Sudden Death

by Don Pendleton

  If there was conversation among the passengers, Bolan couldn't hear it. The even beat of the engine and the discreet boom of the exhaust pipe beneath the trunk were having a soporific effect. If it wasn't for the fact that his headache grew worse with every undulation in the road surface, he might have slept.

  Two hours and fifteen minutes passed before the car bumped along a rough track and finally halted. The engine was cut. Doors opened. The body rocked as people got out. Bolan heard voices fading away to his right.

  He waited ten minutes before he was convinced that the chauffeur had also left and he dared spring back the catch of the trunk lid. Apart from a slight sighing of wind, the silence was total. He was certain the Mercedes was parked in some isolated place and was prepared to take a chance that it was a place where nobody would have an overview of the car.

  The mechanism of the catch was simple all right, but the spring was strong; he was unable to exert enough strength with his fingers and finally had to snap back the greased metal with the barrel of the Beretta. The lock flipped open, and the lid began to rise.

  Rain drifted into the trunk. Screwing up his eyes against the unfamiliar light, he saw a widening rectangle of gray sky fringed by the leaves of a chestnut tree.

  Bolan inhaled grateful lungfuls of fresh, damp air and climbed out.

  He was in an abandoned farmyard knee-high with weeds. He saw a fire-scorched building with rafters showing through a hole in the sagging roof, a wall topped by a grassy bank, the rusted wreck of a truck.

  Warily he circled the building. There was nobody in sight. The surrounding countryside was masked by trees.

  It was ten minutes before he found the opening beneath the fig tree.

  Before he could decide whether to explore the dark passage revealed beyond, he heard the distant mutter of a motorcycle engine. The sound grew louder, the beat more rapid and the exhaust note more laboring as the rider shifted down. He had already concluded that the farm was on high ground. This proved it; the bike was climbing a steep hill.

  When it became clear that the machine was approaching the farm along the grass-grown track, he ducked beneath the wreck and flattened himself under the differential casing, the Beretta ready to fire.

  He saw the bike's wheels slowing through the weeds. The motor wheezed into silence. The machine was leaned against the wall ten yards away. He heard two voices, a man and a girl.

  "Am I glad that's bloody over!" the girl said. "I feel like I was kicked from head to heels by a horse."

  "I told you it would be a long ride. Better than risking a police check on public transport, though," the man replied.

  "I still wonder what happened to Dirk after he fell."

  "He fucking bought it. You know that. You read the paper."

  "Yeah, but it could be some kind of cop trick. To make us, you know, think that…"

  "Bullshit. The stupid bastard lost control and got himself wasted by that cop wagon."

  Drops of moisture pattered on the rusty cab as the branches of the fig tree were thrust aside. Bolan heard the couple's footsteps recede down the passageway. He heard the code knock: two long, two short, a final long.

  Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow.

  The sound of a door opening, closing. Silence returned to the deserted yard, broken only by the tick of cooling metal and the hiss of raindrops spitting on the hot cylinders of the bike.

  Bolan crawled out into the open. He parted wet leaves and cat-footed down the dank passage.

  Counting the footsteps, he knew the couple hadn't gone far. With the faint illumination from the exhausted batteries of the pencil flashlight, he located the ancient steel door.

  He waited, listening.

  On the far side of the door, silence. In the corridor, the stealthy drip of moisture, a distant moan of wind.

  Bolan lifted his left hand, hesitated and then repeated the code knock.

  17

  Dash… dash… dot-dot… dash. The rhythm of the code knock was somehow as familiar as the morse signal for the letter V — and the opening phrase of the Beethoven symphony the Allies had used as a V-for-Victory signature to announce their clandestine radio transmissions during World War II.

  Mack Bolan repeated it.

  And a third time, with a little more force.

  The door remained closed.

  Could he have been mistaken? Had the knocking he heard originated someplace else? No, a door had opened, must have opened, or the two bikers would still be there.

  Was there a second door?

  Bolan explored the farther depths of the curving tunnel, playing the weak beam of his flashlight over roof, walls, floor.

  The roof was arched brickwork, and the walls were brick, too. Moss, lichens and subterranean plant growths with pallid stems like the fingers of drowned men patched the crumbling surface. Here and there along the flagstoned floor puddles reflected the light where moisture had seeped through the vaulting above.

  No more doors.

  After forty feet the passageway turned again, and Bolan was faced with a mass of rubble that blocked it completely.

  The slant of bricks, earth and fragments of masonry had collapsed a long time ago: it was covered with spiderwebs. The dead gray veils heaved slightly in the disturbed air as he advanced. He saw bat droppings on the edge of a pool of stagnant water filmed with green slime. The air was dank, earthy, tainted with the staleness of vegetable decay. Clearly nobody had come this way in a long time.

  Bolan returned to the door.

  Rust, grime and rivulets of dried mud that had trickled down from a fissure in the roof caked the surface. But the faint illumination from the flashlight showed telltale brightness at the extreme edges, where the steel sheet fitted against the door frame. The door was in constant use all right.

  He paused, thinking. Four or five men had driven for more than two hours to get to the deserted farm. He hadn't actually heard them knock, but their voices had faded in this direction… sure, and where the hell else could they be?

  A little later, the bikers had shown up and been admitted.

  According to the girl, they, too, had come a long way.

  No prizes, then, for figuring out that some kind of meet, and an important one at that, was going down.

  So there could be others on the way.

  The terrorists? Max Nasruddin, the Marksman, members of the team he hadn't heard of yet? Could be.

  The most vital point: were the two bikers last to arrive or were there others on the way?

  Bolan hadn't seen any other cars, nor any other bikes. He took a chance on the hunch that the men in the Mercedes had been early arrivals, that more were expected to complete the picture.

  Maybe his own knock had remained unanswered because whoever was on the door had to escort people past some second security check inside.

  He switched off the light, eased the Beretta out into the open and gave the code knock for the fourth time.

  Dash, dash, dot-dot, dash. Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow. Something flashed in his brain. It reminded him — He lost it.

  The door opened immediately, revealing, thanks to the light from an oil lamp, a stone-walled cellar and a stocky man built like the chauffeur. He wore a jersey and jeans and held a Browning-style automatic in his hand.

  Bolan was standing back, but the illumination was strong enough to reveal his build and height.

  The bullet-headed doorman's mouth dropped open. "You! But who the…?"

  Bolan struck.

  The barrel of the Beretta streaked downward, cracking against the wrist of the hardman's gun arm.

  He yelled, dropping the automatic.

  Bolan hurled himself into the cellar, adjusting stride and balance as he moved, pivoting just right so that his left fist, with the wrist locked steady, slammed with all his weight behind it against the tight-fitting jersey between the two descending curves of the guy's rib cage.

  Breath whooshed from the big man's lungs.

  On the backswi
ng from that punishing blow to the solar plexus, Bolan's own gun arm swept up with the Beretta's barrel to split open the doorman's left cheek.

  Half stunned by the attack, winded and blind with pain, the hardman crashed back onto a rickety table that disintegrated with his weight.

  He was groggy, but he was tough. As Bolan leaned in to hook steely fingers under the belt around the doorman's waist, he thrashed his legs sideways and kicked the Executioner's feet from under him.

  Bolan sprawled back against the wall. The doorman struggled free of the splintered table and leaped… not for Bolan, but for the fallen automatic. Bolan stamped on the guy's damaged wrist one-tenth of a second before his outstretched fingers reached the butt.

  The guy swore, yellow teeth bared, the teak face creased into an expression mingling agony, frustration and rage. Bolan kicked the pistol away as the guy sprang back, facing him in a half crouch.

  With a grunt of effort, the hardman launched himself again, his unhurt fist cocked and ready for a murderous blow.

  In the moment that the man's arm drew back, Bolan dropped to a squatting position, fingertips brushing the damp floor.

  With no target for the unleashed haymaker, the guy overbalanced, pitched forward and spilled over the Executioner's bowed shoulders.

  Bolan rocketed up as he hit, and the doorman made a half turn in the air to land flat on his back.

  He stayed there: he had rapped his skull against an iron wheel that operated bolts on the inner side of the half-open door and knocked himself cold.

  Bolan rolled him onto his face, whipped the belt from the waistband of his pants and lashed his hands behind his back. There was nothing else he could use in the cellar. He saw only splintered wood, dead leaves, an ancient chair. He ripped away the man's jersey, tore it into strips, bound his ankles and wadded another length into a makeshift gag, which he jammed into his open mouth and tied in place.

  It wouldn't keep the guy hog-tied forever, but he wasn't going to open his eyes for a while anyway.

  Bolan located the trapdoor. He closed the outer door, spun the wheel, then brushed leaves aside to expose the iron ring. He pulled the trapdoor open and climbed warily down the ladder into the lit passageway, lowering the hatch after him.

  Now came the tough part. The entrance door, for example, could well be wired to relay the code knocks to a control room below, to flash a warning light, to ring a bell. Because it was evident from the condition of the cellar that nobody stood guard there all the time.

  If Bolan's hunch was right and there were more people expected, the fact that their knocks remained unanswered would tip off whoever was inside that the doorman was out of action.

  By that time, Bolan would have to be out of sight.

  But that wouldn't be possible until he made the second steel door, one hundred yards along the passage. It stood ajar. Evidently the doorman had expected to return with someone right away.

  So there were more arrivals scheduled.

  Bolan peered around the door into the white-tiled entrance lobby, dazzled temporarily by the fluorescent lights.

  Blinking, he saw the back of a blond girl in a white jacket seated near a telephone switchboard behind the desk. As he watched, a red light winked on the board, and she plugged in a headset. He couldn't hear what she said, but a moment later she hooked up the set, rose to her feet and walked to an open-cage elevator at the far end of the lobby. The cage whined down out of sight.

  There were two doorways, one on either side of the shaft. Bolan padded across the tiles and opened each in turn.

  The first led to a storeroom stacked with crated electronic equipment; the other opened onto another passageway. He slid through and closed it after him.

  Back to brickwork and an odor of mildew and molds.

  In the roof, low-power lamps glowed again every few yards, but it was obvious that this part of the complex was much older than the shining, aseptic lobby — in line, he guessed, with the farmyard entrance, the first door and the cellar.

  He passed an alcove arched into the wall that held an oak desk grainy with age, a wheel-back chair with a split seat and a wooden filing cabinet.

  The desk was bare, its drawers empty. He tried the cabinet. The top drawer jammed; he had a hell of a job prying the dried wood open a couple of inches. There was nothing inside. From the easy way the cabinet rocked when he leaned against it, he figured the others could also be empty.

  Behind the desk, a chart yellowed with age was tacked to the alcove wall.

  He moved in. The nearest tunnel light was some distance away, and the recess was in shadow. He had to use the last of the flashlight power to make out the faded lettering at the top of the chart.

  It was headed: "Saales No.4 — GHQ 52nd Bn. VIII Div. Art."

  Beneath this he saw what looked like an exploded diagram of a mining site, webbed with galleries, shafts, ladders and stylized representations of machinery.

  At random, Bolan traced out some of the lines that linked parts of the diagram to captions set around the perimeter of the chart.

  He read: "Overhead monorail to shell armory. Eighteen-ton counterweight for ammunition lift. Stairway to MG turret 16. Generator housing. Decontamination chamber for officers. Block H: access to 88 mm observation tower."

  He drew a deep breath. You didn't have to be an Einstein to relate the aged chart to the underground complex he was in.

  With his fighter's knowledge of modern warfare and its history, he had suspected it from the moment he'd seen the opening in the grassy bank above the farmyard. If he was right, it could have been the German or French side of the Rhine. Now the old chart clinched it — the wording was in French.

  He had penetrated a surviving underground fortress that had once formed part of the Maginot Line!

  It figured, of course; it made good sense.

  What better place for a terrorists' rendezvous, for a guerrilla training camp, perhaps? Geographically it was practical, too. A little over two hours' drive from Neuchâtel, it was probably — he recalled World War II campaign maps — in the Vosges, somewhat south of Strasbourg, overlooking the Alsace plain. Easily accessible from Paris, from the western part of Germany, from Luxembourg and the Low Countries. Perfect.

  Bolan had never heard of Saales, but it was clear from the chart that this had been a key artillery observation post in the French defense system. What he needed now was a contemporary chart detailing the changes and modernization. It would be a hell of a help for instance, he thought wryly, if he could happen on a piece of paper that would tell him where he was in relation to the rest of the restored fort.

  Because even if the old wall chart had been small enough to take with him, it wouldn't have been that much help. It showed the original workings of the place in cross section all right, but there was no floor plan of each separate level, and that was what he needed. Whatever alterations they had made, the general layout had to remain the same; the heavy construction equipment necessary for any modification of that would have drawn too much attention to the site.

  It seemed that there were four levels. The topmost, accessible only from the farther reaches of the fortress, had housed the artillery and automatic weapons designed to cover through concrete casemates the terrain that fell away toward the Rhine.

  Below that was the level he was on.

  Lower still, two more sets of galleries ran off on either side of a central shaft. Fashioned at first to accommodate the ammunition lift that had linked magazine and firing points, this was now, Bolan reckoned, the site of the open-cage elevator he had seen.

  The wall chart showed stairs and companionways running between the various levels, but whether these were still in existence he would have to find out.

  Memorizing as much of the general layout as he could, he moved on along the corridor. Turning sharply right, the tunnel passed three openings in the outer wall and then stopped abruptly. The entire width had been bricked up.

  Bolan surveyed the openings. Shaped li
ke an arched window, each ran from waist height to the tunnel roof.

  The arches were carved from solid rock, piercing a wall more than two feet thick. But these "windows" carried no glass. A faint light filtered through from the far side, accompanied by a hint of ozone and a distant, barely heard thrumming that could have been a generator.

  Heaving himself across the sill of the first arch, he peered cautiously through… and down.

  He was in an opening — one of six; three more were visible on the far side — up near the roof of a lofty cavern. The chamber, which rose clear through two, if not three levels, must once have been the magazine. But the shelves and stacks and ledges crammed in 1940 with shells, grenades, rockets and antitank ammunition now held a bewildering array of high-tech electronics.

  Fronting the racked data banks and computer terminals, three men, white-jacketed, sat in front of VDT screens manipulating keyboards in the greenish light flickering from the unscrolling, constantly changing texts.

  Beyond, red and blue pilot lights winked underneath a row of video monitors, each displaying a different image. Bolan hazarded a guess that these were relayed from scanners placed at strategic positions all over the redoubt. At this distance, he was unable to make out details or recognize characters, but one of the screens showed a number of people grouped around a desk in what looked like a lecture theater.

  Bolan wished he was among them.

  For if he was to check out the fortress in a meaningful way, find out how it was used and why, he must somehow first get to one of the lower levels. The passage he was in was a dead end, and apart from the storeroom and the entrance lobby there was nothing else on this one.

  Except the elevator.

  Sure, the elevator. But it would be better if there was some other way of getting down, since he had no idea how many people staffed the fort, where the elevator ended up, or whether it was within range of a scanner.

  Shoving his head and shoulders farther into the opening, he glanced once more at the technicians below. Two were intent on their screens and keys; the third was speaking to the blonde from the reception lobby.