could not contribute to the mission in some way, before or after, he could always just leave her. The walls of the nitro building were three feet thick, reinforced concrete. She would never be found.
Just before dawn on Saturday, Edwin Kreiss parked his pickup truck at the end of a fire road on the eastern edge of the Ramsey Army Arsenal.
He shut it down, slid down the windows to listen, and waited. He had spent most of Friday looking for the arsenal, which, considering that it took up a couple of thousand acres, had not been as easy as he had anticipated.
The state road map, which showed the installation fronting 1-81 east of Christiansburg, was wrong. Unwilling to be remembered in Christiansburg for asking questions, he’d gone to the public library in the town of Ramsey and found a single book on the history of the arsenal. The reference librarian had told him the Ramsey Arsenal had been shut down for nearly twenty years.
He’d then found the main entrance south of town, but the intersection that led to what he assumed was a main gate was blocked off with concrete-filled barrels that had obviously been there for a long time. After that, he had followed every paved road, dirt road, and fire lane that seemed to point in toward the installation, trying to construct his own map. Every access that ran up against the arsenal ended the same way—in a firebreak and a tall double chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top, festooned with signs warning that this was a U.S. government restricted area and also a federal toxic-waste site. When he found what he assumed was a rail spur into the installation, he parked the truck out of sight and walked along the rusting rails for nearly two miles before seeing double gates. Assuming there would be surveillance, he had not approached the gates, but backtracked to his truck and continued with his mapmaking of the perimeter.
Now he was parked within two hundred yards of the spot he felt was the most discreet way into the reservation, the intersection of the security fences and a wide, quiet creek flowing out of the interior of
the installation The creek had been routed under the fences through a concrete conduit five feet in diameter that slanted down from the higher ground of the installation. There had been a heavy re bar grating out on the exterior side of the tunnel. It had looked intact, until he inspected it and found that the part below the surface of the water had long since rusted away.
The creek widened considerably when it came out of the reservation, and the deep pool below the conduit showed evidence of being a local fishing hole, despite all the toxic-waste SITE signs decorating the fences.
According to the book, the arsenal encompassed about 2,400 acres, but the industrial heart of it appeared to be much smaller than that, if the pictures in the book were accurate. The bulk of the installation’s acreage was occupied by the extensive bunker fields, where the Army’s freshly minted ammunition had been stored. At least that’s what the book implied; one never knew what other things the government might have secreted out here on a restricted area in the southwestern foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The place was sufficiently remote and secure as to contain damn near anything. He didn’t care about munitions; he wanted to know if the kids had ever come here. There had been no mention in the book of any Site R. He had considered walking the entire perimeter, to see if he could find any better prospects for easy access, but doing that covertly would entail at least several days. No, he had concluded, it was more important to get inside and do his looking there, where, if the kids had run into trouble, he might find signs of it. 7/’this was the place, of course.
Knowing his chances were slim to begin with, he sighed and got out. It was better than brooding in the cabin, and a lot more than the Bureau had done.
Birds were beginning to stir in the trees, but there was still little light.
The mountains to the east would mask the direct sunrise for another hour and a half yet. The sky was clear and it was almost cold, in the low fifties.
If there were Saturday fishermen coming, he should have at least an hour to get through the one very visible access point: the tunnel. He stripped off his shoes, jeans, and shirt and slipped into the wet suit: bottom, top, hood, mask, and boots. He put his street clothes back into the truck and took out a sealed waterproof duffel bag, which had a short lanyard ending in a snap attached to one end. He locked up the truck, put the keys in the exhaust pipe, and then headed for the pool.
The water was slightly colder than the air, but his only exposure was the skin of his face. He paddled out to the lip of the tunnel, towing the bag behind him. It was dark in the tunnel as he pushed the bag
under the rusting teeth of the re bar grate, and then he ducked under and pulled himself up into the stream flowing over the lip of the tunnel. The concrete was slippery with old moss and he immediately found himself sliding backward, catching himself at the last moment against the top half of the grating. The structure swayed ominously, dropping bits of rusted metal all over him. He got one arm onto dry concrete on the side of the tunnel and worked his way back in, away from the grate. He then crawled on all fours through the stream, towing the bag behind him. The other end of the tunnel was about 150 feet away, visible as a pale circle of light against the blackness in the tunnel. He had to fight his way past a tree snag that was jammed across the tunnel about halfway in. Something dropped from the snag and went slithering past him in the dark water, but he pressed on.
He knew that a snake’s first instinct would be to get away from him. What he didn’t know was whether or not the grate on the other end was intact.
There wasn’t a grate at all. The tunnel opening gave onto a concrete sided high-walled penstock shaped like a broad funnel in reverse. The creek came into the penstock via a waterfall at the far end. He spied a set of rusting steel rungs embedded in the concrete to one side, and he sloshed across the shallow water to get to the ladder. Once up on dry ground, he sat quietly for ten minutes, absorbing his surroundings. He was in a densely wooded area inside the security perimeter. The penstock appeared to be the only manmade structure other than the fences. He scanned the fences in the dawn light for cameras, but did not see any. He had checked the external fence during his reconnaissance yesterday for signs of electrification but had found no evidence of any wiring, not even alarm wires.
He pulled the duffel bag closer. He extracted a towel and a smaller, camouflaged bag. He stripped out of the diving gear, toweled off, and put all the diving gear into the smaller bag. Since he planned to make his daylight surveillance of the arsenal covertly, he had brought a crawl suit, into which he slipped quickly to avoid becoming chilled. The crawl suit was a one-piece camouflaged jumpsuit, which had padded knees, shoulders, and elbows, a wide elasticized waist, and elasticized arm and leg joints. The fabric at the back of his knees and under his arms was a breathable nylon mesh. The chest and upper back areas had segmented black plastic bands running vertically from just below his collarbone to a line level with his rib cage. The bands were made of Kevlar body armor and were separated by raised vertical strips of Velcro. There were tiny penlights sewn into the wrist cuffs on each arm.
Next, he pulled on a set of dark green high-topped boots, which were lined outside with Kevlar filament mesh to guard against snakebite. They had articulated steel ridges running vertically over a layer of rubber reaching all the way to the top of his calves. The soles were also rubber, with built-in steel shanks and heel cups. The boots were secured with four Velcro straps, and there was a built-in covered knife sheath on the left boot and a covered holster for wire cutters on the right. There were climbing studs embedded into heavy leather pads on the inside of each boot.
Next out of the bag came two flat mottled green packs, one for his chest and one for his back. Each pack was constructed of nylon netting with Velcro attachment pads. One contained two days’ worth of food, the other his trekking equipment. He put on the backpack first, then the chest pack. The two packs were connected with Velcro straps under his armpits, preventing them from hobbling around.
He then pulled a lightweight camouflaged hunter’s hood over his head, face, and neck. The hood was also mottled black and green, and heavily padded on top. It revealed only his eyes. His gloves were dark gray gauntlets that were made of cotton, lined outside with Kevlar mesh. He used a built-in bladder pump to inflate partially a two-inch cuff around both forearms, and then he attached a water bladder around his waist. He had not brought a gun; he rarely ever carried or used a gun. The last item out of the bag was a dull black telescoping titanium rod, which he extended to four feet in length before setting the locks. The rod had a broad hook topped by a black bulb on one end and a sharp spear point on the other.
He took the bags a hundred yards upstream of the penstock, then climbed up the bank to a knoll above the stream. The larger bag contained a low-profile camouflaged one-man tent, a lightweight sleeping bag, four military long-storage rations, a water-purification tube, and some cooking gear if he needed to stay longer. He sealed and then hid both bags in the middle branches of the largest pine tree on the knoll, then melted back into the woods and sat down to watch and listen for a few minutes. He could see the far edges of the fishing pool through the fences in
