The Proteus Operation

by James P. Hogan

  Cassidy's fingers tapped an "okay" signal on his shoulder, and he acknowledged. He found the sounding line by touch, and a minute or so went by while he lowered the float, all the time counting the knots slipping through his fingers. At last he felt the line go slack as the float settled. Not enough. The detonations had raised the pressure and forced the level down, but not far enough. The opening into the conduit was still submerged twelve feet. He found Cassidy's arm and touch-signaled him to be ready to fire a second string. Cassidy signaled back that he was going to fire several. Ferracini began hauling the float back up while Cassidy reported the situation to the others in the outer chamber by tapping on the wall in Morse with an iron spike.

  In the outer chamber, Lamson and Payne were kitted out ready to go, except for the masks. Payne checked that the sampling valve gauge had registered the pressure rise, while Lamson followed the signal being tapped through the wall. "Another twelve feet," Lamson called across to Ryan, who was by the hatch. "They're gonna set off a bigger string. How are things out there?"

  Ryan relayed the news to Warren and Knacke, who were outside. "Quiet so far," he said, turning his head back.

  Some flickers of light had begun penetrating the swirling murk, when the second string of detonations wiped everything out again. Ferracini's ears strained, but swallowing eased them. He could feel fumes starting to irritate his eyes: There were chinks where the mask didn't hug his face tightly enough, and the rising pressure was forcing gases through. He tried moving the facepiece around to coax it into a better fit.

  Again he paid out the line and counted the knots. Two hundred . . . two hundred twenty-five. The conduit was clear! . . . Two hundred thirty . . . The float bottomed at two hundred thirty-six feet. They had over ten feet of shaft clear below the conduit. But how gas-tight was the shaft? Were its walls absorbent? Would the level stay down?

  He signaled his findings to Cassidy, and together they slowly lowered the makeshift raft of oildrums and planks, to which was lashed the load of TNT that they would use to collapse and plug the shaft. The limited size of the inspection cover had forced them to make the raft in two sections and pass them through to be joined together inside the chamber. After what seemed forever, they felt the raft come to rest on the surface. Ferracini kept hold of one end of a guideline attached to the raft and passed the sounding line to Cassidy. The time had come for Ferracini to go down the shaft.

  Feeling blindly, Ferracini checked that his submachine gun was securely strapped to his back, and that his automatic, dagger, ammunition pouches, tools, and grenades, along with the bag containing the thermite and accessories for melting the top-cover bolts were all firmly attached. Then he located the coiled rappel line and cast it away down the shaft. Finally he stood up carefully and turned in the sling, wrapped a turn of the rappel line around his back and under one thigh, unfastened his safety loop, and stepped backward into nothingness to go plummeting downward.

  The line hissed through his gloves and over his greased clothing as he fell in long, swinging, pendulumlike bounds, using his feet to push clear of the wall. He could feel rocks and debris coming away from the sticky, crumbling sides. The blackness was absolute, and touch his only means of preserving any sense of direction. The shaft's square cross-section enabled him to orient himself by staying on one of its four walls, without which he would have lost himself completely. When he felt the warning knots that he had made ninety feet down the rappel line, he tightened the turn around his body to check his descent and walked himself gingerly down the final stretch, feeling his way with his feet. He found the conduit opening and hauled himself into it.

  The footing felt fairly secure. He tugged slowly and deliberately on the rappel line three times to let Cassidy know he had made it. After a couple of seconds, he felt the line tugged twice in response. Then another pause, followed by three tugs from above. That meant that Cassidy had checked the depth, and the level of the liquid below Ferracini was holding steady. Relieved, Ferracini hammered a couple of iron spikes into the wall to fix the bottom end of the rappel line; then he took in the slack of the guideline from the raft, which was floating invisibly below, and used it to draw the raft over until it was vertically below where he was standing. Then he signaled Cassidy to come down.

  So, in the end they'd had to do it all without telephones, Ferracini thought to himself as he fixed more spikes to anchor the guideline from the raft. It was amazing how, with practice, it was possible to construct a mental model of the surroundings by touch alone. He felt grateful now for the endless drills of working blind in the British Navy's tank at Portsmouth. Sometimes Ferracini had thought of Warren as too much of a stickler for details, yet those details had an uncanny habit of transforming themselves into life-or-death essentials. As always, Claud had picked the right person for the job. Strangely, he found himself wondering what Claud was doing while he was feeling his way about in a pitch-black pit full of poison gas and explosives somewhere under Germany, with the surface above swarming with SS. Probably wining and dining with Churchill and Arthur Bannering somewhere in London, Ferracini guessed.

  Cassidy arrived and lodged himself alongside Ferracini in the conduit opening, and Ferracini guided him to the line securing the raft below. Then Ferracini used the rappel line to lower himself down from the conduit until he was kneeling on top of the raft itself. He found the box of detonators and fuses fastened to one end, and for the next fifteen minutes moved the raft slowly around the shaft to place a configuration of charges in the walls, packing the explosive deep into cracks, faults, and pockets wherever possible with the aid of an iron tamping bar brought down on the raft for the purpose.

  When this was done, Cassidy pulled the raft back to a position immediately below the conduit, and Ferracini climbed back up, bringing the main fuse cord with him. The gases were densest at the bottom of the shaft, and his cheeks were streaming inside his mask. The nervous tension and the effort of his labors below were causing him to breathe heavily, and he could taste acrid fumes in his throat. He was starting to feel dizzy.

  Cassidy had more fuse ready to attach to the cord that Ferracini brought up. Paying it out behind them, they began climbing the conduit. The conduit was steep, but having been tunneled down from Hammerhead rather than drilled, it was roomy enough for them to proceed steadily; also, its floor was cut into a series of stepped working levels, which helped offset the grade.

  Ferracini's eyes were stinging, and he was struggling against an urge to cough. He opened the oxygen valve of his rebreather wider, which gave some relief; but he knew at the same time that this would exhaust its supply sooner. He was too muzzy-headed to calculate how long he had, or to really care that much. Keep plodding on—one, two, three, up a step; one, two, three, up a step. It would be worse after the next charge went off—more pressure. . . . Hoped he'd be able to keep going till they got out. . . . Oh, Christ, have to fight the SS then. . . . Keep plodding on—one, two, three, up a step. . . .

  After a hundred feet or so they crouched on the conduit floor. Cassidy lit the fuse, and they covered their heads and ears.

  Back in the outer chamber, the needle of the sampling valve pressure gauge jumped in the light of Payne's flash lamp. "That's it!" Payne said. "They've blown the shaft."

  "They seem okay so far, Lamson relayed across to Ryan, who was still at the hatch. "They've blown the shaft."

  "They've blown the shaft," Ryan told Warren and Knacke outside.

  By the cover into the inner chamber, Payne and Lamson tensed and rechecked their equipment. When the needle dropped again, it would mean that the coverplate of the conduit underneath Hammerhead had been opened. That would be their signal to open up the inner chamber and get through.

  Deep below, Ferracini and Cassidy were following the long grade of the conduit upward—under the perimeter fence of the main plant complex; under the high-security zone around the Citadel; under Hammerhead. Ferracini was drenched with perspiration mixed with the grease. His head reeled, and
he stumbled. Cassidy gripped him firmly and steadied him on his feet again.

  In Gestapo Headquarters, Berlin, Heinrich Himmler was screaming into a telephone at the SS general commanding the Citadel garrison. On the far side of a table littered with construction plans, the two engineers from the Todt Organization were staring with appalled faces at the drawing spread out on top.

  "They're not coming through the plant, you imbecile. They're coming under the plant! Do you understand me? Under it! . . . Well, get the dolts down from the upper levels. . . . Rassenau is wasting his time in the Munitions Compound. They're not in the Munitions Compound. They're coming in through number three waste shaft. . . . Yes, we've got him on another line, and he's sending his troops there immediately. But they may already have gone down. You must secure Valhalla. . . . What? . . . No, you fool, I've already told you that those shafts don't matter. There's another one leading right up your asses! They're going to come up right underneath you!"

  Even as Himmler was shouting, a steel plate blew off a scaled opening on the lowermost level of the Hammerhead complex, and red-brown gas exploded out in every direction. Two hooded, black-clad figures wearing masks and brandishing submachine guns emerged, and the personnel in the vicinity started collapsing and choking.

  While back in the waste shaft, two more figures were already on their way, hurtling downward through the darkness.

  CHAPTER 45

  MAJOR WARREN CROUCHED BY the hatch outside the brick hexagon, the steel cover of which had been temporarily replaced to avoid releasing a tell tale cloud of smoke now that the inner chamber was open. It was secured by two nuts only for quick removal. A rapidly tapped message from Ryan on the inside told Warren that Lamson and Payne had entered the shaft; Ryan was about to throw down the getaway ladder—a pair of lines joined by loops, intended for climbing back up the shaft afterward—and then follow. Warren signaled to wish them good luck, then straightened and turned to look up at Knacke, who was keeping watch at the top of the steps. "Ryan's going now," he called. Knacke nodded, but didn't turn his head. Warren pulled himself halfway up the steps, grunting with the effort of dragging his leg. "Look, there isn't anything more for you to do here now,'" he urged. "Go while the going's good. This isn't a time for speeches, but you've done a great job. It won't be forgotten."

  "Why should Americans be doing this?" Knacke asked.

  "Much too long a story. And I wouldn't be allowed to tell it to you, anyway."

  "Does whatever's under Citadel affect America, then?"

  "The whole world."

  Knacke nodded distantly. "I suppose that should make a difference. It's not easy, doing this. I am a German, after all."

  "Yes. I'm sorry it had to be this way. But if it helps, this operation is directed against the Nazis, against what will happen if they're not stopped."

  "I can imagine. That was why we agreed to help."

  "You can't imagine."

  At that moment a woman's voice called from somewhere nearby, sounding shrill with alarm. "Gustav! Gustav, are you here?"

  Knacke reached for the gun beside him and peered over the walls and concrete blocks around the top of the steps. Marga, wearing a raincoat, was at the end of the alley. She was clearly distraught and looking around in desperation. "Marga!" Knacke called to her. "Over here."

  A moment later a harsh voice from somewhere around the corner shouted "Halte!" Marga whirled around to look, emitted a cry, and began running along the alley toward Gustav. The clatter of boots running on cobblestones sounded, and a group of a half-dozen SS troopers appeared behind her. "Halte!" the officer leading them shouted again. He raised a pistol. Knacke shot him down as Marga's running figure cleared the line of fire. The burst also hit one of the others. A moment later, a grenade landed in the middle of the group, while behind Knacke's shoulder Warren was already picking up a second. The SS troopers scattered for cover amid another burst of fire from Knacke, and a second later the grenade exploded.

  Marga tumbled breathlessly down beside Knacke at the top of the steps. "They found out where you were. I wanted to warn you they were coming, but—"

  "Later." Knacke sealed her lips with a finger and thrust a gun into her hand. They'd had the foresight to learn how to shoot when they first found themselves getting mixed up in this business.

  Shouts came from around the corner at the end of the alley, and a whistle was blowing. Bullets from somewhere whined overhead and pinged off girders. The officer that Knacke had hit was lying face down, motionless, with blood spreading across the cobbles from beneath his chest. The other soldier was on his knees, clutching one arm with the other and trying to get up. Two of the others made a dash from behind the corner and dragged him clear while the rest fired a covering volley. Knacke returned the fire, bobbing up to shoot over the wall in front of him, then falling and moving to the side to shoot around without exposing himself in the same position twice.

  Marga was lying behind the top few steps. A couple of steel-helmeted heads appeared on top of the pumphouse across the alley. She fired up at them and they ducked down out of sight. Warren threw his grenade over the parapet of the roof, and it exploded a second later, sending roofing and pieces of skylight showering upward and blowing out two of the windows below. Warren tossed another grenade at the far end of the alley. An incoming grenade from somewhere to the right exploded in the trench at the base of the hexagon. Marga shifted her aim to fire at shadows moving inside the pump-house windows.

  Knacke exchanged more fire with the soldiers at the end of the alley. "They're regrouping, he called back over his shoulder between bursts. "They're going to rush us."

  Warren was back at the bottom of the steps, loosening the two coverplate nuts with a wrench. "Fire anywhere," he shouted up at the other two. "Make noise. Hit the tanks—try to burst them. Then do as I say." He fired a long burst at the horizontal storage tanks over the end of the alley and followed it with a grenade. Reacting to the authority in his voice, Gustav and Marga shot at the tanks and pipes overhead and on all sides, while Warren threw more grenades. One of the tanks exploded, spewing a dense cloud of white vapor down into the alley just as the soldiers came charging around the corner. Then something inside the pumphouse caught fire, adding oily black smoke. "Take deep breaths—fill your lungs," Warren yelled, pulling on his SS colonel's cap and straightening his uniform. "Now, ready!" He yanked off the coverplate, and a thick, brown cloud vomited out to mix with the vapor and smoke, blanketing the surroundings with a choking, blinding fog.

  Warren left a couple of grenades on long-delay settings to explode in the trench, then fired more shots into the air and hauled himself back up the steps through the murk. "Stand up! Put up your hands!" he ordered the other two, snatching their guns. Knacke was too bewildered to react. Warren struck him hard across the face. "Hands up, I said! Get back—back!" Prodding them with his gun, he drove them out into the alley. Figures were milling and colliding all around them. Warren fired back at the hexagon just as the grenades he had left in the trench began detonating, and more shooting broke out in the confusion.

  The fog thinned to a haze at the end of the alley, which was now cordoned off by troops. Limping determinedly, Warren marched his "prisoners" through, coughing and weeping with their hands raised high. A sergeant and two privates moved forward to assist. "There are more of them hack there," Warren shouted at them. "Go and give a hand forward." The soldiers rushed away.

  They turned into the cobbled roadway and headed for the car. Behind them a brownish-yellow cloud was rising over the roofs and covering the surrounding part of the plant, with the sounds of shouting, gunfire, and more grenades still coming from beneath it. Fire sirens had begun to shriek, adding to the commotion. Soldiers were running by in the opposite direction, while others held back workers who were appearing from the surrounding buildings to see what was happening. Warren lowered his gun. "Relax now. Walk naturally," he muttered, and they transformed into just an officer and two civilians who could have been Ge
stapo.

  Nobody challenged them as they reached the Mercedes, which was still where Ryan and Ferracini had left it. "Look as if you belong here," Warren told Marga as he steered her into the front seat. "You're driving." Then he climbed in the back with Knacke and handed the others their weapons. They pulled away, and an SS sergeant obligingly waved his squad back out of the way to let the car turn into the road.

  At the side gate, however, things had changed since Warren and Ryan entered. Warren took in the situation rapidly as the car approached. The barrier was down, and an SS captain, a corporal, and two privates were standing outside the gate-hut; three more soldiers were standing on the other side of the gateway, in front of a Kuebelwagen (the German equivalent to the Jeep) which was mounting a machine gun and had a driver and gunner at the ready inside. Very likely, more soldiers were in the hut, too. The corporal moved forward in front of the car with an arm raised, and the car slowed. A couple of the others raised their weapons, then lowered them again when Warren stood up and they saw his uniform.

  "What's going on back there?" the captain began. "It sounds like—" He froze as his gaze wandered down from Marga's pale, tense face to the muzzle of the automatic resting on the top of the door. She fired and gunned the car forward at the same time. The captain reeled back against the wall of the hut, and the corporal dived clear; in the same instant, Knacke opened fire with a submachine gun on the others who were by the hut, while Warren shot the gunner in the Kuebelwagen on the opposite side and then lobbed in a grenade. The soldiers in front of the Kuebelwagen were still scattering when the Mercedes crashed through the barrier, and a hail of fire from its back seat kept the heads of the rest down as it roared away.