gone to the air base for revenge. He'd been waiting for justice a long time. Now someone was going to try. But he knew it wasn't his time, not yet.
She nodded and turned into the black coolness of the mine. Stephen brushed past her, taking point. Ten paces in, she looked back. Tate was squatted like a guardian troll in front of the radiant mouth of the mine, his forearms resting across his knees. She stifled the urge to call out to him, to plead for him to come. She wanted to say,
When she turned again, Tate was gone.
ninety-one
Stephen braced his feet and hands against the rusty
metal rungs set in the concrete tube that ascended from the mine like a chimney and pushed his shoulder into the manhole cover above him. It rose slowly, sounding like a mason jar when you unscrew the lid. Blinding light sliced into the pitch darkness of the shaft. And something else. The stench of rot—it pierced his nostrils and stung his eyes, perhaps not as effectively as the gaseous irritants cops use to incapacitate suspects, but enough to force shallow breaths and teary vision. Squinting, he made out the source—and also the reason Tate thought this was a safe entrance into the compound: he was behind a trash container roughly the size of an eighteen-wheeler. Sludge oozed down its side and through unseen holes in its bottom, forming pools that collected tissue paper and cans and other refuse the way tar pits entrap animals.
Metal wheels held the container ten inches off the ground, giving him a view of the base beyond. Straight ahead and down a grassy incline were the Quonsets Tate had described. That's where they'd find the stairs into the underground complex—and Allen, Stephen prayed. He looked off to the right, and his heart jumped. There, a hundred yards away, was the entrance gate and a guard shack. They were the first things he recognized from the home movie Despesorio Vero had smuggled out—the second video, which showed the air base. The sense of being here, of having made the journey in search of his brother, made the hair on his arms stand up.
Two guards were talking, submachine guns at their sides. A collection of battered metal trash cans next to the Dumpster nearly shielded Stephen's position. He and Julia would have to be careful when they emerged.
He eased the cover down, pinching off the light. He snapped on his flashlight. Below him, also clinging to the rungs, Julia peered up.
'Can we get to the stairs?' she asked. Her whispers sounded loud in the concrete shaft so near the enemy.
'I think I spotted the building they're in. There are guards at the front gate, within view. I don't see any way to just
The entire shaft rumbled around them. Flakes of rust rained down from the bottom of the manhole cover. Under Stephen, one end of a rung popped loose, and his foot sailed into Julia's forehead. She lost her grip. For a moment she remained suspended over the fifty-foot drop to the mine floor, her body wedged diagonally in the shaft; her cheek was pushed into the side; her feet fought for traction on the opposite side.
Stephen's flashlight struck the top of her head and tumbled down, strobing until it hit the earth and blacked out. Julia fell and jerked to a stop as Stephen grabbed the shoulder strap of her knapsack. She flailed her arms in the dark until she found the rungs and pulled herself to them.
Above them, sirens sounded.
ninety-two
Karl Litt had just finished scouring Dr. Rankin's blood off his hands and arms and was watching the last pink swirl slip down the drain when the blast quavered through the bathroom. He gripped the edge of the countertop. It felt like the bumper of a very powerful car, ready to roll. The light flickered. He caught his sunglasses as they slipped off the counter. Someone screamed in the hall— impossibly loud. Then he realized it was the base's air raid siren, which Gregor had made functional shortly after they'd leased the base. He yanked his handheld out of his pocket.
'Air strike!' Gregor answered. 'I saw it. One of the hangars went up. A jet. Here comes—'
Another explosion. This time the thunderous sound echoed through the handheld's speaker, breaking up into squeals and static.
Gregor cursed. 'They're after the planes,' he said. 'I just saw Atropos—the Atroposes—heading for the Quonsets. One of the Cessnas got hit. Karl, get out of there. Get—'
The room shook. Static.
'Gregor? Gregor?'
Litt bolted from the bathroom and headed for the bedroom door. The monitor on the dresser showed several people running past in the hall. He tripped over something and fell to the floor. He got to his knees, and his handheld jangled, an incoming call. Without looking at it, he answered.
'Gregor?'
'Hello, Karl,' Kendrick Reynolds said.
Litt glanced around the darkened room, half expecting to see the old man standing there, grinning down at him.
'I'm surprised how quickly we found your number,' Kendrick said. 'Once we knew where to look.'
Litt rose to his feet. He had always believed Kendrick's assault, if ever he found Litt, would entail an elite division of commandos quietly killing its way into the compound and slipping into the subterranean complex to kidnap or murder the evil Karl Litt. Explosions didn't fit the model.
'Karl?'
'I'm here.' He opened his bedroom door. The corridor fluorescents appeared unaffected. Several were out and others flickered, but they'd been like that as long as Litt could recall. Squinting against the light, he remembered the sunglasses in his hand and slipped them on. The siren blared, piercing his ears.
'You don't think you'll get away, do you?' Kendrick asked. 'The sort of air strike we have planned for you will take some time, but I assure you, it's quite comprehensive. The explosions you're feeling now are merely a prelude. My advisors thought it would be prudent to knock out any aircraft you have in the hangars. Next, we'll pelt the surface above your head with earth-penetrating tomography bombs. Those will give the Vikings flying at forty thousand feet with their ESM suites and Inverse-Synthetic Aperture Radar clear pictures of the area's subterranean architecture. We'll see your underground complex as if it were topside.'
Litt stopped moving down the corridor. 'How . . .'
The sirens stopped.
Kendrick said, 'That's better. Did your alarms stop because of a lull in our bombing? I'm sure the next wave will commence shortly.'
'How did you figure the underground part?' Litt asked. He could not imagine that Despesorio's information was so detailed.
'You got sloppy, Karl. You let a tracking device get in.'
That thing inside Allen Parker. It must be more sophisticated than the devices he had surgically installed in his staff—always under the guise of repairing an 'accidental' injury. His could not be detected under so much earth and concrete, and they did not provide the altitude relative to ground level. Leave it to Kendrick to have the best.
He pressed the handheld into his face until his cheek and ear hurt. It was Gregor who had become sloppy, inviting Atropos. He hoped that last interrupted transmission from him marked his death.
'After the Vikings get a handle on the layout, we'll send in the F-15s. They'll drop GBU-28 bombs. You know about those, Karl? Bunker Busters? Forty-seven hundred pounds. Designed to punch through packed earth and twenty-two feet of reinforced concrete before exploding. Boggles my mind, the weapons we have these days. FA-18 Hornets will sweep in next. They'll cover the whole area— especially inside the smoking craters—with Maverick missiles and napalm. That stuff burns at 3,000 degrees, Karl, enough to make your germ just . . . disappear. Want to know what's next?'
Litt ran an arm over the perspiration on his forehead. All the lab doors were open, the workers gone. He went into his private lab, where he squatted in front of a cabinet and opened it, revealing a safe.
