The Sacred Vault

The radar installation was not the facility’s only structure. Several smaller buildings were clustered to one side, and at the end of the long ice runway was an aircraft hangar. A path marked by a line of lights on poles ran from it to the edge of the depression beneath the composite building, where a covered walkway extended across the gap to its lowest floor.

‘Looks like they’ve made themselves comfortable,’ said Eddie, taking it in. He indicated a line of large cylindrical tanks. ‘Those’ll be full of diesel - enough to keep them going for months.’

‘However long before they feel it’s safe to poke their noses out of their rat-hole after the apocalypse,’ Nina guessed. ‘What do we do?’

He scanned the area for signs of life. ‘Do you see anyone?’

Nina squinted into the wind. ‘Nope.’ She looked up at the windows, which in the interests of preserving heat were small and few in number; all were lit, but nobody was silhouetted in them. ‘Windows look clear too.’

‘Okay, let’s look for something to break.’

‘Did I ever tell you that I love you for your subtlety?’ Nina joked as they warily headed for the walkway. It would surely not be much longer before somebody realised the men sent to finish off any crash survivors were overdue. ‘Whoa, wait. Look at that.’

A broad ramp descended into the depression beneath the main building, where a path had been dug to a boxy metal structure extending down from the base of the radar station - and into the ice below. The path led to a pair of large sliding doors. ‘It’s an elevator shaft,’ she realised.

‘Big elevators,’ Eddie added.

‘Very big elevators. Big enough to take all the equipment for a Cold War bunker . . . or Michelangelo’s David, you think?’

‘Easily.’ There was a hatch beside the two doors. ‘We might be able to get in there. Maybe there’s a ladder.’

‘Or we could just, y’know, use the elevator,’ she said as they descended the ramp.

‘That might be a bit of a giveaway that we’re here. See? I’m being subtle.’

They reached the hatch. ‘Is it locked?’ Nina asked as Eddie tried the handle.

‘Who’s going to break in, Nanook of the North?’ He rattled it until the crust of ice over the jamb broke away. Opening it, he jabbed his gun inside.

Nobody lay in wait. The entrance led to an emergency ladder running parallel to the elevator tracks. He stepped on to the walkway inside, about to climb the ladder when he looked down through the gridwork floor. The shaft dropped into blackness, a line of small maintenance lights shrinking to pinpricks in the dark. ‘Bloody hell. How deep is it?’

‘I don’t know, but they would have built the bunker deep enough to survive a nuclear strike . . .’ She tailed off.

‘What’s the matter?’ Eddie began, before some form of spousal telepathy - or realisation of the inevitable - gave him the answer. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You want to climb down there, don’t you?’

‘If the US military’s built you a mini-NORAD, you might as well make use of it. Whatever the Khoils are doing, that’s probably where they’re doing it from.’

‘It’s a bloody long climb!’

‘Well, we could take the elevator . . .’

Eddie made a disapproving sound, then grudgingly mounted the ladder. ‘All right. But for God’s sake don’t slip.’ He began to descend, boots clunking on the metal rungs.

Nina followed suit. The descent was easy at first, but after a few minutes her muscles started to ache - and the bottom of the shaft didn’t seem any nearer. ‘I just had a depressing thought.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I want to hear right now,’ Eddie said. ‘What?’

‘What if they dug the bunker out of the actual bedrock? The Greenland ice sheet is over two miles thick in places.’

‘If we have to climb down a two-mile fucking ladder,’ he warned, ‘I’m going to throw you down the quick way!’

‘I, uh, don’t think it’ll be quite that far,’ she said. All the same, she looked down the shaft with increasing frequency, hoping for some sign of the bottom.

It came after another few minutes - still some distance below, but a dimly lit rectangle of grey was now visible at the end of the trail of lights. The sight rejuvenated them, and they increased the pace of their descent.

Finally, they reached the bottom. Eddie stepped on to another walkway and went to the hatch at its end. The bottom of the shaft proper was about six feet below, a concrete block covered by icy water. As Nina climbed off the ladder behind him, gratefully resting her arms, he opened the metal door a fraction of an inch.

More drab grey concrete greeted his eyes as warm air blew past him; a wide corridor, lit by sickly fluorescent bulbs. The hatch opened into an alcove in its side, blocking his view down the passage. Gesturing for Nina to stay still, he took hold of his gun, then stepped through and peered round the corner.

The corridor was about thirty feet long. At its far end was a huge metal door, painted a dull institutional green. Another, larger alcove on the opposite side contained a desk, the sleek laptop on it in marked contrast to the Cold War clunkiness of the surroundings. An Indian man was passing the time in exactly the same way as any bored worker in a regular office: surfing the internet.

‘There’s one guy,’ Eddie whispered to Nina, ‘and a huge bloody door. We’ve found the bunker.’ He brought up the gun. ‘Wait here.’

He checked that the man was still fixated on the laptop, then slipped round the corner and advanced quickly along the corridor. Unless the guard had the peripheral vision of a boiler-suited sentry in a Bond movie, he would spot the intruder at any moment . . .

Eddie made it almost halfway before the man’s eyes flicked sideways. He jolted in his seat, startled, then lunged for a control box on the wall—

‘I wouldn’t,’ Eddie said, MP5K fixed on the man’s head. He froze, outstretched palm stopped a few inches from a large red alarm button. ‘Sit back down. Hands in the air.’ The guard obeyed. Eddie came to the desk, keeping the gun locked on him. ‘Okay, Nina,’ he called.

Nina hurried to him, pointing her own gun at the guard as Eddie frisked him. ‘I see what you mean about the door,’ she said. ‘It must weigh ten tons! How are we going to get inside?’

‘Let’s ask Chuckles here,’ said Eddie. He shoved his gun’s muzzle under the guard’s chin. ‘How do you open the door?’

‘You - you push that button,’ the guard stammered, indicating the control panel.

‘Which one?’

‘The one that says Open.’

Nina examined the panel, finding that one of the buttons on it was indeed marked Open. ‘Huh. Whaddya know?’

‘You do the honours, love,’ Eddie told her. She glanced at the guard for any signs of treachery, but the only thought in his head appeared to be the very real concern that a bullet might go through it. Shrugging, she pushed the button.

Yellow warning lights flashed, and a low mechanical drone filled the corridor. With surprising speed for its size, the door smoothly swung outwards, revealing that it was over two feet thick. Beyond it, oddly, was darkness: Nina had expected to see some sort of control room. ‘That was . . . kinda easy.’

‘It’s a bunker, not a bank vault,’ Eddie replied. ‘You don’t want to wait five minutes to get inside while there’s a nuclear missile on its way.’

‘Good point.’ She looked at the guard. ‘What about him?’

Eddie cracked him sharply on the forehead with his gun. The man slumped to the floor. ‘What about him?’

‘The subtlety phase was pretty short-lived, I see.’ She stepped through the door into the chamber beyond.

Even without lights, she could tell it was large, her footfalls soaked up by the space. A small bulb beside the doorway illuminated another control panel. A bank of what looked like light switches was topped by a button marked Main L; she pushed it. With a clack, the overhead lights came on. She turned . .