Atlantis Found (Dirk Pitt 15)

There was nothing they could do except remain inside the main cabin out of sight and stare up at the immense monster as they crept alongside. From bow to stern, the great mass of glass was a blaze of light inside and out, giving it the effect of a baseball stadium during a night game. The famous classic liners of their time, Titanic, Lusitania, Queen Mary, Queen Elisabeth, and Normandy, if anchored in a row, would still have come up short next to the Ulrich Wolf.

"I could use a hamburger about now," said Giordino, trying to relieve the tension.

"Me, too," said Megan. "All they fed us was yucky nutritional stuff."

Pat smiled, though her face looked strained. "It won't be long, honey, and you'll get your hamburger."

Pitt turned from the helm. "Were you treated badly?"

"No abuse," answered Pat, "but I've never been ordered around by so many nasty and arrogant people. They worked me twenty hours a day."

"Deciphering Amenes inscriptions from another chamber?"

"They weren't from another chamber. They were photos taken of inscriptions they found at a lost city in the Antarctic."

Pitt looked at her curiously. "The Antarctic?"

She nodded solemnly. "Frozen in the ice. The Nazis discovered it before the wax."

"Elsie Wolf told me they'd found evidence the Amenes built six chambers."

"I can't say," admitted Pat. "All I can tell you is that I got the impression they're using the ice city for some purpose. What, I didn't find out.

"Did you learn anything new from the inscriptions they forced you to decipher?"

As she talked, Pat no longer looked sad and forlorn. "I was barely into the project when you burst through the door. They were extremely interested in what me deciphered in the Colorado and St. Paul chambers. It appeared that the Wolfs were desperate to study the accounts passed down by the Amenes describing the effects of the cataclysm."

"That's because any inscriptions they found inside the lost city came before the cataclysm." He paused and nodded toward her briefcase.

"Is that what's in there?"

She held it up. "The photos from the Antarctic chamber. I couldn't bring myself to leave them behind."

He looked at her steadily. "They don't make women like you anymore."

Pitt might have said more, but a boat was crossing his bow about a hundred yards ahead. It looked to be a workboat, and its course remained steady as it turned and passed on the Grand Bank's port side.

The crew seemed intent on their labors and didn't pay the slightest attention to the cabin cruiser.

Relaxing a bit as they neared the forward section of the Ulrich Wolf without any sign of pursuit, Pitt asked, "You said they're studying what conditions will be like in the aftermath of the cataclysm?"

"In a big way. I assume they want every bit of data they can glean for their survival."

"I'm still at a loss as to why the Wolfs are so positive a comet is going to retur

n and collide with Earth within days of the prediction made by the Amenes nine thousand years ago," Pitt said.

Pat shook her head slowly. "I have no answers to that."

Still crawling along at eight knots, Pitt gently turned the wheel, sending the Grand Banks on a wide arc around the bow of the Ulrich Wolf and passing the end of the dock, now swarming with shipyard workers and security guards checking the identification of every man and woman in red coveralls. He passed a small powerboat running with no lights that ominously swung around in a 180-degree turn and began following in their wake. He set his directional computer on the frame of the windshield and studied the readings that would lead him through the darkness to the ravine that held the Skycar.

Three miles to the ravine, three miles over water in a boat that offered no protection from probing lights or automatic weapons and heavy machine guns. All they carried were a pair of handguns. And there were the patrol boats that surely must have been alerted by now of a stolen powerboat carrying intruders attempting to escape the shipyard. His only consolation was that the patrol boats were at the far end of the fjord, giving them an extra few minutes of time. A slim consolation at best. With their superior speed, the patrol boats could easily intercept the Grand Banks before they could reach the mouth of the ravine.

"Al!"

Giordino was at his side immediately. "Aye, aye."

"Find some bottles. There must be some on board. Empty, then fill them with whatever you can find that's highly inflammable. Diesel fuel is too slow-burning. Look for gas or solvent."