Mercer made up for his earlier mistake. His timing was perfect. Like a crop duster swooping over a field, the two-hundred-fifty-foot-long submarine rose off the bottom of the tunnel and climbed the sloped side of the hill, her keel never more than ten feet from its irregular surface. At thirty meters, the U-boat cleared the top of the mound with the ceiling of the tunnel now only forty feet above her ruined conning tower. Level once again and her screws churned with every remaining amp in her batteries. From here it was a race to the open sea. Mercer’s gamble had saved them nearly eight minutes.
“When we surface,” Ira said and took another draw from his breathing tube, “I’m going to blow compressed air through the boat to vent the gas. Be prepared for a pressure change.”
Once he was satisfied they had cleared the tunnel and entered the fjord, Mercer ordered Ira to blow the tanks. The climb from a hundred feet seemed to take forever. His air supply was about exhausted, and each breath was a supreme effort that left his chest aching. Anika and Ira were in even worse shape.
Come on, damm it. We are so close. He gave Anika a draw off his supply and she sucked at it greedily. Hers must be empty, he thought. Passing through twenty meters, Mercer felt his vision begin to close in on him and he took the breathing tube back for a moment. He could taste Anika on the mouthpiece.
Somehow, Erwin found the strength to climb the ladder to the escape hatch. He wasn’t going to remain on the U-boat one second longer than necessary, pushed more by fear of confinement than of the gas.
The sub emerged from the sea bow first, lifting forty feet from the water before slamming back again, blowing off sheets of frothing water. Protected from the waves of the Denmark Strait by the fjord’s towering mountains, the cauldron of turgid water around the sub was the only mark on the otherwise calm bay. She rolled for a moment as Ira pumped up the air pressure in an effort to vent the poison gas.
As soon as the ex-Navy man nodded to Erwin, he undogged the hatch. Air pressure blew the hatch outward, sucking out a majority of the gas. Icy water from the flooded attack room rained into the control space, showering the crew. Erwin scrambled up the ladder, twisting around the bent remains of the two scopes to reach the next ladder. The outer hatch spun freely and he threw it open, reveling in their first sight of daylight in a week, Hilda and Anika at his heels. He clambered the rest of the way out of the sub and stood fully upright, facing eastward to the open end of the fjord several miles away.
No one heard the shots hammering the conning tower, but the metallic twang of ricochets sounded clearly, lead and fractured steel exploding in all directions.
Erwin felt a twin sting as his brain registered what was happening and he went limp, allowing himself to fall back into the attack center. His blood stained the pooled water pink. Hilda screamed. Even as the barrage continued against the U-boat’s steel hull, Anika began to check his injuries.
Like her, Mercer didn’t hesitate. It was as if he’d expected such an ending to this hellish trek. He raced back to his cabin and reemerged with a machine pistol in each fist, spare clips tucked into the pocket of his snow pants. Wordlessly, he tossed one MP-40 to Ira, racked back the cocking handle on his own, and climbed for the bridge.
THE ICE SHEET ABOVE THE PANDORA CAVERN
The Geo-Research Bell Jetranger 414 flared into a maelstrom of ice and snow that its rotors had just kicked up. The impenetrable fog settled only after the blades began to slow, dusting the two idling Sno-Cats, a dozen men, and a cargo sledge stacked with the recovered Pandora boxes. The smaller box, found in the antechamber at the top of the air vent, was kept separate. The snow around the vent had been trampled flat by the frantic work to recover the golden chests. Nothing remained of the tunnel itself but a stain of dust that had belched from it when it had been dynamited. The men who had completed the work waited for the rotor-stat to come and carry the boxes away.
Klaus Raeder was sitting in the insulated Sno-Cat and hadn’t heard the chopper’s approach until it was nearly upon them. The flash of anger that jolted his body gave way to an eerie calm. There was no need for the chopper here. That meant Rath was about to make his play for the deadly hoard. For the tenth time in the past hour, he glanced into the cargo area behind the ’Cat’s rear seat. The two assault rifles used to sink the fuel drums in the cavern were safely locked into an integrated rack. Raeder stripped off his heavy glove and jammed his right hand into his snowsuit pocket, where he had the loaded automatic pistol he’d taken from his office. He’d had no problem sneaking the weapon out of Germany. Customs paid little attention to corporate jets.
He opened the vehicle’s door and stepped out. There was little wind, but the air was as clear and cold as crystal. Gunther Rath stood a short way off with Greta and the professional driver, Dieter. Before Raeder took two paces, a shadow passed overhead. He looked up. The rotor-stat had come over the crest of the mountains that divided the ice sheet from the sea, its bulk eclipsing the weak sun for a moment. It was an otherworldly sight, more befitting Titans than men. The four engine pods mounted on the side of her great white hull were larger than the Jetranger helicopter sitting insectlike in the snow.
The pitch of its airship’s engines changed as it began to slowly settle toward earth.
Raeder approached Rath. “What is the helicopter doing here?”
“The rotor-stat won’t be able to land out here without a mooring mast. We’ll attach her lifting cables to the cargo and then follow in the chopper as she heads out to sea to drop the boxes.”
“No.” Raeder wouldn’t pretend to go along with this charade. “I’m not going to let the Pandora boxes out of my control until I know they will be dumped. We are getting on the rotor-stat.”
“Klaus, she can’t pick us up without a mooring mast,” Rath said placidly. “We can watch from the chopper.”
The noise of the descending airship increased as she fell below the tops of the mountains, the drone of her power plants echoing off the rock. The downdraft from her rotors began to stir the surface snow.
Rath’s logic was reasonable. It was always reasonable, Klaus reflected. His special-projects director could find excuses for murder and torture and make it sound sensible, as if there was no other way. But there were always other ways — only it had been easier for Raeder to let Rath give in to his brutality. No more. Raeder had just a few minutes left. The boxes would slip from his grasp if the dirigible took off without him. “This is as far as I’m going to let you go, Gunther. Tell the airship pilot to pick us up.”
Raeder’s pistol came out in an easy maneuver, unwavering and deadly.
And then the gun was lying in the snow ten feet away and Klaus Raeder’s arm was numb from fingertips to elbow.
Klaus Raeder looked first at his limp hand and then at the gun and finally at Gunther Rath. Expecting the pistol to paralyze Rath, Raeder had not anticipated the lightning kick that sent the automatic flying. Rath stood implacably, a trace of a smile on his face as if inviting Raeder to dive for the weapon. He was closer by ten feet, but when he peered beyond Greta and Rath, Raeder saw that the workers who’d emptied the Pandora cavern had watched the one-sided confrontation. And each man was armed with either an assault rifle or a pistol. The guns in the back of the Sno-Cat weren’t the only ones Rath had brought to the area. Raeder realized too that he didn’t have the men’s loyalty. They were Rath’s.
“Klaus, I don’t blame you for trying to stop me. I think I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t.” Gunther picked up the fallen pistol and handed it to Greta.