ZBIROH
CZECH REPUBLIC
Gretchen Casey phoned down to the hotel’s concierge and asked him to prepare a list of restaurant and nightclub suggestions in Prague. When the women stepped out of the elevator and crossed the lobby forty-five minutes later, heads turned so fast you could hear necks snapping.
Considering what these women did for a living, they certainly wouldn’t have described themselves as being dressed to kill, but everyone else would have. High heels, perfect hair and makeup, and dresses that left very little to the imagination screamed: big night on the town.
Everything came to a stop as the four gorgeous women walked across the marble floor to the concierge desk. They made small talk with the staff as the concierge handed Casey the list he had prepared and then handed them a map and highlighted the route to Prague.
Outside, the valets had the ladies’ car ready and waiting. They wished the women a pleasant evening and seemed to take an unusual amount of care in seeing that their legs were fully tucked into the vehicle before closing the doors.
Once they had driven about a hundred yards, the women all burst out laughing. “They’re going to be mopping up the drool out of that lobby for a month,” joked Rhodes from the front passenger seat.
Cooper looked over her shoulder and out the rear window. “The valet who opened my door was kind of cute.”
“Now that we know you like them that young,” said Ericsson as she turned out onto the road, “we’ll stop hitting bars and start taking you to high school football games.”
After the laughter in the car subsided, Cooper said, “Okay, maybe not that young.”
“Stick with the young ones,” said Casey, looking out her window. “The older they get, the more of a pain in the ass they become.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” replied Rhodes.
“Whatever happened to if he’s older, he’ll hold her?” asked Ericsson, trying to catch Casey’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
Rhodes didn’t give her a chance to answer. “If he’s younger, he’s probably got the hunger, if you know what I mean,” she proclaimed.
That got a laugh from everyone but Casey, who was still staring out the window, preoccupied with her own thoughts.
The wooded hotel grounds were quite extensive, and after about two kilometers, Ericsson pulled the car off onto a barely visible dirt road. She drove slowly, the headlights bouncing with each rut and pothole they hit. Above them, the thick canopy of trees blocked out the night sky.
As a clearing approached, Ericsson slowed down and pulled in. She drove over uneven ground for about fifty yards until the car was completely hidden from the road and then shut off the ignition. “We go the rest of the way on foot.”
“Not in these shoes we don’t,” said Cooper.
Julie hit the trunk release button. “Boots and clothes are in back,” she replied. “Megan and I cached the rest of the gear up ahead.”
The women stepped out of the car and grabbed their backpacks from the trunk. As the car had been under the hotel’s control, nothing out of the ordinary had been left inside. If anyone had searched their vehicle, all they would have found was hiking gear.
Once they had changed, Megan Rhodes clicked on her flashlight and used its filtered beam to guide them deeper into the woods.
The equipment John Vlcek had provided had been organized in several black duffel bags, which were hidden well out of sight. Even in broad daylight, they would have been difficult to find unless you knew exactly where to look. Rhodes and Ericsson quickly divided up the gear.
In addition to night vision goggles, or NVGs as they were known, Vlcek had provided them with.40 caliber CZ Rami pistols and extra magazines, as well as encrypted radios and a few other items Hutton had asked for. After checking their weapons and loading the gear in their packs, they recached the duffel bags and Megan Rhodes once again took the lead, using a pre-programmed GPS to guide their way.
Hans Kammler had done an excellent job of hiding his research facility in the 1940s. Even modern satellite technology was unable to pick it up.
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.