Atlantis

nearly lost the escape sub.”

They had retrieved the submersible soon after despatching the DSRV, its passengers safely delivered to Sea Venture some thirty nautical miles west. Even though they had secured the craft inside the internal bay it had bounced off its pivots during the night, nearly causing a massive weight displacement that would have been fatal for the ship and crew. If the efforts of Howe and his team had failed, they would have had no recourse but to ditch the sub, a move that might have saved Seaquest but would have cut off their only emergency escape route.

“We’re only a skeleton crew of twelve,” Howe continued. “My people have been working flat out through the night. What’s our status?”

York looked at the SATNAV monitor and watched their co-ordinates converge with the GPS fix where they had launched the DSRV the day before. The storm had almost abated, the sea had reduced to a moderate swell and the morning sunlight shimmered off the glassy surface of the island. It was going to be a perfect summer’s day.

“If we still haven’t heard from Jack in six hours’ time I’m sending in the divers. Meanwhile, you can stand down the crew for the next watch so they can have a well-earned rest. I’ll call reveille at twelve hundred hours.”

“And our guardian angels?”

“Same time frame. If there’s no contact we’ll transmit emergency status notification at twelve hundred hours.”

Their guardian angels were the naval task force, which was their ultimate back-up. Already a Turkish frigate and FAC flotilla had passed through the Bosporus and was steaming full speed in their direction, and in Trabzon a flight of Seahawk helicopters with elements of the Turkish Special Forces Amphibious Marine Brigade was in advanced readiness. Mustafa Alkozen and a team of high-ranking Turkish diplomats had flown to the Georgian capital Tbilisi to ensure that any intervention was a fully collaborative effort between the two nations.

“Right.” Howe spoke with obvious relief. “I’m going to check the forward gun turret and then catch some shut-eye myself. See you at noon.”

York nodded and moved to the binnacle. Twenty minutes ago the helmsman had reported a huge cleft in the seabed, a previously uncharted tectonic fault ten kilometres long and over five hundred metres deep. He had watched as the depth-finder charted their progress from the canyon up to the line of the ancient shoreline 150 metres deep. They had now reached their rendezvous position and were hove to one and a half nautical miles north-north-west of the island, almost exactly the spot where Jack and Costas had first seen the ancient city from the Aquapods the day before.

York looked towards the island, the twin peaks and saddle now clearly visible where the caldera had collapsed eons ago. He stood still, in awe at what might lie below. It was almost beyond belief that the waters in front of him concealed the greatest wonder of the ancient world, a city that pre-dated all others by thousands of years and contained towering pyramids, colossal statues and multi-storeyed tenements, a community more advanced than any other in prehistory. And to cap it all somewhere below lay the sinister form of a Soviet nuclear submarine, something he had spent half a lifetime training to destroy.

A voice crackled over the radio. “Seaquest, this is Sea Venture. Do you read me? Over.”

York grabbed the mike and spoke excitedly. “Macleod, this is Seaquest. Relay your co-ordinates. Over.”

“We’re still trapped in Trabzon by the storm.” The voice was wavering and distorted, the effect of 100 miles of electrical mayhem. “But Mustafa’s managed to tap into a satellite. It’s hot-wired for heat imagery. It should be streaming in now.”

York swivelled to get a closer look at the screen on the navigation console, moving alongside the crewman who had the helm. A flickering sheen of colour resolved itself into a rocky landscape and then fragmented into a mosaic of pixels.

“You’re looking at the central part of the island.” Macleod’s voice was barely audible. “The eastern shore is at the top. We’ve only got a few moments before we lose the satellite.”

The upper half of the screen remained obscure but another sweep of the scanner revealed a vivid image at the centre. Beside the jagged contusions of lava lay the edge of a wide platform, a radius of evenly spaced stones just visible to the left. To the right was the unmistakable outline of a rock-cut stairway.

“Yes!” The crewman punched the air. “They made it!”

York eagerly followed his gaze. Two red blotches detached from the stairway and were clearly moving. A third appeared from the haze of pixels at the top of the screen.

“Strange.” York was uneasy. “They’re moving up from the direction of the shoreline, yet Jack was convinced the underground passage would land them near the top of the volcano. And they should have made radio contact as soon as they reached the surface.”

As if on cue his worst suspicions were confirmed. A fourth and then a fifth figure emerged into view, fanned out on either side of the stairway.

“Christ,” the crewman exclaimed. “Not ours.”

The image disintegrated and the crackle of the radio became continuous. The crewman’s head jerked towards a warning light on the adjacent screen.

“Sir, you should see this.”

The monitor displayed the circular sweep of a military-specification Racal Decca TM1226 surface-search and navigation radar.

“There’s a contact detaching itself from the east side of the island. I can’t be sure until the image clarifies, but I’d say we’re looking at a warship the size of a frigate, maybe a large FAC.”

Just then there was a terrific shriek overhead and the two men were thrown violently back. York picked himself up and ran to the starboard wing just in time to see a plume of spray erupt five hundred metres off the bow. At the same moment they heard a distant crack of gunfire, the sound reverberating off the island and rolling towards them in the clear morning air.

“All systems down, I repeat, all systems down,” the crewman shouted. “Radar, radio, computers. Everything’s dead.”

York lurched back into the deckhouse and quickly looked around. Through the door to the navigation room he could see his monitor was blank. The lighting and VHF radio in the bridge were out, along with the GPS receiver and all other LCD displays. He immediately pulled down the handle on the clockwork klaxon and flipped open the lid on the voice tube that led to all quarters of the ship.

“Now hear this,” he bellowed above the alarm. “Red alert. Red alert. We are under attack. All electronics are down. I repeat, all electronics are down. Major Howe, report to the bridge at once. All other crew assemble in the internal bay and prepare to deploy the escape sub Neptune II.” He snapped the lid shut and looked across at the helmsman, his face grim and drawn. “An E-bomb.”

The other man nodded knowingly. The gravest addition in recent years to the terrorist arsenal had been electromagnetic bombs, magnetically charged shells that emitted a multimillion watt microwave pulse when they exploded. The most powerful made a lightning bolt seem like a lightbulb, and could disable all electric power, computers and telecommunications within their radius.

“Time for you to join the others, Mike,” York ordered the helmsman. “The reserve battery packs in the sub and the command module are protected from electromagnetic interference so should still be operable. Peter and I will stay as long as possible and depart in the module if necessary. It’s imperative that you reach Turkish territorial waters before transmitting your position. The call code is ‘Ariadne needs Guardian Angel’ on the secure IMU channel. As senior crewman you have my authority.”

“Aye, sir. And good luck, Captain.”

“And to you too.”

As the crewman clattered hurriedly down the ladder, York focused his binoculars on the eastern extremity of the island. Seconds later a low form slipped out from behind the rocks, its raking prow as menacing as a shark’s snout. In the pellucid morning light every feature seemed accentuated, from the gun turret in front of the sleek superstructure to the fanjet nacelles on the stern.

He knew it could only be Vultura. Apart from the US and Britain, only the Russians had developed electromagnetic pulse artillery shells. During the most recent Gulf conflict Russia’s studied neutrality