from top to bottom. Jared, an able carpenter, had done most of the work, including building in a single flush- mounted door.
They then painted the side of the barrier facing the bunker doors a flat black. The idea was to make it look to anyone shining a flashlight quickly into the partially buried bunker that it was as empty as all the rest. He had taken this precaution after watching the security patrols for a few weeks and seeing them occasionally pick a bunker at random, unlock the heavy steel doors, and poke their flashlights in for a moment. The barrier wouldn’t stand a thorough search, of course, especially if someone restored electricity to the bunker farm and turned on each bunker’s main lights.
Jared had then taken the old padlock to a swap meet up in Harpers Ferry, to a guy who claimed to be able to find a key for any lock. Since the Army’s padlock was part of a series, the locksmith had been able to produce a master key. Then all they had to do was to lift a padlock from another bunker, well removed, and put it on their hideout. That way, they could keep it locked but not raise flags when security encountered a lock not of the series. If the security patrols ever came upon the bunker that no longer had its lock, they would go in and have a look. But there would be nothing there and then they would simply replace it.
He had listened to an all-news radio station on the way down from Washington. The aTF headquarters bombing was the center of attention, of course, with excited reports of hundreds killed and major damage to the entire downtown area. Reporters on the scene gave breathless accounts of the shattered building, streets full of glass and office debris, and five fire companies and their EMTs working isolated bloody vignettes up and down Massachusetts Avenue. Spokespersons for the Treasury Department, Justice Department, FBI, and belatedly, the aTF had all made grave pronouncements about the growing threat of domestic terrorists, the need for increased resources, expressions of condolence for the victims, and determination to hunt down the perpetrators. One interview had been most revealing, when a reporter put a microphone in front of the bleeding face of an aTF agent who had been injured up on the roof deck of the parking garage. He had sworn a bloody oath to find the son of a bitch who had done this and blow his—word bleeped—head right off, an hysterical comment his supervisors would undoubtedly regret.
Over the course of the day, however, the reports were toned down significantly.
It was revealed that most of the building had been evacuated before the blast. Apparently, there had been a last-minute warning. There were indeed dozens of people injured, but most of these had been hurt in the street, or had not moved far enough away from the building when the top half was blown off. When he finally got to the logging road, they were reporting three civilian security men killed on the roof of the parking garage, twenty-six injured within the vicinity of the building, and the top four floors of the aTF building destroyed. By the time he switched off, speculation as to the source of the bomb and the motives behind it was driving any hard, factual news off the story.
He was sorry that he had not been able to kill them all, to drive an explosive stake into the heart of that agency and to immolate the Washington policy makers he held responsible for Waco once and for all else.
But there had been no disguising the sense of outrage and, behind the outrage, palpable fear in the voices of all those federal law-enforcement agency spokes persons They probably all thought they had paid for Waco in the Oklahoma City bombing. Now they would know that there were people out there who felt otherwise. He got to the end of the logging road and parked the car as far back into the trees as he could maneuver it. He sat in the darkened vehicle for a moment. If there had been aTF building security people injured in the parking garage, they must have known about the propane truck. In any event, the truck would have survived, but they would trace it back to West Virginia, not here to the Blacksburg area.
The gasoline incendiary he’d left behind in the cab should have taken care of any fingerprints. He was taking a mixed chance coming back here to the arsenal, but he still believed in the old rule about hiding things under people’s noses. Especially these people.
By the time the first dog hit the front wall of the hut, Lynn had the back door open and two lanterns lighted and ready to go. She waited in the narrow passage behind the hut while Janet wedged the little table against the front door. They both heard a man shout, “In here!” from the front passage, and then there was a huge commotion of dogs and shouting voices as someone brought a light into the passage and the hornets finally had a target.
As the voices and screaming dogs withdrew, Janet stepped through the narrow back door and shut it tightly. She had the .38 stuffed into her waistband holster and was struggling into her jacket. She looked for some way to block the back door, but there wasn’t one.
“Let’s go,” she whispered, picking up a lantern.
“They’ll be right behind us.”
“Not until they figure out a way to get past those hornets,” Lynn said.
Lynn led the way down the narrow passage behind the hut. The passage was seven or eight feet high, and the rock on either side was cold and damp. The trail beneath their feet was hard-packed dirt. Janet had pulled the fuse in the hut out into full view, hoping that whoever was hunting them would see it and slow down to check for booby traps. The passage went straight for fifty feet and then there was a cross passage, with two more caverns opening into the intersection. Lynn consulted the map and chose the left branch. The noise behind them had subsided, but Janet knew the dogs would be coming soon, even if the men did not.
The passage they were in now was even narrower, and the roof came down the farther they went. The floor had turned to loose gravel, and they had to slow down to keep from turning an ankle. At one point, Janet lost her footing and sat down heavily, sliding on her backside for a yard or so before stopping. She managed to put her lantern out in the process.
“Leave it out,” Lynn said.
“We may need the fuel later.”
Janet got back up and hurried after the girl, who seemed to be doing just fine. She wondered if Lynn had been in the caves before. There was still no sign of pursuit behind them, for which she was very grateful. The air remained dank and oppressive. Janet was not exactly claustrophobic, but she was certainly aware of the mass of the mountain above their heads.
“Can you follow the map?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s pretty clear. There’s a pit coming up. Not sure what that means.”
They rounded a dogleg turn in the cave, the lone lantern throwing weird shadows along the ceiling, and Lynn stopped suddenly. They had entered a round chamber, which was about twenty feet wide. The ceiling domed up a similar distance. The path ahead skirted a perfectly smooth conical hole, which disappeared into the depths of the mountain. The top of the hole was almost as wide as the chamber. Lynn kicked a small rock off the trail. It slid down over the smooth edge of the hole and then disappeared without a sound. The bobbing lantern made the walls look like they were moving.
“That’s what “pit” means,” Janet whispered.
“Damn thing goes to China.”
“And we go that way,” Lynn said. She pointed with the lantern to the left side of the pit, where an eighteen- inch-wide ledge led around the lip of the hole and into another passage on the far side. The walls of the chamber curved up toward the top of the dome.
“Shit,” Janet said, “Look at that curving wall. What do we hold on to?”
Behind them came the sounds of something moving down the passageway.
“Duck-walk,” Lynn said.
“Now.”
She led the way, holding the lantern extended in her left hand to move her center of gravity closer to the wall. She squatted down, facing the hole so as to maximize the room between the side wall and the lip of the pit, then duck-walked sideways out onto the ledge. Janet followed, willing her eyes to look at Lynn’s bobbing back and not into the pit. They were halfway across the ledge when they distinctly heard a dog coming, its unmistakable snuffling sounds amplified by the narrow tunnel. There was nothing they could do; they couldn’t move any faster, and the dog would be on them in seconds. Suddenly, the lantern went out, and Janet gasped.
She froze in place, her left hand scrabbling against the damp rock, searching for something to hold on to. The darkness was absolute, and she was terrified.
