David Golemon - Legacy

“Buck Rogers,” Alice explained when she saw what Everett had illuminated.

“Ma’am?” Everett said.

“The spaceships are from an old movie serial of the thirties, Buck Rogers. Judging from the looks of things, the Nazis had designs on making this a tourist attraction after their triumph in the war.”

Carl shook his head as he climbed free of the small cab. He turned the light on the small gift shop and the equally small snack area opposite.

“I swear, when you think this job has topped out in strangeness, something comes along that makes you feel you’ll never see the end,” Everett said as he was joined by Sebastian and the others.

Sebastian chose to ignore the strange shops around them and looked up at the thick steel doors ahead. He read the words spelled out in German on those doors: Galerie Ein-Wohnkomplex.

“What does it say?” Everett asked Sebastian.

“The first line says Gallery One, Living Complex, and the second line says ‘No electric carts beyond this point and no one enters without SS escort.’” Sebastian looked over at Everett. “And before you ask, no, I do not qualify as one of those murdering bastards.”

“I never said a word, buddy. You’re not responsible for those cheery bastards. Shall we open it up and see what’s behind door number one?”

Sebastian just nodded his head and looked over at Niles, who had already found the breaker box for the door. The German dipped his head forward, giving the director the go-ahead.

The giant steel doors started to part. As the black breach expanded, they could see nothing but darkness beyond. Sebastian and Everett were struck with a breeze that chilled them as the doors slid apart. They brought their weapons up and waited. The doors stopped; beyond them both men felt like the vastness of space had opened up before them.

“Boss, see if you can find the light switch,” Carl said as the two were joined by Lee, Alice, Charlie, Appleby, and the MIT man, Franklyn Dubois.

Niles found the handle with the electrical symbol above it and threw the switch.

Suddenly the gallery beyond the doors flared into a glorious brightness. They were standing on the precipice of a massive stone ledge overlooking a giant cave system.

“This isn’t a mine, it’s a cave, a natural formation,” Ellenshaw said. He stepped forward and looked down at one of the most amazing sights he had ever seen. The others braved the heights and followed Ellenshaw’s lead out onto the ledge.

Far below, they saw a pathway that had been dredged out of solid rock leading down to the bowels of the cave system. Thousands of overhead lights had been installed by German workmen over seventy years before. Illuminated by these lights was what looked like the destroyed remains of an ancient city. The buildings were made up of material that looked like plastic, white and dull with dirt and dust. Some of the structures were upright, others crushed beneath stone and other debris that had fallen over the years. They could see that some of the strange material had actually petrified, indicating its age. They could also see very old German heavy equipment that had been used to excavate some of the strange buildings. Tractors, earth movers, and other construction elements littered the three-mile length of the dig.

“Look at those,” Niles Compton said as he joined the group looking out over the crushed and battered cave system below.

“What are they?” Appleby asked.

“Petrified trees,” Ellenshaw answered for Niles. “Thousands of them.”

“This site used to be aboveground, possibly before the formation of the mountains.”

The men and Alice looked at Niles as he continued to speculate.

“Millions of years ago these buildings were in the light of day, but a shift in the continental plates and a buckling of the crust created the Andes as continents collided with each other, forming the up-push that sent stone and dirt miles into the air, covering this site, this small village of visitors.”

“Visitors?” Alice asked.

“They had to be. Check out those geodesic domes. They look as though they were meant to be temporary structures, just like we would pitch tents in an unknown land. Can’t you feel it?”

Everett watched as Niles and the others visualized a group of explorers setting up a base on an inhospitable bit of land doomed to be crushed by the formation of a mountain range, all of this happening nearly a hundred million years before.

“We have to get down there,” Niles said, turning to looked at Everett.

“The path is this way,” he said. He looked at Lee. “Sebastian, I think we can break the rules your forebears warned of and take the carts down. If that heavy machinery made it, we can too.”

“I agree, Captain,” Sebastian said without looking at the ailing senator.

Lee was staring at the large and age-tattered streamers that bore the Nazi swastika. The flags and banners hung around the entire circumference of the rounded chamber below. This is what had led to the death of Alice’s husband Ben, and Lee for one was determined to find out what that death had been for, what the price was for the death of a good young man.

“For some reason, I think more than a global cataclysm struck this place,” Ellenshaw said. The others, save for Everett, made their way back to the electric cars.

“Come on, Doc. Let’s get down there,” Everett said.

The Mechanic, using field glasses, scanned the ridge in front of the mine and nodded as he took in the defense line of the Americans. The small force had been cut in half by his on-again, off-again assaults. He had witnessed three men go down in the last minute of battle from the front line of defense. As he adjusted the binoculars, he watched another team of his men run forward throwing grenades, only to be cut down by withering fire from the first and second ridgelines before them. Whoever was commanding those men up there had done a masterful job of concentrating fire on the most immediate threat. But time was running out for them. The attrition he was using his men up for was pushing the defense of the mine entrance to its limits.

He turned to the twenty men of his personal security team and told them to make ready to move forward with the special strike teams. He knew the defense line was soon going to falter and he didn’t want any remnants falling back into the mine, where they would have to be rooted out later at great expense in men and, more importantly, time. The pests had caused far more casualties than the Mechanic would have liked. They had killed his men at a rate of fifty to one and that was getting a bit expensive. He needed these men for the removal of the artifacts and the weaponry from the mine.

He lowered his field glasses and admonished his men to keep a low profile as they advanced because of the threat of the most amazing sniper he had ever come into contact with. Try as he might, he could not pinpoint where the shooter was, but he was taking a heavy toll on his men. The man must be running low on ammunition, because his rate of fire had slowed, even though targets of opportunity abounded in the tree line.

“Radio the assault teams to make ready for the final push. I want the Americans to be swept clean of that ridge. We are running out of time. We still have a force of close to two hundred-adequate for the job, but not if we hesitate. Tell them that-”

He never got to finish. A withering fire opened up from somewhere behind them. Men who were formed for the final attack were struck by automatic weapons fire and mortars from their rear. As the Mechanic swung around he saw an amazing sight. From the very positions they had held earlier, a large force of men in green camouflage was running and firing-stopping, adjusting their fire, and moving in relays toward his exposed men.