Atlantis Found Part 88

While Pitt focused on keeping the Snow Cruiser from brus.h.i.+ng against the unsympathetic ice, Giordino sat in the pa.s.senger seat, his rifle propped on one knee, eyes fastened as far as the headlights could throw their beams, watching for a sign of movement or any object other than the seemingly unending pipe with its intersecting tubes that ran down into the floor and through the roof of the tunnel.

The ominous fact that the tunnel was deserted suggested to Pitt that the Wolfs and their workers were abandoning the mining facility and preparing to escape to their giant s.h.i.+ps. He pushed the Snow Cruiser as fast as it would go, occasionally spinning the wheel hubs into the ice walls and carving a trench before steering the vehicle straight again. Dread began clouding his mind. They had lost too much time crossing the ice shelf. The timetable that Karl Wolf had boasted of in Buenos Aires at the amba.s.sador's party had been four days and ten hours.

The four days had pa.s.sed, as had eight hours and forty minutes, leaving only an hour and twenty minutes until Karl Wolf threw the doomsday switch.

Pitt estimated that one mile, maybe one and half, separated them from the heart of the facility. He and Giordino were not given satellite maps of the layout, so finding the control center once they were inside would be pure guesswork. The questions nagging his mind were whether the Special Forces team had arrived and had been successful in eliminating the army of mercenaries. The latter would put up a bitter fight-the Wolfs had surely promised to save them and their families from the cataclysm. Any way he looked at it, the thought did not present a rosy picture.

AFTER another eighteen minutes of negotiating the tunnel in silence, Giordino hunched forward and gestured ahead. "We're coming to a crossroads."

Pitt slowed the Snow Cruiser, as they came to an intersection where five tunnels spread off into the ice. The dilemma was maddening. Time did not allow them to make the wrong choice. He leaned out the side window again and studied the frozen floor of the tunnel. Wheeled tracks branched into them all, but the deepest ruts appeared to travel into the one on the right. "The tube on the right looks like it's had the heaviest traffic."

Giordino jumped down out of the Snow Cruiser and disappeared up the tunnel. In a few minutes, he returned. "About two hundred yards farther on, it looks like the tunnel opens into a large chamber."

Pitt gave a brief nod and turned the vehicle and followed the tracks into the tunnel on his right. Strange structures began appearing locked in the ice, vague and indistinguishable but with the straight lines of objects that were man-made rather than a creation of nature. As Giordino had reported, the tunnel soon widened into a vast chamber whose curved roof was covered by ice crystals that hung down like stalact.i.tes. Light filtered down from several openings in the roof that illuminated the interior with an eerie glow. The effect seemed extraterrestrial, magical, timeless, and miraculous. Awed by the sight, Pitt slowly brought the Snow Cruiser to a halt.

The two men went silent in astonishment.

They found themselves parked in what was once the main square, surrounded by the icebound buildings of an ancient city.

42

NO LONGER COVERED BY the security blanket of the ice storm, the wind having dropped to only five miles an hour, Cleary felt naked, as his white-clad force fanned out and began advancing toward the mining facility. They took advantage of a series of hummocks that rose like camel humps for cover, until they reached the high fence that ran from the base of the mountain to the cliff above the sea and encircled the main compound.

Cleary had no prior intelligence on the force his men were up against. None had been gathered on the facility, simply because the CIA had never considered it a threat to the nation's security. Discovering the true horror of the menace at the last minute had left no time for covert penetration, nor had this simple hit-and-run strategy. It was a surgical operation, uncomplicated, requiring a quick conclusion. The orders were to neutralize the facility and deactivate the ice shelf breakaway systems before being relieved by a two-hundred-man Special Force team that was only an hour away.

All Cleary had been told was that the Wolf security guards were hardened professionals who came from elite fighting units around the world. This was information provided by the National Underwater & Marine Agency-hardly an organization practiced in intelligence gathering, Cleary mistakenly concluded. He was confident his elite force could handle any hostiles they encountered.

Little did he know that his small force was outnumbered three to one.

Moving in two columns, they reached what at first looked like a single fence but became two that were divided by a ditch. It looked to Cleary as if it had been built decades before. There was an old sign whose paint was badly faded but could still be translated as "No Trespa.s.sing" in German. Made up of a common chain link, it was topped by several strings of wire whose barbs had become impotent long before from a thick coating of ice. Once many feet higher than now, ice drifts had built up against it until one could easily hoist one leg and step over it. The ditch had also filled in and was little more than a low, rounded furrow. The second fence was higher and still protruded seven feet above the snow, but posed no serious hazard. They lost precious minutes cutting through the strands until they could enter the grounds of the compound. Cleary took it as a good omen that they had penetrated the outer perimeter without discovery.

Once inside, their movements were s.h.i.+elded by a row of buildings with no windows. Cleary called a halt. He paused to examine a fifteen-by-eighteen-inch aerial photo of the compound. Though he had etched every street, every structure, in his mind during the flight from Cape Town, as had Sharpsburg, Garnet, and Jacobs, he wanted to compare a mark on the map to where they had pa.s.sed through the outer fences. He was pleased to see they were only fifty feet from their intended infiltration point. For the first time since they had landed, regrouped, and advanced across the ice, he spoke into the Motorola radio.

"Tin Man?"

"I copy you, Wizard," replied the gravel voice of Lieutenant Warren Garnet.

"We split up here," said Cleary. "You know what is expected of you and your Marines. Good luck."

"On our way, Wizard," acknowledged Garnet, whose mission, as a.s.signed to his Marine Recon Team, was to secure the generating plant and cut off all power to the facility.

"Scarecrow?"

Lieutenant Miles Jacobs of the Navy SEALs answered quickly. "I hear you, Wizard." Jacobs and his team were to circle around and a.s.sault the control center from the side facing the sea.

"You have the farthest to go, Scarecrow. You'd better get a move on."

"We're halfway there," Jacobs replied confidently, as he and his SEALs began moving out down a side road that led in the direction of the control center.

"Lion?"

"Ready to sweep," answered Captain Sharpsburg of the Army Delta Force cheerfully.

"I will accompany you."

"Happy to have an old hand along."

"Let's move out."

There was no synchronizing of watches, no further voice contact, as the teams divided and made their way to their a.s.signed targets. There was no need. They all knew what they had to do, having been fully briefed on the horrendous consequences should they fail. Cleary had no doubts that his men would fight like demons or die without hesitation to stop the Wolfs from launching the apocalypse.

They moved lightly, almost fluidly, in offensive formation, two men ten yards ahead on either flank, and two men covering their rear. Every fifty yards, they stopped, dropped to the ground, or took whatever available cover presented itself, while Cleary studied the terrain and checked with the Marines and the SEAL teams.

"Tin Man, report."

"Sweep is clear. Approaching within three hundred yards of target."

"Scarecrow? Have you encountered anything?"

"If I wasn't sure, I'd say the place is abandoned," answered Jacobs.

Cleary did not reply. He rose from his crouched position as Sharpsburg moved his Lion team forward.

On the face of it, the facility seemed like a bleak and austere layout. Cleary saw nothing special about it, but then trepidation began to mount. The compound appeared totally deserted. No workers showed themselves. No vehicles moved. It was too quiet. The entire inner compound was cloaked in a cold, eerie silence.

KARL Wolf stared at an array of monitors in the headquarters of his security guards on a floor below the main control center. He watched with bemused interest as Cleary and his a.s.sault teams made their way through the roads of the complex.

"You'll have no problem preventing them from interrupting our launch time?" he asked Hugo, who was standing next to him.

"None," Hugo a.s.sured him. "We have contemplated and drilled for such an intrusion many times. Our fortifications are in place, the barricades raised, and our armored Sno-cats awaiting my orders to move into battle."

Karl nodded in satisfaction. "You have done well. Still, these are the elite of the American fighting forces."

"Not to worry, brother. My men are just as well trained as the Americans. We heavily outnumber them and have the advantage of fighting on our ground. The element of surprise is in our favor, not theirs. They do not suspect that they are walking into a trap. And we can travel through the facility's underground utility tunnels, emerge inside buildings, and attack their flanks and rear before they realize what is happening."

"Your overall strategy?" Karl asked.

"To gradually siphon them into a pocket in front of the control center, where we can destroy them at our leisure."

"Our ancestors who fought so many heroic battles against the Allies during the war would be proud of you."

Obviously pleased by his brother's compliment, Hugo clicked his heels and made a stiff bow. "I am honored to serve the Fourth Empire." Then he looked up and gazed at the monitors, studying the progress of the American fighting teams. "I must go now, brother, and direct our defenses."