“Ugh. Smells like a locker room of a girls’ volleyball team.”
“I’ve got bad breath and pee in mine. Want to switch?”
“Pass.”
They were standing outside the entrance of the old mine with Ahmad, Devrin, and Ludmilla. The Russian scientist checked over their suits, using a roll of duct tape to seal their gloves and boots. She ran her hands over the suits to make sure there were no rips or tears from when she had examined the train wreckage. Mercer wasn’t sure whose backside she lingered over more, his or Cali’s, but the examination in that region had been more than thorough.
“Perhaps you should leave this for the Russians,” Professor Ahmad suggested for the second or third time. “Devrin and I plan to leave here before the helicopter that Captain Federov requested arrives. We can take you and Cali with us to the airport in Samara.”
“I told you, Ibriham.” Mercer had to raise his voice to be heard outside the yellow suit. “The man partially responsible for the theft will want to hide his culpability. He’s in Novorossiysk right now looking for those two missing barrels. When he finds them he’s going to return them to the train wreck and act like nothing happened.”
“It will be your word against his.”
“Trust me this won’t be going to any court of law.” Mercer checked his flashlight and the spare in the bag slung over his shoulder. He had no intention of being in the mine long enough to drain even one, but he’d spent half his lifetime underground and knew you could never be too prepared. “Ms. Stowe,” he said with a gallant sweep of his arms toward the small forklift Poli had brought and abandoned. “Our chariot awaits.”
They climbed onto the little machine, each sharing part of the single seat, their hips pressed tight though there was no feeling through the thick rubber. Mercer keyed the electric motor, which hummed to life. A foot pedal controlled the motor speed and a small wheel directed the agile rear wheels. He noted that there was plenty of juice left in the batteries when he flicked on the lights.
Mercer tossed the Turks and Ludmilla a wave over his shoulder and guided the forklift into the mine. As soon as they’d traveled just a dozen yards down the dark tunnel, he felt the temperature begin to drop, as if the stone was leaching the heat from his body. The shaft was at least forty feet wide and fifteen tall, much bigger than Mercer had expected, so the lift’s puny lights cast a feeble ring along the ceiling, walls, and floor that retreated just a few yards ahead of them as they drove downward. The triple set of tracks for hauling ore and waste rock from the mine were dulled from exposure and the mine’s constant dank humidity.
The main shaft shot arrow straight into the earth for nearly a mile before they came to their first cross tunnel. Mercer cut the power to the lift to conserve its batteries and jumped to the ground. Cali followed him as he entered the secondary tunnel. She carried a gamma detector and watched its readings intently.
After fifty yards they came to a chamber where the miners had employed what was called room-and-pillar mining. In essence they had excavated a broad cavern, but left thick columns of rock undisturbed to support the weight of the mountain above.
Mercer played his flashlight around some of the columns and whistled when something reflected the beam back at him. He felt like he’d stepped into a military museum. He recognized the sharklike snout of an ME-262, the extraordinary jet fighter the Germans introduced in the latter stages of the war. The aircraft’s wings had been removed and leaned against a pillar next to the deadly plane. A little farther on he came to another and another. Then he saw planes he didn’t recognize. They were advanced even for today. They were small and sleek one-man attack aircraft that looked capable of incredible speeds.
He said, “These must have been prototypes of planes the Nazis ran out of time developing.”
“Good thing too. Our prop jobs wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“Anything on the gamma reader?”
“Background’s a tad high but nothing like what we found on the Wetherby.”
They spent another fifteen minutes exploring the cavity just to be sure. There were at least fifteen aircraft stored here, all in remarkable condition. They also found early rockets. Some were mounted on trailers to be launched as the world’s first surface-to-air missiles. Others were small enough to be carried aloft for direct aerial combat. All of them were far more advanced than anything the allies had at the time.
“Clever, weren’t they,” Mercer said, examining a multiple rocket pod intended to fire a deadly swarm of small unguided missiles.
“Just think what the world would be like if they’d turned their genius to helping humanity rather than destroying it.”
Satisfied that the plutonium had been stored deeper in the mine, they retreated back to the forklift and continued their descent down the gently sloping floor. The next cross tunnel revealed another chamber of captured German arms. On benches were man-portable weapons — machine-guns of a type Mercer didn’t know, a bazooka-like weapon that unspooled thin wires for guidance, a table littered with rifles with curved barrels, for shooting around corners presumably. Dominating the entrance to the chamber was the biggest battle tank Mercer had ever seen. It had to be three times the size of a modern M-1 Abrams. The tracks were three feet wide and instead of a single cannon mounted in the boxy turret, this behemoth sported two side by side.
“It’s a Maus,” Mercer said, awed. “My grandfather was a military modeler. He built one from scratch using a couple of old pictures. Hitler ordered the prototypes when someone suggested their tanks were vulnerable to attack from railroad guns. Never entered his mind the Allies didn’t have any railroad guns, of course. I didn’t know any of these survived the war.”
Cali looked at him askance. “Ever thought of going on Jeopardy?”
“Hey, don’t blame me. A photographic memory is both a blessing and a curse. Want me to tell you the tank’s specifications?” He tapped his helmet. “They’re in here too.”
“Another time, maybe. I got something.”
“Where?”
“That way.” She pointed deeper into the chamber.
Despite the mine’s chill Mercer was sweating in his suit, adding his own unwashed body to the stench permeating the rubber. Guided by the readings on the gamma ray detector they carefully made their way into a subchamber of the main excavation.
“Look.” Mercer shot a finger toward the stone floor. They could make out tracks cut through the dust by the forklift’s solid rubber tires.
“Great job of tracking there, Cochise,” Cali teased. “We could have just followed the trail.”
Mercer shrugged. As he stepped forward he felt something snag his ankle and for a microsecond he wished he could take back that fateful stride. He should have known Poli would have left behind a surprise. He threw himself onto Cali, knocking them both to the ground, his body shielding hers as best he could.
The booby trap was a simple trip wire attached to a couple of grenades with their pins already partially pulled. The wire ran around the room, where the grenades were hidden behind a massive timber balk supporting the entrance back to the main tunnel.
The suit prevented Mercer from hearing the pins pull free and the spoons flip up to activate the grenades, but he knew it was happening. “Open your mouth,” he shouted in the seconds before the bombs went off.
The trio of grenades exploded almost simultaneously. Confined by the surrounding stone, the overpressure wave shot across the room and slammed into Mercer and Cali, causing their suits to squeeze in on them painfully. Had Cali not heeded Mercer’s timely warning her eardrums would have ruptured.