In the distance they could hear the rain-swollen Arc River rushing past. Fed from glaciers higher in the mountains, it caused the air to chill as they descended toward its banks. And when they glimpsed it through the trees, the water was a turquoise color because of the sediment left in the ancient glacial ice.
Once they were close enough, the team maintained their spread and started marching toward the Albatross Mine, all the while keeping a lookout for the entrance to the nearly eighty-year-old subterranean fort. They had no idea what to expect, so they looked for anything man-made.
Cabrillo walked closest to the river, so he was the first to spot the two men. They were a hundred yards ahead, both standing on the riverbank and scanning their surroundings through binoculars. He ducked behind an overturned stump but wasn’t fast enough. One of the men saw him and tapped his partner on the shoulder. The two were dressed in typical outdoors gear, but there was nothing woodsy about their demeanor. Neither man was carrying a rifle, but that didn’t mean they weren’t armed.
They started jogging toward Cabrillo’s position. One of them plucked a black rectangular object from a pouch on his belt. Juan was certain it was a radio, and knew if this encounter was reported, the element of surprise would be blown. He also knew that if they got into a gun battle, the sound would echo up and down the valley for miles.
Juan set his rifle down on the ground and slowly got to his feet. He pretended to do up his fly, like the men had just caught him urinating in the woods. It was a ploy that usually made the other guy lower his guard. He could see now that it was definitely a radio. These weren’t innocent hikers but a random patrol of Bahar’s guards. Cabrillo cursed their bad luck because, no matter the outcome, their timetable was in ruins.
When they got closer, he could see both men had dark Semitic features with heavy brows and black hair. One of the men pointed at Cabrillo, then waved him off as if to say he should turn back.
“Is there a problem?” he asked in Spanish, not thinking that either of these guys was a native French speaker.
“You go,” one said, and pointed back up the valley.
“Allez,”the other grunted, his thick accent proving Cabrillo right.
“Hey, hon, what’s going on?” It was Linda Ross, coming down out of the woods and acting like a confused tourist.
Both guards turned to look at her. Cabrillo sprang. He chopped the wrist of the man with the radio, sending the compact unit skittering away, and in the same movement slugged the second guy in the jaw with everything he had. Even as the man was dropping to the ground, his eyes showing nothing but white, his partner recovered enough to start reaching under his coat for a weapon.
Linda bounded at him in a flying leap. She hit him high in the shoulders and used her considerable momentum, and not so considerable weight, to drive him into dirt. She picked up a fist-sized rock from the water’s edge and bashed him across the temple.
In moments, both unconscious men were dosed with sedatives, to keep them out for twenty-four hours, and were gagged and bound at the wrists and ankles. Juan kept their radio but tossed their handguns into the river. The men were then wedged under a fallen tree and covered with brush until they were invisible.
“The mine is going to go on alert when they don’t report in,” Max said.
It was a reminder that Cabrillo didn’t need. He flexed his fingers to ease a little of the pain and stripped the cover off his REC7 assault rifle. It was clear that there weren’t any tourists wandering these woods. He had Eddie contact Linc and his team to tell them that the schedule was out the door and to be ready for anything. Lincoln acknowledged with a double click of his microphone.
They continued sweeping along the riverbank, searching for a bunker or an armored pillbox, but also on the alert for other guards. They’d gone another quarter mile when Max did an uncanny bird whistle. He was halfway up the slope. When Juan arrived, he saw what the French called a cloche, or bell.
It was an immobile armored turret, with machine-gun ports to give the men inside a wide field of fire. Unfortunately, it was cast in too-thick steel to be cut open, and the ports were too small to expand. It sat atop a rust-streaked and dirty concrete foundation that had been there so long, it seemed to blend in with the forest.
“Where there’s one,” Hanley said, “there’s bound to be more.”
And, sure enough, they found two more of the clochesbefore they hit the mother lode. The entrance to the bunker was two solid metal doors set in a concrete frame that projected out of the hillside like a portal into the earth. Above the doors were some faded stenciled numbers that had been this fortification’s designation. The remnants of the road that had once led to the bunker were barely noticeable, but, with a little imagination, it was possible to see it rising up and over the rim of the hill.
The doors themselves had been welded shut with a crude bead of solder that ran from top to bottom.
“Okay, everyone fan out and keep watch,” Cabrillo ordered. “Max, get to it.”
Hanley set his pack onto the ground at the base of the garage-sized doors and started rummaging about while the rest of the team took up surrounding positions to look for more roving patrols. Max molded the puttylike Hypertherm along the weld, making sure to use just enough to melt the solder away. He worked quickly, and within just a couple of minutes he was set and had a detonator in place.
“Ready,” he radioed.
“Push out the perimeter and give me a sit rep,” Juan ordered.
The smoke generated by the chemical reaction would be a dead giveaway, so Cabrillo needed to know it was clear all around them. It took a quarter hour, but he felt relieved that they were alone out here.
When the last all clear came in, he ordered Max to burn the door.
With a sizzling hiss and a glare like looking into the sun, the Hypertherm ate into the weld so that molten metal ran down in dribs and drabs that quickly turned into a fiery torrent. Acrid white smoke as thick as cotton candy billowed over the bunker’s entrance, but with the wind blowing up the valley it was being carried away from the Albatross Mine, which was another mile downstream. When it was over, the seam glowed cherry red.
Max was ready for this and sprayed the seam with liquid nitrogen from the Oregon’s engine room that he had in a vacuum flask. The metal was still hot, but with a pair of thick welder’s gloves he could safely touch it. The right-hand door squealed mercilessly as he heaved it open, and a damp chill oozed out of the ground within. Beyond was a white concrete wall and inky darkness.
“We’re in,” he informed the others.
The rest of the team came in at a jog. Cabrillo was the last to arrive.
“Good job.”
“Was there ever a doubt?” Max held up his meaty hands for the others to admire. “Nothing made by man can resist these babies.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s go.”
Just before Juan stepped over the threshold, the guard’s radio squawked and then a voice came through en clair. “Malik, anything to report?” someone asked in Arabic.
Cabrillo pushed the transmit button. “Nothing.”
“Why did you miss your scheduled call in?”
“My stomach is not well,” Juan ad-libbed.
“See the doctor when your shift ends in an hour.”
“I will. Out.” He tossed the radio aside. “We’ve got one hour before they know we’re here. Let’s put it to good use. Linc, you with me?”
“Go ahead.”
“Give it sixty minutes and light ’em up.”
“Roger that.”
He could only hope they had gained access to the mine itself by then or this was all for nothing. And then there was the second part of this operation, the one MacD had told him about in private after returning from Monte Carlo. It was something that went beyond the pale, but its rewards boggled the imagination. He cursed the name Overholt, and led his people inside.