Atlantis Found Part 95

Cleary's eyes reflected curiosity. "What good is a tire?"

"A little subterfuge of our own."

MINUTES later, a tremendous detonation tore through the heart of the tunnel. No flame or swirling smoke, but a blinding flash followed by an enormous shock wave that crushed the confined air before it shot away like a missile through a pneumatic tube. The explosive sound came like a giant clap of thunder before it rumbled away and its echoes slowly faded.

Very slowly, stunned by the sheer density of the shock, his ears ringing like cathedral bells, Hugo Wolf and his eight remaining security guards staggered with numbed senses to their feet and began to advance through mounds of fallen ice, expecting to find nothing but the disintegrated bodies of the Americans. The sheer concussion was far beyond what they'd expected, but their hopes were buoyed into thoughts that their enemy had been eliminated.

Rounding the bend and using flashlights to penetrate the remnant of the mist and vapors from the explosion, they slowly moved forward until they could distinguish bodies lying gruesomely in and under the ice dislodged from the tunnel's roof. Hugo's eyes wandered from figure to figure, satisfaction and elation rising inside him at the sight of the dead Americans. Not one had survived. He looked down at two men who were dressed as civilians and wondered who they were and where they had come from. They were lying facedown, and he failed to recognize them as the two men who'd driven the abominable vehicle that had caused so much death and destruction at the control center.

"Congratulations on a great triumph, Mr. Wolf," one of his guards complimented him.

Hugo slowly nodded. "Yes, but it was a triumph that came with too high a cost." Then, mechanically, he and his men turned their backs on the seeming carnage and began walking back to the hangar.

"Freeze!" Cleary shouted.

Hugo and his men whirled around, aghast at seeing dead men suddenly leap to their feet with their guns leveled and trained. He might have surrendered then and there. Any sane man would have seen that resistance could only end in certain death. But Hugo, more on reflex than with a stable mind, threw up his gun to fire, the guards following his action.

The Special Forces weapons roared as one. The security guards managed to fire only a few frenzied rounds before they were cut down. Hugo stumbled backward, stood motionless in his tracks, his face contorted as he dropped his gun and stared through shocked and glazed eyes at the neatly s.p.a.ced bullet holes that crossed the stomach of his black uniform from chest to waist. Finally, with sick certainty that he had failed, and knowing he had only a few seconds to live, he crumpled to the ground.

The gunfire had died away, and Jacobs, followed cautiously by his men, began inspecting the bodies and removing all weapons clutched in dead hands. Pitt, with his Colt hanging loosely in his right hand, came over and knelt at Hugo's side. The leader of the Wolf family's annihilated security force became aware of a presence and stared up expressionlessly.

"How did you know?" he murmured.

"Your people used the same b.o.o.by-trap trick on me in the mine in Colorado."

"But the explosion ... ?"

Pitt knew the man was going, and he had to get it in fast. "We rolled the spare tire and wheel from a tow vehicle down the tunnel, tripping the wire to your explosive charge. We then took cover in a storeroom. Immediately after the blast, we ran out and scattered ourselves in the ice debris caused by the concussion and played dead."

"Who are you?" he whispered.

"My name is Dirk Pitt."

The eyes widened briefly. "Not you," he whispered. Then the eyes froze open and his head slumped to the side.

46

THE EXPLOSION, FOLLOWED BY a storm of gunfire, resounded through the tunnel and into the hangar like thunder rumbling from the other end of a drainage pipe. Then the racket abruptly stopped and the sounds ebbed, until an ominous silence spread and hung heavy inside the hangar. Minutes pa.s.sed, with everyone standing frozen, staring into the yawning darkness, waiting with uneasy trepidation. Then the eerie stillness was broken by the approaching sound of footsteps echoing along the ice floor of the tunnel.

A figure slowly took form and walked into the refracted light falling through the roof of the hangar. A tall man, holding a stick with a white rag flowing from the top, advanced toward the semicircle of a hundred men and women holding guns, every muzzle pointed at the stranger. A scarf was wrapped around the lower half of his face. He walked directly up to Karl Wolf and his sisters, stopped, and pulled away the scarf, revealing a craggy face darkened with bearded stubble and haggard with fatigue.

"Hugo sends his regrets, but he is unable to join your little bon voyage party."

There was a moment of incredulous confusion throughout the hangar. Blondi stared in amazed fascination. Elsie's face took on an expression of shock and baffled rage. Predictably, Karl was the first to recover and come back on keel. "So it's you, Mr. Pitt," he said, observing Pitt through suspicious eyes. "You're like a curse."

"Forgive the casual dress," said Pitt cordially, "but my tux is at the cleaners."

Glaring at Pitt, her blue eyes furious, Elsie stepped forward and thrust an automatic pistol into Pitt's stomach. He grunted in pain, stepped back, and clutched his midriff, but the smile never left his face.

"You will notice," Pitt spoke tautly, "that I am unarmed and carrying a flag of truce."

Karl pushed Elsie's gun hand away. "Let me kill him," she hissed venomously.

"All in good time," he said conversationally. He looked Pitt in the eyes. "Hugo is dead?"

"As we say back home, Hugo bought the farm."

"And his men?

"In the same category."

"Were you responsible for the destruction of my aircraft?"

Pitt looked around at the smashed aircraft and shrugged. "I drove rather recklessly, I must admit."

"Where did you come from?" Wolf asked sharply.

Pitt smiled, ignored him completely, and said, "I suggest you order your people to lay down their weapons before they get hurt very badly. More than enough blood has been spilled here today. It would be the height of stupidity to add to the carnage."

"Your men, Mr. Pitt, how many of the American force are left?"

"See for yourself." Pitt turned and made a motion with his arm. Giordino, Cleary, and his remaining twenty men stepped from the tunnel into the hangar and spread out in an even line nearly ten paces apart, guns held at the ready.

"Twenty against a hundred." Karl Wolf smiled for the first time.

"We're expecting reinforcements momentarily."

"Too late," Karl said, firmly believing that Pitt was desperately attempting to save himself through deception. "The nanotech systems created to break away the ice shelf have been activated by now. The world is headed for a cataclysm as we talk. Nothing can stop it."

"I beg to differ," Pitt said, his tone purposefully neutral. "All systems were shut down ten minutes before they were to be set in motion. I'm sorry to disrupt your plans, Karl, but there will be no cataclysm. There will be no New Destiny, no Fourth Empire. The world will go on spinning around the sun as before, far from perfect, with all its man-made weaknesses and frailties. Summer and winter, blue skies and clouds, rain and snow, will continue uninterrupted until long after the human race has ceased to exist. If we become extinct, it will be from natural causes, not from some outlandish scheme by a megalomaniac bent on world domination."

"What are you saying?" Elsie snapped in growing alarm.

"No need to panic, dear sister," said Karl, his tone a shade less than congenial. "The man is lying."

Pitt shook his head wearily. "It's all over for the Wolf family. If anyone deserves to be indicted by a world tribunal for attempted crimes against humanity, it's you. When seven billion souls find out how you and your family of ghouls tried to exterminate every man, woman, and child on the planet, you're not going to be very popular. Your giant s.h.i.+ps, wealth, and treasures will be seized. And if any of your family members do escape a lifetime in jail, their every move will be closely watched by international intelligence and police agencies to ensure that they won't have any ambitions for a Fifth Empire."

"If what you say is true," Karl said with a sneer, only slightly diminished by uncertainty, "what do you plan to do with my sisters and me?"

"Not my call." Pitt sighed. "Sometime, someplace, you'll be hanged for your crimes, for all the murders you've ordered of those who stood in your way. My satisfaction will be sitting in the front row and watching you drop."

"A most provocative illusion, Mr. Pitt, and most intriguing. A pity it's pure fantasy."