The Atlantis Legacy - A01-A02 Read Online Free

and the distinct worlds each of them inhabited would for the first time collide made him wonder if the space-time continuum could handle it or if the universe itself would explode.
    “This isn’t going to end well, Commander, is it?”
    “Probably not. But General Yeats is waiting.”
    “Give me a minute.”
    Conrad turned and walked back to Mercedes, who had been watching the exchange with a furrowed brow, and kissed her. “I’m sorry, baby. But I’m going to have to go.”
    “Go?” she said. “Go where?”
    “To visit a real ancient astronaut.”
    Conrad reached into her pack again and took out a gold Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian statuette of Ramses II, who was pharaoh during the alleged Exodus. He had found it in the slave city, and it was the one thing left in his life that proved he wasn’t insane. He gave it to Mercedes.
    “Now you never knew where this came from, just in case the nice gentlemen coming over the ledge ask you when they escort you back to Lima.”
    Mercedes’s mouth dropped as Conrad and Lundstrom climbed into the Black Hawk. The door shut and the military chopper lifted up and away.
    Conrad looked down at the shrinking plateau. By the time he remembered to wave good-bye to Mercedes, the militia menhad reached the summit and the chopper was over the side of a mountain.
    Conrad turned to Lundstrom. “So what on earth does my father want with me?”
    “It’s where on earth,” said Lundstrom, throwing him a white polar “freezer” suit. “Catch.”

3
DISCOVERY PLUS TWENTY-TWO DAYS
    ACEH, INDONESIA ROME
    D R. S ERENA S ERGHETTI SKIMMED across the emerald rice fields at two hundred feet, careful to keep the chopper steady. The sun had burst through the dark clouds, but thunder rumbled across the lush mountainside, and rain threatened.
    She was nearing the town of Lhokseumawe in the war-torn corner of Indonesia that used to be known as the Dutch West Indies. There were twenty thousand orphans in the province, casualties of a decades-long struggle between Acehnese separatists and the Indonesian military. Now Al Qaeda terrorists had injected themselves into the mix on the Muslim side, making the situation even more combustible. She had to do something to help these children whom the rest of the world had forgotten.
    As she passed over the wetlands, she glanced down and saw the sun glint off the oil slick. A discharge from an oil well in Exxon Mobil’s Cluster II had contaminated the local paddy fields, orchards, and shrimp farms. It had happened before, but this leak looked far more threatening. The widows and orphans in the nearby villages of Pu’uk, Nibong Baroh, and Tanjung Krueng Pase would be devastated. They would have to move to another area for at least six months, maybe a year, their sustenance wiped out.
    She was about to flick on the onboard remote camera when a voice spoke in her headphone in heavily accented English. “Welcome to Post Thirteen, Sister Serghetti.”
    She glanced starboard and saw an Indonesian military chopperwith side-mounted machine guns keeping pace with her chopper. The voice spoke again. “You are going to land on the helipad in the center of the complex.”
    She banked to the right and started to climb when four bullets raked the side. “Land immediately,” the voice said, “or we’ll blow you out of the sky.”
    She gripped the joystick tightly and dropped lower toward the helipad. She lightly touched down on the platform as soldiers in field greens surrounded her chopper, fingers gripping their M-16s.
    They were Kopassus units—Indonesian special forces—based at nearby Camp Rancong, she realized as she stepped out of the chopper with her hands up. Camp Rancong, the site of many reported tortures, was owned by PT Arun, the Indonesian oil giant, which was itself partially owned by Exxon Mobil, which facilitated Post Thirteen.
    The wall of Kopassus forces parted as a jeep drove up. It braked to a halt and an officer, a colonel judging by his