Ethan looked at the tunnels, the inserts and the cables running from them to the base and he finally realized what he was looking at.
‘Power,’ he said finally, ‘hydroelectric power. The Germans were generating electricity from the water flowing beneath the glacier.’
Doctor Chandler looked at the map.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘They must have run the base using the generators as back up for the hydroelectric power produced by this system of channels and ducts.’
Ethan traced some of the lines up and down the map.
‘If we could reactivate this system we could re-seal the base and prevent Veer and his men from getting inside.’
Hannah shook her head.
‘This glacier is moving,’ she pointed out. ‘Those tunnels and power cables are most likely nothing more than debris now.’
‘It wouldn’t take them all to seal the base,’ Ethan suggested, ‘just enough of them to mean that Riggs and his men only had to cover the entrance through the windows of the control center. From that elevated position, they would be unassailable even to a numerically superior force.’
Chandler appeared concerned.
‘We’ll be burying ourselves beneath the ice with no means of escape,’ he said. ‘They’ll blast the entrance and leave us here.’
‘No,’ Ethan replied. ‘They’re here for Black Knight, just like we are. They won’t want to leave without it, so blowing the entrance is the last thing they’ll want to do.’
‘And what are we going to do about Black Knight?’ Hannah asked. ‘Case you hadn’t noticed it’s why we’re down here too and we have no way of getting close to it.’
Ethan grinned and turned away from the schematic. ‘I’ve had an idea.’
‘I don’t like it when that happens.’
XXXIV
‘Fall back to the base!’
Lieutenant Riggs’s harsh whisper echoed across the submarine pens as the SEALs began withdrawing back from the tunnel entrance. Ethan could see the flashlights from the advancing MJ-12 soldiers clearly now as he emerged from the base, shimmering beams drifting like ghosts through the crystalline ice surrounding the mouth of the tunnel.
Lieutenant Riggs retreated toward them.
‘I’ve got an idea about that Seehund,’ Ethan said.
‘It’ll have to wait,’ Riggs snapped back.
‘We may have a way to seal the base and prevent Veer’s men from overrunning our position.’
‘Can it be implemented now?’ Riggs demanded.
‘No, it’ll take time,’ Hannah replied.
‘Then it’ll have to wait, because they’re here. Get into cover and shoot at anything that isn’t us!’
Hannah followed Ethan at a run as they made their way back to the walls of the base, the SEAL’s forming a protective semi-circle around them as they crept back inside. Lieutenant Riggs and his men settled into their defensive positions, their rifle sights trained on the tunnel mouth as they prepared to open fire. Ethan hugged the frame of the base’s main entrance and held his pistol in both hands, Hannah alongside him and mirroring his actions as they took aim and waited for the MJ-12 troops to emerge from the blackened maw of the tunnel.
The flickering lights of shifted this way and that, warped by the bending of the light by the ancient ice as they advanced, and as Ethan squinted he thought he could see the shadowy forms of men advancing toward them through the gloom. His finger slid into place behind the trigger as he stilled his mind and focused.
‘Here we go,’ Hannah whispered, her voice taut.
Ethan watched the lights flickering around the tunnel mouth, and then suddenly they vanished as one as though somebody had pinched out a candle flame and plunged the tunnel into darkness. Ethan let his eyes begin to adjust to the gloom in time to see something clatter down onto the docks before them.
‘Flash bang!’
Ethan squinted his eyes shut and saw a bright, red flare beyond his eyelids and heard two deafening cracks that echoed around the cavern and a hissing sound in their wake as from the tunnel mouth erupted a blaze of gunfire.
Ethan opened his eyes as rounds peppered the walls of the base nearby and clipped chunks of ice off the docks before them with a deafening clatter. Near the tunnel mouth, clouds of smoke billowed from the two grenades to create a smoke screen that shielded the tunnel mouth from view as the MJ-12 troops poured into the cavern.
‘Open fire!’ Riggs yelled, although his men required little prompting.
The SEAL’s opened up with their M-16s on the tunnel mouth, bullets cascading through the smoke to smash into any human being trying to access the cavern. Ethan fired controlled shots into the darkness, the mouth of the cavern now completely obscured by the smoke grenades and returned fire ripping back toward them. Bullets zinged off metal railings a few yards from where Ethan stood in the bunker doorway, Hannah flinching as she fired in return as bullets hammered the bunker walls inches from her head.
‘Tactical retreat!’ Riggs shouted.
The front-most four of the SEALs pulled back in a low run as they were covered by the comrades, then dropped into prone positions a few yards behind their firing line as Riggs and his men jumped up and ran back further toward the base. Ethan fired between the running soldiers as they retreated while maintaining a constant rate of fire against the enemy.
The roar of gunfire echoed back and forth across the cavern in a deafening cacophony as Ethan and Hannah held their position and covered the SEALs’ retreat.
Riggs switched to his grenade launcher and fired off two of the weapons, both aimed either side of the tunnel to avoid bringing it down and cutting off their own escape route. Ethan knew that the MJ-12 soldiers would be fanning out either side of the tunnel to avoid the withering fire from the SEALs, and the smoke screen they had created concealed the incoming weapons just as effectively as it veiled them from the SEALs’ fire.
Two blasts thundered through the smoke and reverberated around the cavern as the grenades detonated, and Ethan heard above the gunfire the wretched screams of injured men cut down by the blasts.
‘Inside!’ Riggs yelled. ‘Before they return the favor!’
The SEALs broke ranks and filtered into the bunker past Ethan as he fired a few more shots and then turned and dashed into cover. Hannah followed him as Riggs fired a couple more shots into the smoke and then backed into the base.
The SEALs heaved the blast door closed, slamming it shut and then driving crowbars they had found through the locking wheel and the braces to hold it shut.
‘Good enough for now,’ Riggs said, Ethan hearing him despite the infernal ringing in his ears. The MJ-12 troops were still shooting outside, the SEALs listening intently.
‘Poor command structure,’ Saunders said. ‘They don’t even know we’ve ceased fire.’
‘Those grenades took out a few of them,’ Del Toro agreed. ‘They should have stayed well back in the tunnel and used grenade launchers to flush us back into the base.’
‘They might fear bringing the tunnel down on themselves,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘A frontal assault is the only real choice they had.’
Moments later, the sound of gunfire ceased.
‘Let’s go,’ Riggs said.
Ethan ran up the stairwell with the soldiers and they dispersed at once through the control center, other members of the team already in place with their weapons aimed out of the broken windows and down toward the docks below.
Ethan found himself a corner beside a shattered window and peered out across the dock. He could still see the smoke drifting across the black water below and figures huddled around the mouth of the tunnel as well as several bodies lying on the icy dock nearby.