The Atlantis Revelation by Thomas Greanias Page B

U.S. Army and loved to play the American cowboy in the new Wild West here on the Caspian. But none had ever been ordered to listen to a woman, let alone one of color, and they resisted. The election of America’s first black president, it turned out, wasn’t going to change human nature or much of anything else in this world.
    They turned onto Neftchilar Avenue and drove along the waterfront boulevard and marina. They quickly passed the state oil company and government house and, a few minutes later, were surrounded by the oil derricks and pumps of the east harbor.
    At last she could make out the warehouse where the van with the crate containing the Flammenschwert was parked. She directed Omar to park at the adjoining oil terminal, then led them to a communal outhouse.
    “Why have we stopped?” Omar said once they were inside and could talk quietly. He was breathing through his mouth because of the stench. “The warehouse is the other way.”
    “Sorry to disappoint you, Omar. But we can’t go storming in like Rambo if there’s any chance they’ve got some kind of nuclear device. We’ve got to take them by surprise.” She unfolded her schematics of the sewer tunnels. “No radios,” she instructed them. “We stick to light signals until we get to the warehouse, and then it’s hand motions.”
    She looked up and locked eyes with each man as she spoke. She wanted to make sure they understood her perfectly.
    Standing around in their black-on-black Texas Ranger baseball caps, flak jackets, and special night-vision hazmat masks, the Azerbaijanis could pass for one of her old U.S. special forces teams. Wanda had gotten her start years earlier in Tora Bora and Baghdad, crawling through caves and bunkers and sewers ahead of American troops in search of al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and, later, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Bomb-sniffing dogs had the noses to find explosives, but they didn’t have the eyes or sense to look out for trip wires in the dark. So she was always the first one in. Later on she was recruited by the U.S. Capitol Police to establish a special recon and tactics squad, or RATS, to police and protect the miles of utility tunnels beneath the U.S. Capitol complex. “Queen Rat,” they called her.
    But Omar and his friends weren’t at that level of professionalism yet. They were inexperienced in these kinds of operations, a political necessity for a “joint” American-Azerbaijani mission that was anything but. Tonight was a baptism by fire.
    “This outhouse is connected to an ancient sewer that pipes into the modern one under the warehouse,” she told them, pointing to the map. “We come up from beneath, use a camera to get a readout, and then we hit them and secure the package.”
    She double-checked to make sure they had properly inserted the translucent magazines of their laser-sighted G36 machine guns. Their short-stroke gas systems enabled them to fire tens of thousands of rounds without cleaning, perfect for these guys. Then she proceeded to unbolt one of the rusty metal latrines from the concrete floor to reveal a big black hole.
    Omar could only stare in horror as the mission she described on the schematic finally sank in. “This is a shithole!”
    “That’s what we Americans do, Omar. Climb through shit-holes all over the world to make it a safer place.”
    He shook his head in horror. “I cannot fit through that,” he said with disdain. “My shoulders are too wide.”
    Which was true. A man’s shoulders were often the limiting factor in this kind of work. For women, it was their hips; Wanda’s were unusually slim. But while women could do little to narrow their pelvis, men had other options.
    “Dang, Omar, you’re right. Here, let me take a look,” she said, and with an open palm made a powerful thrust to Omar’s right shoulder. The blow dislocated his shoulder, and it dropped like a hanging outlaw in an old western. “Oops.”
    “You American bitch!” he