by Greig Beck
“Unknown at this time. And on what?” Hammerson leaned forward.
After a moment, Hartigan shook his head. “Interesting.”
“Interesting?” Hammerson’s jaws clenched for a second and then he leaned forward onto his elbows. “Listen up, I want to know all about these things’ breeding cycle, lifespan, internal organs, where they’re from, and then a million other things in between. I want to know everything about them so I can freaking wipe them out, faster, more completely, and without rendering swathes of our countryside uninhabitable.”
Jack Hammerson rubbed a hand through his iron-gray crew cut. “And before they goddamn wipe us out first.”
CHAPTER 23
The Sokelec system, the Owl Mountains
Matt paused to suck in a deep breath. They’d been trekking for an hour along the side of a small forest-clad mountain with the trunks of the trees so thickly pressed together that even in the late morning sunshine it was still little more than twilight.
The air was cool and dry and, coupled with the exertion of the hike, quickly dried the mouth and throat. Though they expected to only be searching for a few days, Matt knew they’d need to preserve their water.
They came to a ridge, and Alojzy consulted his GPS once again. Matt stood beside him and followed his gaze – down in the gorge there was a small valley with what looked like a dry river course at its base. But other than that he saw nothing.
“This is it,” Alojzy announced.
“It is?” Matt squinted. “I was expecting a huge tunnel mouth or something.”
Klara scoffed. “You remember that bit about them being hidden tunnels, right?”
“Yeah, I knew that.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying there’s hidden, and there’s invisible.”
“This way.” Alojzy led them down the slope, and in another ten minutes they were at the bottom of a gorge. The ground was unnaturally level and hard packed, and gravel had been pressed into it.
“This was a path or road once,” Maddock observed. He pointed to the left and right flank and Klara and Vin spread a little wider.
Though Matt doubted the HAWCs expected to run into any opposition, there could have been treasure hunters, squatters, or local survivalists about, and in Poland many of them were bad-tempered and well-armed.
The path ended at a cliff face with trees standing at its base, and a sheer granite wall rising hundreds of feet above them. Alojzy took them in and then turned to grin back over his shoulder.
“Here.”
Set in among hanging vines and drooping branches were two massive green-tinged iron doors, twelve feet high and twenty feet wide, that were partially swung inward. The designers had known that doors that open outward can scar the ground and leave telltale signs for searchers from above.
Maddock nodded to Klara and Vin who switched on their rifles’ barrel lights and headed in.
“Clear … clear,” came echoing voices from inside after a few moments.
“Shall we, Professor?” Maddock turned with a small smile to Matt. “I believe this is where you take the lead.”
The group switched on their flashlights and headed in. Matt sniffed, and smelt rusting iron, dank earth, and a hint of something like ammonia that might have been animal droppings. Probably bat shit, he guessed.
“Any bears around this part?” he asked.
Alojzy shrugged. “Yes, but very rare here.” He lifted his brows. “Wolves, we have plenty of.”
“What sort of wolves?” Matt stopped.
“Little ones, like poodles.” Vin winked.
“Wolves prefer smaller dens, not big open tunnels. They’d be more wary of bears than we are.” Maddock waved them on. “Let’s go, Kearns.”
Matt conferred with the Polish guide for a moment and they worked out the point of intersection where Alojzy’s map said there was nothing, and Matt’s drawing hinted at another tunnel.
After another moment Alojzy looked up, got his bearings, and then headed in deeper.
There were pools of water, and the sound of dripping. It was cool and became even colder the further inside they went. After only a short distance, their breath steamed in the beams of their lights. The tunnels were wide – big enough for a jeep to travel along the pathway.
There were also smaller side tunnels, and some looked to have housed barracks or maybe sleeping quarters. Rotted furniture lay in corners, and in one room, Matt backed out slowly holding his breath. He bumped into Vin and put a finger to his lips.
“Wassup?” Vin whispered, lifting his gun. Matt simply pointed to the roof.
Vin looked up. Overhead the tunnel was crowded with hundreds of bats, all jostling and fidgeting but silent for now. The smell from the ammonia of their concentrated urine made Matt’s eyes sting. On the floor and in among the bat droppings, huge carnivorous beetles rummaged and searched for any bats that fell to the ground from old age, disease, or an unlucky dropped youngster.
Matt and the others continued on, and came to several areas with fresh-cut rock. In one place there was a large area of blackened stone with vein-like cracks running through the ceiling and surrounding walls.
“Looks like someone started to do some exploring,” Maddock observed.
Vin poked his head into one of the new excavations. “Nothing. Looks like they came up empty here.”
“Came up empty everywhere, that was the problem,” Alojzy replied morosely.
They continued on, and found more excavations, even some in the floor. After another twenty minutes, Alojzy started to slow.
“Coming to last big junction of tunnels.” He turned to Matt. “Let me see your map again.”
Matt held out the drawing and the Polish guide studied it for a moment more. “At the last junction, this says there should be another tunnel.” He exhaled through his nose. “I know this area, and there is no such tunnel.”
They walked another few thousand feet and the air started to grow thicker. Finally they reached a large chamber that had further branching tunnels.
“Smells like a garbage dump,” Vin observed.
“Is that good or bad?” Klara asked.
“Here.” Alojzy turned. “This is where Professor Kearns’ map says is start of hidden tunnel.”
The group stopped and shone their lights in all directions. The excavated room was large, at least one hundred by eight hundred feet. The single tunnel they had come from branched into three more tunnels at its northern end.
“According to the picture from the diary, the missing tunnel opens up from in here … somewhere,” Matt pronounced.
He still felt confident and enthusiastic as he panned his light about. There were excavation areas on many of the walls, indicating that others had been here before them, digging, maybe even searching for the same thing.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Klara said.
Matt exhaled through his teeth. “Something that the others missed. A push-stone, lever, code word, or even an area that sounds hollow when we tap it. It’s gotta be here.”
Maddock pulled his knife and flipped it in his hand. “Good place to start. Everyone pick a quadrant and give it the tap test.”
In seconds the tunnel was filled with the sound of thumps and taps against the cold stone walls.
Matt looked across to Klara, who caught his glance and winked back at him.
She tapped: tap – tappy – tap – tap.
He couldn’t help replying: tap – tap. He grinned back.
“Anything?” She asked.
“Nada.” He looked at his section of wall. “Just plenty of graffiti.”
“Yeah, everywhere,” she replied.
Many areas had words, names, and curses chipped into and scrawled on the walls. Some of it in German, some in Polish, French, and even English. All of it related to the hopelessness of the plight of the prisoners forced to work in the darkness and the constant falling rock dust.
But none of it indicated an entrance. It took them twenty minutes
to go all the way around the walls and meet up again.
“Nothing,” Vin said.
Maddock clicked his tongue against his cheek. “Hundreds upon hundreds of miles of tunnels, and millions of tons of rock above and below us. We need some better clues or we’ll be searching for years.”
“And could still come up empty,” Vin added.
“Welcome to my world.” Alojzy shrugged his bear-like shoulders.
“Come on, Professor,” Maddock said, “you brought us here, so you need to read the signs, and give us something to work with. We’re standing in the center of a mountain with nothing but flashlights and shitty moods.”
Matt nodded and looked around again. He began to pace, circling the huge room. He stopped and turned. “In the center of a mountain.”
The silence stretched as the group waited and watched him.
He held his flashlight out and panned it around. “We’ve looked all around the room, on a horizontal perspective. But there could be an entrance above or below us.” Matt lifted his light.
“How we gonna tap the roof?” Vin looked up at the ceiling two feet above his head.
“Look for a sign first,” Matt replied. “Anything that shouldn’t be there, or looks out of place. We start high, then we look low.”
Once again the group circled the room, lights slowly moving over the ceiling. When that was completed, they moved to the floor. This was a little harder as there were pools of dank water, or a layer of dust that had turned to a slimy glue-like mud.
“Last throw of the dice,” Maddock said.
The group tapped, kicked, scraped, and tried to wipe away as much of the ground scum as they could. But the surface area was large, and in the darkness the murky water kept refilling any areas that had been wiped out.
Just when Matt thought the map he had made from the diary was wrong, Maddock clicked his fingers.
“Professor.”
The HAWC team leader was near a wall that ran with dark water. He scraped a boot along the ground and then stood back, pointing his light down.
Matt saw what he was illuminating – one of the curled swastikas, almost flowery in its design and no bigger than a watch face. The murky water quickly covered it over again.
“Hard to see.” Maddock smiled.
“I’m betting it’s supposed to be. And why it’s been overlooked.” Matt grinned back and then scraped his boot over it, exposing it briefly once again. “Hitler’s personal mark.”
Matt went to his knees. He used the side of his hand to push more of the sticky mud out of the way so he could inspect a greater area, but the curled cross was the only mark there. He then started to hammer with the hilt of his knife. After a moment he looked up.
“It’s a solid surface, like a skin, but I think it might be hollow underneath.”
Roy and Vin joined him, doing more tapping and marking out the size of the hollowness beneath them. After another few minutes they had marked out a square roughly eight feet wide.
“So, the missing tunnel is underneath us. Has been the whole time.” Alojzy chuckled. “I think we might get rich soon.”
“Now what?” Matt stared at the tunnel floor. He couldn’t help feeling vindicated.
“We blow it,” Klara said. “Shaped charges at the edges.”
“Hang on, we could collapse it,” Matt replied. “Cave everything in on top of the tunnel.”
“Start small, shaped charges, blow a layer away at a time,” Klara countered.
“I agree,” Maddock said. “We didn’t bring a jackhammer, and if this is an artificial floor then it won’t be solid granite. We use small shaped charges and see what happens.” He nodded to Klara. “Make it happen.”
Without a word the tall woman dropped her pack, removing a plastic box that contained several foil-wrapped packages, plus slim, battery-sized rods. She expertly peeled away pieces of the putty-like substance and placed them in an x-shaped pattern across the sealed entrance. She finished by sticking a detonator into one of the blobs and also a small timer.
She leaned back on her heels. “Should just lift away the top layer, I guess.” She turned to wink at Matt.
“Give it one minute,” Maddock said.
Klara nodded and set the dial, then stood.
“Let’s go.” Maddock began to jog back along the tunnel and Matt headed the other way.
“Hey, you!” Maddock yelled. “This way. If the tunnel collapses, you want to be on the exit side.”
“Shit.” Matt sprinted back toward the group. He rounded a bend and Klara grabbed him and pulled him in behind the wall.
“Three, two, one …” Klara stared at him, her eyes almost luminous with excitement.
The thump wasn’t huge and they felt the ripple pass through the stone under the soles of their boots.
Klara poked her head around. “Clear,” she announced, and let Matt go.
The group headed back in to see smoke rising from a shallow pit where the female HAWC had planted the explosives.
She nodded with satisfaction. “X marks the spot.”
The top layer of stone had been exploded away exposing a huge metal door.
Roy nodded. “Well done, Professor, seems you might have found us our missing tunnel.”
Matt fist pumped. “Yes.” He felt Klara rub his back, and he turned to see her nod at him.
“We a very good team.” Alojzy clapped his hands together. “And maybe soon a very happy team.” He held up a hand and rubbed a finger and thumb together.
“That’s not why we’re here.” Maddock turned to Vin and motioned to the door. “Get that open, soldier.”
The young HAWC used the hardened steel blade of his Ka-bar to first work around the outside of the steel plate. Though the steel was age-darkened it was in surprisingly good condition as it had been protected from the air by the granite cement mixture that had covered it over.
Vin paused. “Can’t see any locking mechanism, so …”
He grabbed hold of a foot-long bar handle recessed in one side of the door and then tugged. Nothing moved even a fraction so he repositioned himself and tugged again. Still nothing happened. He looked up, grinning and red-faced.
“Little help here, guys.”
“Wait.” Alojzy had a looped length of climbing rope in his hand. “Tie the end to the handle.
Vin did as asked and then stood. “Okay.”
Alojzy held up the rope. “Everyone grab on, and we’ll pull it open.”
One after the other the group grabbed the rope.
“On the count of, one, two, three, pull …” Alojzy with the group behind him tugged on the rope. Nothing happened for a moment, but then the steel door popped open like a tin can lid, and the iron slab clanged heavily to the ground. The group approached.
CHAPTER 24
Matt immediately threw a hand over his mouth and nose. “Jesus.” He grimaced and backed up. “Gas.”
A sickening stench escaped from the dark void they had just opened.
Alojzy also backed away. “Could it be some sort of leftover nerve gas, like as booby trap?”
“Masks on,” Maddock said.
The group pulled on their gas masks, except for the Polish guide who just tied a spare t-shirt around his mouth and nose, and stayed well back.
“Not a chemical attack but I’ve smelt this before,” Maddock said. “When I was in Syria we uncovered a mass grave that had been baking in the sun for several months. Hundreds of bodies in that one.”
“Corpses?” Matt grimaced.
“Yeah,” Maddock said. “We should have expected it. Remember around twenty-eight thousand laborers on this project disappeared. We might have found their final resting place, and their reward for all their work.”
He pointed his light downwards. “Steps.” He waved Klara with him. “We’ll take a quick look. Everyone else hold positions.”
Matt watched as Maddock and Klara vanished into the dark hole. After another moment there was no sound or light coming u
p out of the pit. He looked to Vin, who held up a finger, and then pointed.
Sure enough, in another moment Maddock resurfaced standing half out of the hole. “There’s a huge tunnel stretching both ways. But a few hundred feet in one direction there’s another door.” He spoke directly to Matt, and then Alojzy. “But everyone better steel themselves for what we see down there.”
“Bad?” Matt asked.
“Oh yeah.” Klara’s voice drifted up from the darkness.
Maddock turned back, facing down. “Let’s do this. Klara, lead us in. Matt next, and I’ll bring up the rear. Vin, you get to stay here and cover our rear.”
“Got it, boss,” Vin said.
“I would very much like to see,” Alojzy pleaded. “I have searched for these tunnels for nearly half my life.”
“Not without breathing equipment, you wouldn’t last thirty seconds. The air is off the toxicity scale,” Maddock replied.
“Hey Alojzy.” Vin took off his mask and tossed it to the Polish guide. “You owe me one.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vin.” Alojzy pulled it over his head. “And now I am ready.”
“Then you go in front of me.” Maddock eased aside. “Let’s go, people.”
Klara headed back down, with Matt close behind her. Once they were below the floor level and in the new tunnel, Matt’s beam seemed to pick up veils of a miasmic mist hanging in the air. As he stepped off the last step, his foot squelched into a glutinous mud.
“Ah shit.” He sank to the ankle.
Matt slid to the side; feeling sharp sticks and objects hidden within the thick mud as he waited for the team to join him.
He shone his torch at the ceilings and walls and then toward the end of the tunnel that was still lost in darkness. Closer to the walls there were mounds of something that looked like stacked kindling.
“Massive,” he said. “Wonder what it was used for?”
Maddock stepped down last. “I know what its final use was.” He shone his light downwards and moved his boot through the muck. Something large and round surfaced: a skull. “A kill zone.”
He lifted his light higher so the powerful beam shone down along the tunnel illuminating the seemingly endless river of death. “And there.” He lifted his light to one of the mounds against the wall.