“What do we do now?” Ben asked.
There was a dull thumping noise from far off in the submarine.
“There’s your answer,” Jack replied. It was a prearranged signal from Costas that the operation to cut through the hull was complete. Jack got up and led the other two out of the control room, skirting round the slick of blood still seeping out of the corpse by the dais. As they retreated down the corridor, Jack glanced back one last time at the wreckage of the room to make sure they were not being followed.
They left Ben squatting in the shadows beside the top of the loading chute. He had signalled his intention and waved Jack and Katya on. With only a magazine and a half at his disposal the odds were stacked against him, but Jack knew if it came to a showdown every round would find its mark.
It took only a few minutes for Jack and Katya to traverse the now familiar route down the chute and round the edge of the torpedo room. As they reached the opening in the grating, they wordlessly donned the SCLS packs they had left there, checking each other’s straps and activating the regulator consoles.
They knew what they had to do. There was nothing to be gained from lingering with Ben and Andy, a siege that could have only one outcome. Their defence rested on the potency of Katya’s threat and as soon as that failed their numbers would make no difference. This was their only chance, their only hope of reaching help while the storm raged overhead.
The stakes were terrifyingly high.
As they lowered themselves onto the bilge floor they could see Costas had already shut his visor and sealed his helmet. They quickly followed suit, but not before Katya handed her pistol to Andy at the console.
“You may have more need of this than me,” she said.
Andy nodded appreciatively and holstered the weapon before turning back to the screen. While Jack quickly recounted the stand-off in the control room, Costas finished retracting the telescopic arm. The laser had cut a perfect circle a metre and a half wide in the hull casing.
“It pivots on the hinge we inserted,” Andy said. “All I need to do now is reduce the air pressure in the chamber and it should spring outward like a hatch.”
They looked with mixed emotions at the casing, apprehensive about the perils awaiting them yet drawn by the overpowering excitement of a lost world beyond their wildest imaginings.
“OK,” said Costas. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTER 17
Costas crouched through, careful to avoid the razor-sharp rim where the laser had cut into the casing. He reached forward to test the strength of the magnetized membrane and then turned to help Katya and Jack. Once they were safely through, he heaved the hatch shut, fearful that a tear in the membrane would cause uncontrollable flooding in the submarine. The flush join where the hatch closed was testament to the microsurgical precision of the laser.
Although the membrane was translucent there was scarcely any natural light at this depth, and it was further blocked by the rocky overhang which extended all the way to the submarine and cut them off from the sea outside.
When they activated their headlamps, all around them the light reflected off the crystalline lattice of the membrane, producing a brilliant shimmer of white. Ahead of them the cliff face seemed startlingly unfamiliar, the monochrome green of the hologram giving little sense of its lustrous surface. It was as if they were looking at an old-fashioned sepia photograph, a hazy border framing the tinted image of some long-lost grotto.
They walked slowly forward, their posture becoming upright as the tunnel widened. The membrane was rock-hard and provided a sure grip despite the trickle of water that ran down from the platform ahead. About eight metres in, they reached the point where the membrane had bonded magnetically with the cliff face. Costas led the way onto the stairs and crouched down to inspect the surface.
“Almost total absence of marine encrustation, not even algae. I’ve never seen a sea more dead than this one. If we took off our helmets this place would reek of rotten eggs from the hydrogen sulphide in the water.”
He joggled the volume setting on his communications console and looked over to make sure the others could hear. Jack murmured in acknowledgement but was preoccupied by the image in front of him. He and Katya stood side by side only a few metres from the darkness at the rear of the platform.
As Costas joined them, his headlamp added further definition to the scene. Directly in front was a rectilinear rock-cut niche about twice their height and three times as wide. It was recessed about three metres into the cliff face and had been polished to an immaculate finish. On the back wall was the image that had transfixed them on the hologram, the outline of a great double door.
Katya was the first to state the obvious, her voice taut with excitement.
“It’s gold!”
As their beams converged they were nearly blinded by the glare. Katya cautiously trained her headlamp on the lower edge below the brilliant shimmer.
“Gold-plated, I’d guess,” Costas said matter-of-factly. “Beaten and burnished and then attached to stone slabs underneath. There was plenty of river gold in the Caucasus at this period but it would have stretched the resource to make these solid gold. They would have been too soft anyway.”
Through the chink round the edge a fine sheen of water sprayed out from the cavity beyond. The light from their headlamps refracted into a myriad tiny rainbows, a kaleidoscopic halo that added to the dazzling effect of the gold.
“They’re butted against a sill, a low jamb in the rock all round the edge.” Costas was peering at the lower right-hand corner. “That’s what’s keeping the doors from bursting out on us. They’re designed to open inwards as we thought.”
He stood back and turned to Jack. “We need to flood this chamber to equalize the water pressure on both sides of the door. Are we ready?”
The other two nodded and adjusted their regulator consoles, changing their breathing gas from compressed air to the trimix necessary to survive almost one hundred metres below sea level. Katya swayed slightly, feeling a rush of light-headedness as the unfamiliar mixture came online. Costas reached over to steady her.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said. “It’ll clear your head for all those inscriptions you’re going to translate.”
Katya and Jack checked each other’s cylinder pressures before giving the OK signal to Costas, who slid back along the membrane to the submarine. After activating his own regulator he gave a succession of sharp raps on the casing with his multi-tool. Seconds later a violent jet of water burst through the hole in the centre of the hatch, slamming into the cliff with the force of a water cannon. Andy had reversed the high-pressure pump and drawn the water up from the bilges through a filtration device to cleanse it of toxins and solid matter.
They flattened themselves against the wall to avoid the blast of water that thundered past them. As it rebounded off the rock and began to soak them, Jack gasped in pain.
“What is it?” Katya demanded. “Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing.”
Jack’s posture said exactly the opposite, his body contorted as he held himself against the rock. It was only as the water welled up around their legs that he slowly straightened himself, his rasping breath clearly audible through the intercom.
“It was during our little showdown.” His tone belied his agony. “I took a hit on the right side when we rushed the room. I didn’t say anything because there was nothing to be done. The bullet penetrated the Kevlar so I’ve got a leaky chamber. The water’s cold. It’ll pass.”
The reality was more serious. Even though it was only a low-velocity Uzi round, the bullet had fractured a rib and left a penetrating flesh wound. He had already lost a lot of blood and he knew he would soon be running on borrowed time. The rush of water had staunched the bleeding and was numbing the pain, but the rent in his suit was worse than he had intimated. In the near-freezing conditions it would only be a matter of time before his core temperature dropped to danger level.