He reached the fence without incident and flattened himself to his chest to covertly survey the complex. There were only a few headlights still in the lot beyond the snow-blanketed mounds of dirt, construction materials, and earthmovers, which would serve to conceal his final sprint to the building itself.
He removed the folded canvas tarp from underneath his jacket. This would be his moment of greatest exposure. His heartbeat thudded in his ears, a counterpoint to the screaming wind.
“Ready on that fence?”
“You’re a go on my end.” Gunnar paused. “Don’t get yourself killed.”
Mason jumped up from the ground and used the momentum to unfold the canvas. He gripped the chain link with his fingers and toes and crawled upward for everything he was worth. It took several tries with the wind working against him, but he managed to flop the tarp over the coils of razor wire. It didn’t work perfectly, but well enough to prevent the sharp barbs from disemboweling him when he leaned on top of them, tucked his head, and pushed off. A moment of weightlessness and he struck the snow flat on his back.
He rolled over onto his belly and scrutinized his surroundings. The moment he was certain no one had seen him, he tore down the tarp, pushed himself to his feet, and ran at a crouch toward a dump truck. Pressed his back against it. Peered around the hood.
Clear.
Dashed toward a mound of earth. Rounded it. Stayed low all the way to the rear of a construction trailer. Listened for any noise inside. peeked through the dusty windows.
Nothing.
Crept along its length, around the side.
The grand international headquarters of GABP was just on the other side of the dirt lot. Maybe a hundred feet. Five, six seconds at a sprint. Still cars to his left. Not many, though. The majority of the headlights had become the red glare of taillights.
It took him closer to eight seconds to reach the building. He hadn’t taken into account the choppiness of the ground beneath the snow from all of the deep tire ruts.
“There’s a second entrance on the northern side,” Gunnar said. “Get moving.”
He ran low and kept his shoulder against the building. It was bare gray concrete, which, presumably, would soon enough be hidden behind some sort of ornate bricks or stones. He grabbed the handle of the steel door and gave it a solid tug. It didn’t budge. He glanced beside it.
“Door’s locked, Gunnar. There’s a standard ten-digit keypad—”
“I’m on it.”
The tiny red light turned green. He had the door open and his entire body inside before the beeping sound died. The darkness closed around him like a fist. While he waited for his eyes to adjust, he slipped off his white sweatsuit, folded it neatly, and tucked it up under his jacket. He drew the Infinity from its holster beneath his arm, clicked on the light, and crept down the corridor. The inner walls and floor were made of the same smooth concrete as the exterior. All of the electrical and plumbing lines had been run across the ceiling and bracketed in place. The entire building had a distinctly industrial feel to it, which didn’t mesh at all with what Victor had told him.
Mason advanced slowly, listening for even the slightest sound. Swept the beam from one side of the hallway to the other. Passed through a section where it looked as though they were installing an air lock or hatch of some kind. There were no doors on either side, only a single opening dead ahead. He clicked off the light as he neared the terminus, pressed his back against the wall, and moved as stealthily as he could. The corridor opened onto a landing. Beyond the railing he could see only darkness. An elevated walkway led to either side. His first impression was of being on the upper level of a shopping mall, but that quickly faded when he factored in the height of the building and how many levels there must be above him, all of them built surrounding an open courtyard of some kind. More like a hotel.
He leaned over the railing and peered upward. There were three more levels up there. Another one below. There were rooms or offices on every level. Large windowless cubicles, the interior walls of which he assumed would eventually be lined with glass. He found a staircase to his right and descended to the lower level.
The open space was vast and cavernous. He risked turning on his light and shined it across the bare concrete, which was littered with sawdust and dirt and construction scraps. There were four small trailers that looked like they could be hitched to the back of pickup trucks. Each supported a large array of domed spotlights, the kind highway crews used for night work. There was no hint at all as to what his in-laws intended to do with the space. He was sure that if Paul had his way, the entire thing would be filled with his various pet projects growing all the way up to the sky. But there was no skylight up there to admit the sun.
He turned his light in a circle. Nothing about the structure made any kind of sense. It almost reminded him of a—
And then he saw it.
“What the hell?”
58
“Talk to me, Mace,” Gunnar said. “What’s going on?”
Mason walked slowly toward the southern wall, beneath the balcony, and stood in the mouth of a great dark hole. He traced the circular edges with the under-barrel light and then shined it inside. The beam terminated long before encountering any resistance.
“Answer me, Mace! Are you all right?”
He was incapable of formulating a reply as he stared into a concrete tunnel. Not bare soil or wooden cribbing. This was no temporary construct or mine shaft that predated construction of the structure above it. This was new and it was supposed to be here. There were recessed light fixtures in the ceiling, what looked like narrow elevated walkways to either side, and a wide trench right down the center.
“You are not going to believe this.”
“Believe what? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, Gunnar. Give me a few minutes, okay? I have a feeling I might lose my signal.”
“If you do, you’re on your own. I can’t deal with security if I don’t know where you are.”
Mason nodded to himself and started walking. He was heading maybe five degrees east of due south—toward the city of Greeley, which was still a solid seven miles away. The tunnel wasn’t wide enough to accommodate a car, and that distance was simply too far to walk comfortably. If the tube had actually been designed for any sort of underground transit, then you’d need—
His beam glinted from the central rail, running right down the middle of the trench. There was just enough room for the horizontal wheels that fit between it and the concrete sides, as evidenced by the black stripes of discoloration from the rubber tread. More rails were stacked on either side, ready to be laid.
The track was too narrow for anything as large as a subway car. More like the shuttles they used at large airports to connect the remote terminals. Small passenger trams that moved at high rates of speed. Something like that could cover the distance between Greeley and the GABP HQ in roughly ten minutes. But what would they need to transport that couldn’t simply be driven down the road? Neither Victor nor Paul would have gone to such great lengths and even greater expense to provide a mass transit system for a workforce they bussed in from south of the border. Nor would they have designed it to let out in the middle of their brand-new global headquarters.
He was missing something critical.
The Bluetooth crackled with static. Another couple of steps and he completely lost the connection. Even his lightest footsteps echoed. He passed the occasional access panel on the wall. Electrical conduits traversed the distance between them. Rounded forks branched off to either side, only to rejoin the main passage a couple hundred feet later. Everything appeared to age before his eyes. Water stains appeared on walls no longer perfectly smooth and gray. Construction of the tunnel had obviously commenced long before they’d broken ground on the new building, but how could they have pulled it off without anyone knowing? Earthmovers and trucks driving in and out of the complex all day and night wouldn’t have gone unnoticed, and surely Angie woul
d have discovered such massive expenditures when she reviewed AgrAmerica’s taxes, which meant that another entity must have been financing the construction, and had been for quite some time.
If there were security cameras down here, he was already screwed. There could be men closing in on him from both sides at this very second. He figured he’d be better off forcing a confrontation with one group rather than both at once, so he started to jog beside the rail, his light swinging in front of him, casting eerie, shifting shadows.
He pondered the building falling rapidly behind him. Maybe they were going to lay marble over the concrete and install full panes of glass for the front walls of the cubicles. And maybe they would build a fountain and plant trees in the courtyard. Maybe he simply lacked the vision to see the glorious design as his in-laws envisioned it, because to him it looked almost like you could fashion bars across the open units with their bare concrete walls. Like you could transport whoever you intended to keep inside of the cells in trams that traveled underground, where no one could see them. The kind of place where they were installing air locks in the entry corridors to prevent something inside from reaching the outside world.
Mason was still jogging nearly due south when he came upon the first access chute. Rungs were bolted to the wall and led upward from the walkway into a round chimney. He’d been jogging for what felt like about twenty minutes. At roughly six miles an hour, that put him approximately two miles from the building, well clear of the outer perimeter. He figured now was as good a time as any to poke his head out and see where he was.
He wasn’t about to relinquish his pistol, so he climbed one-handed. There was no light above. He was maybe twenty feet up when he saw why. There was a hatch on the chute, maybe another fifteen feet higher up. It had a wheel on the underside like you’d find in a submarine. It spun easily and opened into darkness every bit as complete as that below.
He tapped his earpiece to connect with Gunnar again.
“For the love of God, Mace! Get the hell out of there!”
“What’s wrong?”
“You’ve been in there too long. You’re already on borrowed time. Get out of there while you still can. If you still can. The last of the traffic is passing through the main gate and security’s already begun to fan out into patrols. And other than the main door on the east and the one you entered through, I can’t find any other way out of that building. Damn place is built like a fortress.”
“That’s pretty much exactly what it is.” Mason crawled from the hole and slowly turned in a circle. He was inside a small cube that couldn’t have been more than four feet wide and four feet high. There was a small door set into the wall. He tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. “Can you triangulate my location?”
“You’re inside a building. Open your eyes and look around.”
“Just do it, Gunnar.”
Mason focused on a point just to the right of the doorknob. Kicked it as hard as he could. There was a loud cracking sound. He kicked the same spot again. The door popped open three or four inches. The frigid wind raced through the gap and buffeted him with snowflakes. He crawled outside into the accumulation to get his bearings.
“How’d you get all the way out there?” Gunnar asked. “I’m showing you just under two miles outside the perimeter.”
“Do me a favor. Draw a straight line from the building, through my current location, and to whatever it intersects in Greeley, okay?”
“What am I looking for?”
“Where the tunnel lets out.”
“What tunnel? There’s no tunnel on any of the security schematics.”
“That’s kind of my point, Gunnar.”
Mason stood outside a small concrete access building, the kind they built along railroad tracks or beside highways. The kind you saw everywhere with such frequency that as you grew up, you ceased wondering what secrets they held, and eventually stopped seeing them altogether. Just a tiny, essentially invisible building in the middle of a field, undoubtedly overgrown by sunflowers or cornstalks in the summer.
“The line intersects with a commercial plot on the northeast corner of Eighth Avenue and Seventh Street,” Gunnar said.
“Which building specifically?”
“A feed and tack shop. Flying W Ranch Supply. What are you thinking?”
“That the tunnel will take me directly there.”
“It could bend in any number of directions long before then. Or it could stop altogether.”
“They’ve already laid rails down there, Gunnar. A track for some sort of transport vehicle that goes all the way into the new building itself. Through tunnels that aren’t on the blueprints.”
“Why would they need something like that?”
“To move something they don’t want anyone to see.”
“Like what? Their new top secret cash crops? A herd of supercattle?”
Mason ducked back inside, out of the wind, and stared back down into the darkness. It smelled of dust, motor oil, and grease.
“I think it’s designed to move people. I don’t think the building was built to be the envy of the corporate world like Victor said, but, rather, as some sort of long-term housing arrangement. I’m just not sure whether or not the intended occupants will be there of their own free will.”
He heard Alejandra’s voice, but couldn’t make out her words.
“Was it like the other place? Where they took Alejandra? She says you’ll know what she means.”
“I don’t know. All I can say is that it looked like they were installing an air lock in the entry corridor, and the hatch I just crawled through was airtight. It’s like they want to prevent airborne particles or contaminants from getting in. Or out.”
“So what’s the plan from here?” Gunnar asked.
“How’s it looking at AgrAmerica? Did I set off any alarms?”
“Negative. It doesn’t sound as though security has any idea you were there.”
“Then I’m going back down.” Mason closed the door behind him and sat with his legs dangling over the nothingness. “I need to see where the tunnel takes me.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t have a signal.”
“Just meet me at Flying W, okay? But keep your distance until you hear from me again.”
“There’s no way someone could build a tunnel underneath downtown Greeley without anyone noticing. Something like that would be impossible to miss.”
“Which means that at least some portion of it was already there.”
“I’m not sure whether I hope you’re right or wrong.”
The signal dissociated into static before he even sealed the hatch above him. He shined the light toward the ground to make sure there was no one sighting him down the barrel of a rifle, then hustled down the rungs.
He listened for any indication that he wasn’t alone in the tunnel before taking off at a jog.
The Thorntons had somehow built a tunnel under miles of farmland without anyone knowing. It was a monumental task that would have taken years, and had surely been designed with a specific goal in mind, one his in-laws had been planning for a long, long time. And they were finally close to seeing their plan to fruition. He needed to figure out what they were hiding, and how it could possibly be more important to them than the life of one of their own.
Mason found a pace he could sustain and settled into a rhythm. He needed to pace himself if he was going to cover five more miles in a reasonable amount of time. As it was, there was only one thing he knew for sure: He had a long night ahead of him.
59
Mason passed several more surface-access chutes along the way. There were maybe half as many short, semicircular branches designed to allow railcars moving in opposite directions to pass each other without slowing. The under-barrel flashlight beam diminished in strength as the smell of decaying wood and earth increased. It was a distinct scent, like that of a ghost town.
The tunnel widened, subtly at first. Water dribbled down the rust-stai
ned concrete from the exposed pipes and formed puddles at the base of the walls. He slowed to a more cautious pace. There was no doubt he was underneath the city now, and he could stumble into another secured zone at any time.
He walked in a shooter’s stance, allowing the Infinity to lead him. He couldn’t quite picture the configuration of streets above him and wished he’d paid closer attention any of the dozens of times he’d driven through. The city civic center, or what most just called “old downtown,” was on the northeastern edge of town. The town spread to the southwest from there, toward the distant mountains. The courthouse and city hall were a couple blocks away.
The signs of the district’s age showed through. Despite renovations every generation or so, a decision would have to be made in the not-so-distant future either to designate it a historical landmark or raze it to the ground. The buildings deteriorated quickly heading east from there, almost as though the face-lift to the civic center itself served the dual purpose of hiding the unsightliness of the warehouses and run-down stores that had serviced the Denver Pacific tracks a century ago.
The ceiling of the tunnel rose as the walls receded. He had to be getting close. The smell of age grew stronger with each step, until finally the tunnel opened into a man-made cavern of sorts. Modern pillars supported an aged concrete dome that showed signs of recent patching. His best guess was that directly above him was an intersection, one that had partially collapsed during a storm not so long ago. The patch job reflected the pride and craftsmanship of a city employee, unlike the rest of the artisanship around him, which was positively breathtaking.
It was like a city beneath the city, only one that hadn’t seen use in many, many years. He was at a crossroads, where once men and women of wealth and prestige had moved unseen between theaters and brothels and speakeasies while their reputations remained intact aboveground. He wondered how many people had been aware of the existence of this place at the time, let alone now.
The Extinction Agenda Page 30