Brad Thor - The Athena Project

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 beyond 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.

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.