The Hunt For Atlantis

“What? Come on, we’ve got to help him!” Running out, Nina saw Chase ascending the side of the temple and headed after him.

“It’s too dangerous!” Kari protested, but to no avail. “Nina! Damn it!” She hurried back to the team’s equipment, picking up another rifle and Chase’s Wildey, then ran after Nina.

The remaining Halo moved in, warily skirting the plume of thick black smoke rising from the collapsed end of the temple. As it descended, the trailing ropes dragged through the surrounding foliage.

Starkman slowed to a jog, yelling into his radio: “Come on, faster! Get me out of here!” He waved his arms furiously to summon the chopper closer-

The dark stones around him splintered and cracked under bullet hits.

“Jason!” roared Chase, still shooting.

Starkman flung himself on the next tier up and fired back, UMP blazing. Chase ducked as bullets smacked into the stone above his head, showering him with dust and fragments. He crawled several feet before popping up again to let fly with another burst.

Nina heard gunfire and ducked into cover on the lowest tier of the temple’s side, peering cautiously ahead. Chase was exchanging fire with Starkman, several feet higher and close to the devastated far end of the temple. The helicopter was closing on him, ropes trailing beneath it.

Chase fired another burst-and his gun clicked on the last shot.

Empty!

Starkman could count shots as well as he could. He would know he was dry. Scrabbling forward another few feet, Chase popped his head up, then immediately ducked back. As he’d expected, his brief appearance attracted gunfire, more stone chips spitting onto him. Starkman wasn’t worried about running out of bullets.

The wind from the descending helicopter whipped at his clothes. At low altitude, a Halo could easily blow a man off his feet.

Which would make aiming very difficult.

Chase threw himself onto the next tier, immediately rolling against the wall as more bullets raked the ancient stones. He could just barely hear Starkman shouting into his radio: “Lean out and shoot him!”

Shit!

He looked at the helicopter. A man poked his head through the open cabin door, staring down at him. Then he ducked back-only to reappear a moment later with a gun in his hands.

Not another submachine gun, but an M82 sniper rifle, which could put a hole through a man’s skull from eight hundred yards away-and Chase was barely fifteen yards beneath the chopper!

“Nina!” Kari caught up with her, the rifle in her hands.

“In the helicopter, they’re going to shoot him!” Nina cried, pointing.

Kari instantly took in the scene. The massive helicopter had drifted into position above Starkman so that he could grab one of the hanging ropes and be winched aboard-and a man was leaning out of the cabin, the sniper rifle in his hands aimed directly at Chase-

She lifted the gun and emptied the entire magazine into the helicopter’s fuselage.

The sniper staggered, then fell out, his rifle dropping just ahead of him. Starkman jumped out of the way as they plunged towards him. The gun’s barrel hit the unyielding stone of the temple-and its erstwhile owner landed headfirst on top of it, the stock punching right through his collarbone and burying the weapon deep inside his chest. The body flopped grotesquely down the side of the temple, still impaled on the weapon.

Starkman recovered and seized one of the ropes with his right hand as he shouldered his gun, yelling into his radio for the pilot to ascend.

“Eddie!” yelled Kari over the rising din of the engines. Somehow he heard her, and looked around. “Here!” She threw his Wildey.

Chase caught the gun neatly in one hand as he jumped to his feet, then spun and pointed it at the helicopter as Starkman swung overhead. The Halo was already rising fast, its nose dipping as it prepared to power away over the rain forest.

Chase aimed for the pilot and fired twice. Both shots punched through the Halo’s underbelly near the nose, but the downdraft threw off his aim. The aircraft was unaffected.

Starkman climbed hand over hand, quickly rising as his rope was reeled in.

Another rope flicked past, a black nylon snake gyrating in the blasting wind. Chase jumped after it and grabbed hold.

“Oh my God! No, you idiot, no!” Nina shrieked helplessly after him as he was whisked off the side of the temple.

Holding on to the rope with his left hand, Chase raised the Wildey in his right and pointed it up at Starkman’s ascending figure. He still had several feet to go before reaching the relative safety of the cabin. “Get you right up your arse, you bastard-”

The Wildey barked twice. Spinning and twisting on the end of the rope, Chase had no idea where the first shot landed-but the second one cratered the fuselage above Starkman, showering him with flecks of paint.

Starkman looked down and saw Chase dangling below. For a moment Chase thought he was trying to unshoulder his UMP to shoot back down at him…

Until he realized he was unsheathing his combat knife.

Chase suddenly became very aware of his position. He was hanging by one hand from a rope beneath a helicopter, already at least seventy feet in the air and rising as the Halo moved out over the jungle.

His gaze met Starkman’s one good eye. Starkman grinned-and sliced through Chase’s rope, severing it with a single brutal slash.

“Oh, fuck!” Chase just had time to gasp before he plummeted towards the endless jungle canopy below.

SEVENTEEN

The rope was still in his left hand. In the split second before he hit the uppermost leaves, Chase let go of his gun and snatched for the black nylon line with his right.

Branches pummeled him as he plunged through them, each one thicker and more inflexible than the last. One slammed against his shoulder, and Chase flung the rope at it.

Suddenly he was clear and falling again, nothing between him and the ground-

The line snapped taut.

He clamped his hands around the rope, screaming as friction seared his skin. He was slowing, slowing…

The severed end of the rope shot through his grip, and was gone. He was free-falling, the canopy of foliage rushing away-

Impact.