Nestled up against the immense bulk of Table Mountain on the other side of the peninsula was the modern city of Cape Town. Right now, two dozen South African Navy warships formed a semicircular perimeter around the city, covering the seaward approach.
Anchored in close to the rocky coastline about a mile south of the city’s last seaside residence were a few unmarked American vessels and one private cruiser with Saudi Arabian markings that had arrived several days ago.
In a diving bell beneath those vessels, CIEF troops in scuba gear were busily at work, pulling a veil of seaweed from an ancient stone doorway cut into the rock wall of the coast.
It was the main entrance to the Second Vertex.
But as Jack knew, since the Second Vertex was modeled on the layout of the ancient city of Ur—or more correctly, Ur had been based on the much-older Vertex—there was a second entrance, one that arrived at it from the east before bending down to meet the vertex from the north.
“It’s got to be around here somewhere,” Lachlan said, eyeing the sub’s GPS readout.
“I’m pinging the shore for voids and recesses,” the Sea Ranger said. “But we have to be careful with the active sonar. If someone hears it, they’ll know we’re here.”
He was firing sonar signals at the underwater shoreline; those signals then bounced back to the Indian Raider …unless they disappeared inside an aperture in the rock wall.
“Sir!” a sonar operator called. “Sonar anomaly in the coastline, bearing 351. Depth 170 feet.”
The Sea Ranger came over. So did Jack and the twins.
“Makes sense,” Julius said. “Sea levels are a lot higher now than they would have been back then. An ancient entrance would be underwater now, like at the Cosquer Cave in southern France.”
“Let’s take a look,” the Sea Ranger said. “Fire up the outside forward camera.”
A monitor was switched on, showing the underwater world outside in ghostly night-vision green, thanks to a camera mounted on the sub’s bow.
On the monitor, fish glided by, even a shark or two. Seaweed waved lazily in the current, and beyond it all, the rock wall of the coast cruised by—
“There!” the Sea Ranger said abruptly, pointing at a blurry dark spot on the screen.
Jack leaned close, and his eyes widened.
“Sharpen focus,” the Sea Ranger ordered.
The image was refined, came into clearer focus.
As it did, Jack knew they’d found it.
On the screen in front of him, partially covered by strings of twisting seaweed, was an ornate ancient doorway, huge in size, perfectly square in shape, and beautifully cut out of the solid rock around it.
“Holy shit…we’re here.”
THE EASTERN ENTRANCE TO THE 2ND VERTEX
The Indian Raider jettisoned its trawler shell and dived.
Moving slowly, the sub pushed through the veil of waving seaweed that hung down over the ancient doorway and entered the darkness beyond it.
Twin beams of light lanced through the haze from the two floodlights mounted on its bow.
On the monitor inside the conning tower, Jack saw a square tunnel stretching away into darkness, boring into the very foundations of the Cape itself.
The Sea Ranger kept his men alert, kept them driving the sub slowly and carefully, now using his active sonar without restraint.
After about fifty minutes of this slow travel Jack saw something on the monitor that he’d seen before: columns.
Great, high stone pillars holding up a flat rock-cut ceiling. And yet still the space was wide enough for the 240-foot-long submarine to fit between them.
“This place must be enormous…” the Sea Ranger whispered.
“You should have seen the last one,” Jack said.
A wall of steps appeared in front of them. Just like at the First Vertex at Abu Simbel, it was an enormous mountain of steps,hundreds of them, all as wide as the pillared hall through which they were cruising. Only at this vertex, they went upward not downward, rising up and out of the water.
“Sir, I’ve spotted the surface,” the sonar man said. “There’s an opening up there, at the top of the steps.”
“Let’s see what’s up there,” the Sea Ranger said, swapping a look with Jack.
The Indian Raider rose gracefully through the spectacular underwater hall, gliding silently up past the hall’s massive pillars, following the incline of the submerged superstaircase.
Then it left the hall, breaking the surface.
The Indian Raider ’s conning tower rose silently out of a still body of water, seawater sliding off its sides.
It found itself hovering in a walled pool easily a hundred yards wide. It looked like a miniature harbor, four-
