and twenty feet. How deep the ventilator was filled, I can't say. We could break through in the next foot or we might have to fight to the last inch.'
'I'll settle for the next foot,' said Macklin. 'This mist isn't going to shield us much longer.'
'Any sign of the Americans?'
'Only the sound of vehicles somewhere behind the hill.'
Shaw lit another of his special cigarettes. It was his last one. 'I should have thought they'd be swarming over the hillside before now.'
'They'll get a jolly hot reception when they show,' said Macklin, almost cheerfully.
'I hear American jails are overcrowded,' Caldweiler muttered. 'I don't relisly spending the rest of my life in one.'
Shaw grinned. 'Should be a piece of cake for a man of your experience to tunnel out.'
Caldweiler knocked the ashes out of his pipe. 'Nothing like looking at the fun side. Though in all seriousness, I can't help wondering what in bloody hell I'm doing here.'
'You volunteered like the rest of us,' Macklin said.
Shaw exhaled a lungful of smoke. 'If you live long enough to return to England, the Prime Minister himself will pin a medal on you.' All for tearing up a scrap of paper?'
'That scrap of paper is more important than you'll ever know.'
'For what it's going to cost us in blood and sweat, it'd damned well better be,' groused Caldweiler.
A small convoy of armored personnel carriers rolled to a stop. An officer in battle dress leaped from the lead vehicle and shouted an order. A stream of marines, clutching automatic weapons, poured to the ground and began assembling in squads.
The officer, who had an eye for authority, walked straight up to the admiral.
'Admiral Sandecker?'
Sandecker fairly beamed at the recognition. 'At your service.'
'Lieutenant Sanchez.' The arm snapped in a salute. 'Third Marine Force Reconnaissance.'
'Glad to see you.' Sandecker returned the salute.
'My orders were unclear as to our deployment.'
'How many men do you have?'
'Three squads. Forty including myself.'
'All right, one squad to cordon off the immediate area, two to patrol the woods around the hill.'
'Yes, sir.'
'And Lieutenant. We don't know what to expect. Tell your men to tread with a light foot.'
Sandecker turned and walked to the escape shaft. The last bar of the grating had been cut away. The diving team stood ready to pierce the heart of the hill. A curious silence fell over everyone. They all stared at the black opening as though it was a sinister doorway to hell.
Pitt had donned an exposure suit and was cinching the harness of his air tank. When he was satisfied everything was in order, he nodded to Riley and the dive team. 'Okay. Let's make a night probe.'
Sandecker looked at him. 'A night probe?'
'An old diver's term for exploring the dark of underwater caves.'
Sandecker looked grim. 'Take no chances and stay healthy…...'
'Keep your fingers crossed I hope you find the treaty in there.'
'Both hands. The other is in case Shaw gets in before you do.'
'Yes,' said Pitt wryly. 'There is always that.'
Then he entered the beckoning portal and was swallowed up in blackness.
The old escape route from the main quarry sloped downward into the bowels of the hill. The walls were seven feet high and showed the scars from the miners' picks. The air was moist with the faint but ominous smell of a mausoleum. After about twenty yards, the passageway curved and all light was lost from the outside.
The dive lights were switched on, and Pitt, followed by Riley and three men, continued on, their footsteps echoing into the eternal darkness ahead.
They passed an empty ore car, its small iron wheels joined in rusting bond to narrow rails. Several picks and shovels stood neatly stacked in a chiseled niche as though waiting for calloused hands to grasp their handles again. Nearby were other artifacts: a broken miner's lamp, a sledgehammer and the faded, stuck-together pages of a Montgomery Ward catalog. The pages were frozen open on advertisements displaying upright player pianos.
Ajumble of fallen rocks blocked their way for twenty minutes until they cleared a path. Everyone kept a suspicious eye trained on the rotting timbers that sagged under the weight of the crumbling roof No word was spoken while they worked. The un communicated fear of being crushed by a cave-in chilled their minds. Finally they wormed their way past the barrier and found the tunnel floor covered by several inches of water.
When their knees became submerged, Pitt stopped and held up a hand. 'The water level will be over our heads before long,' he said. 'I think the safety team better set up operations here.'
Riley nodded. 'I agree.'
The three divers, who were to remain behind in case of an emergency, began stacking the reserve air tanks and securing the end of an orange fluorescent cord that was wound around a large reel. As they arranged the gear, the dive lights danced spasmodically on the passage walls, and their voices seemed alien and magnified.
When Pitt and Riley had removed their hiking boots and replaced them with swim fins, they grabbed hold of the reel and continued on, unwinding the safety line as they went.
The water soon came to their waists. They halted to adjust their face masks and clamp their teeth on the mouthpieces of the air regulators. Then they dropped into the liquid void.
Below the surface it was cold and gloomy. Visibility was amazingly sharp, and Pitt felt a shiver of almost superstitious awe when he spied a tiny salamander whose eyes had degenerated to the point of total blindness. He marveled that any kind of life form could exist in such entombed isolation.
The quarry's escape shaft seemed to stretch downward like a great sloping, bottomless pit. There was something malignant about it, as though some cursed and unmentionable force lurked in the shadowy depths beyond the beams of the dive lights.
After ten minutes by Pitt's dive watch they stopped and took stock. Their depth gauges registered 105 feet. From beneath his face mask Pitt's eyes studied Riley. The dive master made a brief check of his air pressure gauge and then nodded an okay to keep going.
The shaft began to widen into a cavern and the sides turned a dirty gold color. They had finally passed into a gallery of the limestone quarry. The floor leveled out and Pitt noted that the depth had slowly risen to sixty feet. He aimed his light upward. The beam reflected on what looked like a blanket of quicksilver. He ascended like a ghost in flight and suddenly broke into air.
He had surfaced in an air pocket below the ceiling of a large domed chamber. A crowd of stalactites fell around him like icicles, their conical tips ending inches above the water. Too late, Pitt ducked under to warn Riley.
Unable to see because of the surface reflection, Riley rammed his face mask into the tip of a stalactite, shattering the glass. The bridge of his nose was gashed and his eyelids were sliced. He would not know until later that the lens of his left eye was gone.
Pitt threaded his way through the cone-shaped trunks and gripped Riley under the arms.
'What happened?' Riley mumbled. 'Why are the lights out?'
'You met the wrong end of a stalactite,' said Pitt. 'Your dive light is broken. I lost mine.'
Riley did not buy the lie. He removed a glove and felt his face. 'I'm blind,' he said matter-of-factly.
'Nothing of the sort.' Pitt eased off Riley's mask and gently picked away the larger glass fragments. The dive master skin was so numb from the icy water that he felt no pain. 'What rotten luck. Why me?'
'Stop complaining. A couple of stitches and your ugly mug will be as good as new.'
'Sorry to screw things up. I guess this is as far as we go.'
'You go.'
'You're not heading back?'
'No, I'm pushing on.'
'How's your air?'
'Ample.'
