The front-end loader started forward on the other side of the wall, its steel blade grinding against rock. Rather than seal the cavern with just the machine, the driver used it to shove one of the boulders into place, blocking the opening with a twenty-ton chunk of granite.
All fell quiet as Pitt helped Ana to her feet. They stood and turned to face a second cavern, about half the size of the first. A battered gas lantern, perched on a rock several yards away, cast a dull amber glow. It gave off just enough light to reveal the three dozen haggard, anxious faces of the Macedonia’s crew, crowding close around them.
56
Thirty minutes later, the salvage yard was abandoned. Mankedo loaded a cache of weapons, explosives, and research materials onto the workboat, then supervised the final, gruesome cleanup. The bodies of both the police and his own men were placed inside the two police cars, which had been driven alongside the quay. Using a dockside loading crane, each car was hoisted over the side and sunk in twenty feet of water.
Mankedo watched the bubbles rise from the second vehicle as Vasko approached from the crane controls.
“That should keep the next batch of police at bay,” the bald man said.
Mankedo motioned toward the damaged stone wall. “There are still signs of the firefight. Nearby residents may have heard the shooting.”
“I’ll make a pass down the drive with the front-end loader and clean things up. But if they don’t find the bodies, they will have nothing.”
“The others are secured?”
“They’re sealed up in the side cavern. Unless someone reopens the mine a hundred years from now, they’ll never be found.” Vasko nodded toward some crates near the tunnel. “Do you want to blow the remaining munitions on the way out?”
Mankedo looked about the compound like an aggrieved parent. “No. I’ve already loaded the explosives. This has been our home as well as our base for over ten years. I hope to be back.”
“With that agent Belova gone, their case will be, too,” Vasko said. “Things will blow over, as they always do, and then we can resume operations here.”
“Yes, but we best leave now. I reached Hendriks and he said he will try to arrange transport out of Stara Zagora before midnight. He asks that you accompany the device until it’s in a safe place. Do your best to stay invisible until then. Once you’ve made delivery, you can join us in Greece.”
“Have you negotiated a price?”
“Twenty million, if it is still operational.”
Vasko smiled. “That should buy us a nice base in the Aegean.”
Mankedo took the remaining crew and boarded the workboat. They opened the barrier chain, motored into the Black Sea, and heading south toward the coast of Turkey.
Vasko ran the front-end loader down the entry road, obscuring any tracks while scraping up shell casings and wall debris. He guided the pile across the dock and shoved it all into the lagoon. Then he started the flatbed and exited the compound, locking the gates behind him.
A few miles down the road, he passed a string of police cars headed toward the salvage yard. None of them paid any attention to the well-worn truck. Vasko exited the coastal road at the first opportunity and drove inland at a moderate speed.
He drove for several hours, crossing the eastern plains of Bulgaria that were filled with checkerboard swaths of barley and wheat fields. Near Stara Zagora, a prosperous industrial center, he turned south toward the regional airport. A short time later, he parked the truck off a remote section of the runway and watched a sporadic mix of private planes and small commercial flights take off and land.
At half past nine, a huge cargo jet touched down and pulled to a stop well short of the terminal. With the runway lights, Vasko could see a small flag of Ukraine painted on the side. He started the truck and passed through an open security gate that stood unguarded.
He drove to the rear of the aircraft, which was lowering a drop-down landing ramp.
A man in a flight suit approached with a suspicious air. “Name?” he asked through the open side window.
“Vasko. I’m with Mankedo.”
The man nodded as he eyed the truck. “I’m the flight engineer. You’ll do as I say. We’re going to take the whole truck. Drive it up the ramp.”
Vasko drove into the cargo compartment of an Antonov An-124, one of the world’s largest commercial transports. The truck was carefully secured to the deck by the flight engineer, then Vasko was guided forward to a spartan row of bench seats just behind the cockpit. By the time he took a seat and buckled in, the plane was already moving. He could peer into the open cockpit and watch as the runway rolled beneath them and the big jet took to the sky.
Once the plane reached cruising altitude, the flight engineer reappeared with a cup of coffee, which he handed to Vasko.
“Thanks,” Vasko said. “How soon do we land?”
The flight engineer glanced at his watch. “About eleven hours.”
“Eleven hours!” Vasko nearly spilled his coffee. “Aren’t we just hopping over to Ukraine?”
The man shook his head. “Nowhere near, I’m afraid. We’re headed west, with orders to deliver your cargo to Mr. Hendriks’s private compound.”
“How far west?”
“Halfway across the Atlantic,” the man said, grinning. “To Bermuda.”
57
The cavern was cold, dark, and silent. As Pitt’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, a trim man in a dirty white uniform approached. It was Chavez, the Macedonia’s third officer.
“Welcome to our dark little corner of the world.” He reached out to untie Pitt’s hands.
“We’d feared the worst,” Pitt said. “Is the entire crew accounted for?”
“We’re all here, doing as well as can be expected. Except for Second Officer Briggs. He was killed in the assault. And the captain’s in a bad way.” He motioned toward the rock that supported the lantern.
A prone figure lay with a jacket draped over his torso. Even from a distance, Pitt could see the man’s labored breathing.
The rope fell free from Pitt’s hands and he rubbed his wrists, then turned to untie Ana’s bindings while Chavez went to work on Giordino’s. Mikel was next. The injured Bulgarian officer lay on the ground, drifting in and out of consciousness.
“Tell us what happened,” Pitt said.
“It wasn’t long after the three of you left the ship in Burgas. That archeologist was ashore also. An armed assault team came out of nowhere and took over the ship before anyone knew what was happening. They killed Briggs and shot the captain in the arm.” His voice trailed off briefly. “They sailed the Macedonia out of Burgas straightaway. Brought us to this lovely pit. Nobody’s had anything to eat in several days, but they did leave us plenty of water.”
Pitt finished untying Ana’s hands. “I want to see the captain.”
Chavez guided them past the NUMA crew and scientists, who looked gaunt but were encouraged by Pitt’s presence. Captain Stenseth seemed to be sleeping, but when Pitt knelt beside him, his eyes popped open.
“How are you feeling, Captain?”
“Arm’s giving me fits,” he said in a raspy voice, “but otherwise good.”
Stenseth’s right arm was crudely bandaged just above the elbow. More alarming, it had swollen to nearly twice the size of his other arm. Obviously infected, the wound had become life-threatening.
“Are you here to get us out of this cave?” he asked.
“Yes,” Pitt said. “In just a short while.”
A faint smile crossed Stenseth’s lips before he closed his eyes and drifted into unconsciousness. Pitt stepped away from the captain, joined by the others.
“That arm doesn’t look good,” Giordino said in a low voice.
“He needs immediate medical attention,” Ana said. “As does Mikel.”
“Then we need to find an exit, s
ooner rather than later.” Pitt turned to Chavez. “Have you explored the perimeter?”
“Solid rock all the way around, as far as I could tell, except for the gap they shoved us into.” Chavez grabbed the lantern and passed it to Pitt. “Have a look.”
With Ana and Giordino at his side, Pitt walked the perimeter of the cavern. The walls were as Chavez had indicated, chiseled and grooved stone that rose ten feet high. Above the walls, solid rock tapered to a cathedral ceiling some fifty feet overhead. A shaft of light at the very crest provided a faint supply of fresh air—and a glimmer of hope.
Giordino gazed up at the opening and shook his head. “Even Spider-Man would have a tough time making it out that way.”
Pitt continued the circuit until they reached the lone entrance, which was sealed by two massive boulders. Pitt stood in front of the rocks, studying them a long while. “That’s our only way out,” he said finally.
“Going to be a little tough without a drill bit and some explosives,” Giordino said.
Pitt looked to Chavez. “Are there any tools in here?”
“Nope. Just an old car engine and some wreckage behind those rocks.” He pointed to the center of the cavern and a low pile of ore tailings. Some rusty pieces of metal protruded from the opposite side.
Pitt held up the lantern. “I’d like to take a look.”
Giordino followed him to the rock pile. Skirting a stack of tunnel support timbers, they found the skeletal remains of an antique car. Pitt waved the lantern over a bare chassis that supported its engine and radiator in front and a fuel tank in back. Stacked in a heap beyond were the rusty, dust-covered remains of the car’s body. The chassis had carried a convertible body, Pitt could see, with fenders that were highly flared.
“Odd place to open a body shop,” Giordino said.
“They stripped it down to use the engine,” Pitt said. “Looks like it dates to the 1920s.” He stepped close to the engine, a big straight-eight painted black, and examined the rear mounting. The transmission and driveshaft had been replaced by a makeshift pulley system attached to the flywheel.
“They drove or rolled it in here and used the engine as a power source,” Pitt said. “Probably to drive a pump for draining water out of the mine’s lower levels.”
“Quite a power plant,” Giordino said. He walked to the front of the chassis and admired the large nickel-plated radiator. With his palm, he wiped away a layer of grime on the top of the shell, revealing the white letters IF against a blue background.
“You know what it is?” Giordino asked.
“An Isotta Fraschini.” Pitt smiled. “A high-end classic car that was built in Italy. Rudolph Valentino drove one.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I need a lift in the Sahara. Wish we could drive it out of here.” Giordino blew a coat of dust off the chassis, revealing a rusty surface. “Looks a little rough, even for your collection.”
Pitt said nothing. He owned a warehouse full of antique cars back in Washington, D.C. But he wasn’t considering the car for its collector appeal. He leaned over the engine block and pulled out its dipstick, noting the crankcase was full of oil. He replaced it with a nod of satisfaction.
Ana looked at him and shook her head. “I don’t think this relic can help us any.”
“On the contrary,” Pitt said. “This old beast is our ticket out of here.”
Ana looked at him like he was crazy. “How can this pile of junk get us out of here?”
Pitt gave her a knowing wink. “Quite simple, actually. We just need to use an old trick that once worked for Hannibal.”
58
The Nevena, formerly the Besso, lay anchored in the Turkish harbor of Kabatepe. An offshore current pulled at the vessel until she floated perpendicular to land. A short distance away, the town’s central dock was filled with small, sun-beaten fishing boats. A delivery truck emblazoned with IRMAK PRODUCE motored to the end of the dock and stopped with a squeal of its brakes. Valentin Mankedo hopped out of the cab and opened the rear of the truck, releasing three crewmen who had been wedged between crates of tomatoes.
Mankedo returned to the cab, pulled out a thousand euros from his wallet, and handed the bills to the driver. “Be gone, Irmak. And remember, you didn’t bring us here.”
“Of course, of course, Valentin,” the driver said with a smile. “Good luck with your treasure hunt.”
As the truck drove away, a small launch was released from the Nevena. The boat sped quickly to shore and collected Mankedo and his men.
Returning to the ship, Mankedo climbed up to the bridge, where Dimitov and the ship’s pilot welcomed him.
“Any issues passing the Bosphorus?” Mankedo asked.
“None,” the pilot said. “We registered as the Nevena and passed without question.”
“Good.” He turned to Dimitov. “Now, where are we with the Pelikan?”
“Some positive developments. As you know, available Russian war records only indicate she was lost in the Aegean. Turkish naval records have no information. But I did find a reprimand in March 1917, issued to the commander of a shore battery in the Dardanelles for allowing an enemy submarine to slip past the nets at the southern end of the Sea of Marmara.”
“That doesn’t sound encouraging. If the Turks sank her but have no record of it, that doesn’t leave us much to go on.”
“Actually, they didn’t sink her,” Dimitov said. “It was the Germans. While they had no real surface fleet in the Mediterranean, they did have an active submarine fleet. One of their U-boats, the UB-42, reported attacking and sinking a suspected Allied submarine in February 1917. It can only have been the Pelikan.”
“Do we know where?”
“Navy records indicate the engagement took place twenty kilometers off the northwest coast of Chios, within sight of Epanohoron Cape.”
“That narrows things down a bit.”
“But wartime records are notoriously inaccurate. We might have a weeks-long search on our hands.”
“No matter. Let’s get under way and out of Turkish waters.”
The Nevena raised anchor and sailed south, drawing within sight of Chios eight hours later. One of the larger Greek islands, Chios lay in the central Aegean, just four miles from the Turkish mainland. They approached the northern tip of the island and angled to a point twenty kilometers offshore. A towed side-scan sonar array was lowered off the stern, and the ship began sweeping across a search grid of three-mile-long lanes.
They quickly disproved the conventional wisdom of underwater explorers that lost shipwrecks are never where they’re supposed to be. On only its second survey lane, the Nevena located a prime target. Barely six hours into the search, a lowered ROV confirmed that they had found the Pelikan.
59
“Hannibal?” Giordino said. “I don’t see any elephants. This old car doesn’t even have a trunk.”
“If you’d stayed awake in history class,” Pitt said, “you might remember how Hannibal solved a problem in moving his elephants, and the rest of his army, across the Alps.”
In 218 B.C., Hannibal Barca had led the one-hundred-thousand-man Carthaginian Army in a surprise attack against the Roman Empire, launching what would later be called the Second Punic War. History remembers his epic trek across the Alps from Gaul in the company of thirty-eight war elephants to make a bold strike from the north. But while his army descended the rugged slopes into Italy, its path was blocked by a massive landslide.
Bottled up in the mountains, Hannibal turned his army into laborers, clearing away the loose rock. But several enormous boulders still blocked their way. So the Carthaginian leader turned to an old mining technique that dated to the ancient Egyptians. He set fires beneath the boulders, then doused them with vinegar, which caused them to fracture into smaller pieces that could be hauled aside. With their way now clear, his army proceeded to attack and defeat t
he Roman forces protecting Milan. Though ultimately repelled by the Romans, Hannibal’s march over the Alps remains a classic case study in military strategy.
Pitt knew the fire-setting technique could still work without vinegar. With Giordino’s assistance, he hauled several of the support timbers to the base of one of the boulders that sealed the cavern. He then turned to the Isotta Fraschini for a way to ignite the wood. Prying and pounding the crankcase drain plug with rocks until it spun free, he collected the engine’s syrupy oil in an empty gravel bucket. He punctured the car’s fuel tank with a tire iron, adding some stale gasoline to the mix, and applied it to the boulder and timbers.
“Everybody stay back,” he told the NUMA crew. Using the lantern’s flame, he ignited the formula. At first the oil and gas mixture burned with a low, smoky flame, but the dry timbers eventually produced a roaring fire.
As the flames danced up the face of the boulder, Pitt stood aside with Ana and Giordino.
“I’m a little worried about the fumes,” Pitt said, pointing at the small opening above their heads. “Ventilation is on the weak side.”
“Beats shivering to death in a cold, black cave,” Giordino said.
The two men kept the fire raging for nearly an hour before testing their thermal shock theory. Pitt filled the bucket with drinking water left by their captors, then flung the contents onto the boulder. The water struck the rock with a crackling sound, sending off a cloud of steam. But the boulder held intact. A few minutes later, a flat sliver cracked off and fell to the ground.
Pitt kicked at the small piece. “Not the avalanche I had in mind.”
“At least it proves your theory is working,” Ana said.
In the lantern light, Pitt saw she appeared sleepy, and her eyes were unfocused. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m just feeling very tired.”
“Why don’t you go sit with the others and keep an eye on the captain for me?”