"There's another way," Brick said quietly.
"Name it."
Brick glanced at Leolo, then Zoru, before answering.
"I might drop in on him!"
Pop leaped to his feet sputtering. * "You're crazy," he stormed. "Absolutely batty. You wouldn't have the ghost of a chance."
Brick shrugged. With typical abruptness his decision was reached.
"I'm going to take a crack at it," he said firmly. "We've got to know what the captain is getting ready to pull. The fact that the American navy might be jeopardized is enough to make me disregard the chances. If there was only one in a million I'd have to take it."
Pop knew better than to waste his breath arguing.
"All right, you bull-headed baboon," he said wearily. "Go ahead, but don't expect me to feel sorry for you when you get caught."
Brick grinned then. Zoru laid a hand on his shoulder and said seriously, "Is this absolutely necessary?"
"Yep," Brick said. "You know I wouldn't do a thing like this for a lark. Since I've made up my mind there's nothing more to wait for. I'll leave now and with good luck I'll be back in two hours."
He turned to leave, but Leolo touched his arm gently.
"If you must go," she said softly. "I can take you by the shortest route. It will save you time and greatly lessen the chance of detection."
"Fine," Brick said. He waved a salute to Pop and Zoru, then followed Leolo from the room.
Leolo moved ahead of him with silent, graceful steps. Through a narrow door he followed her, then through the dark mistiness of a labyrinthine passage way that led finally to a large, fairly well-lighted corridor that extended ahead of them for several hundred yards.
At the end of the corridor Leolo stopped before an almost unnoticeable door.
"This opens," she said, "under the archway that connects the two main council rooms."
"Thanks a lot," Brick said awkwardly. He moved slowly toward the door.
"Aren't you going to say good-bye?" Leolo asked softly.
Brick turned suddenly and caught her shoulders in his big hands. His eyes moved over the shining waves of silver hair framing her piquant face and fathomless dark eyes. His heart pounded heavily in his breast as he stared at this girl of unreal loveliness.
"Not good-bye," he said huskily, "but hello."
He kissed her once, gently, barely touching her lips. He removed the language device from his head and gave it to her, then stepped through the door. He closed it behind him quickly, but not quickly enough to blanket the sound of her sobbing.
With an effort, he jerked all of his faculties and thoughts from the girl and concentrated every atom of his will on the job before him.
A glance gave him his location. He was under the archway that connected the mighty halls that had been his first glimpse of Atlantis. The bronze door that led to the occupied section of the continent was to his left, a symbol of the cleavage between one world and another.
* Had the Nazis, when they originally began work on. the Atlantis base, gone beyond this bronze door, they might have saved a lot of time and labor, since the halls beyond were not flooded. Fortunately they did not, or 1941 might have seen disaster for Britain in the Atlantic—Ed.
Behind it—somewhere—was the information he must have. He moved toward it silently.
CHAPTER VIII
Terrible News
Minutes later Brick stood just outside the great bronze door that was the barrier between the ancient, still unexplored world of Atlantis and the sections that had been turned into a modern mechanized Nazi underwater fortress.
He was breathing heavily, and now he stood close against the door, letting the beating of his heart regain normalcy and his lungs resume their steady function. And his ear was pressed close against the cold metal of the door while he listened for sounds from the other side.
After a moment, Brick was able to catch the sounds. They indicated what he had feared—a sentry was posted there. The sentry's footsteps came with muffled regularity.
One-two-three-four-five, (pause) One-two-three-four-five.
Carefully, Brick listened. The sentry was evidently pacing back and forth before the door. As the sounds increased, then diminished, Brick was soon able to tell which series of five steps took the sentry away from the door, and which brought him back to it. This was going to be important.
Brick's hand found the mechanism that would open the great bronze door. And now he held his breath, listening, making certain. Deadly certain. A miscalculation would mean—
One-two-three-four-five.
The steps came close to the door.
Pause.
One-two-three —
The steps were moving away!
Brick's hand shoved hard down on the handle, pulled roughly against the cold bronze surface of the door. It swung back from his weight.
And then the cold glare of arc lamps, the gust of warm oily air inside the Nazi base came to him through the opening.
He didn't hesitate. Timing was everything. He wheeled sharply on his left foot, throwing his weight to the left, lunging desperately in the direction of the sentry's gray-blue figure.
Timing was everything. Brick's timing had been perfect.
The sentry had just started back to the door. Its swift and unexpected opening, the sudden appearance of Brick, the fact that he was in range for a flying tackle—these were the odds against him.
Brick didn't muff those odds. His shoulder drove hard into the pit of the startled sentry's stomach. His arms wrapped ferociously around the stocky legs of the guard, pulling in sharply, viciously, as his legs churned with piston-like power, driving the fellow back and down.
The shoulder in the pit of the stomach cut off the fellow’s wind. He had no breath, no time, to cry out. Brick's aim was as excellent as the tackle. He'd smashed him straight back against the corridor wall.
A sickening sound as they went down together indicated that the sentry's head had cracked hard. Brick felt the body go limp in his arms.
The sentry was out cold.
Brick untangled himself and rose swiftly to his feet. He gave one quick glance at his victim's open mouth, closed eyes, and limply rolling head. Then, satisfied, he got to work.
The second part of his plan was as important as the first had been. Without it, he'd never be able to get through those corridors.
Minutes later Brick stood back and adjusted his tightly fitting blue-gray uniform coat. He grinned for an instant at the still inert body of the now denuded sentry. Then, quickly, Brick tore his own discarded clothing into long strips. Swiftly, he gagged and bound his victim so that the fellow would be helpless when he came around.
The fellow had been carrying a rifle. It lay in a corner by the bronze door. Brick hesitated for an instant, then left it where it was. It would be excess baggage. If things got to the point where he'd have to use it, he'd be a goner anyway.
There were two corridors leading off from the passageway in which Brick now stood. He looked at each of them dubiously. He wasn't certain where the captain's quarters were, and a wrong turn might mean failure.
Brick took a deep breath, then started down the right passageway. He'd have to take his chances on its being the one. There was no sign of other sentries along the way as Brick moved onward. Nevertheless he pulled his cap down slightly over his forehead and hunched his chin into the stiff collar of his uniform coat, keeping his features hidden as well as he could.
Several hundred yards ahead there was another corridor branching off to the left. It was wider, better illuminated than the first. Brick turned off into it. Suddenly, when he had gone perhaps a hundred feet, a gray-blue uniformed figure stepped from an almost concealed doorway on the side of the corridor. Brick kept his head lowered and forced himself to walk evenly, calmly, as the fellow passed.
There was the temptation to run, or look back. But Brick did neither, and the clack of the uniformed sailor's heavy boots was steady as he went on in the opposite
direction. Brick breathed a deep sigh of relief. And suddenly he was aware that the warm air was thickening, getting oilier.
*Pictured here is the United States Aircraft Carrier, "Lexington," which took part in the historic battle of Atlantis, in which the Nazi pocket - submarine fleet came to final grips with the greatest convoy and armada of all time. For the first time in naval history, depth bombs were used by aircraft, and the new value of the aircraft carrier against submarines was demonstrated.
He was on the right track. He was getting closer to the mechanical operations quarters. And in the same vicinity with those quarters, Brick knew, was the office of the captain!
Now Brick could hear the faint humming of the huge dynamos that were also part of the mechanical operations quarters. His heart quickened.
There were more sailors, four of them, who passed Brick without so much as a glance. He walked onward. An officer was the next to pass him, and Brick came to a smart attention, clicking his heels and saluting promptly. His nerves screamed tensely as he gazed rigidly straight forward at the officer. But the fellow merely touched his visored cap, not even looking at Brick, apparently preoccupied with other matters.
Then, a hundred yards later, Brick found it. A black metallic door, emblazoned with a silver swastika underneath which was the German naval insignia of a captain!
Von Herrman's quarters!
Brick turned for an instant, looking up and down the corridor. There was no one in sight. His hand trembled ever so slightly as it sought the knob on the thick black door. He turned it softly, the door going in against his weight.
The room—about fifteen feet square, with a desk, a chair, files, and a liquor cabinet—was deserted.
Brick closed the door softly behind him. His heart pounded like a trip hammer. He gazed swiftly at the desk, trying to discover from the state it was in if it had been left hastily. No. Everything was in order.
Closing the door a little more firmly —it hadn't quite closed—Brick heard a sharp click! His luck, he knew, had held. The door hadn't been quite closed when he'd first entered. That was why he'd had such easy access to it. But now it was locked—as the one who'd left the room last had intended it to be—and there was no chance of a suspicious seaman entering from the outside.
Brick stepped quickly across the room, and in another instant was rifling through the drawers of Von Herrmans desk. There were dispatches, papers of all description, carefully and methodically placed in folders. They were all in German, and Brick cursed his lack of knowledge of the language.
Minutes crept by. Brick gave up his search through the desk. He went over to the files. They were locked. A letter opener, inserted at the edges, opened the first file.
Brick's fingers found heavy, waterproofed paper. It was rolled. He dragged it forth. A map. Brick's lips tightened in satisfaction. Here was a language he could understand.
He stepped back to Von Herrman's desk and spread the map out on its polished top. A map of the Atlantic ocean.
Brick gasped. The map indicated precisely, by longitude and latitude, the location of the sunken submarine base at Atlantis! Furthermore, it was decorated with a series of lines and small drawings of battlecraft. Brick peered closely at this. Then his heart leaped to his throat. The battlecraft, the lines indicated, were leaving the shores of the United States.
And what was more important, they were decorated, variously, with American and British flags!
And now it became even more hideously clear to Brick. There were other, smaller, ships sketched in on the map. These carried no flags and were obviously supposed to represent merchant craft. And a staggering number of merchant craft! A convoy—it could be nothing else!
Rapidly, Brick made an estimate of the number of merchant craft in the convoy. He shook his head unbelievingly. There were at least eight hundred craft involved, possibly a thousand!
And to guard these ships there were the combined Atlantic naval forces of both the United States and Great Britain!
*The U.S. Fleet, from the story told by the map, was to take the convoy several hundred miles out to sea where —at a designated rendezvous—they would join the British fleet. Both naval convoys would then join and guard the fleet of merchant ships through the more hazardous journey that lay ahead.
And that hazardous journey brought the entire convoy—quite unwittingly— directly over the undersea submarine base at Atlantis!
Bricks face was ashen, and he stepped back from the desk falteringly, not quite able to comprehend fully the terrible disaster that waited the convoy. Now he knew. Now he was certain that his hunch had been right. Von Herrman's veiled hints, the rush of activity around the base, were for one reason. And that reason w as an attack against the greatest convoy man had ever known!
*Early in August, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States, and Winston Churchill, prime minister of Britain, met in their history-making rendezvous in the Atlantic for a peace conference which resulted in the famous "Eight Points." Later it was divulged that Aid to Britain was a chief topic of discussion, and the vast convoy that was slated for destruction by Von Herrman's murderous submarine fleet, was planned and the combined might of the British and American navies was scheduled for the convoy. Upon this one convoy the fate of the war hung, all unknown by the two famous men. If it had been destroyed, and the British and American main fleets wiped out, the war would have been Hitler's. American public opinion, at the time of the conference, would have been against this "pooling" of the great fleets, but as events turned out late in 1941, the opportunity was presented to turn suspense into certain victory.—Ed.
He had a horrible vision of Von Herrman's undersea sharks slipping up through the green murk of the waters over the base. Slipping stealthily surfaceward, hundreds of submarines thirsting to wreak horrible destruction on the great flotilla that would pass unwittingly above.
Brick was also terribly certain now that this attack upon the combined U.S. and British convoy was dreadfully close. Closer than he dared imagine. And there would be no one to warn the convoy. No one to stop the hell and fury of death and destruction that would mark the most staggering Axis naval victory in this war.
No one, that was, but Brick himself. For he was the only one who knew of the impending disaster. He was the only one who could hope to stop this ghastly ambush.
But how?
With sickening bitterness, overpowering despair, Brick realized that he was one man against thousands. He felt a maddening surge of helpless rage and futility. There had to be a way. If it meant the trading of his own life to save the thousands of those on the convoy ships it would be a cheap bargain. Brick had been through too much in these past few weeks to value his own life as worth a damn. Snuffing the spark from it uselessly, futilely, was one thing—finding something worth dying for was another.
Brick's brain was racing, seeking an idea that might have a chance in a million, a hundred million. Something. He had to think of something.
He turned away from the desk, picking up the map automatically, and walked to the filing cabinet. He rolled the thick, water-proof paper and crammed it in the open drawer.
Brick was shoving the case shut, and suddenly a sound behind him made him wheel.
Captain Von Herrman stood in the door of the office!
"Am I to understand that I have a new clerk-orderly?" his iron voice asked smoothly. There was a mocking, taunting grin on his face.
And there was a thick, blue-barreled Luger held levelly in his hand. It pointed directly at Brick's belly!
Brick’s blood congealed in his veins, and icy fingers played over his spine. He found words hard to command as he stood there frozen in fear. But this was a different fear, Brick knew. This was a terror not for himself, but for the thousands and thousands of souls who would have their death sentences signed by the crisp bark of the gun held in Von Herrman's hand. This was a fear for the men in the vast convoy whose lives depended on what happened to Brick Harrington in the nex
t few minutes.
Von Herrman stepped up within three yards of Brick.
"Put your hands aloft, please!" he snapped.
Brick raised his arms above his head, his eyes still fixed in numb fascination on the muzzle of that Luger.
"You have found your perusal of my, ah, library interesting?"
Suddenly Brick was choking with rage. His words were a merciful escape valve for the maddening frustration that held him.
"Damn you, Von Herrman!" Brick's hands clenched to fists above his head.
"Steady, my Yankee hothead!" Von Herrman's voice didn't raise. His eyes flicked over to the still half-open filing cabinet. "You have seen that very interesting map," he stated matter-of-factly. "A most unfortunate observation on your part."
Brick's lips worked, but he said nothing.
"Within twenty-four hours I could make you a present of that map, my friend. I'd be quite finished with it then. Yes, I could make you a present of that map, but unfortunately you'll be dead by then." Von Herrman seemed amused as he spoke. Then he turned and barked a command in German.
Three sailors, clad in gray-blue uniforms and carrying rifles, stepped through the door. They'd obviously been stationed outside by the captain. Their faces expressed no emotion as they faced Brick, rifles targeting him menacingly.
Von Herrman shoved his Luger into its holster beneath his uniform coat.
"If you hadn't made such a meddling fool of yourself," the Captain said, "you might have lived to leave here someday. However, I'm very much afraid that I'll have to order these men to take you out and shoot you." His eyes flicked over the uniform Brick had taken from the sentry. "You leave me no other course, inasmuch as you have taken the guise of one of my sailors, and were caught spying in my quarters."
Brick watched Von Herrman turn, heard his steely voice coolly issue orders to the sailors. Then the captain turned back to Brick for an instant before he stepped from the room.
Convoy to Atlantis Page 6
