“Enemy RIB approaching, range eight hundred metres,” he cried. “Depressing barrels to minimum elevation. Engage over open sights!”
York frantically spun the elevation wheel while Howe flipped up the metallic viewfinder in front of the gunner’s seat. Just as his hand closed on the left-hand trigger, there was a deafening crash that threw both men to the floor. With a sound like a thousand smashing windows, a hail of metal splinters ricocheted off the turret armour. One of them sliced deep into York’s leg and drenched his overalls with blood. Seconds later two further explosions swept the deck and a searing concussion marked another armour-piercing projectile as it ploughed through the deckhouse and crashed in the sea off the starboard bow.
York hauled himself to his feet, his ears ringing furiously and his left leg useless, and stared at the gaping hole where the bridge had been. For a man wedded to the sea it was an appalling sight, as if he were helplessly watching the woman he loved in her death throes, sightless, beyond speech, her face destroyed.
“Let’s get those bastards.” His voice was cold and steady despite the pain.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Howe was back in the gunner’s seat with the RIB in his sights as it hurtled towards them less than two hundred metres away. With the barrels at maximum depression he blasted off the remaining HE rounds at one- second intervals. The first fell short but raised the pontoons until they caught the wind and seemed to take off. The second passed under the keel and blew the RIB entirely out of the water, the stern careening up so they could see the six wetsuited men clinging desperately to the floorboards. The third exploded against the transom, igniting the fuel supply and vaporizing the boat and its occupants in a fireball of carnage that rolled towards them at frightening speed.
The two men had no time for elation. The end when it came was as violent and merciless as they could have foreseen.
As the first burning fragments of the RIB hit the turret, they felt a gigantic ripple course beneath their feet. Rivets burst out and the metal twisted grotesquely from one side of the deck to the other. A moment later another shell blasted the turret off its mounting and blew them towards the starboard railing. They were enveloped in a holocaust of fire, a burning vortex that hurled them into a narrowing void.
As York fought oblivion he caught a final glimpse of
CHAPTER 21
As they plunged into the forbidding darkness of the tunnel beneath the eagle’s left wing tip, they could see the walls had been smoothed and polished like the previous passageways. For the first few metres beyond the hall of the ancestors, Costas led the way, but soon it widened and Jack and Katya were able to swim alongside. After about ten metres the floor became a shallow stairway, the worn steps progressing upwards at a steady gradient as far as their lights could penetrate.
“The gods are with us this time,” Costas said. “Another few minutes at this depth and we’d have been here permanently.”
As they ascended the slope, they conserved energy by using their buoyancy compensators for lift. The walls were carved with a continuous frieze of life-sized bulls, their sinuous forms startlingly reminiscent of Minoan bull paintings on Crete. They seemed to glower and stomp on either side as they processed upwards.
Just as Jack’s breathing rate was beginning to stabilize his computer gave an audible warning that he was about to go on reserve. He sensed a momentary tightening in his regulator as the emergency supply kicked in and then it flowed freely again.
“As we ascend and the pressure reduces you’ll get more volume from the reserve supply,” Costas assured him. “If you run out we can always buddy-breathe.”
“Great.” Jack grimaced through his visor before concentrating on maintaining his buoyancy just above neutral.
For the next few minutes the only sound was the exhalation of bubbles as they gradually rose up the passageway. After about a hundred metres Costas signalled them to halt.
“We’re now seventy metres below sea level,” he announced. “My computer says we need a five-minute decompression stop. Even though we’ve mainly been on helium and oxygen, we’ve still absorbed a lot of nitrogen. We need to off-gas.”
Despite the stabbing pain in his side, Jack made a conscious effort not to hyperventilate. He sank exhausted to the stairs and reached for the disc.
“Time for some map reading,” he said.
The other two dropped down beside him as he rotated the disc until the symbol was aligned in the direction of the passageway.
“If our decipherment is correct we’re here, along the left shoulder of the eagle,” Costas pointed out. “We can’t have much further to go along this route. We’re getting close to the cliff face.”
“When this passageway ends we make a right turn,” Katya said. “Then all the way along the wing of the eagle until the final turning to the left, and then to the eastern tip.”
“If we’re heading to the caldera we need to rise about a hundred metres and go four hundred metres south, on a gradient of thirty degrees. At some point we’ll break sea level but still be underground.”
“What happens if the passage goes down?” Katya enquired.
“We get boiled alive,” Costas said bluntly. “The core is a seething mass of molten lava and scorching gas. Even going up we may find our way barred by lava that’s flowed out since the flood.”
Their timers simultaneously sounded a five-minute alarm to show the stop was over. Jack returned the disc to his pocket and stiffly pushed off from the stairway.
“We have no choice,” he said. “Let’s pray that Ben and Andy are still holding out. We’re their only lifeline.”
As they passed above the sixty-metre mark their regulators began to replace helium with nitrogen as the main inert gas. Soon their breathing mixture would differ from atmospheric air only in the enriched oxygen that was injected during the final few metres to scrub their bloodstreams of any excess nitrogen.
Costas led the way as the stairway began to constrict into a narrow tunnel. After a final step it veered right, apparently following a natural fissure, before regaining its original course and promptly depositing them at the entrance to another cavern.
“Here’s our intersection, bang on target.”
Their headlamps revealed a chamber about ten metres long by five metres wide, with doorways on all four sides. The decompression stop had briefly revitalized Jack and he swam forward for a closer look. In the centre was an oblong table flanked by pedestals set about two metres from each corner. The table was hewn from the rock and had a raised rim like the upturned lid of a sarcophagus. The pedestals were free-standing basins like the fonts of medieval churches.
“There are no runnels for blood and it would have been impossible to bring a large animal this far into the mountain,” he said. “Sacrifices tended to be public affairs and whatever went on here could only have been attended by a select few.”
“An ablution table, for ritual purification?” Costas suggested.
Katya finned over to the doorway opposite their point of entry. She peered into the corridor beyond and briefly switched off her headlamp.
“I can see light,” she said. “It’s barely discernible, but there are four separate pools evenly spaced.”
Jack and Costas swam over. They too could see faint smudges of hazy green.
“We’re only fifty metres below sea level and a few metres inside the cliff face.” Costas flicked his light back on as he spoke. “It’s early morning outside, so there should be some vestigial light at this depth.”
“The corridor corresponds with one of the parallel lines jutting out from the wing of the eagle,” Jack said. “I’ll bet they’re accommodation quarters, with windows and balconies overlooking the pyramids. Just like the Minoan complex on the cliffs of Thera, a magnificent location which served the monastic ideal yet also dominated the
