and slipped on his safety harness.
'How much further, Gabriel?' said Michelle.
'Another hour,' he said. 'Mr. Sam can make it there a lot faster in the plane. I've never been on a plane before, have you?'
Michelle was studying the road ahead. Every time they came to a straightway she would floor it, but as they moved up into hilly ground the straight roads were rapidly disappearing. 'Yeah, I've been on a plane.' She jerked her head in Sean's direction. 'He's been on Air Force One with the president.'
Gabriel turned to stare in awe at Sean. 'You met the president?'
Sean nodded. 'But remember, he puts his pants on the same way you and I do. Only when he has his on he can push a button and blow up the world.'
Michelle turned around and gave him a 'what the hell?' look before saying, 'If you want to go on a plane ride one day, Gabriel, we can arrange it.'
'That'd be cool. You go right at the next road.'
'What road?' said Sean as another jarring bump nearly unseated him. 'You mean this obstacle course we've been on for the last ten miles?'
As she made the turn and the road grew steeper, Michelle engaged her four-wheel drive and they bumped along.
'Tell us about the mine, Gabriel,' said Michelle.
'Like what?'
'One entrance in or more?'
'Just the one I know about. Got a grassy runway Mr. Sam put in. I came up here in the truck with him sometimes and we'd mow the grass flat.'
'Keep going,' Michelle said encouragingly. 'The more we know the better we'll be prepared.'
He explained about the shafts and the rooms Quarry had built inside.
'Why did he do all that?' asked Sean
'He said if the world was coming to an end that we'd all go up there and stay. He has food, water, lanterns, stuff like that.'
'And guns,' said Michelle.
'And guns,' agreed Gabriel. 'Probably lots of them.'
Sean pulled out his own nine millimeter along with two extra mags he always carried.
Two pistols, a few extra mags, a little boy, two potential hostages, and going into a dark mine where the other side was armed to the teeth, knew every crevice, and you didn't. He caught Michelle's gaze in the rearview mirror.
She was obviously thinking the same thing he was because she mouthed, 'I know.'
Sean's eyes went to the side window. The terrain here was growing ever steeper. Even as the warming sun came up, it seemed dark and cold. He thought back to the room at Atlee. To a story on a wall that had probably taken Sam Quarry years to construct. Then he thought back to that night in Georgia, walking down that street, seeing the young lady on top of the future president, falling out of the car with her panties dangling around her ankles. The man had a beautiful, intelligent wife at home waiting for him. He'd just been elected to the U.S. Senate. And he was getting balled by some twenty-year-old chick in a car?
And then his mind turned to another woman. Tippi Quarry.
He raped me, Daddy.
A bloody abortion.
A coma for all these years.
Persistent vegetative state, Quarry had written on the wall, underlining each word three times.
Sean had no children. But if he had and something like that had happened to his daughter, what would he do? How far would he go? What sort of a story on a wall would he construct? How many people could he kill?
He slid the gun back in his belt holster.
They would find Sam Quarry up at the mine. He was sure of that. They would find Willa and this Diane woman too. Whether alive or not he was uncertain.
But as to the question of what he and Michelle should do about it all?
He really didn't know.
CHAPTER 80
AN HOUR BEFORE the two choppers carrying the president and his security detail landed, a pair of large helicopters with two dozen Hostage Rescue Team members and lots of equipment hit the dirt about a hundred yards from Quarry's little house. The men rolled off and then fanned out, guns ready. Equipment was hauled off the chopper and then deployed. They did a recon of the immediate area but came up with zero.
In the lead-lined bunker, Carlos, who had heard the chopper come in, hunkered down below the grade line, but his gaze never left the TV monitor set up in front of him. He did make the sign of the cross and mumble a short prayer.
Half the HRT squad set up a temporary perimeter while the other half pulled some more equipment from the second chopper.
Principal among these were two mobile robots, weighing about a hundred pounds apiece. They set them on the ground, fired them up, and one HRT member, using what looked like a very sophisticated joystick, sent the first robot into action. It rolled around and around the perimeter of the house, growing closer to it with each pass and finally entering the house and making a sweep inside. If there were any mines, IEDs, or other explosives here, the robot's onboard infrared sensors would detect them before detonation occurred. Then the HRT explosives specialists could dispose of them safely.
No explosives were detected, so they sent out the second robot. This was even more cutting-edge than the first. The HRT squad had named this machine the Gamma Hound. Its role was to detect radiological, biological, or chemical substances over whatever ground it passed. The HRT squad member used a practiced hand at the joystick to send Gamma Hound on its rounds, even rolling it up on the porch and into the house. Gamma Hound never once 'barked.' The place was clean.
Only then did the HRT squad approach the house and then go inside. What they found in there stunned even the most veteran members of the group.
The leader got on his two-way and reported, 'We got a nonresponsive Caucasian female between thirty and forty in a hospital bed hooked up to what appears to be an elaborate life support system juiced by a battery generator. We've checked the place for weapons and other threats and found none. Other than her the place is clean.'
The squad leader waiting outside listened to this report and then exclaimed, 'What in the hell did you just say?'
His man repeated it. The HRT leader in turn radioed this information back to the president's chopper.
One of his men looked at him and said, 'What do we do now?'
'We go over that house with a fine-toothed comb. And we lock this whole area. I don't want one living thing, other than the coma lady in there, within a thousand yards of this place.'
'Who is she?'
'I have no idea, and I don't need to know. All I know is the president is coming and nothing is going to harm him on my watch. Now move out!'
Another careful search was made of the area. HRT men tramped on and around the bunker where Carlos sat huddled. They didn't find the camera in the tree because Quarry, ever the detail man, had cut a hole in the oak, placed the camera inside, and patched up the hole with bark glued on so that only the camera lens was showing. And as high up as it was, and covered from the ground by dense foliage, except for the sightline Quarry had cut in it, it might as well have been invisible.
Some of the HRT went back inside the house and used a crowbar to pry up one of Quarry's fine floorboards. Underneath was a standard sheet of one-inch plywood. An HRT member pounded on it with his fist. 'Solid as a rock.
