There was an iron ladder attached to the back corner of the steamer. Eight or ten steps led up to the house-sized cab. I had to resist the temptation to climb up to see what was there. The tender was almost as big as the engine, but not nearly as interesting. As I played my light towards the back of the tender, the next big surprise came into view. Here was another locomotive and tender, identical to the first. Past the engines, the first railcar had the shape of a passenger car, but lower and with fewer windows. Our flashlights quickly showed us four anti-aircraft guns, their barrels pointing skyward.
I heard Alice’s voice. “Oh, dear, as if there already isn't enough to creep me out, look at that artwork on the side of the car. It’s spreading wings over a swastika.”
This did alter our mood a bit. I noticed a couple of us, including me, glancing around at the many shadows.
“This is like swimming in dark water,” Alice said. “We can't see the beast. Even our words don't echo, they just fly off into the void.”
“I feel the same,” Jean said. “I keep sweeping my flashlight beam back and forth, half expecting to see a subterranean pile of slime creeping up on us.”
“Ladies, ladies,” M2 said, “keep it up and you'll talk us into a freak out. Concentrate on booby traps. Look at everything.”
“You men whistle when you walk through a dark wood,” Jean said. “We gals talk about it and it helps. Anyway, shall we proceed?”
The next car looked like a standard baggage car, followed by a string of nine passenger type cars. As we moved along, another surprise materialized.
“Good grief,” Alice exclaimed. “What the hell... Can any of you military guys help me out here? Look at what’s over our heads.”
I swung my light up and saw the wing of an airplane that sat perched on top of one of the central cars. It was supported, wheels up, by a spidery framework, giving it the attitude of level flight.
“That’s a Messerschmitt BF-109 fighter.” M2 said. “It looks to be brand new. I see no battle scars, but why it’s there beats me.”
“This is crazy,” M1 said. “The train and now this, all sealed in this place. Who ever heard of an airplane riding on top of a passenger car? It must be symbolic.”
“Yeah,” Alice said, “but symbolic of what?
“Look toward the back,” M2 said. “That pod thing might be some sort of a rocket-assisted unit. I suppose it could be launched, catapult style, but still, it makes no sense.”
We had no answers so we walked on. The last passenger car was followed by a baggage car and another low car with AA guns. All the cars had the Nazi eagle painted on their sides. In all there were seventeen units, which made it a substantial train, longer than a football field.
On the wall opposite the first car, I could make out a large arch cut into the rock. Wood planks faced the opening with a big double door built into the middle. As we walked past the train we counted a total of six more or less identical arches cut into the walls.
When we reached the end, Alice and M2 crossed over to join us. “Here’s something curious,” she said, “I’ve had my Geiger counter on since we arrived here. Background radiation remained normal until I moved close to the train, which I did it in several places and when I did, the count fell off. It’s like there was nothing there. I touched one of the cars to be sure. We also counted six arches on the left.”
Now what? We pointed our flashlights down the empty tracks and saw nothing but more tunnel.
M1 made a decision. “What we'll do is quick march ahead for one half hour maximum, counting arches as we go. Hopefully, we'll reach the end in less time. Once we get there, we'll start opening doors, if possible, for a quick check and to make a map of the place. Before we start, let's take a look at that arch over there. We'll check to see if there's a lock and if not, take a quick peek inside.”
The latch was rusty and the hinges protested, but the doors opened wide for us. Inside, was a tunnel much like the one under the chimney, but our lights could pick up the end about fifty yards away. Along each sidewall were two industrial sized, wooden doors cut into the rock. The back wall had a fifth, but larger door. An assortment of piping and conduit wandered here and there over the tunnel surface and industrial lamps hung from the ceiling.
“Quiet!” Alice hissed. “Wait.”
She tiptoed back out to the main corridor and stood there in silence for almost a full minute. We heard nothing other than our own breathing.
“I thought I heard a faint scraping,” she said, “but I guess I was wrong.”
“I'm dying to open one of those side doors.” Jean said. “Can't we take a quick peek?”
“Good idea, Jean,” M1 said. “Although there will be no dying allowed down here.”
We went to the nearest door on the right. It had no lock and it opened at a touch. We walked into a well-furnished and very large office. All it needed was lights and workers to be complete. There were desks, chairs, drafting tables and file cabinets. Antique telephones sat on the desks next to pen sets and index files. All sorts of papers lay on both the desks and the drafting tables. The whole room looked as though the staff had just left for lunch, but never returned.
Alice played her flashlight around the big space. “Man, this is weird. We're looking at the end of their world, but we don't know why. This reminds me of the mystery of the Mary Celeste. I hope we have better luck.”
“You who can read German” M1 said, “take a look at some of these papers. I'd like to know what they were doing.”
Jean went to the nearest desk and I went to the drawing table that was behind it. The last person who worked here had spread some plans on the working surface and used the telephone for a paperweight. Before I removed it, I couldn't resist the temptation to pick up the receiver and hold it to my ear. Of course, it was dead. I looked up furtively to see if anyone noticed by my actions.
M2 saw me. “That was the right thing to do. We can't be too curious.”
I moved the telephone and looked at the drawing. In the area on the bottom, reserved for specifications, the draftsman had inked in the word Kreisflügel. The drawing itself was right out of the tales about Area 51.
“SHAZAM!” I exclaimed. “Take a look at this.”
Everyone crowded around the table to look at what I had.
“It's a friggin’ flying saucer,” M2 said, practically dancing up and down.
We were looking at the top and side, cut-away view of a disk shaped object that could only be a round aircraft.
“This word, Kreisflügel, means circular wing,” I said, “The illustration speaks for itself.”
The drawings underneath were more views of the same craft. M2 extracted a mini camera from one of his large pockets and began to click away. I went to another table and saw drawings of some different and very strange vehicles. One looked like an early helicopter except that the rotor blades were perfectly round, looking more like sewer pipes than wings. On the very tips were small turbine blades that presumably spun the tubes as they rotated.
“Wow,” M2 said, “Check this out. I can't read the writing, but I've seen a slew of documentaries about the war. It's a drawing of the Horten flying wing. They almost had their own stealth fighter with this baby. This next drawing is a Heinkel Lark, a vertical takeoff interceptor. It’s a strange looking beast. Damn good thing they ran out of time before this stuff became operational. I wonder if the bar of soap came from here.”
“You know,” M1 said, “we could spend all day here and it's a temptation because I love these sci-fi mechanisms of doom, but we should keep to our previous plan. We can always come back and I'm sure we will, but we need to locate what Carl discovered about The Secret Path.”
Alice found a clipboard with blank paper and got busy sketching a rough map of what we discovered so far. “I won't try to draw this to scale,” she muttered. “The place is so big that we'll need this by the time we finish.”
“Let's get moving,” M1 said. “We'll take a quick look thr
ough the rest of the doors, but we won't go in the rooms unless we see something extra special like a stargate or a pile of kryptonite.”
We all laughed at that. I think it relieved some of the tension. Things were moving too fast. I needed more time to examine and think about our findings. As we reluctantly left the flying saucer room that feeling came back with a vengeance. We needed a week in this room alone, but there was a good chance we would not return. It was not our mission and others would experience the thrill of learning all that that particular room had to offer.
There were five doors in this side tunnel. No one had locked any of them and all were similar large offices except the one at the end that was much larger. It appeared to be a fabricating factory filled with all sorts of machinery. We speculated that this place may well have produced test parts or even prototypes for the things created in the four other offices.
Alice kept herself busy with her clipboard map and M2 clicked several more pictures of the new places. I saw that Jean had a roll of stationery-sized paper tucked in her back pocket.
“I didn't have time to read much of what was on the desk,” she said. “I grabbed this to peruse later. It may be nothing, but who knows.”
Once back in the main chamber, we closed the doors and started our hike to find the other end. As we walked the estimated three-quarters of a mile we continued to take a quick look in each arch we passed. They all proved to be identical—two doors on each side and one at the back. In all we counted twenty more arches. That meant there were twenty-six arches on each side for a total of fifty-two. This place was massive. We did take time to look in the rooms of one more side tunnel, but they were totally empty. Here and there we passed strange-looking, electric motorized trucks, but the batteries were long dead. Only once did we see some loose rock that had apparently fallen from the ceiling. This reminded us that nothing lasts forever.
A huge find was just beyond the back wall of the cavern where the tracks ended. We saw an extra big arch cut into the stone. The doors were also extra big and it took some muscle, but they creaked open slowly.
It was a big factory. We saw a profusion of machinery hulking under a tangle of overhead cranes, lights, tubing of all sizes. There was such a tangle that it was hard to judge just what we were seeing. The exception was sitting directly in front of us in a central open space.
M2 was the first to find his voice. “Bejabbers! It's the Dark Lord's Chariot.”
He began to take pictures in the relatively weak light. Although its color was solid black, there was no mistaking that this was the flying saucer we had seen on the engineering drawings only minutes earlier. We slowly followed M2 as he circled the big machine.
“It has to be almost forty feet in diameter,” M1 said.
The bottom of the disk stood about five feet off the floor, supported by three slim, tapered legs ending with ground contact pads that looked like loaves of round bread. At the back, a portion of the disk's lower surface was lying to one side. On the floor directly under the hole was a machine unlike anything I had ever seen.
“It looks like something they were about to plug in or had just removed,” I said, “but it could be a milkshake machine for all I know.”
Alice walked over for a closer look. “I'm happy that this thing was apparently not operational when the staff here had to leave. It must have killed them to have to abandon all of this.”
“One wonders what might have happened if the war had lasted another six months,” Jean said, “but then, had it gone on much longer, this mountain might now be a radioactive crater.”
“We'll have to report this as soon as possible,” M1 said. “Other specialists will need to come here. We also have to keep a tight lid on this. This is our find and it's important that we keep mum about anything we discover—at least at first. Anyway, it's not our call, so we won't worry about it. As important as this is, I don't think it's what we are looking for, therefore, the search goes on.”
With much regret we left, wishing we could accomplish more in this big factory, but not knowing what to do there even if we had the time. We began our return on the concrete roadway next to the other wall to check locks and count arches.
Reluctantly, we simply made sure the arch doors were open as we continued. They were all identical with the first twenty-six until we reached what would have been number thirteen if one were to count from where we entered. When M2 pushed the door open, we flashed our lights in and saw that the door on the end wall was metal, studded with rivets. The door had something mounted on it, but we were too far away to make out any details.
“Okay,” M1 said, “this looks promising.”
Jean, who was standing behind me, still outside the arch door, called out, “Hey guys, look here on the door above the handle.”
We all back-stepped and saw a Kilroy Was Here cartoon penciled on the wood.
“Good old Carl,” Alice said. “He's leaving his bread crumbs all over the place. Let's find out what this is.”
“Hold up a sec,” M2 said. “You all wait here. It's my turn to pull the handle.”
He dogtrotted the length of the tunnel and stooped over the handle for a close look. “It's a bar handle just like the one on the outside door. Next to it is an oversized keypad with six metal buttons, each about four inches square. There are two rows of three buttons. This has to be a mechanical precursor of the digital keypad lock. There are words engraved on each button. Matzenhof on the first one, Braunan next, then Kirchberg. I think they're names of cities. I'll try the handle now.” We saw him pull first to the left, then to the right, then out. “It won't budge,” He called back. “Bring up the experts. We have another puzzle to solve.”
We gathered around. The top three buttons read: Matzenhof, Braunan then Kirchberg. On the bottom row I read: Inn, Antersdorf, then Am.
“Its function is clear,” Alice said. “The problem is to decide which buttons to push, how many to push and in what sequence. Wait one,” she exclaimed, while touching some letters engraved above the keypad. “GEHEIMWEG. I do believe this translates to Secret Path. We're just where we should be. Okay, Jean, can you figure it out?”
“Sure,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “on the top row, push button number two. On the second row, push number six and then push number four. That should do it.”
“Sheesh!” Alice said, her arms wide in a gesture of surrender. “I'm a believer when it comes to you two, but before we push the buttons, tell us how you knew.”
“I know German geography and some history,” Jean said. “Four of the buttons are cities, but button four and button six are just the words inn and am. There is a town in Austria named Braunan am Inn that happens to be Adolph Hitler's place of birth.”
“I'll bet the ranch that Jean is right,” Alice said, “She should do the honors.”
M1 and M2 moved aside to make room for Jean. She moved forward, bent over slightly and spit on button number two.
“What was that?” I asked.
“For luck,” she replied.
“Since when?” I inquired.
“I just made it up, okay?”
Alice moved her lips to within a millionth of an inch from my ear. “Jimmy boy, you do realize I can kill you with just one blow, do you not? If you don't shut up, this tunnel will be your mausoleum.”
I shuffled out of the danger zone. It took a solid shove, but the number two button seated with a clunk. Jean quickly pushed number six and then number four.
“Okay, now one of you strong men can try the handle again.”
M2 took his cue and this time the handle moved smoothly to the left, followed by a louder click and the iron door cracked open. It was heavy, but the hinges must have retained their grease because it swung open silently. Before it was completely open, the lights came on.
This was the last thing we expected. The lights came up slowly, but though they were not bright, we had to squint.
“I suppose Carl found a generator,” M2 said. “I do
n't think the original batteries would hold a charge for this length of time.”
“I can't see where the light is coming from,” Alice said. “Perhaps it's a Nazi secret atomic generator thingy.”
That’s a scary thought,” M1 said, “but we’ll go with whatever works.”
We were in a room that was a miniature, circular coliseum. The lighting was dramatic and theatrical.
“This is a war room—has to be, “M1 said.
“I just hope this is where Carl discovered the location of whatever it is in Egypt,” Alice said.
We stood behind the balustrade on the highest of four railed levels, each about twelve feet wide. They stepped down to a massive map table in the center. Above the table was a huge bronze globe. The lighting was strongest in that area to illuminate the topographical map covering the entire surface of the table. Each of the levels contained desks, tables, a variety of chairs and short file cabinets. Much larger banners covered the walls here, illuminated by something in the ceiling. They all had the same theme, nothing but Nazi.
“Okay, here's the drill,” M1 said. “It's getting late. We have to move fast before Fritz starts to worry. M2, you take a picture of everything. Alice, check those doors around the perimeter to see what's there. Jean and James, you look through some of these desks and file cabinets. See what you can find. I want to take a look at that big map.”
We dispersed around the room on our separate missions.
M1 reached the big table. “This is a map of the entire world. It has lines and notations all over the place. There's nothing obvious yet. I'll holler if I find something… Jean, James, anything?”
“More invoices, material lists, requisitions and packing slips,” Jean replied. “It looks like they were moving a lot of stuff in and out of here. James, how about you?”
“This looks like a military operation. There's horse choking paperwork in every desk. I'm just taking a quick look, then moving on.”
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