“They’re gone,” he finally answered quietly.
“What do you mean, ‘They’re gone,’ Goddamn it?”
Ryan turned toward the command chair angrily.
“What do you think I mean? They’re gone, dead, adrift. What do you want me to say?”
Down below, Sarah heard everything that was happening.
“What do we do?” Maggio asked no one in particular.
“We continue with the mission,” Sarah said and released her safety harness.
“In case you didn’t notice, we just lost the mission commander and the LEM pilot,” Maggio called out, wanting to get out from behind the command seat.
Sarah floated up to the top deck and pulled herself into the access tunnel. She appeared a moment later inside the command module.
“You’ve just been promoted to LEM pilot, Maggio. I’m senior on the project in rank, so I’ll be taking command of the excursion team.”
Maggio looked at Sarah for the longest time.
“What mission? It’s over here, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah, well, she’s senior above a bunch of junior grades and Army personnel,” Ryan said in a calm and steady voice. “If you can get us there, I’ll land us, and Sarah will find what it is we came for. Can you get us there?”
Maggio looked from Ryan to Sarah. The two people had been in the program less than a month, but both commanded authority through their voices and demeanor.
“Yes, I can get us there,” Maggio said, “But the real question here, flyboy, is whether you can get the personnel down to the lunar surface without killing every mother-lovin’ one of us?”
“If not, Lieutenant, you just may end up having an elementary school named after you.”
Maggio was silent when confronted with Ryan’s confidence.
“You have to admit, Maggio, the idea of a school being named after you is appealing, isn’t it?” Sarah eyed the new command module pilot.
“As a matter of fact, a school in El Paso is just waiting to have my name put on it. Yeah, sure. Why not?”
Sarah reached out and pulled a floating Ryan toward her.
“You be the one to tell Mendenhall,” she said.
“Hell, I’m asking him to be my copilot.”
MÜELLER AND SANTIAGO MINING CONCERN, 100 MILES EAST OF QUITO
An hour after the last shots fired at the battle for Columbus Hill, Jack and Tram eased themselves off the electric cart while still in front of the double steel doorways. Jack looked over at the gift shop that had never felt a tourist’s touch. He wondered if they had planned on Hitler visiting the mine after the war was over, or if reich schoolchildren would have been paraded in and allowed to buy such items as Nazi coffee mugs and pictures of the artifacts discovered inside the mine. Collins shook his head in wonderment at the arrogance he was staring at.
“Come on, smiley. Let’s follow along and see if we can find my friends.”
Tram had the now reloaded M-14 lying across his arm as he examined the small Buck Rogers spaceship in the window. He turned and looked at Jack with a curious stare.
“‘Private’ will do, Colonel,” he said, with no malice lacing his voice.
“I’ll be damned—I didn’t think you spoke English. Your sergeant didn’t say anything about it.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t asked,” Tram said as he moved toward the large steel doors.
“You actually sound like you spent time at Yale, at the very least,” Jack joked.
Tram turned and faced Jack. With a slight tilt of the head, he gestured for him to go through the doors in front of them.
“Actually, Colonel, it was UCLA.”
“Hmm,” Jack said. He slid by the small Vietnamese soldier and entered the mine.
When both men stood on the precipice overlooking the main gallery of the mine, neither could believe what they were seeing. The immenseness of the excavation was nearly overpowering. They saw the small electric cart far beneath them in front of the damaged and ancient plastic-looking enclosures. He saw the long forgotten roadway paved over either by the Nazis or someone more recently. The gallery was lit up like New York’s Grand Central Station and its brightness cast shadows in all directions from where the lights were anchored overhead.
“Well, your English is so good, try describing this in a letter back home,” Jack said. He placed his M-16 over his shoulder and started down the steep trail, following the tracks of the electric cart.
“‘Amazing’ is the word that comes to mind,” Tram said as he turned to follow Collins.
The two men couldn’t help but be made uneasy by the false interior breeze that caused the tattered remains of the Nazi banners and streamers to sway and ripple in the wind. It was just another glorious day in the land of National Socialism.
“The day we stop running into more surprises left by these people, I think that’s the day I’ll retire,” Jack said, intending for Tram neither to hear nor to answer.
“They were very industrious, but how many men and women did the SS kill to get this mine dug?”
Jack eyed the Vietnamese sniper as he walked. He wondered why it had taken so long for the private to say something. Now he had an opinion about everything.
As they progressed down the steep incline of the man-made ramp, Jack had a feeling he was being watched, but from where he couldn’t tell. He heard Tram click the safety off on the old M-14; evidently he was feeling the same thing himself.
Far in back of them, near the steel doors, a pair of eyes was indeed watching. The Mechanic held up his hand. His men were anxious to get free of the exposed roadway. They were soaked from their climb up the waterfall and their entrance through the underground river. They had lost one man, who had drowned when the river had taken its downhill course under rock. They then had to fight to get up the rock wall Collins and Everett and his men had fallen from the previous week.
As the Mechanic watched Jack and his smaller companion walk the inclined trail, he finally gave the order for his men to follow, instructing them that they must do so from a great distance as he suspected more Americans were inside already.
Since his previous visits to the mine had been only cursory, the Mechanic knew he would have to be led to the valuable cache of advanced weaponry that he knew was hidden here. Once that was accomplished, he would return to his native Saudi Arabia and sell the specifications for whatever he found. From McCabe’s and Rawlins’s descriptions he knew it would be worth heaven itself to his cause.
The Mechanic fell into line and followed his men as he watched the long-ago flags flap in the strange breeze that seemed to come from nowhere.
* * *
As Alice and Sebastian gently sat Garrison Lee on a rock outcropping, Niles examined one of the buildings. He tore a flap of skin from the two-story structure that had been pushed in millions of years before by an earth movement that had slammed it askew of its neighbor. The age was such that any material or organics left over after this disaster had long since vanished. As Niles felt the strange material, he was approached by Appleby.
“It’s a composite, perhaps nylon, maybe a plastic and nylon weave, but it’s really too strong for that,” the man from DARPA said. He joined Niles, who handed the piece of material over to Alice and Lee. “It will take a while to learn how some of the materials survived in their original form, while others petrified.”
“I can’t imagine the violence of the earth that crushed the life out of this place,” Ellenshaw said. He moved the M-16 to his shoulder and looked into one of the glassless windows of the damaged enclosure.
Niles looked around and noticed small plaques had been placed in several rocks lining the ancient thoroughfare of crushed and mangled buildings. The words were in German and had been etched in the bronze of the embedded plaques.
“What do they say, Sebastian?” Niles asked the German major, who was examining the stone and its writing.
“Site excavated 16 June 1939. No sign of habitation at this level.”
<
br /> “This level? You mean there’s another one under here?” Ellenshaw asked. He rolled down the sleeves of his tan shirt due to the briskness of the false breeze swirling inside the ruins.
“There must be,” Appleby said, as he leaned over and picked up something that caught his eye. “Major, what do you make of this?” he asked. He held out a small object. “There’s more than one here.”
Sebastian Krell took the small item and examined it. He laughed at what he was holding, then looked down and saw several more of the small round objects on the rock-covered ground around his feet.
“It’s the base cap, detonation ball, and string for the Model 24 Stielhandgranate.”
“I didn’t catch that,” Ellenshaw said as he reached down to pick up one of the strange objects.
“A hand grenade,” Lee said. He tried to make himself comfortable on a large rock as Alice slid the needle full of synthetic morphine into his right arm. “A Potato Masher. I’m sure you’ve seen them in war movies, Charlie,” Lee said with a smile. A horrified look came over Ellenshaw’s features and he dropped the small screw cap onto the ground. “But the cap covers are harmless.”
“Maybe they used them for blasting purposes,” Appleby said.
Sebastian looked around himself and closed his fist over the detonator cap cover.
“Possible, but why? I mean, there are so many adequate explosives, why use such a small device? The Model 24 didn’t even have a shrapnel charge.”
“The major’s right,” Lee finished as he rolled down his sleeve and nodded at Alice. “Why use them for blasting? That’s too inefficient. Our old friends the Nazis didn’t operate that way,”
“A mystery among many,” Sebastian said. He looked around the gallery at the taller structures. “These buildings, they remind me of field setups used by the army. Do you agree, Mr. Everett?”
Carl stepped out of the tilted and damaged structure not one person had seen him disappear into when they arrived.
“Yes, they do. It’s like these were temporary structures that housed troops until more substantial housing could be erected.”
“Is there anything interesting inside the building?” Alice asked as she closed and clasped the small medical bag.
Everett looked over at Alice and the senator as they waited for him to answer. He had a curious look on his face.
“You could say that. The Germans have everything documented and labeled inside. The flooring—which looks to be wood of some kind—is old and petrified, but still intact. There are several of these,” he said. He tossed an object toward Alice, who caught it and looked it over before handing it to Lee. “It has the same writing on it that was on the space suit.”
Lee looked at what amounted to an ancient can. It was empty of its long-ago contents, but it may have once contained food. Lee hefted it; it was far lighter than its modern-day equivalent.
“Okay, the Germans marked the trash in the garbage,” the professor from MIT said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“That means they were pretty efficient at keeping this dig in pristine condition. Removing nothing from the dwellings, keeping everything as is for scientific study.”
Lee saw where Everett was going with this.
“So the Nazis insisted on accountability,” Sebastian said, as he took the can from Lee and examined it. “That’s true in every red tape society.”
“What’s missing in there, Captain?” Lee asked. He had begun to feel the pain-relieving effects of the morphine.
“There’s nothing. No tables, no chairs, no canned goods stored anywhere. No mess had been created when the cataclysm erupted around them. The closets are empty, the metal containers that held something at one time have nothing in them.”
“Are you suggesting that the beings who occupied this settlement weren’t here when the Andes started strutting their stuff?” Lee asked. He eased himself up from the rock.
“That’s what I’m saying. I looked at some of the plaques in front of the enclosures and they all list what was in them, but they fail to mention one thing.”
Lee patted Everett on the shoulder as if to say he was appreciative of his intelligence in the face of all the brainpower currently listening to him.
“No bodies of the enclosure’s inhabitants,” Garrison finished for Everett.
“Not only that, you’d better go and take a look at the side of the next enclosure,” Carl said as he turned and left.
The small group followed, feeling the emptiness of the giant mine far more than they had a few moments before. As Everett stopped, they saw he was gesturing upward at a sight that gave them all pause. Along a hundred feet of the next building’s wall, there were slashes in the material that looked as if some giant cat or something worse had attacked the composite material. The groupings of the slashes were in patterns of three. The rips were so long that it was as if whatever created the marks had punctured the material and then dragged great claws down the sides, exposing the interior to the outside elements.
“What in the world could have done that?” Appleby asked as he examined the edges of the ripped-apart and petrified material.
“If you’ll notice, most of the buildings are in the same shape. Whatever it was happened before the camp, or whatever it was, was destroyed by the earth movement,” said a familiar voice from behind them.
They all turned and saw Jack and the Vietnamese private as they eased themselves down from a long dead lava flow to the base of the building they were looking at.
Everett smiled, visibly relaxing for the first time since he had left the colonel to fight a battle he thought he should have been a part of. Jack was closest to Sebastian so he shook hands with him. He then walked over to Everett and shook his.
“So you made it, I see?” Carl said, relieved that his boss was still among the living.
“The president sent in the cavalry at the last minute—or at least Polish paratroopers.”
Everett smiled more broadly. “The times they are a’changin’.”
Niles took Jack’s hand and then Lee and Alice gave him a hug. Next was Charlie, but Jack held out his hand real fast before Ellenshaw could hug him. Pete smiled and nodded, but inside he was churning in total relief they hadn’t lost the colonel.
“You say you’re seeing the same kind of damage in other buildings?” Lee asked Jack.
“It looked…” Jack hesitated, “Hell, those marks looked … methodical to me.”
Ellenshaw was staring at the small Vietnamese sniper. He nodded his head toward him as he eased himself around the stern-looking Tram.
“Are you suggesting that the marks didn’t occur naturally when the ground erupted underneath these dwellings?”
“Hell, Doc, I don’t know,” Collins said. “But after all we’ve been through the past few years, I don’t assume anything that looks like that is a natural occurrence. I’m sorry, but those are some sort of claw marks.”
“This breeze,” Lee said, getting everyone’s attention. “It’s being generated someplace. I suggest we find out where, and then maybe we can find the place where the Germans found those artifacts.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jack said, looking at his watch. “I suggest we start by looking down there,” he said, pointing toward the back of the steeply sloping gallery.
“Is there any word on the status of Dark Star 3?” Alice asked when she noticed Jack looking at his watch.
Collins looked down as the others started to move away.
“The president said the Johnson Space Center lost all contact with them at 0930.”
Alice said nothing. Instead, she just took his arm.
“They still have a visual on it, and it is under power. They’ve lost telemetry, so that means they’re on their own.”
* * *
It took close to three hours of steady downhill walking to get to the far end of the excavation. Every few feet Jack, Carl, and Sebastian, and even the Vietnamese Tram, looked down and saw expended shel
l casings and more detonator cap covers for the German grenades. During one rest stop they compared notes. There were several differing calibers of the expended rounds. Everything from 7.62 to 5.56 millimeter casings were found. They had all come to the conclusion that sometime in the forties there had been one hell of a firefight in the excavation.
As the unnatural breeze inside picked up, they began to hear a wailing sound. The noise was unnerving to all in the group. Jack knew it to be air being pushed through a small opening in the rear wall that they were fast approaching, but the eerie sound made him edgy nonetheless.
“It seems we would have learned our lesson by now about places like this,” Everett said, slowing to allow Niles, Alice, and the senator to catch up. Bringing up the rear of the group were Sebastian and Tram. Wedged in between were the four scientists, who continually scanned the surrounding rock strata and the support beams of steel that had been installed by the Germans.
“You would think,” Jack said, as he examined the dead end of solid stone ahead. “But what do you expect out of a couple of stupid lifers?”
“I hear that,” Carl said, as he used the butt of his M-16 to hammer the rock he was leaning against. “Well, that wind is coming from somewhere,” he said, “but it’s not here.”
“Jack, you may want to take a look at this,” Niles called out as he eased the senator down once more. The old man was looking like he was pretty near the end and Jack was concerned for him, but knew better than to call an extended halt.
Collins and Everett nimbly hopped from the perch they had taken a quarter of the way up the large wall of rock.
“You know,” Everett said, looking back at the spot where they had just been, “the more I look at that, the more I think that was a cave-in or a rock slide of some kind.”
“I was thinking the same thing, swabby,” Jack said as they approached Niles.
“What is it, Doc? We’ve hit a dead end here.”
“It’s back here,” Compton said as he turned and entered a small cove of raised stone.
As Jack and Everett followed, Pete, Ellenshaw, Appleby, and the MIT engineer, Dubois, sat next to Alice and Lee. All of them took long pulls of water from clear bottles they had brought with them. The lighting allowed Jack to see that they were all growing tired. As Collins waited for Tram and Sebastian to join them, he remembered to use his radio to check in. So far, every hour on the hour, he had reported to the guard command watching the mine entrance.
Legacy: An Event Group Thriller Page 45