Lieutenant Riggs reached it and examined the locks.
‘Steel bolts, turned in from the other side,’ he reported as Ethan joined him.
‘Can we cut through them?’ Ethan asked.
‘Yeah, we’ve got a torch but it’ll take time we don’t have,’ Riggs replied. ‘We’ll use the thermite.’
Ethan knew well the power of thermite, a pyrotechnic composition of metal oxide and a metal powder fuel, usually aluminum. Ignited by heat, the thermite underwent an exothermic oxidation process that produced an extreme burst of heat inside a very small radius, as useful for welding as it was for melting and breaching metal structures.
Ethan eased back out of the way as the SEAL team’s explosives expert, Sully, hurried forward, examined the door for a few moments and then attached three slim thermite cylinders to the reverse side of the locking mechanism that was concealed from them on the far side of the door. He wedged the cylinders into place, Ethan guessing that the door was locked shut with three sliding bolts sunk into receptacles in the walls.
‘Fall back,’ Riggs ordered.
The team descended the stairs as the explosives expert finished his work and hurried back down the corridor. He swiftly activated a battery-operated detonator in his webbing, and then flipped a switch.
Ethan saw a bright light flare at the top of the stairwell as the battery-powered igniter inside the first thermite cylinder activated, followed by the second two in fearsomely bright bursts of light and heat. A hissing sound echoed down the corridor and Ethan saw a swirl of blue smoke that was followed by an acrid smell, the taint of burning metal filling the air.
The light faded out and Lieutenant Riggs ascended the stairwell once again. Ethan followed and saw three patches of glowing red metal shimmering in the darkness as he watched Riggs grab the door’s handle and heave back on it.
The heavy door rattled against its locks and then suddenly it swung open as two SEALs aimed their rifles into the darkened interior. Their flash lights illuminated a command center as they rushed in, their weapons sweeping the darkness efficiently.
‘Clear!’
At the harsh whisper Ethan and Hannah advanced with their weapons drawn and entered the command centre.
The center looked something akin to the bridge of a ship, with a central console running the length of the room and overlooking windows that gazed out over the submarine pens and the cavern itself. Ethan could see that the window glass was thickly frosted over, one or two of the panes smashed out to reveal the panorama beyond.
At the back of the command centre was a large map, and this was the sight that really attracted his attention.
‘That’s Antarctica,’ he said with some surprise, ‘but not with the ice on it?’
Doctor Chandler removed his glasses and peered up in amazement at the large map dominating the wall.
‘Good Lord,’ he uttered, enthralled. ‘That’s the Piri Reis map.’
‘The what?’ Riggs asked.
Chandler gestured to the map as the rest of the scientists and soldiers entered the command center.
‘It was found in 1929 by a group of historians,’ he said, ‘drawn on a piece of gazelle skin. It was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by an admiral of the Turkish fleet by the name of Piri Reis, who said that he’d compiled the map from older maps in the Imperial Library of Constantinople that dated back to the fourth century BC and even earlier.’
Hannah frowned at the map.
‘But that map shows mountain ranges, forests, lakes and stuff. How could he have known that was there if Antarctica was covered in a couple miles of ice?’
‘That’s the great mystery,’ Chandler said. ‘How could a fourth century map contain data that we have only recently discovered using orbital satellites and advanced technology? The latest possible date that the region of the Antarctic Piri Reis recorded was ice free was around four thousand BCE.’
‘What’s BCE?’ Ethan asked.
‘The modern form of historical dating, standing for Before Current Era,’ Chandler replied. ‘Historians, like scientists, have long since accepted that biblical history did not record real history, so they replaced BC with BCE, and AD, or Anno Domini — the Year of Our Lord, with Current Era, or CE.’
‘So this map was historically recent, recording ancient data,’ Hannah said.
‘ It’s well known that the first civilizations, according to traditional history, developed in the fertile crescent of the Middle East around the year three thousand BCE,’ Chandler confirmed, ‘and was followed within a millennium by the Indus Valley. Accordingly, none of the known civilizations of the time could have surveyed an ice free Antarctic.’
Ethan looked up at the map with interest.
‘The Nazis were obsessed with the occult, the paranormal and such like. Maybe they got on board with this and figured that Piri Reis knew something worth pursuing?’
‘The Nazis chose this area of the Antarctic for their expeditions because of this map?’ Hannah asked. ‘Would they really have gone so far based on something scribbled on a piece of gazelle skin?’
‘They did far more bizarre things than that,’ Doctor Chandler pointed out. ‘But right now, all that interests me is that they had this map here and they constructed an enormous subterranean base at great expense and considerable difficulty. They wouldn’t have gone to these lengths without a damned good reason.’
Lieutenant Riggs stood in the centre of the room and frowned as he looked at the display he held in his hands.
‘This says the signal should be coming from this room,’ he said. ‘We’re right on top of it.’ Ethan glanced up at the ceiling of the command centre and saw a panel embedded in it.
‘Maybe it’s some kind of mast,’ he said. ‘It might protrude up through the ice to emit a clear signal from the surface.’
Lieutenant Riggs was about to reply when from somewhere in the depths of the base a deep, reverberating moan shuddered through the facility. Ethan felt his guts contract involuntarily, saw anxious glances exchanged between the scientists as the bizarre roar soared through the abandoned tunnels and corridors and echoed away through the subterranean cavern outside to vanish into the glacier’s icy depths.
A long, deep silence followed the unearthly noise as Doctor Chandler removed his spectacles.
‘I fear that Saunders was right,’ he announced. ‘We may not be alone in this facility.’
Lieutenant Riggs shot the scientist a concerned look.
‘Well thanks Doc, I’m glad you’re here to tell us these things.’ The lieutenant turned to his men. ‘Cover all points, permanent rotating watch fore and aft. I get the feeling that something’s going to come looking for us.’
‘What about Black Knight?’ Ethan said. ‘We still have to recover it.’
‘One thing at a time,’ Riggs insisted. ‘If we don’t figure out a way to get that thing and ourselves out of here and past those soldiers, recovering Black Knight won’t do us much good because we’ll be dead.’
XXV
Nicola Lopez sat in a Lincoln pool car and watched across East 94th Street, where a mid-range hotel was situated on the borough’s Upper East Side, just south of Harlem and where the exclusivity of Manhattan began to deteriorate.
‘Good choice,’ Vaughn suggested, ‘anonymous.’
Lopez nodded as she watched the hotel. ‘Doesn’t mean I like it. We’ve spent years trying to put Mitchell behind bars and now he’s wandering the streets of NYC without a care in the goddamned world.’
‘LeMay is in the city and Mitchell flew directly here,’ Vaughn pointed out. ‘Can’t be a coincidence, right? Jarvis knows what he’s doing.’