Amber (14 page)

Maddock flicked on
his flashlight as he and Bones prepared to explore the cliff caves. “Someone should stay out here in case Professor tries to communicate.”

“Or if he tries to climb over into this cave,” Bones added.

Maddock looked to Willis, who had just finished cleaning and wrapping his leg wound with the trauma kit in his pack. “You think you could keep Professor from falling if you had to?”

Willis guffawed. “Man, please!” He eyed Leopov, who stood with her hands on her hips, awaiting his response. “One good leg or not, if you don’t think I can bust more weight than this  little thing...”

Leopov shot Willis another of her trademarked intimidating stares, but remained quiet. Maddock suspected she didn’t challenge Willis only because she would rather explore the cave with him and Bones than remain out here by herself, but it didn’t much matter to him. They needed someone on the edge of the cave for Professor, and to keep watch in general. He didn’t think the Russians would bother to send a climbing kill team up after them when they could try to snipe them from the walls with little effort, but he couldn’t be one hundred percent positive about that assumption, either. Better safe than sorry.

“Okay, Willis, keep watch here and listen for Professor. Hold on...” Maddock shrugged off his pack again and removed from it a pair of walkie-talkies. He gave one to Willis. “Channel 3. Not sure what kind of range we’ll get inside all this rock, but it’s worth a try if you need to get a hold of us.” Willis nodded and then set to work re-rigging a safety line in case it should be needed for Professor’s return.

Then Maddock, Bones and Leopov advanced deeper into the cave, all three with flashlights on. The ceiling of the cave was only about a foot or two above their heads, and perhaps fifteen feet wide, but it appeared to extend back quite a ways. They walked back until they reached a half-wall, where an irregular shelf of rock began six feet up, the lower boundary of a roughly circular opening in the cave wall.

Maddock played his light up into the new space. “It’s like a second shell blast opened up this cave back here.”

“A blast cave within a blast cave,” Bones agreed.

Leopov jumped, extending her arms over the ledge, feet finding purchase on the wall, and climbed up into the new cave. Maddock and Bones easily followed suit, and the trio paused at the entrance to the sub-cave while they shone their beams around inside it.

“Bones.” Leopov said softly.

“What?”

“No, I mean actual bones, over there.” She waved her light beam rapidly back and forth over a spot on the floor back and to the left of them. Maddock and Bones added their beams to the large pile of bones, and then they all moved to them for a closer look, knowing that the last time they found bones they belonged to German and Russian World War II soldiers. Could people have used this alpine cliff cave for a shelter, or even for strategic purposes?

But Bones’ voice put this unspoken theory to rest. “Animal bones.” He kicked a couple of the dirty white, elongated bones aside, sifting through the deep pile. “Kind of a variety, but looks like mostly birds, maybe eagles. Smaller mammals, like marmot...this one here’s not so small, probably a leg bone from a mountain goat type animal.”

Maddock looked around the cave floor. “I don’t see any signs of a campfire. So why would all those bones from different animals be piled right there, unless...”

“Something ate them and left them there?” Maddock guessed.

Leopov appeared unconvinced. “What could get in here that’s big enough to eat animals that large?” She looked down at a two-foot long bone that Bones had kicked to the edge of the pile. None of them had an answer, and Maddock began walking to the rear of the secondary cave.

“Let’s see what else is in here. Except for the bones, so far it looks pretty barren.”

“As expected,” Leopov said, casting a sidelong glance at Bones.

“I never guaranteed anything would be up here,” he said in his defense. “We all agreed that—“

“Hey, look at this!” Maddock’s enthusiasm cut them short. Bones and Leopov met him in the far right corner of the cave, where a tunnel of sorts led upward from the cave ceiling. It was situated high in the corner, but the wall beneath it was naturally stepped, forming a kind of crude stairway that would allow them to easily reach the tunnel.

“Let’s check it out.” Maddock waited for a second, and when no one objected he began climbing up to the tunnel, flashlight still held in one hand, for it would now be pitch black without the lights. He called down to them from the tunnel, which had a rounded shape to it.

“It goes off to our right for some distance. I have to stoop, but it’s passable.”

Bones and Leopov joined him and they began to follow the tunnel as it curved off to the right. They moved along in silence, single file with Maddock in the point position, Bones at the rear. At a section where a large knob of rock protruded halfway into the tunnel, they had to shimmy sideways past it, but they all made it. Shortly after that, Maddock held an arm up, bent at the elbow, hand balled into a fist, the signal to halt.

He heard noise coming from up ahead. “Shhhh!” He hissed back to Bones and Leopov. He killed his light and the others did the same. Footsteps approached. Human, not animal, judging by the cadence. Maddock couldn’t be sure but he thought it was only one man. He drew his knife and waited, kneeling, but suddenly the footsteps stopped.

“Who’s there?” a voice called out, and Bones laughed in response.

“Professor!”

Pete Chapman stepped out into the tunnel with his light on his own face, lest there be any confusion. Friendly fire was the last thing they needed at this point. “Hey, fancy meeting you guys here! And what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Leopov laughed at his second comment while Maddock quickly shined his light behind Professor, just to make sure he wasn’t being forced out into the open by unseen captors so that they let their guard down. Satisfied he was alone, Maddock redirected his flashlight onto Professor himself, looking for injuries.

“You okay? You hit?” he asked, referencing the sniper fire that came so close to him right before he made it into the cave.

“None the worse for wear, but I’m afraid this outfit is done for.” He looked down and dusted off his jeans, which had several rips in the legs. His jacket was in tatters, shredded in a few spots. “How are you guys? Willis?” He shone his light around the tunnel, looking for him. His expression grew concerned when he didn’t see him.

“He’s okay,” Maddock said, realizing that Professor was worried that his gunshot wound was worse than it had initially seemed. “He’s holding down guard duty at the entrance to our cave.”

“We thought you might try to climb over to our side,” Bones added.

Professor nodded, grinning widely. “I thought about it, but decided to take a look around first and I found a larger cavern behind the first one, and that led into a tunnel...”

“Same here!” Bones said.

“So our two adjacent caves connect,” Maddock said, eager to move things along now that the team had been reunited. “I wonder where else these tunnels lead?”

Professor’s face brightened. “There’s another tunnel in my cave, on the opposite side of this one, that leads off to the right. Maybe it goes to the next cave over, I don’t know, I didn’t check it out because I wanted to find you guys.”

Maddock appeared inspired. “We should take Willis with us and go explore that other tunnel.” They all agreed and Maddock used his walkie-talkie to call Willis while Professor, Leopov and Bones discussed what they knew about the tunnel system so far. Willis’ reply was weak, but audible, and Maddock gave him instructions so that he could find them. He arrived soon, and bear-hugged each of them briefly in turn before they set out down the tunnel single file toward Professor’s cave.

They reached it before too long and had to step down a rocky slope to get down onto the cave floor. It looked similar to the other cave, but a little smaller. Maddock pointed out a pile of bones. “There are bones in our cave, too.”

Professor scowled. “I checked them out and they don’t look human to me. But the presence of the bones leads me to believe that this tunnel may lead somewhere, because it would take a sizable predator to kill or even to drag animals of that size up or down the cliff wall into these caves.”

“Maybe some kind of mountain cat,” Bones said.

Maddock made his way over to the tunnel and shined his flashlight up into it. Like the other one, it was accessible from the cave floor. “Let’s see where it goes.” He climbed up into it and allowed his eyes to adjust to the very dim light inside while he played his beam around the confines of the passage. It looked much like the other tunnel, only this one sloped mildly up. When they others joined him he began to follow the tunnel in the only direction it led. They saw no branching paths or other options, only a single passageway that led upward at a shallow angle.

They came to a half-wall where the bottom half dead-ended but the upper half—above five feet—looked like it was the beginning of yet another tunnel. The lower half was smooth, without natural climbing holds, so they boosted Maddock up first and then he pulled up Bones, then he in turned pulled up the others. By the time all of them were up Maddock had already begun exploring down the length of the tunnel. They caught up to him at a fork in the passage, one branch leading right and the other, left.

Maddock directed his beam into the left passage. “This one leads up, while the other one...” He swung his beam in the opposite direction, down along the other tunnel fork. “...this one leads down.”

“Probably to another one of the blast caves,” Professor guessed.

Maddock nodded. “So let’s go up.” He ventured into the left passageway and the others followed. This one was steeper than the others, and it was clear they were gaining elevation rapidly as they walked. A startling moment came when Maddock woke a group of sleeping bats, which then turned and flew out through Bones and the rest of the team, before correcting themselves and flying back past Maddock and up through the tunnel.

“This passage must lead to an opening,” Maddock observed, “or those bats wouldn’t go that way, they’d have went back to the blast caves.”

They trudged on, now realizing that they were walking over years’ worth of encrusted bat guano. Then the incline grew very steep, causing them to slip occasionally on the slick tunnel floor, but they kept on.

“Light! I see light!” Maddock exclaimed.

“We’ve traveled a long distance,” Leopov said. “I wonder if this could be...”

“This is it!” Maddock stopped in front of a dead end, the tunnel having curved at a near right angle to point straight up where it extended about ten feet into a blue sky. Unfortunately the walls were perfectly smooth, preventing them from being able to climb without the aid of ropes, so Bones pulled out his grappling hook and went to work. He fastened a line leading up out of the tunnel stack and volunteered to make the first climb himself.

He planted the soles of his shoes on the wall, set a good grip on the rope with both hands, and then walked up toward the sky. He stepped over the lip of the vertical section of tunnel and for a moment they heard his footsteps, as if walking around up there. Maddock figured correctly that he was in a relatively open space and so was checking his surroundings for threats.

Before long Bones called down to them. “The summit! This it is it. Looks like we have it to ourselves. Come on up.” He tossed the rope back down and double-checked that the grappling hook was secured. The others climbed up and out onto the alpine summit.

“Wow!” Even Leopov was impressed by the view. They stood in the midst of a broad grassy plateau, spotted with rocks here and there, as well as a few patches of snow. Around them was a ring of even taller mountain peaks, whitecapped and shrouded in fog. Below them the plateau gradually sloped down, forming a high hillside that led deep into a valley far in the distance.

They had reached the summit.

“Pretty big area,
but mostly flat.” Maddock brought the binoculars to his eyes and began scanning their surroundings. “Not a lot of rocks, but the tall grass could be concealing something. Let’s take a look around.”

They fanned out and began exploring the grassy summit, Bones taking pleasure in diving into the tallest grass and rooting through it to see what he could turn up, which turned out not to be much. After a few minutes of looking around he had found nothing. No concealed tunnel entrances, no hidden treasure chests; only grassy earth.

Maddock gravitated toward the rocky clumps, checking to see if they were ruptures in the summit floor that led down into the tunnel system or caves beneath, but he, too, discovered nothing interesting.

Leopov wandered toward the downward slope to see how difficult it would be to make the return trip that way versus climbing back down the rock face. The vast distances she observed were not encouraging.

Willis and Professor, meanwhile, opted to walk about the plateau to see what they might come across. They worked at opposite ends of the summit. Professor would stop occasionally to pick up a rock and turn it over in his hands, scrutinizing it as if its very nature held clues that could tell him about the history of this rarely visited place. Willis, on the other hand, favored walking swiftly to a particular area, digging around to examine it, and then moving rapidly again to another area some distance away.

Regardless of their different methods, none of them discovered anything conclusive, or anything at all, for that matter. They converged near the middle of the summit’s plateau, trading accounts of what they had and had not seen. Maddock was relaying his account when they heard a piercing howl, and not all that far off.

Bones held a hand up, asking for silence so that he may identify the sound. A few seconds after the vocalization stopped, Bones’ eyes widened. “Wolf.”

As soon as he said it, the wolf began to howl again, and then, causing all of their heads to turn, a second animal brayed from somewhere nearby.

“Two of them!” Professor observed.

“Sounds like they’re somewhere on the summit with us, too.” Willis looked around nervously, head on a swivel.

“You don’t suppose...” Leopov trailed off as she tried to see over a rocky outcropping.

“Suppose what?” Maddock prompted, taking a step away from the group and starting to look around carefully.

“Suppose that these wolves might be of the same variety we came across before?”

“You mean the frickin’ giant Nazi mad scientist type?” Bones turned his head to one side, listening in a particular direction, not for howls, but for footfalls. He didn’t hear any, but the howling continued, and from more dogs.

Professor eyed Maddock. “It sounds like there are at least four of them. If they are those big ones, we really ought to think about—“

“There!” Bones pointed off to their left, where an oversized wolf was charging over a grassy knoll and headed their way. Bones’ knife now rode in his right hand, but even that didn’t give him much confidence. “It’s a big one. Real big.”

“We didn’t see anything up here, so let’s head back into the tunnels.” Professor said.

“Where’s the entrance?” Leopov whirled around, confused. The rock outcroppings dotting the plateau all looked the same, and the opening into the tunnel system was in the middle of one of them. Maddock pointed at it, but as soon as he did a second massive wolf appeared perhaps fifty yards beyond it, also running towards them.

“Number three coming over there!” Professor pointed to another lupine interloper, the animal growling as it advanced, nose low to the ground, the hair on its tail standing on end.

“Hurry!” Leopov started to run, galvanizing the rest of them to action. They sprinted for the entrance to the tunnels that Maddock had pointed out. Willis stumbled on his injured leg and fell into a stand of tall grass. Bones stopped to pick him up, eyeing a wolf barreling at them, closing the distance fast.

“These things are
fast
, Willis, let’s move it.” He received no argument, and in seconds the two were running again across the summit, glancing left and right and seeing wolves coming at them each time they looked.

Maddock reached the tunnel entrance before the others, but he didn’t drop in first. He stood guard, small knife in one hand as he spun in circles, monitoring the advancing beasts. “Go, go, go!” he encouraged, waving them on. “Don’t look back, just run,” he aimed at Professor in particular, who couldn’t keep from looking over his shoulder every few steps.

Leopov made it to him first. The grappling hook and rope were already set up and Maddock urged her down into the tunnel. She jumped into the hole, barely touching the rope as she slid down into the tunnel. Bones was next to arrive, with Willis close behind him. Bones looked Maddock in the eye.

“Want me to hang out, just in case...” He waved his knife. Maddock shook his head. “Just get down there, Bones. We’re not going to beat these things in a fight. We’ve got to get away from this open space.”

“See you down there.” Bones slid down the rope into the tunnel.

Then Willis stepped up to the entrance and dropped down, followed by Professor, glancing over his shoulder one last time as he hurtled himself into the pit.

The closest wolf was mere feet from Maddock now. It would be on him in seconds, but as terrifying as the creature was, Maddock couldn’t help but marvel at it. A gigantic, majestic animal with a flowing mane and bright white teeth, running through the Alps. He forced himself to shake off his wonderment and drop down into the tunnel, joining the rest of the team.

He found them huddled next to the drop zone, switching on their flashlights... He moved to join them but Bones pointed behind him. “Get my grapple, will you? We might need it.”

Maddock turned to do just that but when he looked up at the hook what he saw stopped him cold in his tracks. A colossal wolf head nearly blocked all light from entering the tunnel shaft. Maddock wiped his eyes as he felt warm saliva drop onto him from the canine’s barking mouth. The wolf barked ferociously, incessantly, putting its entire body into it, front paws sticking out over the pit while the rest of its body behind the head was not visible.

He wouldn’t be able to get the grapple back. That much was for certain. But, even as he turned around to run back to the group so that they could get out of here, that wasn’t what now nagged at his consciousness. It was the wolf, what it was doing.

If it can fit down here...
And then, with a sickening realization, he flashed on the piles of bones in the cliff caves and it hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. He had no time to fully explain so he just expressed his thoughts aloud, as he was thinking them.

“Those wolves can get in here! They roam around in here and bring their kills in here...”

“They can fit?” Professor’s voice was doubtful but also edged with worry.

Maddock opened his mouth to answer in the affirmative but the sound of nails scraping on rock behind them meant that he didn’t have to. Without saying another word, they all took off running down the tunnel as fast as they could manage.

Fortunately the passageway was long and without branches, meaning it wasn’t possible to get lost and wander aimlessly. But that same advantage was also a disadvantage when it came to being chased by angry wolves. The big canine rocketed down the straightaway, still barking, apparently not concerned about stealth, but instead preferring the intimidation factor. Figures, Maddock thought, as his feet pounded the tunnel floor.
Bred by Hitler’s scientists. Instilling fear would be second nature to them.

By the time the team merged with the tunnel that led to Professor’s cave, they could hear a second wolf not far behind the first, barking, sending a message of violence as it pursued them. All five of the human prey were breathless now as they moved through the tunnel as fast as they dared, taking numerous bumps into low-hanging ceiling irregularities or protruding rock slabs. But still they kept on moving, the sound of the slavering canines steadily closing the distance between them as they progressed through the tunnels.

They dropped into Professor’s cave and Maddock started to head for the tunnel that led to the next cave over, the one they had all come to except for Professor, when he paused. Leopov was looking over the side, near the edge. “Should we climb from here instead?”

Maddock looked to Bones, who shook his head. “Already have the belay rope set up in the other cave. No time to set up a new one.” As if to emphasize this point, the first wolf emerged from the tunnel and wasted no time in leaping down into Professor’s cave. Leopov screamed, a piercing shriek that outcompeted the wolves’ barking and yelping.

Maddock grabbed her by the arm and headed for the tunnel that would lead to the first cave. Bones and Willis were already entering it, and Professor waited for Maddock and Leopov to run inside before following. “Three wolves in the cave!” he warned.

They ran as quickly as they could in the hunched over position that was dictated by the tunnel’s low ceiling. Maddock hoped against hope that the wolves would decide that it was too much trouble to pursue them into this tunnel, or that they wouldn’t even fit, but a lively howling that reverberated throughout the tubular space told him otherwise. Maddock urged them on through the space’s remaining yards. He didn’t need any of them giving up now, and in this narrow natural structure, were one of them to collapse or give up, those behind would not be able to pass.

The wolves provided all the encouragement anyone needed, however, and by the time the passageway was a noise chamber of echoing wolf cries, all five of them were pouring out into the cave through which they had come in. Bones immediately ran over to the edge, checking the safety rope setup. He was reaching down to test the integrity of the piton he’d hammered when Maddock yelled at him.

“Bones, remember the snipers!”

He was too close to the edge, offering too high of a silhouetted profile. But as the first gigantic wolf leapt into the room, they all knew that they had a choice to make: Stay here and soon be engaged in multiple direct animal attacks, or rappel down the cliff face the way they had come and be subject to possible additional sniper fire.

As the second engineered predator entered the rear of the cave, they opted for the latter. Bones waved them over to the edge. “No time to rig a harness for everybody, but I can hammer in another piton to beef it up. Just grab the rope—
hold on
—and get down.”

No one liked it but they liked the notion of being consumed alive by humongous wolves even less. Bones scrambled for his hammer and another piton from his pack while Leopov got first in line to descend. A third wolf dropped into the cave, the first one now making its way across the floor to them, slowing as it moved in for the kill.

“Remember, no safety harness—
hold onto the rope all the way down! No room for error!”
Bones shouted his parting words to Leopov over both the hammering of the backup piton and the braying of the canine predators now cornering their victims. The noise meant that he couldn’t listen for snipers, though, but there was no time to do anything about that.

Willis grabbed the safety line and began sliding down, quicker than Leopov, pushing off the wall with his feet every twenty feet or so on the way down. Bones knew that if he caught up to Leopov he would have to wait for her. He mentally kicked himself for not making her go last, but what was done was done. Hopefully she would increase her pace as she warmed to the rappel.

Professor went over the side as he cast a terrified glance over his shoulder. And then Maddock walked over to the edge. “C’mon Bones! No time. We’re both going.”

Bones looked up from the pitons, which he was fortifying to be able to handle the simultaneous weight of the entire team, when Maddock, safety line running through one of his hands,  literally scooped him off the ground and fell over the edge with him. Bones watched as a kaleidoscopic mishmash of jaws, paws and bloody fur jumbled together just beyond his reach. And then they fell away, Bones not even in contact with the only available rope, but clutching Maddock’s midsection, who wrangled them into position as soon as they had dropped below the reach of the slavering beasts.

They paused on the wall about twenty feet down and carefully separated, Bones taking hold of the safety line on his own, just below Maddock, who took the opportunity to look down at the others. One...two...three, good! All still there, still moving down. He supposed enough time had elapsed that the sniper team had given up for the time being. Or perhaps they had even chosen to send a squad the long way to the summit, around the other side. Above them the wolves howled, venting their frustration into the high altitude winds. At first he feared they might be frenzied enough to jump over the edge of the cliff after them, like mindless, predatory lemmings, but they remained right at the edge.

The team descended all the way to the ground, where Maddock quickly reminded them that the sniper threat could return at any moment, that they needed to keep moving. The shaken warriors moved off down the path that led from the base of the cliff back into the lakeside woods.