Tom Townsend, page 18
Jim took a few seconds to check the map and then nodded.
"Beneath the misty mountain deep,” Sherri said, her voice distant and low. "I think we found it.”
Chapter Nineteen
The mountain rose before them like the ruined walls of some ancient castle. Forests of thick pine covered the lower slopes up to a line of gray cliffs on the north face. Above the cliffs, there appeared to be two rocky pinnacles, shrouded now in a strange mist. A few wind-sculptured trees clung to l he eastern pinnacle, but to the west was a jagged point of sheer rock, rising at an odd angle and visible as only a shadow in the mist.
"It does kind of look like a sleeping dragon,” Sherri said as they drove toward it.
The eastern face was also cliff-lined, but a curling spur ran out to the west. According to the map, it encircled and apparently concealed a long, high meadow. Only one road up the mountain was shown on the map, and there was but a trace of it remaining.
"Old map,” Jim commented as he eased the truck across a narrow bridge. “Probably hasn’t been surveyed since World War II. Which, for us, just might be helpful.” He pointed at a place in the woods where the trees were smaller. "I think it ran up that way, up toward the meadow.” A rail fence stood between them and the old road. To cover their tracks, they carefully disassembled a section of it, drove the truck through, and then reassembled it behind them.
The old roadway wound upward along the western spur. An occasional deer moved in the long shadows of afternoon as they inched along, picking their way carefully on the faint path.
“I think this was railroad track before it was a road,” Jim commented.
"What makes you think that? Half the time, I can’t even tell it was a road.”
"The grades. They’re all shallow enough for a train to pull. A road could have been made a lot steeper and shorter.”
"Oh,” Sherri commented, failing to attach any real significance to the observation.
"If there was a factory complex here, they would need a railroad connection. I think this is the old right-of-way.”
"Then it should take us right to the entrance.” “Yeah, the entrance that Ehrler said he sealed.”
They arrived at the meadow’s edge suddenly as the truck pushed its way through a tangle of branches and into the open. Jim stopped when only the hood and windshield were exposed. The meadow was as the map had indicated, flat and totally concealed. On three sides were mountains, and to the north, two sloping spurs hid it from the valley below. A half-dozen deer looked at them for a moment and then bounded away, into the far trees.
“They could have done a lot of testing out here without being seen,” Jim said. In the fading light of evening, they continued on along the old roadbed, which now followed the edge of the meadow. Then it turned abruptly and ended at the base of a ragged cliff. Huge boulders and twisted trees gave evidence I hat, sometime in the distant past, there had been a landslide here.
Twilight settled around them as they made camp. Using the truck and a couple of boulders as a windbreak, Jim built a small, concealed fire. They dined on C-rations and drank melted snow. The moon rose, nearly full, over the mountain peaks, and although the sky was crystal clear, the mist still clung to the rocky pinnacles above. In the cold moonlight, the mist glowed, and from within were tiny sparkles of light.
“I’ve been here before,” Sherri said unexpectedly as she stood a little way from the fire and looked up at the mountain. Jim only looked at her and so she continued. "Not in this life, of course. I remember the mist around the mountain peaks. There used to be a stone gateway here which led into the caverns. There were runes there which could only be read by moonlight on certain nights of the year. I came to some ceremony here—I think.”
“In which comic book was that?” Jim asked sarcastically.
“Knock it off, Fafner. I'm serious."
"Well, I’m sure they crowned you Queen of Ice.” Sherri turned on him. "Will you forget about sex? I told you, I made a mistake. Now just forget it!” She stalked back toward the small campfire. "Do I have to sleep this close to you?”
"You can sleep any place you want. Of course, if you don’t want to freeze, you’ll sleep by the fire.” "Then make it bigger. I want to sleep over here.” Jim shook his head. "Old American proverb say: ‘Indian build small fire, keep close. White man build big fire, keep warm chopping wood.’ ”
“I hate proverbs."
"One more,” Jim insisted. “Dumb broad build big fire, get our asses spotted five miles away.” Sherri groaned as she crawled into a sleeping bag close to the fire and rolled over with her back to him. "You still don't believe in anything you can’t see and touch, not even after everything that’s happened.”
"Actually I try to believe only about half of what I see and touch.”
"You saw your missile bounce off the Jagdpanther. And I was right about where the Jagdpanther was headed, wasn’t I? How much more convincing do you need?”
Jim did not answer.
"It thinks I'm dead. I can feel it. So there must be some other reason it’s coming here—like there’s something else here that it’s afraid of and has to destroy?”
"From what I can tell, it’s doing a pretty good job of destroying just about anything it wants.”
"I know. That's why we have to find out what it’s afraid of and then use it as a weapon." She rolled over and looked at him. "That makes sense, doesn’t it?"
‘‘As much as any other part of this does,” Jim conceded. He looked up at the rock cliff above. "Since you’ve been here before, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding the way up the cliffs tomorrow.”
"There are steps, carved in the stone, over there somewhere.” Sherri’s voice was again distant, and she seemed surprised at what she had just said. “At least, I think they are." She shrugged and disappeared into her sleeping bag, head and all.
Jim sat smoking his pipe as the moon moved slowly behind the tapestry of interlaced pine branches above him. Sherri, mysterious, crazy Sherri. Somehow, he felt that the stone steps would be exactly where she said they would be. And if they were, then he was going to have to take most of the rest of what she said much more seriously. Perhaps he had already been doing that for a couple of days now. Perhaps it was only his own inner self who had yet to believe the worst of what was happening.
Ehrler had spoken of the problems of mating magic with technology. That, in his mind, seemed to sum up his relationship with Sherri. He was a practical soldier. Yes, he reminded himself. You are a soldier. You may write your books and play with old tanks for museums, but under it all, you’re a soldier, and that’s all you'll ever be. Whatever kind of battle was coming, it was still just a battle. Somehow, he would be able to deal with that.
He placed more wood on the fire, crawled into his
sleeping bag, and laid his pistol beside him. Being in love with Sherri? Well, that was going to be a lot more difficult.
He dreamed that night of battles fought. At first it was the tank duel on Golan Heights, and then convoy ambushes in Vietnam. But others followed, a few he recognized only because he had studied them, analyzed them in military science classes; others were completely strange to him, yet he was part of each and every one.
He recognized the trenches and barbed wire at Somme, France, 1917, as the ancient ancestors of modern tanks lumbered across the shell-torn noman's land of the western front, followed closely by foot soldiers and horse cavalry.
The scene changed. He saw Mexican cavalry riding with guns blazing into a ruined stable yard as a young man died beside him screaming, “Viva Legion Etrangere!" Yet, it was not until he saw the white kepi, bloodstained and lying in the dust, that he realized he was fighting with the French Foreign Legion at the battle of Camerone.
Other visions followed in rapid succession. Mounted on a short, stocky horse, he wielded a Scottish claymore and hacked his way into a tightly packed formation of red-coated troops who fought with long pikes.
There were longships with the dragon-shaped bows, beached in a cove. On the rocky shore beyond, he was among huge blond men who butchered each other with swords and axes while the tide ran red with their blood.
Stranger battles followed. One was fought in deep forests against inhuman creatures he had never seen or dreamed of in this life. The head of a dragon rose in front of him; fire belched from its
mouth, scorching the ground around him as he dodged right and left, then lunged with his sword, cutting into the monster's neck and spilling green, sparkling blood onto the rocky ground.
Sherri was there—a fleeting, white-robed figure in the forest shadows. Her hair was longer and laced with beads and flowers which glowed and sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow. She was beside him, smiling, touching his face with her hands and kissing him.
"Hey, Fafner, wake up!” Sherri said, shaking him awake. "Come on. It’s morning and I found the stairs, just where I said they’d be.”
The aroma of fresh coffee aroused him enough to open one eye. It was daylight. The campfire was blazing and Sherri was holding a canteen cup under his nose. It occurred to him that she had looked a lot better in his dream. "I found it in those rations,” she said. “And man, you look like you could use it. You sleep like a rock. I thought I’d never get you awake.”
The steps were there, just as Sherri had said. They were so old and so well hidden it would have been impossible to find them by accident. Beneath the snow and moss that covered them completely were intricate carvings, unlike anything Jim had ever seen.
"Elf runes, I think,” Sherri said excitedly as she traced one of the delicate outlines with her finger. "I can’t say for sure, because there are no authenticated elf runes anywhere in the world.”
"Any idea what they mean?”
"No. I’ve seen a few runes which are supposed to be related to elfish, but they only vaguely resembled these.”
Jim and Sherri started up. So intricately had the steps been fashioned that, in places, it was almost impossible to tell exactly where the stone had been carved and where it was natural. At one point, Jim reached for a snow-covered rock as a handhold. His hand slipped, knocking off the snow and exposing a stone dragon’s head, so realistic it startled him.
“Beautiful,” Sherri commented, and continued climbing.
The mist hung along the top of the cliff like a smoky ceiling, and the steps ended on a ledge of flat gray stone. There were caves there, but a few yards inside, each one had been blasted shut and sealed long ago. Above the caves, the ground sloped upward again. The trees here were smaller and thinner than those on the lower slopes, and the ground was rockier.
“A stairway to nowhere,” Jim said, looking around.
"All races,” Sherri answered, "did not feel the need to destroy their environment like man. Some adapted to it, worshiped it, and enhanced it only when necessary.”
For all of that morning, they climbed and crawled through crevices and over boulders, working their way to the east end of the mountain. Always there was the mist, thick and wet and gray. By late evening, they had circumnavigated the entire mountain and were back at the head of the stone stairs.
Sherri was noticeably disappointed. "I thought I could find the way in, just like I found the stairs. Something keeps telling me that the answer is in the mist, but I can't seem to make any sense out of it.”
“The mist,” Jim repeated thoughtfully. "Maybe that is the answer.”
“How?”
"The mist. Why is it here?”
Sherri looked confused. "Because the legend says it is?”
"No,” Jim said, "that’s the effect, not the cause. Get your mind out of mythology and think about what causes mist.”
"Science, how boring. Oh, let me see, mist is— condensation.”
"Caused by . . . ?”
"Caused by heat?”
“In this case, I think, escaping heat.”
The sun was already up and there was little cover, but still the Jagdpanther rolled steadily southward. Moving in daylight was dangerous. It had learned that years ago, but the sense of urgency was overpowering. It must get to the south, back to the mountain where it was forged, for there, somewhere within the misty peaks, was an enemy that must be dealt with—and dealt with quickly.
Ten miles to the north of the Jagdpanther, an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter flew another leg of its search pattern. In addition to the 12.7mm Gatling cannon in its nose, sixteen laser-guided Hell-fire missiles hung from its weapons pods. Each had a range of seven kilometers, and their tandem, shaped-charge warheads were capable of penetrating the heaviest frontal armor of any known tank.
The Apache’s pilot spotted the single pair of wide tank tracks, southbound along the edge of a treeline and half-hidden in the shadows. He swung his aircraft in a tight, banking turn to follow, then reduced his speed and dived low, barely keeping his wheels above the treetops. He was certain he was jwell south of any army training areas, so there was
no chance these were the tracks of anything belonging to the military. He supposed there was the vague possibility he was following the tracks of some farmer’s bulldozer, but the farther he flew, the more he doubted it. The tracks always avoided the open; they skirted fields and kept to the wood-lines, always seeking the morning shadows. Yes, whoever was driving knew his business.
Far ahead, the Jagdpanther felt the helicopter's presence long before it came into sight. This was some new kind of enemy, something it had never faced, and something it had never been taught how to fight. The Apache came in over the trees sooner than the Jagdpanther had expected and swooped low. With its gun barrel elevated at its maximum altitude, the Jagdpanther turned in a tightening circle, tracking the swift machine above it. Impossible, the Jagdpanther decided. The gun could not be elevated high enough, and this enemy moved too quickly and too radically for any chance of a hit.
The Jagdpanther retreated then and searched its accumulated knowledge. Yes, there was a way. Turning away from its enemy, the Jagdpanther headed for the banks of a stream just beyond the nearest trees. The helicopter swooped in again, clinging to the Jagdpanther’s tail. A salvo of missiles flashed from the helicopter’s stubby wings. Two passed above the Jagdpanther and two more slammed into the rear deck just as it reached the stream bank. The Jagdpanther spun on its treads, sliding sideways down the bank and locking one tread as it went. Its rear deck splashed into the water and its gun pointed suddenly skyward.
As the smoke cleared, the Apache moved in slowly, convinced the missiles had succeeded in turning the Jagdpanther into scrap metal. The pilot brought his craft in ever closer, looking over the strange old armored vehicle he believed he had just destroyed. He marveled at the bright blue light that surrounded it and wondered why no damage was visible. The last thing he noticed was the Jagdpanther’s gun barrel moving slightly, tracking him, as the helicopter descended.
There was a brilliant flash of light as the Jagdpanther’s 88 fired with only a few meters separating it from the helicopter. The resulting explosion echoed across the hills. Flaming aviation fuel covered the Jagdpanther with burning liquid which flowed in a fiery waterfall down into the stream to rise again as gasping clouds of steam. Through this inferno, the Jagdpanther backed into the stream and moved away, against the current, leaving no trace or trail.
"Escaping heat?” Sherri repeated, looking up at the gray mist hanging along the edge of the cliff. "Escaping heat from what?”
"Escaping from inside the mountain,” Jim helped. "Caves usually remain a pretty constant temperature. Outside, it changes every day.” "Yeah, all right. I get it, but where is it escaping?”
Jim was already starting back up the slope. "A factory, built underground where a lot of men were going to work, would need a way to get air to them. Maybe ventilators with air shafts bored through the mountain and camouflaged on the surface.” "Wrong, Fafner,” Sherri argued. "The mist was here a long time before the Nazis. The Eddas described it centuries ago.”
"Very true. Only then, there were caves which let the warm air escape. The Nazis sealed them up to keep people out, but they had to replace them with air shafts.”
Sherri thought about that for a moment. ‘‘And so the mists stayed,” she said finally.
Night overtook them before there was any chance for further exploration. It was near noon of the following day before they found one of the air shafts. It was hidden neatly inside a natural rock chimney. The mist was thickest here, and they could feel the warm air rising to meet them as they climbed down to it. Over the shaft were heavy steel bars, and beneath the bars was a ladder, made of iron rungs, driven into the rock. It led down into the mist below, far past the reach of Jim’s flashlight beam. Using a hacksaw from one of the tool kits, they took most of the rest of the day to cut through one of the bars and bend it far enough out of the way to slip through.
"We probably won’t be coming out of there for a while,” Jim said. "So we better take everything with us that we’ll need.” They returned to the truck once again and loaded some of the C-rations and a pair of sleeping bags into two of the field packs. Jim removed the batteries from the portable radio and took them to use in the flashlight. Sherri reluctantly exchanged her mink for an army field jacket that had belonged to the truck driver. Then they melted enough snow to fill four of the canteens and decided they were ready.
"Should we go now when it’s dark?” Sherri asked, looking up at the moon through the mist.
"Why not? It’s going to be dark down there, anyway,” he answered. They shouldered their packs and picked their way carefully up the winding stone steps to the bluffs above. The moon was full and pale. Against the mist, it cast eerie light and ghostly shadows on the rocky crag which concealed the air shaft. They descended silently—first to the iron bars and then carefully down the ladder below.
Jim led the way, feeling with his foot in the darkness for each rung and wondering what he would do if one of them was not there. The descent seemed to go on for hours. A constant flow of warm air rose past them in the darkness. At one point, Jim stepped onto solid ground and found he was standing on a rock ledge. A few feet away, the ladder continued down into the darkness.
