The Atlantis Legacy - A01-A02 Read Free Page B

few friends and universities. Hell, he might as well get paid for it.
    Suddenly the wind picked up and Mercedes’s ponytail slapped him across the face. A gleaming metallic object hovered in the sky. He shaded his eyes and recognized the shape of a Black Hawk military chopper fitted with side-mounted machine guns.
    Mercedes followed his gaze and frowned. “What is it?”
    “Trouble.”
    Conrad reached behind her and pulled out a Glock 9 mm automatic pistol from her backpack. Mercedes’s eyes grew wide. “You sent me through customs with that?”
    “Nah, I bought it in Lima the other day.” He pulled out a loaded clip from his belt pack and rammed it into the butt of the pistol. He tucked the gun behind his belt. “I’ll do the talking.”
    Mercedes, speechless, nodded.
    The chopper descended, the wind from its blades kicking up red dust as it touched down. The door slid open, and six U.S. Special Forces soldiers in field uniforms stepped down onto the summit and secured the area before a lanky young officer in a blue USAF flight suit clanked down the metal steps to the ground and walked up to Conrad.
    “Doctor Yeats?” the officer said.
    Conrad looked him over. He appeared to be about his own age, a slim, easygoing man Conrad had seen somewhere before. He wore a single black leather glove on his left hand. “Who wants to know?”
    “NASA, sir. I’m Commander Lundstrom. I work for your father, General Yeats.”
    Conrad stiffened. “What does he want?”
    “The general needs your opinion on a matter of vital interest to the national security.”
    “I’m sure he does, Commander, but the national interest and my own are two different things.”
    “Not this time, Doctor Yeats. I understand you’re persona non grata at the University of Arizona. And in case you hadn’t noticed, an armed goon squad is climbing up that cliff. You can come with me, or you could spend a few weeks in a Peruvian jail cell.”
    “So you’re saying I can either see my father or go to jail? I’ll have to think about it.”
    “Think about this,” Lundstrom said. “Your little friend there might not want to bail you out of jail when she discovers you’ve been using her to smuggle a stolen Egyptian artifact into the country so you can pawn it off to a wanted South American drug lord.”
    “Another lie coming out of Luxor. Where did I allegedly find this artifact?”
    “The Egyptians say you looted it from the National Museum of Baghdad when the city fell to invading American forces during the Iraq war. They got the Iraqis to confirm it. At least that’s what they’re telling the Peruvians, Bolivians, and anybody else who will listen.”
    Conrad tried to muffle his rage at the Egyptians even as he calculated the chances of Mercedes letting him rot in prison. He concluded she’d probably let the guards have a few whacks at him before bailing him out.
    “Very nice,” Conrad told Lundstrom. “But all the same, I’m going to have to pass up this wonderful opportunity.” Conrad offered his hand to wish Lundstrom a hearty good-bye.
    But the commander didn’t budge. “There’s more, Doctor Yeats,” he said. “We’ve found what you’ve spent your whole life looking for.”
    Conrad looked him in the eye. “My biological parents?”
    “Next best thing. You’ll be briefed when we get there.”
    “‘There’ almost got me killed last time, Commander. Look, why don’t you find somebody else?”
    “We tried.” Lundstrom paused, letting the reality sink in that Conrad wasn’t at the top of anybody’s list these days. “But if her disappearance is any indication, it appears that Dr. Serghetti has already been retained by another organization to investigate this matter.”
    “Serena?”
    Lundstrom nodded.
    Conrad’s mind raced through a number of scenarios, all of them entirely unpleasant and utterly thrilling at the same time. Just hearing her name made him come alive. And the thought that he and Serena and his father