The Atlantis Codex (Warner & Lopez Book 7) Read online

  Lopez pulled out the cell, took one look at the screen and then she hurled herself at Ethan and crashed into him.

  *

  Hellerman finished sending his text and then he laid down out of sight of the shaft opening and with the bent branch he probed in the opening. He pressed one ear down against his arm to protect his hearing and used his other arm to shield his right ear.

  The branch pressed against something and then a deafening explosion reverberated through the ground beneath Hellerman as the landmine detonated and blasted a cloud of debris out of the passage to flutter into the sunlight around him.

  Hellerman leaped up and grabbed the mirror he’d bought from the shopkeeper, turned it and deflected the brilliant rays of the sunrise into the shaft.

  *

  Ethan staggered upright as Lopez climbed off him, clouds of debris fluttering down around them as the torrent of filth from inside the shaft poured out into the chamber. As he got up he realized that he could see a bright shaft of light beaming down into the chamber, light enough that they no longer needed the flaming torch.

  Lopez set it aside as she showed him the message on her cell phone.

  FIRE IN THE HOLE

  She turned and yelled up the shaft at Hellerman.

  ‘A couple of yards of bamboo would have done the job! Why’d you try to blow us all up?’

  To Ethan’s amazement, he heard Hellerman’s voice snap back down at them.

  ‘Hurry up, they’re here!’

  Ethan felt a pinch of concern as he realized that the Russians must already have caught up with them. He was about to suggest getting out of the chamber when a fearsome beam of sunlight burst through the shaft into the chamber and Ethan forgot about Hellerman and the Russians and pretty much everything else.

  The sunbeam struck the top of the sarcophagus and instantly both the undulating top of the structure and the sundial cast their shadows across the chamber’s west wall. Ethan turned as he saw the moving shadow cast there, Hellerman somehow deflecting the rising sun’s rays to mimic the sunrise at the solstice.

  The engravings on the wall burst into relief, the moving shadows seeming to breathe life into the ancient carvings as though they were moving with the sun. As the light strengthened so Ethan noticed that the uneven surface of the sarcophagus now appeared in shadow on the wall as rolling hills and mountains, the unmistakeable horizon of a landscape cast in sunlight as the sundial cast its vertical shadow down on a singular point on the horizon.

  Lopez flipped her cell phone over and snapped an image of the vivid display just before the sun moved out of alignment and the light began to fade. Ethan looked up the shaft for Hellerman, but instead he heard a different voice call down to him from far above.

  ‘Comrades! I believe that you have found what we are looking for.’

  Ethan did not know to whom the voice belonged but he could detect the Russian accent with ease.

  ‘Sure, why don’t you come down here and take a look?’ he called back.

  The Russian laughed, no sound of genuine humor in his voice.

  ‘I think that we have all we need up here, don’t we?’

  Ethan heard Hellerman shout down at them. ‘Don’t do what they say! Tell them to go to hell and…’

  Ethan heard a faint thump and the sound of coughing as Hellerman was silenced by one of the Russian thugs. Their leader called down to them once more.

  ‘I have your friend’s cell phone here, and he has been in contact with you already. Send me everything you have or I will have to fire this pistol I have pressed to his head, understand?’

  Ethan swore under his breath but he nodded at Lopez, who was already sending the images they had taken as Ethan began backing away toward the main chamber exit.

  ‘You’ll kill him anyway!’ he shouted back up at the Russian.

  The reply that came back down was as cold as ice.

  ‘This young man? No, he is far too useful. But the two of you? Trust me, the next time somebody lays eyes on either of you, it will be you who is ten thousand years old!’

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Ethan heard something rattling down the shaft and before he could say anything two grenades dropped out of the shaft and clattered onto the floor of the temple just inches from where he and Lopez stood.

  Lopez whirled and vaulted over the top of the sundial and sarcophagus as Ethan hurled himself over behind her with far less grace. They slammed down together and covered their ears as the two grenades detonated with a deafening double blast that sent shrapnel flying across the chamber to clatter against the rocks.

  Ethan remained crouched where he was as he looked at Lopez.

  ‘They’ll find the entrance and seal it shut,’ he said in a hushed whisper.

  ‘We can’t get there quickly enough anyway, it must be visible from that shaft. The Russians will shoot us on sight and take Hellerman with them.’

  Ethan listened intently to the sounds coming from outside the shaft. He heard what sounded like walking boots, and then a shadow was cast over the shaft as somebody tried to peer down into the chamber. Ethan saw the feeble glow of a flashlight probe down the shaft and then the Russian’s voice taunted them once again.

  ‘You may hide if you wish, but your wait will be a long one.’

  There was a cackle of laughter and then the sunlight returned and the sound of men vanished.

  ‘They’ve got Jo’,’ Lopez whispered harshly.

  ‘One thing at a time,’ Ethan said as he looked about. ‘Most of these temples and pyramids have more than one exit.’

  Lopez nodded as she too looked around them. ‘That may be true, but we don’t know anything about this place. How can we possibly find hidden exits from in here?’

  ‘Because we are in here,’ Ethan grinned in reply. ‘They normally hide entrances to stop people getting in to tombs, not to stop them from getting out.’

  Lopez couldn’t argue with his logic, but a faint crackling sound and the smell of burning caught their senses and they turned to see burning debris tumbling into the entrance shaft, the flickering light of flames lighting the corridor in a ghoulish glow.

  ‘They’re gonna suffocate us,’ Lopez said.

  Ethan got up and hurried to the back wall of the chamber, searching the surface for any possible means of escape. The builders, if they were in any way influenced in the same way as the Egyptians, would have probably used carved blocks to prevent access to the chamber by grave robbers.

  Ethan searched the entire back wall but he could see nothing but smoothly cut and positioned stone. There were no doorways, no loose bricks, nothing. The acrid stench of smoke filled the chamber as Lopez backed out of the entrance passageway followed by clouds puffing on the air.

  ‘They’re too thick and too many, I couldn’t stamp the fire out,’ she coughed as she joined him.

  The Russians would have used green foliage, which burns with thick smoke, tossing it down into the shaft and then sealing it once more. Ethan knew that there was no need to try to burn them alive down here: most victims of fires were dead from asphyxiation long before the first flames scorched their skin.

  ‘Make it fast, Ethan,’ Lopez warned. ‘You don’t get us out of here I’m gonna dock your pay check.’

  ‘Get low to the ground,’ Ethan ordered as he crouched down, the veils of choking smoke drifting up to the ceiling. As he did so he found himself looking at the floor of the chamber, the stones as smoothly cut and placed as those of the walls.

  There was no way that he and Lopez could dig their way out of here, but if there was some kind of passage like the entrance they had used that would lead out of the chamber then it would probably be on the opposite side to the one that they entered: one passage to the world of the living, another to the underworld.

  Ethan looked down again at the stone floor. ‘It goes down.’

  ‘Say what now?’

  Ethan scanned the floor of the chamber as the smoke lowered further, the air thick with
it and stinging his throat. Ethan’s eyes blurred as he squinted and tried to see a pattern in the stones. There, barely six feet from where he crouched, he saw a faint rectangular shape where the stones had not been modified to fit each other but instead had been cut with straight lines.

  ‘There!’

  Ethan crawled across to the rectangle and instantly saw that the gaps around its edges were just a little wider than those around the rest of the stones. His chest heaved and he began coughing, sweat and prickly heat tingling on his skin as he grabbed the edge of the rectangle and pulled with all of the strength he could muster.

  Lopez moved alongside him and heaved at the block, managing to get her smaller fingers down into the crevice around it as she too began shaking with convulsive coughs. With a heave of effort Ethan felt the block rasp and lift as the smoke finally blinded him and his vision swirled with light and color as his brain began to shut down from a lack of oxygen.

  Ethan’s fingers dragged along the edge of the block and he felt them scrape on the stone as he lost his grip and his balance with it. The heavy block slammed down into place once more and the thick smoke enveloped him as collapsed onto his side.

  ***

  XXIV

  Konstantin Petrov climbed into the rear of an SUV and settled in as the driver turned the vehicle around and pulled away from the ancient site. He turned and looked over his shoulder through the window at the forested hill behind them. Despite the thick foliage they had forced into the chamber entrance and the ferocity of the flames, the perfect seal of the replaced stone had prevented even a wisp of smoke from escaping from the chamber. By now, Warner and Lopez would probably be dead and roasting nicely.

  He turned to the young and nervous looking man sitting next to him, his wrists manacled in his lap and Petrov’s pistol pressed into his side.

  ‘Now then,’ he began, ‘the image on that cell phone. How would you determine what it tells us? I should add that if I detect any hint of deception, I will respond by shooting off your kneecaps.’

  The young man known as Hellerman trembled visibly but he picked his chin up and clenched his fists.

  ‘You may as well kill me, I won’t tell you anything.’

  Petrov chuckled. It was always amusing to him how people always managed to put a brave face on when confronted with the threat of violence and pain, presumably inspired by the courage of television heroes or imagined peer pressure. In reality, there was little to be gained by withholding information that could almost certainly be gained by other means. Confessions merely shortened the amount of time it took to obtain the required information, and Petrov was an impatient man.

  ‘Joseph,’ he replied softly as the SUV descended along the track toward the coast, fifty miles to the south, ‘we have a long and uncomfortable journey ahead of us. When I get back to our people with this information, I will have them working on it and they will reveal everything I need to know. Your assistance will merely save us time. Your friends are dead by now and you will be serving no purpose by trying to be a hero. Save yourself a lot of pain for no ultimate reason, Joseph. Take a look at the photograph on your cell and tell me what these shadows on the wall mean to you.’

  Hellerman glanced down at the image that Petrov showed to him, and his eyes briefly shimmered with light and life as he saw something there. In an instant Petrov knew that Hellerman could decipher whatever was hidden in the image and that gave the American some leverage, at least for now.

  Hellerman looked up at Petrov. ‘I know what it means to me.’

  ‘Then tell me,’ Petrov urged.

  Hellerman smiled. ‘It tells me that my friends died rather than reveal to you what it means, and that’s what I’m going to do too.’

  Petrov looked into the young man’s eyes, saw them filled with a volatile mixture of apprehension and determination and pride and fear. He had seen that look before in many interrogations, and although he knew the young American would break with the impact of the very first bullet through his kneecap, he knew also that he would probably try to deceive and delay as long as he could just to keep himself alive in the hope that rescue would somehow come from somewhere.

  Petrov glanced at his driver. ‘Pull up here.’

  The SUV slowed as Petrov holstered his pistol and then reached down and with a small key unlocked the American’s manacles. Hellerman looked up at him in confusion.

  ‘You’re letting me go?’

  Petrov looked at him for a moment. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  *

  Ethan lay on the stone and coughed as his vision blurred into life and he turned to see Lopez standing over him, a length of wood in her hand, her fingers smeared with blood that looked black in the harsh glow of the flashlight.

  Veils of smoke swirled all around her, her vest off and wrapped around her face as she tossed the length of wood aside and grabbed his hands.

  ‘Get the hell up!’

  Ethan pulled his legs in and managed to stagger to his feet, and as he swayed unsteadily he saw that Lopez had been able to wedge a chunk of tree root beneath the stone block before grabbing a length of wood to prize it open. A black rectangle of darkness awaited them as she pointed down into the shaft.

  ‘Get down there!’

  Ethan staggered down a set of stone steps into the darkness and away from the choking smoke, his head clearing rapidly as clean air filled his lungs and his vision cleared. Lopez followed him in, and he saw her reach up and haul the heavy stone block back into place on its mounts. The glow from the crackling fire vanished and Ethan used his cell phone screen to illuminate Lopez as she sealed the stone back in place.

  ‘Good work,’ he coughed, his voice hoarse.

  ‘If a job needs doing, it needs doing by a woman,’ she replied. ‘Lead the way then.’

  Ethan smiled to himself as he descended the steps, which led onto a ramp which continued downward. The walls of the passage were roughly hewn, not dressed and polished like those of the chamber above them. Ethan eased his way down and spotted the ramp levelling out as it headed roughly due south.

  Thick vines began to appear in the ceiling of the passage, evidence of the forest growth above them as they moved.

  ‘The passage must end somewhere just up ahead,’ Lopez said.

  Ethan kept moving and pointed the light to where he could now see a slanted block of stone maybe two feet square in size at the end of the tunnel, roots growing around it in dense coils like the fingers of some grotesque creature.

  ‘We’re on the south side of the pyramid,’ Ethan said. ‘This should bring us out in the forest somewhere near the village.’

  He stopped before the giant stone and felt around the edges but he could find no immediate means of moving the block. He was about to consider digging out and around it through the walls of soil and stone when Lopez pushed past and looked up at the stone.

  ‘Step back,’ she said.

  Ethan eased to one side as Lopez felt around the edge of the stone until she was able to get her fingers into a narrow seam across the top edge of the block. Ethan moved the cell phone’s light to illuminate the area and he saw that the block was sitting on a ridge of smaller stones arranged around its edge. Lopez levered the block this way and that, wincing as she did so but shifting the block bit by bit until Ethan could get his hands into the same seam.

  Ethan pushed and pulled and the stone shifted in position until he could get his fingers beneath its edge. Chunks of soil and debris broke away from behind the stone slab, freeing it further, and Ethan reached down with both hands and grabbed the bottom of the block. With one great heave he lifted it clear and dropped it onto the floor of the passage behind them.

  For a moment he thought that they had been duped and that there was no exit here, the space behind the block as dark and dank as the rest of the tunnel. Then Lopez turned sideways and drove one boot into the thick soil and instantly several inches of mud tumbled into the tunnel followed by bright light and a waft of blessed clean
air. Two more kicks and the rest of the soil collapsed and revealed the forest outside.

  Lopez dusted off her hands and smiled up at him. ‘Ladies first.’

  She ducked out of the tunnel, Ethan right behind her as they stood up and breathed in the sweet fresh air. Ethan could feel the tropical heat on his skin and the air may have been humid and dense but right now it was like a drug and he breathed it in deeply before looking around and getting his bearings.

  ‘There’s the village,’ he said, pointing to their left.

  Lopez turned and headed straight for it, crouching low and with Ethan following close behind her. He could see the shanty town on the dusty track, and the rows of tuk–tuks and mopeds lined up nearby. A few locals were walking up and down, going about their daily business. Ethan could see no sign of any other vehicles on the road and no sign of any Russians among the villagers either.

  He followed Lopez to the edge of the treeline and they crouched there for a moment. Ethan noticed in the dust before them thick tire tracks, of the kind he might expect to see on SUVs or similar American gas–guzzling vehicles. His eye traced the tracks into the village, and then signs that they had turned around and left again.

  ‘They’re already gone,’ he said as he looked down toward the south.

  ‘And they’ve taken Jo’ with them,’ Lopez said urgently. ‘They won’t need him for long and we know what they’ll do with him when they’re done.’

  Ethan nodded and looked at the old mopeds lining the shanty buildings. They were all ancient but they’d get them back to the coast far quicker than the tuk–tuks that had brought them here.

  Ethan followed Lopez across to the mopeds. An elderly man watching over them shook his head and waved a stick at them, the mopeds hired by people to bring them here and parked for safe keeping. Ethan produced a wedge of green notes and handed the old man a hundred bucks. The old guy’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets and he instantly pointed to two of the newer looking machines nearby,