After several more minutes, Rourke stopped, flashing his light behind him, searching for Fulsom’s face, seeing the terror in the eyes. Abner Fulsom said, “I’m a little claustrophobic. Place gives me the creeps.” “I don’t think anybody exactly likes it,” Rourke almost whispered. “I make it we’ve done a mile—no end of the tunnel is in sight. How much further?” “My brother laid the drain, told me about it—said it was just about an even mile.”
“And it lets out in a small culvert at the edge of the parking lot, then dips back under the lot toward the shopping center itself?” “Yeah, that’s what he said,” Fulsom whispered.
“Where’s your brother now?” Rourke snapped.
“Dead. He was in Atlanta when the bombs or missiles or whatever hit it—”
Rourke exhaled hard. “I’m sorry.” He turned and shone his Kel-Lite back along the storm drain. Without saying anything else, he started walking again. If Fulsom’s memory were correct, Rourke judged, then the culvert should be coming up soon. He swung the CAR-15 from his back, slinging it under his right arm, suspended from his right shoulder, his fist wrapped around the pistol grip.
After another five minutes, Rourke stopped, cutting the light.
“Back flat against the wall,” he rasped, then started edging forward. There was light—dim—but light none the less, up ahead. He moved toward it. The smell in the drain had been bad, but here it was worse, the drain partially clogged and the water several inches deep. He edged up along the side and stooped as he went forward, grateful for the insect repellant he had used. There were swarms of small flies and mosquitoes, some of them, he wagered with himself, carried sleeping sickness.
The tunnel took a slight bend around a right-angle elbow joint, and Rourke stopped again at the mouth of the tunnel, a heavy-looking grillwork over the drain opening beyond and a V-shaped cement culvert visible in the moonlight ahead.
Rourke moved as silently as he could toward the grating, peering beyond it into the open, smelling the comparatively fresh night air, breathing it in deeply. The grille was set into the mouth of the drain, forming a grid of squares eight inches roughly on each side, a thin layer of cement holding it in place, a slightly wider opening at the top and bottom and each side where the grid of steel didn’t quite fit—an afterthought, he guessed.
Rourke heard no noise outside—nothing. The quiet seemed ominous to him. He edged back into the drain, taking a deep breath of the fresher air before he did. He stopped where Reed, Fulsom, and the others crouched along the side of the drain beyond the elbow.
“I need a couple of bayonets and a couple of good-sized rocks. Going to have to hammer our way out.” “Why don’t you use that bayonet you got,” Reed snapped.
“I paid for mine—yours is issue—we’ll use yours,” Rourke told him quietly. “And let’s get going. Time’s against us.” Rourke glanced at his watch. It was just past midnight, and they still hadn’t even penetrated the base.
Reed barked an order to one of his two men and after a moment, two bayonets and two paving bricks were handed up along the line. “Come on,” Rourke said, distributing one set of the tools to Reed.
With the Intelligence captain behind him, Rourke started forward again toward the elbow, through it and then, slowly, toward the grating at the end of the storm drain. Reed started to chisel at the cement and Rourke stopped him, raising a finger to his lips for silence and listening to the night sounds and listening for some sign of activity by the Russians. It was as if the place were deserted, Rourke thought, and that was all wrong. He was tempted to turn back, but realized then that any chance of the Resistance people or the Army Intelligence people helping to find Sarah and the children would be gone. Pausing for another moment, swinging the CAR-15 out of the way, Rourke set the point of one of the borrowed bayonets to the bead of cement and drew back the paving brick in his right hand.
“Watch your eyes for chips,” Rourke cautioned Reed, then smashed the paving brick down against the butt of the bayonet, a two-inch fragment of the cement bead breaking way and falling into the muddy water in which they stood. In an instant, Reed was chiseling away at the opposite side.
“Cheap construction,” Rourke thought, a six-or seven-inch piece of the cement bead chipping under the impact of his blow. It took both men some ten minutes to get a sufficient amount of the cement chipped away to try pushing at the grating. It budged, but didn’t give way. They resumed chiseling at the cement, then when the cement was nearly gone from both sides, threw their weight against the grating a second time. This time it moved and slipped too easily. Rourke and Reed frantically caught at it to avoid letting it fall and clang against the cement of the V-shaped channel in the culvert outside. They edged the grating along the side of the storm drain, conscious of every clang and scrape. Rourke sent Reed back to get Fulsom and the others, Rourke himself moving out of the storm drain, up the side of the channel and peered over the edge of the culvert and across. The parking lot was comparatively huge for a largely rural area, the yellow lines drawn for orderly parking meaningless now. A few rusted wrecks sat in the lot at the far side, but that was all. Closer in, toward the shopping center itself, Rourke could see Soviet-marked trucks—the Red Stars seeming to burn in the night, somehow, psychological he imagined.
“What’s up?”
Rourke turned toward the voice: it was Reed.
“You’ve been around,” Rourke rasped, slipping down from the edge of the culvert, leaning back against the steeply sloping cement behind him. “This whole deal smells. We’re not going in the rest of the way through the storm drain; we’re cutting across this lot and into the buildings. There’s a trap out there. Only thing we can do is try and work around it.” “Fulsom’s not gonna like that,” Reed cautioned.
“Yeah, well—that’s too damned bad,” Rourke said. “I’ll let him lead the war when he lets me sell hardware. Come on.” Slipping back toward the mouth of the storm drain, Rourke put his left hand on Fulsom’s shoulder and drew the man aside, telling him, “There’s some kind of trap in the wind. I can feel it. We’re going through the parking area, to the buildings. Couple of us go up on the roofs after sentries, then everybody piles after us. If it looks possible, some of us can go into the complex through the roof.” “But why not the drain, the way we had —”
“You want to go that route, count me out,” Rourke rasped.
Fulsom, the corners of his mouth set down hard, nodded—grim-looking, Rourke thought.
“All right, you keep a handle on things here,” Rourke said. “I’ll take Reed and his two Army Intelligence guys with me.” Edging back toward the lip of the culvert up the V-shaped channel, he waved toward Reed, the Intelligence captain moving diagonally along the rough concrete surface toward him.
“Get your two boys, then stay with me,” Rourke told him emotionlessly. “First shot or anything from us or
