Seconds later Skarda joined her. Outside, they could hear the pounding boots of Jaz's men, their weapons raking the house and the chopper with bullets. A man shouted. Then, with a thunderous roar, the grenades exploded, igniting the fuel and ammunition and ripping through the fuselage in a blizzard of superheated metal.

___.

Stepping off the elevator, Belisarius hurried down a dimly-lit corridor bored into the side of the mountain. Alone on his study, he'd heard the sounds of gunfire and the explosion. Was it the Atlanteans attacking? He doubted it. They wanted the Emerald Tablet and needed to keep him alive as a source of more orichalc.u.m. Had Skarda and Force survived? Maybe by some miracle. At any rate, Jaz's troops would take care of the interlopers.

It was time for him to get to Mount Tavrida.

Coming to a steel door, he tapped in a code on a touch pad and the door unlocked with an electronic snick. Pushing it open, he entered a small vestibule, where another door blocked his path. But this one had been constructed of thicker steel and here was not only a touch pad but a fingerprint scanner as well. He keyed in a code, then laid his palm against the scanner screen. This time there was no noise. He grabbed the heavy handle and turned, pulling open the vault door.

Overhead lights blinked on automatically as he stepped inside. The vault walls were lined with tiers of steel shelves, cradling medieval and Renaissance oil paintings, a few Greek and Roman marble busts, and farther back, ingots of gold, stacked to the ceiling.

Belisarius smiled, as he always did, when he saw the dull gleam of the yellow metal. Over the years he'd been converting more and more of his a.s.sets to gold. It was ultimately untraceable, able to be melted down and recast in any form or shape, a currency that was recognized and valued the world over.

If the Atlanteans succeeded with their plans, he would be one of the wealthiest men on the planet.

Moving into the vault, he walked past an original Rubens portrait to the spot where the Emerald Tablet rested inside a steel case. Opening the lid, he checked to make sure the artifact was still inside, then closed it and stepped out into the corridor, pulling the heavy vault door shut behind him.

___.

When the helicopter exploded, Skarda and April threw themselves against the hard slate floor. Jagged fragments of metal and stone burst over their heads, the noise of the blast echoing in their ears. Rolling to his feet, Skarda saw that they were in a long, rectangular great room dominated by hand-carved oak furniture, the walls hung with oil paintings. At the far end logs crackled in a ma.s.sive fireplace.

At the high opening leading to the house an arm and hand flashed motion. A round object arced through the air.

"Grenade!" April yelled, immediately diving for the protection of a heavy table and tipping it over like a shield in front of her.

Ducking low, Skarda leapt for the shelter of an oversized chair, clapping his hands over his ears.

With a deafening whump the bomb exploded, sending a whirlwind of razor-sharp confetti in all directions. Waiting a count of three, the commando took a quick step into the opening, spraying the room with a burst of bullets from his G36, blowing big chunks out of the limestone walls and ripping several paintings to shreds.

Behind the protective wall of the oak table, April waited, holding her breath, knowing that Skarda wouldn't make a move until she did. Then in one fluid motion she rolled out, snapping up to a crouch, seeing the commando still standing in the open pa.s.sageway, his figure obscured by a nebula of smoke.

The man saw her motion and whipped his rifle up- Her hand moved and one of her throwing knives flashed through the air, the blade burying itself to the hilt in his neck. He staggered back, letting go of his rifle and clawing at his throat. His knees sagged and he dropped to the floor.

Stooping to retrieve her knife, April wiped the blood on the commando's pants and sheathed it. She peered out into a marble-floored corridor leading west. Nothing moved. Ahead a short pa.s.sageway opened onto another huge doorway framed by an oak lintel. They moved forward, finding themselves in a circular room whose walls were constructed of stones and boulders mortared in place, clearly supporting one of the ma.s.sive turrets they'd seen from sky. Floor-to-ceiling windows fronted the south side and above them a balcony perimetered the circ.u.mference of the second floor.

As they entered, a man barged onto the balcony, swinging his rifle around in a tight arc, blazing fire.

April dived right into the shelter of a long couch, crouching, bullets cracking all around her, sending up clouds of splinters. Whipping up the barrel of her rifle, she twitched her finger. A slashing stream of bullets caught the man across the midsection, doubling him in half. His body jerked back, out of sight.

The sound of shouts came to their ears. Three more men blitzed onto the balcony from a second-floor corridor, their guns spraying the room with bullets. Skarda and April dove, hitting the wood floor with their shoulders, rolling for the protection of the balcony overhang, out of the attackers' line of sight. Jumping to her feet, April freed a grenade from her webbing, whipping around to see Skarda following suit. The rattle of automatic weapons hadn't stopped-bullets chewed through furniture and stone, chipping off chunks of the bouldered wall.

Together they pulled the pins. April held up her right hand, her fingers counting out one...two...three...

Taking a step out, they lobbed the grenades at the balcony.

The explosions seemed to shake the house. A man screamed, then was abruptly silent. A mangled body pinwheeled to the floor, the dead man's head crashing on an end table with a sickening thud and snap of bones.

April traded a quick glance with Skarda. He nodded. Like one person they leapt out of hiding, flipping around in mid-air and landing on their backs, sliding across the polished wood floor, letting loose with their Barretts on full auto.

Behind the railing of the balcony, one man was still alive, his blood-spattered face snarling with hate. Spotting him, Skarda fired. But the man leapt clear, whipping the barrel of his rifle around and pulling the trigger. A line of bullets strafed across Skarda's chest, pummeling him as if he'd been hit by blows from a gigantic hammer. Gritting his teeth in pain, he jerked up the Barrett and fired. The rounds. .h.i.t the commando in the mouth, blowing his jaw apart and splattering blood and brains against the wall behind him.

Coming to a crouch, April knelt beside him, her black eyes probing his. "Hurt?"

He shook his head. The movement made him wince. The bullets had felt like spikes had been pounded into his chest, but they hadn't pierced the armor. "I'll be black-and-blue," he smiled ruefully.

She helped him to his feet. "Okay. Let's get out of here! There's a staircase over there. The main house must be that way."

They took the steps in a rush, emerging at the top in a low crouch. On this section of the balcony two doors stood open, separated by about twenty feet. Sprinting past the first door, April stabbed her rifle into the far doorway while Skarda took the first. They saw a library, its walls lined with built-in mahogany bookcases.

Empty.

Another twenty feet down a doorway led to a long pa.s.sageway, lined with a series of tall, narrow windows on both sides of the aisle. Hurrying along, Skarda could see the front grounds of the castle on his right, lit by unseen yellow lights, where a snow-covered circular drive looped around a garden and fountain to hook up with the main drive where it dropped out of sight over the edge of a pine-forested hillside. On his left, the windows looked out over an outdoor courtyard, where fifteen-foot-tall sculpted yew hedges formed a giant maze.

A m.u.f.fled shrill scream from outside made him turn his head. On the driveway a black BMW 760i had appeared, a dark shape in the diffused light. Skarda heard another scream and then Jaz came into sight, dragging Flinders toward the car. She yanked open the rear door and forced her inside, slamming it shut, then ran around to the driver's side and climbed in.

The BMW took off with a screech of tires.

April had seen her, too. "We need a car."

On the western end of the corridor, two commandos burst into view, dropping down and taking up defensive positions behind the stone walls. Behind them came the pounding of booted feet. Skarda spun around to see more men converging on the opposite end of the corridor.

They were boxed in.

"Jump!" April yelled at him.

Ripping two grenades from her webbing, she pulled the pins and tossed one right and one left. Then she spun around, her rifle stuttering out rounds on full auto at the windows. The plate gla.s.s above the courtyard shattered into a million fragments and they jumped, arms outspread, landing on top of one of the huge yews, their feet smashing through leaves and branches and burying themselves half way down the length of the hedge.

Above them the grenades blew. Gla.s.s shivered and burst in a whirlwind of flying shards, drowning out shouts and screams. Billows of dark gray shot out over the courtyard.

Lunging forward against the dense foliage, Skarda clawed his way out of the yew, his feet smashing through branches as he tumbled to the paved floor. He turned and caught April as he toppled forward. A door opened at the far end of the courtyard. Racing for it, they came upon another corridor that broadened into a kitchen, and beyond it, a mud room, where five sets of car keys dangled from a hang-on board.

April yanked opened the single door in the room. The garage. Flicking on a light, Skarda whistled, seeing two more BMW's, a Mercedes, a Hummer H2 SUT, and an Aston Martin Rapide.

"Aston Martin," she decided.

Finding the key, they climbed in. Skarda hit the electronic door opener and she jammed down on the accelerator. The powerful car leapt forward, rocketing out of the garage and onto the twisting driveway.

By now the snow had stopped, giving way to tattered clouds revealing an inky-black sky littered with stars. She pumped the brake pedal and the Rapide swerved through a shallow S-curve.

Glancing over at him, April said, "Odds are they're going to the airport. We're running out of time, which means they'll probably head for Crimea."

"Munich?"

"That's the closest. Jaz will want to keep her weapons, so that means a private plane."

Nodding his agreement, Skarda tapped out a text to Candy Man: "Check on flight plans at Munich Airport, private jets bound for Crimea."

Ahead of them the road twisted sharply in switchbacks of tight S-curves. April hit the brake and downshifted, tires screeching in protest. The Rapide shuddered, taking the turn at sixty miles-per-hour in a spray of dirt and snow as the wheels jumped off the road and bit into the shoulder. Involuntarily Skarda's fingers clutched the armrest.

"Good car," she said.

The road continued to sidewind like a rattler. They were heading for the foothills of the Alps, where far in the distance Skarda could see cl.u.s.ters of light that were small towns.

The Stealth chimed. He looked at the screen: "da.s.sault falcon 7X flight plan for yalta, crimea, franz josef strauss munic.i.p.al airport, munich."

April's head shot up. "Park."

He glanced over, seeing her eyes pinned to the rear view mirror.

Twisting around, he saw the lights of a Hummer stabbing the night behind them, approaching fast.

"Jaz's guys," she said. "I guess we didn't get all of them."

The next curve came up suddenly. April wrenched the wheel, downshifting, watching the speedometer leap downward as she stepped on the brake. Even at forty miles an hour, over the squeal of tires and the roar of the wind, Skarda could hear the chatter of the machine gun from the Hummer. He ducked. The rear window shattered in a burst of glittering fragments. Next to his right shoulder the headrest exploded, sending a flurry of shredded leather and fiber stuffing flying. More slugs smacked into the dashboard and drilled starred holes through the windshield, raking over the roof with the sound of tearing metal. Chunks of limestone shattered and flew from a great shoulder of rock as the Aston Martin disappeared around it.

Grabbing his Barrett, Skarda switched to full auto and vaulted into the back seat, shoving the barrel into the jagged hole where the window had been. Cold wind tunneled through the Rapide, making his hands shake. He pressed the barrel against the top of the seat for support. Then around the limestone shoulder the lights of the Hummer appeared, yellow cones spearing through the darkness. Even though the Aston Martin was faster, April was forced to constantly brake and lessen speed as they hit hairpin after hairpin.

When the Hummer's lights flashed straight in his face, Skarda fired. His bullets punched into the top of the SUT's hood, striking off sparks and crawling in a ragged line up the windshield of the pa.s.senger's side where he could see the dark shape of a man starting to crawl out the side window to fire. The gla.s.s exploded in a shower of red as the rounds tore the man apart.

Its tires howling, the Hummer dropped back, zigzagging over the road.

Hitting the gas, April yelled back to him. "Get the rear seats down and take a couple of grenades and get into the trunk! When I'm ready, I'll yell!"

They were approaching a steep downgrade now as the road straightened out past the vast dark bulk of a pine-forested cliffside. Wind cycloned through the jagged holes in the window gla.s.s. Yanking down the rear seats, Skarda wriggled into the trunk compartment, wincing from the pressure on the bruised muscles of his chest. Freeing two grenades from his vest, he pulled the pins and waited.

In the mirror, April watched the Hummer's headlights zooming nearer. Deliberately she took her foot off the gas, letting the SUT gain ground. The Hummer roared closer, closing the gap. Obviously the driver was planning to use his bulk to ram them from behind and drive them off the side of the cliff.

"Get ready!" she yelled over the screaming wind.

Then in one fluid motion she stomped on the brakes and popped the trunk release. Caught by the rushing wind the trunk snapped open as the two vehicles narrowed the gap between them. Raising himself up, Skarda let the grenades fly, watching the spoons winking light as they were torn away by the slipstream.

His aim was true. Both grenades arced through the air toward the Hummer, disappearing through the dark hole in the shattered windshield. He saw the driver scream. The man smashed his foot against the brakes, his shoulder ramming against the door, desperately trying to force it open. The Hummer snaked over the road. Then its ma.s.sive body erupted in a sheet of flame, the fiery hulk spinning around in a half circle until it smashed against a pile of boulders on the side of the road in a gushing cloud of smoke.

Taking a quick glance at the fiery wreckage in the mirror, April stepped on the gas and the Aston Martin sped away into the night.

With clenched teeth Skarda heaved himself into the front seat. He glanced over at her. "Well... all we have to do now is save the world."

FIFTY-SEVEN.

Mount Tavrida, Crimean Peninsula THE jagged teeth of the Crimean Mountains rose abruptly from the northern coast of the Black Sea, extending in three parallel ridges from Sevastopol to Feodosia and culminating in their highest peak, Mt. Tavrida, at almost a mile-and-a-half above the level Babugan Plateau. Dense forests of oak, beech, and ash covered the lower elevations of the mountain, giving way to pines as the alt.i.tude increased and finally to steep slabs of bare rock at the summit where vegetation could find no foothold.

In a deep gorge scooped out between two towering spires of limestone, the cyclopean walls of a fortress rose up in heavy architectural ma.s.ses that looked like a continuation of the living rock. The roof, sculpted out of polished stone, looked like a flat, natural mesa whitened by wind-blown patches of snow. No battlements crenellated the walls nor were there any other defensive measures. There was no need. No roads wound up the side of the mountain, and the sheer precipices were impossible to climb. The only access was by aircraft, and any enemy coming within range of the stronghold would be immediately spotted and shot down.

The whine of throttled-back jet engines shattered the stillness of the thin air as the Dussault Falcon touched down on the airstrip, its lights carving out an advancing swath of light across the asphalt. The aircraft taxied to a stop beside a Lexus GX, where Zandak stood waiting for its arrival. Next to him two Atlantean soldiers stood at attention alongside a Jeep, their rifles in ready position.

The pa.s.senger door dropped open and Belisarius stepped out, carrying the metal case containing the Emerald Tablet. A strong wind whipped his hair and drove tiny spicules of ice against the skin of his ruined face. He paid it no attention.

Behind him, Jaz had exited the pilot's chair and now followed him, dragging Flinders by the arm. With no coat to protect her, she shivered as a blast of icy wind buffeted her.

Zandak eyed the case. "You brought the Tablet?"

Not bothering to answer, Belisarius brushed past him and yanked open the rear door of the Lexus. "Have our things brought to our quarters." He climbed inside.

Zandak barked orders at the soldiers, who trotted to the open door of the jet. Jaz tightened her grip, forcing Flinders into the SUV next to her father. She sat stiffly, not looking at him, her eyes fixed straight ahead. Zandak got behind the wheel.

"Comfy?" Jaz whispered in her ear.

Flinders jackknifed herself forward, addressing Zandak. "This is kidnapping, you know-"

Belisarius' voice sliced through her words like a razor blade. "Do you have someplace you can lock this woman up?"

Stepping on the accelerator, Zandak glanced into the rear seat. "There are confinement rooms in the lower level."

A choked scream erupted from Flinders' lips but Jaz whipped her right hand out, her fingers pinching both sides of her mouth. Flinders slumped back in her seat, her eyes burning with hate and fury.

Belisarius nodded in approval, then withdrew into himself, staring out at the bleak landscape. They were moving west on a narrow road that bisected the runway. On a shorter airstrip two Mi-25's had been tied down and beyond them sat the long, white shape of a Challenger 600, barely visible in the darkness.

The road emerged into a branching driveway that looped around the front of the fortress. No lights shone from its windowless walls. Even up close it looked like an extension of the natural landscape. The only feature distinctly man-made was the 4.5-meter satellite receiver dish antenna mounted in the lee of a spire of rock.

Zandak swung the Lexus in a tight half-circle, parking in front of twelve-foot-tall doorway, glinting with a dull metallic gleam in the reflected glare of the headlights. Climbing out, he waited until the other three had exited the SUV, then strode purposefully to what Flinders could now see was an immense copper door thrust deep into the rock face, its surface pitted and coated with a thick patina of verdigris.

Jaz shoved Flinders to get her feet moving. But with no coat to protect her, she didn't need encouragement. Shivering, she ran toward the entrance.

Zandak pushed open the door. Entering, he led the group down an unlit, stone-floored corridor, whose high, square skylights allowed only dim natural illumination to filter inside. A rush of warm air coc.o.o.ned Flinders as she stepped inside. The abrupt change of temperature raised gooseb.u.mps on her arms.

Coming to a second copper door, Zandak pushed it open, treading down another echoing corridor that opened onto a broad flight of stone steps leading downward into the mountain. Soft overhead lights illuminated their descent. Finally the staircase gave way to another hall, flanked by a large rectangular opening barred by copper doors.

At one of the doors, Zandak stopped. Under his touch it swung open. Inside was a dimly-lit, high-vaulted chamber, at least two hundred feet long, whose marble-slabbed walls were interrupted by rows of ma.s.sive fluted columns. From the base of each column scrolled marble b.u.t.tresses rose to arch into a cathedral-like roof, worked with inlaid panels of gold. Along the walls, likewise inlaid with patterned designs of gold and emerald and incrusted with golden plates and studs, lines of marble statues of men marched, three times life-size, their muscles and veins carved in exquisite detail, their empty eyes staring with grim purpose out across the eons.

Without pause, Zandak crossed the room, disappearing through a high doorway surmounted by a carved marble lintel. The group followed, their footsteps echoing loudly on the polished floor. Here another corridor ran north and at its end point, another linteled doorway.

As they stepped through, Flinders gasped again. They had entered a hall at least twice the size of the one they had just left, whose ceiling, arching up into a heaven-like dome, reached at least sixty feet above their heads. Here, painted in panels between arching cross beams, were scenes from the mythology of Atlantis, worked with inlaid gold and green crystal. As in the other hall, the beams led down to meet fluted columns that lined the lengths of both walls. But here no imposing statues stared down at them from the heights.

But what Flinders saw at the far end of the chamber caused her to gasp out loud. A gigantic statue of a man, his great horned head thrust forward, wreathed in seaweed, his ma.s.sive hands held open with fingers outstretched, his stone eyes, sunk deep under heavy brows, like living pools of blackness in the gloom. She knew this was Ymm, the great sea G.o.d of the doomed Atlanteans. An immense trident, fashioned out of pure gold and emerald, stood next to his throne and all around the t.i.tanic figure stylized marble waves curled, cradling smaller images of sea nymphs sitting astride the backs of dolphins and sea monsters.

Zandak crossed the room, disappearing through a high doorway capped by a carved scrolled marble lintel. The group followed, their footsteps echoing loudly on the polished floor of a corridor running perpendicular to the Great Hall. Flinders tried to hang back, staring in wonder at the huge statue, but Jaz shoved her hard through the open door. Following the corridor, they entered another doorway.

Inside, Flinders blinked at the sudden onslaught of bright lights. They were standing in a steel-walled command room, lit by rows of overhead lamps that shone down on a warren of computer stations manned by men in red jumpsuits. X-Wall video displays covered three of the walls, their screens shifting with a kaleidoscope of changing images from news feeds, maps, and satellite data from around the world.

At their entrance a tall man swung around. He was at least an inch taller than Zandak, broad-shouldered and heavily-muscled, with ginger-colored hair and widely-s.p.a.ced, oversized blue-gray eyes set flatly in a head shaped like a rounded rectangle. An aura of leadership emanated from him like a force field.

He took a step forward, his eyes narrowing as his gaze swept across the newcomers.