The Atlantis Ascent Read online

  “Huh?” Grunt imitated him. “It was a test, pyro. You pass.”

  Otto rolled his eyes. “The things I have to put up with you.”

  Grunt snickered all the way back to the Russians.

  “Oh, Otto, I knew you’d never leave me,” Nadya said as they let them back in. She blew him a kiss.

  “Drink some more water and shut up,” Otto grumbled.

  Nadya smiled at him, grabbed one of the water bottles in the back seat, and took a long drink. Dimitri did the same.

  “Now tell us what you know or we really will leave you,” Grunt said.

  The two Russians drank some more. Otto made eye contact with them in the rearview mirror.

  “You can fill your stomachs with water but you still won’t survive this desert if we ditch you. And we will ditch you if you don’t tell us what we want,” Otto snarled, trying to sound like he meant it.

  The bluff worked. Nadya took another slug of water and replied, “Dimitri here was just a regular historian at the University of Moscow. He learned about the People of the Sea from a Mauritanian student. He started studying their culture and came across the old Saharan legends about the original water, the same water you found. He had found similar legends among the ancient Maya and the Buddhists of Tibet. That got him interested and he found an old medieval account of a well of this water in Siberia.”

  “You have the water there too? Then why come here?” Otto asked.

  “The well was dry,” Dimitri said. “I traced the legends of the healing well. Russians used to trek three hundred kilometers to get to this well. It is still in the middle of nowhere. It took me years to find it, and when I did it looked just like the descriptions said. It was dry, but I had at least some proof. I got one of the new oil millionaires to dig there but we found nothing except a vast underground network of caverns, all dry.”

  “So you decided to look here,” Otto said. “How did you get the Russian government involved?”

  “They are not involved,” Nadya said. “We are our own team.”

  Otto slammed on the breaks and brought the Land Rover to a grinding halt.

  “Out!” he shouted.

  Dimitri raised his hands, “All right! All right! We do have government backing. This oil baron has many connections, and he convinced the government to fund me and give me a team. They didn’t believe in the water at first, saying it was just religious superstition, but someone went digging in the old Soviet archives and found more evidence for the water. Think what we could do if we got some to analyze! We could heal all illness!”

  “Or make an invincible army,” Grunt said. “That’s what you and your government really want.”

  Nadya sat up straight. “Why shouldn’t Russia be strong? Your government would do the same thing. That is what those American generals are after, that and the Atlantean DNA.”

  “That’s not the government,” Otto said. “They’re rogue.”

  The Russians fell silent. Otto kept driving, making a series of crisscross paths through the desert, guided by a map Grunt was checking. The idea was to make a systematic survey of the desert and try to find Jaxon and Orion, but after what Meade had said, Otto didn’t hold out much hope. Orion and Jaxon could be halfway to Morocco by now.

  Or anywhere else.

  Every now and then one of the other teams radioed in to report they hadn’t found them either. A couple of the Tuareg teams had been chased by the Mauritanian military, who had shown up in large numbers, and the rebels warned everyone to be on their guard.

  Nadya and Dimitri started whispering to each other in Russian.

  “Quiet back there,” Grunt said.

  They fell silent. After a minute Nadya spoke.

  “Let’s make a deal.”

  “You have nothing to bargain with,” Grunt replied.

  “We have the Russian network in this region. They can help you find your friend.”

  “Oh yeah, have the Russian government find Jaxon, that would really make everything better,” Otto said.

  “You will never find her this way, and soon you will have to call off the search when the army comes after you.”

  Otto and Grunt glanced at each other. Nadya went on.

  “We have failed to get the water, and we cannot get the secret from you. The next best thing for us to do is to stop those American generals. If we cannot get what we want, at least we can keep the enemy from getting what they want. We have agents all over the region. If you let us contact them, we can start the search. Even if they go to another country we can find them. They are a very visible pair.”

  Otto and Grunt glanced at one another again.

  “How can we trust you?” Otto asked.

  “You can trust that we don’t want those generals to succeed. We have to come back to our government with something.”

  Otto grinned. “Or you’ll be back in Siberia, but this time not looking for a healing well.”

  Nadya pouted. “Oh Otto, you used to be so nice to me.”

  Grunt glanced between him and the Russian spy. Before he could ask any awkward questions, Otto said, “You’ll try to betray us the first chance you’ll get.”

  Nadya laughed. “Of course we will, you silly boy! Your bald friend with the funny tattoos already understands this.”

  Grunt tried to hide a smirk. Otto rolled his eyes. He just couldn’t win with these people.

  “Do we risk it?” Otto asked Grunt.

  Grunt shrugged. “What do we have to lose?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Not really. They’re right, we’re not going to find them, and if we keep looking we’re going to get busted. All of us. Then it’s game over.”

  Otto thought for a moment, trying to figure out a better way, a safer way, a way that didn’t require them to trust people they knew were untrustworthy.

  He couldn’t come up with anything.

  Chapter 17

  SEPTEMBER 1, ROSSO, ON THE BORDER BETWEEN MAURITANIA AND SENEGAL

  3:15 PM

  * * *

  General Corbin watched as Isadore prepared the syringe. Nearby, Jaxon lay in a hotel bed in a state of chemically-induced unconsciousness. Her head was wrapped in fresh bandages. Vice President Salek had been kind enough to send a top doctor from the capital to take care of Jaxon’s concussion. A good thing too, because Corbin didn’t trust any of the doctors in this hick border town.

  They had been here for two days, waiting for Jaxon to heal. She was recovering much faster than an average human, but still needed time. Keeping her unconscious had proven to be the only way to keep her in line. Any time she regained consciousness she screamed and fought. Corbin didn’t want to have to kill her, at least not yet.

  They had moved south to this border town on the Senegal River on a hunch. While Jaxon was still severely injured and drifting in and out of consciousness, she had mumbled something about The Gambia. Corbin had no idea what was going on in that nation, just three hundred miles south of here, but he decided to get as close as he could while still being able to rely on Salek’s help. Once they left Mauritania, they’d be on their own.

  “You sure the truth serum will work on an Atlantean?” Corbin asked.

  Isadore shrugged. “I have no idea. I can double the dose if you want.”

  “Do it.”

  “That might have averse side effects,” Isadore warned.

  “She’s not as valuable as she once was.”

  “All right.” Isadore added some more serum and set the hypodermic next to another one that would wake up Jaxon.

  Before she gave her the injections, Isadore handcuffed Jaxon to the metal frame of the bed. Corbin drew a pistol, a gift from Salek, and kept it ready.

  “Will those cuffs hold her?” he asked.

  “She might be able to break them, but she’d break her arm doing it. She’s still only flesh and blood,” the assassin replied.

  Isadore gave Jaxon the first injection, telling Corbin it would take a few minutes to wake her
up.

  Impatient, he moved to the balcony of their hotel, the best in town but still pretty run down. It did have a fine view, though, over the low concrete and wooden buildings and three or four minarets to the gleaming river to the south. On the far shore lay Senegal, and beyond that The Gambia. The air was more humid here, and trees grew along the sides of the streets. The people were different too, fewer of the brown-skinned Arabs and Tuaregs and more black-skinned Africans from south of the Sahara.

  He’d been monitoring the news. His and General Meade’s disappearance had become international headlines. The government hadn’t been able to keep it out of the papers. It didn’t matter. Salek was already concocting a story about his being kidnapped by the People of the Sea. Corbin had even posed for a video, tied to a chair and with Orion posing next to him with a gun. It all looked very convincing. Salek would release it when the time was right, and then go on to “save” Corbin. That would make Salek a hero, get him loads of support from the United States, and Corbin’s story about investigating an Atlantean terror group would be vindicated.

  Of course that meant Salek would have even more dirt on him. Corbin didn’t like the idea of that guy knowing so much. Once he got in power in the United States he’d have to take care of him. Of course that wouldn’t prove easy. Salek would no doubt share his secrets with a few trusted advisors or leave the information in a safety deposit box in some European bank, to be released to the press on the occasion of Salek’s death or disappearance. That was standard insurance practice in the underworld, and Corbin had no doubt Salek would think of it. Corbin would have to tread carefully.

  That would all come at a later time. Right now he was happy to be invisible, using the false passport he had kept hidden in an inside pocket of his uniform all this time. Now he wore civilian clothes, and traveled under a different name. He just hoped no one recognized him. His face had been plastered everywhere.

  “She’s coming to,” Isadore said.

  General Corbin moved back to the foot of the bed and pointed his pistol at Jaxon. The teenager’s eyes fluttered open. The first thing she saw was the black muzzle of the gun. Her eyes widened with a brief spike of fear, then narrowed in anger and calculation.

  “You awake enough to listen?” Corbin asked.

  Jaxon nodded, wincing at the pain the simple movement caused her.

  “Good. Behave and you might make it out alive.”

  “I don’t have much hope of that,” Jaxon replied. Her voice came out weak.

  “You could have had so much if you had just stayed with us,” Isadore said, giving her the second injection.

  Jaxon watched her warily. After a minute her eyes glazed over and her mouth went slack.

  Corbin had used truth serums before. Unlike what they showed in the movies, a truth serum did not force the subject to tell everything. They still had some willpower. What it did do was to lower their inhibitions and their rational thinking, very much like being drunk but with the memory and intelligence intact. It took careful questioning to get around the remaining resistance and extract the needed information.

  General Corbin and Isadore were both trained in finding out just what they wanted in these circumstances, and after an hour of poking and prodding and asking the same questions over and over again in different ways, they found out everything they needed to know.

  And what they learned changed everything.

  Both Jaxon and Orion had more power than he had suspected, and some strange old artifact down in The Gambia would give them more. Once he had assembled enough Atlantean slaves, he could shift the artifact from one to the other, using their various special abilities at will. He would have unlimited power.

  He realized that he had been too modest in his aspirations. Why rule the United States when he could rule the world? It was possible now.

  But first he had to get down to The Gambia and get that artifact.

  “We should kill her,” Isadore said once she had given Jaxon another injection to knock her out again. “Let me give her a poison. I can make it look like a heart attack. Rare in someone her age, but the doctors here won’t suspect a thing. She’s too much of a danger to bring along.”

  Corbin rubbed his jaw, considering. “She is a bit of a handful.”

  “She’s been nothing but trouble since the beginning. She’s got too much of a mind of her own. I offered her wealth and she turned her back on it like it was nothing.”

  “There are more things in the world than money.”

  Isadore kept a neutral expression. Corbin knew that if he hadn’t been her boss, she would have laughed right in his face. It didn’t matter. Power was far more important than money, and he’d have plenty of that soon enough.

  “Let me kill her,” she repeated. “We have Orion. He can sense where the artifact is.”

  Corbin paused and looked at the little black bag sitting on the bedside table that contained Isadore’s collection of poisons. Just a single little needle jab and one of his major problems would be solved forever.

  “No,” he said at last. “It’s better to have two of these special Atlanteans. What if something happens to Orion? Then we’ll never get that artifact. Besides, once we get her back to the Poseidon Project we can get her under control.”

  Isadore shook her head. “Don’t be too sure.”

  “We shall see. If she causes too much trouble, we can always kill her later. Right now, though, we have to plan a trip down to The Gambia.”

  Luckily, his good friend Vice President Salek had already provided them with a large Land Rover that could hold them all. It was a bit cramped, and Corbin didn’t really like to share his space with a pair of psychopathic twins, an assassin, a slave, and a prisoner, but he didn’t want a second vehicle. He didn’t want to split up his forces. Corbin had the feeling that the Atlantis Allegiance wouldn’t be far behind.

  The trip down to Banjul, the capital of The Gambia, took two days. The roads were bad and clogged with trucks, and the lines at both border crossings took hours. Customs officials in this part of the world took ages to check every vehicle and get through the paperwork. Corbin sweated every minute of the way. He had to beat the Atlantis Allegiance down here or all would be lost. He made frequent calls to Salek for updates, but the vice president could tell him little. Besides some battles with the Tuaregs, who now had People of the Sea fighting in their ranks, there was no sign of the troublemakers.

  That prison camp was getting some international attention, though. Video of the squalid conditions had made it onto the Internet, and while the major news media usually ignored human rights abuses in countries they didn’t care about, the story gained extra interest since two American generals had disappeared in the same country. The press speculated that the two events might be linked, but they had no proof.

  Corbin barely noticed the beautiful countryside they passed through. After crossing the Senegal River, they had left the desert behind. Soon the land became lush, and they passed grasslands waving in the wind, palm trees, and field of millet. The people were mostly black Africans, and far more numerous than up north. Villages of thatched roof huts dotted the road every few miles, and the radio was alive with dozens of stations rather than a couple of faint, distant broadcasts.

  They got to Banjul on the afternoon of the second day, a bustling city of half a million people near the mouth of the River Gambia. While Jaxon’s description of the Atlantean slave trader had been vague, it had been enough to track down some information on the Internet. Mars Sans Pitié had been quite a colorful figure in the 17th century. He had for a brief period dominated the mouth of the River Gambia, one of the main outlets for the slave trade. His fort still stood just a few miles downstream from Banjul.

  General Corbin wasted no time going there. They grabbed the first livable hotel they could find and headed for the riverside. Unfortunately, he had to bring Jaxon along. He needed all his people at the fort, and he didn’t dare knock her out and leave her alone in the hotel roo
m. If she woke up she’d cause all sorts of trouble. Her Atlantean body had healed far more quickly than a normal human’s and she was full of fight again.

  The McKay twins got her in line.

  “Listen, lass. You cause a ruck or try to scarper, we’ll be hard on you.”

  “I’ll behave,” Jaxon said. Corbin wasn’t convinced. Neither were the McKay twins.

  “You remember our razors, luvvie?” one of them said.

  Jaxon nodded soberly.

  “Well if you make a fuss we’ll skin the ears off the nearest babe and feed them to his mum on toast, understand?”

  Jaxon shuddered. She knew they meant it. Good. Corbin didn’t want that sort of spectacle on the streets of Banjul.

  And those streets were far too crowded for his liking. They had to shoulder their way through a thick crowd. The dirt roads were a cacophony of honking trucks and revving motorcycles, and what passed for the sidewalks were lined with little wooden market stalls selling peanuts, bananas, jugs of palm oil, and cheap Chinese electronics and plastics. Locals, mostly young men, kept pestering them.

  “You need hotel?”

  “No.”

  “You need guide? I show you the market!”

  “We’re already walking through it.”

  “You want to buy some bananas?”

  “Do I look like I do?”

  “Yes! Here is a good bunch. Very cheap!”

  Ronnie McKay pushed the banana seller out of the way.

  “You need hotel?”

  “I already told your friend I didn’t.”

  “You want bar? I know a good bar.”

  “I’m beginning to need one, but no.”

  “You need boat?”

  That got Corbin’s attention. He kept on walking but actually looked at the guy who tagged along beside him—a lanky teenager in denim shorts, leather sandals, and a t-short that had more holes than fabric.

  “You have a boat that can fit all of us?” Corbin asked dubiously.

  “My uncle’s boat! Very fine boat. He can show you everything—the port, the bay, he can even take you all the way out to the ocean for fishing.”