“Keep still and attend to your own part of this business. The man will be useful. I need him and desire to have you hide him. Do you understand?”
The very tone was a command, and to the great interest of O’Hara he saw Tom Whalen straighten and salute. Then O’Hara slipped again into the kitchen and now he emerged noisily.
The men turned to him and as they did so, Brown said in a low tone, “Put him in the cave.”
Then he spun on his heel and departed. He had no sooner left than the startled eyes of O’Hara made out a cloud of dust on the far horizon in the direction of Albuquerque.
“Come on,” exclaimed Tom Whalen, hurrying his huge bulk toward the garage, “or the devil take you.”
Wondering, O’Hara easily kept pace with him and paused beside the garage. Tom Whalen had by now removed the top of the hole where the huge gasoline tank was buried, and to O’Hara’s amazement, the tank was revealed to be empty. Whalen slipped carefully into the tank and O’Hara followed as directed. Whalen then pressed some hidden spring in the metal and the sides slowly revolved, leaving an opening large enough for a man to slip through. His guide ordered O’Hara to step through the aperture, and with a shiver of apprehension, but helpless to disobey he did so. Then the man handed him a lantern somewhat resembling a miner’s lamp and the wall swung back slowly.
O’Hara stood perfectly still in the darkness. The air was dank and musty but there was means for allowing fresher air to enter, for it was not breathless. Slowly he flashed his lantern about the place. The walls of the small room in which he stood seemed to be made of adobe. He searched the sides most carefully, there was nothing to break the absolute uniformity of line until the lantern’s rays reached the third side, the side through which he had entered. Here faint and far away, he could discern up through a small hole the dim light of day.
About a foot out from this wall, standing sinister and black, was the only object within the room, a huge iron safe.
The light of O’Hara’s lantern passed carefully over it and then went on to the fourth wall. The lantern flickered and then beamed steadily upon the gleaming wall. With a shiver of amazement, O’Hara realized that here in this desert spot, in his beloved country, the floor of the garage reached down a full twenty feet of solid concrete emplacement!
Astounded beyond measure, he recalled the many reports he had heard about the huge concrete emplacements supposed to have been built by the Germans during the war, and even before the war, in various parts of the United States.