"It's easy to miss," said Franze. "All you can see from the road is a gray painted iron door set into the mountain."
They could see a dark blue Ford panel truck parked up ahead. "There it is," said Franze, "about thirty meters before that truck."
Fitzduane couldn't see anything at first. The entrance was recessed and had weathered into much the same texture as the mountain. Then, when he was practically parallel and Franze was pulling in to park, he saw the iron door. It looked old, from another century, and there was a small grating set in it at eye level.
Franze walked ahead to the truck and peered inside, then walked back to where Fitzduane stood beside the iron door. "Nobody in it," he said. "Probably some deliveryman gone to have a pee."
An unlocked padlock hung from the hasp. Franze eased the door open. It was stiff and heavy but not too hard to handle. It was balanced so that it closed slowly behind them. Ahead lay a corridor long enough for the light from the door grating to get lost in the gloom. Franze looked around for a light switch. He flicked the switch but nothing happened.
"Shit," he said, "I didn't bring a flashlight. Still, it's not far."
It was cool but dry in the corridor. Fitzduane felt something crunch underfoot. It sounded like glass from a light bulb. "What's the layout?" he asked. The corridor curved, and the last vestiges of light from the grating vanished.
"This passage runs for about another forty meters and then splits into three," said Franze. "The cheese storage is on the right, so if you hug the right-hand wall, you can't miss it."
"What about the other passages?"
"The middle cavern is empty, I think," said Franze. "The one on the left is used by the army. You know there are weapons dumps, thousands of them, concealed all over the country."
Fitzduane digested the idea of storing cheese and armaments together and decided it was a nonrunner for Ireland. "Why not give Krane a shout?" he said. "We could do with some light. There seems to be glass everywhere." He thought he could hear voices but very faintly. He paused to listen.
Suddenly there were screams, a series of screams, all the more unsettling for being muffled. The screaming abruptly terminated in a noise that brought memories jarring back into Fitzduane's brain. There was no sound quite like the chunk of a heavy blade biting into human flesh.
"Mein Gott!" said Franze in a whisper. Three was silence apart from his breathing. "Herr Fitzduane, are you armed?"
"Yes." He slid the shotgun from it s case and extended the collapsible metal stock. He pumped an XR-18 round into the chamber and wished he had an opportunity to test-fire a few rounds first. He heard Franze, ten paces ahead of him, work the slide of his automatic.
The darkness was absolute. He tried to picture the layout in his mind. They must be close to where the passage widened and split into three. That would mean some kind of lobby first, more room to maneuver. He felt vulnerable in the narrow passage. There was a slight breeze on his face, and he heard a door opening ahead of him.
"Krane!" shouted Franze, who seemed to have moved forward another couple of paces. He shouted again, and the noise echoed from the stone walls. "Maybe he has had an accident," he said to Fitzduane. "One of those cheese racks may have fallen on him. You stay where you are. I'm going ahead to see."
Fitzduane kept silent; he did not share Franze's optimism. Every nerve ending screamed danger, and he concentrated on the elemental task of staying alive. When it happened, it would happen fast. There was the sound of fumbling. Fitzduane guessed that Franze was looking for a lighter. He moved from crouching on one knee to the prone position and began to wriggle forward in combat infantryman's fashion, using his elbows, holding his weapon ready to fire. Every two or three paces he held his weapon in one hand and with his free hand felt around him. The passage was widening. He moved toward the middle so that he could maneuver in any direction.
Franze's lighter flashed and then went out. Fitzduane could see that Franze, who was right-handed, was holding the lighter in his left hand far out from his body. His automatic was extended at eye level in his right hand. It was not the posture of a man who thought he was investigating a simple industrial accident. Fitzduane hoped that Franze had the combat sense to change positions before he tried the lighter again. As he thought this, he rolled quickly to a fresh location, painfully aware of how exposed they were. Darkness was their sole cover.
He had a sense that there was someone else in the tunnel with them. He could hear nothing, but the feeling was strong and his skin crawled. He wanted to warn Franze, but he remained silent, unwilling to reveal his position, ad prayed that the policeman had detected the intruder as well. He heard the faintest sound of metal rubbing against stone. The sound was to his left, roughly parallel with Franze. His imagination was playing tricks. He heard the sound again and thought he could hear breathing. The hell with appearing a fool, he thought. He heard the sound of Franze's lighter again. The policeman hadn't moved from his original position.
"Drop right, Franze!" he shouted, rolling right as he did so. In a blur of movement he saw that Franze's lighter had flared again. For a split second its light glinted off bloody steel before the lighter tumbled to the ground, still gripped in the fingers of the policeman's severed left arm. Franze screamed, and Fitzduane's mind went numb with shock. The sound of movement down the corridor toward the outer door snapped him back to his senses.
He pushed Franze flat on the cold stone floor as a flash of muzzle blast stabbed toward them and bullets ricocheted off stone and metal. He tried to sink himself into the solid stone. Two further bursts were fired, and he recognized the sound of an Ingram fitted with a silencer. The outer door clanged shut. His left hand was warm and sticky, and Franze was breathing in short, irregular gasps.
He felt again with his left hand. He touched inert fingers and the warm metal of the lighter top. He placed the shotgun on the ground and with his two hands removed the lighter from the severed arm. He needed help. It seemed probable that whoever else had been there, Krane perhaps, was gone. He had thought that there had been two people, but he couldn’t be sure. Christ, it was like Vietnam again, yet another fucking tunnel. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and he could feel the vibration of bombing in the distance. He fought to control himself and realized that the vibration was a heavy truck grinding up the road outside, where it was daylight and life was normal.
He flicked the lighter, and the flame caught immediately. Franze was slumped on the ground where he had been pushed, conscious but in shock. Blood was pouring from the stump of his left arm. It had been severed above the elbow.
Fitzduane removed his belt and tightened it above the stump until the flow had almost stopped. It was tricky work because he needed both hands for the tourniquet, so he had to let the lighter go out and work in darkness. His hands and clothing became saturated in blood. He spoke reassuringly to Franze, but there was no response, and the policeman's skin felt cold. He needed medical attention immediately. The wound itself wasn’t fatal, but Fitzduane had seen lesser casualties go into deep shock and die after the loss of so much blood, and the sergeant was no longer young.
He helped the policeman back along the passage to the outer doorway. His spirits lifted when he saw the glimmer of light that signaled they were approaching the iron door and the road. It was difficult work. Franze was heavy. He lacked the strength of help himself, so in the end Fitzduane carried him in a fireman's lift. When he tried to open the iron door, he found with a sickened feeling that it was locked on the outside.