calculating the exact arrival time of the expected hurricane winds and tidal waves. Nor can I predict their initial strength. But if they reach the Ulrich Wolf before our flight can land, I fear the result can only lead to tragedy.'
'Are you saying we're all going to die?' demanded Elsie.
'I'm saying we won't know until the time comes,' Holtz said soberly.
'We'll never have time to transfer the Amenes artifacts from the damaged planes after Bruno arrives,' said Karl, staring distraught at the family's personal executive jet, sitting broken like a child's toy 'We'll take only relics of the Third Reich.'
'I'm going to need every able-bodied male and female who can shoot a weapon.' The voice came from behind Karl. It was Hugo, whose black uniform was splattered with blood from the dead guard who'd failed to tell him of the havoc in the hangar. 'I realize we have many frightened and disoriented people on our hands, but if we are to survive until rescued by our brothers and sisters at the shipyard, we must hold out against the American fighting force.'
'How many of your fighting men have survived?' asked Karl.
'I'm down to twelve. That's why I require all the reserves I can find.'
'Do you have enough weapons for us all?'
Hugo nodded. 'Guns and ammo can be found in the arsenal room at the entrance of the hangar.'
'Then you have my permission to recruit any and everyone who wants to see their loved ones again.'
Hugo looked his brother in the eyes. 'It is not my place, brother, to ask them to fight and die. You are the leader of our new destiny. You are whom they respect and venerate. You ask, and they will follow.'
Karl stared into the faces of his brother and two sisters, seeing his own expression of foreboding in their eyes. With a mind as cold as an iceberg and a heart of stone, he had no misgivings about ordering his people to lay down their lives so that he and his siblings might survive.
'Assemble them,' he said to Elsie, 'and I will tell them what they must do.'
Leaving four of his men who were not hurt seriously to tend the wounded and stand guard over the surviving security guards, Cleary and twenty-two able-bodied men of his remaining team, led by Pitt and Giordino, who knew the way to the hangar, entered the main tunnel in tactical formation, with two of Garnet's Delta Force acting as forward flanking scouts.
Lieutenant Jacobs was more than surprised to meet up with Pitt and Giordino again, and even more amazed to find that they were the madmen who'd driven the Snow Cruiser into the battle zone only minutes before Cleary and his men would have ended up like Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn.
Moving cautiously, the column rounded the first bend in the tunnel and moved past the deserted construction equipment and the doorways leading into the empty storerooms. Walking through the ice tunnel seemed far different to Pitt and Giordino than when they had careened through it in the Snow Cruiser. Pitt smiled to himself at seeing the long gouges in the ice caused by his reckless driving when escaping the armored Sno- cat.
When they reached an abandoned tow vehicle, attached to a small train of four flatbed cars that had been used to haul supplies and cargo throughout the tunnel labyrinth, they halted their advance and used the equipment for cover, as Cleary questioned Pitt and Giordino.
'How far to the hangar from here?' he asked.
'About another five hundred yards before the tunnel opens into it,' Pitt answered.
'Is there any place between here and there they could set up a barricade?'
'Every ten feet, if they had the time and blocks of ice. But I doubt they could have built anything substantial in the few short minutes since they lost their battle for the facility.' He pointed down on the ice. Besides the rotund indentations from the tires of the Snow Cruiser, the only other tracks came from a single snowmobile and the footprints of several men that suggested that they had been running from the battle.
'Can't be more than a dozen security guards left. If they intend to mount a defense, it will have to be within a hundred yards of the hangar.'
'Don't forget the Sno-cat,' said Giordino quietly, 'the one you didn't mash into scrap.'
'There's another one of those devilish vehicles still lurking around?' growled Cleary.
Pitt nodded. 'Very well could be. What's in your traveling arsenal that can disable it?'
'Nothing that will penetrate its armor,' Cleary admitted.
'Hold up your men, Major. I think I see something that might be of use.'
Pitt rummaged around in the toolbox of the tow vehicle until he came up with an empty fuel can. He found a steel pry bar and used it to perforate the top of the can. Then he took the bar and punched the bar through the bottom of the tow vehicle's fuel tank. When the can was full, he held it up. 'Now all we need is an igniting device.'
Lieutenant Jacobs, who was observing Pitt's actions, reached into his pack and retrieved a small flare gun used for signaling purposes at night or in foul weather. 'Will this do?'
'Like a beautiful woman and a glass of fine Cabernet,' said Pitt.
Cleary raised his arm and swung it forward. 'Let's move out.'
There were no haunting fears of the unknown now, no urgencies or trepidations. Flankers moving like cats, followed by men unshakable and committed, bent on avenging friends who'd died back at the control center, they advanced into the tunnel like wraiths under the obscure light refracting through the ice. Pitt felt a swell of pride, knowing that he and Giordino were accepted by such men as equals.
Suddenly, the flankers motioned a halt. Everyone froze, listening. An engine's exhaust faintly heard in the distance signaled the approach of a vehicle. Soon the sound grew louder and echoed through the tunnel. Then twin lights appeared, their beams dancing on the ice before rounding the bend.
'The Sno-cat,' Pitt announced calmly. 'Here it comes.' He pointed at one of the nearby empty storerooms. 'I suggest you and your men get inside quickly before we're all exposed by the headlights.'
A terse, quiet command, and twenty seconds later, every man was inside the storeroom, with the door cracked open an inch. The lights grew brighter as the Sno-cat trod its way through the tunnel. Just behind the storeroom door, Pitt crouched with the fuel can clutched in both hands. Behind him, Jacobs stood poised and ready to fire the flare pistol, and behind him, the entire team primed and ready to pour from the storeroom and lay down a hail of lethal fire on the occupants of the Sno-cat or any guards who might be following on foot.
Timing was critical. If Pitt threw the can too soon or too late and the guards inside survived, the entire Special Force team was trapped inside the storeroom like ducks in a closet, and would be wiped out in less time than it would take to tell about it. Jacobs had to be on target, too. A miss and it was all over.
The Sno-cat came closer. Pitt judged its speed at about ten miles an hour. The driver was moving cautiously. Through the narrow slit between the door and frame, he saw no sign of guards following the vehicle on foot. 'She's coming too fast for support to follow behind,' Pitt reported softly to Cleary. 'My guess is they're on a scouting mission.'
'They carry four men,' Cleary murmured. 'I know that much.'
Pitt shied his head and closed his eyes to keep from being temporarily blinded by the bright lights of the Sno-cat. It was so close now he could hear its treads crunch against the icy floor of the tunnel. With infinite caution, without using any sudden movement that might catch the eye of the vehicle's occupants, he inched the door open. The front end of the Sno-cat was now close enough to the storeroom that he could hear the muted beat of its engine. Nimbly, focused, and precise, he threw the door open, raised himself to his full height and hurled the gas can into the open compartment of the Sno-cat. Then, without the slightest suggestion of a pause, he ducked to his side and dropped to the ice.
Jacobs was not one to let the grass grow under his feet. He was aiming the flare pistol before Pitt cast aside the door. A millimeter's adjustment and he fired, the shell missing Pitt's head by the width of two fingers a heartbeat after the fuel can sailed into the open Sno-cat and splashed its contents inside.
The interior erupted in a holocaust of flame. The horrified guards, their uniforms ablaze, leaped from the Sno-cat and rolled frantically on the ice to smother the fire. Even if they had been successful, their lives would not have been spared. The men of Cleary's command who had suffered so appallingly from the guards earlier were not in a benevolent mood. They burst from the storeroom and put the guards out of their agony in a flurry of gunfire. The Sno-cat, now hardly identifiable as a mechanical transport, lurched driverless through the tunnel, grazing the slick walls of ice that did little to slow it down.
