bronze spear, which stood out brightly against the white marble of his body. The statue was only five foot seven inches high, much taller than its adjoining companions.
'If these were men of Atlantis, they weren't all that impressive in size,' Ryan said, feeling even taller as he stood next to the largest statue. He had no way of knowing that the statue was once of Talos, the last of the great Titans.
'Well, ancient man was a very small creature compared with humans today. Even in biblical times men rarely, if ever, topped a height over five-eight,' Leekie said, looking at Ryan.
'Jack,' Everett called as he and Mendenhall stood in front of the giant bronze bull.
Collins joined them as Everett shone the torch over the lowered horns of the beast. Jack saw two notches about fifteen inches wide on each of the horns.
'Professor, could you look at this,' he called. 'Could these notches have held something?'
'Dammit!' Leekie said as she looked at the horns. 'The blue diamond was more than likely cradled by the two horns.'
'Maybe they were just--'
'It was very difficult removing the diamond from its locked base on those horns, I assure you.' The female voice, raised over the sounds of the river, caught them off guard.
Collins, Everett, Ryan, Mendenhall, and Leekie took cover behind the pillars. Jack ventured a look across the river and saw fifty men slowly coming down the slope. The blond-haired woman was behind them, walking slowly with the use of a cane. The soldiers stood silhouetted in the light of the fire ring. She gestured right and then left as her men took up positions in various places on the slope.
Jack looked at his watch and saw that he desperately needed to stall the woman.
'I was hoping you drowned at Pearl Harbor,' Jack called out.
'Almost, Colonel Collins, almost,' Dahlia said as she paced to her left behind the wall of soldiers. 'The Atlantean Key is safely where it should be. We recovered it only ten hours before your arrival here.'
Collins did not respond as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a second transmitter, which he had hoped not to use. He looked at the excavated ceiling, hoping that it was mostly earth and not rock. He needed a ground-penetrating signal to pierce through to the surface. As he thought about how he was going to put the transmitter in the right spot, Everett joined him, after sneaking behind the temple.
'We're trapped like rats--there's no way out in the back--'
He went silent when he saw what Jack held in his hand.
'Oh, shit.'
Everett recognized the small electronic marker that had a counterpart: one attached to a thousand-pound ground-penetration bomb called a bunker buster.
'I take it you alerted the air force already?'
'Just before we broke cover in the dunes. Niles insisted we have a failsafe.'
'It would have been nice if the diamond was still here,' Everett said, not taking his eyes off the remote signal.
'It would have been, swabby, but what the hell.'
'Yeah, what the hell.'
Collins walked to the front of the temple.
'Where did you take it, if you don't mind me asking?'
Dahlia smiled as Collins walked slowly down the steps of the temple. The man's arrogance was beyond anything she had ever seen. She came close to laughing at the bravado of this bastard.
'This isn't the movies, Colonel. I do not tell all even though I am sure you're living the last moments of your life. Just rest assured that because of your failure at the
Collins raised his weapon and fired as fast as anyone could have thought possible. The first bullet tore through one man's ear and struck Dahlia. It grazed her left shoulder just outside the protection of the vest she was wearing. The rest of the rounds struck men and dropped at least five of them. The commotion gave Jack the time he needed as he reared back and threw the designator across the river. The laser was broadcast on both sides, front and back, so he knew that it didn't need to land upright to work. The device landed about twenty feet up the slope.
'What are you waiting for?' Dahlia screamed, angered almost to the point of hysteria. 'Kill that son of a bitch, kill them all!'
Jack hit the temple steps just as large chips of marble started flying. He rolled until he was safe behind one of the thick pillars.
Everett was stunned at what had just happened. Jack had caught even him off guard. He had thrown the transmitter as far as he was able to, giving them hope that they could survive what was coming. Carl fired five rounds into the swirling mist of the falls and hit three of the men.
Ryan and Mendenhall added their fire to Everett's and together they kept the Coalition mercenaries moving and ducking. Jack looked for Dahlia and finally saw her crouching low beside the fire trough. She was directing something behind her. Jack looked up the slope and saw a man place a tube to his upper shoulder.
'Get down!' he cried.
The LAWs rocket was old, but effective. It streaked out of its launch tube and struck a pillar at the front of the temple, smashing it, bringing some of the marble roof down with it.
Jack took careful aim and fired. The man holding the tube in the shadows across the way crumpled as the bullet hit the thickest part of his body; the stomach.
Dahlia saw the man lean forward and slide down the slope. She shook her head in anger, then stood and fired her own pistol at the temple.
Collins saw his chance, lined her up, and pulled the trigger, nothing. He cursed and ejected the spent clip and inserted another. He brought up the Beretta, but Dahlia had lowered her frame once more.
The aircraft was a B-1B bomber. In its belly was just one large egg it needed to drop--the bunker buster. It was there just as a last ditch effort in stopping the Coalition from obtaining the diamond just in case it had not been recovered by Major Dutton and Professor Leekie. Niles knew that it was a last-resort type of mission and called for only if there was no other way. So, naturally, when the air force informed him of the bomb drop, he lowered his head, thinking the worse.
'We have a painted target,' said the pilot as he pickled his load off.
The bomb-bay doors opened automatically and the thousand-pound weapon fell free.
'We have a clean drop and designator is receiving target information.'
'I hope someone down there knows how to duck,' the copilot said as the B-1B bomber turned for home at Diego Garcia.
Dahlia waved forward more men with LAWs rockets. As the volume of Coalition fire increased, she knew she was close to ending the luck of this Colonel Collins. Her embarrassment would be erased and she would be able to look at herself once more without the shame of Collins around her neck.
She smiled, as the pitiful return fire was so ineffective that her men were starting to take chances by standing and taking better aim, pinning Collins and his few men down. It was now only a matter of time. Dahlia saw the men above her on the slope arming the rockets, and when she looked back down the incline she saw one of her men kick something along the ground. It was just dumb luck that she had seen it at all. The black case gleamed in the firelight flickering onto the slope as it skidded to a stop not five feet from her position.
Her eyes widened when she recognized the transmitter. Dahlia knew it was a geo-positioning transmitter, the sort used as a portable ground-penetrating lasing system.
'That crazy bastard is trying to kill us and himself!' she screamed indignantly as she broke free of her safe position and ran down the slope toward the return fire of Collins and his people.
The signal of the laser beacon was weakened by the topsoil and sand above it, but it was enough for the seeker head located in the nose of the bomb to lock on to. Small fins fore and aft maneuvered the fat weapon onto its glide path. This particular smart bomb was the largest in the U.S. inventory capable of guided flight. Falling from a height of thirty thousand feet, it had little trouble penetrating the thickness of the earth.
