Knacke found his voice. "There isn't time. It would take forever to raise that kind of volume to the pressure you'd need."
"You don't know that," Ferracini shot back. "You don't know for sure that it's even us they're after. And even if it is, they might not know where to look. A search could take hours to get here in a place like this."
Knacke licked his lips and went quickly in his mind over what Ferracini had said. "When you blow off the cover at the other end, the pressure would be released. Then the liquid in the shaft would rise back up again and seal off the conduit. How would you get back out?"
Ferracini looked at Payne. "Did you figure that out when you were thinking this up, Ed?" he asked.
"We force the level down far enough to set charges below the conduit to cave in the shaft and plug it. Payne replied. "That way, nothing can come back up after the pressure's released." That meant they would have to be inside the shaft when the charge was detonated. They'd all had enough experience with explosives to know that, provided they were some distance back from the blast, the pressure wave would dissipate without causing undue discomfort. Miners blasted in enclosed spaces all the time.
"That means more explosive," Knacke protested.
Ferracini waved a hand vaguely. "Well, if we can't find enough in a place like this . . ."
Knacke shook his head hopelessly. "You can't be sure that the shaft will cave in and seal itself. You're talking about a shaft full of explosive gases as well as what's down there already—poisonous oxides, partly reacted nitrotoluenes, unburned TNT—all of it lethal. How do you expect to get through that?"
"What about the stuff you said you worked on—gas masks or whatever?" Ferracini said. "Could we get some of those?"
Knacke shook his head again. "They wouldn't be any good—not for that kind of mixture under pressure. Besides, a mask only filters out the toxins. It can't add anything that's not there. There won't be any oxygen down in that shaft."
"I thought you said something about an oxygen rebreather unit—the one the Navy was interested in. Wouldn't that do?"
"But they're just prototypes, and we only have a couple.
"Would they work?" Ferracini demanded.
"They might . . . but there are only two."
Ferracini looked at Payne inquiringly. Payne went through the alternatives in his head. "These rebreathers must use some kind of supply bottle," he said at last, looking at Knacke.
Knacke nodded. "One or two, worn on the chest."
"Okay," Payne said. "There ought to be a way to punch an inlet into a mask to inject oxygen from one of those bottles. Nothing fancy—it'd only need to hold up for a few minutes. The two guys with the proper breathers are inside the shaft. The two with the modified masks wait in the outer chamber. After the pressure's been raised to uncover the conduit and the shaft's been plugged, the two guys who are inside go through and open the top-end seal under Hammerhead. That drops the pressure. Then the other two waiting at this end open up the inner chamber, do a free-fall rappel down the shaft, and have a clear run up the conduit. If they move fast, they should make it."
They all looked at Knacke. Knacke spread his hands. "Maybe. . . . It sounds impossible. . . . I don't know." The others stared at him and said nothing. He began to say something, then faltered; gradually, a feeling of shame at his own negativeness crept over him. These were the men who would be going down there. They were prepared to face the dangers; but it was he who was finding all the objections. He rubbed his eyes, drew a long breath, and pulled himself together. "You're right," he said. "We have to try it. If we fail, let it not be because we were afraid to try."
Ferracini punched him lightly on the shoulder. "That's more like it, Gustav. Now you're talking like an American."
"I knew it! Knacke exclaimed.
"So you're with us all the way, right?" Ferracini said.
"On one condition," Knacke said.
"Name it."
"One day, when this is all over and if we get out of it okay, you tell me what's inside Citadel."
Ferracini grinned wearily. "Okay, Gustav, you've got a deal."
Knacke's whole attitude switched to positive. "Those gas masks," he said. "The more modern ones carry the filters in the facepiece itself. They would be difficult to modify. But the older models use a separate pack, which would make it easier. I think I know where there are some."
"Mind if I make a suggestion?" Lamson asked from the hatch, where he had been listening.
"Go ahead," Ferracini said.
"Bombs make lots of gas fast. If you're gonna set a charge off down the shaft anyhow to plug it, then why not let that raise the pressure for you? It'd be a hell of a lot quicker'n what you're talking about. Wouldn't have to go fooling around with air lines at all."
Payne thought for a second, then nodded. "Makes sense. Why not?" he said.
Ferracini looked at Knacke challengingly. "See, Gustav—one problem down already. Okay, now, where's the best place to get our hands on some explosives around here—plenty of explosives?"
But Knacke had stopped listening. Instead he was looking up past Ferracini's shoulder with a questioning expression. Ferracini turned to follow his gaze and saw Cassidy beckoning urgently while he kept his eyes fixed on something above. Motioning for the others to stay put, Ferracini moved stealthily up to look from where Cassidy was crouching. His stomach tightened.
An open Mercedes staff car with a swastika emblem on the door had stopped at the end of the alley, and a figure clad in an SS lieutenant's uniform and holding a submachine gun was climbing out from the front. From the rear seat, a second officer covered while the first approached cautiously.
Then Cassidy's jaw dropped. Ferracini blinked, stared again, and then straightened up slowly into full view.
"Jesus!" Cassidy breathed. "I don't believe this, Harry. Holy Jesus Henry Christ . . . it's Paddy Ryan and Harvey!"
CHAPTER 44
WARREN AND RYAN HAD entered Germany from Holland on Bulgarian papers, posing as a dealer in precious stones returning from Amsterdam, and a civil engineer. Unfortunately, Warren's description had matched that of a French agent whom the frontier police had been tipped would try to enter via that route at about the same time, and the pair were promptly arrested.
The Germans quickly realized their mistake, but upon further questioning became just as convinced that the "Bulgarians" weren't who they claimed to be, either. Soon thereafter, an SS staff car arrived to collect them for interrogation at the SD regional office at Osnabrück, and they departed under the escort of a colonel, a lieutenant driver, and two guards. But the party never reached Osnabrück, and the two Americans ended up minus their captors and in possession of the vehicle. In the process, however, Major Warren had collected a bullet wound in the knee. The SS uniforms had enabled them to obtain treatment from a doctor, but the leg had since stiffened. Nevertheless, they resolved to keep their rendezvous. Impersonating an SS colonel and his chauffeur, they had motored across Germany with a purloined set of license plates without being stopped once.
Their problems hadn't ended there, however. After they reached Leipzig, their contact failed to materialize. Why, they never found out, but it meant that their link to the local coordinator of the operation—Gustav Knacke—was broken. Since nobody was going to come looking for them, and knowing that the four others of the Ampersand party ought to have arrived in the vicinity, they had spent two weeks driving brazenly around Weissenberg and the surrounding area in the hope of spotting one of the group or of being recognized themselves. But to no avail.
Then today, an SS convoy in a hurry passed them, heading in the direction of the plant. Accustomed to all-or-nothing gambles by that time, they followed at a distance and drove around to a side gate while the main column was unloading at the front, and the confused factory guards admitted them in response to Warren's shouting.
At least it solved the weapons problem, Ferracini thought as he lifted a canvas bag holding more Erma MP38 submachine
guns and a case of ammunition from the trunk of the car. They had moved it to a less conspicuous position farther along the cobbled roadway at the end of the alley. Paddy Ryan picked up another bag containing Mauser 9mm automatics and cartridges, along with a couple of boxes of model 39 "potato masher" grenades. "We figured that if we were asking for trouble, we'd better be ready to do it right," Ryan explained as they turned and began walking back with their loads. "You wouldn't believe the things people leave lying around."
They turned the corner at the end of the pumphouse to find a man in stained overalls standing in the doorway, smoking a cigarette while he surveyed the scenery. He saw Ryan's SS uniform and looked at them quizzically "What are you staring at?" Ryan barked. "How you no work to do? Don't you know there's a war on?" The man mumbled something and disappeared back inside the pumphouse.
Meanwhile, Gustav Knacke, carrying a folded sack under his arm, had appeared back at his office in the Safety Equipment Development Section near the front of the plant. "Where've you been?" Franz, one of his colleagues, asked from the next desk. "Have you heard the news?"
"What news?"
"There's some kind of security flap going on. The SS are here checking all the gates. Instructions are to stay put. That's what the sirens were about. Didn't you hear them?"
"Oh, I thought that was a drill. Any messages?"
"Your wife called."
"Okay." Knacke sat down at his desk and dialed an internal number.
A few seconds later a girl's voice answered, "Works personnel office."
"Is Marga Knacke there, please?"
"Just a moment."
Gustav drummed his fingers nervously on the desk. A few seconds went by that seemed like forever. Then Marga said, "Hello?"
"Gustav."
Marga's voice dropped. "What's happening? You've heard the news?"
"Yes. But they're having their picnic, anyway—a change of plan, I gather. If Erich calls again, tell him they're supplying their own things."
"Yes, all right. I hope the weather stays fine."
"So do I. Must go."
"Take care."
Knacke rose, picked up the sack again, and walked on through the office to the laboratory area beyond. One of the technicians was working at a bench in the room where the oxygen rebreather units were kept. Knacke fussed around with a test assembly across the room for a minute or two, and then sent the technician on an errand. With the room empty, Knacke stripped one of the units off the dummy head and torso on which it was assembled, took the other unit down from where it was hanging on the wall, and bundled them into his sack, along with some of the oxygen bottles from the shelf above.
Then he went out into the passageway again and reached the storage rooms at the rear, where he closed the door behind him and began checking the closets. As he recalled from some tests he'd been involved in once, there ought to be several of the older-style gas masks here somewhere—the type used in the Great War, with concertina tubing running down to a filtration pack worn above the hip. He needed only three in addition to the two oxygen units, since it had been decided in a hasty conference that "Cricketer" wouldn't be going down the shaft because of the condition of his leg; instead, he would remain at the shaft head as a rearguard to cover the way out. The Americans still thought they had a chance of getting out— or at least, that was what they had told Knacke. He was through arguing. He stuffed the three masks and a spare into the sack, added a box of clean filter inserts, and then moved around a rack of storage shelves to the back of the room and opened the window.
Cassidy was standing in a doorway on the opposite side of the yard below. A sentry had been posted a short distance away at the end of the building, but he was facing the other way and watching the roadway. Cassidy stepped quickly out, nodding up at the window. Knacke tossed down the sack. Cassidy caught it and walked away. After closing the window, Knacke went out of the room, walked downstairs, and left the building by a back door. On his return to the waste plant, he made a detour to borrow a dolly from one of the materials stores, and used it to pick up a couple of empty oil drums.
Ferracini and Payne were inside the brick hexagon, waiting to open the inner, steel shaft-head chamber, when Cassidy returned with the oxygen units and masks. They had changed their regular clothes for oiled boilersuits, balaclavas, and woolens put on over a thick layer of grease. A hose had been run outside from one of the valves on the chamber wall to bleed off the excess pressure before they removed the cover. Ferracini was making a sounding line from a copper float stolen from a men's room and some cord knotted at measured intervals with the aid of the tape from Lamson's toolbox.
The clothing and grease, along with several hand-lamps and seemingly miles of coiled rope and cord, came from a burglarizing expedition by Lamson and Ryan. Since then, following directions given by Knacke, they had gone off again on the trickier mission of penetrating the higher-security Munitions Compound to get explosives. Major Warren was outside, keeping watch and placing weapons and ammunition where they would be ready to hand if needed. The SS had concentrated so far on securing the gates and the more sensitive installations, and had posted guards within the general plant area, no doubt in preparation for combing the place section by section.
Ferracini shook his head as he helped Payne make the rough-and-ready adaptations to the gas mask filtration systems for injecting oxygen. "Why does it always have to be like this, Ed? We had it all planned to the last detail—fixed lines down the shaft, cozy suits, even the little chemistry set. . . . Plenty of time at every step. . . . And here we are again—the usual no-time-to-take-a-shit foul-up." Behind them, Cassidy began stripping to grease his body before putting on one of the improvised combat suits.
"Do you realize the impact this'll have inside Hammerhead when you two blow that cap off the top end of the conduit?" Payne asked as he checked the pressure gauge on one of the inner-chamber sampling valves.
"What?" Ferracini asked as he worked.
"What Gustav was talking about earlier—a mix of hvdrogenated hydrocarbons, nitrotoluenes, vaporized TNT, possibly cyanides—all exploding out under pressure. The effect on whoever's in there at the other end should be devastating, without any protection or anything."
Ferracini looked curiously at him, then at Cassidy. "Hear that, Cass? We may have an even chance of holding out till the rest of the guys get through."
"That's what I'm saying," Payne told them.
"That's the kind of news we could use more of," Cassidy said.
A form darkened the hatchway, and Knacke ducked inside. "No sign of Saxon and Zulu?" he asked. He still knew the team only by their code names.
"They're still away getting the explosives and stuff," Ferracini said. "Should be the last item."
Knacke nodded. "Then let me give you two a quick rundown on how these rebreather units work," he said.
Behind him, Major Warren heaved the first of the oil drums through the hatch from outside. Payne took it and rolled it across to a couple of wide wooden planks lying on the floor.
In the plant security manager's office, which SS General Heinz Rassenau had taken over as his temporary headquarters, a major entered and saluted smartly. "Yes, Major?" Rassenau inquired, turning away from the large wall-plan of the complex, which he and his executive officer had been studying.
"The second contingent has arrived from Leipzig, sir, and is disembarking inside the main gates, the major reported. At that moment, a telephone rang in the outer office. "Also, sector two is now secured, and squads Yellow Two and Yellow Four are moving in to begin searching sector three."
"Good, Rassenau said. "Form up the new men and begin on sector four at once. Also, put a call through to the commander of the Citadel and find out—"
"Herr General!" The voice of the security manager, tense and alarmed, called from the far side of the open door.
"Excuse me." Rassenau strode out to the outer office. The security manager was on his feet, holding a phone off the hook and co
vering the mouthpiece with a hand. "Yes?" Rassenau inquired.
"It's the supervisor of the Line Stores in R38, inside the restricted compound. . . ."
"Well?"
The security manager swallowed hard. "A foreman and another man have just been found tied up and gagged in an office there. Two men armed with machine guns forced their way in and got away with at least a hundred pounds of high explosive, plus some thermite mix, fuses, and detonators."
Rassenau's mouth compressed itself into a grim line. "So, we were too late after all," he muttered grimly. "They're already inside."
The security manager nodded rapidly. "They're inside the Munitions Compound. My God, they could blow half this place off the map!"
"We'll discuss how they got in there later," Rassenau promised icily. "Major, disregard that last order. Move all of the newly arrived troops through to the Munitions Compound and take four squads from the general plant area to seal it off—watertight, you understand. Then I want that whole compound searched, inch by inch."
"Yes, sir," the major acknowledged, and hurried away.
Breathing not too uncomfortably inside the mask, Ferracini could feel grease oozing between his fingers inside his gloves as he gripped the rope sling in which he was hanging from supporting bars rigged across the top of the inner chamber. The cover had been closed, and his world was now reduced to Cassidy's sinister hooded form next to him, vaguely outlined in the eerie dampness revealed by their lamp, and the shaft plummeting away into blackness below. They had sounded the liquid surface as lying one hundred ninety-eight feet below, which put the top of the conduit opening only twenty-five feet farther down—it could have been a lot worse. Their main risk now was being caught in a discharge from above. The best way to reduce it was not to waste time.
He nodded and hooked an arm around the supporting rope to cover his ears through his balaclava. Cassidy ignited a fast fuse attached to one of the lines going down the shaft, and the pinpoint of flame raced away into the depths toward the string of small charges suspended fifty feet below. Ferracini felt, more than heard, the concussion, and his body swayed wildly in its rope restraints. He had a split-second glimpse of the smoke front boiling up the shaft toward him, and then everything was blotted out.
The Proteus Operation Page 39
