"Try to climb up, Hans! We have to hurry! The timers are set!"
"Please! It hurts!"
"Fuck." The German scrabbled lower. His light began to glow on the tube walls.
Hart retreated into the side tunnel. "In here!"
There was a splash of light. Bristle-Head followed, swearing. "It's too tight! What are you doing in here?"
"I'm lost!" Hart groaned. "Hurry!"
Then he dropped quickly and silently to the main tube and began to double back toward the surface.
"Hans! Where are you? Hans?"
Quickly now, very quickly.
"Christ! The markers are all gone! Hans?" Silence. "Where the hell are you?"
Time. How much time?
Realization dawned. "Hart! Hart, you son of a bitch!" Bristle-Head began to climb back. "A dead end! Where are the damn markers? Hart, you sneaking bastard…"
Owen switched his lamp on to hurry. Bristle-Head must have seen its receding glow because another shot rang out far below him, its energy consumed by ricochet.
"Hart…!"
The pilot staggered into the small, sandy-floored room at the cave mouth. His battery was nearly exhausted, its light duller than a candle. In the feeble gleam and the pale light from the nearby entrance he saw explosives wired as before. Behind and below he could hear the German swearing furiously as he tried to find his way up the cave. The pilot looked at the timers. Eleven minutes. Too long. Taking a breath, he shoved the minute hand on the dial to one, praying he hadn't disrupted its mechanism. "Time's up, Rudolf," he whispered.
He hurtled forward on hands and knees toward the low slit of the cave opening, clawing for its brightness. His head popped out into the shock of Antarctic cold and he rolled out onto the shelf and over its lip to the snow below, landing with a thud and digging in with fingers and toes to arrest his slide. Then he pressed his face into the slush and waited.
The flank of the mountain heaved.
There was a roar and a fountain of rock debris made an arcing plume from the cave entrance. The fragments sailed over the pilot's head and spattered onto the cone far below Hart's position. He could hear the grinding collapse of rock inside the mountain.
Was it over?
Then there was an ominous rumble, outside this time. He lifted his head. Beyond the haze of smoke and dust at the collapsed tube's mouth, farther upslope, a slice of snow had sheared away and was avalanching downward like an advancing wave. Hart staggered upward to the basalt outcrop and threw himself at its toe. Thundering snow blasted over his head and crashed onto the slope where he'd lain moments before, churning like a threshing machine, eating space. He pressed himself into the outcrop. Then the avalanche guttered out on the slopes below and the mountain's quivering stopped. Sound growled away.
Numb, he stood up. The cave was gone, erased by a smear of rock. He was alone and the world was still.
Turning, he looked out over the immensity of Antarctica. A clean sharp wind snapped at his filthy clothes. The cove far below still beckoned.
He took a deep breath. It was time to get back to Greta.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The U-4501 was quiet again, most of its crew asleep. It was dark outside and the submarine rocked slightly in a rising wind, waves splashing against the side of the boat. Greta sat on her bunk, impatient and angry. Owen should be back by now with the men from the cave. Had Jürgen betrayed them? She felt with her heels under her bed. Instead of one crammed pack there were now two, filled with food she'd quietly stolen from the Antarctic stores, as well as some rope and twine.
She'd made a decision. If God granted her wish and she saw Owen again, she was going to go with him. She'd begun seeing her situation with unusual clarity since that morning's conversation with Schmidt. She now knew— if, indeed, she'd ever doubted it— that she lived in a dark world of betrayal. If she remained in the sub, sailed home with Jürgen, the darkness would only deepen. Jürgen would continue his power over her, keep her around as a witness to his bizarre schemes. So hopeless. So crazy. The unspeakable misery they'd cause.
Contemplating her future, the only light she saw was Owen. She was enough of a realist to realize the light would be brief, that two people couldn't survive the small-boat ocean crossing he hoped to attempt. But at the moment of her death, there would be a certain satisfaction. She would know that, even if she hadn't lived her life well, she'd ended it well, with the man she loved.
To hide her preparation she'd been snarling at anyone who so much as bumped her cubicle curtain, claiming a right of privacy as a female. It had the desired effect, the sailors giving her a wide berth. Now she could only wait. Where was he? Restless, she got up to confront her husband.
Schmidt met her in the corridor before she could reach a ladder, carrying a sturdy metal tank the size of a large sausage.
"Another safe for your microbes, Max?" she asked caustically.
"For your antibiotic, actually. The drug powder should fit in this gas cylinder, the toughest container I could find. In case we're attacked again on the way home."
"Ah. Well, in that case the lab cultures you made from the spores need to be boxed or destroyed too. We can't risk them breaking."
"Yes, but I'm experimenting with growth variables. One colony is really exploding! I should be able to use these findings to accelerate production when we reach Germany. I want to give them as much time as I can. Don't worry. I'll see to the cultures before departure."
She looked at him doubtfully. "You've already hidden your spores from me. Don't take foolish risks with the ones you've hatched and grown."
"No risk, Frau Drexler. We doctors respect disease."
She bit her lip at that and gestured down the corridor. "Is Jürgen in his quarters?"
"No, on deck, preparing to go ashore. The last soldiers haven't returned from the cave. He's leading a search party."
She started, looking dismayed. "Did something go wrong?"
"Who knows?" Schmidt smiled at her weakness for the pilot. "That's what he's checking."
Greta put on her parka and climbed to the deck. It was very dark and the strength of the wind caught her by surprise. She had so little sense of the elements inside the submarine. The sky was like a tattered sail, streamers of cloud blowing past the stars. A storm was building and the realization dismayed her. Would nothing favor them?
The motor launch was alongside, bumping against the hull as Jürgen's search party of storm troopers boarded by the illumination of flashlights. She walked along the wet deck, whipped by spray.
"Going for more microbe spores?"
He jumped at her bitter voice. "What are you doing up here?"
"What are you doing? Hunting for fresh diseases like the good doctor?"
He squinted at her sourly, irritated at her complaint of betrayal. "Safeguarding our mission."
"You lied to me again."
He shrugged. "Does it matter anymore?"
The indifference hurt. "No. Not anymore." She looked at the boatload of men. "So. Where are you going?"
He considered his reply. "If you must know, I'm looking for your damned pilot."
"Why isn't he back yet?"
Drexler looked out at the walls of the crater. "That's what we're going to find out. Hans and Rudolf and Oscar haven't returned either. It's a dreadful night and I don't want them getting lost in a storm."
"You won't leave without him this time?"
He looked at her resentfully. "Not if he's alive."
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing! For God's sake, can you stop mooning for one moment over Owen Hart? Go below and get some sleep. You need it."