From outside, voices: “Helfen Sie mir!” Help me!
Tanner shined the light about. Above their heads the doors were fitted with steel L-brackets; to the right, mounted on a hinge in the jam, was a cross brace. It was held in place by a loop of wire.
“Can you hold?” Tanner asked Cahil.
Bear grunted. “Not for long.”
“Five seconds.”
With his back pressed to the door, Tanner slid upward, dug in his pocket for his folding knife, then opened the blade. He slipped the blade beneath the wire and began sawing.
The doors bucked inward a few inches. Cahil slammed them shut.
With a twang, the wire split. Tanner pulled the cross brace down into the brackets. “Okay, let it go.”
Cahil did so. The doors bucked again, but the brace held. The pounding and shouting continued for twenty seconds, then stopped. Briggs could hear murmuring from the other side.
“Looking for another way in,” he whispered.
Cahil nodded. “If we found one, they will.”
Tanner shined the flashlight around. “What is this place?”
“The Ligne de Fantôme,” Cahil replied. In the relative quiet, their voices echoed off the walls. “The Ghost Line.”
The Ghost Line, Tanner thought, trying to recall where he’d heard the phrase before. “Another tidbit from Fodor’s?” he asked.
“Baedeker’s.”
Then Tanner remembered: The Ligne de Fantôme was the nickname for the Quily portion of the Maginot Line — or at least that had been the original intention when France and Great Britain had begun its construction prior to World War Two.
In 1929, with memories of the First World War fresh in its collective mind, the French government began building an underground line of interlinked bunkers, gun emplacements, and fortresses, or ouvrages, along its eastern frontier, where they were certain another German invasion would eventually come. Each ouvrage consisted of gun cupolas, artillery turrets, underground power plants, barracks, and rail lines for transporting troops and munitions to adjoining forts.
The main Maginot Line, which stretched from Switzerland to the Ardennes in the north and from the Alps to the Mediterranean in the south, was to be France’s answer to Germany’s advantage in manpower and equipment.
However, in the spring of 1940 the Maginot Line was rendered obsolete as Hitler’s blitzkrieg went over, around, and on occasion through the line, battering France into submission in a matter of months.
The little known Ghost Line, a joint venture between France and Great Britain, had been envisioned as not only a fallback position for the French Army, but also as an unassailable beachhead for British reinforcement troops crossing the channel. With the collapse of France, construction of the Quily Line ceased, and for the past sixty-three years the three-kilometer-long redoubt had sat deserted in the middle of the French countryside.
“According to the article,” Cahil whispered, “it never saw any action.”
“Until now,” Tanner replied. “I don’t suppose the guide had any ‘you are here’ maps.”
“ ’Fraid not.”
On either side of the doors a steel ladder ascended the side of one of the towers — which Tanner now recognized as 75mm gun cupolas — and ended at the opening to the dome itself. At the base of each ladder was a hatch which Tanner assumed was a munitions elevator. Down the tunnel to their right, they would find the next cupola and another set of doors. To their left lay the entrance to a catwalk ladder shaft.
The floor was littered with piles of shoring timbers, cement blocks, and the occasional hand tool, as though the workers had dropped what they were doing and run — which, given the speed of the German invasion, may have been exactly what happened. Somewhere in the distance came the sound of water dripping.
“What’s the plan?” Cahil asked.
“Find a way out, steal their car, and run,” Tanner replied.
“Just like that?”
“I’m an optimist.”
In truth, Tanner wasn’t hopeful about grabbing the Mercedes. Nor did the idea of taking on six armed Spetsnaz soldiers appeal to him. Their best chance was to elude the Germans, find an exit, and slip undetected into the French countryside while their pursuers scoured the complex for them.
“Do you remember how many levels in the complex?” Tanner asked.
Cahil thought for a moment. “Six — eighty feet from ground level to the bottom. Munitions magazines on the lowermost level, then the power plant and sewer system, then barracks and supplies on the ones above. What’re you thinking?”
“Go all the way to the bottom and start running. We get ahead of them, then climb back up and find another exit. It’s three kilometers to the end; multiply that by six levels and they’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
Bear made a flourish toward the stairwell. “After you.”
They jogged to the ladder and started down. As Tanner’s foot touched the third step, he felt a tremor run through the steel. He froze. With a wrenching sound, the catwalk began swaying. After a few moments it stopped. Slowly, gingerly, Tanner lifted his flashlight and played it over the walls.
Steel bolts connected the ladder to the wall. Without exception, the head of each was a misshapen lump of rust. Tanner touched one with his fingertip. It trembled, then slipped halfway from its hole, exposing rusted threads. The catwalk shuddered.
“Please don’t do that again,” Cahil muttered.
“Sorry.”
“What’s your preference?” Cahil asked. “Fast or slow?”
From above, they heard a crash and a reverberating gong. “They found your cinder block,” Briggs said. “I vote for fast.”
“Me, too.”
Tanner took a deep breath, shined the flashlight ahead of him, then began running. He took the steps two at a time, one hand on the rail for support. With each footfall the ladder trembled and groaned. Briggs felt a momentary wave of dizziness, but shook it off and kept going. At his back, he could hear Cahil panting out a mantra: “Hold together, baby, hold together…”
As they passed the fourth level, Tanner cast a glance upward and immediately regretted it. The upper catwalks were swaying from side to side, banging into the walls. Concrete dust drifted down like fine snow. Bolts and chunks of railing bounced down the ladder, clanging as they fell.
Tanner saw the bottom of the stairs come into view. He called “Jump,” then leapt off the top step. He hit the concrete floor, curled into a ball, and let himself roll to a stop. A few feet away, Cahil was rising to his knees.
“Okay?” Tanner asked.
“Yep.”
Up the ladder shaft, voices called out: “Wo sind sie?… Welcher Weg?”
A circle of light appeared at the top of the shaft. Tanner could just make out the dim outline of a face peering down at them. “Hier!” a voice called.
Tanner clicked off his flashlight. He and Cahil backed into the shadows. “We’ve got to move,” he whispered. “They’ll try to cut us off.”
“Ready when you are.”
Footsteps pounded on the catwalk, which gave out a groan. The footsteps stopped. A panicked German voice called, “Ach, Gott!”
Tanner and Cahil crept down the tunnel a few feet. Tanner clicked on his flashlight and played it ahead, looking for obstacles. There were none. He clicked off the light. “When we get past the next shaft, I’ll check again,” he whispered.
Cahil nodded. “Pray the rest of the ladders are bad.”