42

 

Val stepped off her ATV, her black leather boots crunching on the small pebbles and grit of the dirt covered pavement. Ahead of them stood a long pinkish-white wall of concrete slightly higher than Ulrik. Morten and Oskar had stayed at the entrance to the large parking area just before the wall, so they could peer down the road and alert the others when they spotted the Hangers approaching.

Emblazoned across the wall in huge embossed letters, stretching forty feet long, was a slogan in a foreign tongue:

 

STRADA DELLE 52 GALLERIE

 

“What does it mean, Nils?” There was some kind of mural artwork next to the name, but it had long faded with age, and Val could not make it out. The site was abandoned. She was less sure of the man’s plan now. This place felt like a dead end. There was an opening in the wall off to the side that was just large enough for one ATV, but there had been only the one road leading in and out.

“It is in the Old Italian language. This is our destination.” The historian look pleased with himself.

“Fifty-two?” Ulrik asked. “Fifty-two what?”

“I read about this location in one of Halvard’s many books,” Nils assured them. “It was originally called ‘The Road of the First Army.’ The Italians built a long road through the mountains, and it clings to the side of the rock like a goat. The Alps seem to have been little affected by the earthquakes of the Utslettelse. So I thought it would be intact.”

Val was less and less sure. “Tell me your plan, Nils. All of it.” She turned on the smaller man with her red-lensed goggles, and zipped up her black leather jacket, preparing for the battle that would come. The Hangers had followed them up the winding path to the beginning of this Army Road, and she expected their attack at any time. They were not far behind.

“The path is narrow,” Nils closed his eyes as he recalled the pages of the book he had seen, and the faded photos on those weathered pages. “The road is a trail, really, like the trails through the forest back in the North. At times so narrow that only one ATV will be able to pass. The ground is rocky and uneven. Or it was, anyway.” The thin man turned to them grinning, like he had a secret that he was finally able to tell them. If he had been ill earlier, he was feeling fine now, with a renewed purpose. “And there are tunnels. Fifty-two of them.”

Ulrik and Val knew what tunnels were—they had each seen a few in the North, and of course, they had raced through the broad tunnel at the end of the Øresund Bridge.

“Fifty-two?” Ulrik asked, his face a mask of pure disbelief. “Surely an exaggeration.”

Nils shook his head. “I’ve seen pictures of some of them. Some are short, just arches through the stone. But some are quite long.” He was grinning again.

The man’s plan crawled through Ulrik’s mind. “You mean to use your bricks from the castle. Collapse one of the long tunnels with the Hangers inside…then the far end, sealing them inside the mountain.” He looked pleased with the notion.

“What are these ‘bricks?’” Val asked.

Nils reached back and opened a satchel on the side of his ATV. Anders and Heinrich stepped over to see the pack’s contents—a few brick-sized packages wrapped in red, semi-transparent plastic wrap. “We found these at the castle, in the large storage room where the propane was. They make things explode.”

“Explode?” Val asked. She wasn’t familiar with the term.

“These are very old, but you mix one of these larger red bricks with a smaller green block. The material is like unfired clay. Then you insert a detonator. The effect is like a lightning strike ripping rock to pieces.”

Val leaned closer, peering at the plastic-wrapped bricks.

Nils continued, “These are a special kind of explosive from shortly before the cataclysms. They were used for construction—not for the army—but they will work for our purposes.” He pulled out a small metal rod four inches long, with a black numbered dial on the end. “This is the detonator. We can set it for half an hour. We stick this in the brick, and it will take down a good part of the mountain, the way a rock will shatter when you hit it with a large hammer.”

“And we will be farther down the road, out of the other end of the tunnel?” Val was starting to see the advantage of the exploding bricks.

“Yes,” Nils said. “We will be well clear of the blast area.”

“And how many of the bricks did you bring, Nils?” Ulrik asked.

“Seven.”

“Several chances to get it right,” she said. “Good. And where does this Tunnel Road lead us?”

“It goes deep into the mountains where we can either come back on an easier return road, to this very starting point, or we can go off road.”

“Wait,” Anders spoke up as he zipped up his leather jacket. Ulrik was the only member of their group still bare-chested. He did not appear to be bothered by the cooler air now. “What is to stop these Hangers from looping around on the easy road to the end of this tunnel trail and ambushing us there?”

A shadow crept across Nils’s face. “I was hoping they would follow us into the trail. They might never have been up here.”

Val considered. While it had been a long journey to reach this Tunnel Road, there was no evidence to suggest that the Hangers had no knowledge of it at all. And if they knew the place, they would know of the return road and likely follow Anders’s suggestion. But if they did not know the road...

“We will go on the Tunnel Road. And we will hang back a bit, waiting for them to come. We need to see if they all follow us, or if some of them split off.”

Nils started his engine and the others did the same, preparing to follow him toward the wall opening. Anders, without being told, turned back and raced across the lot to speak with Morten and Oskar, filling them in on the plan. The three of them waited behind, still watching for the first Hanger.

Val rolled up behind Nils as their ATVs crawled slowly onto a trailhead. The four-foot-wide path, covered in crushed rock, rose up sharply, winding through small trees and boulders. On the far side of the first archway was a man-made concrete tunnel. Val wondered if it was the first official tunnel. A gate blocked their path, but Nils did not slow. He rammed the edge of the rusted structure with his ATV. The barrier crumbled to dust and metal flakes.

Past the barrier on their right, crumbling, fang-like mountains, rose up. Their white and brown facades were imposing, but promised escape. Before they reached the trail’s first turn, Ulrik hollered. Val twisted her head around to see that Anders, Oskar and Morten had joined them on the trail, and the men were coming fast. Morten raised his finger, pointing up the trail. The message was clear.

The Hangers had taken the bait.