Shell Shocked (21 page)

As we moved I tried to picture our passage. We had now left the ammunition storage building behind. We were outside, underground, with a few feet of ground and six inches of snow above us. Somewhere in front of us was the steam plant. How much farther it was and, more important, what awaited us there were both unknown.

We had a plan, but it wasn't really a complete plan. So much would depend on what we saw and found and how we'd react to it. And I guess as important was how the people there would react if they saw us … we had to hope they'd already left before we got there. If not, well, we both had our pistols.

The path in front of me was almost all darkness. I stopped and looked back. Jack had fallen thirty feet behind. It wasn't as easy to travel while holding a flashlight. I could help speed him along. I turned on my flashlight and lit the way for him.

He shielded his eyes. He wasn't only holding the flashlight. In his other hand he already had his pistol out.

“Turn off your light!” I hissed.

He switched the flashlight to his other hand and turned it off. Now, with one hand free, he was able to move more easily, but not much more quickly. Jack was struggling to
fit through the service corridor. It was a tight fit for me, but he had to squeeze his body between the narrow walls. He kept moving until he finally came in behind me.

“I can't move as fast as you,” he puffed. “You know what this reminds me of?”

I knew exactly. “Being in the escape tunnel at Camp 30.”

“Yeah.”

“But this is smaller … tighter,” I said.

“Are you still having nightmares about the tunnel?”

“Not so much,” I said. “I figure soon enough I'll start having nightmares about this, instead.”

Jack laughed, and for a brief second I almost lost the seriousness of what we were doing, the danger we were in. It was just Jack and me, fooling around.

“At least here we don't have to worry about cave-ins, we're nobody's prisoner, and we have the guns,” Jack said.

“We have
some
of the guns.” I paused. “There are people with other guns who could be waiting for us at the end of this tunnel.”

“Not if we time it right. We'll be alone in the building with time to do what we need to. What time do you have?”

I aimed the flashlight at my watch. “Fourteen minutes to midnight.”

“We'd better hurry up and get to the end of the tunnel. You lead and I'll light the way again.”

Jack put on his flashlight, and I turned off mine. I started forward, the wire between my fingers and the light showing the way. Part of me was caught up in the adrenaline rush. I wanted to get there, and get there as quickly as possible. But another part of me wanted to stop, turn off the flashlights and sit in the dark, out of sight and safe. Would these service corridors be safe? If there was an explosion in any of the buildings, wouldn't the flames shoot right through all of the tunnels? Maybe this was the
least
safe place in the whole complex!

I looked back again. Jack was again far behind. I stopped to wait.

“Keep moving!” Jack called out.

“You want me to go on without you?”

“I can't keep up. If you get ahead of my light, turn your flashlight on—but be careful. Don't let the beam go too far ahead. Don't let the light give us away. In case they haven't left yet. When you get to the end, wait for me before you climb out.”

“You don't have to worry about that.”

Even more than not wanting to go on, I didn't want to go on alone. But there was no choice. I started crawling. Very quickly the light from Jack's flashlight faded away until it was illuminating only the space between us, and not the path ahead of me. I flicked on my flashlight. I
knew I had to keep going. I knew, with or without Jack, I had to do this.

I aimed the flashlight so that the beam of light was ahead of me, but not too far ahead. I kept focusing on that little trail of light and tried not to peer into the darkness or think about what was beyond it. I put my head down and kept moving. I shuffled forward, one hand holding the flashlight and trapping the strand of wire as I moved.

My elbow slammed against the side of the corridor. I tried to shift over a bit but the other wall was too close. I turned the flashlight on the wall—the cement blocks had shifted, collapsed inward, and the tunnel was much narrower. I had to get through. I rotated my shoulders and wiggled forward and stretched myself out. I was pressed on both sides but slipped through—only barely, though. I'd made it … but could Jack?

I didn't have time to wait to ask. I had to keep going forward. He'd get through. He
had
to get through. I kept crawling.

The seconds turned into a minute and the minute into two and three and four and—the wire became stuck. I pulled it but it didn't come down … wait … maybe this was the spot.

I turned off my flashlight and I was in total darkness. No, not total darkness. There was a little streak of light coming from above. I followed the strand of wire with my
fingers. It led up, between the pipes, and then disappeared through a metal trap door. I was now under the steam plant.

I looked back down the tunnel. I couldn't see a beam of light to mark where Jack was. He was somewhere back there, but how far? And more important, how long would it take him to get here?

I turned on the flashlight and looked at my watch. It was eight minutes to midnight. If it took him three minutes to get here we'd still have five minutes to find the charges, the bundle of wires, and cut them and—that was enough time. Besides, the longer I waited, the greater the chances of the building being empty. I still had time.

I tried to picture what was up above the trap door. I had a pretty good idea. In my mind I could see the corridor that ran around the perimeter of the steam plant right above my head. All along the corridor were trap doors that led into the service corridors that carried the steam pipes to all the other buildings. Coming out of this trap door—coming out of fifteen of the trap doors—were ignition wires. When Jack and I had cut each of those wires, all of the buildings would be safe. I had to cut the wires and get back into the service corridor and out of sight. Easy.

I turned the flashlight onto my watch again. I was relieved to see that it was still eight minutes to midnight
so I had … it couldn't still be eight minutes … at least a minute had passed since the last time I'd looked. The second hand of the watch was frozen in place! I tapped the watch and it started to run again. But had it been stopped for fifteen seconds or a minute or four minutes? I didn't know, and I had no way of finding out.

I looked back down the tunnel. There wasn't a hint of light. If Jack was coming, if he'd been able to get through that narrow part, he still wasn't going to be here in time. I had no choice. I had to go on without him.

I squeezed between the wall and the pipes until I was pressed right against the metal grating of the trap door. If I pushed it open, I could look out—I could climb out. That thought sent a shiver up my spine that was in contrast to the heat that was flowing through and around me in the pipes.

Ear pressed against the metal, I listened. I couldn't hear anything except the sound of the steam rushing through the pipes. I
could
wait until Jack got here, but what good would that do? If somebody was up there, I was dead. If I waited, I was dead. If I tried and nobody was up there, I could complete our mission. Only one hope. Besides, it was better to die trying.

I pressed my hands against the metal and pushed. The trap door started to rise—and groaned noisily. I wanted to stop, but that was pointless. If there was somebody up
there I was already as good as dead. If nobody was there, then a little groan wouldn't matter. I pushed it open and climbed up on the pipes and looked through the opening. I was right, I had come out in the corridor that ran along the outer wall. I looked around. There was nobody. I was right inside the steam plant and I was alone.

I used all my strength to slowly lower the metal grating all the way until it swung down to the floor, landing open with a loud thud. I pulled myself up and climbed out and onto the floor.

Immediately I noticed that there were already three wires together on the floor, leading from—or to—something. They were probably coming out of other trap doors. I bent down, took out the wire cutters and snipped all three wires. Maybe they were coming from buildings where we'd already disconnected the explosive charges—maybe not. Either way, I couldn't take a chance.

I had to make a quick decision. This corridor circled the entire building. No matter which way I went I could, if I made a complete circuit, cut the wires individually. But, if I could get to the main door, all of the wires would lead there, and I could get them all at once. I didn't have time to stand here and decide, so I just moved quickly, cutting any wires that I saw.

I still held one strand of wire in my hand. I followed it as it led across the floor and then up the wall—right into
a large clump of plastic explosive! There was a wire leading into it from the other direction … and that wire ran through a second clump of explosive! This was exactly what Mr. Granger had said—they would have put charges here, too. I had to disarm the explosives and then follow the wires until they met.

I ran over to the first clump of explosive and ripped it off the wall, the wire coming free as I threw it to the ground. I ran toward the next charge. Any one of them was enough to destroy this building and kill me. If I didn't get them all, it would be like I didn't get any of them.

The second charge was also on the wall, but much higher up, above my reach. I had to find a ladder or something to stand on, or—I didn't have time for any of that. I backed up a few steps and then ran straight toward the wall, jumping into the air and smashing against it, clawing at the explosive. My fingertips hit against it and only half of the clump fell down, but the wires were dislodged, making the rest harmless.

Up ahead there was another trap door and a wire leading out of it. I took out the wire cutters, bent down and snipped it.

Instinctively I looked at my watch. It was running—five minutes to midnight—but that didn't mean anything. I had to hurry and—I stopped dead in my tracks. Lying there as I rounded the curve, blocking my way, was a body. I stood
there, staring, trying to understand. The man was on his back, face up, unmoving and—wait, I recognized him! It was Frank, the man who'd shown me around the steam plant, and he was … he was … there was a dark stain on the floor, blood. There was no question.

There was also no question as to why he was dead. The men who worked here—the men not in on the plot, the men who weren't Nazi agents—would all have had to be killed. I could expect to find more bodies.

Carefully, quietly, I walked up, like I was afraid to disturb him. His eyes were blank, but open, and looking vacantly up at the ceiling. I stepped over him, trying not to touch the body, and Case appeared around the corner!

He looked as shocked to see me as I was to see him. Before I could react, he jumped forward, bowling me over. The wire cutters I was holding were knocked from my hands as we crashed to the concrete floor. I tried to scramble free, push him off, but he wrapped his hands around my neck, squeezing, strangling me. He wasn't big but his grip was like steel around my throat. I reached up and clawed at his eyes and he screamed in pain, and then he pulled my head up and banged it against the concrete floor! My hands fell limp as he continued to choke me. I didn't have the strength to break his grip.

My free hand pushed out and I felt the wire cutters. I grabbed them, and with the last bit of strength I had I
swung them up until I heard them crack against his skull. He screamed in pain again, his grip loosened and I pushed him off! I scrambled to get away but he grabbed me by the leg. I spun around, the wire cutters still in my hand, and smashed him on the top of his head! Again his grip failed and I crawled away, desperately trying to breathe. His hands were gone from my throat but I couldn't draw a full breath, and—

He pulled out a pistol and aimed it at me. I thought about my gun, lodged down my waistband. If I could get it out—

“Get up!” he screamed as he got to his feet. There was blood pouring from his skull and his eyes were wild and red.

Before I could react, he reached down and grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to my feet. He pushed me forward.

“You stupid, stupid boy!” he yelled.

I stumbled forward as he pushed me again from behind.

“Now you will die.”

There was something about the way he said those last words—quietly, with no anger. It was like a simple fact, and that scared me more than if he had screamed at me.

He kept pushing me along the corridor. We passed by other trap doors. Snaking through the cracks of some of them were wires, and those wires joined other wires. He
was going to take me to the spot where all the wires led, where they joined and snaked out of the building. Once I was outside, Mr. Granger and Mr. McGregor would see me and Mr. McGregor would put a pill between his eyes and—

“Stop,” he ordered.

I did what he said.

“Sit.”

Without waiting he shoved me to the ground. It was then that I noticed that there were a dozen or more wires leading from both directions and they all came together right where he stood.

“You should not have come, boy. Now you are dead,” he said.

“We're both dead if we don't get out of here.”

He shook his head. “I was a dead man from the moment I agreed to this mission.”

“We have to get out before the explosives are detonated!” I exclaimed. “It's almost midnight.”

He looked at me. “How do you know midnight is to be the time?”

“I … I just thought that would be the time … when two shifts are here.”

“You are a clever boy. Too clever, and that is why you will die.”