Night Probe! - Night Probe! Part 79
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Night Probe! Part 79

"My next step was to search through old geological maps," Heidi continued. She paused and slipped one from her briefcase and flattened it on the table. "The only underground limestone quarry between Albany and Germantown lay here." She made a mark with a pencil. "About nine miles north of the DeauvilleHudson bridge and three-quarters of a mile west."

Pitt put the binocular glasses to his eyes and began scanning the aerial photos. "Here, due east of the quarry site, is a dairy farm. The house and barnyard have erased all remains of the junction."

"Yes, I see it," Heidi said excitedly. "And there's a paved road that runs toward the New York State Thruway."

"Small wonder you lost the trail," Giordino said. "The county laid asphalt over it."

"If you look closely," said Pitt, "you can pick out a section of old rail ballast as it curves from the road for a hundred yards and ends at the foot of a steep hill, or mountain as the natives would label it."

Heidi peered through the binoculars. "Surprising how clear everything becomes when you know what to search for."

"Did you happen to turn up any information on the quarry" Giordino asked her.

"That part was easy," Heidi nodded. "The property and the track right-of-way were owned by the Forbes Excavation Company, which operated the quarry from eighteen eighty-two until nineteen ten, when they encountered flooding. All operations were halted, and the land was sold to neighboring farmers."

"I hate to be a wet blanket," said Giordino. "But suppose the quarry was an open pit?"

Heidi gave him a considering look. "I see what you mean. Unless the Forbes Company mined the limestone from inside the mountain, there'd be no place to hide a train." She scanned the photo again. "Too much growth to tell for sure, but the terrain appears unbroken."

"I think we should scout it out," Pitt said.

"All right," Giordino agreed. "I'll drive you."

"No, I'll go alone. In the meantime, call Moon and get some more bodies up here-a platoon of marines, in case Shaw brings in reinforcements. And tell him to send us a mining engineer, a good one. Round up any old-timers around the countryside who might remember any strange goings-on at the quarry. Heidi, if you feel up to it, kick the local publishers out of bed and dig through old papers for any relevant news items that were pushed to the back pages by the Deauville-Hudson bridge collapse. I'll know better where we stand when I inspect the quarry."

"Not much time left," Giordino said gloomily. "The President makes his speech in nineteen hours."

"I don't have to be reminded." Pitt reached for his coat. "All that's left for us now is to get inside that mountain."

The sun had set and was replaced by a quarter moon. The evening air was crisp and sharp. From his vantage point high above the old quarry entrance Shaw could see the lights of villages and farms miles away. It was a fair and picturesque land, he thought idly.

The sound of a piston-engined plane intruded on the silent countryside. Shaw twisted around and looked skyward, but could see nothing. The plane was flying without navigation lights. He judged by the sound of the engines that it was circling at only a few hundred feet above the hill. Here and there the light of a star was blotted by what Shaw knew were parachutes.

Fifteen minutes later, two shadows moved out of the trees below and climbed toward him. One of the men was Burton Angus The other was stockily built. In the darkness he could have passed for a huge rolling rock. His name was Eric Caldweiler, and he was former superintendent of a coal mine in Wales.

"How did it go?" Shaw asked.

"A perfect jump, I'd say," Burton-Angus replied. "They practically landed on top of my signal beam. The officer in command is a Lieutenant Macklin."

Shaw ignored one of the cardinal rules of undercover night operations and lit a cigarette. The Americans would know of their presence soon enough, he reasoned. "Did you find the quarry entrance?"

"You can forget about it," said Caldweiler. "Half the hillside slipped away."

"It's buried?"

"Aye, deeper than a Scotsman's whiskey cellar. The overburden is thicker than I care to think about."

Shaw said, "Any chance of digging through?"

Caldweder shook his head. "Even if we had a giant dragline, you're talking two or three days."

"No good. The Americans could show up at any time."

"Might gain entry through the portals," said Caldweiler, stoking up a curved briar pipe. "Providing we can find them in the dark."

Shaw looked at him. "What portals?"

"Any heavily worked commercial mine requires two additional openings: an escape way in case the main entrance is damaged, and an air ventilation shaft."

"Where do we start searching?" Shaw asked anxiously.

Caldweder was not to be rushed. "Well, let's see. I judge this to be a drift mine-a tunnel in the side of the hill where the outcropping broke the surface. From there the shaft probably followed the limestone bed on a down% yard slope. That would put the escape way somewhere around the base of the hill. The ventilator? Higher up, facing the north."

"Why north?"

"Prevailing winds. Just the ticket for cross-ventilation in the days before circulating fans."

"The air vent it is then," said Shaw. "It would be better hidden in the hillside woods and less exposed than the escape portal below."

"Not another safari up the mountain," Burton-Angus complained.

"Do you good," said Shaw, smiling. "Work off the fancy buffets of those embassy row parties." He mashed out the cigarette with his heel. "I'll go and round up our helpers."

Shaw turned and made his way into a heavy thicket near the base of the hill about thirty meters from the old rail spur. He tripped over a root at the edge of a ravine and fell, arms outstretched for the slamming impact. Instead, he rolled down a weed-blanketed slope and landed on his back in a bed of gravel.

He was lying there gasping, trying to get his knocked-out breath back, when a figure materialized above him, silhouetted against the stars, and touched the muzzle of a rifle to his forehead.

"I rather hope you're Mr. Shaw," a polite voice said.

"Yes, I'm Shaw," he managed to rasp.

"I'm pleased." The gun was pulled back. "Let me help you up, sir."

"Lieutenant Macklin?"

"No, sir, Sergeant Bentley."

Bentley was dressed in a military black-and-gray camouflaged night smock with pants that tucked into paratroop-style boots. He wore a dark beret over his head and his hands and feet were the color of ink. He carried a netted steel helmet in one hand. Another man stepped out of the darkness. "A problem, sergeant?"

"Mr. Shaw had a bit of a tumble."

"You Macklin?" asked Shaw, getting his breath back. A set of teeth gleamed brightly.

"Can't you tell?"

"Under that minstrel makeup you all look alike to me."

"Sorry about that."