Cleary's lips spread in a shifty grin. "Don't you think it and proper that the men who have gone through hell should the final kill?"
"You'll get no argument from me."
"Are you two up to acting as guides?"
"Did you get permission from Washington?"
"I neglected to ask."
Pitt's opaline green eyes took on a wicked look. Then he said, not? Al and I never could pass up a diabolical scheme."
45
It would be a classic understatement to say that Karl Wolf was horrified and enraged when he laid eyes on the broken wreckage of his aircraft. His grand scheme was in tatters, as he and his scientists and engineers milled around the hangar in fear and confusion. To his knowledge, the mechanism to break away the ice shelf was still set to come online in less than four minutes.
Misguided by Hugo, who told them his guards at the control center were still locked in a life-or-death struggle with the Special Forces teams, Karl had no perception that the Fourth Empire had died before it was born, or that Project Valhalla was aborted.
The Wolfs stood in a solemn group, unable to accept the full impact of the disaster, unable to believe the incredible story of a huge vehicle that had run amok and smashed their aircraft, before heading off toward the battle raging in front of the control center. They stood stunned with disbelief at the sudden reversal of their long-cherished plans. Hugo was the only one missing from his family members. Committed to the end, he had disregarded their predicament and was feverishly organizing the remaining members of his security force for the final resistance against the Americans he knew for certain were short minutes away from assaulting the hangar.
Then Karl said, "Well, that's it, then." He turned to Blondi. "Send a message to our brother Bruno on board the Ulrich Wolf. Explain the situation and tell him to send backup aircraft here immediately with all speed. We haven't another moment to lose."
Blondi didn't waste time with questions. She took off at a run toward the radio inside the control room at the edge of the airstrip.
"Will it be possible to land on the Ulrich Wolf during the early stages of the cataclysm?" Elsie Wolf asked her brother. Her face was pale with anguish.
Karl looked at his chief engineer, Jurgen Holtz. "Do you have an answer for my sister, Jurgen?"
A frightened Holtz looked down at the icy floor of the hangar and replied woodenly. "I have no way of calculating the exact arrival time of the expected hurricane winds and tidal waves. Nor can I predict their initial strength. But if they reach the Ulrich Wolf before our flight can land, I fear the result can only lead to tragedy."
"Are you saying we're all going to die?" demanded Elsie.
"I'm saying we won't know until the time comes," Holtz said soberly.
"We'll never have time to transfer the Amenes artifacts from the damaged planes after Bruno arrives," said Karl, staring distraught at the family's personal executive jet, sitting broken like a child's toy "We'll take only relics of the Third Reich."
"I'm going to need every able-bodied male and female who can shoot a weapon." The voice came from behind Karl. It was Hugo, whose black uniform was splattered with blood from the dead guard who'd failed to tell him of the havoc in the hangar. "I realize we have many frightened and disoriented people on our hands, but if we are to survive until rescued by our brothers and sisters at the shipyard, we must hold out against the American fighting force."
"How many of your fighting men have survived?" asked Karl.
"I'm down to twelve. That's why I require all the reserves I can find."
"Do you have enough weapons for us all?"
Hugo nodded. "Guns and ammo can be found in the arsenal room at the entrance of the hangar."
"Then you have my permission to recruit any and everyone who wants to see their loved ones again."
Hugo looked his brother in the eyes. "It is not my place, brother, to ask them to fight and die. You are the leader of our new destiny. You are whom they respect and venerate. You ask, and they will follow."
Karl stared into the faces of his brother and two sisters, seeing his own expression of foreboding in their eyes. With a mind as cold as an iceberg and a heart of stone, he had no misgivings about ordering his people to lay down their lives so that he and his siblings might survive.
"Assemble them," he said to Elsie, "and I will tell them what they must do."
Leaving four of his men who were not hurt seriously to tend the wounded and stand guard over the surviving security guards, Cleary and twenty-two able-bodied men of his remaining team, led by Pitt and Giordino, who knew the way to the hangar, entered the main tunnel in tactical formation, with two of Garnet's Delta Force acting as forward flanking scouts.
Lieutenant Jacobs was more than surprised to meet up with Pitt and Giordino again, and even more amazed to find that they were the madmen who'd driven the Snow Cruiser into the battle zone only minutes before Cleary and his men would have ended up like Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn.
Moving cautiously, the column rounded the first bend in the tunnel and moved past the deserted construction equipment and the doorways leading into the empty storerooms. Walking through the ice tunnel seemed far different to Pitt and Giordino than when they had careened through it in the Snow Cruiser. Pitt smiled to himself at seeing the long gouges in the ice caused by his reckless driving when escaping the armored Sno-cat.
When they reached an abandoned tow vehicle, attached to a small train of four flatbed cars that had been used to haul supplies and cargo throughout the tunnel labyrinth, they halted their advance and used the equipment for cover, as Cleary questioned Pitt and Giordino.
"How far to the hangar from here?" he asked.
"About another five hundred yards before the tunnel opens into it," Pitt answered.
"Is there any place between here and there they could set up a barricade?"
"Every ten feet, if they had the time and blocks of ice. But I doubt they could have built anything substantial in the few short minutes since they lost their battle for the facility." He pointed down on the ice. Besides the rotund indentations from the tires of the Snow Cruiser, the only other tracks came from a single snowmobile and the footprints of several men that suggested that they had been running from the battle.
"Can't be more than a dozen security guards left. If they intend to mount a defense, it will have to be within a hundred yards of the hangar."
"Don't forget the Sno-cat," said Giordino quietly, "the one you didn't mash into scrap."
"There's another one of those devilish vehicles still lurking around?" growled Cleary.
Pitt nodded. "Very well could be. What's in your traveling arsenal that can disable it?"
"Nothing that will penetrate its armor," Cleary admitted.
"Hold up your men, Major. I think I see something that might be of use."
Pitt rummaged around in the toolbox of the tow vehicle until he came up with an empty fuel can. He found a steel pry bar and used it to perforate the top of the can. Then he took the bar and punched the bar through the bottom of the tow vehicle's fuel tank. When the can was full, he held it up. "Now all we need is an igniting device."
Lieutenant Jacobs, who was observing Pitt's actions, reached into his pack and retrieved a small flare gun used for signaling purposes at night or in foul weather. "Will this do?"
"Like a beautiful woman and a glass of fine Cabernet," said Pitt.
Cleary raised his arm and swung it forward. "Let's move out."
There were no haunting fears of the unknown now, no urgencies or trepidations. Flankers moving like cats, followed by men unshakable and committed, bent on avenging friends who'd died back at the control center, they advanced into the tunnel like wraiths under the obscure light refracting through the ice. Pitt felt a swell of pride, knowing that he and Giordino were accepted by such men as equals.