“Any idea where exactly he’s going?” the captain asked without much hope. Colonel Kokol smiled broadly. He brought his small handheld device and showed it to the captain. It had a six-inch oval display and there was a glowing dot with some numbers next to it. The dot was almost exactly in the center. “Pashenka’s bugged?”
Kokol nodded as he read the data. “I was prepared for this. They’ve moved since they tripped the alarm.” He pointed down. “Just about right below us and over eighteen hundred meters down.”
The captain turned and pointed at an eight-foot-wide column that came out of the ground and extended up about fifteen feet. “Main ventilation shaft for the Kremlin underground complex. Goes straight down just about two thousand meters.”
“We’d need an awfully long rope to rappel down that far,” Kokol said, as they walked over to the shaft. Several soldiers were already unscrewing plates from the outer surface. Another was opening a small chest bolted to the ground nearby.
“There was concern about a swift way to get deep if all power was cut and missiles were inbound,” the captain said. “Elevators wouldn’t work, and taking stairs or even the ramp would be too slow.”
Two panels came off the side of the tube, revealing two brass poles bolted to the side of tube. The captain went over to the chest and reached in, pulling out two devices. They had handholds with straps that wrapped securely around the wrist. Facing outward were clamps that would go on the brass poles and levers controlled by the hands determined how much pressure they applied to the pole.
“Jumars,” the captain said as he held them up. He wrapped the straps around his wrist, making sure his hands were secure inside the devices. Colonel Kokol hesitated only for a moment, then got his own set.
Together they walked over to the tube and looked down. Lonely lightbulbs lit the tube every fifty feet or so, leaving sections of darkness between.
“I am willing to allow your rank to proceed me,” the captain said.
Kokol demurred. “I would prefer to watch your expertise with the equipment first, so I might learn the proper way to do this.”
The captain laughed and stepped onto the narrow ledge around the inside top, sidling over to one pole. He clamped the jumars down on the pole and tested the pressure, squeezing his fingers against the pads they rested on. He glanced over at Kokol, no sign of laughter on his face now. The colonel nodded.
The captain carefully released the pressure and began to slide down.
Petrov checked his watch but displayed no sense of impatience, knowing it would do no good. The man was working as fast as he could. The flame went out and the welder stood. “It’s clear to open.”
Two mercenaries began unscrewing the door, which seemed to consist of a single large threaded metal disk, about five feet in diameter. It moved easily and they had it unscrewed in less than fifteen seconds. It slowly rotated away from the entrance on hydraulic arms.
It was dark inside. Petrov pulled down his night-vision goggles and turned them on. He waited until the green glow came alive, then poked his head in the opening. He saw a large chamber, the far end of which wasn’t visible in the night-vision goggles. Petrov blinked as he recognized the forest of vertical objects filling the chamber — human beings impaled on stakes set in the floor.
“Hold here,” Petrov ordered as he stepped over the threshold in the chamber. There were hundreds of mummified bodies dangling on stakes run up through the centers of their bodies within view. Directly in front, less than ten feet away, was a heavy wooden chair, bolted to the floor. Leather straps were looped over the arms and legs, indicating that whoever had occupied the chair had not done so willingly. The chair faced the forest of dead. Looking up, Petrov saw that rails lined the ceiling with small trolleys with chains dangling from them. He immediately understood that was the way each body had been conveyed to its stake, then lowered onto it.
Ingenious. Petrov had seen many horrible things in his time and he had watched much torture. He could envision the process here. A victim was interrogated in the chair, facing all the bodies, some probably still alive and writhing on the stakes, while the victim could witness his pending fate, probably with an offer of being spared if he spoke. Petrov imagined most spoke, even making up things if they weren’t really guilty, which was often the case. Regardless of what he said, the prisoner was lifted out on the chains and pulled to his final resting place and the next victim was brought in and strapped down.
How long had this been going on? he wondered. He looked at the closest body. The skin was stretched tight, the body mummified. The naked body was shriveled tight as if every fluid inside had been drained. Petrov felt a start as he remembered why he had come there.
He moved farther into the room, up to the chair. Directly on the other side was something he had not seen at first. A large wooden cart with a metal device on it and large glass bottles on the lower level. Rubber hoses led from the metal device to the cart. It took him a few seconds before he realized the device was a pump. And there were more thin rubber hoses on top with large-gauge needles on top. There was writing in German on both the bottles and the metal device. A swastika was stenciled on the side of the cart.
There was no mistaking the device’s purpose: to forcibly draw blood from a victim.
So where was the blood?
“Get in here,” Petrov ordered. His remaining commandos entered, all with night-vision goggles on. It was a tribute to their training that not a word was said.
“We need to find a cache of blood,” Petrov said. “Search the room.” The men spread out.
“Are we there yet?” Colonel Kokol hissed. His forearms were aching and the last halt had taken all his energy to compress the pads against the pole.
The captain glanced down at the tracking device hung around his neck, craning to be able to see the display. “Close.”
Kokol glanced at the small grate between the two poles. They’d passed one about every thirty feet on the way down. Each had a small six-inch-wide ledge in front of it. “Should we exit?”
Kokol waited for the captain’s answer as the junior officer tried to angle his head to get a better read on the screen. The colonel’s old forearms supplied the answer in the absence of anything from the captain. Kokol swung his feet over onto the ledge, then completely released his hold on the poles. His arms swung free and he used his teeth to release the wrist straps on the jumars.
“We are exiting, then?” the captain asked.
“Da” Kokol muttered as he tried to see through the grate. He saw the ramp, but nothing else.
The captain joined him. Together they pushed out on the grate and it popped loose. Kokol stuck his head out and saw nothing either way, so he slid through.
However, when it was the captain’s turn, the weight lifter’s shoulders wouldn’t make it through, no matter how hard he tried. As the captain strained and twisted, Kokol cocked his head to catch a sound floating up the ramp. Voices.
“I’ve got contact just below,” Kokol hissed to the captain.
“I can’t get through,” the captain muttered, stating the obvious.
“There must be a maintenance entrance at the bottom,” Kokol whispered. “It’s not that much farther down. Get there, then come up the ramp. I’ll hold from above.”
The captain pulled back and looked up. “My strike team is on its way down. Wait for reinforcements before you do anything.” “Certainly,” Kokol said.
The captain clamped onto the pole and began heading down. Kokol turned back to the ramp and waited, AK-74 at the ready.