Gregg Loomis - Gates of Hades

PRAISE FOR GREGG LOOMIS!

THE JULIAN SECRET

I could not put this book down!... I was sure I had the mystery figured out, but as usual, Loomis kept me involved and surprised until the end.... A highly recommended read.

Fresh Fiction

This is a lively and stimulating thriller you do not want to put down.... Dan Browns fans will find The Julian Secret a delight.

I Love a Mystery

THE PEGASUS SECRET

[The Pegasus Secret has] more intrigue and suspense than The Da Vinci Code!

Robert J. Randisi, Bestselling Author of Cold Blooded

The Pegasus Secret is a driving thriller that slams the reader from the first page and doesnt let up until the explosive end. A fantastic novel.

Fresh Fiction

The international setting and fast-paced action grip... [Readers] looking to repeat The Da Vinci Code experience will be satisfied.

Publishers Weekly

Fans of Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code are going to love The Pegasus Secret, an ecclesiastical thriller that is so action-packed that readers will feel they are on a fast-moving rocket ship. Gregg Loomis writes an amazing thriller with more twists and turns than a maze.

I Love a Mystery

With impressive success Loomis has created a highly entertaining mystery.... You wont want to miss The Pegasus Secret.

New Mystery Reader

Jason could simply flee, disappear into the night. But where? Anyone who had tracked him this far was not going to be discouraged by not finding him at home and the islands presented few hiding places. No, he was going to have to terminate this venture here and now.

Jason sighed. His fight had been from the first very, very personal. He had taken satisfaction from the expression on the faces of men who knew they would be dead within the next second. Satisfaction and a small degree of revenge, a minute reprisal for his loss. Tonight there would only be impersonal killing from which he would derive little vindication.

Well, with one exception.

Jason crept forward on his knees and elbows, the plastic device between his teeth and the shotgun held in both hands. When he was close enough to see the sentry against the sky, he stood.

Welcome to North Caicos, Jason said softly....

Other Leisure books by Gregg Loomis:

THE JULIAN SECRET
THE PEGASUS SECRET

GREGG
LOOMIS

Dorchester
Publishing

This book is for Suzanne.
Thank you.

DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

May 2011

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Copyright 2007 by 594, LLC

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4285-1139-2
E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0246-8

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The common misconception is that writing is a lonely craft. This might have been true when Dickens dipped his quill into an inkwell or even when Mark Twain was the first to use a typewriter to create a novel. Today, with e-mail, phone and fax connections, Im not only not alone, I have immediate assistance and advice from my ever-patient agent, Mary Jack Wald, and my editor, Don DAuria, who is both quick and tactful in separating the good ideas from the not-so-good. Without either of these professionals, this book would not have happened.

Thanks also to Suzanne my wife, who loves to poke into the dimmer corners of history.

The scenes and much of the history of the ancient underworld come from my interpretation of Robert Temples Netherworld, a photographically illustrated account of an actual descent into and exploration of the Oracle of the Dead, or Hades, at Baia in 2001. As stated in the book, the site was sealed again after Temples exploration.

The cave of the Sybil of Cumae, though perhaps requiring a seeress to find, is open to the public.

In the 1960s, Robert Padget, an amateur archeologist, had retired from his job in England and was living in the Naples area. For unclear reasons, he suspected there was a historical basis for parts of the epics of Homer and Virgil, particularly those dealing with the Sibyl of Cumae and, nearby, Hades.

When a cave that fit the classical description of the Sibyls was discovered, Padget was certain that Hades must also exist.

In 1962, he found a series of man-made caverns at the ancient resort town of Baia that included sacrificial altars and tunnels that would have allowed the seemingly mystical appearance and disappearance of priests (as described in the classics). And there was a shallow underground river, the Styx. The series of caves had been methodically filled with dirt, rocks and rubble, the latter dated to the last years of Augustus Caesar (27 B.C. 14 A.D.). There were traces of sulfur gases but none of the potentially poisonous vapors associated with volcanic regions.

Padget scheduled a press conference in London to announce his discovery, but the timing could not have been worse: November 22, 1963 at 6:00 p.m., or early afternoon in Dallas, Texas. Apparently, the conference was never rescheduled and the caves were decreed a hazard by the Italian government and ordered to be sealed.

In 1992, Robert Temple convinced the Italian authorities to let him follow Padgets path. He and his crew took photographs this time, which were reproduced in his book, Netherworld.

Again, the Italians sealed the cave, citing the possibilities of poison gases, unstable earth, etc.

55 o, 47', 21" ' N
173 o, 40', 14" W
North of Atka, Andrean of Islands, Bering Sea
June 12, 0618 Hours

The Russian fishing trawler had to have been the source of the SOS. As big as a WWII aircraft carrier, it was designed to catch, process, and freeze tons of North Pacific cod without leaving the fishing grounds. That was why a number of countries had banned these superships: two or three of them could wipe out a breeding ground in days.

But fishing wasnt what it was doing now.

Captain Edward Easy Rumpmiller stood on the small bridge of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Reynolds and studied the massive craft through binoculars. Even in the glare of the subarctic spring sun, he could see there were no nets out. The open hatches to the huge holds were covered in a white cloud of gulls feasting on a catch left available to them. The craft was wallowing in the swell, not under power.