almost in full darkness, but it was also empty: There were no trash cans or other debris, just the bare concrete and some weeds here and there. A
noticeable chemical smell pervaded all the old concrete, and he was struck by the absence of any living thing.
He found the ladder at the back of the second building and climbed it.
Where the skylights had been on the first building, there was a row of large metal ventilator caps, whose guy wires made it difficult to move around the roof. The parapet was much lower, so he set himself up at the corner of the roof nearest the power plant, from which he ought to be able to see both ways down the cross street. He rigged out the cone device and pointed it directly across the darkened street at the bare concrete wall of the opposite building. Since he didn’t know which direction the men had gone, any sounds they made should reflect off the slab- sided building opposite if they reemerged. Just in case he had missed something, he put on the stethoscope and trained the cone to either side, first down the street and then back up toward the corner. He pointed it at each of the buildings, listening for any acoustic indication of humans inside. He did not expect sounds to penetrate all that windowless concrete, but there was always a chance of a machine making some noise. But there was nothing.
He pointed the cone back across the street and waited.
Two men. Just like last time. Now that he knew what he was dealing with, and roughly where they were, this should be entirely manageable.
Browne got Jared to help him set up the retort for the first generating batch. The copper plates were awkward to move, but they would yield a much longer sustained reaction than the wire he had been using. He would have to cut them in half to get them into the retort.
“Once we get this going, I want you to take a look around the industrial area, make sure we don’t have any close-in visitors. Got your nightscope?”
“Yep. And a three fifty-seven in my jacket, too.”
“If you see something, try to come back here and get me before you use that. I’d rather catch ‘em than shoot ‘em. See who the hell they are. Two guns are better than one for that.”
Browne set up the pump while Jared used a hacksaw to cut the plates.
The soft copper cut quickly. Browne went into the boiler hall to start the generator. He came back and cleared all the lines coming from the retort, then went into the maintenance bay to line up the fill valve on the truck’s tank. He came back and opened the acid feed line, and the reaction in the retort became audible. They waited for the pressure switch to activate the transfer pump, but it didn’t happen. Browne tapped a gauge, then tapped it again.
“Have to do something here; this thing isn’t working.”
“Can you jump it? “Jared asked, eyeing the pressure gauge. The frothing noise in the retort was getting louder.
“That safety valve is fixin’ to let go.”
“I know that,” Browne said irritably. Sometimes, he thought, Jared was a master of the obvious. William would have been suggesting solutions.
He checked the lineup with the transfer pump once more and then hurried to hook a wire directly from the supply side of the pressure switch to the hot terminal on the pump motor. The pump kicked in and the pressure began to fall off in the retort as the hydrogen was sent to the truck next door.
“Looks like I’m going to have to run this thing manually,” Browne said.
“Go take the girl her food and water, and then have a look around the immediate area. Check back in an hour.”
“All right.”
“And Jared? No messing around with that girl. Tell her to put the blindfold on, open the door, check the room, make sure she’s not hiding behind the door, leave the food, lock back out.”
Jared acknowledged and grabbed up the paper sack. Then the transfer pump began to chatter and Browne swore.
“Go on,” he said.
“Be back in an hour. This plate should be done by then and we can fix this switch.”
Jared left the control room, an unfathomable expression on his face.
He stood outside the power plant walk-through door for fifteen minutes to get his night vision back, and he thought about the girl. They had brought her here that first afternoon, blindfolded and restrained, and simply left her for several hours. Then they had come back, pausing outside the smaller door at the north end while Browne ordered her to put the blindfold back on. That had been the routine since then, each time they brought her food. She never spoke to them. She would just sit there, motionless, with her back to the door and the blindfold on her face, not even acknowledging their presence. And they, in turn, never spoke to her.
Jared knew that she had seen both of them, but only that one time. The fact that she wouldn’t speak to them kind of pissed him off. She was shining an attitude he wasn’t used to.
He stepped off into the street and headed for the nitro building.
Kreiss was wondering if he should give up his listening position and go search for the two men, when the cone picked up something. He strained to listen, but the sounds were very small, almost beneath the threshold of the night sounds. There must have been some clouds coming through, because the ambient light had diminished, throwing the streets below
into total darkness. He reached up and turned the cone to the left. Nothing.
He turned it slowly to the right. Nothing, and then a sound. A footfall?
No. He could not classify it. He wanted to use the nightscope, but that battery was limited, and he normally did not use it until he had a firm directional cue from the cone. If someone was moving around down at the end of the street, there was no way to tell precisely where in this maze of concrete buildings. Then the sounds stopped. He slewed the cone back and forth, trying to regain contact, but now there was only the small breeze. And then there was the unmistakable loud sound of a metal door closing, somewhere out there among all those buildings.
He took off the earpieces of the stethoscope and sat back on his haunches. That had been a door, which meant they were definitely doing something inside one of the big buildings. Probably a drug lab of some kind. He sniffed the night air, but the breeze was blowing toward that end of the street. He looked into the darkness; the only thing he could make out was the tall stack of the power plant, and that was beyond where he thought the noises had come from. Two men, who knew their way around this complex in the dark, were doing something in one of the buildings.
Should he go down and probe that end of the street? And run into some more traps? He had to do something.
And then he had an idea. It had sounded as if they had parked that truck. He would back out and go see about that vehicle. It would have a tag, and a tag would lead to a name, and with a name, he could find an address. That would make things a lot simpler than prowling around this place, where they had had time to rig defenses.
Jared opened the door and shone the light inside. She was right where she was supposed to be. He flashed the light around the room, which was a hundred feet long, seventy wide, and four stories in overall height. There were several cable ways and electrical boxes on the walls, and two large steel garage-type doors at either end. Prominent red NO smoking signs were painted every ten feet along the walls. A set of rusting rail tracks was embedded in the concrete floor, right down the middle. The lighting fixtures suspended overhead were devoid of bulbs, so the only light she would ever see was the daylight that came through the grimy skylights.
There was a single steel walk-through door to one side of the larger sealed doors at each end of the building. Otherwise, it was empty, the machinery and the workers long gone, with only the smell of chemicals lingering in the old concrete to give any indication of its previous function.
He shoved the bag of food inside the door and then stepped inside. He put the Maglite down on the floor, pointing at the silent figure in the middle of the room. He pushed the door shut, then backed up against it.
“Stand up,” he ordered. She didn’t move.
