A concrete wall rose alongside the streambed, with more ornate concrete facades on either side of it. In the center lay a rusting steel door. Hansen squinted. On the door was an old white sign with red letters: VERBOTEN. SIEGFRIEDSTELLUNG WESTWALL.

Fisher didn't have time to get out of the ravine,Hansen thought. He must have gone in there.

"We need to get down there!" Hansen ordered.

"Over here!" called Noboru. "I think we can get down here!"

They rushed over to where Noboru picked out a rocky edge of the ravine that would allow them to descend--slowly and carefully--but at least they could get down without breaking out ropes or rappelling gear from the trunk.

Noboru took the lead, and they descended one by one, burning up valuable time.

"Hey, I called up this place on the OPSAT," said Ames. "They called it the Siegfried line. It's a whole bunch of bunkers built by the Germans after World War I. There are thousands of them and tunnels and machine-gun emplacements all up and down it. Goes for, like, four hundred miles."

"Great," Hansen said with a groan. "Another perfect place for him to lose us."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," corrected Valentina, who reached the ground and took off running along the bank toward the door.

Noboru jogged behind her, as did Hansen, who turned back to Ames and Gillespie and said, "Circle around the other side and see if there's another entrance up top."

They nodded and rushed off.

As they neared the door, Hansen motioned to Noboru. "Sorry, buddy. I'm going to post you right here."

Noboru made a face, but he drew his SC pistol and nodded.

Hansen and Valentina reached the door, and Hansen gave it a solid shove with his shoulder. The door seemed to give a little, then bounced back, as though held by something elastic.

"Light," he ordered Valentina.

She moved in with a penlight, and in the gap between the jamb and the door they saw weblike rows of paracord. Fisher had tied shut the door from the inside.

Hansen drew his combat dagger--the one that had belonged to Fisher. He got to work on the cord.

31

THE SIEGFRIED LINE WESTERN GERMANY

HANSENsawed through the first line of paracord and began working on the second.

"It's taking forever," said Valentina.

"Best I can do." The second one gave suddenly, and he began work on the third.

Something pinged hard just inside the door, near the concrete jamb, and Hansen realized with a start that he was taking fire. He pulled back the knife, shuddering as he did so.

"Shots," he said through a gasp.

Her eyes widened. "What did you expect? He's slowing us down even more. Come on."

Hansen took a deep breath--just as another round struck the wall inside.

"That came from a distance," he said, knowing that he would've heard a slight hand clap from inside but hadn't heard anything. "Warning shots."

"Just cut," Valentina urged him.

Hansen thrust his hand back into the gap and began sawing once more. "Kim, you find anything up there?"

"Not yet," she answered in his subdermal. "No other entrances or exits that we can see so far. . . . There could be some farther down the line. Or maybe we went the wrong way. Still, he's got to come out somewhere."

"Roger that."

Hansen cut hard into the last piece of paracord, which suddenly gave, and together he and Valentina shoved open the door.

They flipped down their goggles and switched to night vision. Water seeped down from a large crack in the ceiling, like a varicose vein bubbling with fluid, and, in fact, more water trickled inside from cracks all over the walls and floor, as though the place had become a sponge over time and was slowly being squeezed.

To their left and right lay a central passageway about thirty feet wide and seemingly miles long. Concrete stairwells intersected the passage, assumedly leading up to the old pillboxes and machine-gun emplacements, a few leading downward to who knew where, perhaps living quarters or storage facilities. Between the dust and rank odor of mildew, it was difficult not to cough.

"This place is a trap," whispered Valentina. "If he doesn't get us, a slip or fall will."

"Go infrared," he told her. "I'm willing to bet he's navigating this way. Check it out. You can see the cool air rising up from the weaker parts of the floor . . . those blue plumes. The greenish ones are warmer air."

"I see it. You're pretty smart, cowboy."

"Thanks, cowgirl."

"Don't call me that."

"Ditto."

"Follow me," he said, staying close to the wall and leading her down the main passage.

He picked up Fisher's footprints with the infrared in no time, and they led toward a concrete stanchion with a ladder built inside and leading up into a concrete shaft.

Something metallic pinged and clattered across the floor, followed by a second metal object. Hansen gave a hand signal to Valentina to get down. He zoomed in with the goggles to spot a rusting old bolt on the floor, accompanied by a second one. The bolts' heads were rusty, but their shafts were darker, cleaner, as though they'd been wrenched out of something, the wall probably. They belonged to the ladder and were loosened because Fisher was up there.

As that realization struck, so did something else, thumping into the floor. Hansen threw Valentina another hand signal: Don't move.

He zoomed in . . . and there it was, a Sticky Cam at the bottom of the shaft, panning toward them.

Hansen nodded to Valentina, and they advanced toward the shaft.

Another noise, this time from above, like a wheel turning hard against a rusty axle.

Now Hansen advanced himself, moving ahead of Valentina and ready to reach the shaft and mount the ladder rising up into the darkness.

But then, as he was about to steal a look up, something clanged hard on the floor, struck the upper edge of the shaft, and began rolling toward him.

The device was easily identifiable by its hexagonal end caps and perforated tube with brown and pastel green bands.

Of course the word "grenade" never made it out of Hansen's mouth. He turned away, about to dive out of its path, when the flashbang brought instant hell.

A piercing shrill, at 170 decibels, threatened to shatter his eardrums while eight million candela of stark white light entered the Tridents and forced him to slam shut his eyes as he landed hard on his stomach. At the same time, the concussion struck like a Rolls-Royce jet engine suddenly switched on. He was literally knocked over onto his back.

And then . . . nothing, save for the bang echoing in his ears and the light still flashing behind his closed his eyes.

"Ben, what the--" Her voice came tinny and distant, barely perceptible behind all the ringing.

"Are you all right?" he asked, unable to hear his own voice.

"What happened?"

"Flashbang. Don't try to move or do anything. Just wait a minute."

Hansen opened his eyes, flipped up his goggles. Nope. He couldn't see a damned thing, and his ears were now ringing even more loudly so that, despite the subdermal, he could barely hear Valentina say, "Okay."

GILLESPIEhad led Ames along the top of a cliff where it seemed the bunker line continued onward. They had searched for openings or hatches leading inside but had found only patches of concrete covered over by thick clumps of weeds.