The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery 2)

Kate glanced out the glass door. The sun had almost risen now. It was going to be a long day.

“I’ll call you back. Be ready.”

CHAPTER 39

Immari Operations Base at Ceuta

Northern Morocco

David awoke to the second-loudest alarm he’d ever heard in his life. The loudest alarm had been in Langley, Virginia, in 2003: an airhorn held at his head, prompting him to jump out of bed, half-naked. His CIA training handlers had hauled him out of the barracks, still half-naked, and dumped him in the woods of northern Virginia.

“There are six snipers in these woods. You have ’til dusk to reach the barracks. Their bullets carry paint, and if any is on you, we don’t want you.”

They had thrown him out, the van still rolling, and he had seen them again as the sun set behind the one-story barracks building.

Since that evening, he had never slept in his underwear again, save for that single time, a slight oversight, a moment of weakness, when he let his guard down in Gibraltar, with Kate.

Now a flood of footsteps echoed through the door. He took up position in the opposite corner of the room, diagonal from the door, ready to assault anyone who entered. Had Rukin found out? Bugged the room? He would have heard everything.

The door clicked open, but it didn’t swing. Two black hands peeked out from the door, held straight out, showing that they were empty. The owner called through the rush of footfalls behind him. “Kamau.”

“Step inside. Then close the door,” David said from his crouching position, then quickly, silently, on bare feet, stepped to the other corner of the room, in the door’s blind spot.

Kamau entered the room and pushed the door closed behind him. He instantly focused on the corner David’s voice had come from, then spun to the other corner, facing David.

“We’re under attack,” he said.

“By whom?”

“We don’t know. The major has asked for you.”

David followed Kamau into the hall, which was awash with men, all rushing to their positions, paying no mind to David and Kamau.

Outside the residential wing, the inner courtyard of the citadel buzzed with activity. David wanted to stop, to make a tactical assessment, but Kamau pressed on, jogging toward a high tower.

They raced up the rickety iron staircase, and Kamau grabbed David’s arm just before the last landing. “They don’t know what’s going on either. He’s testing you.”

David nodded and followed Kamau into the command center. It exceeded David’s wildest expectations. It had eight sides; every other wall was filled with a floor-to-ceiling window that allowed a clear view of each direction of the camp. The other four walls held computer screens that showed maps, charts, and readouts David couldn’t begin to understand.

The interior of the room looked like the bridge of the starship Enterprise—from the original series. At the center, two technicians hunched over tables and computer screens. A single chair was set off from them, and the major occupied it, as if he were Captain Kirk directing a voyage to nowhere. “Deploy batteries four and five. Fire at will.” He spun around to David.

“You knew about this.”

“I didn’t. I don’t even know what this is.”

A technician spoke up. “The planes have dropped their payload.”

The major eyed David.

Out the side window, guns along the north wall rotated quickly and fired into the night.

The shots seemed to instantly connect, exploding in a cascade of midair explosions. The remains of the attack planes rained down into the water below.

“Seven targets, seven kills,” another technician said.

David marveled at the air defenses. He wasn’t well versed on surface-to-air defense systems, but what he had just seen was more advanced than anything he was aware of.

This base wouldn’t be taken from the air.

The tech that had fired the barrage of missiles punched his keyboard a few times and shook his head. “Radar’s clear. It was just one group.”

The major stood up and walked to the window. “I saw only seven explosions. Why didn’t anything hit us? Did the missiles miss?”

“They fell short, sir.”

Out the western window, a plume of water and light rose up.

“What the hell was that?!” Rukin demanded.

The techs worked their computers. Another man stood up and pointed to one of the screens. “I don’t think we were the target, sir. I think they deployed mines in the straits. A piece of one of the planes hit one of the mines as it sank, I assume.”

The major stood there for a moment, staring at the water, at the point where the plane debris had exploded. “Get me the chairman’s fleet. He needs to alter course.”

David and Kamau exited the command center, and David got an aerial view of the pens he had heard on his way in. They were filled with people, huddled together, packed in. There must have been two or three thousand of them. Barbarians waiting for the boatman, Rukin had said. Who could do this? David wondered.

On the way back to the residential wing, Kamau and David walked in silence. At David’s room, he motioned for Kamau to stay. “What was that?”

“An RAF squadron. We haven’t seen one in months. They tried to take the base shortly after the outbreak, before the Immari burned the city and got their air defenses in place. We thought the British were out of jet fuel.”

“Why did they drop the mines?”

“Dorian Sloane is on his way here. He’s leading the main Immari fleet north. They’re going to invade Europe. I assume the British have mined the straits to cut him off from the Mediterranean.”

“How far out is Sloane?”

“The main fleet is days away. I just read a memo that said Sloane flew up the coast and is leading a smaller, advance fleet. He’s after something. He could be here as soon as tonight.”

David nodded. Sloane. Here. Taking Ceuta before he arrived could save even more lives than David imagined—if he could kill or capture Sloane. And he had just seen the key to doing it. “What are those guns?”

“Rail guns,” Kamau said.

“Impossible.”

“They were a classified Immari Research weapons program.”

David knew the US Military had experimented with rail gun technology, but rail guns weren’t in active use. The principle problem was power. Rail guns used massive amounts of electricity to propel a projectile at hypersonic speeds—over sixty-two hundred kilometers per hour. “How do they get the power?”