SEVEN
Rain dripped from great banks of razor-wire flanking a high spike-topped steel mesh gate. The massed coils of serrated metal strips had been added to at different times. Most strands were heavily rusted; others, though streaked or spotted with the same dull encrustments, could still show lengths that gleamed brightly. A moss-blotched reinforced concrete guard post flanking the gate was unmanned, and the gate itself hung open.
Above soared a towering cliff of dark granite. The walls of the castle extended it still higher. Tire marks showed a single light vehicle had been through that day.
‘Do we knock and wait for the butler.’ Scully felt nervous, overpowered by the sheer scale of the rock face.
‘There can’t be anything special in here.’ Checking quickly for booby-traps, Carrington went forward a few meters, but could see the side road for only a short distance where it followed the base of the cliff. ‘They wouldn’t leave the post unmanned and the gate open if there was.’
‘Maybe the two guys in the Hummer were the last to leave.’ Ripper also felt oppressed by the sheer scale of their surroundings. When he looked up he had to fight down the fear that the whole mountain was looming over him, falling to crush him.
‘Wouldn’t it be great if this was the entrance to that Paradise Valley?’
‘You think they’d leave the gate open if it was?’ Hyde snorted. ‘A place like that would be protected by a battalion at least.’
‘We’re never going to find out by standing here.’ Revel checked he had a round chambered and with Andrea at his side led in through the gate. Carrington tagged close behind them.
Andrea loaded a smoke round into the grenade-launcher slung beneath the barrel of her M16. ‘When I was in the camps there were many stories about a special place that held vast stocks of everything we could ever want. All that we so desperately needed was supposed to be there. Food, clothing, medical supplies, arms, everything.’
Though she talked as they walked, Andrea never for an instant relaxed her vigilance. Revell made no response, giving all his concentration to trying to anticipate what lay around the next bend.
‘An old man came to one camp I was in. He was crippled and almost deaf and covered by many great scars. Always he spoke of a wonderful valley where anything could be had. If you could get in. Eventually he persuaded some men to go with him. He would not tell them the location in advance, only that it was in this general area. We never heard of any of them again.’
Still between high frost-cracked walls of granite, the road curved around the base of the cliff. Beside the road there was room only for a shallow stream that crossed and re-crossed the metalled surface, and where they had to wade through it the water lapped ice-cold to their ankles.
Throwing himself against the illusory cover of the rock, Revell edged back a few paces. ‘No wonder they didn’t bother with the guard post.’ His breath came in gulps and he could feel his heart hammering inside his ribs.
He had seen it for only a second, but it was locked vividly in his mind’s eye. A massively strong bunker seemed to grow from the rock itself. Perhaps a meter of concrete faced with inches of steel, the snouts of machine guns protruded from step-sided embrasures. The weapons could sweep a hundred-meter straight stretch of road that offered no shred of cover. Even attempts to rush the position using smoke would have been doomed. Firing blind, the guns could not have failed to hit anyone attempting that suicidal run.
Armour would have been no protection. Niches cut in the rock held well-protected directional anti-tank mines. At point-blank range the hull sides of the toughest main battle tank would be penetrated effortlessly.
‘Maybe the Russians are here before us.’ Carrington too had seen what lay in their path. ‘Anybody who strolls that way is going to get creamed. I’m impressed.’
Revell was too, but someone was going to have to go out in the open and… ‘You can come forward.’
The bull-horn blared into life without crackling a pre-warning. ‘I promise you are quite safe.’ Each heavily accented word bounced back and forth in echoes that gradually diminished to a confused babble.
‘It is no trick. We are on the same side. We have been watching your approach on remote cameras, but only in the last few moments have we picked you up on our microphones.’
There was a pause, and Revell made no move. He laid a restraining hand on Carrington’s arm. ‘We’ll take no…’
‘I see that you doubt me.’ The disembodied voice blasted out again. ‘That is understandable. I shall expose myself.’
Dooley tittered. ‘That’s supposed to set out minds at rest?’ He had to shove fingers in his mouth to comply with Sergeant Hyde’s order for silence.
There came an electronically amplified thud and then a resonant ‘click,’ as if the bull-horn had been put down while still switched to full power. There was a brief period of dead silence and then from behind the machine gun nest strolled an unarmed officer. Walking into the open, he turned to beckon behind him and was joined by three young soldiers. Their battledress was immaculately new, but long hair straggled from beneath their helmets.
The trio lounged against the blockhouse, masking the machine guns. Reassured, but still maintaining a degree of caution, Revell went forward with Andrea and Carrington. Advancing to meet them, the first man made a careless salute.
‘Lieutenant Hans Voke, commander of Dutch Pioneer Company seven four nine.’ He grinned a broad grin that exposed a gold tooth. ‘I am welcoming you to NATO supply depot number twelve. You may have heard of it; the unofficial name is Paradise Valley.’
‘Doesn’t look much like paradise to me.’ Keeping a tight grip on the side of the truck, Thorne was bumped by others as the eight-wheeled Foden wallowed through huge potholes.
The basin of land dominated by the castle was over two kilometres in diameter. They were nearing a small village set in its centre, and dwarfed by the jagged ridges and precipitous slopes around it.
Apart from the straggling collection of about twenty houses and a small church, the only other sign of habitation in the valley was a picturesque farm on the slopes opposite the castle.
All of the buildings were from another and gentler age. Half-timbered for the most part, some with shutters and fenced gardens, the only sign that the twentieth century had created any impression on the place was the abandoned hulk of a farm tractor beside a rotting woodpile.
Pulling into the yard of a small sawmill that was little more than an open-sided shed beside a house with blue shutters, the truck came to a stop with a hiss of air brakes. When they’d all dismounted it drove forward beneath the shed.
‘So where are all the goodies that are supposed to be stashed here?’ Looking about him, all Dooley could see was a typical abandoned West German village, scruffy from long neglect.
‘You are standing on them.’ Voke displayed his gold tooth again. ‘But perhaps it is improper of me to say that. You are standing over them, a small part of them.’ Beside him stood an electric saw bench. The drive belt had perished and fallen off. He pressed the start button.
There came the subdued hum of a well-maintained pump starting up and the sigh of powerful hydraulics. The Foden began to drop smoothly as the floor beneath it sank.
‘What you tell me about the two men in the Hummer is a cause for worry.’ Voke led the major down a long well-lit corridor that smelled of gun oil and linseed.
‘They were two of my men; they deserted early in this morning, I think.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Here they have knowledge of this place. You can be certain one was taken as a prisoner?’