make 'em count, son,' he said as he slapped the boy on the shoulder. With that, Collins aimed his MP-5 at the closest group of mercenaries firing from the side of one of the pyramids two hundred yards from the aqueduct.
Everett heard the thirty-second call and then looked out over the city. He saw the three massive electrical lines coming out of the dry lake at the center of the city. They were exposed for only ten feet before some paranoid engineer had sent them down through a crack in the cobbled roadway and then had covered them with cement. As he looked on, he knew that they would have precious little time to lay the explosives on the leads that led to thousands of miles of cable and ended at the sound-amplification modules in three different parts of the world.
Suddenly there was a loud crack and rumble as one of the remaining upright pillars of marble fell from its base. Carl winced as the twenty-five-ton pillar crashed into the center of the city, making a hundred or so Coalition troops run for cover. He looked over at the SEAL lieutenant.
'I don't know if that's good or bad. It cleared out part of our sector of responsibility, but this whole damn place could start coming down around our ears, and I don't think our little tiny skulls could handle the pressure this deep in the Med if that shaky-ass dome suddenly collapses.'
Everett looked at his watch and waited. Three, two, one. Off in the distance Everett thought he heard the soft
'Damn, that son of a bitch has a survival instinct to end all instincts.'
Suddenly, flame and debris erupted out of the dry lake bed. One mortar round caught the tower and destroyed half of it and killed most of the observers there.
'Damn, that's good shootin',' Everett said as more 40-millimeter mortars fell into the dry lake bed. He ventured another look up and saw four more people run from the tower, one of whom he could swear was a well- dressed woman.
More rounds started targeting the heavy machine-gun emplacements throughout the destroyed city. Here and there eruptions of flame and shrapnel tore through men and old marble. But added to the fierceness of the marines' mortar attack was the power of the Wave as it started to add its weight to the fight. In a hundred different places the dome started to leak all at once. The already cracked and damaged ruins around them started to move in a frighteningly furious way. But still, Everett heard the shrill whistle coming from halfway around the ancient city.
The U.S. Marines came storming out of the natural darkness around Atlantis, screaming and firing their weapons at anything that moved to their front.
The assault was on, and the marines had just added one more verse to the corps hymn: the continent of Atlantis.
20
Sarah, Mendenhall, Ryan, and the ten marines were caught between the lava mound and the dry lake bed. Mortar rounds were still going off, but their allotted number intended for the equipment in the dry lake bed had been expended. Now, the mortar teams concentrated on the Coalition positions; after their initial shock, the Coalition troops started to return fire in an amazing response time.
As they ran, tracers found them just before they ducked behind an ancient lava flow that had frozen in time. One marine cried out and hit the broken roadway. Machine-gun fire concentrated on the spot where they had vanished, and the soft stone didn't absorb the concussion all that well.
As they ducked and took stock, another of the stone-and-marble buildings leaned, and then it rolled over as easily as an animal in death.
Suddenly they heard machine-gun fire coming from somewhere above them, and he knew that Jack and his team had opened up from the aqueduct. They started laying a large volume of fire in the direction of their unseen attackers.
'Well, it looks like someone's paying attention up there,' Ryan said as he started forward again and the others quickly followed.
Everett and the SEALs were having a much harder time of it. They faced about a hundred heavily armed Coalition mercenaries. As he ventured a peek up above a fallen pillar, Everett saw the three power lines; they were shaking with the earthquake but were still very much intact. He lowered his head and checked the magazine in his MP-5, then he straightened and fired ten rounds into the mass of soldiers hidden behind a solid stone covering.
'Come on, Jack, now's not the time to dawdle,' he said to himself. With that, Everett stood and fired again, and this time he heard a satisfying yelp from a hundred yards away.
'One down, about ninety-nine to go.'
Collins ordered one machine gun to continue firing into the area of the lake bed to cover Sarah and her team, while splitting his firepower and opening up against the mercenaries penning Everett and his men down. All the while the aqueduct was filling with water from above. The volume was increasing every second and he and his men had to hold on to keep from being washed away to the broken end, where it fell off three hundred feet straight down.
Collins pulled the pins on three hand grenades and tossed them as far as he could into the Coalition lines. Ten of the men never heard their death knell as the grenades exploded behind them.
Suddenly, the sound hit Jack's ears. The crack came from above as a large section of the dome caved in. Thousands of tons of seabed and water cascaded and struck the aqueduct a hundred feet behind Jack and his men. It tore through the old stone, tearing their section away from the rest. The men felt the waterway beneath start to tremble, but it still held firm.
Sarah was the first to reach the side of the lake. She looked up at the mangled corpses of the people who had been on the high platform. She had no sympathy for them as she looked into the devastation of the lake. Equipment lay shattered; even the generators had been hit. But she saw and heard the centrifuge as it was spinning out of control.
'Carl hasn't cut the power lines yet--that damn thing's still broadcasting!'
Ryan and Mendenhall didn't hesitate. With five of the marines, they started down into the lake bed. Enemy fire increased a hundredfold and Mendenhall was singed by a round that knocked his Mylar helmet off his head. Sarah picked it up and tossed it to him.
'A little hot down here!'
'You can say that again,' Will said as he turned and started to follow Ryan down the scaffold.
Sarah heard a loud crack somewhere to their rear and then felt the stone through her boots as the floor above them split in two. Then a rush of water started cascading from a crack in the great dome. The water from the Mediterranean struck one of the superhot generators and it exploded, sending out a thick wave of steel and sparks. As she traversed the scaffold, the crack in the floor reached them and she had to jump a five-foot crevasse, barely making it over to the far side. The platform above them started to wobble as the stabilizing cables started snapping like overtaxed guitar strings. It fell over, twisting as it did so. Ryan and the others ran quickly as the tower crashed into the scaffolding and tore it free from the rock, then both crashed into the lake bed.
All around the city, water was penetrating the dome at an alarming rate as the world started shaking once again, and this time it was like the death throes of a wounded beast, as the groan and bark of solid stone announced that Atlantis had started to crack apart.
The ancient city was dying for the second time.
The sudden rise of the sea ripped two U.S. Marine Sea Harriers from their moorings and tossed them into the churning ocean. All hands had been ordered belowdecks as the attack carrier's bow sank below the water as she slowly moved way away from the quay. She had taken on four thousand civilians, who huddled inside her hangar decks and screamed every time the carrier rolled one way or the other. Three miles away, the attack carrier
