The Hunt For Atlantis

Castille fired back. With his target wearing body armor, he aimed for the head. All three of his shots landed on target. The man’s skull blew apart in a gruesome shower.

Another of Starkman’s men heard the shots and turned to confront his new adversary-

A boot heel smashed into his face.

Even as the man reeled, Kari spun around and delivered another crushing kick into his groin. He crashed through a hut wall.

Kari picked up his gun, paused for a fraction of a second to make a decision-then shot him in the head.

Chase felt consciousness, life, slipping away. The commando loomed over him like a demon, the whirling blades of the helicopter a dark halo behind his head.

With the last of his strength, his right hand finally reached the object for which he’d been grasping: the grappling gun on the man’s back.

He pulled the trigger.

The grapple flew out with a loud thump of compressed gas, rocketing almost vertically upwards with a nylon- coated steel cable trailing behind it… into the Halo’s rotors.

The carbon-fiber grapple itself was smashed to pieces by the blades-but the cable was almost instantly drawn into the spinning rotor head, tangling around it.

And winding up.

The commando’s eyes widened in shock as he realized what was about to happen-then he was yanked off the ground so hard that several of his ribs snapped. Flying skywards as if launched by a catapult, the cable dragging him inexorably into the rotors, he burst on impact, gory shredded scraps raining back down onto the village.

The helicopter lurched, out of control. The cable around the rotor shaft was jamming the pitch controls, and now the blades themselves were damaged…

“Cover!” shouted Chase.

Kari looked around. Starkman was sprinting for the side of the temple. Overhead, the huge helicopter began to spin, the roar of its engines joined by the shriek of wounded machinery. There was only one of Starkman’s men now still standing, close to Chase.

She and Castille fired simultaneously, taking the man down.

The Halo continued spinning. A man fell from the cabin door, screaming all the way to earth, where he landed headfirst on the elders’ hut, breaking his neck. Control completely gone, the helicopter rolled towards the temple, losing height.

The pilot of the other Halo saw it coming and frantically jammed his throttle to full power, pulling up on his collective control to increase altitude. The men being winched out through the hole in the temple roof were smashed against the jagged edges and plummeted back to the stone floor beneath.

Smoke pouring from its engines, the spinning Halo hit the temple roof. The curved stone structure, already weakened by the hole blasted in it, collapsed under the impact. The aircraft fell through the ceiling and into the temple itself. Its rotors were dashed to pieces as they hit the unbending stone, huge shards thrown hundreds of feet into the air before arcing back down.

All power lost, the massive aircraft plunged almost vertically to crash at the base of the statue of Poseidon, where it exploded.

A fireball swept through the temple, flames consuming the remaining men. The enormous statue of the god rocked, then fell forward to crush the blazing wreckage, its golden skin already melting in the intense heat.

A heat that reached the thermite charges in the altar room.

They detonated, the temperature inside the chamber flashing in an instant to over two thousand degrees. The gold and orichalcum artifacts within didn’t merely melt-they vaporized, obliterated completely by the searing wave of fire.

Castille turned at the sound of the explosion-and reflexively threw himself backwards as a jagged piece of rotor blade over a meter long stabbed into the ground between his legs like a javelin. “Merde!” he screeched.

“Helicopters!”

The rest of the temple roof gave way, thousands of tons of stone cascading down to bury everything within. A shockwave tore through the other tunnels and chambers, a huge cloud of dust and debris exploding from the temple entrance like an express train. Chase barely threw himself clear as it swept past.

The ancient replica of the Atlantean Temple of Poseidon, hidden in the jungle for thousands of years, was destroyed forever, along with all the secrets it contained.

Nina peered from the hut, shielding her eyes as the dust cloud swept past. “Jesus!”

Chase used the temple wall to pull himself up. He wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand. His broken nose was starting to hurt. Through the dust, he saw Kari and Castille running towards him. “Where’s Starkman?” he gasped.

“That way!” Castille pointed. Starkman was now out of sight around the corner of the ruined structure.

“Nina?”

“In one of the huts,” Kari told him.

“Give me your gun.”

Kari handed him the Colt. “What are you doing?” Castille asked.

“I’m not letting that bastard get away! Kari, look after Nina. Where’s Agnaldo?”

“He’s been shot.”

“Then help him! Go, both of you!” Chase broke into a pained run after Starkman.

Starkman jumped onto the stepped base of the temple and ran along it, shouting into his walkie-talkie. “Chopper two! This is Eagle Leader, I need pickup now!” The surviving Halo was hovering cautiously over the jungle a few hundred yards away.

Chase rounded the corner of the temple, hunting for Starkman.

There!

“No you bloody don’t,” he growled, climbing up onto the first tier after him.

Kari ran back to the remains of the hut where she’d seen Nina take cover with Philby. She flung back the animal skin covering the door. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“We’re fine!” Nina said.

“Speak for yourself,” Philby muttered.

Nina ignored him. “What about the others? Where’s Eddie?”

“Di Salvo’s been shot,” Kari replied. “Hugo’s giving him first aid. Chase has gone after Starkman.”