The black man rubbed his unshaven chin as he surveyed the room. Gray stubble had appeared, the result of having spent the morning lying on the cold, wet ground. Tiger suddenly found it disconcerting to look at his friend. He looked old and haggard. He wondered if Dee looked at him and thought the same thing.
He also knew deep down he didn’t want to know.
Dee walked down the center of the room, studying the levers and switches as if he were at the corner market perusing the produce. At the other end of the room, he turned left and started up the next aisle of panels.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Ruff asked, impatience and anxiety tinging his voice like a drop of oil in water. Nervously, he glanced back over his shoulder at the door. Any second now, his troop would start to wonder where he was. They would begin to ask questions. Once they realized he’d gone AWOL, the shit would hit the fan. He imagined they would come looking for him with that rare, delicious zeal that they reserved only for those times when it wasn’t just a job; those few and far between moments when the assholes actually enjoyed what they did. Of course, their pleasure usually involved making others very, very miserable.
“Maybe we can help … if you told us what you were lookin’ for,” Tiger chimed in. “Like a lever marked … I dunno … ‘SECRET SPACESHIP STORAGE?’ ” He looked at Ruff, and they both snickered like two junior high kids.
Dee ignored them, intent on the task at hand. But he looked confused, stopping about halfway down the aisle, looking around like he’d lost his bearings.
“Maybe it’s another maintenance room,” Tiger suggested. “You said yourself that some things weren’t in the same place they used to be.”
Dee appeared frustrated as he put his hands to his forehead, interlocking his fingers and running them back over his shiny bald dome. They came to a stop at the back of his skull, and he supported it in the cradle of his palms as he contemplated something. Then, without warning, he reached out and threw a large, high-amperage disconnect lever. The spring-loaded device closing sounded like a gunshot, causing both Tiger and Ruff to start.
A low vibration filled the room, the sound of machinery engaging. Suddenly, along the south wall, a bank of panels shuddered and began to part. The electrical cabinet swung out, and a door appeared in the wall behind it.
“Granny’s Jesus!” Tiger shook his head. “This is some fucked up Bat Cave shit!”
“Oh, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” Dee grinned, stepping up to the mysterious dark entrance. “C’mon, you smartasses!”
He fumbled along the wall and found a light switch. The lights revealed a narrow corridor with a gradual downward descent that made a slow lazy curve. As they walked, Tiger sensed they were not only going down but also walking in a big, wide circle.
“Just how the hell are we gonna get this ship in the air with it buried underground like this?” he wondered aloud.
Dee turned and looked back over his shoulder at the rocket jockey. Tiger saw his expression.
“Don’t look at me like that!” He was instantly on the defensive. “I mean, c’mon now! We go much further down we’ll be taking off from China!”
Dee said nothing, just stopped and gazed straight ahead.
“What?” Tiger asked. “What is it?”
It took him a second to realize they’d reached their destination. Looking up, it gradually became apparent that the narrow passageway had opened up into a much larger, open area. The air was rank with the damp smell of wet magnicrete. The sound of multiple water drips could be heard echoing through the cavernous space. Plop-plop! Ploploplop!
Ruff saw it first. His eyes adjusted to the dark quicker than the human eye. He now stared at it in awe. It took Tiger a second or two to make out the shape in the dark. Flat, matte-black curves against satiny, soft blackness. But as his eyes adjusted to the absence of light in the hangar, they grew wide in astonishment.
And then they grew wider.
“Holy Millennium Falcon, Batman!”
***
Stella made it down two floors before barricading herself at a nurse’s station on the seventh floor, leaving a trail of wounded ZiPs in her wake. So far, she’d not taken any lives or harmed any civilians. Afterward, many of the responding troopers would recall the dead, emotionless eyes and the bulldog tenacity with which she fought. Yet, Stella seemed only to be fighting a delaying action, waiting for something … or someone.
By the time Matt and his escort, Walsh, made it to the seventh floor, heavily-armed SWAT team members had surrounded her. Overtures had been made to facilitate a peaceful end to the standoff. They’d been met with stony silence. With patients and medical staff trapped in rooms, assault team members were in the process of preparing for a sleep gas assault as soon as snipers were in position.
Stepping off the elevator, Matt and Walsh joined two heavily armed troopers crouching in the main hallway at the corner of a wall. One of the troopers had a folding sniper rifle with a periscope sight. He had the barrel bent around the corner and was peering through the periscope intently. Matt tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for the man to let him have a look.
Through the scope, Matt surveyed the scene. The nurse’s station sat at the center of a large open area. The bar-like counter was pockmarked with laser burns and punctured by pulse rounds. There’d been one helluva firefight here earlier before things had settled into a stalemate. He moved the scope slowly from left to right. The station was a junction point for four separate hallways, which led to four different blocks of rooms. As such, it was a choke point. Patients and staff couldn’t be evacuated because the only route of escape led right past Stella, making it
