Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle Read online

  On the edge of the Shadow’s fog a lone woman named Tam Nok now stood in an abandoned guard house made of large blocks of finely fit stone. The guard house was high on a ridge-line overlooking the fog that delineated the edges of the gate. But the fog, normally a swirling grayish yellow mixture, was now very dark, almost black and more solid than anyone remembered since fleeing Angkor Kol Ker.

  Tam Nok stared out over the jungle, at the unearthly fog, toward where she knew the city lay. She was a priestess from Angkor Wat, taught all the knowledge that remained in the Khmer’s collective memory of the Ones Before and the Shadow. Sadly, and dangerously, that knowledge was incomplete. She had traveled here on foot to see the Shadow for herself and because the first stop of her journey lay inside the darkness in front of her.

  Tam Nok was tall and slender, wrapped in a finely woven black cloak with red trim. Her eyes were slanted, her skin dark brown. Her black hair was cut short for functionality rather than style. At her waist a dagger hung in a sheath and on her back was a leather pack, containing what she would need to begin her journey. A bamboo case stuck out the top of the pack, both ends corked with a piece of wood. Inside lay precious documents, handed down through generations of priestesses.

  Looking at the darkness, the priestess accepted one thing: the end was coming. The end for every living thing on the planet. The writings of the ancient ones indicated that the signs they were now seeing indicated they were approaching the point where danger would come again. The presence of the Shadow, darker than ever before over Angkor Kol Ker backed up those writings. The Earth was rumbling every so often, giving warning that the gods underneath were disturbed. There had been a great explosion in the ocean to the southeast. Ash had fallen for days afterward and a dark cloud darkened the day. The sky was still red as the sun set every night.

  The writings handed down about the Ones Before said there was a way to survive, to fight back against the Shadow. But again, unfortunately, the writings were not complete. There was a Shield that the ancient ones had been given by the Ones Before. A Shield that worked against the creatures and beings in a gate. That could even shut a gate. But the Shield had been lost in a great battle, lost where the Khmer’s ancestors had come from. The ancient ones had won the battle but in the process lost their home and much of their knowledge and most especially, the Shield they had used to win the battle. Tam Nok would have to travel back the way they had come to search for it and the path was long and hard and she was uncertain of exactly where it was she was to go. She only knew where she was to start from.

  On each corner of the guardhouse was a statue of a Naga-- the seven-headed snake from the creation myth of the Khmer. The Khmer who did not honor the Ones Before. Who had lost the truth in the telling of the story over the years dissolving into legend. Even among the priests and priestesses, Tam Nok was aware that much of what she had been told had to be viewed warily to separate fact from fiction.

  The inside walls of the guardhouse were covered with carvings and drawing. Some the scratchings of bored soldiers, but other markings obviously the work of skilled artisans. They told parts of the history of the Khmer, stretching back to the ancients’ ones and the Ones Before.

  Tam Nok had been here four days studying the writing and drawings. According to the words, the Khmer had established Angkor Kol Ker, the city now abandoned in the fog, over five thousand years ago. The ancient ones had come from an island located in the sea beyond the sea. That had caused Tam Nok to sit and think. There was a great sea to the east, one that no sailor in known memory had ever crossed. To think there a sea beyond the land that no one had ever gone to caused her some concern, because she knew that her destination lay far away.

  According to the writing, her ancestors left their island to escape the Shadow. They traveled far before settling here. And for many generations they thought they had succeeded in their evasion. And because of that feeling, much ancient wisdom had slowly been forgotten. And then the Shadow had come here.

  Tam Nok knew about the failure here-- the story of the coming of the Shadow over Angkor Kol Ker was too recent to have faded into legend. She was more interested in the island in the sea beyond the sea. It was described in some detail: rings of land and water, surrounding a central hill on which was a mighty temple and palace. Even at Angkor Wat where she had come from, the use of rings of water to protect those within was preserved.

  But the water had not saved the ancient ones. The island was attacked by fire from the dark Shadow and decimated so completely it disappeared beneath the waves of the sea and the people scattered.

  Tam Nok knew her people had come from the ocean, from the direction of the rising sun. But the ability to cross that sea had been lost-- or perhaps deliberately forgotten as the generations passed. She could not go east. The writings she had told her there were others who had escaped and gone in different directions. And that she would have to find some of those others in order to uncover what she was looking for.

  As the sun rose in the east, she shouldered her pack. She climbed down the stone stairs on the interior of the watchtower. Tam Nok turned toward the Shadow and began walking into the valley.

  If she survived this first part, she still had a very long journey before her.

  THE PRESENT

  Chapter 3

  1999 AD

  Dane peered out the window of the helicopter and all he saw was open ocean. He held Chelsea’s leash tightly and scratched behind her ears to calm her down. She had been on helicopters before when they worked search and rescue and she had never liked the ride. The high pitch of the turbine engines caused her great discomfort. She strained against the leash, her tail thumping against Dane’s leg to show her displeasure.

  Keeping tight hold, Dane slid down the red web seating, closer to Sin Fen, the only other occupant of the cargo bay of the two-bladed Chinook helicopter other than the crew chief. The middle of the cargo bay was full with two pallets of tied down gear.

  Before getting on the chopper, they had taken a Navy transport from Andrews Air Force Base to Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station on the eastern tip of Puerto Rico. Throughout the trip, Sin Fen had maintained her silence, working on her lap top computer. Dane had spent the early part of the flight napping, catching up on lost sleep and then reading, going through several books he had purchased at the post exchange before they took off, when he had been able to shake Sin Fen for a few minutes.

  Chelsea squeezed between Dane and Sin Fen and promptly collapsed, her belly on the toes of his shoes, her chin resting on her front paws, somehow feeling comforted lying in that spot.

  “What’s the fallout from the nukes in the Atlantic?” Dane asked.

  “I received the latest report from Foreman over the modem before we took off,” Sin Fen said. “The bombs all detonated on the ocean floor, at depths between one thousand and three thousand feet. The navy has sent ships and subs to do a survey, but we have to assume there was damage to the line between the plate tectonics. I think this was a test-- like the United States used to test nukes in Nevada and the Russians in Novlaya Svetlanya. Checking yield and effect. The fact that the Shadow tested along the junction of tectonic plates shows their electromagnetic surveillance of those joints definitely has a purpose.

  “There was, of course, quite a bit of radiation released. Given the prevailing currents that run northeast, some of that is going to brush along the coasts of Iceland, Eire Land and England. What the effect will be is hard to say at this point although there’s no doubt fisheries throughout that area will be affected negatively.”

  “Affected negatively?” Dane didn’t bother to wait for an amplification. “In other words, we don’t know much more than we did before eight nuclear bombs were exploded. Mind telling me exactly where we’re going?” he asked.

  Sin Fen still had her laptop open and her almond eyes shifted their gaze from it to him for a second before returning. She type in a command and then showed him the screen. A ship was displayed. “That’
s our next stop.”

  “What is it?” Dane had never seen anything like it.

  A massive ship was in the middle of an empty sea, a large wake indicating it was moving. A huge derrick took up the entire center of the ship, towering over it. Two helicopters sat on a landing pad on the stern, dwarfed by the derrick, giving an idea of how large the ship was. There was room on the pad for the Chinook they were on to land with some to spare.

  “It's the Glomar Explorer,” Sin Fen said.

  “A navy ship?”

  Sin Fen shook her head. "It was built in 1973 by Howard Hughes for the CIA."

  Dane saw the long arm of Foreman involved in that somehow. “To do what? Oil exploration?"

  "The cover story that Hughes gave the press was that the Glomar Explorer was built to mine minerals off the ocean floor. That’s even what he told the people building it.

  “It was constructed at York, Pennsylvania and is over two hundred meters long. Hughes spent about four hundred million of the government’s dollars on the thing without the taxpayers knowing about it. And that was in 1973 dollars-- A recent refit just cost over six hundred million. To get it to the Pacific, they had to sail it around South America because it wouldn't fit through the Panama Canal.

  "While the ship was built on the east coast, a companion craft was built in California called the HMB-1, Hughes Marine Barge. It's about a hundred meters long and built like an underwater aircraft hanger.

  "The barge and the ship work together when needed. While the Glomar is the surface platform, the HMB-1 is submergible. It's got a giant claw, remote TV camera and lights. It can dock with the Glomar in the well of the ship underneath the derrick.

  “The Glomar and HMB-1 were actually built to be part of a secret CIA mission called Project Jennifer. The purpose of that project was to recover a Russian submarine that had gone down in the Pacific with all hands. They went after the sub in 1974.”

  “Did they recover it?”

  “Part of it,” Sin Fen acknowledged. “The claw grabbed hold and they started bringing it up, but the submarine broke. They only got about a forty foot section. Enough to recover some cipher codes and manuals. Along with two nuclear torpedoes.”

  “Why would they spend that much money to get a Russian submarine?” Dane asked. “Our technology was ahead of theirs. There isn’t much we could have learned.”

  “Recovering the cipher codes for the Soviet fleet was the priority,” Sin Fen said.

  “How long between the Russian sub going down and the Glomar pulling up that piece?”

  “A year and a half.”

  “Then recovering the cipher codes is bullshit,” Dane said. “The Russians would have changed their ciphers the day after they lost the sub.”

  “But the CIA still had tapes of all the classified traffic that had been transmitted using those codes while the sub was still sailing,” Sin Fen said. “Even going back and breaking year and a half old transmissions can still reveal a lot of intelligence about fleet operations.”

  Dane glanced out the porthole at the open ocean. “The cover story was undersea mining,” he said. “And the story you’re telling me is that the CIA wanted to recover a Russian submarine for the cipher codes. Now, tell me the real reason the Glomar Explorer was built.”

  Sin Fen closed the laptop. “You are very distrusting, aren’t you?”

  “I’d be stupid not to be,” Dane said.

  Sin Fen nodded. “I apologize. Old habits die hard. I am so used to lying and telling cover stories. Working with Foreman all these years, not knowing what the gates were, we had to be very careful. We also had to manipulate people to do what we wanted without ever letting them have a hint what the real reason for their actions was or it was most likely they would not do what we wanted.”

  “Like sending my recon team after a downed spy plane in Cambodia,” Dane said.

  “Yes, but there was a downed spy plane,” Sin Fen said.

  “Downed because it was flying a mission for Foreman, concerning the Angkor gate, not supporting our war effort in Vietnam,” Dane noted. “And he wanted more than just the black box from the plane recovered-- he wanted my team and his man, Castle, to check out the gate on the ground.”

  “Please believe that our motives are good although our means might be deceptive.”

  “Right,” Dane said in such a tone that Chelsea lifted her head and regarded him with her golden eyes for a few seconds, before pushing her head against his knee, earning a scratch behind the ears. “Back to the Glomar,” Dane said.

  “The real reason for the Glomar Explorer was to recover the Russian submarine.”

  “But why did Foreman want the Glomar to do that?” Dane asked. “He was never interested in old cipher codes or Russian subs, was he?”

  “He was interested in submarines when they went through a gate,” Sin Fen said. “This particular vessel disappeared for a week in 1973 during passage through the area known as the Devil’s Sea off the coast of Japan. The Russian Navy got a bit excited about losing a nuclear armed sub as you can expect.

  “Then the submarine suddenly appeared a week later, exactly where it had disappeared as if nothing had happened. Except it wasn’t answering any radio calls. Then, less than an hour after reappearing, it goes down in very deep water. Too deep for the Russians to rescue anyone or even recover anything from the wreck with the technology that was available at that time.”

  “But not too deep for Foreman to try,” Dane said.

  “Correct. He was able to get the CIA to fund Glomar on the possibility of getting those cipher codes and classified manuals. Give the navy an idea what the Russian nuclear submarine capability was. Plus he got Howard Hughes to help. Mister Foreman has always been very good at getting wealthy individuals in the private sector to aid his cause.”

  “Did Foreman learn anything from the wreckage he did recover?”

  “What Foreman was really interested in was the nuclear power plant and the nuclear weapons. The Glomar wasn’t able to get the power plant and he only recovered two of the fourteen nuclear weapons it had on board.”

  Dane waited.

  “Some of the nuclear weapon berths were empty,” Sin Fen finally allowed.

  “Meaning the weapons were removed from the sub.”

  “Correct. And the two weapons recovered had been worked on.”

  “Worked on?”

  “Casings taken off. Parts removed.”

  “That helps explain how the nukes from the Wyoming were aimed, fired and detonated,” Dane noted.

  “Indeed it does,” Sin Fen said.

  “What else?”

  “You are persistent, aren’t you?” Sin Fen didn’t wait for an answer. “They recovered some bodies off the Russian submarine.”

  “That’s to be expected.”

  “Not these bodies,” Sin Fen said. “There were a total of eight in the section recovered. Four were Russian crewmembers. The other four-- well, three were Japanese and one was, as near as could be determined, an American.”

  “What were they doing on a Russian submarine?” Dane asked.

  “That’s a good question. A couple of years ago, Foreman made some discrete inquiries with his counterpart in Russia-- a man named Kolkov-- who was investigating what he called Vile Vortices-- their name for the gates.

  “Kolkov confirmed that when this Russian submarine sailed there were no foreigners on board. Foreman is of the opinion that these strangers came on board while the sub was in the Devil’s Sea gate.”

  “Sort of the way I was transported on board the Scorpion?”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps these people were inside the gate to begin with. Even more interesting is that we were never able to identify the American, nor could the Japanese identify the other bodies. However, one of the Japanese bodies had some work done on his teeth that was indicative of the state of dentistry in Japan in the early 1900s. Yet the body was in his prime-- no more than 30.”

  “We know time is different on the
other side of the gates,” Dane said.

  “We know that now,” Sin Fen corrected. “We didn’t know it then.”

  “Is it possible that the Shadow can use people?” Dane asked.

  “The Ones Before used Flaherty, so it is possible the Shadow can use humans.”

  Dane rubbed his hand across his forehead, feeling the onset of a headache. “Why did the submarine sink?”

  “That’s another intriguing thing,” Sin Fen said. “It appears that the Russians had quite a few ships of their fleet in the area, searching for the sub. When it reappeared, rather than recover it, the Russians seem to have sunk it.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know. We couldn’t even get Kolkov to confirm that.”

  “Because of the foreigners on board?” Dane wondered.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Or perhaps because of the nukes on board?”

  “Or the nukes not on board,” Sin Fen said with a slight smile.

  Dane could pick up the aura of her emotion. He could tell she knew how frustrated he was by the lack of clear-cut answers to the many mysteries surrounding the gates.

  “Is that why Foreman is so worried about the Wyoming?” Dane asked. “Even though the crew took a fatal dose of radiation, he’s concerned there might be others on board.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the sub would still be hot, wouldn’t it?” Dane asked. “Anyone going on board would receive a fatal dose.”

  “Yes, but--” Sin Fen shrugged to indicate this was another mystery beyond her. “That Trident was launched from the Wyoming, there’s no doubt about that. Whether there’s anybody alive on board is kind of moot now.”

  “Why didn’t they recover the rest of the Russian submarine?” Dane asked.