“She’s alive,” he announced, relieved. “Took a nasty hit to the head.” Zahra looked up at him. He looked at her. Then his eyes darted up to her own head injury. “Yes, well, you know…”
The ground rumbled… again.
“What was that?” Zahra asked.
Hammet didn’t know either. He looked up as if staring through the cockpit floor. “Is that the mountain?”
Yana sat bolt upright, startling both her partners.
“Gah!” Zahra yelped, falling back on her ass. “Dammit, Yana. What the hell!”
The Russian’s eyes floated. She was still half out of it. She blinked and nearly vomited again. Once Yana was semi-coherent, it looked like her body realized how injured she was. She grabbed her head and winced.
“You probably have a concussion,” Hammet suggested.
“I do,” she replied. “A bad one. I will be useless for a few hours, maybe even the rest of the day.”
Zahra pushed herself back up onto her knees. “You sound okay, though.”
Yana shrugged. “I’ve had my share of head injuries. I know what to expect.”
“Same,” Zahra said. “I can’t imagine how many brain cells I’ve killed over the years. Two plus two still equals five, right?”
They all let out soft laughter.
The ground shook again. Then, the rumbling sound advanced toward them.
“You guys remember the stampede from The Lion King?” Zahra asked.
“Who doesn’t?” Yana replied.
Hammet was confused. “There are no wildebeests in Antarctica. I don’t think it’s a stampede, either. “I think it’s a…” His voice trailed off.
“What’s wrong?” Zahra asked.
Hammet threw himself on top of the two women and squeezed. “Avalanche!”
The plane was pounded and spun, then buried by a combination of snow, ice, and rock. They stayed together and crawled up against the back of the cockpit as the chilling deluge forced its way inside the plane’s busted nose.
With the individual pieces of glass gone, the white and gray mass surged inside and buried them.
Chapter 73
Henri
From the northern end of the lake, Henri and his four armed escorts turned around in their seats and watched as an avalanche buried the mangled remains of the B-29. The aircraft wasn’t the only thing buried, too. The entire front entrance of the Underworld was interred beneath more debris than anyone could ever hope to move.
But not the plane; it was only partially covered from what he could tell. There was a chance that whoever was inside was still alive. Henri glanced over to the box sitting off to his right. The troopers had decided to leave Zahra’s Sno-Cat behind. They had discussed taking it but had opted to stay together in one.
And now Zahra has it.
He couldn’t help but smile.
“You find this amusing?”
Henri turned around and found the soldier in the front passenger-side seat staring at him.
He shrugged. “I guess that depends on your definition of humor.”
Henri sat in the backseat between two other men. The fourth member of the lake guards drove and did a poor job of it. He struggled to get the Sno-Cat back into gear but finally did after some help from his navigator.
The first thing the team did after zip-cuffing Henri was search him. They inevitably found the Mengele journal, and when they did, they quickly informed the team back at the LC-130.
Who had no doubt contacted Krause.
They had also discovered Dietrich’s message from the U-boat. Henri had no idea that it had been folded inside the journal.
This was what Henri hoped to avoid the most. If Krause didn’t know the journal survived, then he may have called off any search for it. Henri would need to be even more careful now.
Once he escaped.
He still had plenty of time to figure that part out. The drive back to the LC-130 was a long one, and the less-seasoned men charged to look after him would surely tire from it.
Henri needed to be patient and wait for his moment.
Chapter 74
Zahra
Everything hurt. Everything was cold. The cold had numbed some of the pain but not all of it.
Zahra, Yana, and Hammet slowly dug themselves free. They found a pocket of glorious open air at the top of their would-be tomb, what had been the floor only minutes ago. The avalanche had stopped with two feet to spare. They crawled along the low passage until they reached the front of the busted nose of the B-29.
Hammet unsheathed his knife and cleared the remaining glass from the edges of a window. He then sheathed it and wiggled through the tight opening. Zahra and Yana’s narrower builds made their escapes easier.
Yana stood on the compacted earth with her top half jutting out of the plane. Hammet took her beneath her armpits and lifted her out the rest of the way.
“Don’t get used to this,” she said, wincing as the sun struck her face. “Ouch.”
“Stop whining,” Zahra said. “Just be thankful that you’re not dead.” Yana squinted at her. “But yes, ouch.” The sunlit sky pounded Zahra’s brain.
The three battered explorers now stood atop the underside of the Geisterbomber and gazed out over Lake Untersee. Zahra was thrilled to see that the landscape had been completely transformed by the avalanche resulting from the collapse of the Underworld facility. The violent tremors from deep below had triggered a cleansing of sorts on the surface, too.
Even now, Zahra was having trouble identifying where the massive hangar doors had been.
We should have seen that from the beginning. They truly were hangar doors.
“A welcome change,” Yana muttered.
“Yes,” Hammet agreed. “We couldn’t have asked for a better result. Now, no one will ever find this place.”
“Not that there’s anything left to find,” Zahra added. She turned, faced north, and smiled. “Hello, beautiful.”
Yana and Hammet matched her gaze, and they each smiled, too. Their Sno-Cat was still here.
They used the compacted embankment to hike around the remodeled shoreline of Lake Untersee. The only familiar things were the shapes of the mountain peaks and the Sno-Cat. Yes, the lake was still present, but it didn’t look like their lake anymore.
Lake Untersee had been given a fresh start. So had Ritscher Peak, for that matter. The evil within the mountain had been destroyed; an evil that had unknowingly been plaguing Antarctica had been snuffed out.
They made it around to their Sno-Cat in complete silence. Once they climbed inside and got out of the bitter cold, they relaxed and took a moment to savor being alive. Hammet had beelined straight for the driver’s seat. Neither Zahra nor Yana argued. Zahra, once more, manned the other front seat. Yana had gladly taken the back bench seat again, only this time, instead of going over the team’s gear, she laid down and covered her face with the crook of her right elbow.
Zahra needed to do something, and she knew it would be cheesy as all hell. But it felt right.
She turned in her seat and faced her partners. “Hey.” Then she held out her right hand, palm down.
Hammet looked down at it and nodded. He placed his hand on top of hers.
Yana peeked around her arm and sighed. Then she flopped her hand over theirs.
“Yes,” she said, “go, team.”
Zahra smiled. “Thank you, both.”
Yana softly patted their hands, then removed them from the stack. Hammet did, too, though he dragged it across Zahra’s first. Her body broke out in another fit of goosebumps, and she quickly turned and looked the other way. She hoped he hadn’t seen her cheeks flush.