Ascendant

by Sean Ellis

As soon as the next eruption relented, Montero hauled himself up onto the horizontal surface of the fissure. He hastily unclipped his climbing harness from the fixed rope his doomed lieutenant had set, and snatched a large flashlight from a belt holster, stabbing the beam into the sloping darkness. Grimacing in fear, he plunged into the tunnel and followed the bright spot of illumination.

  He moved as fast as the slope would allow, shuffling along at a jogging pace, and checked his watch repeatedly. Soon, the light from the fissure opening was swallowed up, leaving him cloaked in night, with only the beam from the flashlight for assurance that he had not unknowingly been struck blind. Four minutes into his descent, he found the bodies of the fallen advance group.

  When he first noticed the shapes, he dared to hope that the bodies would belong to Raiden and her companion, but there was no mistaking the dark fatigues his friend had worn. As he drew closer, he realized that the garments would prove to be the only means of identifying the corpse; the flesh had been boiled until it virtually fell off their bones, revealing gleaming white skulls. Montero did not linger with the fallen men lest he share their fate.

  His pace quickened as the minutes ticked away. He could not control the panic rising in his chest, nor stem the murmurs of profanity that trickled from his lips. The deeper he went, the more certain he became that he would not survive to see daylight again. Twice, he almost turned back, but it was already too late for that. Then, when there seemed no alternative but to give in to his growing despair, he reached the end of the tunnel.

  The platform was exactly as Mira had left it. The grating was pulled back, revealing the sodden length of rope that afforded passage to the catwalk below. Montero stared dumbly at the rope, wondering if he dared to proceed. Completely alone, without any way to communicate this discovery to the rest of his group, or to request back-up, he would be easy prey for Mira Raiden. Shoving aside his hesitancy, he reached into his pack and fumbled for a rudimentary figure-8 rappelling device, which he threaded onto the fixed rope. Hooking the device to his climbing harness, he lowered himself through the hole and descended like a spider on a strand of silk.

  As his feet touched upon the lower section of metal grating, it occurred to Montero for the first time since commencing his journey into the mouth of hell that he was standing on the threshold of something Odessa had desired for nearly sixty years. More than once, he had publicly questioned whether the so-called “Last Redoubt” even existed. Now, however, he could not help but be awed by the grandeur of his predecessor’s accomplishment.

  He correctly recognized the apparatus before him as part of a geothermal generator. He had seen plans for similar devices and knew that they were utilized extensively in Iceland, the most geologically active place on the planet. Yet here before him was a steam turbine built decades before his own birth, operating flawlessly despite the fact that it had been untouched by human hands for all that time. Montero momentarily forgot the urgency of his situation, lingering instead with his appreciation of the technological feat. He knew that most of the device must lay hidden in the depths of the mountain. Only the uppermost workings, the actual generating device, was exposed here at the top. Subterranean caverns formed a natural holding tank, he surmised, building up the steam pressure necessary to turn the turbine fans.

  In a rush of understanding, it occurred to Montero that there must be some way to disable the turbine temporarily, in order to prevent the release of steam from the generator, clearing the way for his soldiers to descend. He crossed the catwalk toward the cylindrical turbine housing, scanning the exterior for any kind of control apparatus. He found what he was looking for almost immediately. Stenciled letters, indicating in the German language the need for due caution, marked a hinged cowling on the uppermost surface of the generator. Montero pulled it back, revealing a simple flywheel valve control underneath.

  He checked his watch; only a few minutes until the next eruption commenced. If he failed to stop the steam from venting into the tunnel, there would be no escape. Strangely, he no longer felt any fear. Though the flywheel was stiff with age and the beginnings of corrosion, it yielded to his strength. He screwed it in a clockwise direction, noting that each twist seemed to shorten the valve stem, until it would turn no more, then sat back to wait.

  Nothing happened.

  Almost giddy with relief and the thrill of a minor success, Montero ascended the rope, eager to gather his troops and take possession of that which he had sought for so many years.

  ELEVEN

  DiLorenzo gazed dubiously over the parapet at the parade grounds below. It looked to be about a twenty-foot drop, roughly the equivalent of jumping off the roof of a two-story house. From somewhere in the darkness above, he heard the low growl of the wild dogs, perhaps gathering their courage for another assault. “A rock and a hard place,” he murmured.

  Mira flashed a daring smile, handing him the flare, then spritely hopped onto the narrow wall, planting her left hand and dropping over in a smooth, almost practiced motion. Her right hand flashed up, catching the wall to arrest her fall. She lowered herself until her arms were fully extended, then let go, dropping the remaining twelve or so feet—more than twice her own height—to the ground below. The shadows of the parade ground seemed to swallow her whole.

  “Huh,” observed the detective, with characteristic eloquence, dropping the flare over the side. “Well, it won’t be the craziest thing I’ll do today.”

  With considerably less grace and confidence, DiLorenzo heaved himself onto the half-wall and, after a great deal of tentative positioning, lowered himself until he was hanging by his fingertips. The added length of his reach and his height reduced the distance he would have to fall by a bit, but his additional weight and lack of experience more than cancelled out this small advantage. Screwing up his courage, he surrendered to gravity. The cinders that had been scattered on the floor of the stadium absorbed most of the energy of his landing, but he nevertheless hit with a bone-jarring impact that sent him sprawling and reawakened the throb in his skull with a vengeance.

  “We’ll need to work on your technique,” Mira observed dryly as she aided him to his feet.

  “A little sympathy would be nice.” DiLorenzo feigned umbrage. “I do have a concussion after all.”

  She ceded the point with a sideways tilt of her head and then scooped up the flare. In the relatively small sphere of illumination, it was impossible to see their goal or much else. The parapet ringing the stands was now a featureless high wall trapping them in the arena. Mira handed the detective her flare and reloaded her Beretta.

  “Expecting more trouble?” he inquired.

  “Always.”

  Trouble, however, did not rear its head as they crossed the floor toward their unseen destination. They reached the carved stone platform in less than five minutes, scrambling up the carved relief figures from Norse mythology in the last flickers of flame from the nearly spent flare. As soon as they were solidly on the enormous podium, Mira pitched the flare out into the darkness. It landed in the cinders at the foot of the dais, quickly guttering and enveloping them once more in darkness.

  “Try to let your eyes grow accustomed to the darkness,” she advised. “Down here, relying on artificial light could prove fatal.”

  DiLorenzo squinted into the black. “You know, I think I can see.”

  “It’s the luminescence. Mann must have found a way to stimulate it artificially, perhaps with a low-level electrical current.”

  “But still working after sixty-some years?” DiLorenzo made no effort to hide his incredulity.

  “The steam generator is still working. And you can see with your own eyes the evidence. The light was probably much brighter fifty years ago.” Mira’s fingers explored the back wall of the dais. At first glance, it had appeared to be nothing more than blank rock, but the darkness revealed what the flare’s light could not. A thin blue tracery outlined a minute gap between the stone blocks; the wall was not a single solid piece. After
a few minutes of study, she was able to confirm that the center block, roughly three feet wide and twice as high, was not cemented in place with mortar like the other blocks.

  “Well?” inquired DiLorenzo, able to distinguish her examination of the wall in the pale periwinkle night, but clueless as to its significance.

  “Open sesame.” She placed her hands flat against the center block, extending her right leg back, and threw her weight forward. A grunt escaped her lips as she reached into her deepest reserves of strength, then a different noise filled the air.

  Grudgingly at first, but then with decreasing resistance, the block slid backward on the stone floor. DiLorenzo stood gaping, not even thinking to add his power to the effort. Mira continued shifting forward, planting her boot soles in short increments in order to gain maximum leverage. The block slid a full meter back before she paused for a moment to catch her breath. It was not enough to afford access to whatever lay beyond—the surrounding wall was almost that thick—but the intensity of the illumination spilling through the crack grew tenfold. The substance or mechanism that caused the dome overhead to glow was considerably more powerful in the passageway beyond the sliding section.

  Mira threw herself once more at the block, forcing it completely out of its niche and into a recess in the corridor beyond. Azure brilliance filled the tunnel, spilling from every surface—walls, ceiling and even the floor.

  DiLorenzo let out a low whistle. “Do you see stuff like this a lot?”

  “Not like this.”

  The tunnel ran perpendicular to the opening for about fifty feet in either direction, ending at the top of paired descending stairs. Mira felt no urge toward one descent over another, but sensed that the rest of the Trinity did indeed wait somewhere below. Favoring an old superstition, she chose the left-hand stairwell.

  The luminescence remained constant as they worked down the long, spiraling steps, sublimating the most instinctive of human terrors—fear of the dark—but did little to assuage the second—claustrophobia. The passages remained cramped, the air stale and hot. The stairs opened onto a landing, from which sprouted another long, constricting tunnel, but also continued descending. The corridor was lined with wooden doors and lintels. Curious, Mira opened the nearest.

  The room beyond had at one time served as a luxury apartment. Time, however, had ravaged the furnishings, leaving only a scattering of debris. A closer inspection revealed the presence of two mummified corpses amid the ruin, withered, leathery limbs still filling out the uniforms of German Wehrmacht soldiers.

  “Nobody’s home,” she muttered, backing out of the suite. They returned to the stairwell and continued descending.

  There were four more levels devoted entirely to apartments. On the second of these, they began to see bodies strewn about the tunnel. Some wore German army fatigues, while others wore simple pajama-style garments. But whereas the remains in the apartments had been more or less preserved from decay, these corpses were only skeletons, picked clean of flesh. “I’d say we’ve found the food source for the dogs,” ventured Mira.

  “That’s crazy. Even if they did eat carrion, they would have run out after a few years.”

  “True. After that, they probably survived on whatever vermin made it down here, or simply ate each other. A closed environment.” Gazing at the skeletons, victims of a similarly savage action, but one perpetuated by a human beast, Mira regretted having voiced the observation. “Let’s keep moving. What we want will be farther down.”

  Beyond the residence levels, there were two larger caverns with endless rows of freestanding structures that looked almost like tents. Mira realized that the suites had been designed for officers and high-ranking Nazi Party members, while the foot soldiers for the reborn Reich would bivouac here. These levels had housed the thousands of slaves secretly brought over from the death camps up until the time Mann, like an Egyptian Pharaoh, determined to kill everyone who had labored to hew the stronghold out of the mountain. She didn’t want to think about what horrors they might find in those vast chambers.

  As they reentered the stairwell, eager to see something other than the lingering evidence of the last great Nazi atrocity, a strange noise echoed down through the depths.

  “That’s gunfire,” breathed Mira. “We’re not alone.”

  “Someone is still alive down here?” DiLorenzo sounded almost ready to believe anything.

  “No. We were followed. I didn’t think they’d catch up to us so quickly though.”

  “So what do we do? We’re going to be outnumbered.”

  “We get what we came for and worry about the rest later.” She managed a confident smile. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

  Montero gazed at the bullet-riddled corpses of the last remaining members of the feral dog pack. The automatic weapons carried by his soldiers had swiftly converted the crazed canines into hamburger. But there were other carcasses nearby that had nothing to do with their brief battle. Mira Raiden had fought the same pack not long before.

  He surveyed the carnage with his flashlight, half hoping to find her mangled corpse among the dead. Still, he was not entirely disappointed to discover that she had survived her encounter with the dogs. For the first time, it occurred to him that Mira was an attractive woman. Though Rachel Aimes had been capable in bed, there was nothing quite as exhilarating as taking an unwilling lover by force. Montero now found himself excited by the idea of capturing Mira alive.

  He divided his forces into three groups of eight, assigning his own men as leaders over larger forces of Bolivians. “We may not be able to use our radios down here,” he concluded, after giving each group an assignment, “so pay attention to where you are and how you got there. Meet back here in half an hour. Don’t try too hard to take the Raiden woman alive, but if you do . . . nobody touches her until I’m finished with her.” His lascivious grin earned an eager chuckle from the men, who evidently had entertained a similar fantasy.

  Montero led his group clockwise around the landing above the parade grounds. A second force went the other direction while Delacortes was part of the third division, tasked with exploring the depths of the stadium. Montero watched as the men moved out, soon becoming nothing more than flickering ghosts of light in the vast darkness of the cavern.

  Five hundred yards from the point of entry, Montero found a recess in the outer wall, all but hidden from view. A closer inspection showed a steel accordion gate, blocking access to a vertical shaft. An old-fashioned electrical switch was mounted to a gatepost. Curious, Montero threw the lever. There was a burst of blue sparks as the current flashed through the connection, followed by a whine of resistance and a growing smell of ozone, but nothing helpful occurred. Montero quickly broke the circuit.

  “Let’s get this open. We’ll rappel down.”

  On the far side of the parade grounds, three of Montero’s Odessa soldiers and five local ruffians from Ouros had made a similar discovery. Unaware of their superior’s failure, the man in charge of the group threw the switch. This time, the circuit closed cleanly, and the antique system of pulleys, cables and counter-weights was activated. To the amazement of the onlookers, a large elevator car rose slowly from the depths of the shaft.

  As the car drew level with the platform on which they stood, the leader reversed the switch to stop the elevator. He then drew back the gate and opened the hinged door to the car. There was room inside for six. After directing two of the Bolivians to stand guard at the entrance to the shaft, he led the rest of the group into the car and closed the door.

  Unlike a modern elevator with an automatic system of sensors controlled by push buttons, the old lift car featured a handle similar to the engine controls on a ship. The lever controlled the speed and vertical destination, requiring the operator to be attentive in order to stop the car level with the desired floor. Situated alongside the lever was an unusual numeric keypad—zero through nine—that seemed unrelated to the operation of the elevator. The leader pushed the numbe
r “2” experimentally, but nothing happened. Shrugging, he moved the control lever to the right. The lift car shuddered under the load, then began settling downward.

  Through a glass porthole in the heavy metal door, they could see only the bare rock of the vertical shaft. As the car descended, they spied markings on the rock face, indicating that something was about to happen. The lead soldier eased back on the lever handle, slowing the already plodding descent as the gated opening came into view. It settled a few centimeters after he released the controls completely, but was nevertheless almost perfectly level with the passage beyond. Smiling, he reached for the door handle.

  The inside door was locked. He wiggled the handle in frustration, but the mechanism would not yield.

  Someone behind him coughed nervously, suddenly making them all very much aware of where they were: trapped in a closet sized room, with limited air, in a cavern hundreds of feet beneath a mountain.

  In a rush of understanding, he divined the importance of the keypad. It was a numerical lock. In order to open the door, he would have to enter the correct sequence of digits to release the pins that held the latch closed. The possible combinations numbered in the millions, perhaps more as he had no idea how many numerals were in the sequence. The idea of being held hostage by such a simple security measure was especially frustrating.

  “Forget it,” suggested his friend, likewise one of the Odessa troopers from Argentina. “You could spend the rest of your life trying out combinations. Just force the latch.”

  The leader nodded, drawing a large commando-style knife from a sheath on his combat harness. He inserted the blade into the narrow gap between the door and the lintel, probing for the latch bolt. The tip came to rest against an unyielding bar, at which point he began wiggling the knife, slowly moving the bolt back into the door.

  “Got it,” he declared triumphantly as the bolt cleared the doorjamb.