by Night Probe!
"I don't think so," said Sanchez. "Pass the word to cease fire."
Soon a strange silence settled over the battle-scarred woods. Then slowly a man rose out of the thicket, his rifle held high over his head.
"Son of a bitch," Hooper muttered. "He's wearing full battle dress."
"Probably bought it at war surplus."
"Smug- looking bastard."
Sanchez rose to his feet and casually lit a cigarette. "I'm going in. If he so much as picks his nose, cut him in two."
"Stay off to the side, sir, so we have a direct line of fire."
Sanchez nodded and walked forward. He stopped a yard or two away from Sergeant Bentley and looked him over. He noted the blackened face, the netted helmet with the twigs sticking out of it and the enlisted man's insignia. There was no trace of fear in the face. In fact, there was a spreading smile. "Good morning to you, sir," greeted Bentley. "You in charge here?"
"No, sir. If you will please follow me, I'll take you to him."
"Are you surrendering?"
Bentley nodded. "Yes, sir."
Sanchez leveled his rifle. "Okay, after you."
They stepped through the bushes djefoliated by bullets and into the gully. Sanchez' eyes took in the scattered bodies, the gore-sopped earth. The wounded stared back at him with indifferent interest. Three men who looked unscathed snapped to attention.
"Straighten up the line, lads," said Bentley sternly.
Sanchez was at a loss. These men didn't fit the picture of terrorists, not any he'd seen or heard about. They appeared to be uniformed soldiers, highly disciplined and trained for combat. Bentley led him up to two men resting beside an excavated hole in the ground. The one who looked like he'd been rolling in dirt for a detergent commercial was bent over the other, cutting away a boot that was filled with blood. The man stretched beside him on the ground gazed up at Sanchez' approach and threw ajaunty salute.
"Good morning."
A cheerful lot, thought Sanchez. "Are you in command here?"
"Yes indeed," replied Macklin. "May I have the honor of your name, sir?"
"Lieutenant Richard Sanchez, United States Marine Corps."
"Then it's diamond cut diamond. I'm Lieutenant Digby Macklin of Her Majesty's Royal Marines."
Sanchez stood there open-mouthed. All he could think of to mumble was "Well, I'll be damned."
The first thing Shaw noticed as he eased himself down the ventilator shaft was the dank and musty stench that welled up to meet him. After about twenty yards he could no longer reach out with his feet and touch the encircling earth walls. He clutched the rope in a near death grip and beamed his light into the dark.
Shaw had dropped into a vast cavern, at least forty feet from floor to ceiling. It was empty except for a large pile of debris in one corner. The rope ended twelve feet from the ground. He shoved the flashlight under his armpit, took a deep breath and released his grip.
He fell like a pebble falling down a well through the blackness, a frightening experience he would never care to repeat.
A gasp was squeezed from his lungs when he landed. He should have struck clean, his legs taking most of the impact. But when he fell to one side, his outflung wrist smashed against something hard, and he heard the sickening crack as it fractured.
Shaw sat there for two or three minutes, lips tightened in agony, feeling sorry for himself. Finally, he snapped abruptly to his senses, realizing it was only a question of minutes before the Americans would be coming down the air shaft and struggled to a sitting position.
Groping in his waist for the flashlight, he pushed the switch. Thank God, it still worked.
He found himself next to railroad tracks of a narrow gauge that ran from the cavern into a tunnel carved at one end.
Awkwardly he one-handedly slipped off his belt and made a crude sling, then rose to his feet and struck out along the track into the tunnel.
He walked between the rails, careful not to trip on the raised ties. The tracks ran level for fifty yards and then started to slant up a slight incline. After a while he stopped and played the beam into the darkness ahead.
What seemed like two monstrous red eyes reflected back at him.
Cautiously he moved forward, stubbed his toe against something solid, looked down and saw another set of rails. They were spiked at a much wider gauge, even wider than the ones British trains ran on, Shaw judged. He came out of the tunnel into another cavern.
But this was not an ordinary cavern. This was an immense crypt filled with dead.
The red eyes were two lanterns mounted on the rear of a railroad car. On the observation platform were two bodies, mummies really, still fully clothed, their blackened skulls staring into the eternal dark.
The hair on the back of Shaw's head raised and he forgot about the stabbing ache in his wrist. Pitt had been right. The underground quarry had yielded the secret of the Manhattan Limited.
He glanced around, half expecting to see a shrouded figure holding a scythe, beckoning with a bony finger, beckoning for Shaw. He passed alongside the coach, noting that it was surprisingly free of rust. At the boarding steps, where the next car was coupled, another grotesque bundle lay, its head propped against the six-wheeled truck. Out of morbid curiosity, Shaw stopped and studied it.
Under the flashlight the skin showed a dark brownish-gray color and had the consistency of leather. As the months and years passed, the body had desiccated and hardened and become naturally mummified by the dry air of the quarry. The round visored cap still resting on the head indicated that this map had been the conductor.
There were others, scores of them, scattered around the train, frozen in the final posture of death. Most had died sitting up; a few were lying outstretched. Their clothing was in a remarkable state of preservation and Shaw had no trouble telling the men from the women.
Several of the dead were stiffened in warped positions below the open door to the baggage car. In front of them a jumbled stack of wooden crates sat partly loaded into an ore car. One of the mummies had pried open a crate and was holding a rectangular-shaped block against his chest. Shaw rubbed away the grime on the object and was stunned to see the smear turn the color of gold.
My God, he thought. By today's prices there must be over three hundred million dollars' worth of the stuff lying about.
Tempting as it was to linger and contemplate the riches, Shaw forced himself to push on. Sweat was soaking his clothes, yet he felt as if he were in a refrigerator.
The engineer had chosen to die in the cab of his locomotive. The great iron monster was blanketed under a century of dust, but Shaw could still decipher the fancy gold numerals "88" and the red stripe that ran down the side.
Thirty feet in front of the cowcatcher there was a massive fall of rock that had buried the main entrance of the quarry. More dead were strewn about here; having dug frantically with their final breath, their gnarled hands still clutched around picks and shovels. They had actually moved several tons of stone, but it had been only an exercise in futility. A hundred men couldn't have dug through that mountain of rubble in a month.
How did it all happen? Shaw trembled unconsciously. There was an undeniable horror about the place. Helplessly trapped in a cold and dark underground prison, what tortures of the mind had they all endured before death ended their sufferings.
He continued around the locomotive and coal tender, then mounted the steps of the first Pullman car and walked down the aisle. The first sight he saw there was a woman lying in a berth, her arms embracing two small children. Shaw turned away and kept moving.
He rummaged through any and all hand cases that remotely looked like they might contain the North American Treaty. The search went with frustrating slowness. He began to rush as the cold fingers of panic touched his mind. The flashlight was dimming, the batteries would not last but a few minutes longer.
The seventh and last Pullman car, the one with the grisly occupants on the observation platform, bore the emblem of the Ame
rican eagle on the door. Shaw cursed himself under his breath for not starting here. He laid his hand on the knob, turned it and passed inside. For an instant he was taken back by the opulence of the private coach. They certainly don't make them like they used to, he mused.
A figure wearing a derby hat with a yellowed newspaper covering his features was sprawled in a red velvet revolving chair. Two of his companions sat folded over a mahogany dining table, their heads in their arms. One was dressed in what Shaw identified as an English-cut coat and trousers. The other wore a tropical worsted suit. It was the second who grabbed Shaw's interest. A withered hand clutched the grip of a small travel case.
Almost as if he was afraid of waking its owner, Shaw painstakingly removed the case from under the rigid fingers.
Suddenly he froze. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he caught an imperceptible movement. But it had to be an illusion. The wavering shadows on the walls were causing his inborn fears to run wild. If it was left to his imagination, the feeble light could make anything come alive.
Then his heart stopped. A cardiologist would say that's impossible. But his heart stopped as he stared paralyzed at a reflection in the window.
Behind him, the cadaver with the derby in the revolving chair was straightening to a stiff-backed position. Then the hideous thing lowered the newspaper from its face and smiled at Shaw.
"You won't find what you're looking for in there," Dirk Pitt said, nodding at the travel bag.
Shaw would never deny that he'd been rattled out of his wits. He sagged into a chair, waiting for his heart to pump again. He could see now that Pitt wore an old coat over a black wet suit. When he finally collected his senses, he said, "You have a disconcerting way of announcing your presence."
Pitt added to the dim illumination by turning on his dive light and then nonchalantly turned his attention back to the old newspaper. "I always knew I was born eighty years too late. Here's a used Stutz Bearcat Speedster with low mileage for only six hundred and seventy-five dollars."
Shaw had used up all his emotional reactions in the past twelve hours and was hardly in the mood for idle levity. "How did you manage to get in here?" he demanded more than asked.
Pitt continued to study the classified automobile ads as he answered. "Swam in through the escape shaft. Ran out of air and almost drowned, Would have too if I hadn't lucked onto a pocket of stale air under an old submerged rock crusher. One more breath enabled me to break into a side tunnel."
Shaw motioned around the coach. "What happened here?"
Pitt pointed toward the two men at the table. "The man with the travel case is, or rather was, Richard Essex, undersecretary of state. The other man was Clement Massey. Beside Massey is a farewell letter to his wife. It tells the whole tragic story."
Shaw picked up the letter and squinted at the faded ink. "So this fellow Massey here was a train robber."
"Yes, he was after a gold shipment."
"I saw it. Enough there to buy the Bank of England."
"Massey's plan was incredibly complex for its time. He and his men flagged the train at an abandoned junction called Mondragon Hook. There they forced the engineer to switch the Manhattan Limited onto an old rail spur and into the quarry before any of the passengers realized what was happening."
"Judging by this, he got more than he bargained for."
"In more ways than one," Pitt agreed. "Overpowering the guards went off without a hitch. That part of the plan had been well rehearsed. But the four army security guards who were escorting Essex and the treaty to Washington came as a rude surprise. When the gunfire died away, the guards were all dead or wounded and Massey was minus three of his own men."
"Apparently it didn't stop him," said Shaw, reading on.
"No, he went ahead and faked the Deauville-Hudson bridge accident; then he returned to the quarry and set off black powder charges that sealed off the entrance. Now he had all the time in the world to unload the gold and flee out the escape exit."
"How was that possible if it was filled with water?"
"The best laid plans, etcetera," said Pitt. "The escape shaft runs on a higher level than the deep end of the quarry where the original flooding occurred. When Massey hijacked the Manhattan Limited, the way out was still dry. But after he blew the entrance, the shock waves opened underground fissures and water seepage gushed into the shaft and cut off any chance of escape, condemning everyone to a slow, horrifying death."
"The poor devils," said Shaw. "Must have taken them weeks to perish from cold and starvation."
"Strange how Massey and Essex sat down at the same table to die together," Pitt mused aloud. "I wonder what they found in common at the end?"
Shaw set his flashlight so that its beam illuminated Pitt. "Tell me, Mr. Pitt. Did you come alone?"
"Yes, my diving partner turned back."
"I must assume you have the treaty."
Pitt gazed at Shaw over the top of the paper, his green eyes inscrutable. "You assume correctly."
Shaw slipped his hand from a pocket and aimed the.25 caliber Beretta. "Then I'm afraid you must give it to me."
"So you can burn it?"
Shaw nodded silently.
"Sorry," Pitt said calmly.
"I don't think you fully comprehend the situation."
"It's obvious you have a gun."
"And you haven't," Shaw said confidently.
Pitt shrugged. "I admit it didn't occur to me to bring one."
"The treaty, Mr. Pitt, if you please."
"Finders keepers, Mr. Shaw."
Shaw exhaled a breath in a long silent sigh. "I owe you my life, so it would be most inconsiderate of me to kill you. However, the treaty copy means far more to my country than the personal debt between us."
"Your copy was destroyed on the Empress of Ireland," Pitt said slowly. "This one belongs to the United States."
"Perhaps, but Canada belongs to Britain. And we don't intend to give it up."
"The empire can't last forever."
"India, Egypt and Burma, to name a few, were never ours to keep," said Shaw. "But Canada was settled and built by the British."
"You forget your history, Shaw. The French were there first. Then the British. After you came the immigrants: the Germans, the Poles, the Scandinavians and even the Americans who moved north into the western provinces. Your government held the reins by maintaining a power structure run by people who were either born or educated in England. The same is true of your Commonwealth countries. Local government and large corporations may be managed by native employees, but the men who make the major decisions are sent out by London."
"A system that has proven most efficient."
"Geography and distance will eventually defeat that system," said Pitt. "No government can indefinitely rule another thousands of miles away."
"If Canada leaves the Commonwealth, so might Australia or New Zealand, or even Scotland and Wales. I can think of nothing more distressing."
"Who can say where national boundaries will lie a thousand years from now. Better yet, who the hell cares?"
"I care, Mr. Pitt. Please hand over the treaty." Pitt did not respond, but turned his head, listening. The sounds of voices faintly echoed from one of the tunnels. "Your friends have followed me down the air vent," said Shaw. "Time has run out."
"You kill me, and they'll kill you."
"Forgive me, Mr. Pitt." The gun muzzle pointed directly between Pitt's eyes.
A deafening, ringing clap shattered the silent gloom of the cavern. Not the sharp, cracking report of a small-caliber Beretta, but rather the booming bark of a 7.63 Mauser automatic. Shaw's head snapped to one side and he hung limp in his chair.
Pitt regarded the smoldering hole in the center of his newspaper for a moment, then rose to his feet, laid the Mauser on the table and eased Shaw to a prone position on the floor.
He looked up as Giordino charged through the door like a bull in heat, an assault rifle held out in front of him. Giordino jerked
to a halt and stared fascinated at the derby still perched on Pitt's head. Then he noticed Shaw. "Dead?"
"My bullet creased his skull. The old guy is tough. After a nasty headache and couple of stitches, he'll probably come gunning for my hide."
"Where'd you find a weapon?"
"I borrowed it from him." Pitt motioned to the mummy that was Clement Massey.
"The treaty?" Giordino asked anxiously.
Pitt slipped a large piece of paper from between the pages of his newspaper and held it in front of the dive light.
"The North American Treaty," he announced. "Except for a charred hole between paragraphs, it's as readable as the day it was signed.
In an anteroom of the Canadian Senate chamber, the President of the United States nervously paced the carpet, his face betraying a deep sense of apprehensiveness. Alan Mercier and Harrison Moon entered and stood silently. "Any word?" asked the President.
Mercier shook his head. "None."
Moon looked strained and gaunt. "Admiral Sandecker's last message indicates that Pitt may have drowned inside the quarry."
The President gripped Mercier's shoulder as if to take strength from him. "I had no right to expect the impossible."
"The stakes were worth the gamble," said Mercier.
The President could not shake the heavy dread in his gut. "Any excuse for failure has a hollow ring."
Secretary of State Oates came through the door. "The Prime Minister and the Governor-General have arrived in the Senate chamber, Mr. President. The ministers are seated and waiting."
The President's eyes were sick with defeat. "It seems time has run out, gentlemen, for us as well as for the United States."
The 291- foot Peace Tower forming the center block of the Parliament building gradually grew larger through the windshield of a Scinletti VTOL aircraft as it banked toward the Ottawa airport. "If we don't get backed up by air traffic," said Jack Westler, "we should land in another five minutes."
"Forget the airport," said Pitt. "Set us down on the lawn in front of Parliament."
Westler's eyes widened. "I can't do that. I'd lose my pilot's license."
"I'll make it easy for you." Pitt slipped the old Mauser pistol out of Richard Essex's travel case and screwed the business end into Westler's ear. "Now take us down."
