Spartan Gold

by Clive Cussler

  Sam turned. Remi was shining the flashlight on the rock wall above the pier. Clearly homemade out of pounded tin and paint that had long ago lost most of its color, the four-by-three-foot rectangle was nonetheless recognizable.

  “Kriegsmarine Nazi flag,” Sam whispered. In his hurried survey of the cavern, he’d missed it. “The pride of home ownership, I suppose.”

  Remi laughed.

  Taking it one careful step at a time, probing for weak spots as they went, they made their way across the catwalk to the pier; aside from a few nerve-wracking creaks and pops, the planking held firm. The cables, though coated in a thick layer of slimy rust, were similarly solid, bolted into the ceiling and rock walls by thumb-sized steel eyelets. Under the helpful beam of Remi’s flashlight, Sam recrossed the catwalk, grabbed the rope, and returned to the pier, dragging the submerged dinghy along. Together they hauled it up onto the pier. While the dinghy itself was shredded, the motor and attached gas can had miraculously survived with only a few bullet scrapes. Similarly, of their two dry bags, one was riddled with a dozen or more holes, the other unscathed.

  “We’ll sort through this, see what we can salvage,” Sam said.

  They walked to the end to have a look at the rear wall. The second chamber was, as Sam had suspected, a fracture-guided system. While thousands of years of water erosion had smoothed the walls of the main cavern, the secondary chamber had jagged and wildly angled walls. At the juncture were two tunnels in the shape of a wide V, one tunnel slanting upward to the left, the other slanting downward to the right. Water sluiced from the left-hand tunnel, half its volume coursing into the main cavern, the other half disappearing down the right-hand tunnel.

  “There’s your river,” Remi said.

  “It can’t have been here long,” Sam replied. “Walls are too rough.”

  “How long, do you think?”

  “No more than a hundred years, I’d say. Here, let me see the light. Grab my belt loop, will you?” Remi did as he asked, leaning backward as Sam leaned forward. He shined the light down the right-hand tunnel, then said, “Huh. Okay, reel me in.”

  “What?” Remi asked.

  “The tunnel curves back to the right. Just around the corner I can see another pier and more catwalks.”

  “The plot thickens.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Using what remaining rope they had—sixty feet of the original seventy-five—they set up a system to ferry themselves and their gear down the right-hand tunnel. Remi went first, with Sam giving her slack from a loop around the piling until she reached the next pier.

  “Okay!” she called. “It’s about thirty feet, I’d say.”

  Sam reeled in the line, then attached the motor, the dinghy (which they didn’t want to leave for their pursuers to find, should they have any doubt about whether their quarry was still in the cave), the two dry bags, and the dive gear to the end. Once done, he played out the line until Remi called, “Okay, hold it.” He could hear her grunting as she fished the gear from the water. “Tied off!”

  From the entrance Sam heard a gurgling sound, then the tellale sputtering blow of a regulator breaking into air. He dropped onto his belly and went still, face pressed to the pier’s planking. A flashlight clicked on and played over the walls and ceiling. In the ambient glow Sam could see the man’s head; floating beside him was a bullet-shaped object—a battery-powered sea scooter, Sam realized. Combined with good fins and strong legs, a sea scooter could propel a 180-pound man at a speed of four or five knots. So much for the outflow advantage, Sam thought.

  The man threw what looked like a grappling hook over the catwalk, gave the attached rope a tug, then shouted in Russian-accented English, “All clear, come on!” The man turned the scooter toward the dock and started across the cavern.

  Sam didn’t give himself a chance to think or second-guess, but gave the rope three emergency tugs, then rolled over the edge and lowered himself into the water. The current caught him and took him down the tunnel. A few seconds later the next pier came into view. Remi was kneeling on the edge, taking up the slack. Sam put his finger to his lips and she nodded and helped him onto the pier.

  “Bad guys,” he whispered.

  “How much time have we got?”

  “Only enough to hide.”

  Sam looked around. An E-shaped grid of catwalks spanned the cavern, connecting this pier to another against the opposite wall; both piers held stacks of wooden crates bearing the Kriegsmarine emblem.

  Though almost twice as large as the first, this cavern was of the fracture-guided variety, which meant they would find no exit on the seaward side. Or would they? Sam thought, shining the light around. Hanging from the ceiling in the far corner was what he’d initially taken for an especially long stalactite. Under the flashlight’s beam he could now see it was actually a desiccated tangle of roots and vines drooping nearly to the water’s surface.

  “A way out?” she asked.

  “Maybe. The current’s slower in here.”

  “Half a knot, no more,” Remi agreed.

  From the first cavern they heard a pair of voices calling to one another, then a third. A gunshot echoed down the tunnel, then another, then a ten-second burst.

  “Shooting into the water,” Sam whispered. “They’re trying to flush us out.”

  “Look here, Sam.”

  He turned the light around and pointed it at the water where she was pointing. Resting just beneath the surface was a curved shape.

  “Hull,” Remi whispered.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “We might have just found the UM-77.”

  “Come on, we got some work to do.”

  Explaining his plan on the go, they wrapped the motor and the rest of their gear inside the riddled dinghy, cinched it shut using the painter line, then sank the bundle beneath the pier. Next they cut off a thirty-foot section of rope and started tying loops every few feet. Once that was done, Sam asked her, “Which part do you want?”

  “You dive, I’ll climb.”

  She gave him a quick kiss, then grabbed the rope and started half running, half creeping across the catwalk.

  Sam took the flashlight, slipped off the pier, and dove.

  He immediately realized this was not a Molch-class mini sub. It was far too small, at least six feet shorter and half the diameter of the UM-34. It was a Marder-class boat, he decided, essentially a pair of G7e torpedoes stacked atop one another, the upper one hollowed out and converted into a cockpit/battery compartment with an acrylic-glass viewing dome, the lower one a live, detachable torpedo.

  Following the curve of the hull to the bottom, Sam could immediately see there was no torpedo attached, but only a cockpit tube lying on its side, the viewing dome half buried in the sand. He kicked down the length of the hull to the dome, laid the flashlight in the sand, and set to work on the unlatching bolts. They were frozen in place.

  Time, Sam, time . . .

  His lungs began to burn. He wrapped both hands around a bolt, braced his feet on the hull, and heaved. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing.

  Through the water he heard muffled voices again, this time closer. He clicked off the flashlight, looked up, got his bearings, then kicked off the sub and swam toward the far wall. The pier’s pilings appeared in the gloom and he slipped between them and turned right, following the wall. Clearing the pier, he let himself float upward and gently break the surface.

  Across the cavern and down the adjoining river tunnel he could see lights dancing off the walls—Kholkov and his men at the end of the pier; they’d be coming here next. Ten feet to Sam’s left the root/ vine tangle hung just above the surface; close up it was even larger than he’d estimated, as big around as a fifty-five-gallon drum. He sidestroked to it, dug around a moment, and found Remi’s rope. He started climbing.

  A minute later and fifteen feet higher his reaching hand found Remi’s foot, which was resting in a loop. He gave it a reassuring squeeze and got a wiggle in reply. He placed his
foot inside a loop, did the same with his right hand, then got comfortable.

  “Luck?” she whispered.

  “No. Locked up tight.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now we wait.”

  Their wait was short.

  Kholkov’s men moved fast, using generally the same ferry-rope system Sam and Remi had used to reach the second pier. Peering through the vines, Sam counted six men. One of them stalked down the pier, shining a flashlight over the crates, into the water, and down the catwalks.

  “Where the hell are they?” he barked.

  It was Kholkov himself, Sam realized.

  “You four, flush them out!” Kholkov ordered; then he nodded at the other man and said, “You, with me!”

  As Kholkov and one man searched the crates, the others lined up at the pier’s edge and started firing short, controlled bursts into the water. After nearly a minute, Kholkov called, “Cease fire, cease fire!”

  “There’s something down there,” one of the men called, shining his light into the water.

  Kholkov walked over, looked a few moments, then pointed to two of the men. “That’s it! Get your gear and have a look.”

  The men were back in five minutes, and five minutes after that they were diving under the water.

  “Search the cavern first,” Kholkov ordered them. “Make sure they’re not hiding somewhere.”

  In a cloud of bubbles, the men disappeared beneath the surface. Sam watched their lights move over the bottom, under both piers, and along the walls, before finally both men resurfaced.

  “Not here,” one of them reported. “There’s no place to hide.”

  Sam let out the breath he’d been holding. They’d missed the sunken gear.

  “Perhaps they went down the river tunnel,” the man standing beside Kholkov suggested.

  Kholkov considered this for a moment. “You’re sure there was nothing?” he asked the divers.

  Both men nodded, and Kholkov turned to the man who’d suggested the river tunnel. “Take Pavel, rope yourselves off, and search the tunnel for any sign of them.”

  The man nodded, moved to the end of the pier, and began uncoiling a rope.

  “Search the sub,” Kholkov ordered the divers, who both replaced their regulators and dove.

  Sam watched their lights move along the hull until they stopped at what he assumed was the cockpit dome. The lights wobbled and shifted and there came a faint clinking of metal on metal. After three more minutes, one of the men broke the surface and pulled the regulator from his mouth.

  “It’s a Marder,” the man said. “The 77.”

  “Good,” Kholkov replied.

  “The bolts are frozen, though. We need the crowbar.”

  One of the men on the pier kneeled beside a backpack and pulled out a crowbar. The diver swam over, took it, and dove again.

  There were five more minutes of muffled metal-on-metal banging, then silence for a few moments, then suddenly a giant bubble burst on the water’s surface.

  The minutes ticked by until finally both divers broke the surface again. One of them gave a hoot and lifted an oblong object from the water.

  “Bring it!” Kholkov ordered. When they reached the pier he knelt down and took the object, which Sam could now see was an all-too-familiar loaf-shaped wooden box. Kholkov studied the box for a full minute, turning it this way and that, peering closely at its surface, before carefully lifting the lid and peeking inside. He closed it and nodded.

  “Good work.”

  From the river tunnel, a shout: “Help! Pull us in, pull us in!” Several of the men rushed down the pier and began hauling the rope hand over hand. After ten seconds a man appeared at the end of it. Lights panned over him. He was semiconscious, half his face covered in blood. They pulled him onto the dock and laid him flat.

  “Where’s Pavel?” Kholkov demanded. The man mumbled something incoherent. Kholkov slapped him across the face and grabbed his chin. “Answer me! Where’s Pavel?”

  “The rapids . . . the line got cut. . . . He hit his head. I tried to reach him, but he was gone. One second he was there, then he was gone. He’s gone.”

  “Damn it!” Kholkov spun around, paced halfway down the pier, then spun back. “Okay, you two carry him and get back to the lagoon.” He pointed to the other man. “You and I will set the charges. If they’re not already dead, we’ll bury the Fargos alive! Get moving!”

  CHAPTER 19

  Kholkov and his men left. Gesturing for Remi to follow, Sam scrambled down the rope, shifted his weight back and forth to get a swing going, then nodded to Remi, who jumped off onto the catwalk, followed by Sam. They knelt down together.

  “You think he meant it?” Remi whispered.

  “I doubt they have enough explosive to bury us, but they can certainly seal the main entrance. Did you check for an opening up there?” he asked, nodding at the tangle of roots.

  She nodded. “It was nothing but a crack—no wider than a couple inches, and a good six feet to the surface.”

  “But you saw daylight?”

  “Yes. Sun’s going down.”

  “Well, exit or not, at least we’ll have an air shaft—but they’ve got the damned bottle.”

  “One thing at a time, Sam.”

  “You’re right. Let’s get off this catwalk before the—”

  As if on cue there came a whump from the main cavern, followed by two more in quick succession.

  “Down!”

  Sam pushed her to the ground and lay on top of her. A few seconds later they felt a gust of cool air wash over them. A cloud of dust billowed through the tunnel and filled the cavern, the heavier particles peppering the surface like rain. Sam and Remi looked up.

  “Ah, alone at last,” Remi murmured.

  Sam grinned, stood up, brushed himself off, and pulled her to her feet. “You want to stay for a while?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Well, then we better get busy on our escape pod.”

  Remi put her hands on her hips. “What’re you talking about?”

  Sam unclipped the flashlight from his belt and shined it in the water, illuminating the sub’s hull. “I’m talking about that.”

  “Explain, Fargo.”

  “I’ll check to be sure, but chances are we can’t go out the way we came, and no one knows exactly where we are, so we shouldn’t count on rescue. That leaves one option: down the river.”

  “Oh, you mean down the river that killed one of Kholkov’s men and sucked him into limbo? That river?”

  “It goes somewhere. That tunnel is a good fifteen feet in diameter and the water’s moving fast and steady. If it narrowed anywhere down the line we’d see backflow or signs of a higher tide line on the walls. Believe me, it dumps out somewhere—either aboveground in a lake or pond, or into another sea cave.”

  “And you’re sure about this?”

  “Reasonably.”

  “There’s a subjective judgment if I’ve ever heard one.” Remi chewed her lip for a moment. “What about this: You work your engineering magic with one of the tanks and blow a hole in the ceiling crack.”

  “Not enough power, and we might bring the whole roof down on us.”

  “True. Okay, we can wait for daylight then set the root tangle on fire. It’ll be a smoke signal—” She caught herself and frowned. “Scratch that. We’d asphyxiate long before help arrived.”

  “You’ve done as much cave diving as I have,” Sam said. “You know the geology. That river’s our best chance. Our only chance.”

  “Okay. One problem, though: Our escape pod is full of water and sitting fifteen feet below the surface.”

  Sam nodded. “Yes, that’s a problem.”

  After checking to make sure the main cavern was in fact sealed, they returned to the secondary cave and got to work, first retrieving their gear from the bottom, then scrounging through the Kriegsmarine crates for any odds and ends that might be of use. In addition to a well-stocked toolbox of mostly rusted tools t
hey found four lanterns and a dozen stubby votivelike candles that lit at the first touch from Sam’s lighter. Soon the pier and surrounding water was dimly lit by flickering yellow light. While Remi sorted through their remaining gear and conducted an inventory of the toolbox, Sam stood at the edge of the pier, staring distantly into the water.

  “Okay,” Remi said. “We’ve got two air tanks, one two-thirds full, a second completely full; two flashlights, both working, charge unknown; my camera’s shot but the binoculars are fine; the revolver is dry, but I can’t vouch for the bullets; two canteens of water and some slightly soggy beef jerky; a first-aid kit; your Gerber Nautilus multitool; one dry bag that’s in good shape, one that’s Swiss cheese; and, finally, two cell phones that are dry, working, almost fully charged, but useless inside here.”

  “The motor?”

  “I dried it out as best I could but we won’t know until we try it. As for the gas tank, I didn’t find any holes and all the valves are sealed, so I think it’s fine.”

  Sam nodded and went back to staring at the water.

  After ten minutes of this, he cleared his throat and said, “Okay, we can do it.” He walked over and sat down beside Remi.

  “Let’s hear it,” she said.

  He started explaining. When he was done, Remi pursed her lips, tilted her head, and then nodded. “Where do we start?”

  It started with a tense, claustrophobic crawl for Sam. He had no trouble with either confined spaces or water, but had no love for the two combined.

  Wearing only his mask and a dive belt, he first did a series of practice dives to expand his lung capacity, then spent a full minute on the surface doing deep-breathing exercises to oxygenate his blood to its maximum.

  He took a final breath, then dove to the bottom. Flashlight extended before him, he wriggled through the sub’s dome hatch and turned aft. He knew from his cursory study of Kriegsmarine subs back in the Pocomoke, the nose section of a Marder-class boat held only a seat and some rudimentary steerage and diving controls. What he was looking for—the scuttle valves—would be in the tail section. Pulling and pushing himself along the interior piping, he felt the cylindrical walls close around him, felt the darkness and the water pressing him, crushing him. He felt the hot bloom of fear in his chest. He quashed it and refocused: Scuttle valve, Sam. Scuttle.