Trojan Odyssey (31 page)

Pitt produced a small pair of wire cutters from his backpack. “I thought we might need these if we ran into barbwire.”

Giordino held them up to the light from below. “They should do nicely. Now please stand back while the master creates an entrance.”

It looked easy, but wasn't. Giordino was sweating rivers twenty-five minutes later when he finally cut a hole high and wide enough for them to crawl through. He handed the cutters back to Pitt, pulled the mesh apart and peered into the shaft. The square-cut ventilator shaft, acting as the passage for the expelled air from the tunnel far below, was fifteen feet wide. A circular metal tube filled one corner. This was the access shaft, with a ladder that seemed to vanish into a bottomless pit.

“For maintenance in case the ventilator system needs repair,” Pitt volunteered loudly over the fan noise. “It also serves as an emergency exit for the mine workers should there be a fire or a roof collapse in the main tunnel.”

Giordino entered the shaft feet first onto the lower rungs of the ladder. He paused and looked up at Pitt sourly. “I hope I won't regret this!” he shouted over the roar of the fans, as he began his descent.

Pitt was thankful the shaft was lit. After dropping down the ladder fifty feet, he paused and looked below. All he could see was the ladder stretching into infinity, like the tracks of a railroad. No sign of the bottom was visible.

He pulled out a paper towel from a pocket, tore it into two small pieces, wadded them up and stuffed them in his ears as plugs against the irritating noise level of the fans. Besides the main fan system, booster fans had been installed every hundred feet to maintain the required pressure to vent the tunnel to the surface.

After what seemed half a lifetime, and what Giordino estimated was a drop of five hundred feet, he stopped his descent and waved a hand. The bottom of the ladder was in view. Slowly, cautiously, he turned until he was upside-down. Then he crawled downward until his eyes could see under what was now the roof of a small control center that monitored and detected the gasses, carbon monoxide, temperature and fan system operations.

Pitt and Giordino had passed far below the main fan system and could now converse in low tones. Giordino raised up until he was on his feet again and spoke to Pitt, who had slid down the ladder beside him.

“What's the status?” Pitt asked softly.

“The ladder runs through a ventilator systems control center that sits about fifteen feet above the floor of the tunnel. A man and a woman are sitting at computer consoles. Luckily, they're facing away, with their backs to the ladder. We should be able to take them out before they know what hit them.”

Pitt looked into Giordino's dark eyes, only inches away. “How do you want it?”

Giordino's lips parted in a conniving grin. “I'll take the man. You're better at incapacitating women than I am.”

Pitt glared at him. “You big chicken.”

They wasted no more time and dropped down the ladder into the control booth silently without being detected. The system operators—the man wearing black coveralls, the woman in white—were intent on monitoring their computers and did not see the reflection of their assailants in their screens until it was too late. Giordino came in from the side and slugged the man with a right hook to the jaw. Pitt opted for striking the back of the woman's neck just below her skull. Both went out with no more than slight moans.

Keeping unseen below the windows, Pitt pulled a roll of duct tape from his knapsack and tossed it to Giordino. “Bind them up while I remove their coveralls.”

In less than three minutes the unconscious ventilation systems operators were bound and gagged in their underwear and rolled under counters out of sight from anyone passing by below. Pitt slipped on the black coveralls, which were a loose fit, while Giordino burst the seams of the white coveralls that came off the woman. They found matching hard hats on a shelf and put them on. Pitt casually carried his knapsack over one shoulder, while Giordino looked official with a clipboard and pencil. One after the other, they dropped down the ladder to the tunnel floor.

When they got their bearings and stared around their surroundings, Pitt and Giordino stood spellbound in awe, as they stared at the immense spectacle, their eyes narrowing under the glare of an unending array of lights.

This was no ordinary railroad tunnel. It was no railroad tunnel at all.

T
HE HORSESHOE-SHAPED TUNNEL
was far more immense than either he or Giordino had imagined. Pitt felt as though he was standing in a Jules Verne fantasy. He estimated the bore at fifty feet in diameter; far wider than any tunnel ever constructed. The diameter of the Chunnel that ran between France and England was twenty-four feet and the Seikan Tunnel that connected Honshu with Hokkaido was thirty-two.

The whirr of the ventilator fans was replaced with a buzzing sound that echoed up and down the tunnel. Above them, mounted on a series of steel beams, a huge conveyor belt traveled continuously toward the eastern end of the tunnel. Instead of rocks twelve to eighteen inches in size, the muck had been crushed almost to sand.

“There's the source of your brown crud,” said Pitt. “They grind down the rock until it has the consistency of silt so it can be pumped through a pipe into the Caribbean.”

A railroad track and a parallel concrete roadway ran beneath the conveyor belt. Pitt knelt and studied the rails and ties. “Electric-powered, like the subways of New York.”

“Mind the third rail,” warned Giordino. “No telling how much voltage is running through it.”

“They must have generator substations every few miles to provide power.”

“You going to put a penny on the track?” Giordino asked in jest.

Pitt stood and stared into the distance. “No way these tracks could handle high-speed two-hundred-and-forty-milean-hour trains carrying cargo containers. The rails are not of superior quality and the metal ties are laid too far apart. On top of all that, standard railroad gauge between rails is four feet eight and a half inches. These measure about three feet, which makes it a narrow-gauge railroad.”

“Laid as equipment support and supply transport for a tunnel-boring machine.”

Pitt's eyebrows rose. “Where did you come up with that?”

“I read about TBMs in a book somewhere.”

“You move to the head of the class. This tunnel
was
excavated by a boring machine, a big one.”

“Maybe they intend to replace the tracks later,” Giordino speculated.

“Why wait until the entire tunnel is dug? Track-laying men and equipment should follow in the wake of the boring machine to save time.” Pitt slowly shook his head pensively. “A tunnel this size wasn't built for train traffic. It must serve another purpose.”

They turned as a large double-decker bus painted lavender silently passed, its driver waving. They turned away and acted as if they were discussing something on Giordino's clipboard as workers sitting inside, wearing different-colored jumpsuits and hard hats, passed by. All were wearing sunglasses. Pitt and Giordino also noted the Odyssey name and horse logo on the side of the bus. The driver slowed, not sure if they wanted a ride, but Pitt waved him on.

“Electric-powered,” said Giordino.

“Eliminates carbon monoxide exhaust pollution.”

Giordino walked over to a pair of empty battery-powered golf carts that looked like miniature sports cars. “Nice of them to provide us with transportation.” He climbed behind the wheel. “Which way?”

Pitt thought a moment. “Let's follow the excavated muck on the conveyor belt. This may well be our only chance to confirm if that's the source of the brown crud.”

The cavernous tunnel seemed to trail off forever. The road traffic looked to be restricted to transporting mine workers, while the narrow-gauged railroad carried only muck and cargo. The golf cart's panel held a speedometer, and Pitt clocked the speed of the conveyor belt. It was traveling at the rapid clip of twelve miles an hour.

Pitt turned his attention to the upper works of the tunnel. After the boring machine had passed, the miners had installed rock bolt support systems to strengthen the rock's natural tendency to reinforce itself. Then a thick lining of shotcrete or gunite was sprayed on the tunnel pneumatically at high velocity. Conveying the concrete for long distances would have been accomplished by booster pumps spaced from the entrance source to the recently excavated area behind the boring machine. This would have been followed by an injection of fluid grout under pressure to seal off leaks from groundwater. Besides ensuring water tightness from without, the shotcrete and grout would also improve the flow of fluid through the tunnel, a phenomenon that Pitt began to believe was a distinct possibility.

The overhead lights illuminated the tunnel so brilliantly it almost hurt the eyes. Both men could now understand why the workers in the bus had worn sunglasses against the glare. Almost as if they timed their actions, Pitt and Giordino put on their own sunglasses.

An electric locomotive pulling several flatbed cars and carrying open crates of rock bolts passed, headed in the opposite direction toward the ongoing excavation. The train crew all waved at the two men in the golf cart, who responded by waving back.

“Everyone is real down-home friendly in these parts,” remarked Giordino.

“Did you notice the men wear black jumpsuits and the women either white or green?”

“Specter must have lived a former life as an interior decorator.”

“More like some sort of caste identification system,” said Pitt.

“I'd cut off an ear before I wore lavender,” muttered Giordino, suddenly becoming aware that he was covered in white. “I think I'm out of uniform.”

“Stuff something in your chest.”

Giordino said nothing, but his bitter stare at Pitt said it all.

A sober look crossed Pitt's face. “I wonder if those miners have any idea of the toxic mineral content of the muck they're pouring into the sea.”

“They will,” added Giordino, “when their hair starts falling out and their internal organs dissolve.”

They continued on, conscious of an unnatural atmosphere deep below the earth and sea. They passed several smaller crosscut tunnels leading off to their left that aroused their curiosity. Another parallel tunnel appeared to be linked by the crosscuts every thousand yards. Pitt assumed it was a service tunnel for electrical conduits.

“There's the explanation for the earth tremors on the surface,” said Pitt. “They didn't use a big tunnel-boring machine for these small tunnels. They were excavated by drilling and blasting.”

“Shall we turn in?”

“Later,” replied Pitt. “Let's push ahead and follow the muck on the conveyor belt.”

Giordino was stunned at the power of the golf cart. He got it up to fifty miles an hour and he soon began overhauling other vehicles on the concrete road.

“Better slow down,” cautioned Pitt. “We don't want to arouse suspicion.”

“You think they got traffic cops down here?”

“No, but Big Brother is watching,” Pitt countered, discreetly nodding at a camera mounted above on the overhead lighting system.

Giordino reluctantly slowed and settled behind a bus traveling in the same direction. Pitt began timing the bus schedule and quickly calculated that the buses ran twenty minutes apart and stopped at work sites when and wherever miners waited to board or requested to get off. He glanced at the hands on his watch. It was only a question of time before the technicians on the replacement shift entered the ventilator control room and found their coworkers duct-taped to the floor. So far, no alarms had been sounded, nor had they seen security guards cruising up and down the tunnel as if searching for someone.

“We're coming up on something,” Giordino alerted Pitt.

A thumping sound became stronger as they moved closer to what Pitt quickly identified as a giant pumping station. The rock that had been crushed to sand was sent from the conveyor belt into a monstrous bin. From there, pumps the size of a three-story building thrust it into huge pipes. As Pitt had concluded, the contaminated muck was then propelled into the sea where
Poco Bonito
had run aground on the accumulation. Beyond the pumping stations were giant steel doors.

“The enigma goes deeper,” said Pitt thoughtfully. “Those pumps are monumental, far more capable of pumping ten times the excavated muck. They must serve another purpose.”

“They'll probably dismantle them when the tunnel is finished.”

“I don't think so. They look permanent.”

“I wonder what's on the other side of those doors,” said Giordino.

“The Caribbean,” answered Pitt. “We must be miles from shore and deep beneath the surface of the sea.”

Giordino's eyes never left the doors. “How in the world did they dig this thing?”

“They began with an open excavation onshore by digging a portal. First, a starter tunnel was launched with a different type of machine called a roadheader excavator. When it reached a calculated depth, the big boring machine was brought in and assembled in the excavated tunnel. It worked east under the sea, then it must have been disassembled and reassembled so it could begin excavating in the opposite direction toward the west.”

“How could an operation this size be kept secret?”

“By paying the miners and engineers big bucks to keep their mouths shut, or perhaps by threats and blackmail.”

“According to Rathbone, they don't hesitate to kill intruders. Why not workmen with loose tongues?”

“Don't remind me about intruders. Anyway, suspicions confirmed,” Pitt said slowly. “The brown crud is spread into the sea by man without the slightest consideration for the terrible consequences.”

Giordino shook his head slowly. “A contaminated dump operation that puts all others to shame.”

Pitt reached into his knapsack again and lifted out a small digital camera and began taking pictures of the giant pumping operation.

“I don't suppose your magical kit can produce any food and drink?” probed Giordino.

Pitt reached inside and produced a pair of granola bars. “Sorry, that's the best I can do.”

“What else is in there?”

“My trusty old Colt forty-five.”

“I guess we can always shoot ourselves before they hang us,” Giordino said glumly.

“We've seen what we came for,” said Pitt. “Time to go home.”

Giordino was pressing his foot on the accelerator before Pitt finished his sentence. “The sooner we're out of here, the better. We're on borrowed time as it is.”

Pitt continued snapping pictures as they drove. “One more detour, I want to see what's inside those crosscut tunnels.”

As he accelerated, Giordino sensed that heading off into a side tunnel was only part of Pitt's plan. He was dead certain that Pitt wanted to check out the other end of the tunnel and observe the big boring machine in action. Pictures were taken of every piece of equipment they passed. No small detail of the tunnel's construction went unrecorded.

Giordino swung right into the first crosscut he reached without slowing down, taking the turn on two wheels. Pitt hung on and gave him a waspish look, but said nothing. They had traveled less than two hundred feet when abruptly the golf cart shot into another tunnel. They came to a fast stop and stared in total astonishment.

“Mind-boggling,” Giordino muttered under his breath in awe.

“Don't stop,” ordered Pitt. “Keep going.”

Giordino acquiesced and drove the golf cart at top speed into another tunnel. He didn't hesitate or wait for Pitt to urge him forward. His foot never came off the pedal as they charged through the crosscut into a fourth tunnel. At last they could go no farther, and Giordino braked the cart before they struck the far wall. They sat there for several moments, staring left and right into eternity, taking in the immensity of what they were seeing.

The gargantuan proportions of the tunnel network became even more spectacular when Pitt and Giordino in stunned dis-belief forced themselves to accept the fact that there was not one but four immense interconnected tunnels of equal size.

Giordino didn't astound easily, but he was shamelessly overwhelmed. “This can't be real,” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

Carefully, Pitt steeled himself, shutting out all inclinations to fog his mind from the impact and blind his concentration. There had to be an explanation for the Herculean undertaking. How was it possible that Specter had built four massive tunnels under the mountains of Nicaragua without exposure by international intelligence or the media? How could such a vast project have gone unnoticed for more than four years?

“How many railroads does Specter intend to operate?” Giordino muttered dazedly.

“These tunnels weren't built to run cargo across the land by rail,” Pitt mused.

“Barge transportation, maybe?”

“Not cost-efficient. There has to be another objective behind it all.”

“There has to be a colossal bonanza at the end of the rainbow for such an expensive undertaking.”

“The cost must have easily run more than the estimated seven billion.”

Their voices reverberated up and down the cavernous tunnel that was completely empty of men and vehicles. If not for the perfectly arched walls and roof and the smooth concrete surface, they could have imagined themselves in an immense natural grotto.