Now, with only half an hour left before the assault the silence was eerie. No hum of sewing machines, no printing presses with their click and clack churning out counterfeit currency, no drills being run, no engines humming being checked one last time. The only sounds came from the communication station he was seated in front of and the faraway generator that gave them power.
The twelve soldiers left behind to guard him and his eventual escape were a quarter of a mile away near the mouth of the cave. His team was safe for the duration of the assault. If they were discovered they would retreat, draw as many Nazi’s in as possible in before detonating the explosives laid all through the tunnels and caverns. Those would go off one way or the other. They weren't going to give the Nazi’s a chance to examine at what they had done there, unless they wanted to dig it all out and sift through the debris, in which case they were welcome to. Clean up crews had made sure nothing of real importance was left.
Behind him, on the large wooden conference table, were the models of the main buildings and surrounding streets open at the top to provide a view into the layout of the interior; toy trucks and soldiers to stand in for the transport vehicles and men. The table a had wonderful heft and was constructed through intricate joinery. He felt that in the face of impossible odds these patriots had been living the humans were meant to, as if every moment mattered, putting all of their attention into details. Even the radio he was sitting in front of him had intricate elegant, modern brass work trim.
His team were spread out at their stations, already placing and moving pins on large maps posted on the the sides of the control room. Travel routes, of Baltimore, the coastal plantations, routes from the towns to the coast, all the territories and geographies that were in play. The chalkboards surrounding the table were already filled with grids and tables, prepared to to track and document all phases. They had files on each of their combatants (coded of course) and would do their best to track losses of life. Arendt insisted that they keep the names, the stories of the people involved, to invoke memory.
The convoy had rolled out from the newly opened exit tunnel exactly four hours earlier. The main team had been making steady unhindered progress. John sat next to their communications expert a lovely young women in her late twenties intently scanning the channels. The relay chain of ham radios hidden in attics and basements that kept was fragile. The weight of responsibility and the tense tedium of waiting had lead him to think obsessively of sex. He fantasized non stop of pulling her off to the side and fucking her. “I guess your mind wants to do anything but be here. It's just the stress man.”
Chapter 34
The Arendt Files Page 33
