The Athena Project: A Thriller Page 10

  Vicki gave in and reached over to pick up the crumpled package. “I don’t even like touching these things,” she said as she offered it to him.

  “Open it up.”

  She started to ask why, but the look in his eyes stopped her. Gently, she lifted the lid. The inside was stuffed with cotton, like you would find in an aspirin bottle. “Peter, what is this?” she asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  Pulling out the lumps of cotton, Vicki quickly realized that the package hadn’t contained cigarettes at all. “It’s gorgeous!” she said as she removed the necklace. “Where did you find it?”

  “Do you remember that jewelry store you liked?”

  “The one in Naples?”

  He nodded. “The woman remembered you. In fact, when I walked in, the first thing she asked me was where you were.”

  Suffolk smiled as she held up the necklace and put it on. “You’re a liar, but I still love it. When were you in Naples?”

  “About a month ago,” he replied. After a beat, he added, “Alone.”

  “I’m not naïve, Peter.”

  “It’s true.”

  Vicki allowed herself to believe it and she pressed the necklace to her bare chest.

  “How about you?” he asked. “Your reports have been very professional, very clinical. Are you sleeping with him?”

  Suffolk took a sip of her wine as she decided how to respond. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  Peter Marcus smiled. “You’re a very attractive woman, Victoria.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Marcus took a sip of his wine. It was important that she felt the decision pained him and that he had trouble talking about it. “We don’t make the rules of the game. We are just forced to play by them.”

  “Oh, puh-lease!”

  He loved how direct she could be. “Okay, yes. I did say that you were authorized to sleep with him. Secretly I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but perhaps it was. At least you appear to have been successful. I will comfort myself with that.”

  Suffolk moved back over and rubbed her body against his. “You can also comfort yourself with the fact that when I was in bed with him, the only way I could do it was if I pretended I was with you.”

  She leaned over, her breasts brushing against his chest, and kissed his lips. As the tiny tea candles burned, they ignored the food and made love once more.

  An hour later, the wine almost gone, Marcus stared at the ceiling and said, “We need to have a talk.”

  Suffolk propped herself up on an elbow. “About what?”

  He took his eyes from the ceiling and looked at her. “What you’re going to do with Ben Matthews’s body.”

  CHAPTER 19

  ZBIROH

  CZECH REPUBLIC

  Gretchen Casey phoned down to the hotel’s concierge and asked him to prepare a list of restaurant and nightclub suggestions in Prague. When the women stepped out of the elevator and crossed the lobby forty-five minutes later, heads turned so fast you could hear necks snapping.

  Considering what these women did for a living, they certainly wouldn’t have described themselves as being dressed to kill, but everyone else would have. High heels, perfect hair and makeup, and dresses that left very little to the imagination screamed: big night on the town.

  Everything came to a stop as the four gorgeous women walked across the marble floor to the concierge desk. They made small talk with the staff as the concierge handed Casey the list he had prepared and then handed them a map and highlighted the route to Prague.

  Outside, the valets had the ladies’ car ready and waiting. They wished the women a pleasant evening and seemed to take an unusual amount of care in seeing that their legs were fully tucked into the vehicle before closing the doors.

  Once they had driven about a hundred yards, the women all burst out laughing. “They’re going to be mopping up the drool out of that lobby for a month,” joked Rhodes from the front passenger seat.

  Cooper looked over her shoulder and out the rear window. “The valet who opened my door was kind of cute.”

  “Now that we know you like them that young,” said Ericsson as she turned out onto the road, “we’ll stop hitting bars and start taking you to high school football games.”

  After the laughter in the car subsided, Cooper said, “Okay, maybe not that young.”

  “Stick with the young ones,” said Casey, looking out her window. “The older they get, the more of a pain in the ass they become.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” replied Rhodes.

  “Whatever happened to if he’s older, he’ll hold her?” asked Ericsson, trying to catch Casey’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  Rhodes didn’t give her a chance to answer. “If he’s younger, he’s probably got the hunger, if you know what I mean,” she proclaimed.

  That got a laugh from everyone but Casey, who was still staring out the window, preoccupied with her own thoughts.

  The wooded hotel grounds were quite extensive, and after about two kilometers, Ericsson pulled the car off onto a barely visible dirt road. She drove slowly, the headlights bouncing with each rut and pothole they hit. Above them, the thick canopy of trees blocked out the night sky.

  As a clearing approached, Ericsson slowed down and pulled in. She drove over uneven ground for about fifty yards until the car was completely hidden from the road and then shut off the ignition. “We go the rest of the way on foot.”

  “Not in these shoes we don’t,” said Cooper.

  Julie hit the trunk release button. “Boots and clothes are in back,” she replied. “Megan and I cached the rest of the gear up ahead.”

  The women stepped out of the car and grabbed their backpacks from the trunk. As the car had been under the hotel’s control, nothing out of the ordinary had been left inside. If anyone had searched their vehicle, all they would have found was hiking gear.

  Once they had changed, Megan Rhodes clicked on her flashlight and used its filtered beam to guide them deeper into the woods.

  The equipment John Vlcek had provided had been organized in several black duffel bags, which were hidden well out of sight. Even in broad daylight, they would have been difficult to find unless you knew exactly where to look. Rhodes and Ericsson quickly divided up the gear.

  In addition to night vision goggles, or NVGs as they were known, Vlcek had provided them with .40 caliber CZ Rami pistols and extra magazines, as well as encrypted radios and a few other items Hutton had asked for. After checking their weapons and loading the gear in their packs, they recached the duffel bags and Megan Rhodes once again took the lead, using a pre-programmed GPS to guide their way.

  Hans Kammler had done an excellent job of hiding his research facility in the 1940s. Even modern satellite technology was unable to pick it up.

  The warm day had turned into a rather cool night. The women were glad to have brought several layers. As they followed Megan, keeping about five yards between team members as their training had taught them, they maintained complete silence. Their senses were acutely aware of every sound and every movement in the forest around them. Casey had been very clear; they were operating blind and had to remain prepared for anything. The lack of information still weighed heavily on each of them, though no one said anything. No one needed to. They’d worked together long enough that they could almost read each other’s minds.

  After fifteen minutes of walking, Megan signaled the team to stop. As they did, she waved for Gretchen to come forward. Casey did as Megan asked, but it wasn’t until she was standing right next to her that she saw what her point woman was looking at—a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. And it was relatively new. Whoever had placed it there, it certainly wasn’t the Nazis. Someone was trying to keep people from going any farther.

  Rhodes motioned for the team to stay put while she investigated. Ericsson and Cooper turned to guard against possible ambush, while Casey scanned what part of the forest she could see beyo
nd the fence.

  Megan returned a few moments later. “I don’t see any cameras, and the fence doesn’t appear to be electrified,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t have buried seismic sensors, or something else I’m not picking up. I did, though, notice several large signs warning people not to trespass.”

  “Well, that does it for me then,” joked Ericsson. “I’m going back. I’m tired anyway.”

  “It is getting pretty late,” said Cooper, adding to the humor.

  Casey ignored her teammates. “Do we have any wire cutters?”

  Rhodes nodded and swung off her pack. Lifting the top, she sifted around until she found a pair of C7 Swiss wire cutters, about the size of a large set of pliers, which could cut through wire up to three-eighths of an inch thick, and pulled them out.

  Gretchen walked the fence until she found a support pole and began clipping there. A few minutes later, she had made an opening large enough for them to squeeze through one at a time if they took their packs off.

  Once they had all gathered on the other side of the fence, Casey gave the signal for Rhodes to lead them forward.

  They walked for less than five minutes and came to another fence. No one needed to say anything; they were all thinking the same thing. Whoever had built these fences was serious about keeping people out.

  As before, Megan checked the fence and once she deemed it was okay, Gretchen went to work cutting just enough to get them through one at a time without their packs.

  If someone was serious enough to have erected two fences, there was no telling what other measures they had taken. The women’s already heightened senses were even more keenly alert.

  As they walked, they came upon a large stone with an odd symbol carved upon it. “Runic letters,” said Rhodes. “Nazi occult stuff.”

  Casey had a real thing about the occult. She didn’t like it at all. She felt a chill race down her spine and tried to shake it off. Getting Megan’s attention, she signaled for her to move out.

  They passed several large piles of oddly shaped rocks. The rocks were jagged and misshapen as if they had been chiseled, or more than likely blasted out of the earth. They were getting closer. They all could feel it.

  It didn’t just come from the piles of rocks or the runic symbols. There was an aura to this place, an aura of pure evil. The deeper they pushed into the woods, the colder the air became and the more unsettled they all felt. Death seemed to hang in the very air itself.

  The path suddenly sloped downward and curved to the right, and that’s when they saw it.

  CHAPTER 20

  The opening to the tunnel was big enough to drive a truck through. Above it, carved in relief, was a Nazi eagle emblazoned with the immediately identifiable letters SS.

  They were standing on the remnants of what once must have been a paved road of some sort. Rocks were scattered everywhere and several trees had been sheared in half. Had someone used explosives to blow the rocks away from the bunker entrance? Unless someone had come spinning through the forest with a buzz saw set at random heights, it was the only thing that made sense. As the rocks had been blasted away from the entrance, they had exploded outward, snapping the enormous trees like matchsticks.

  “Looks like we found it,” said Ericsson.

  Casey and the others nodded.

  While they had no idea what kind of research had gone on inside the underground complex, they knew they were staring at a piece of history; a piece of history few even knew existed.

  “Are we going to stand here all night?” asked Rhodes. “Or are we going to go inside and look around?”

  “We’re going to have to leave one person outside to stand guard,” said Gretchen.

  Reflexively, she began to look in Ericsson’s direction until Cooper said, “I’ll do it. I’ll stay outside.”

  “Okay then,” replied Casey. “Megan and Jules, you’re with me.”

  As Alex took up her position at the entrance, the three other women struck off down into the tunnel.

  “Remember, the Nazis boobytrapped everything. So be careful.”

  “Roger that,” said Rhodes and Ericsson in unison.

  Their night vision goggles cast an infrared beam that helped illuminate the tunnel. Alex Cooper watched from her position until her teammates disappeared from view, swallowed by the darkness.

  As the three women walked, they noticed the composition of the tunnel walls changing. The solid stone was soon studded with minerals as they went deeper.

  “Quartz?” asked Rhodes as she reached out to touch some of the crystalline formations they were passing.

  “Either that,” replied Casey, “or Kammler’s miraculous minerals.”

  “This place has got a very bad vibe to it,” said Ericsson.

  Vibe was the right word, thought Casey, and it was definitely bad. The tunnel seemed to pulse with an ominous force all its own.

  “Hey, Jules,” said Rhodes. “If we find anything in here with a full set of teeth, it’s all yours, okay?”

  “And I’ll make sure to send anything that’s younger or has a hunger right your way,” Ericsson replied.

  Something along the ceiling caught her eye and Casey looked up. They appeared to be murals.

  The other two women followed her gaze.

  “Man, the Nazis were sick,” said Megan as she stared at a rearing horse with glowing eyes leading a dancing column of skeletons. “I thought this was supposed to be some sort of scientific facility.”

  “It was,” answered Gretchen.

  “So what’s with the paintings?”

  “I’ve got no idea. Let’s keep moving.”

  “Shouldn’t we be getting video of this?” asked Ericsson.

  “Probably,” agreed Casey, who stopped to remove the digital night- vision camera from her pack.

  Turning it on, she pointed it toward the ceiling and then pressed the record button. “Okay, let’s move,” she said.

  Every thirty feet was another set of blast doors that had been propped open. A string of lightbulbs ran down the tunnel’s left side. Up ahead, they could see what looked like a guard station of some sort carved out of the solid rock.

  “Would it surprise anyone if suddenly three SS officers just stepped right out in front of us?” asked Rhodes.

  Casey instinctively reached for her pistol just to make sure it was still there.

  “How deep into this place do you want to go?” Julie asked.

  “As far as we can,” replied Casey.

  The answer was good enough for Ericsson, who kept checking behind them, to make sure they weren’t being followed.

  They stepped into the old stone guardhouse. There was a desk with a field telephone that was vintage World War II. There was also a cot, a table with two chairs, and a bookcase lined with moldy, German-language books. On one of the walls was a small control panel with a series of buttons and dials that looked as if it might have been responsible for the opening and closing of the heavy blast doors they had been passing through.

  “Check this out,” said Rhodes as she dusted off the desk. “More runes.”

  Casey looked down and saw the strange string of symbols that had been carved with the point of a knife. “More Nazi occultism. Terrific. Let’s keep going.”

  They exited the guardhouse and continued walking deeper into the tunnel.

  “When do you think somebody opened this place back up?” asked Ericsson.

  Casey shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell.”

  “Weeks? Months? Years?”

  “Jules, I don’t know.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “I’m not angry,” replied Casey. “I’m just trying to process what I’m seeing too, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve got about as much of this figured out at this point as you do.”

  “I got it,” said Ericsson. “Enough said.”

  Casey chastised herself for not being more professional, but
Ericsson had a bad habit of asking dumb questions when she was on edge. Gretchen didn’t need that now.

  The trio moved on in silence. Above them, the Nazi murals grew more macabre. Casey continued filming, just as she had in the guardhouse. She had no idea if any of this would be of value back home, but she had her orders.

  Up ahead, they came to their first obstacle—a set of blast doors that were closed. Rhodes tried to push them open, but they wouldn’t budge.

  “Maybe they left the key under the mat,” said Ericsson.

  “What mat?”

  “Found it,” said Casey, as she ran her fingers down along the outline of a smaller entrance that had been cut into one of the blast doors.

  Ericsson came over, flipped up her NVGs, and lit up the lock with her filtered flashlight.

  “What do you think?” Casey asked after a couple of moments.

  Ericsson studied the rest of the door for any sign that it was wired, either with boobytraps or with alarm sensors, and then finally said, “I can do it.”

  Taking off her backpack, she removed a small zippered case. Holding the flashlight in her mouth, she unzipped the case and pulled out a small steel lockpick gun.

  Kneeling, she adjusted the flashlight and then slid the tension wrench into the lock and applied a slight amount of downward pressure. Next came the pick gun. Once it was inserted, she began pulling the trigger. The noise it made resembled a stapler being depressed over and over.

  She adjusted the tension wrench a couple times and then felt the lock give way.

  Removing the equipment from the lock, she said, “We’re in.”

  Casey and Rhodes drew their weapons and pointed them at the door as Ericsson stowed her gear and then slung her pack over her shoulders.

  Flipping her NVGs back down, she reached for the door handle and waited. All three took a deep breath and then Casey whis-pered, “Go.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Ericsson pulled on the handle and the door swept back soundlessly on perfectly greased hinges.

  Rhodes stepped through the doorway, followed by Casey and Ericsson, who closed the door behind them. They then moved forward slowly, purposefully.