“Not a big plant at all,” Slade told Dick, “but I imagine in the present battle emergency it’s pretty important as a source of electric power for the Germans.”
Dick and Vince nodded, watching Slade as he looked over the objective with a practised eye. There was a long black steel pipe, at least ten feet in diameter, leading from the bottom of the dam to the power house. That, Dick knew, was the sluice, or pipe-line, which carried the water under pressure into the power house for turning the turbines that drove the generators.
“It won’t be easy,” Slade said. “Even figuring that you can get me in there despite all those guards, it’s going to be tough to place the charge so that it will surely knock the dam completely out and not just crack it.”
“Tell me the place you want to put your dynamite,” Dick said, “and then it’s up to me to get you there.”
He knew that was a broad statement, for he still had no idea how he could get Slade and his dynamite past the guards on the wall and around the power house.
“There is one spot that would do the job, without a doubt,” Slade said. “But I’m afraid that would be asking too much of you. Do you see that pipe-line over there?”
“Yes, I see it,” Dick replied.
“Well, if I could get inside that and crawl up to where it comes out of the dam itself, it would work,” Slade said. “With the big pipe coming out of it, that’s the weakest part of the whole structure. But that pipe is filled with water under very high pressure.”
“Wow! That’s a tough assignment all right,” Dick said. “But let’s see—what if the pipe didn’t have any water in it?”
“You mean if the water-gate at the entrance to the pipe were closed?” Slade asked. “If that were done, I could get there all right. All those pipes have a couple of hatch-like openings along them so that workmen can get in to clean them out and so on.”