by the dais. As they retreated down the corridor, Jack glanced back one last time at the wreckage of the room to make sure they were not being followed.

  They left Ben squatting in the shadows beside the top of the loading chute. He had signalled his intention and waved Jack and Katya on. With only a magazine and a half at his disposal the odds were stacked against him, but Jack knew if it came to a showdown every round would find its mark.

  It took only a few minutes for Jack and Katya to traverse the now familiar route down the chute and round the edge of the torpedo room. As they reached the opening in the grating, they wordlessly donned the SCLS packs they had left there, checking each other’s straps and activating the regulator consoles.

  They knew what they had to do. There was nothing to be gained from lingering with Ben and Andy, a siege that could have only one outcome. Their defence rested on the potency of Katya’s threat and as soon as that failed their numbers would make no difference. This was their only chance, their only hope of reaching help while the storm raged overhead.

  The stakes were terrifyingly high.

  As they lowered themselves onto the bilge floor they could see Costas had already shut his visor and sealed his helmet. They quickly followed suit, but not before Katya handed her pistol to Andy at the console.

  “You may have more need of this than me,” she said.

  Andy nodded appreciatively and holstered the weapon before turning back to the screen. While Jack quickly recounted the stand-off in the control room, Costas finished retracting the telescopic arm. The laser had cut a perfect circle a metre and a half wide in the hull casing.

  “It pivots on the hinge we inserted,” Andy said. “All I need to do now is reduce the air pressure in the chamber and it should spring outward like a hatch.”

  They looked with mixed emotions at the casing, apprehensive about the perils awaiting them yet drawn by the overpowering excitement of a lost world beyond their wildest imaginings.

  “OK,” said Costas. “Let’s do it.”

  COSTAS CROUCHED THROUGH, CAREFUL TO avoid the razor-sharp rim where the laser had cut into the casing. He reached forward to test the strength of the magnetized membrane and then turned to help Katya and Jack. Once they were safely through, he heaved the hatch shut, fearful that a tear in the membrane would cause uncontrollable flooding in the submarine. The flush join where the hatch closed was testament to the microsurgical precision of the laser.

  Although the membrane was translucent there was scarcely any natural light at this depth, and it was further blocked by the rocky overhang which extended all the way to the submarine and cut them off from the sea outside.

  When they activated their headlamps, all around them the light reflected off the crystalline lattice of the membrane, producing a brilliant shimmer of white. Ahead of them the cliff face seemed startlingly unfamiliar, the monochrome green of the hologram giving little sense of its lustrous surface. It was as if they were looking at an old-fashioned sepia photograph, a hazy border framing the tinted image of some long-lost grotto.

  They walked slowly forward, their posture becoming upright as the tunnel widened. The membrane was rock-hard and provided a sure grip despite the trickle of water that ran down from the platform ahead. About eight metres in, they reached the point where the membrane had bonded magnetically with the cliff face. Costas led the way onto the stairs and crouched down to inspect the surface.

  “Almost total absence of marine encrustation, not even algae. I’ve never seen a sea more dead than this one. If we took off our helmets this place would reek of rotten eggs from the hydrogen sulphide in the water.”

  He joggled the volume setting on his communications console and looked over to make sure the others could hear. Jack murmured in acknowledgement but was preoccupied by the image in front of him. He and Katya stood side by side only a few m
etres from the darkness at the rear of the platform.

  As Costas joined them, his headlamp added further definition to the scene. Directly in front was a rectilinear rock-cut niche about twice their height and three times as wide. It was recessed about three metres into the cliff face and had been polished to an immaculate finish. On the back wall was the image that had transfixed them on the hologram, the outline of a great double door.

  Katya was the first to state the obvious, her voice taut with excitement.

  “It’s gold!”

  As their beams converged they were nearly blinded by the glare. Katya cautiously trained her headlamp on the lower edge below the brilliant shimmer.

  “Gold-plated, I’d guess,” Costas said matter-of-factly. “Beaten and burnished and then attached to stone slabs underneath. There was plenty of river gold in the Caucasus at this period but it would have stretched the resource to make these solid gold. They would have been too soft anyway.”

  Through the chink round the edge a fine sheen of water sprayed out from the cavity beyond. The light from their headlamps refracted into a myriad tiny rainbows, a kaleidoscopic halo that added to the dazzling effect of the gold.

  “They’re butted against a sill, a low jamb in the rock all round the edge.” Costas was peering at the lower right-hand corner. “That’s what’s keeping the doors from bursting out on us. They’re designed to open inwards as we thought.”

  He stood back and turned to Jack. “We need to flood this chamber to equalize the water pressure on both sides of the door. Are we ready?”

  The other two nodded and adjusted their regulator consoles, changing their breathing gas from compressed air to the trimix necessary to survive almost one hundred metres below sea level. Katya swayed slightly, feeling a rush of light-headedness as the unfamiliar mixture came online. Costas reached over to steady her.

  “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “It’ll clear your head for all those inscriptions you’re going to translate.”