Cam - 03 - The Moonpool

by P. T. Deutermann

  Then all the lights went out.

  We stopped running but kept moving, using the light from the heating and air-conditioning machinery control panels. I visualized some Marines coming around the corner with their rat pistols and night vision gear, but hopefully they’d secured by now. I glanced at my watch—two ten. At least we were on my timeline.

  We pushed forward in the darkened passageway, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were not alone. I wondered where they kept that rottweiler at night if not in the basement—outside the fence? I gripped the canister of Mace even harder.

  Feeling our way along the wire mesh walls, we got to the corner of the first passageway and turned left. All the storage cages on our right appeared to be stuffed to the gills with cardboard boxes marked MEDICAL RECORDS. To our immediate left was a boxy, oil-fired boiler, whose orange flame was visible through the boiler front inspection port. The boiler room wasn’t really a room, but more of an area enclosed in wire mesh walls with chain-link fence doors. The area stank of heating oil, and wisps of low-pressure steam were visible in the nest of pipes leading up into the main building. Two ancient water pumps ground away in one corner of the enclosure.

  I couldn’t see much of anything ahead, where the loading docks should be. We desperately needed some light, because the farther away we got from the boiler room, the less ambient light there would be in the passageway. Behind us we heard banging on the door jammed by that steel drum. We weren’t going to be alone much longer.

  “Gotta hide,” I whispered to Moira. The question was: where? If they were wearing night vision gear, there wasn’t going to be anyplace to hide down here.

  Except.

  I grabbed her arm, and we turned around.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “The boiler room,” I said, as I started trying doors. “That flame will interfere with their NVGs.”

  The banging was getting louder. It sounded like someone was using a fire axe on that door. The chain-link doors into the machinery room were padlocked.

  “Climb, quickly,” I said, and we scrambled up the chain-link, bent over the tops of the wobbly door, and slid back down to the floor on the other side.

  Up close the boiler gave off tangible heat over the sustained low roar of the burners. Down the passageway we heard that steel drum bang down onto the concrete floor and go rolling. We scrambled around behind the boiler and crouched down between two large air ducts. The place was littered with boxes of rags, tools, and spare valve parts all stacked behind the boiler, and we made ourselves a nest out of these.

  For the moment we were safe, but that wasn’t going to last long. They’d spread out on NVG, search the entire basement area, and then realize that none of the doors to the outside had been opened. Since we’d jammed the elevator and the fire doors, they’d know we were still down there, somewhere in the basement area. They’d turn the lights back on and go cage to cage.

  Or go get the dog.

  There might be another set of fire stairs and elevators on the west side of the building, but they probably had people on those already. It was just a matter of time before they’d come in here. We needed a diversion, and quickly.

  Moira tapped me on the arm and pointed. Between the two metal air ducts there was a space of about six inches, and we saw two ghostly figures slipping by in the glow of the burners. They walked by too fast for me to see if they were carrying weapons, but they were definitely wearing night vision headgear.

  Just a matter of time.

  A fuel pump lit off under our feet and the boiler ramped up in response to a demand from a thermostat somewhere upstairs. More air began to rattle through the combustion supply ducts.

  “We need a diversion,” I said softly.

  “A fire would do it,” she said, pointing to the glowing firebox. The machinery was making enough noise to mask our voices.

  “Without a way out?”

  “Fuck it,” she said. “I’m not going back inside. Besides, they’ll evacuate the building. They’ll have to turn off the security system to do that.”

  That might be true, I thought. Or they might just isolate the basement, pull the handle on some kind of fire suppression system, and wait it out. Two more figures swept past the boiler room, walking slower this time. I thought I heard tactical radio voices.

  Sooner, rather than later.

  We had to do something.

  “Okay, fire it is,” I whispered. I turned around and found a large ball-peen hammer. I slithered out of our nest of boxes and crawled to the boiler front. I looked both ways out into the passageway, but couldn’t see anyone. That, of course, didn’t mean they couldn’t see me, but that orange glow from the glass inspection port ought to show up as a bright, foggy plume on their NVGs, which would make them avoid looking in my direction.

  The inspection port was a five-inch-diameter circle of heat-tempered glass. I turned over on my back, cocked an arm, and whacked it. The first whack produced a crack; the second one, harder, shattered the glass, at which point a jet of flame roared out of the hole and blew all the way out through the chain-link and into the passageway itself. It singed the sleeve of my jumpsuit, and I ducked back out of its way to the side of the boiler, which was now making noises like a jet airplane spooling up on the tarmac as the burners went unstable. Anyone on NVGs looking my way would be stone blind with all that light and flame. Then I smelled heating oil, and saw Moira whaling away on the fuel-supply line filter housing, which was already spurting thin streams of pressurized oil across the floor. Goddamned woman was a born fighter, but she might not appreciate what was going to happen next.

  “Time to boogie,” I said, no longer trying to keep quiet.

  We slithered through all the boxes at the back of the boiler enclosure to a side wall made of expanded metal screen. Then we waited. The jet airplane effect didn’t seem to be getting any bigger on the other side of the boiler, but it wasn’t getting any smaller, either. There wasn’t much smoke forming because that jet of flame had the entire basement’s supply of oxygen to play with. Then the spreading pool of heating oil must have made its way under the boiler and out to the front, where it found a partner in crime. The ensuing fireball easily engulfed our hideout, accompanied by an ear-squeezing whumping sound. And now there was lots of smoke.

  I nudged Moira, and we began scrambling over the wire mesh wall, using the supporting studs as footholds. First one and then two fire alarm bells went off somewhere in the basement, followed by an entire chorus of smoke detectors. The fire was getting bigger by the second, and would soon discover all that paper piled up in the wire cages across the passageway.

  We’d climbed from the machinery cage into the adjacent storage enclosure, which was empty. The passageway we wanted was right in front of us, but there would still be Marines out there, so we kept climbing through the row of cages, one after another, as the glare from the oil fire behind us got big enough to light up the whole basement. It was hard going, and the edges of the hardware cloth were tearing up our hands.

  Then we saw the loading dock area, suddenly visible ahead and to our right—where four Marines were crouching down and talking anxiously on shoulder-mike radios. They had their NVGs pulled down, and their young, scared faces were orange in the reflected firelight.

  We hung there, frozen halfway up the sidewall of the storage cage like a pair of lizards, as that light got brighter and brighter. If they’d looked up, they’d have seen us immediately, but they were all focusing on the loading ramp door. One kept trying the handle, as if they’d asked someone to unlock it remotely. The noise of the fire behind us suddenly increased, probably as a fuel line melted down and put the heating oil out onto the floor at full throttle. A modern system would have shut itself down long ago, but that boiler plant had to be 1940s vintage. I looked at Moira, who was staring at the four Marines in pure disbelief. Then a horn went off and one of the steel loading dock doors started to roll upward.

  The Marines d
idn’t hesitate. All four bolted for the widening gap between the door and the concrete ramp, hitting the floor like paratroopers and rolling under the gap as if it were concertina wire. One minute they were there, the next minute they were gone and down the road. Or at least up the ramp.

  “Go! Go! Go!” I yelled at Moira, because I knew what would happen next—they’d shut that door as soon as they knew their Marines were safe. If left open, that door would create a firestorm. I could already feel the blast of cool night air headed in to help with the fire.

  We scrambled the rest of the way up the wall, then went sideways along the top to the front section of the cage, heedless now of the ragged edges of hardware cloth at the top. Over the top, drop to the floor, and run like hell for that ramp, pursued now by the heavy cloud of thick black smoke that was coiling along the ceiling like an angry incubus. I took one breath of some truly noxious gases of combustion from wiring, pipe lagging, and cardboard boxes, which put me momentarily on my knees. We were forced to get down to all fours as we arrived at the ramp, just in time to hear that horn go off again.

  It was harder rolling up the ramp than it would have been rolling down, but we had plenty of motivation coming down the passageway after us in the form of a flame front. The door slammed down onto the concrete just as Moira made it through, and the air began shrieking under it as the fire demanded more and more oxygen.

  We huddled at the bottom of the ramp to get our bearings. I was almost afraid to look up the ramp, expecting to see a four-pack of smiling Marines waiting for us. But they were gone. What we could see was that every light in the building above us was on, which probably meant that there was a full-scale evacuation in progress. We’d wanted a diversion, and by God, we had one.

  We crawled up the ramp on our bellies to the sidewalk from which the exercise pens extended into the foggy night. Still no guards in sight. The interior gates to the exercise pens had latches but no locks, as there were always guards out on the sidewalk when the detainees were in the pens. I quickly counted to the third gate, and we went through, closing it behind us. We could hear a commotion of voices growing on the other side of the building, but no sirens yet. The fire in the basement was invisible behind all that concrete, but we could still hear it sucking a shrieking gale of air under the steel ramp doors.

  We trotted out the length of the pen through wet grass, and the building grew indistinct behind us as the fog closed in. By the time we got to the far end and the dreaded white line, all that remained was a yellow-white glow behind us and some muffled sounds of emergency personnel. We pressed up against the chain-link of the perimeter fence and stopped to listen for signs of guards. Or dogs. Moira looked back into the gloom.

  “Suppose the whole place will go up?” she asked quietly.

  “It’s old, but it’s mostly concrete and brick, so maybe not,” I said. “They should have time to get everyone out.”

  We finally heard distant sirens in the fog, which should mean that this would be the best time to make our run for it, before the guard force was relieved by EMS people and could come looking.

  I dropped down to my knees against the fence and tried to lift the bottom. It didn’t move.

  What the fuck! Had they found it and fixed it? Or were we in the wrong pen?

  “What?” Moira asked, seeing me look up. I explained the problem. She swore and immediately began climbing the side fence. She flopped over the top and dropped to the ground, checked the perimeter fence, and hissed a “here” at me. We’d miscounted.

  I went over the side fence to find her already sliding under the pushed-out skirt of the perimeter fence. I dropped to my back, pulled myself under, and got back on my feet.

  “Good thing you don’t have tits,” Moira said with a grin, but then we heard that goddamned trapdoor bang behind us in the fog.

  I don’t know where they kept that dog, but, apparently, it had not been in the basement. We didn’t waste time: We ran straight away from the fence and the lights, hurtling out into the fog as fast as we could go, and hoping like hell we weren’t running in a big circle right back to an unpleasant canine rendezvous.

  We couldn’t see a thing out ahead of us, so after what seemed like the length of an entire football field, we stopped to listen. Moira was breathing really hard and went down on one knee to catch her breath. I tried to orient myself in the fog, but of course there was nothing to navigate by except our own trail through the wet grass. It looked pretty straight, but I knew we could still be way off course. The sirens were louder behind us, but the fog distorted sound direction.

  The big question, besides navigation, was whether or not my rescuers were out there in the woods. There was one way to find out: I let go a short, sharp whistle. Moira made a face as if asking if I were nuts, but then I heard something coming through the grass. An animal something, not human. The new question of the moment: my dogs or theirs?

  “Ready Mace,” I whispered, and put us in a back-to-back stance, each with a Mace canister pointed and ready. The sirens had stopped, and now the fog had completely enveloped the building and the fire. I could feel Moira’s legs trembling against mine.

  We waited.

  A full minute passed, then another.

  Then there was a low, rumbling growl out there in the fog. I felt Moira tense up. I wanted to point the canister in the right direction, but there was no way to tell in that fog. Little beads of cold moisture were forming on my face that had nothing to do with the weather.

  A second growl, seemingly closer, but from a different direction. I tried desperately to think of something we could do, but we were blind. I think it would have been better if we’d also been deaf.

  If it was the rottie, he was circling us. He knew there was human prey out there, but not how many, and, once he left our scent trail, he was operating blind, too. Our scent wouldn’t go anywhere in this fog.

  More sounds of something moving in the grass, but not necessarily closer. The grass crunching quietly, low panting.

  Another minute of aching silence, then a third growl—much closer. I leaned out, pointed my can down low, and fired a burst in that direction. I got a satisfying little whimper out of the fog and the sounds of some frantic pawing in the grass.

  I reached behind me and grabbed Moira’s belt, and then we advanced in the direction I’d fired until I could see a darker shape low on the ground. It saw me at about the same time, and this time the growl was more like a roar. I fired again, and the roar changed to a prolonged yipping. The rottie backed away into the fog, and I did, too, dragging Moira with me to make damned sure we didn’t get separated.

  We’d solved our rottweiler problem, for the moment, anyway, unless we managed to step on him out there in the fog. He shouldn’t be able to smell anything for a week if I’d managed to get any of that spray onto his face.

  But now we were really lost. We no longer had our own tracks away from the facility to guide on.

  Screw it, I thought, and whistled again, this time louder. This time I was rewarded by a familiar woof, and we moved in that general direction. I started calling them, as quietly as I could, and pretty soon first one and then a second fuzzy friend showed up, all excited at being reunited. I told them to quiet down, and then we followed their tracks back through the dewy grass. They hadn’t exactly come in a straight line, but it was better than nothing. Somewhere out there in the fog we heard a muffled, thumping explosion, and then another one. There was a brief orange glow, which quickly faded, and then the sounds of more sirens.

  We literally collided with the trees, and I got a face full of pine needles. We stopped to listen for any signs of pursuit, but there was nothing out there but the fog and the sounds of my shepherds panting. I turned to start swatting through all the low-hanging pine branches when something black came out of the fog from my side and launched itself at my face.

  A branch saved me. The rottie clamped hard but got a mouthful of tree limb instead of my throat, and we both crashed backward ont
o the ground. Moira screamed in surprise as I tried to roll out from under that monster, but then I found myself underneath the dogfight from hell, and all I could do was cover my head with my arms, get as small as possible, and practice some strenuous bladder control. It was loud and messy and scary, with three roaring, snapping, growling, slobbering, heavy dogs going at it over my inert form as I tried hard to find that fabled direct route through the earth to China.

  The shepherds finally won, and I lunged out from under that writhing furball, my ears ringing and my clothes covered in spittle, among other things. Frack had a death grip on the rottweiler’s windpipe from the front, while Frick had a similar grip on one of its hind legs, pulling its stumpy body taut while Frack slowly strangled it. Moira was backed up against a tree with her hands to her wide-eyed face. I sat up in the carpet of pine needles and began wiping myself off.

  “Are you . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” I said, getting up carefully while I checked for holes. “It was mostly noisy. But, as usual, I’m awfully glad they were here.”

  The rottie gave up the ghost in one hard spasm, struggling to the end, and I called my guys off. I felt sorry for the dog, who’d only been doing his assigned duty, much like the Marines.

  Marines. We both heard vehicle noises out there in the fog at the same time. Somewhere in the direction of the facility.

  “There’s no way they can track us,” Moira said. “Not in this fog.”

  I was looking at the rottie’s bloody throat, where there was a leather collar with a small metal object dangling from it.

  “Oh, yes, they can,” I said. I turned to my two shepherds and told them to go find it. Frack gave me his usual blank look, but Frick understood and took off through the trees, with us in hot pursuit. We ran into Tony and Pardee a minute later when we popped out of the trees and met them coming inland from the river bank to see what had happened to the shepherds.