“Seems a bit excessive, don’t you think?” Zahra asked. Even though her words were soft, they reverberated loudly around her. The entrance had maintained the original dimensions as the doors, measuring fifty feet tall and four times as wide.
Yana shrugged. “I guess that all depends on what they have down here with us.” She switched her gaze to Hammet. “Any ideas, Herr Braun?”
He shook his head. “I’m at a loss. But whatever it is, it will be grand. That I can assure you. The Nazis never did anything small. They liked to put on a grand show whenever possible.” He motioned to the entrance. “Hence, all this.”
Yana sighed. “I am going to be very pissed off if this is nothing more than an oversized broom closet.”
The three operatives chuckled together.
They eventually came to the end of the tunnel entrance. It ended at a connection point of sorts. Within the dim light of the intersection were three cookie-cut tunnel openings. Lights ran across the equally tall ceiling in an X formation, giving Zahra and the others a touch of illumination, though not much. Zahra didn’t know what to expect, but it definitely wasn’t this.
“What the hell?” she said, walking to the center of the enormous four-way stop. She gave the other three archways a quick look, but it was too dark beyond them to make out much of anything. “How big is this place?” Her voice bounced around like mad.
Yana unzipped her coat and removed a flashlight from her chest rig, clicking it on and showing it on the wall between the entrance tunnel and the one to the east, Zahra’s left. “Look at this.”
Zahra and Hammet added their own lights and were in awe of what they found.
“It’s the Reischsalder,” Hammet explained, “the imperial eagle of the Nazi Party, only it isn’t holding the swastika. It’s—”
“It’s holding the upside-down globe,” Zahra interrupted, “the one from the dead sailors’ uniforms.”
“That’s not all. There are words over here. And they’re in English.”
Zahra and Hammet turned and found Yana pointing her light at the next wall. This one was between the eastern and southern tunnel openings.
“Well, yeah,” Zahra replied. “English would have been the common language between the represented groups.”
“Okay, sure, but listen to this…” Yana read her discovery aloud. “‘And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of the heavens fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.’”
“‘And the heavens departed,’” Hammet continued, reading the next wall, “‘as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains.’”
Zahra was already standing in front of the third and final wall with script. She cleared her throat and read. “‘And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?’”
Hammet stepped up next to her. “The Book of Revelation, chapter six, verses twelve through seventeen.”
“The Sixth Seal,” Zahra said softly.
He nodded. “I guess we know where they got their name from. They named themselves after what constitutes as the apocalypse or—”
“Armageddon,” Zahra finished. “These people worship the death of the world — of mankind.”
“But not their kind,” Hammet added. “Think about it for a moment. To them, this makes perfect sense. It’s the same as the Nazis. Wipe out everyone until only they are left to rebuild the world in their image.”
“I would like to keep moving.” Zahra and Hammet turned and found a very uncomfortable Yana Fedorov standing at the center of the intersection. She was slowly rotating in a circle and recounting the engravings. “This place… This was a bad place.”
Zahra had never seen the woman so nervous. Even in the firefight back at the LC-130, Yana had kept herself composed and unflappable. Zahra had to admit that she, too, was becoming more and more anxious about what they’d found. She also knew that it would only get worse.
She placed a reassuring hand on Yana’s shoulder. “You okay?”
Yana found her eyes. “No, I’m not. I don’t like this place.”
“None of us do,” Hammet said. “But we have a job to do.”
That seemed to perk the Russian up some. “So, which way now?”
Zahra scanned the three unexplored openings again. She faced the southern one. “Let’s keep going straight.”
“South it is,” Yana said, sounding nearly back to normal. “Wish we had the Sno-Cat right about now. Would feel much better. I feel too exposed.”
“No,” Hammet said. “It would be so loud that we wouldn’t be able to hear anyone sneaking up on us.”
“He’s got a point,” Zahra added. “We do still have the Russians’ killers out there somewhere.”
Yana wasn’t happy. “Fine,” she tossed her pack back down, “but let’s at least take a few minutes to reassess our kit.” She unzipped her heavy coat. “I’m burning up in this thing.”
Zahra only got a shrug from Hammet.
He also tossed his bag down and stripped his outermost layer off. “It’s a good idea.” He patted his loaded plate carrier. “I have a feeling we may need quick access to our gear in the near future.”
Begrudgingly, Zahra followed suit and removed her jacket. She then folded it up as small as she could get it and shoved it into her backpack. Having her extra magazines ready to go without her bulbous coat blocking them did relax her some. She also removed her gloves and then rechecked her rifle and her sidearm.
Okay. Here we go.
She slipped back into her pack and started off to the south with Yana and Hammet close behind.
Hammet pulled up next to her on her left. “You always bring that along on your adventures?”
Zahra glanced down at her grappling hook. She nodded. “Yeah, you’d be surprised how much use it’s gotten.”
“I haven’t seen you use it yet.”
She gave the German a wink. “Well, the night is young.”
Yana caught up to them and ruined the moment. “Technically, it won’t be night here for a few more months.”
While Yana and Hammet stopped and bickered about the definition of “night” and whether daylight actually had anything to do with it, Zahra continued beneath the southern archway until she was greeted by nothing except a railing. A large dark void ate her flashlight’s beam. She carefully leaned over the railing and looked down, but the abyss was so dark and large that she saw nothing.
“Uh, guys?” Yana and Hammet were still going back and forth. Zahra spun and shot them in the face with light. “Guys!” They stopped and snapped her head toward the owner of the booming voice. “Over here, please.”
The pair stepped over the threshold and into the darkness beyond, instantly forgetting their conversation about what constituted “night.” Yana gently gripped the railing to Zahra’s left and softly whistled. The sound echoed for eons.
“Whoa,” Yana said.
“Yep, big whoa.”
“Over here,” Hammet said.
They turned and found him back at the entrance. He was inspecting something built into the doorway’s framework. It was then that she saw a mass of cables coming up through the floor and attaching to the base of it. Most of the cables then continued up to the ceiling, snaking around up there. Even from here, Zahra could see what the object was.