"Good," Borman answered, then walked to the intercom and transmitted, "Team Two, go."
He turned and opened the door, allowing two soldiers access to the observation area.
"Open her up again, Sanchez."
Lieutenant Colonel Thunder stammered, "What—what is this??"
"Stand down, Colonel. Sanchez, open her up."
The keys turned again, the access door buzzed open once more. The two soldiers who comprised “Team Two” moved into the vault room. They carried heavy bundles as well as several large metal plates.
And welding gear.
"Cover your eyes, people," Borman said.
Sparks of yellow and red sprayed as Team Two welded plates onto the vault door, sealing its edges—making it impossible to open even if the locks were disengaged.
"General Borman, what the hell are you doing? What if they are successful? What if they complete their mission? How will they get out?"
Borman answered her while still trying to watch the progress of the welders through the bright sparks of their work: "They’re not coming back, Colonel. And no one else is going in. Ever. This is the end game."
15
Gant realized he had already made one mistake, and they had been in the quarantine zone for only three seconds. He should have dimmed the vault room’s lights. That mistake had been just plain stupid. Worse, maybe it was a sign that he was not concentrating on the mission enough. Had all the talk from Thunder and Twiste distracted him enough to cause him to miss such an important detail?
He was about to switch on his night vision when he realized there was, in fact, light in the room. He noticed small red dots along the walls near the ceiling. Some sort of emergency lighting that had somehow remained in operation.
Instead of night vision, Gant switched on a tactical flashlight, as did others on the team.
"Hold, gentlemen. Let your eyes adjust," Gant said. The tactical headset worked, but there was plenty of static. Apparently the EMP shielding built into the walls was not going to allow the units to work over long distances; probably no better than line of sight.
As his pupils expanded his surroundings took hold. The now-sealed vault door was ten yards behind. Open black space stretched forward even farther. He could see the form of walls on either side of his team, but the details of those walls remained hidden. Still, the hall was a lot wider than he had expected.
"Listen up. Franco, take us out. Stay sharp, stay focused."
The air was cold enough that he caught glimpses of frosty breath in the collection of flashlight beams. At first it felt as if they had stepped into a refrigerated room, but adrenaline kept any chills at bay.
He sensed a combination of smells in the air. Something like mold, another something like chemicals, and even a subtle hint of spent cartridges, as if a battle had taken place here long ago and the air of the sealed sublevel had captured and held traces of the aroma.
Another smell carried in the air: the smell of dust. Opening the door had kicked up a storm, and every breath nearly induced a sneeze.
His eyes adjusted more completely.
The walls were battleship gray ad looked much newer than he thought they should, despite the dust. There were no functioning light fixtures other than those red emergency lights. As they slowly moved forward, the team worked around some kind of tables and what might have been toppled chairs. After a moment, they cleared the clutter and the area opened up.
Gant spotted Franco at the head of the team. The point man stopped, knelt, and held one fist in the air. The rest of the soldiers followed suit. The major crept forward, weaving between the members of his unit, until he was alongside Franco.
Thom saw why Biggy had halted their brief progress. The hall they traversed came to a choke point, a set of large containment doors dented, scorched, and knocked halfway out of the heavy frame holding them in place.
He thought about what they knew of Briggs's containment order. It had been for expanded containment with, he had assumed, the vault door they had just entered being the perimeter of that expanded containment. So why a set of bulkheads here, and why were they obviously broken open?
"Wait a second," Gant muttered and surveyed his surroundings, but wobbling, thin flashlight beams did not illuminate the area well enough.
"Watch your eyes, people," he warned and lit a flare, which he flung into the center of the hall. After a burst of sparks, a blood-red flickering glow fully lit their surroundings.
They were not, in fact, in a hallway at all. They were in a room that had been segmented into two distinct parts. The unit had already come through the first part, but now the flare showed what they had not seen before in the dark.
What they had thought to be tables were, in fact, consoles equipped with cracked and smashed monitoring equipment. The consoles were perfectly positioned to monitor the second segment of the room, a big chamber housing the broken bulkheads just ahead of Franco.
While Gant said nothing—not at first—the sergeant managed to encapsulate his feelings perfectly.
"Deja fucking vu."
Sal Galati flashed his light over the remains and said, "Didn’t we just leave this place?"
Thom bit his lower lip as he felt his arms tremble, not in fear, but with anger. If Borman had not bothered to fill him in on the important detail that quarantine had been broken sometime in the past—that whatever lurked in the sublevels had actually expanded its reach over the years—then how many more important details had been withheld?
It was all a carbon copy of the vestibule and vault room they had just passed through on their way in, except this one was not shiny and new. It gave Gant the feeling of seeing ancient ruins from Rome or Greece, in the sense that bits and pieces of the structure remained, enough to envision what the entirety had once been.
Suddenly Brandon Twiste—hauling the duffel bag carrying the V.A.A.D.'s batteries—was in his ear, saying, "The bear went over the mountain, and what do you think he saw?"
Beyond the smashed bulkheads waited a dark hall. For a terrifying moment, he wondered if this was what they were in for: layer after layer of observation rooms and containment doors, each one broken and replaced. Thunder had told him there were stretches of time missing from the files. Had Borman covered up the fact that his expert security had repeatedly failed?
Gant spoke into his headset: "Listen up. Wells, Galati, Moss—get up here."
The three soldiers moved forward until they huddled at the front with the sergeant and major.
"Let’s make this a clearing operation. Franco, take these three and slice the pie. We’re looking for a stairwell that goes down ... should be twenty yards or so ahead."
Gant remembered the general layout of the facility. Stairwells and elevator shafts were contained between certain levels, most going between only two floors. That is what had made sublevel 5 the choke hold for the complex. All of the elevators and stairwells below were self-contained. No way to the surface except through the main elevator on sublevel 5 on the far side of the nonquarantined zone.
Yet this made their mission more time consuming. They had to search for stairs to take them to sub-6, then either a stairwell or an elevator shaft to go to sub-7, and again to get down to sub-8.
Franco, Galati, Wells, and Moss moved into the hall at angles, almost like a game of leapfrog, with the rearmost team member moving forward while covered by the others. Then the next, then the next—each sweeping his zone of fire, looking for targets and covering the others in the process.
"Clear," came Franco’s voice over the headset. He was only a few yards away but the static was intense.
"Let’s go." Gant moved the others ahead, with Campion still guarding the rear.
Franco and Wells stood at a junction of halls. This made for a good stopping point, not only due to the convergence of passages but because of what they saw ahead: emergency lights mounted high along the wall, shining so brightly it seemed their bulbs were brand new.
Those lig
hts shined in sharp beams creating alternating patches of very bright light and complete darkness. A couple of overturned equipment carts cast long shadows, and doors—some knocked off their hinges, others closed tightly—lined the hall.
Gant did not welcome the extra illumination. He did not like the sharp shadows it created. If it were darker, they could use their night vision or flashlights. If all the interior lights worked, then, well, things would be easy. This was a halfway compromise that seemed to favor all the negatives.
Or, of course, it might just be his nature to be a pessimist.
"Keep moving, Sergeant. We have a long way to go."
"Door right," Franco ordered, and Moss stuck his weapon and its attached tactical light into a storage area, finding buckets, mops, and rusting containers of ancient cleaning supplies.
"Door left," Franco ordered again, and Jupiter Wells used the barrel of his SCAR-H to push open a partly shut door. He found a file room where it appeared someone had once—long, long ago—used old paperwork to start a fire.
"Thom," Twiste said, kneeling and shining his flashlight directly on the concrete floor, revealing a pair of spent ammunition cartridges. "Looks like 5.56 to me."
Ahead of them, Franco continued to use the men to check each side door, every shadow. They found a military boot, lots of papers, pens, clipboards, and several toppled computer terminals. Exactly the type of leftovers one would expect in an evacuated laboratory.
No signs of any threats, but nonetheless Gant let Franco and his team work several paces ahead, knowing that he needed to keep Twiste and the gear he and Campion carried well out of harm's way. If something leapt from a shadow, Franco's group would be on their own.
They are expendable.
After two more minutes of moving forward, the scout team stopped again and Franco signaled for consultation.
Pearson and Campion remained with Twiste a ways behind the vanguard while Gant moved forward to survey the situation. He found Moss and Wells standing to either side of the hall with their weapons trained ahead where a solitary emergency light cast a glow over stacks of desks, chairs, and file cabinets thrown into a messy pile.
Gant squinted and realized this was not a mess but, rather, a hastily constructed barricade. Someone had taken refuge behind that spot and—
The floor, ahead of them and around them, was stained crimson. Old and faded, covered in dust, dried and decaying—but recognizable nonetheless. He moved his flashlight into the shadows unreached by the small spotlight and saw more gore, including an ancient patch splattered among the pipes and wires running along the ceiling.
Meanwhile, Franco and Galati eyed an open stairwell that led in the only direction the designers of Red Rock had allowed: down, one floor at a time.
Gant turned around and glanced back in the direction they had come, seeing a long corridor of light and dark. Particles of dust kicked up by the newcomers' boots floated in the air. He knew the duplicate vault room and vestibule were not too far back there, yet it felt as if they had marched a mile.
He turned back around, sighed, and looked to the stairs. It seemed darker down there, but somehow he knew they would find enough working lights to find their way, although he did not take comfort in that fact.
"Sir?" Franco waited for orders.
"No reason to wait, Sergeant, move us down."
16
Liz stood on the wrong side of her desk, having ceded the position of authority to General Borman, who was making it quite clear that her appointment as facility commander at Red Rock meant very little anymore, if it ever had at all. Nonetheless, she refused to back down.
"How are you even going to know if they’re successful?"
"Not your problem, Colonel. You have one job—"
"Yes, yes," she said, waving her hand and dismissing his words. "To keep that door closed. Well, you opened it, General. Maybe I should have stopped you."
"Stopped me? I own this place and I own you!"
"Do you own the mess that happened down there, too? Is that what this is all about? This is all about cleaning up a mess you made, isn’t it? All about covering your ass!"
Borman stepped around the desk and at her so fast that she instinctively retreated a step. Before she knew what was happening, his sidearm was aimed at her forehead.
Liz stood perfectly still. Time slowed and she became incredibly aware of her surroundings, as if her senses had quadrupled in acuity. She heard the tick of the wall clock, the flow of air through the ventilation ducts, the beating of her heart.
General Borman pulled the slide on his semi-automatic pistol. A bullet chambered with what was, in reality, a short and sharp click, but to her ears it sounded like a boom of thunder.
She noticed a soft gleam on his skin and realized he perspired; a sheath of moisture covered his cheeks and gave his skin a plastic-like appearance, as if Harold Borman were more mannequin than man. Except for the eyes, of course. His eyes were wide and white and full of something that was most likely fury but might also pass for desperation.
He spoke through clenched teeth, and as he did, Liz Thunder realized that at that very moment he would not hesitate to murder her. General Borman might very well pull that trigger, because he so clearly believed that—yes—he owned Red Rock and everything within.
Or does Red Rock own him?
"Listen … very … carefully. When I’m here, I rule. I am the undisputed dictator of this world. I decide who lives and who dies and no one—no one—ever asks me why or how. I put you in this office to babysit. Nothing else. Stay out of my business or I will bury you."
He pushed the automatic into her forehead, leaving a mark on her skin. She closed her eyes to retain at least some outward image of calm, but everything inside went haywire. Confusion. Fear. Anger.
Over the years she had faced a fair number of loaded firearms, from patrolling sentries offering challenge to unbalanced patients desperate for a way out—escape—from nightmares of her conjuring.
This felt different. She could not talk him down, she could not reason with him. Her survival depended on his insanity blowing over, if that was even possible. So Liz Thunder stayed quiet and as motionless as her shivering body allowed.
His breath huffed out in adrenaline-filled snorts, like a bull facing a torero.
Then the pressure was gone. She heard his gun return to its holster and then the click of his shoes. When she finally opened her eyes, General Borman had disappeared.
Still, she remained frozen in place for four … five … ten seconds until the wretch in her gut forced her to seek the wastebasket.
As she struggled to keep the contents of her stomach down, she also struggled with the idea of walking right off base and getting as far away from the Red Rock Mountain Research Facility as possible.
She had already felt that her life was in danger from whatever lurked in the sublevels below, and now she knew that General Borman could put a bullet in her head as easily as ordering lunch from the canteen. When faced with bodily threats, retreat—running—made perfect sense. In this case, she might be able to find someone at the Pentagon willing to listen. They might even send an investigator … who would get here in two to three weeks and who would need to cut through General Borman's long and illustrious history dealing with threats most of the military brass simply did not understand.
Sure, that will work.
Or she could do exactly what she had done last time: just do her job as defined by her superiors and let others worry about the fallout.
Who are you kidding, Liz? That was as much an act of abandonment as walking away.
She pulled herself together and leaned against the desk. Both choices—staying and following orders to the letter or running off for help—meant leaving Thom to his fate.
That gave her pause, and she wondered what secrets they might already have discovered deep below her feet beyond the steel-reinforced concrete, the EMP shielding, the sealed vents, and the welded door. She wondered if they w
ere still alive.
Liz sensed a hint of weight in her pocket; the weight of a cigarette pack. How nice it would be to sit here and enjoy a smoke. Yes, that might just put her mind at ease.
Her fingers slipped into her pocket, touched the half-pack of Virginia Slims … and stopped.
No.
Liz's eyes darted around the office to find something to focus on other than a craving from the past. She saw a pile of file folders on a side table; personnel folders, one for each of the soldiers she had come here to confuse and stump to see if they were focused enough to handle the pressure. She wondered how well she would do in such a test.
One file sat by itself to the side of the rest. She vaguely remembered Sanchez leaving it for her last night, but she had not given it much thought. It was not, after all, like all the rest. Instead of boiling the personality of a man into numbers and words, this folder contained information regarding the Archangel mission into the quarantine zone. Nothing of real interest, just the type of paperwork required of the bureaucracy to ensure the proper documentation of all actions inside Red Rock.
Inside the file she found an inventory of the team's items. It seemed Borman had treated this mission like a NASA moon shot; noting—ad nauseam—every item, including the clothes on the back of each man. She even saw a listing for the Twinkies Sal Galati had stuffed in his kit. Borman must have had base security interview each man, perhaps even search them, prior to their load-out session before entering the vault.
She scanned the columns and sentences and numbers page by page. The weapons list included the standard stuff: rifles, pistols, knives, plenty of ammunition, ballistic armor, fragmentation grenades, one old-style flamethrower, and more.
An idea came to mind. She paged past the information on rations and first aid equipment and personal effects to Captain Twiste’s gear. She found the listing for the variable accelerator antimatter delivery device, or V.A.A.D. for short. There was only a brief description of the thing's size and shape, noting the separate battery packs needed for operation. Under the general column requiring an item's particular function were the words "bombard target area with antiparticles."
Opposing Force: Book 01 - The God Particle Page 15