But she didn’t see blood.
None.
Her right arm was trapped under her body, and she shifted her weight as much as she could, lifting her arm clear and raising her good hand toward her head. She placed her fingers against the back of her neck and eased her hand upward, moving slowly, expecting to feel a crater of splintered skull bone, thick with blood.
Nothing.
She forced her hand to continue upward along the back of her head and in another inch her fingers tangled themselves in her hair, which had become matted and snarled. She’d been wearing an old Washington Senators baseball cap and it had been torn off her head in the explosion, lost somewhere among the debris and the tons of fallen earth.
She pushed harder against her snarled hair and the pain in her head returned. It was nothing like what she had felt immediately following the explosion, but it was there, and the truth began to dawn on her.
My skull’s not damaged at all, she thought wonderingly. The chunk of timber landed on my hair as it embedded itself into the ground next to me head. The pain I felt was the wooden beam ripping out my hair. I’m not going to bleed to death!
The flash of elation faded quickly as Tracie realized that although she was in no immediate danger of dying—barring a second cave-in, which remained a very real possibility—she was still alone in the tunnel and trapped, unable to move, likely facing a long, slow, tortuous death. Her hair was holding her in place against the tunnel floor. In many ways what she faced would be worse than the quick extinction she had somehow avoided and that Gruber must have experienced.
The feeling of panic began to return and Tracie forced herself to slow down and think. She would not remain trapped. She would rip her hair from her head by the roots if that was what it took to free herself.
She pulled her hand away from her head and let it drop to the tunnel floor. Pushed against the dirt and tried use her hand as a lever, to force her body upward. Tugged her head, attempting to pull free.
But it was no use. She felt a flash of pain as her hair pulled taut against her head but there wasn’t enough clearance between her skull and the tunnel floor to generate any momentum.
She breathed deeply, working hard to forestall the panic that was lurking in the back of her mind.
Think, dammit.
Then she smiled despite the pain in her hand and her head, despite the shock of losing Gruber and the fear of dying alone fifteen feet underground. She knew what to do. If she hadn’t been so stunned by the sudden explosion it would have occurred to her immediately.
She snaked her good hand along the ground toward her lower body as she scrunched into the fetal position, knees together and folded in toward her chest. Lifted her right pant leg up her calf toward her knee. Grasped her combat knife and lifted it clear of its sheath.
Then she bent her arm at the elbow and began hacking away at her hair, working quickly but carefully to avoid stabbing herself in the skull. Wouldn’t that be ironic, she thought. Survive the cave-in after thinking my skull was crushed, only to bleed to death after slicing my own head open.
Her eyes watered as each slice of the knife pulled her hair tight against her skull. She didn’t mind the pain. Rather, she relished it, each stroke of the knife a reminder that she was still alive.
Still kicking.
A half-dozen strokes later she was free.
She rolled to her knees, pivoting her body to peer down what was left of the tunnel toward the storage container. She had maintained a death grip on her flashlight, instinctively knowing that in the unlikely event she survived the explosion she would stand no chance at escaping the tunnel without it.
She flicked the light on and gasped.
The container was gone, replaced by moist black earth that had dropped onto it seemingly in a solid mass. It was as if the tunnel had been dug to a point five feet from Tracie’s prone body and then had been abandoned.
She crept forward in shock, fearful of another cave-in but unable to stop herself from moving toward where she knew the storage container—and Gruber—to be.
I hope the explosion killed Gruber, she thought. Because the prospect of being buried alive…
Tracie shook her head and turned away from the fresh earth. Gruber was gone, and any more time spent contemplating the gruesome nature of his death would make her own death down here that much more likely.
She stood and took and step.
Froze as the sound of a muffled cry drifted through the tunnel.
No way. It can’t be. I’m imagining it.
She shook her head and took another step and then heard it again. It was not her imagination. Gruber was alive. How that could be, she had no idea, but she had seen plenty of death in her lifetime and in not a single case had a corpse cried out.
“Gruber?” she whispered, immediately shaking her head with the realization that he would never hear a whisper. He would have been lucky to hear her pathetic attempt were he standing right next to her, never mind buried under tons of dirt and rubble.
She turned in a circle, using her flashlight to reveal the devastation of the tunnel. Beams hung from the ceiling, the brick side walls had collapsed. The portion of the tunnel that had survived the cave-in was narrow and ill defined.
God help me, Tracie thought, and then she raised her voice and half-spoke, half-shouted, “Gruber! Are you okay?”
A half-second delay, and then the response. “I-I’m bleeding, Quinn. I’m trapped.”
“Stanch the bleeding the best you can, Gruber. I’m going to dig you out.” She spoke the words knowing their futility. There was no way she could dig out a man buried under tons of earth with no tools and one good hand.
“Forget it, Quinn.”
“I’m damned well not going to forget it,” she answered angrily. “I’m not leaving you there to die. How did you survive the blast, anyway?” She asked the question partly to keep his mind off his situation and partly because she simply couldn’t fathom the fact that he could have been that close to the blast site and still be breathing.
“One of the panels wedged itself just above my body, between the storage container and the falling dirt,” he said. His voice was shaky and fading, she could hear it getting weaker. He was going into shock. “There’s a narrow gap underneath it. That’s where I am.”
“I’ll get to you as quickly as I can. Hang on, Gruber, do you hear me? That’s an order.”
“I told you, forget it. I’m dying.”
“And I told you you’re not going to die. Hang on.” She knelt against the fresh earth and began shoveling scoops backward, one small handful at a time, knowing it was hopeless but doing it anyway.
“You’re not hearing me,” Gruber said. His voice wavered like a ninety year-old man’s. “My leg is gone. A piece of iron took it off above the knee. I’m bleeding out, Quinn. I’ve got a couple of minutes. Maybe less.”
“No!” Tracie answered. “No! That’s not acceptable. Hang on, I’m coming. Do you hear me, Gruber? I’m coming to get you out of there.” She continued to dig as the tears began to fall, rolling down her cheeks and plopping into the dirt below. “I’m not leaving you there to die.”
“Quinn, listen to me. Stop. You could have a bucket loader to dig with and I’d be gone long before you could get to me. It’s okay. I’m not in any pain, just feel a little cold, and that will be gone soon, too. I’ve just got one question for you, Quinn.”
“What is it?” She tried to keep the tears out of her voice when she answered. It was the least she could do for the dying man, but she failed miserably at the attempt.
“Will you sleep with me now?”
42
November 19, 1987
Approximately 11:15 a.m.
Under the Wuppertal Munitions Plant
Northwest of Wuppertal, Federal Republic of Germany
“I’ll sleep with you, Gruber, just keep breathing. Hang on for me.” She tore at the soil with her hand and ripped off a fingernail and barely noticed
.
Silence.
“You hear me, Gruber? Yes, I’ll sleep with you. Tell me all the things we’re going to do when we sleep together.”
Silence.
“Gruber! You hear me? Answer me!”
Silence.
43
November 19, 1987
Approximately 11:20 a.m.
Under the Wuppertal Munitions Plant
Northwest of Wuppertal, Federal Republic of Germany
Tracie wasn’t sure how long she cried. The concussive blast of the explosion had smashed her watch, or maybe it broke while she was clawing at the fresh earth in her frantic—and futile—attempt to get to Gruber following the cave-in.
She wasn’t even sure why she cried, or at least why she cried so fiercely. This wasn’t the first time another operative had died on a mission, and in all likelihood it would not be the last.
Maybe next time it would be her.
Hell, maybe this time it would still be her. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. She had the length of the tunnel to fight her way through and who knew how much damage the Nazi explosives had caused down the line?
But the tears kept coming, making furrows down her filthy face and dropping onto her clothing, and out of nowhere the reason occurred to her.
She was crying because this was her fault. This death had been entirely avoidable, and the fact that Gruber had fallen victim to his own impetuous nature did nothing to change the fact that it should never have happened in the first place.
I shouldn’t have given him the choice of locks to open, Tracie thought bitterly. I should have taken the lock closest to the explosives. It’s my fault just as much as it is Gruber’s that he’s dead. It’s not like I hadn’t seen plenty of examples of his carelessness. Hell, the reason I was sent here in the first place is because he couldn’t handle his assignment.
Gruber’s dead because of my poor judgment.
Mine.
I’m to blame.
***
After a while—ten minutes?...ten hours?—the tears stopped of their own accord. There were none left to cry. Tracie felt hollowed-out, defeated, an exhaustion that was every bit as much mental and spiritual as physical. She had switched off her flashlight to save the batteries and the resulting darkness seemed utterly appropriate to the occasion.
“I’m sorry, Gruber,” she muttered into the darkness. “I let you down and I’m sorry.” She spoke so softly she could barely hear the words herself; they certainly weren’t going to carry through the tons of dirt piled between her and the storage container.
But the volume at which she spoke no longer mattered.
Tracie rose to her feet and switched on her flashlight. The result was a weak and flickering beam, and she realized with no surprise whatsoever that either the light had been damaged in the explosion or the batteries were failing.
She might well be plunged into darkness before escaping the tunnel.
***
The blockage that she and Gruber had passed only at great cost while working their way to the Amber Room—Tracie wouldn’t know how high a cost until her hand had been thoroughly examined back at Langley, assuming she survived—represented even more of a challenge on the way out.
As she had feared, the explosive blast further damaged the ceiling supports and caused more earth to spray into the passageway. The narrow gap that had existed between the top of the dirt pile and the tunnel ceiling was now gone. The corridor was completely blocked.
She sighed and climbed the pile as far as she could, then flicked off the flashlight and started digging. Every few minutes she checked her progress, pausing for a short break and flicking on the light before resuming her work. For a long while she didn’t seem to be making any.
Her fear was that as she removed dirt from the cave-in, more would fall from above, dooming her to a Sisyphean struggle that would end only when she ran out of energy.
Or oxygen.
Or will.
The Nazis had obviously provided for air circulation when constructing the tunnel, but who was to say that the ductwork wasn’t by now completely blocked?
The thought spurred Tracie on, and she forced herself to continue working when her arm burned and her shoulder ached and she wanted nothing more than to climb to the bottom of the pile and curl up into a ball.
But doing so could be fatal, and she kept digging. One by one the fingernails of her right hand were ripped off, falling victim to rocks embedded in the dirt, or pieces of the iron storage unit that had been blasted the length of the tunnel, or the hard-packed earth itself.
The passage of time became elastic. With no watch to provide context to her struggle and no sun—or moon, as by now it was just as likely nighttime as day—to track across the sky, it became impossible to guess how long she had been at work.
Not that it mattered. Time was relevant only to the extent that she didn’t want to outlast her air supply, and that consideration was beyond her ability to control.
She alternated between hopelessness and the certainty that if she worked hard enough and kept at it long enough she would survive.
Finally she punched through to the other side, a puff of air flowing through an opening so small she could not even see it yet. The airflow was so minimal it could not even legitimately be considered a breeze, but it was there and it was real. It tickled her bloody fingers and provided hope to her flagging spirit.
She celebrated with a momentary sob of relief and then got back to work, digging and enlarging the opening, working without any further breaks until she had excavated a hole just large to allow passage for her shoulders. Her mini-tunnel was located in the upper left corner of the cave-in, between the ceiling and what remained of the tunnel wall, perhaps twelve inches wide by twelve inches high.
Tracie paused before crawling through. She was dirty and tired and in pain, and perhaps as devastated in spirit as she had ever been. She turned and aimed her flashlight—it was still working, although the quality of the light was nothing like what it had been at the beginning of the subterranean journey—back at the solid wall of earth standing between her and the Amber Room.
And her now-dead temporary partner.
“See ya on the other side, Gruber,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I let you down.”
Then she turned back and slithered through the hole, sliding headfirst down the other side of the pile until she came to a painful stop amid fallen chunks of ceiling supports, bricks and other unidentifiable rubble.
The massive boulder she had been so concerned about a thousand years ago when they were working their way toward the Amber Room, the one that had been perched precariously a third of the way down the dirt pile, had disappeared, apparently buried under thousands of tons of fresh earth.
“Small favors,” Tracie muttered. Dirt had forced its way into her mouth as she tumbled down the pile, and now she dug out the biggest pieces—clods the size of strawberries but not nearly as sweet—with her fingers and spit out the rest.
And her flashlight failed. Without warning the beam of light disappeared, and even though the equipment failure was anything but unexpected, for a moment Tracie froze in her tracks, her pulse skyrocketing and adrenaline pounding through her system.
Relax, she thought. Barring any further serious damage from the explosion, all she needed to do was pick her way around smaller cave-ins until reaching the entryway beneath the plant manager’s office, and then feel around for the iron ladder bolted to the wall.
Simple.
Unless there’s more damage.
She forced the thought away, along with the accompanying image of herself trapped in the darkness, lost and unable to find her way out, rats chewing at her exposed skin when she became too weak to fight them off.
Keep moving.
She tamped down on the panic and worked her way forward. She discovered to her surprise that the damage to this end of the tunnel seemed to have been relatively minimal. The unseen obstacles she
was forced to pick her way around seemed no more daunting than she remembered them being while she and Gruber were moving in the other direction.
Her mind wandered. She was moving slowly but her brain was racing. She thought about the Amber Room, and its supposed value, and about whether the fact that a man had died in the quest to retrieve it added to that value or subtracted from it.
She thought about Marshall Fulton, to whom she felt a strong attraction and whom she had dated a few times but had mostly kept at arm’s length, concerned about starting a relationship when her own future was so uncertain.
She thought about Aaron Stallings, and about D.C. politicians and bureaucrats to whom the Amber Room represented not a rare and important historical artifact, but rather a prize, monetary and strategic, to be bartered and leveraged in their unending quest for more power and greater influence.
She thought about the man she had known as Matthias Gruber. That hadn’t been his real name, of course, any more than Tracie’s real name was “Fiona Quinn.” But that was how she had known him, and it would be how he lived on in her memory.
She was so absorbed in her racing thoughts that she was actually surprised when she reached the beginning of the tunnel. Her head banged on the iron ladder, in virtually the exact spot she had already bruised on the tunnel ceiling support, and she didn’t care at all. She sank to her knees in relief, blurting out thanks to a God she wasn’t even sure she believed in.
44
November 19, 1987
Early evening
Wuppertal, Federal Republic of Germany
Climbing out of the tunnel was simple once she had made her way back to the ladder.
Once above ground and inside the plant manager’s office, Tracie lifted the hinged door with her “good” hand, which was now missing fingernails and dripping blood. She dropped the door into place over the tunnel entrance, and then sprinted to the Opel.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 96