The security guards froze in stunned astonishment along with every member of the Special Forces team, wounded or not, and watched in involuntary fascination as the colossus, not content with demolishing the barricade, rumbled on toward the high archway entrance of the control center like an out-of-control express train, callous of the devastation it was causing.
Bedlam! Security guards came alive and scattered frantically in every direction, trying to leap clear.
For that one brief, fleeting moment, Cleary couldn't believe the rescuer of his command hadn't really been the work of aliens or demons from a hallucination. The curtain quickly parted in Cleary's mind and he realized that, thanks to the ponderous machine, victory had suddenly risen from the ashes.
Cleary always retained an image of that grand vehicle, its red paint transparent and glistening under the bright sun, its driver gripping the steering wheel with one hand, the other firing an old 1911-model Colt automatic out the window at the security guards as fast as he could pull the trigger, while another man sprayed any black uniform that moved with a Bushmaster rifle. It was a spectacle entirely unexpected, without precedent, a spectacle to make men doubt their sanity.
The thirty or fewer security guards who had not been laid dead and injured by the Special Force teams, and who'd survived the onslaught, soon recovered and began blasting at the murderous, freakish vehicle. Their gunfire slammed deafeningly in wave after wave. Bullets peppered the red body and great tires, tearing into metal and rubber, and still the monster refused to stop, horns atop the roof still trumpeting until they were shot away. Every shard of glass was shot out of the control cabin, and still the driver and his passenger blazed away at the security guards.
With brutal ferocity and with appalling savagery, the Snow Cruiser slammed into the control center, hurling her thirty-plus-ton mass, propelled at twenty miles an hour, through the metal walls and roof surrounding the entrance like a fist ramming into the front door of a dollhouse. The shattering impact tore off the roof of the Cruiser's control cabin as cleanly as if it had been chopped away by a giant ax. The front end of the raging monster crumpled as she bit deeply and plunged into the control room in a chaos of tearing, twisting metal and an explosion of electronic equipment, wiring, office furniture, and computer systems.
Her great body rent by a hurricane of small-arms fire, the control cabin nearly disintegrated, the massive tires torn to shreds and sitting flat under the wheels, the Snow Cruiser lost her momentum, rammed into the far wall, and finally came to a stop.
At such times, logic vanishes and men rise magnificently to the occasion. Stirred to action, shouting and cursing and without a spoken command, the surviving Marines, Delta Force, and SEALS leaped from their pitifully sheltered positions in the ice and rushed forward. Running through the breach left by the Snow Cruiser, they overran the barricade, concentrating their fire and eliminating most of the surprised security guards, who were caught unaware of the assault while they were still concentrating their attention and fire on the rampaging vehicle.
Hugo Wolf stood in pure horror. The gigantic red monstrosity from nowhere had, within the space of two short minutes, turned the tide of battle, wiping out two Sno-cats and their crews, and crushing nearly twenty of his men. Like a football quarterback who'd thrown a surefire touchdown pass in the closing minutes of the game, only to have the ball intercepted by the opposing team and run back for a touchdown, Hugo could not believe it was happening. Abruptly overtaken by panic, he leaped astride a nearby snowmobile, gunned the engine, and roared away from the turmoil toward the aircraft hangar.
Left abandoned and leaderless, the security guards saw faint hope of escape, and one by one, they surrendered their weapons and placed their hands on their heads. A few melted away and circled Cleary's assault teams in an attempt to reach the hangar before the aircraft took off. Suddenly, mercifully, the scene of carnage became strangely still and quiet. The bloody and nasty fight was over.
The control room was in unspeakable shambles. Consoles had been catapulted from their bases and hurled against the walls. The contents of desks, shelves, and cabinets were spilled across the floor, carpeting it in files and paper. Tables and chairs were twisted and smashed. Monitors hung from their mountings in crazy angles. The Snow Cruiser sat astride the insane havoc like some great wounded dinosaur, showered by a thousand bullets. Astoundingly, she did not die. In defiance of all the laws of mechanical engineering, her diesels still turned over at idle, with a low rapping sound coming from her shattered exhaust pipes.
Pitt pushed aside the bullet-riddled door of the Snow Cruiser and carelessly watched it drop off its fractured hinges and fall away. Remarkably, he and Giordino had not been killed. Bullets had cut through their clothes, Pitt had taken a shot that had cut a small gouge in his left forearm, and Giordino was bleeding from a scalp wound, but they had survived without serious injury, far beyond their wildest expectations.
Pitt searched the mangled control room for bodies, but the Wolfs, their engineers, and their scientists had evacuated the building for the hangar. Giordino stared through those smiling yet brooding dark eyes of his at the scene of havoc.
"Is the clock still ticking?" he asked gravely.
"I don't think so." Pitt nodded at the remains of the digital clock lying amid the debris and pointed at the numerals. They were frozen at ten minutes and twenty seconds. "By destroying the computers and all electronic systems, we stopped the countdown sequence."
"No ice shelf breaking and drifting out to sea?"
Pitt simply shook his head.
"No end of the earth?"
"No end of the earth," Pitt echoed.
"Then it's over," Giordino muttered, finding it hard to believe that what had begun in a mine in Colorado had finally reached a conclusion in a demolished room in the Antarctic.
"Almost." Pitt leaned weakly against the wrecked Snow Cruiser, feeling relief dulled with anger against Karl Wolf. "There are still a few loose ends we have to tie up."
Giordino stared as if he were on another planet. "Ten minutes and twenty seconds," he said slowly.
"Could the world have really come that close to oblivion?"
"If the Valhalla Project had truly gone operational? Probably. Could it have truly altered Earth for thousands of years? Hopefully, we'll never know."
"Do not move a finger or twitch an eye!" The command came as hard as cold marble.
Pitt looked up and found himself face-to-face with a figure in white fatigues pointing a mutant-looking firearm at him. The stranger was bleeding from the chin and a wound in one hand.
Pitt stared at the apparition, trying unsuccessfully to gauge the eyes behind the polarized goggles.
"Can I wiggle my ears?" he asked, perfectly composed.
From his point of view, Cleary couldn't be sure whether the nondescript characters standing in front of him represented enemy or friend. The shorter one looked like a pit bull. The taller of the two was disheveled and had slipshod bandages covering half his face. They looked like men dead on their feet, their gaunt, barely focused, sunken eyes set over cheeks and jaws showing the early stages of scraggly beards. "Who are you and where did you two characters come from, wise mouth?"
"My name is Dirk Pitt. My friend is Al Giordino. We're with the National Underwater and Marine Agency."
"NUMA." Cleary repeated, finding the answer little short of lunacy. "Is that a fact?"
"It's a fact," Pitt answered, perfectly composed. "Who are you?"
"Major Tom Cleary, United States Army Special Forces. I'm in command of the team that assaulted the facility."
"I'm sorry we couldn't have arrived sooner and saved more of your men," Pitt said sincerely.
Cleary's shoulders sagged and he lowered his gun. "No better men have died today."
Pitt and Giordino said nothing. There was nothing fitting they could say.
Finally, Cleary straightened. "I can't believe a couple of oceanographic people from NUMA, untrained to fight hosti
les, could do so much damage," said Cleary, still trying to figure the men standing in front of him.
"Saving you and your men was a spur-of-the-moment action. Stopping the Wolfs from launching a cataclysm was our primary goal."
"And did you accomplish it?" asked Cleary, looking around at the wreckage of what had once been a high-tech operational control center, "or is the clock still ticking?"
"As you can see," Pitt replied, "all electronic functions are disabled. The electronic commands to activate the ice-cutting machines have been terminated."
"Thank God," Cleary said, the stress and strain suddenly falling from his shoulders. He wearily removed his helmet, pulled his goggles over his forehead, stepped forward, and extended his unwounded hand. "Gentlemen. Those of us still standing are in your debt. Lord only knows how many lives were spared by your timely intervention with this. . ." As he shook their hands, he paused to gaze at the twisted shambles of the once-magnificent Snow Cruiser, her Cummins diesel engines still slowly clacking over like a pair of faintly beating hearts. "Just what exactly is it?"
"A souvenir from Admiral Byrd," said Giordino.
"Who?"
Pitt smiled faintly. "It's a long story."
Cleary's mind shifted gears. "I see no bodies."
"They must have all evacuated the center during the battle and headed for the hangar to board the aircraft and make their escape," Giordino speculated.
"My map of the facility shows an airstrip, but we didn't see any sign of aircraft during our descent."
"Their hangar can't be seen from the air. It was carved into the ice."
Cleary's expression turned to fury. "Are you telling me the fiends responsible for this shameful debacle have vanished?"
"Relax, Major," Giordino said with a canny smile. "They haven't left the facility."
Cleary saw the pleased look in Pitt's eyes. "Did you arrange that, too?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Pitt answered candidly. "On our way here, we happened to run into their aircraft. I'm happy to announce that all flights from the facility have been canceled."
Shouts and cheers erupted unabashedly in the Pentagon and White House war rooms at hearing Cleary's voice announce the termination of the ice shelf detachment systems, followed by Lieutenant Jacobs's report that the survivors of Wolf's security force were laying down their arms and surrendering.
Elation washed over the two rooms at learning the worst of the deadly crisis was over. They heard Cleary's voice carrying on a one-sided conversation with the saviors of the mission, who carried no radios and whose words could not be heard intelligibly over Cleary's throat microphone.
Unable to contain his exhilaration, the President snatched up a phone and spoke sharply. "Major Cleary, this is the President. Do you read me?"
There was a flicker of static, and then Cleary's voice answered. "Yes, Mr. President, I hear you loud and clear."
"Until now, I was told not to interfere with your communications, but I believe everybody here would like a coherent report."
"I understand, sir," Cleary said, finding it next to impossible to believe he was actually talking to his commander in chief. "I'll have to make it quick, Mr. President. We still have to round up the Wolfs, their engineers, and the last of their security guards."
"I understand, but please brief us on this macabre vehicle that came on the scene. Who does it belong to and who was operating it?"
Cleary told him, but failed miserably at attempting to describe the snow monster that had burst forth from the ice at the last minute and snatched victory virtually from the mouth of defeat.
Everyone sat and listened, bewildered, but nobody was more bewildered than Admiral Sandecker when informed that two men from his government agency who were under his direct authority had driven sixty miles across the barren ice in a monstrous 1940 snow vehicle and helped crush a small army of mercenary security guards. He was doubly stunned when he heard the names Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino, who he thought were due to land in Washington within the hour.
"Pitt and Giordino," he said, shaking his head in wonderment. "I should have known. If anyone can make a grand entrance where they're not expected, it's them."
"I'm not surprised," said Loren, with a smile across her lovely face. "There was no way Dirk and Al were going to stand by passively and wait for the world to stop."
"Who are these people?" demanded General South, angrily. "Where does NUMA get off interfering in a military operation? Who authorized their presence?"
"I would be proud to say I did," Sandecker said, staring directly at South without giving an inch, "but it simply would not be true. These men, make that my men, acted on their own initiative, and it looks to me that it was a damned good thing they did."
The argument died before it had begun. It never left the minds of those present in the war rooms of the Pentagon and White House that without the intervention of Pitt and Giordino, there would have been no estimating the frightful aftermath.
Pitt's and Giordino's ears should have been burning, but without a link to Cleary's headgear radio, they could not hear what was said half a world away. Pitt sat on the step of the Snow Cruiser and pulled the bandages off his face, revealing several cuts that would require stitches.
Cleary looked down at him. "You're certain the Wolfs are still here?"
Pitt nodded. "Karl, the head of the family, and one sister, Elsie, must be in tears at seeing the aircraft they'd planned to use to flee the facility has been rendered nonflyable."
"Can you and Mr. Giordino lead me to the hangar?"
Pitt cracked a smile. "I'd consider it an honor and a privilege."
General South's voice cut into the brief conversation. "Major Cleary, I am directing you to regroup, do what you can for your wounded, and secure the rest of the facility. Then wait for the main Special Forces unit, which should be landing inside half an hour."
"Yes, sir," answered Cleary. "But first there is a little unfinished business to settle." He pulled out the connector between his mike and receiving unit, turned to Pitt, and fixed him with an "Where is this hangar?"
"About half a mile," said Pitt. "Are you thinking of rounding up a hundred people with the few men you have left?"
Cleary's lips spread in a shifty grin. "Don't you think it and proper that the men who have gone through hell should the final kill?"
"You'll get no argument from me."
"Are you two up to acting as guides?"
"Did you get permission from Washington?"
"I neglected to ask."
Pitt's opaline green eyes took on a wicked look. Then he said, not? Al and I never could pass up a diabolical scheme."
<<45>>
It would be a classic understatement to say that Karl Wolf was horrified and enraged when he laid eyes on the broken wreckage of his aircraft. His grand scheme was in tatters, as he and his scientists and engineers milled around the hangar in fear and confusion. To his knowledge, the mechanism to break away the ice shelf was still set to come online in less than four minutes.
Misguided by Hugo, who told them his guards at the control center were still locked in a life-or-death struggle with the Special Forces teams, Karl had no perception that the Fourth Empire had died before it was born, or that Project Valhalla was aborted.
The Wolfs stood in a solemn group, unable to accept the full impact of the disaster, unable to believe the incredible story of a huge vehicle that had run amok and smashed their aircraft, before heading off toward the battle raging in front of the control center. They stood stunned with disbelief at the sudden reversal of their long-cherished plans. Hugo was the only one missing from his family members.
Committed to the end, he had disregarded their predicament and was feverishly organizing the remaining members of his security force for the final resistance against the Americans he knew for certain were short minutes away from assaulting the hangar.
Then Karl said, "Well, that's it, then." He turned to Blondi. "Send a message to our br
other Bruno on board the Ulrich Wolf. Explain the situation and tell him to send backup aircraft here immediately with all speed. We haven't another moment to lose."
Blondi didn't waste time with questions. She took off at a run toward the radio inside the control room at the edge of the airstrip.
"Will it be possible to land on the Ulrich Wolf during the early stages of the cataclysm?" Elsie Wolf asked her brother. Her face was pale with anguish.
Karl looked at his chief engineer, Jurgen Holtz. "Do you have an answer for my sister, Jurgen?"
A frightened Holtz looked down at the icy floor of the hangar and replied woodenly. "I have no way of calculating the exact arrival time of the expected hurricane winds and tidal waves. Nor can I predict their initial strength. But if they reach the Ulrich Wolf before our flight can land, I fear the result can only lead to tragedy."
"Are you saying we're all going to die?" demanded Elsie.
"I'm saying we won't know until the time comes," Holtz said soberly.
"We'll never have time to transfer the Amenes artifacts from the damaged planes after Bruno arrives,"
said Karl, staring distraught at the family's personal executive jet, sitting broken like a child's toy "We'll take only relics of the Third Reich."
"I'm going to need every able-bodied male and female who can shoot a weapon." The voice came from behind Karl. It was Hugo, whose black uniform was splattered with blood from the dead guard who'd failed to tell him of the havoc in the hangar. "I realize we have many frightened and disoriented people on our hands, but if we are to survive until rescued by our brothers and sisters at the shipyard, we must hold out against the American fighting force."
"How many of your fighting men have survived?" asked Karl.
"I'm down to twelve. That's why I require all the reserves I can find."
"Do you have enough weapons for us all?"