Two Graves

74

PAST THE CAVE-IN, THE TUNNEL RAN IN A BROAD CURVE around the inside of the fortress’s curtain wall, laboratories on the left, the massive wall itself to the right. It was the major route of movement along this lower level of the fortress: a dangerous place to be. The key, Pendergast decided, would be to go deeper still, where they might be able to escape into the labyrinth of underground passageways, dungeons, cells, and storage rooms. It was the area where Pendergast had initially been confined, but he had not explored it further during his quick reconnaissance of the fortress, believing it irrelevant.

Now it was most relevant. Indeed, it was their only chance.

Already he could hear a group of men running toward them, the clatter of rifles and the regular thud of boots echoing down the stone passageway. A laboratory door stood to their left, inset into a stone alcove, but it was locked and there was no time for Pendergast to pick it. With hand signals, he gestured for the colonel and his men to press themselves against both walls, drop to their knees, and level their rifles toward the approaching soldiers.

“Fire at will,” he said quietly. The colonel repeated the command in Portuguese.

The footsteps grew closer, echoing around the curve of the tunnel. The small band readied themselves for a point-blank ambush.

In response to a barked order, the approaching soldiers halted, just out of sight. There was a sudden silence. A moment of electric intensity ensued—and then two expertly tossed grenades came bounding off the curved wall, hitting the floor and rolling toward the Brazilians.

Taken by surprise, Pendergast and the others leapt up in a flash, turning and throwing themselves back into the alcove of the laboratory door; the grenades went off simultaneously, an enormous pressure wave in the confined space slamming them backward. One of the Brazilians, not as fast as the others, was caught in the open and vanished in a cloud of blood, flesh, bone, and dust.

Shaking his head to clear it, Pendergast fired into the enveloping dust cloud. He could hear stones falling and realized the soldiers could not advance, at least not immediately, due to the blocks tumbling from the ceiling.

“Retreat!” he said, firing another blast into the dust.

The colonel and his three remaining men ran. Pendergast continued his suppressing fire until they were safely around the curve of the wall, then he followed. A few hundred yards past, he knew, lay a lateral tunnel; he had no idea where it went and was reluctant to chance it, but they now had no choice.

“To the right!” he called ahead. “Direita!”

They took the tunnel, leaving the dust-choked passage behind him. There was no lighting and the colonel’s men pulled out flashlights to see what lay ahead. The tunnel was old and disused, the stones encrusted with niter, the air dead and smelling of mold and decay. They came to an ancient oaken door, banded with rotten iron, wormy with age, which fell to a single blow from a rifle barrel.

Ahead, a circular stone staircase spiraled downward into foul darkness. Behind, they could once again hear the thud of boots.

The staircase had partially collapsed, and they slithered down the broken, tumbled, slimy stones until they arrived at the lowest level of the fortress. They raced down a long tunnel that began at the base of the stairway, the sound of their pursuers not far behind.

At length the tunnel branched, then opened into a large, domed space. At the center of this space was a most unusual sight: a freestanding steel cage about fifteen feet square, securely locked. It was not fixed to the ground: rather, it was constructed around what appeared to be a deep, natural fissure in the undressed floor of the fortress’s sub-basement. Filling the fissure, and rising up to fill the cage as well, were countless boxes of weapons, grenades, shells, gunpowder casings, stamped with swastikas and warnings exhorting that the contents were very dangerous—SEHR GEFÄHRLICH. This appeared to be the central ammo dump of the fortress, located as a protective measure deep, deep within its bowels.

So their original plan, to detonate the ammo dump, would have been doomed to failure in any case: it was placed too deeply in the fortress to have blown open an entrance for the colonel and his men.

But there was no time for further examination, and they passed through the space into another passage leading out the far side.

Soon this passage came to a T, then branched again, lined with rows of empty cells, the rotting remains of wooden doors lying on the damp ground. An ancient skeleton, streaked with copper salts, was chained to one wall. Water leaked down the walls, and puddles lay on the cindery floor, which—Pendergast noted—was most unfortunately preserving the footprints of their passage.

Now the grunt of running men, the thud of boots, grew ever closer.

“We’ve got to kill those men,” the colonel said.

“An excellent suggestion,” Pendergast replied. “Grenades, please.”

He pulled out the last of his grenades, nodded to the colonel; as they ran, following Pendergast’s lead, the colonel and his three remaining men all pulled the pins from their own grenades, keeping the spoons in position. As a corner in the tunnel loomed ahead, Pendergast gave a sharp nod; they released the spoons simultaneously as they dropped the grenades into the soft cinders, turned the corner, and threw themselves to the ground.

“How do you say it in English?” the colonel muttered. “Payback is a bitch.”

“Douse all lights,” Pendergast whispered in return.

Seconds later, multiple explosions ripped the tunnel directly around the corner, almost deafening them. Immediately Pendergast was on his feet, gesturing for the others to follow; they charged back around the corner, where confused, dim flashlight beams could be seen here and there amid falling rubble. They fired frantically into the massive dust cloud, aiming at the lights, the return fire ineffectual and chaotic.

In a few moments it was over. Their pursuers were dead, the dust was settling in the damp air. Turning on his own flashlight, Pendergast played it over the dead: six soldiers in simple gray uniforms with only one small insignia in the shape of an Iron Cross. But the seventh, clearly the leader, was wearing an old Nazi uniform, the feldgraue field uniform of the Waffen-SS, with a few latter-day additions.

“Babaca!” the colonel said, kicking the body. “Look at that son of a whore, playing Nazi. Que bastardo.”

Pendergast briefly examined the uniformed officer, then turned his attention to the other dead: half a dozen fine-looking young men, ripped apart by the explosions and gunfire, their blue eyes staring sightlessly this way and that, mouths open in surprise, delicate hands still on their weapons. He bent down, retrieved another magazine and a spare grenade. The others similarly replenished their own supplies.

And then there was only silence, save for the slow cadence of dripping water. The smell of blood and death mingled with the muck, mold, and decay. But into the silence came the sound of rustling. The explosion had dislodged a section of the massive wall, and now insects, disturbed from their resting places, were slithering and crawling out, many falling from the ceiling—oily centipedes, white vinegaroons with spiked pedipalps, giant earwigs with greasy pincers, albino scorpions clacking their claws, furry leaping spiders.

With an oath the colonel brushed an insect from his shoulder.

“We must get out of here,” Pendergast said. “Now.”

Then something strange happened. One of the colonel’s soldiers gasped, turned—and pulled a bloody throwing knife from his chest, staring at it in astonishment before collapsing to his knees.