“Please,” she begged, “not until I have an opportunity to explore what lies beneath the chamber we found. Let me figure out when it was built and by whom. The Nazis didn’t choose this site randomly. They came here because the chamber was already in place! They came here because they suspected what this site truly holds!”
“All the more reason to bury it forever.”
“The Nazis didn’t have time to explore what else might lie down there. If they had, if we could …”
McCracken shook his head.
Melissa turned her impassioned gaze on Wareagle. “Talk to him. Please!”
“He is right,” Johnny said softly. “All that can ever be allowed to emerge from here is what we have seen already. We must prevent any further evil from escaping. Further discoveries can only serve to release more secrets the world is not yet ready to bear.”
Melissa’s eyes bulged in response to the Indian’s last words. “You believe it, then. You believe my father was right. You can feel it. You know it. This really is hell.”
“There are many hells,” Johnny explained after exchanging a quick glance with McCracken. “This is one of them.”
“And I suppose the two of you plan to blow all of them up?” she said cynically.
Blaine looked at Johnny, thinking back to the conversation they’d had before the mansion and the White Death had been destroyed. “The world will never run out of its hells,” he told Melissa.
“Please! You don’t know what you’re doing, I tell you!”
“No, Melly. I think we do.”
They entered the tunnel that led into the storage chamber minutes later, weighted down slightly by the necessary supplies. A work crew hired by McCracken and supervised by Sal Belamo waited back near the find itself to level the land soon to be ruptured and pitted by the explosion. Otherwise, the invitation would always be there for future parties to try to find and explore what Blaine had come to feel quite certain was better left alone. The crew would not only level the land, they would also disguise it so that it would blend in with the rest of the surroundings. Virtually no trace whatsoever of the discovery would be left behind, even to aerial photography.
Melissa insisted on leading the way, for her own good as well as theirs. With the proper equipment and lighting, the trek should have been much easier, but her legs were lead-heavy and her mouth dry beyond water’s ability to help. She waited for them while they set the explosives within and around the chamber, feeling in her heart that far more than its contents would be lost to the world when they were set off. Blaine and Johnny were careful to plant the charges to ensure that the contents of the cavern would be entombed, not exploded, even though samples taken from containers bearing stockpiled nerve and chemical agents had revealed that the years had stripped them of their potency.
The three of them emerged into the light of the dry riverbed with plenty of time to spare, and waited. Remote detonation wouldn’t work, given the logistics involved, so they had set the timers to the one-hour mark. The blast at that moment came as a mere rumble that barely shook the ground about them. It was enough, though, to tell Blaine and Johnny that they had been successful, that the final remnants of the Third Reich had been sealed from the world at last.
And that all doorways leading to what might have lain beneath them had been closed forever.
A Biography of Jon Land
Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-eight novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He wrote techno thrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.
Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel, The Doomsday Spiral, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain our security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.
In 1998 Land published the first novel in his Ben and Danielle series, comprised of fast-paced thrillers whose heroes, a Detroit cop and an Israeli detective, work together to protect the Holy Land, falling in love in the process. He has written seven of these so far. The most recent, The Last Prophecy, was released in 2004.
Recently, RT Book Reviews gave Land a special prize for pioneering genre fiction, and his short story “Killing Time” was shortlisted for the 2010 Dagger Award for best short fiction. Land is currently writing his fourth novel to feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong — a female hero in a genre which, Land has said, has too few of them. The first three books in the series — Strong Enough to Die (2009), Strong Justice (2010), and Strong at the Break (2011) — have all garnered critical praise with Strong Justice being named a Top Thriller of the Year by Library Journal and runner-up for Best Novel of the Year by the New England Book Festival. His first nonfiction book, Betrayal, tells the story of a deputy FBI chief attempting to bring down Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, and will be released in 2011.
Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.
Acknowledgments
With each book the desire to sustain continued improvement makes my reliance on the help of others greater. With this one I start as always at the top with a wondrous agent, Toni Mendez, who has been there since the first beginning and all the ones that have followed. Ann Maurer continues to amaze me with her detailed eye that misses nothing. And Daniel Zitin deserves special commendation for never tolerating anything but my best work possible.
Because of Emery Pineo, of course, I can make anything happen, and because of Walt Mattison (the real Blaine McCracken) it happens with the proper equipment. Mort Korn and Tony Sheppard lent their customary expertise with the early drafts, a feat for which they deserve medals. Nancy Aroche, meanwhile, provided priceless input toward making credible all things archaeological. A special appreciation to the Saltuks for translation of the Turkish passages, and to Dr. Dennis Karambelas for unlocking the mysteries of the eye.
For geographical assistance along the way, I am indebted to Tom Holleb for his help with Chicago, especially his father’s house; Michael Sherman for New Orleans; Skip Trahan for Crystal City and Washington; John Balletto and Kent Thaler for San Francisco. And an extra special acknowledgment to the brilliant translator of my German editions, Uwe Anton, for his help with Germany.
A final thanks go to Art and Martha Joukowsky for suggesting a while back that someday I do “something” with archaeology. That was where the idea for this book was born.