Atlantis Found

Jacobs watched helplessly as two of his men were cut down. Madder than hell, he held the trigger on his Eradicator rifle until the final round ejected from the clip, then his sergeant grabbed him by the collar of his parka and pushed him behind a trash bin before a barrage of counterfire could strike him. A volley of fragmentation missiles from the SEAL team temporarily halted the Sno-cats, but they began to come on again.

The SEALs fought tenaciously as they executed their withdrawal up the road, using whatever cover they could find. Then, unexpectedly, two more Sno-cats suddenly appeared at their rear and unleashed a torrent of fire. Jacobs felt a knot form in his stomach. He and his team had nowhere to go except into a narrow side alleyway. He prayed they were not being forced into an ambush, but the alley looked clear for at least seventy yards.

As he ran after his men, hoping they could reach cover before the Sno-cats turned the corner of the alley and achieved a field of unobstructed fire, he reported to Cleary. "Wizard, this is Scarecrow. We are under attack by four armored Sno-cats."

"Scarecrow, do they carry heavy weapons?"

"None that show. I make four hostiles with automatic weapons in each vehicle. Our fragmentation missiles have little effect on them."

Cleary crawled under a stairway, using it as a shield, and studied his map of the mining facility. "Give me your location, Scarecrow."

"We are moving down a narrow road toward the sea behind what looks like a row of maintenance shops about a hundred and fifty yards from the control center."

"Scarecrow, go another fifty yards, then bend a right turn and advance between a series of fuel storage tanks. That should bring you close to the front of the control center from a side road, where you can flank the hostiles pi

"Roger that, Wizard. On our way." Then, as an afterthought, Jacobs asked, "What have we got for defense against the armored Sno-cats?"

"Tin Man has two LAWs."

"We'll need four."

"The man carrying the other two went missing during the jump."

"Tin Man is at the power station," Jacobs said, frustrated. "He's not facing the armored cats, we are."

"I ordered him to withdraw from his objective because of overwhelming concentrated fire. He should be converging with Lion shortly."

"Tell him to load up, because four of those nasty vehicles will be right on our tail when we step into your front yard."

Jacobs and the SEALS soon circled the fuel storage tanks without encountering organized gunfire. Frequently glancing at his map of the facility, he led his men around a long wall that appeared to end near the front of the control center. It seemed like perfect cover, as they rushed to outflank the security guards behind the barrier who were blasting hell out of Sharpsburg and his Delta Force. Hardly had the SEALs come within fifty yards of the end of the wall when a blaze of concentrated fire struck them from the rear.

Unknown to them, a group of security guards had rushed through an underground tu

Only eighty yards away, Cleary lay flat and peered through his binoculars, searching for a weak spot in the barricade blocking the entrance to the control center. He found none and realized that, like Garnet's, his position was rapidly becoming untenable, yet he was determined to make an assault on the control center as soon as he was reinforced by the Marine Recon Team, and the SEALs had begun their flanking attack on the barricade.

But down deep, doubts were starting to form as to whether he could still pull the coals of final victory out of the fire.

The security guards were waging war with a vengeance. In their minds, they were fighting not only for their own lives but for the lives of their families who were waiting on board the Ulrich Wolf. Hugo himself was in the thick of the fighting in front of the control center, directing his forces and tightening the noose on the American assault team. His arrogance while issuing orders reflected his supreme confidence and optimism. His battle strategy was going exactly as he'd pla

He was flushing his enemy into one concentrated area for a

He spoke into an intercom mike inside his battle helmet. "Brother Karl?"

There was a moment or two of slight static before Karl responded. "Yes, Hugo."

"The intruders are contained. You and Elsie and the others can leave for the hangar as soon as the engineers set the nanotech systems on automatic."

"Thank you, brother. I'll soon meet you at the aircraft."

Two minutes later, as Hugo was ordering his two remaining armored Sno-cats to charge the American team, a security guard rushed to him behind the barricade and shouted, "Sir, I have an urgent message from the aircraft hangar!"

"What is it?" Hugo yelled above the gunfire.

But in that instant, Sergeant Mendoza squinted at the head behind the crosshairs inside his sniper scope and gently pulled the trigger of his Eradicator. The guard dropped dead at Hugo's feet, neither hearing nor feeling the bullet enter his right temple and exit the left. The message he had urgently wished to report, on the destruction in the aircraft hangar by a strange vehicle, died with him.

Garnet's Marines linked up with Sharpsburg's Delta team and took cover, as the four Sno-cats withdrew from chasing Jacobs and attacked them in a double column from the rear. They came on oblivious to the two antitank weapons aimed at them by the Marines, who at less than a hundred yards couldn't miss. The lead Sno-cats went up in an explosion of fire and flying debris and bodies, forming an effective roadblock that prevented the remaining vehicles from striking the already beleaguered Americans.

Cleary realized quickly that the reprieve had only short-term benefits and was temporary. It would be only a question of time before the security guards wised up to the fact that no more antitank shells were being fired because the supply was exhausted. Then the armored Sno-cats would attack, and there would be no stopping them. When Jacobs and his team hit the barricade from the flank, hopefully the advantage would swing to their side.

In Washington, the battlefield reports from the men under fire made it evident that the assault force was in deep trouble. It was becoming more obvious by the minute that Cleary and his men were being shot to pieces. The President and the Joint Chiefs could not believe what they heard. What had been launched as a daring mission had turned into a slaughter and a disaster. They were shocked by the growing realization that the mission had failed, and that the entire inhabited world was in jeopardy of vanishing, a nightmare they found impossible to accept.

"The aircraft carrying the main force," the President said, his thinking becoming disoriented, "when…?"

"They won't be over the compound for another forty minutes," answered General South.

"And the countdown?"

"Twenty-two minutes until the currents are right for the ice shelf to break off."

"Then we've got to send in the missiles."

"We will be killing our own men as well," cautioned General South.