No time was spent inspecting the death scene. Cleary regrouped his men and got them moving again. Not one man turned and looked back or showed a sign of remorse. They pushed on through the tunnel, anxious to end the nightmare and punish those responsible. With a conscious effort of will, Pitt rose to his feet and leaned on Giordino's rock-strong shoulder for a few steps until his legs worked efficiently again, then set off after Cleary.
When his radio calls to the Sno-cat went unanswered and the sounds of gunfire reverberated from the tunnel, Hugo Wolf assumed the worst. With no more armored vehicles, he had one more hand to play before the Americans reached the hangar and engaged in another free-for-all battle with his eight remaining security guards. He had little confidence in the small army of engineers, who hardly knew how to handle weapons or had the fortitude to shoot down another human, especially a trained professional who was shooting back. What he was about to attempt, Hugo thought morosely, was the last throw of the dice.
He walked over to where Karl, Elsie, and Blondi were conversing with Jurgen Holtz. Karl turned and looked at Hugo, seeing the dark expression. 'Problems, brother?'
'I believe I have lost my last armored Sno-cat and four men who were not expendable.'
'We've got to hold out,' said Elsie. 'Bruno is on his way with two aircraft and is scheduled to arrive five hours from now.'
'Three and a half hours after the ice shelf breaks free,' Holtz remarked. 'The activation sequence for the ice machines has begun and there can be no stopping it.'
Karl swore softly. 'Can we hold out until then?'
Hugo stared at the tunnel leading to the mining facility as if he were expecting an army of phantoms. 'They can't have but a handful of men left. If my guards can eliminate them in the tunnel or at least whittle them down to a pitiful few, then between the rest of us, we easily have enough firepower to stop them for good.'
Karl faced Hugo and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'Regardless of the outcome, brother, I know you will have conducted yourself bravely and with honor.'
Hugo embraced Karl, then moved off to join the last of his guards and lead them into the tunnel. They were followed by a tow vehicle pulling a flatcar loaded with a fifty-five-gallon drum and a large six-foot-diameter fan.
The Special Forces team stopped short of the last bend in the tunnel before it straightened and ran another fifty yards into the hangar. A light mist appeared ahead that seemed to grow thicker as it rolled through the tunnel and began to envelop the men.
'What do you make of it?' Cleary asked Pitt.
'Nothing good. We encountered nothing like it when we passed through here with the Snow Cruiser.' Pitt raised a finger as if testing for wind. 'It's not a natural phenomenon. Not only does it have a strange smell, but it's being sent by some sort of mechanism, probably a large fan.'
'Not poisonous,' said Cleary, sniffing the mist. 'Part of our training is in recognizing toxic gas. My guess is they're laying a harmless chemical on us to screen their movements.'
'Could be they're short on manpower and making a desperation play,' suggested Jacobs, who came up alongside the major.
'Close up,' Cleary ordered his men through his helmet radio. 'We'll keep going. Be ready to take whatever cover you can find, should they advance and fire out of the mist.'
'I don't recommend that course of action,' Pitt warned him.
Cleary simply asked, 'Why?'
Pitt grinned at Giordino. 'I think we've been here before.'
'And done that,' Giordino added.
Pitt stared appraisingly at the mist, then put his hand on Giordino's arm. 'Al, take one of the Major's men, run back to the tow vehicle, and bring back its spare tire.'
Cleary eyes reflected curiosity. 'What good is a tire?'
'A little subterfuge of our own.'
Minutes later, a tremendous detonation tore through the heart of the tunnel. No flame or swirling smoke, but a blinding flash followed by an enormous shock wave that crushed the confined air before it shot away like a missile through a pneumatic tube. The explosive sound came like a giant clap of thunder before it rumbled away and its echoes slowly faded.
Very slowly, stunned by the sheer density of the shock, his ears ringing like cathedral bells, Hugo Wolf and his eight remaining security guards staggered with numbed senses to their feet and began to advance through mounds of fallen ice, expecting to find nothing but the disintegrated bodies of the Americans. The sheer concussion was far beyond what they'd expected, but their hopes were buoyed into thoughts that their enemy had been eliminated.
Rounding the bend and using flashlights to penetrate the remnant of the mist and vapors from the explosion, they slowly moved forward until they could distinguish bodies lying gruesomely in and under the ice dislodged from the tunnel's roof. Hugo's eyes wandered from figure to figure, satisfaction and elation rising inside him at the sight of the dead Americans. Not one had survived. He looked down at two men who were dressed as civilians and wondered who they were and where they had come from. They were lying facedown, and he failed to recognize them as the two men who'd driven the abominable vehicle that had caused so much death and destruction at the control center.
'Congratulations on a great triumph, Mr. Wolf,' one of his guards complimented him.
Hugo slowly nodded. 'Yes, but it was a triumph that came with too high a cost.' Then, mechanically, he and his men turned their backs on the seeming carnage and began walking back to the hangar.
'Freeze!' Cleary shouted.
Hugo and his men whirled around, aghast at seeing dead men suddenly leap to their feet with their guns leveled and trained. He might have surrendered then and there. Any sane man would have seen that resistance could only end in certain death. But Hugo, more on reflex than with a stable mind, threw up his gun to fire, the guards following his action.
The Special Forces weapons roared as one. The security guards managed to fire only a few frenzied rounds before they were cut down. Hugo stumbled backward, stood motionless in his tracks, his face contorted as he dropped his gun and stared through shocked and glazed eyes at the neatly spaced bullet holes that crossed the stomach of his black uniform from chest to waist. Finally, with sick certainty that he had failed, and knowing he had only a few seconds to live, he crumpled to the ground.
The gunfire had died away, and Jacobs, followed cautiously by his men, began inspecting the bodies and removing all weapons clutched in dead hands. Pitt, with his Colt hanging loosely in his right hand, came over and knelt at Hugo's side. The leader of the Wolf family's annihilated security force became aware of a presence and stared up expressionlessly.
'How did you know?' he murmured.
'Your people used the same booby-trap trick on me in the mine in Colorado.'
'But the explosion…?'
Pitt knew the man was going, and he had to get it in fast. 'We rolled the spare tire and wheel from a tow vehicle down the tunnel, tripping the wire to your explosive charge. We then took cover in a storeroom. Immediately after the blast, we ran out and scattered ourselves in the ice debris caused by the concussion and played dead.' 'Who are you?' he whispered. 'My name is Dirk Pitt.' The eyes widened briefly. 'Not you,' he whispered. Then the eyes froze open and his head slumped to the side.
46
The explosion, followed by a storm of gunfire, resounded through the tunnel and into the hangar like thunder rumbling from the other end of a drainage pipe. Then the racket abruptly stopped and the sounds ebbed, until an ominous silence spread and hung heavy inside the hangar. Minutes passed, with everyone standing frozen, staring into the yawning darkness, waiting with uneasy trepidation. Then the eerie stillness was broken by the approaching sound of footsteps echoing along the ice floor of the tunnel.
