Harry Brock was a crown prince. Harry had walked the walk, Hawke knew. He just hadn’t swum the swim.
Five minutes later, Hawke held up his hand, signaling Brock to stop. They were hanging twenty feet below the surface, a few hundred yards from the docks, and the sound of the patrol boat’s twin screws was rapidly growing louder. She was headed straight for them.
The underwater sound was, for Hawke, a most unpleasant reminder of the incident aboard the USS Lincoln. The two men hung in the water and watched the patrol boat approach and slide overhead. The underside of the fifty-foot hull was clearly visible as it passed above. Both watched intently, instinctively holding their breath despite the re-breathers. If she made a left turn north toward Point Arras, they had serious problems.
Captain Ali and Ahmed would be caught completely unawares. They were both clever and resourceful men, but what plausible and speedy explanation could be offered for Cacique’s presence in the little cove so near the fort? And if they were suddenly boarded by armed French sailors, would one of them have the presence of mind to quickly duck below and hide or remove any incriminating evidence of documents and equipment? It wasn’t likely that there would be time.
The two men in the water breathed a sigh of relief. The patrol boat had turned right and away from Cacique. She was steaming south along the coast. Still, they had less than an hour to complete their mission and get back to the boat. They swam for the fort.
“Shit,” Brock whispered under his breath as they broke the surface simultaneously.
“Now what?”
They had surfaced as planned under the steel dock. No one had seen or shot at them. But the water was thick with jellyfish. Hawke himself could feel a few stinging welts rising across his cheek and the back of his neck. Portuguese man-of-wars. A few more of these electrifying stings could send a man into a state of shock. He decided not to tell Brock about that part.
“One of them get to you, Harry?” Hawke asked.
“Yeah. Damn it.”
“When you get back to the boat, rub some of your own piss on the welts. It’ll take the sting away.”
“What?”
“Trust me. I think the opening is just below me. I can feel it with my flipper.”
“Yeah, I feel it, too.”
“Go. I’ll mark the spot and catch up inside.”
“Kick ass. Loot and shoot.”
“Kick ass? No, Harry, we—”
Brock had disappeared below the surface. Hawke took out his assault knife and carved three horizontal slashes in the barnacles on the piling. The entrance below was now clearly marked but out of sight on the inside of the piling. He checked his stainless-steel watch. This was mean high tide. At dead low, a few hours from now, the opening in the rock would be large enough to accommodate a lighter full of men and ammo. Or an outbound vessel loaded with rescued hostages.
Then, as the tide came back in, the opening would disappear. The timing on this operation was going to very interesting.
Hawke dove down, used his knife again to mark the entrance with three slashes just above the arch, and swam inside.
He and Brock were not heavily armed. Hawke himself carried only a compass, a plumb line, and a depth gauge in addition to his knife. They weren’t here to kick ass, Hawke was thinking as he swam toward the phosphorescence that marked Brock’s rapid progress inside the tunnel. No. They were here to run away and fight another day.
Namely, tomorrow. That’s when Stokely would arrive. Along with his deadly friends from Martinique, the antiterrorist team known as Thunder and Lightning. Tonight’s objective was solely to reconnoiter the powder magazine and find a safe way inside the fortress. To figure out precisely how to kick ass when they came back. And get the women and children out safely.
Loot and shoot? That’s what Harry had said.
Hawke swam faster.
A loose cannon was one thing. But a loose cannon without a cannon was another matter entirely. Hawke made another mental note: Keep an eye on Harry.
Chapter Forty-five
Die Unterwelt
THE TUNNEL WAS DANK AND CLAUSTROPHOBIC. THE STONE walls were cold to the touch, wet. The ground beneath Stoke’s boots felt like loose shale, pockmarked with puddles. Jet led the way with a small halogen light from the SLR’s emergency roadside kit. Blondi ran ahead, sniffing the ground. Every fifty feet or so there was an alcove with an exit door. All the doors were painted the same faded luminous green. These exits to nowhere still glowed faintly in the dark, a century after they had been installed.
There were exposed pipes and pneumatic tubes running overhead. Strange egg-shaped lanterns were mounted on rusted steel frames attached to the walls, every twenty feet or so. Now and then you’d see hand- cranked ventilators beneath the egg lamps. Stoke stopped a second and tried one. It made a creaking sound, but it turned and he could feel a slight suction from the grate. Still operable, Jet said. They’d been installed in World War I. Their purpose was to thwart any lethal gases an enemy might unleash in the tunnels.
There was, Stoke learned, an extensive network of bunkers and abandoned tunnels beneath the Tempelhof airfield. All were laid with small-gauge railroad track. Smaller tunnels like this one led off to a vast system of bunkers beneath the city of Berlin. And connected with even larger tunnels that could actually accomodate automobile traffic.
“During the war,” Jet said, her words bouncing off the dripping stone walls, “Goering used his big Mercedes staff car to commute out here in secret. Every day, he was driven out from his Luftwaffe headquarters on Wilhelm Strasse in Berlin. This tunnel is seven kilometers long.”
“Yeah? What about these smaller tunnels?” Stoke asked.
“They loop around the entire field. During the war, electric trams ferried ammunition and supplies out to the squadrons. Luftwaffe Junkers and Messerschmitt crews used trams to get out to their aircraft. The idea was to keep as much human activity as possible below ground and away from the eyes of Allied bombardiers.”
“These tracks look new.”
“They are. There’s a tram station about five hundred yards ahead. New high-speed trams. That’s how I get out to my car.”
“Where’s the third rail? For the electric trams, I mean.”
“They’re not electric now. Levitation. Antigravity propulsion.”
“Get out of town.”
“You’ll see for yourself if we have time. When the Allied bombers came, these tunnels and bunkers were used as bomb shelters by millions of Berliners. I imagine you could barely feel the tremors down here.”
“Must have been great,” Stoke said.
After they’d been walking along the tracks for about five minutes, Jet paused at one of the unmarked green doors. “This is it,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Trust me. Where’s Blondi? Kommen Sie hier! Schnell!”
She pushed the green door open and they went inside, Blondi trailing happily behind.
The walls of the large room were lined with triple-bunk beds. In the center of the room, what looked like an operating table. In a corner stood an old toilet. More hand-cranked ventilators. Over the door, in chipped and peeling paint, was the word Wehenzimmer. Stoke paused to look at the sign.
“This was one of the labor rooms for pregnant women,” Jet said. “There were shops, hospitals, breweries, everything you’d need down here in the Unterwelt. Come on, we’re almost there.”
“Where?”
