The Bone Hunters by Robert J. Mrazek Read Free Book Online

Jurgen,” said Nordgren, “but it would have been impossible to drill into the granite walls from the elevator without creating a huge mess. Look at the elevator car. It is original and still in pristine condition.”
    â€œIn one of the construction files, I read something about a freight elevator,” said Lexy. “They could have bored into the granite wall from there.”
    â€œYou’re right,” said Roy Boulting with mounting excitement in his voice. “I read last night that an open-walled freight elevator was originally attached underneath the Führer’s elevator. It was removed some time after the war.”
    â€œCan we rig a platform on the original mountings?” Lexy asked Tom Luciani, the logistics specialist for the expedition.
    â€œShouldn’t be a problem,” he said.
    Two hours later, a freight bed made of heavy oak planks had been cut to the needed dimensions and bolted to the original mountings of the freight elevator. Jurgen’spulse induction detector had been mounted into position with clean access to the solid granite walls in the shaft. It weighed less than ten pounds and took up very little space, but there was still only room for him and Lexy.
    Tom Luciani had rigged a governor on the submarine motor that powered the elevator. It allowed a smooth, controlled descent at less than five feet per second. They planned to make four trips, two descents and two ascents, with Jurgen focusing his detector on a different wall each time. Lexy gave the go-ahead to Hurd in the elevator above and the freight bed began to slowly descend.
    Jurgen stayed too busy adjusting the discrimination settings on the monitor to pay unwanted attention to her. During the first descent, the LED indicators reflected no change in ground mineralization, meaning the area behind the wall was solid granite for a distance of at least one hundred feet. The detector was equipped with an external speaker so that both of them would hear any changes in the signal volume.
    â€œNo change in signal strength,” he said with frustration at one point.
    When they reached the base of the shaft with no positive reading at any point, Jurgen adjusted his equipment to scan the second wall.
    â€œBegin your ascent,” called out Lexy to Luciani.
    They reached the top of the shaft about two minutes later with no pulsating alarm emitted from the detector.
    â€œI told you,” said Jurgen as he adjusted the detector to face the third wall.
    They were halfway to the bottom on the second descent when the detector began pinging out like atelephone busy signal before fading out again a few seconds later.
    â€œStop and then slowly begin climbing again,” Lexy called out to Luciani.
    They had risen back about ten feet when the detector began pinging again. Luciani stopped the elevator when it reached its strongest setting. Lexy stepped close to the wall and began to closely examine it. Almost immediately she saw faint striations in the rock surface. They appeared to be straight lines.
    â€œWe found something,” she called out to the rest of her team waiting in the elevator.
    Removing her Case bone-handled pocketknife from her coveralls, she opened the blade and inserted it into one of the striated edges. It sank in an inch. As she twisted it to one side, a small eruption of powdery shavings crumbled away from the edge. She caught some of them in her hand.
    â€œConcrete,” she said, grinning at Jurgen.
    Using a marking pen, she outlined the circumference of the striations and then had them return to the Eagle’s Nest. Tom Luciani assembled some basic digging tools and they were soon on their way back down, this time with Jurgen replaced on the freight bed by Luciani and Roy Boulting.
    Two sharp blows from a small pickax caved in a small section of concrete. Lexy saw that the concrete wall patch had a thickness of about four inches. Dampness had softened the concrete and Luciani