Two Graves p-12

by Douglas Preston

  That roused them.

  “We head upslope, then get behind that cover, there. Now. Follow my lead.”

  “What about covering fire?” Thiago asked.

  “Too many attackers—and that would only warn them. We simply run like hell. On three… One, two, three!”

  They leapt over the boulders and ran diagonally across the slope of loose volcanic cinders. Immediately a barrage of fire erupted, but the ambushers had evidently not been expecting so soon a move and all seven made it behind the rockslide before the RPG volleys began. He could hear officers shouting orders in German.

  “Keep going!” the colonel cried.

  At a crouch, they kept on, angling diagonally up the slope and around the slight curve of the island. The fortress wall loomed far above them, rising ominously from the volcanic cinders, black and rough.

  More fire came pouring in as they emerged from cover, the rounds kicking up the cinders all around them. A man to the colonel’s left grunted with a thud of lead meeting flesh, a spray of blood and matter erupting from his chest, and he fell heavily onto the rocks.

  They ran on and on, the bullets peppering the cinders around them. More orders shouted in German: “Ihnen nach! Verfolgt sie!” The colonel understood: the ambushers were in pursuit.

  “Down!” he cried. “Drop and return fire!”

  The men, so very well trained, spun and dropped almost as one into the soft cinders and let loose a withering fire from their own automatic weapons; the colonel was extremely gratified to see several of the pursuers go down, the rest quickly taking cover.

  “Up!” he ordered. “Run!”

  In a flash they were up again and running. And as they came around the slope, he saw—above them, about a quarter mile away—the ragged hole in the outer wall. They would have a far better chance within the fortress than out in the open, on the island.

  “Head for that breach!” the colonel cried, pointing.

  The men angled uphill, heading for the breach, but once again exposed to fire. If only they could reach the hole, talvez…

  73

  PENDERGAST, WEDGED INTO A BROKEN GUN PORT IN A half-ruined wall of the old fortress, had watched the colonel’s boats approach the docks. At first he had believed it was part of the feint they had originally planned; but then, in a horrific moment, he realized the colonel had diverged from that plan.

  He was headed straight for the docks.

  Pendergast believed he understood the colonel’s reasoning: speed was of the essence. He and the colonel had discussed this line of attack, back in Alsdorf, and dismissed it because of the danger, however small, of an ambush. There was always the possibility that, at the sounds of the attack on the town, the men in the fortress could move quickly enough to arrange a trap—or arm a trap that was already in place. The colonel had dismissed this possibility, but ultimately Pendergast’s view had prevailed.

  But, it seemed, not prevailed enough.

  Pendergast watched the approach, his heart accelerating. It might work. Indeed, now he could also see that the colonel had brought far fewer men than agreed upon—with such a small force, surprise and speed became essential.

  If it worked, so much the better. But it was a risk—a huge gamble.

  And then, at the first eruption of fire, the docks punched up into the air, the men blown back into the water, the two vessels lurching sideways—Pendergast felt the utter stillness of shock take over. All had instantly changed. He heard the distant rattle of automatic gunfire and saw, behind a sheltered ridge just below the castle walls, the faint flashes of muzzle flare. He couldn’t see the ambushers from his vantage point, but he estimated they must comprise a moderate force—perhaps a hundred, a good portion of the fortress’s complement—well trained and organized. As the smoke from the explosions on the dock began to clear, the full dimensions of the debacle sank in. Many of the invading force had been killed outright or badly wounded, and the survivors were being mowed down in the water. But the colonel himself seemed to have survived, along with a handful of his men. Pendergast watched as they made their way behind a screen of boulders along the shore; ran for more cover farther around the hill, losing a man on the way; and then completed the final dash toward the opening in the wall, during which another soldier was cut down. Four men and the colonel made it to the breach and immediately disappeared.

  Five soldiers. And himself. Six against a fortress of well-armed, highly trained fighters who were genetically bred for ruthlessness and intelligence, on their own turf, defending their land, their town, their fortress—their very reason for existence.

  As Pendergast considered the problem, he began to realize that there might not be any paths to success remaining. His only consolation was that the least predictable of all human activities was war.

  Scrambling down from his perch, Pendergast sprinted along a tunnel, ducking into a side passageway when he heard the approaching sound of soldiers’ boots. They went by and he flitted back out, descending a ruined staircase that headed into the foundations of the fortress. He could hear, echoing upward, the beginning of a firefight from within the walls: the defending soldiers were converging, no doubt, fighting the last of the colonel’s men at the gap or just inside.

  The sounds of firing grew louder as he reached the massive, sloping basement tunnel encircling the interior of the curtain wall. He heard boots behind him again and had just enough time to swing into an unlocked lab and close its door before they passed. More shooting, bloody gargling screams. The Brazilians, at least, were putting up a remarkable fight.

  He ducked back out into the passage and continued on until he came to a dogleg, beyond which a group of German soldiers was hunkered down, apparently pinned by fire from the Brazilians. The narrow tunnels, heavy stone walls, and endless alcoves and hiding places helped defray, at least to a degree, the Brazilians’ severe disadvantage in numbers. Listening intently, Pendergast surmised that the Brazilian soldiers must be in a highly defensible redoubt inside the wall itself, fighting hard but hemmed in on all sides. They were doomed unless they could break free.

  Pendergast crept around the corner, waited for a loud explosion, and then—using the sound as cover—dropped one of the German soldiers with a shot to the femoral artery in the thigh, where the direction his shot had come from would not be as obvious. He waited again, took another opportunity to drop a second German. It was as he had hoped: the soldiers, not realizing they were taking fire from behind, retreated toward him in some confusion, thinking instead they were being exposed to fire from an unknown direction ahead. Pendergast quickly fell back into the lab to let them pass. He then moved out—now in front of the retreating group—and, rifling one of the bodies he had shot, retrieved several grenades and two full Sturmgewehr magazines, all the while taking periodic cover as he was fired on by the panicked Brazilian troops.

  Now rearmed, Pendergast made a loop back to the lab, wired all the grenades together, and tied a breakaway knot around the spoon levers. Next, he searched around for a thin wire, and—finding one—pulled out the pins from all the grenades. With infinite care, he moved back into the tunnel, listening for the pauses between explosions and gunfire. At the correct moment, he sprinted down the tunnel, stopping at a point where the roof was webbed with cracks from the resurgent ground. Rolling a gurney out of an adjacent lab, he climbed onto it, affixed the bundle of grenades to the ceiling with a chock, and unrolled the thin wire he’d found in the lab from the breakaway knot holding the grenade levers. He shoved the gurney back into the lab and crouched in the doorway, listening again.

  After a moment he let fly with several massive bursts from his gun. “Sie sind hier!” he shouted. “Schnell! Hurry, over here!”

  He followed this cry with more bursts of gunfire. “Hurry!”

  The German soldiers fell back rapidly toward him, crouching and firing as they retreated, crab-like.

  Pendergast let loose another burst of automatic fire, then cried for help. “Hilfe! Hilfe!
”

  As they approached, Pendergast jerked the wire, releasing the spoon levers on the cluster of grenades—and then ducked into the lab, shutting the steel door behind him. A moment later, a massive explosion sounded in the hallway. The tiny window in the door blew out; the door itself was ripped from its hinges and flung into the room. Pendergast, crouching against the rear wall, stood up and dashed through the doorway into choking stone dust and plaster, running amid falling blocks as the tunnel partially unraveled and began to cave in around him. Still in choking dust, with visibility zero, he came up to the colonel’s redoubt.

  “Colonel, it’s Pendergast!” he cried in English and then in Portuguese. “Me ajude!” And then: “Follow me—we have only a moment!”

  He turned and ran back into the blinding dust, the colonel and his four remaining soldiers following.

  74

  PAST THE CAVE-IN, THE TUNNEL RAN IN A BROAD CURVE around the inside of the fortress’s curtain wall, laboratories on the left, the massive wall itself to the right. It was the major route of movement along this lower level of the fortress: a dangerous place to be. The key, Pendergast decided, would be to go deeper still, where they might be able to escape into the labyrinth of underground passageways, dungeons, cells, and storage rooms. It was the area where Pendergast had initially been confined, but he had not explored it further during his quick reconnaissance of the fortress, believing it irrelevant.

  Now it was most relevant. Indeed, it was their only chance.

  Already he could hear a group of men running toward them, the clatter of rifles and the regular thud of boots echoing down the stone passageway. A laboratory door stood to their left, inset into a stone alcove, but it was locked and there was no time for Pendergast to pick it. With hand signals, he gestured for the colonel and his men to press themselves against both walls, drop to their knees, and level their rifles toward the approaching soldiers.

  “Fire at will,” he said quietly. The colonel repeated the command in Portuguese.

  The footsteps grew closer, echoing around the curve of the tunnel. The small band readied themselves for a point-blank ambush.

  In response to a barked order, the approaching soldiers halted, just out of sight. There was a sudden silence. A moment of electric intensity ensued—and then two expertly tossed grenades came bounding off the curved wall, hitting the floor and rolling toward the Brazilians.

  Taken by surprise, Pendergast and the others leapt up in a flash, turning and throwing themselves back into the alcove of the laboratory door; the grenades went off simultaneously, an enormous pressure wave in the confined space slamming them backward. One of the Brazilians, not as fast as the others, was caught in the open and vanished in a cloud of blood, flesh, bone, and dust.

  Shaking his head to clear it, Pendergast fired into the enveloping dust cloud. He could hear stones falling and realized the soldiers could not advance, at least not immediately, due to the blocks tumbling from the ceiling.

  “Retreat!” he said, firing another blast into the dust.

  The colonel and his three remaining men ran. Pendergast continued his suppressing fire until they were safely around the curve of the wall, then he followed. A few hundred yards past, he knew, lay a lateral tunnel; he had no idea where it went and was reluctant to chance it, but they now had no choice.

  “To the right!” he called ahead. “Direita!”

  They took the tunnel, leaving the dust-choked passage behind him. There was no lighting and the colonel’s men pulled out flashlights to see what lay ahead. The tunnel was old and disused, the stones encrusted with niter, the air dead and smelling of mold and decay. They came to an ancient oaken door, banded with rotten iron, wormy with age, which fell to a single blow from a rifle barrel.

  Ahead, a circular stone staircase spiraled downward into foul darkness. Behind, they could once again hear the thud of boots.

  The staircase had partially collapsed, and they slithered down the broken, tumbled, slimy stones until they arrived at the lowest level of the fortress. They raced down a long tunnel that began at the base of the stairway, the sound of their pursuers not far behind.

  At length the tunnel branched, then opened into a large, domed space. At the center of this space was a most unusual sight: a freestanding steel cage about fifteen feet square, securely locked. It was not fixed to the ground: rather, it was constructed around what appeared to be a deep, natural fissure in the undressed floor of the fortress’s sub-basement. Filling the fissure, and rising up to fill the cage as well, were countless boxes of weapons, grenades, shells, gunpowder casings, stamped with swastikas and warnings exhorting that the contents were very dangerous—SEHR GEFÄHRLICH. This appeared to be the central ammo dump of the fortress, located as a protective measure deep, deep within its bowels.

  So their original plan, to detonate the ammo dump, would have been doomed to failure in any case: it was placed too deeply in the fortress to have blown open an entrance for the colonel and his men.

  But there was no time for further examination, and they passed through the space into another passage leading out the far side.

  Soon this passage came to a T, then branched again, lined with rows of empty cells, the rotting remains of wooden doors lying on the damp ground. An ancient skeleton, streaked with copper salts, was chained to one wall. Water leaked down the walls, and puddles lay on the cindery floor, which—Pendergast noted—was most unfortunately preserving the footprints of their passage.

  Now the grunt of running men, the thud of boots, grew ever closer.

  “We’ve got to kill those men,” the colonel said.

  “An excellent suggestion,” Pendergast replied. “Grenades, please.”

  He pulled out the last of his grenades, nodded to the colonel; as they ran, following Pendergast’s lead, the colonel and his three remaining men all pulled the pins from their own grenades, keeping the spoons in position. As a corner in the tunnel loomed ahead, Pendergast gave a sharp nod; they released the spoons simultaneously as they dropped the grenades into the soft cinders, turned the corner, and threw themselves to the ground.

  “How do you say it in English?” the colonel muttered. “Payback is a bitch.”

  “Douse all lights,” Pendergast whispered in return.

  Seconds later, multiple explosions ripped the tunnel directly around the corner, almost deafening them. Immediately Pendergast was on his feet, gesturing for the others to follow; they charged back around the corner, where confused, dim flashlight beams could be seen here and there amid falling rubble. They fired frantically into the massive dust cloud, aiming at the lights, the return fire ineffectual and chaotic.

  In a few moments it was over. Their pursuers were dead, the dust was settling in the damp air. Turning on his own flashlight, Pendergast played it over the dead: six soldiers in simple gray uniforms with only one small insignia in the shape of an Iron Cross. But the seventh, clearly the leader, was wearing an old Nazi uniform, the feldgraue field uniform of the Waffen-SS, with a few latter-day additions.

  “Babaca!” the colonel said, kicking the body. “Look at that son of a whore, playing Nazi. Que bastardo.”

  Pendergast briefly examined the uniformed officer, then turned his attention to the other dead: half a dozen fine-looking young men, ripped apart by the explosions and gunfire, their blue eyes staring sightlessly this way and that, mouths open in surprise, delicate hands still on their weapons. He bent down, retrieved another magazine and a spare grenade. The others similarly replenished their own supplies.

  And then there was only silence, save for the slow cadence of dripping water. The smell of blood and death mingled with the muck, mold, and decay. But into the silence came the sound of rustling. The explosion had dislodged a section of the massive wall, and now insects, disturbed from their resting places, were slithering and crawling out, many falling from the ceiling—oily centipedes, white vinegaroons with spiked pedipalps, giant earwigs with greasy pincers, albino scorpions clacking their cla
ws, furry leaping spiders.

  With an oath the colonel brushed an insect from his shoulder.

  “We must get out of here,” Pendergast said. “Now.”

  Then something strange happened. One of the colonel’s soldiers gasped, turned—and pulled a bloody throwing knife from his chest, staring at it in astonishment before collapsing to his knees.

  75

  COLONEL SOUZA, HEARING THE GASP, SPUN AND FIXED his light on the soldier. The man clutched the heavy blade in his own hand, staring at it with an expression of sheer amazement, before folding slowly to the ground.

  “Take cover!” said Pendergast, dropping to a crouch.

  Souza staggered up against the wall while Pendergast probed the passage with his light, examining the walls, the ceilings, the dark cells and rotten doors. Tendrils of mist drifted through the tunnel, illuminated in the thin beam. There was nothing but silence and the drip of water. The light played over the chained skeleton, a single wisp of long black hair still attached to its cranium.

  “Nossa Senhora,” the colonel whispered, turning to Pendergast, their gazes meeting. Once again he found himself disconcerted by those pale eyes, which seemed almost to shine in the dark. He could feel his lower lip trembling, and he struggled to suppress it. He could not think, not yet, of how badly he had failed in this mission. His son, Thiago, had said nothing—nothing—since the disaster. He couldn’t bring himself to meet the gaze of his son… but he could feel it. Yes, he could feel the pressure of the youth’s eyes, the fear and censure, against the back of his neck, as if it were a tangible thing.

  Crouching there, waiting for he did not know what, having no idea what they could possibly do now, he saw Pendergast move, reach out, and touch his fallen soldier’s neck at the pulse. He waited a moment, then glanced over at the colonel with a faint shake of the head. It felt like another thrust of the knife. To lose these men, so many good men… but he couldn’t contemplate that now.