The Illuminati Sanctum (The Relic Hunters 6) by David Leadbeater (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕

it now, at a more advanced stage of exposure, Bodie felt a renewed sense of pride and a repeated sense of loss at the death of Eli Cross, who had been killed on the waters above. That made him think of Gunn, another tragic demise during their last mission.

“There.” Lucie pointed. “Where the largest pillar is shorn off at the top. The ground below that is where the ley line intersects.”

Bodie guided them lower, focusing on the controls for the robotic arms. One button extended them, another turned them, and still another would allow them to scoop up a sample of the bedrock. Very quickly, they were up close to the crumbled pillar, traveling down its length to the sea bottom. Bodie saw carvings of men with long hair, holding spears and bows. He saw women brandishing swords, and a triangle, above which shone a beam of light. He saw several unnamable machines and a hill with a castle on top of it, backlit by a crazy sun.

“Watch out!”

Lucie’s warning snapped him back to reality. They were close to the bottom. Too close. The mountainous terrain came up fast, suddenly filling the window.

Bodie braced, cursed and held on. The others were too scared to even breathe. The submersible struck rock with a forbidding crunch and tipped forward. Bodie found himself trying to watch every gauge at the same time as a chilling sensation swept through his body.

The bulkhead shuddered, the gauges rattled, the seats shivered against their moorings. Bodie bit his lip until blood flowed as the sub tipped, but then held his breath as it steadied, leveling up with the ocean floor. A moment passed, and then another in which they rejoiced that they were still alive. Bodie breathed deeply.

“All in a day’s work,” he said gruffly and tilted the sub to a sharper angle, this time hitting the seabed hard with the extending arms, and scooping up a fair sample of rock. Lifting that, he discarded it, and then hit the rock once more, trying to get relatively fresh rock rather than age-old shale and ocean particles.

Lucie assured him that they were in the perfect spot, so Bodie executed a third sweep of the robotic arm, scraping off a good sample. This, he lifted and carefully deposited into a storage bin on the side of the vessel. When that was done, he breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Easy,” Jemma said.

Bodie let out a long breath. “You weren’t the one holding their breath for the last five minutes.”

“Actually...”

“Can we go?” Jemma asked. “I hate it down here.”

Bodie nodded, not quite sharing her distaste. The emerging underwater city of Atlantis was incredible, and worth revisiting again and again in his opinion. What a privilege it must be for the men and women involved in its excavation.

Taking a last look at the once-mighty pillars and their intricate designs, he maneuvered the submersible so that it was level once more and then began the ascent. Deciding that using the exterior lights was pointless, he flicked them off and, almost immediately, his eyes were drawn to an undetermined point across the ocean bed to the east.

Spearing through the gloom were several faint beams of light. Some were steady, others moving slowly. “How thick is that ley line?” he asked Lucie.

An unusual silence followed. “As questions go, that’s a good one,” she said eventually. “And impossible to answer. I guess you’d have to measure the width of the magnetic field where it crosses the land.”

Cassidy was also peering at the distant lights. “Just go,” she said. “It could be the Illuminati, but it could also be archaeologists. Night and day doesn’t matter down here, and maybe they’re working double shifts.”

Bodie nodded, thinking and letting the vessel drift for a few seconds. Moving closer would risk everything they’d already accomplished. With a final nod he began the ascent in earnest, checking the radar and making sure they were rising to the correct coordinates, somewhere close to and east of the Dooley.

The cloying, unrelenting darkness was their entire world, so deep they turned away from it and stared at each other, attempting some inconsequential conversation to help take their mind off it. The minutes ticked by like hours, each one longer than the last. When the sub neared the surface, Bodie, Lucie and Jemma were more than ready.

It came up fast. One second they were in pitch darkness, the next a faint light appeared and then they were breaching the surface. The sub bobbed up, then space, light and the night sky surrounded them.

They were facing the superyacht.

“Perfect,” Bodie said. “What a bloody ride. I’m quite amazed it all went to pla—”

Blinding lights swept the sub. Bodie closed his eyes, opening them only when the light fell away. Jemma glared backward.

“Coastguard,” she said. “That’s a coastguard vessel.”

Bodie swore. They were sitting ducks here, with no way of powering their craft closer to the yacht. Lucie was already calling Cassidy and Yasmine. The coastguard vessel didn’t appear to have noticed them in the sweep, but the lights were still roving, taking in their area of the ocean and coming back around.

“Cass,” Lucie was whispering for unknown reasons. “We’re off your starboard, about a hundred feet. Shit...” She looked to Bodie. “What are we gonna do?”

Bodie understood her quandary. She wasn’t a thief, a decision maker or a field agent. He was all those things, and still dithering.

“We’re dead in the water,” he decided. “Tell them to come, but quietly.”

“In the yacht?” Lucie asked.

“No, no,” Bodie smiled a little at her naivety. “Tell them to use the speedboat.”

At that moment, the beams of light passed over them once more. Bodie blinked, temporarily blinded. Cassidy told Lucie that she was on her way. Bodie cracked open the lid of the sub, pushing the spherical globe back on its