Annara stared hard across the horizon. "Drive over them. Squash them like...ants? What's the Earth expression? 'Squash them like ants,' I think I read in one of those silly novels you sent me."
"Ew, sounds gross, but you're right. If they're dormant, they shouldn't be able to crawl up inside and cause trouble."
As they approached the outer perimeter of the nanobots, Olivia felt a bit squeamish, but she persisted. She had to reach Hernando and the others. Somehow, she knew it was imperative to get to them—the sooner the better. She had to know they were all right.
Spotting a less congested spot of miniature robots, Olivia steered the vehicle toward it, lifting her foot off the pedal to gain the maximum speed.
"All right, hang on. Here we go..."
Olivia hunched her shoulders and gritted her teeth as the metal treads made contact with thousands of nanobots beneath them. Annara covered her ears with her hands. The crunching and scraping of metal against metal was louder than either had expected.
"Squashing ants doesn't sound like this, does it?" Annara shouted over the metallic din, frowning. "Can you drive faster over them?"
"This is all it's got to give. I'm afraid of them getting lodged in the treads." Their speed slowed and Olivia tried tacking back and forth to dislodge the metallic devices from the underneath of the vehicle. "I wonder if we shouldn't get out and walk at this point."
Annara shook her head. "Let's go as far as we can in this transport. They're almost hip-deep here. We don't want to be caught off guard in case they're reactivated."
"Right." Olivia steered around several larger robots and material crates located along the perimeter of the site. The nanobots thinned out at this point. "We're through the thickest part," Olivia said several long moments later, nodding to the view in front of her. "Look up ahead... We've almost made it to the command bunker."
"Park close to the door in case we have to make a fast escape."
Olivia pulled up next to the building and fiddled around with the start button until she managed to turn off the vehicle. "There. We did it." She stood and stared at the exit, hesitating. Hernando, are you inside? Valori, are you here?
Annara patted her shoulder. "Are you picking up anything?"
Olivia smiled at her friend, knowing it didn't hide the fear in her voice. "No, I can't hear anything. Could be the walls are too thick?"
"I reckon that's it." Annara reached into her bag and pulled out two small knives in decorative handmade leather sheaths. She placed one in Olivia's hand. "I know we weren't supposed to take any lethal arms on the airships, but I feel naked without some kind of back up weapon."
"Good idea." Olivia gripped the knife and took a deep breath. "Let's go."
They exploded out of the transport and in two leaps reached the bunker door. Olivia grabbed the round handle and felt relieved to find the door wasn't locked—she hadn't thought through what to do if it had been. After several rotations of the handle, the door swung open.
"I'll go first." Annara moved Olivia aside and entered, knife at the ready. Olivia followed, unsheathing her knife as well. They tiptoed through the tunnel.
The command center was empty.
Chapter Fourteen
"Where else could they have taken shelter from the nanobots?" Annara asked. She searched throughout the echoing command control chamber, knocking over chairs and peering under desks and consoles.
Olivia checked out the small side offices. "No one home. There must be another passage leading from here to another building in this complex. Look for a hallway, a trapdoor, a sign, anything."
Annara raced about the room and kicked a tall metal filing cabinet away from the wall. "Nothing. I thought perhaps it concealed a hidden doorway. I remember reading about a hidden door in one of those silly novels you sent me to read."
"Really? Which one was it?”
Annara shrugged. "It was the story where the heroine found a passage behind a piece of furniture leading to a secret laboratory. Of course, she thwarted the mad doctor's evil scheme and rescued the good-looking detective who'd been kidnapped, and they all lived happily ever after."
Olivia chuckled. "Typical romantic-suspense plot. We'd be so lucky to find one so easily. To think, in this age of computers they would even waste time and money lugging one of these antique cabinets with them all the way to..." She frowned. "This could be our clue after all."
Olivia approached the filing cabinet and opened the top drawer. It was half-filled with print-outs of site statistics, building blueprints and other schematics. She closed it and opened the second drawer down. "You know, it's suspicious this cabinet isn't locked." She rifled through papers which appeared to be personnel files. Bending to open the bottom drawer, she noticed a straight crack on the floor paralleling the wall. She ran a finger along the seam and traced out a square as large as an old-fashioned telephone booth.
"You've found the trapdoor." Annara knelt beside Olivia and pried at the crack with her knife. "There must be a way to open this."
"Hmm, in the movies there's always a secret switch, lever or panel somewhere close." Olivia searched around the cabinet and noticed a usual outlet plug on the wall behind it. They scooted the cabinet off the square and then flipped open the cap to reveal a red button. She grinned. "Ah-ha. Here goes nothing."
She pushed the button and the trapdoor slid back, revealing a long, white, painted metal ladder, lit at intervals with security lights. Sheathing her knife, Olivia swung her legs over the side of the opening and climbed down the ladder, with Annara close behind. They climbed what felt like several stories before reaching the bottom.
Olivia turned from the ladder and gasped.
"What is it?"
