The Hunt

73

Standing to one side, in case whoever was behind the door tried to open fire, Jaeger shrugged off his pack and readied a charge of PE4. Contrary to popular myth, trying to shoot open a lock was not a smart idea, especially when using a handgun or an assault rifle.

As soon as you opened fire, those on the other side of the doorway would know you were coming. Nothing like advertising your intentions. And even if you did manage to shoot up the lock, more often than not you’d jam the working parts, fragments of shattered bullet lodging in the lock’s innards. Plus rounds hitting a steel lock at close quarters would spit out chunks of shrapnel, threatening to injure the shooter.

Jaeger had learnt that much on day one of SAS room-clearance drills. A metal-reinforced door such as this would require a special ‘thread-cutter’ shotgun, which fired a solid twelve-bore slug. And right now, they didn’t have any such weapon to hand.

It was just as easy to blow it using a shaped charge of PE4.

Jaeger moulded the explosives to where the door’s hinges met the frame. The detonation would cut them in two, as well as blast the wood apart. The combined effect should tear the door outwards, its very weight ripping it free.

Charges set, he triggered the thirty-second fuse, and he and Narov took cover in an adjacent room. There was a sharp explosion, followed by a thick cloud of smoke and debris billowing along the corridor. They emerged from cover to find the door hanging at a crazy angle, the lock struggling in vain to keep it in position.

Even as they approached, weapons in the aim, the lock gave way and the door tumbled outwards with an almighty crash. Jaeger was the first through, Diemaco levelled and flashlight piercing the smoke-filled interior.

The first thing that struck him was the faces: row upon row, eyes wide with terror. Desperate voices were crying out frantically in what Jaeger figured had to be Chinese. His flashlight flitted over the crouched figures, hands raised and panic etched across their features.

It was instantly clear that this sad mass of humanity were workers, not soldiers.

They were dressed in ragged, stained boiler suits, and looked underfed and in terrible condition. Jaeger was suddenly aware of the stench in the room. It reeked of unwashed bodies. Sickness. Fear. There were dirty mattresses lying against one wall, plus a battered toilet bucket.

What the hell had Kammler been running here? Some kind of slave camp?

‘Any of you speak English?’ he barked. ‘English?’

‘Me,’ a nervous figure volunteered from the darkness.

Jaeger’s eyes came to rest upon the man who had spoken. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Chinese workers. Locked up. To stop escape.’ The speaker gestured at the others. ‘We all try escape. Boss catch us and lock us here. He make us work or we die. Underground. Many people die.’

‘What were you doing underground?’

‘Making chamber. Tunnel. On far side of laboratory.’

Jaeger’s mind flashed back to the St Georgen tunnel complex. Hundreds of thousands had died constructing the Nazi-era labyrinth that honeycombed the Austrian mountains. It looked as if Kammler had been doing something similar here.

The question was, why?

Jaeger sank to his haunches, getting eye to eye with the speaker. The haunted look in the man’s eyes spoke volumes.

‘Why a chamber? What sort of tunnel?’ he pressed.

‘Is shelter. This place attacked, boss stays underground; boss stays safe. Is shelter. And – how you say? Headquarter.’ The speaker pointed to himself. ‘Hing made foreman. All shot if try to escape. Boss is a madman. Hing and his team prisoners. Those the rules.’

Jaeger straightened up. ‘Well they’re not the rules any more. You’re free now. All of you. Go out to the right and down towards the river. Wait there until we’re done, okay.’

Jaeger explained that once he and his team had cleared the entire plant, they’d come back and furnish whatever help they could. For now, though, the workers had to lie low at the riverside.

He paused. ‘But not you, Hing. You’re coming with us.’