Atlantis

EPILOGUE

“The last time we met, you were pointing a gun at me,” Foreman said.

Dane stared at the old man on the other side of the conference table noting the changes the years had etched. Foreman had aged well, except that his once-thick snow-white hair was thinner than Dane remembered. “You were lying to me then,” Dane continued, reaching down to his left and rubbing Chelsea’s left ear. The golden retriever cocked her head and pressed against his hand.

“Withholding information,” Foreman clarified. “Lying is too strong a word to be used for the situation.”

They were seated in a conference room inside CIA headquarters at Langley. Sin Fen sat next to Foreman. Foreman would be leaving shortly for a high level meeting in Washington with the president and the National Security Council to discuss what had just occurred both in the Angkor Gate in Cambodia and the other Gates.

The shocking sudden reappearance of the submarine Scorpion-listed as lost in US Navy logs in 1968-was being kept under wraps, but Dane knew it could not last much longer. They could not explain the fact that not a man in the crew seemed to have aged a day in forty years. Nor could the crew explain it. As far as they were concerned, just minutes had passed between the time they last radioed Foreman in 1968 that the reactor was going off-line as they entered the Bermuda Triangle to the moment Dane appeared on the ship’s bridge two days ago.

“Why do you still need me?” Dane asked.

“Because that mission you started on forty years ago never ended,” Foreman said. “Because you stopped the invasion through the Angkor Gate.”

“For the moment,” Sin Fen added.

Foreman nodded. “That’s why I need you.”

Dane glanced at Sin Fen. Her mind was a black wall to him. Then back at Foreman. There, he could tell more, but not as much as he would have liked. He knew the old man was telling the truth, but he also sensed there was so much Foreman didn’t know or was holding back. Based on his experiences with the CIA man, Dane knew it was likely a combination of both.

“I put everything in my report,” Dane said.

“Also,” Foreman continued as if he had not heard, “we lost the Wyoming, inside the Bermuda Triangle Gate.”

“Other submarines have been lost in the Gates,” Dane said.

Foreman steepled his fingers. “Not one with twenty-four Trident ICBMs on board. With each missile carrying eight Mk 4 nuclear warheads rated at a hundred kilotons each. That’s 192 nuclear warheads. And our friends on the other side, whoever or whatever they are-the Shadow as your man Flaherty called them-seem to have a penchant for radioactive things. We defeated their weapons in this first assault, but we might not do so good against our weapons that they’ve captured.”

“Great,” Dane said. “We get the Scorpion back, the Shadow get the Wyoming and its nukes.”

“We got you,” Foreman said. “You have some sort of power, some sort of attachment to these Gates. You made it into the Angkor Gate and out again. Two times. That’s once more than anyone else has ever done.”

Dane simply stared at the CIA representative. He felt as if he were in a whirlpool being sucked in against his will into a dark and dangerous center. And to be honest, he wasn’t sure how hard he should swim against the power drawing him in; if he was even capable of resisting.

Foreman slid several photos across the table. “The top one is the Angkor Kol Ker Gate. Then the Bermuda Triangle and other Gates around the world.”

Dane looked at the first photo. It was a satellite image of Cambodia. There was a solid black triangle in the center, about six miles long on each side. It was located in the north-central part of the country, in deep, nearly impenetrable jungle.

“Each Gate is now shaped the same and stable at that size,” Foreman said. “That solid black is something new and we don’t know what it means. It’s never been reported as long as we have recorded history. No form of imaging can penetrate it. Ground surveillance from those visually watching the Gates over land say the fog has coalesced into solid black. Remote sensors sent on remotely piloted vehicles, whether sent via ground, air or sea, simply go into the black and cease transmitting. And they never come back out, even if they are programmed to return.

“The Russians-and this is classified as is everything else we discuss-sent a team into one of the Gates on their territory near Tunguska two days ago. The team hasn’t come back and is presumed dead.

“I’m afraid that although we stopped the propagation it went on long enough to allow this thing, whatever it is, to gain a solid foothold on our planet at each of the Gate sites. That’s something that never happened before.”

“That we know of,” Sin Fen added.

“It means they’re waiting,” Dane said.

“They?” Foreman asked.

“The Shadow.”

“For what?” Sin Fen asked.

“To attack again,” Dane said.