“Perfect. Straight ahead slow.”
Jack depressed the foot pedals, and the sub slid smoothly forward, lights drilling a path forward.
“Good, your trajectory is right on target.”
Frowning, Jack watched his compass begin to swing wildly. It reminded him of the problem he had with his compass when he was caught in the volcanic eruption. “Topside…there’s something screwy with—”
Suddenly, the submersible’s lights reflected back at Jack, blinding him for a few blinks. “Holy—”
“Shit!” Lisa finished for him.
Ahead, a massive sleek triangle of whitewashed metal blocked the way forward, thrusting up from the jungle of lava pillars. The twin xenon lamps lit it up brightly. In the center, a huge American flag was prominently depicted, under it the designation BOEING 28000. It was the tail fin of Air Force One.
“The Eagle has been found,” he whispered.
Jack slowed his sub, engaging the thrusters to lift him up and over the gigantic fin. As he rose he dilated his lights to maximum diffusion, thrusting a fog of brilliance over the landscape below.
Past the tail fin, the remainder of the wreckage appeared. In a rain of destruction, the Boeing 747 lay scattered across the valley in a rough circle. Hundreds of the fragile lava pillars lay toppled amid the debris. Seamounts towered on the far side.
Jack slowly circled the site. Sections of torn wing and chunks of fuselage littered the seabed. He crossed over the crumpled nose of the great plane. Its glass had been shattered out, but Jack could see the instrument panel.
He tore his eyes away, afraid of what else he might find. It was a graveyard down here. Memories of the shuttle crash flashed across his mind. Another fall from the sky. Had this been all that was left of Atlantis, bits and pieces scattered across a seabed floor? Jack shuddered.
The admiral’s firm desire to know the fate of President Bishop had been accomplished. All that remained now were the details.
Who to blame?
Jack closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. After the Atlantis disaster, he had experienced firsthand the feeding frenzy of blame, and he pitied the person who would bear the brunt of the coming accusations. Opening his eyes, he reached and gripped the controls to his exterior manipulator arms. He had one final duty down here. Retrieve the two black boxes—the flight’s data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder—and bring them to the surface.
“Lisa, I’m going to need more guidance from here to find those boxes.” Jack glanced at his compass, expecting to see it still spinning. Instead the needle remained fixed and steady, pointing toward the debris field. “Looks like I’ve got the compass back.”
“Good, then what you want to do—”
Jack watched the compass needle slowly inch as the Nautilus circled the debris field. “Just a second, Lisa.” Bunching his brows, he accelerated, gliding around the edge of the crash site. He completed almost a full turn, yet the compass needle continued to point toward the center of the destruction.
“That can’t be right.”
“What is it?” Lisa asked. “Do you have a problem?”
Jack slowed the sub, swinging its nose forward. He coned his lights back down to narrow spears. The concentrated light penetrated to the heart of the debris field. A towering pillar lay near the center, at least forty meters tall—but something wasn’t right.
The pillar seemed to glow.
Jack blinked, thinking the seawater must be playing tricks.
He edged the Nautilus forward, passing for the first time into the graveyard. Small hairs at the back of his neck began to tingle. Not from any fear of the ghosts, but something more physical. Even the hairs on his arm began to vibrate.
Lisa’s voice came over the radio, but interference drowned out her words. Not static. It was as if someone had recorded Lisa’s voice and played it back at a higher speed.
“Say again, Topside.”
He concentrated, and he could just make out Lisa’s words. “Your heart rate…it’s dropping significantly. Are you okay?”
Jack glanced to his own pulse reading. It was normal. “I don’t understand.”
Any response was lost in a high-pitched whine. Jack lowered the volume as it began to ache his ear. He thought there must be a glitch with the radio, and glanced to the compass. It still pointed toward the strange pillar.
The damned thing must be magnetic.
As he moved nearer the pillar, the tingling sensation was swept from his body, as if cool water were drenching him. Jack shivered and slowed the submersible. He hovered before the pillar.
Craning his neck, he examined its length. The column continued to glow, but not with its own light. It was simply an optical effect, a reflection and refraction of his own light, like sunlight on a diamond. Though the pillar was clearly stone, it was not black volcanic rock. Instead, it was made of some type of crystal, like a shaft of quartz thrust up from the seabed floor.
Under his lamplight, the crystal had a slight aquamarine hue to it, streaked with whorls of brilliant ruby. Though it stood as straight as an arrow, Jack sensed it was a natural structure. Not man-made. Some natural phenomenon, undiscovered until now. With only five percent of the ocean floor explored, such discoveries, like the lava pillars, were being made all the time.
Jack circled the crystalline obelisk. With the communications still garbled, he feared the video feed might also be affected, so he switched the cameras to local recording, saving it all on DVD disk. Once he was done, he turned the sub around and returned to the edge of the debris field.
The mystery would have to wait for now. He had a mission to complete. He would use his own hydrophones and sonar to search for Air Force One’s data recorders. It would make the work harder, but not impossible. Whatever communication glitch had occurred would have to be worked out topside.
As he swung free of the debris field, Lisa’s voice came over the radio, as clear as glass. “Jack…What the hell is going on down there?”
“Lisa?”
“Jack!” The relief in her voice rang clear. “You goddamn ass**le. Why didn’t you answer me? The readings we were getting were all frizzed, and the video feed became garbled nonsense. We didn’t know what was going on.”
“How are my readings now?”
“Uh…fine. Green lights across the board. What happened down there?”
“I’m not entirely sure. There’s something here that I can’t explain. It’s screwing with my compass and must be affecting other systems, too.”