The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  Franz motioned at the vegetation he was gripping, and then he rapped on it with his gloved knuckles, making a muted, hollow sound. It was the camouflaged cover for an opening in the coral wall. Slater's helmet ducked out of sight.

  Matt burrowed headfirst into the spot where Slater had disappeared and emerged into the dimness of the inside of a twenty-foot-wide tunnel. The camo ‘plate’ hiding its entrance was simply a hoop with artificial vegetation around its rim. A diver could literally swim through the hoop and into the tunnel unimpeded if he only knew it was there. Slater, being Slater, had already disappeared into the inner darkness of the tunnel. Strickland eased out through the camo cover, spotted his team, and motioned to the entrance. They all speeded up to rendezvous on the spot. Matt ducked back inside and waited.

  Without exception, every one of the divers was startled as he passed through into the tunnel. When the last one entered, Matt signed to them that they were to follow him single-file and spaced out. He dug a Biolume flare from a pocket and shook it vigorously. The bioluminescent photophores inside the acrylic tube burst into a brightly-glowing greenish light. He tucked the tube part-way into the top of his right booty and took the lead, the green glow serving as a waving beacon in the dark to the men behind him.

  Strickland used his legs to power himself, while he trailed one hand along the rock wall of the tunnel to his right as a guide and held his other hand in front of him to avoid colliding with anything in the dark. Two minutes into the tunnel, he stopped and brought his left wrist close to his eyes. He knew that the tunnel was rising slightly because his depth gauge showed they were almost forty feet shallower than when they'd started in. Almost as soon as he resumed swimming he felt the tunnel turning sharply to the left and within a few seconds saw light no more than thirty yards ahead. He grouped his men and they moved on, but more slowly and much more cautiously. Finally, they reached the end of the tunnel where it appeared that they would have to swim into what looked like the bottom of a small swimming pool. Looking up, they could see the ‘surface’. He motioned for the team to wait while he eased out into the ‘pool’ and ascended, using rock outcroppings of the rough, vertical wall to stealthily approach the surface. He waited several seconds but nothing moved above him. He broke the surface so gently that only his face plate came out of the water. Seeing no immediate danger, he motioned with a free hand to the divers waiting below. He knew they'd be watching him intently. Suddenly he was surrounded by heads popping out of the water like a pod of surfacing seals. With one exception. These ‘seals’ made no sounds.

  As he looked around, Strickland realized they were sharing the pool with another ‘creature’. There was a twelve-foot-long minisub rocking gently in the slight disturbance caused by their surfacing.

  Across the pool to his right was a narrow set of crude steps cut into the rock, leading steeply up into the recess of the cave. There was movement on the steps. Suddenly there was a gun in every hand, all trained on the stairs.

  "Easy, guys," Franz said gently, pausing when he reached the landing and stepped out of the shadows to come face to face with five 9mm Berettas.

  "What's up?" Strickland asked his scout.

  "Vertical shaft at the top of the steps. Ladder up the shaft. Maybe 20 feet to the top of the ladder. Don't know what's beyond. Thought I might ought to wait on you."

  Matt nodded. When they'd all climbed out of the water and stripped out of the dive gear on the tiny landing, Matt turned to them.

  "Check your weapons," he said in a barely audible voice. "Be ready for anything. We have no intel on the layout of this place, so we'll have to wing it. The best we can hope for is to surprise 'em. If we can, we'll isolate them and take 'em out one at a time. If worst comes to worst..."

  "We kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out!" Franz finished the thought in a stage whisper. There were rumbles of agreement from the rest of the team. Strickland smiled grimly at the motto they'd somehow picked up along the way. He motioned to Slater to scout ahead and they all followed like vapors, wafting up the dungeon-like steps into the murky dimness of the strange cave, weapons at the ready.

  From the top of the shaft, Slater raised a manhole cover just enough to peer out. Then he eased it back into place and leaned out from his perch on the ladder just enough to look at his leader and nod. Strickland nodded, just once in return. Slater cracked the cover again, peeped out, and slid it aside. A moment later he disappeared in a rush up the ladder.

  The rest of the team followed, each man pausing at the top of the shaft to confirm that it was still safe to continue before emerging to take up a position where he could cover the next man out. The last one eased the carpeted cover back in place and flattened himself against the wall.

  They were in one end of a corridor. It was illuminated by indirect lighting recessed into some kind of clear grid work ceiling. The hallway seemed to dead-end where they had exited the shaft. Deep carpet cleverly obliterated any trace of the outline of the manhole, which explained the dead-end.

  Strickland tapped Franz twice on the back and the scout moved out, crouching. One at a time, and at six foot intervals, they all followed. The lush, black carpet deadened any noise they might have otherwise made. In thirty feet the hallway turned left. Franz quickly ducked one eye around the corner twice. Seeing only more corridor, he slipped around it and continued, crossing over to the right side. When Matt turned the corner, he could see the end of the hall and a closed door thirty or forty feet ahead. But nothing else broke up the smooth surface of the white wall. No doors leading off to other rooms. Nothing. Just a long, L-shaped hallway, devoid of...

  Something didn't feel right.

  "Sss!" He signaled Slater to stop and moved up and crouched down to whisper into his left ear.

  "Does this hallway seem kind of strange to you?"

  Franz turned his head a little to the left and thought about it. "What do you mean?" he asked. He knew enough to respect Strickland's hunches.

  "Just two long hallways. They don't lead to any other rooms. They don't seem to have any real...function, y' know? They're just kind of...stuck out here all by themselves."

  Franz considered it. "They lead to what looks like a secret escape route," he observed.

  Strickland was silent a moment. "Yeah," he finally conceded, "I guess so."

  They both thought about it again. Finally, Slater rose and began to advance. Matt and the others followed closely behind, still uneasy.

  They'd gone no more than a third the length of the corridor when Franz froze. Anytime Franz went ‘on point’, as they called his uncanny behavior that reminded some of them of a bird dog's hunting instincts, so did the rest of them. He was right most of the time.

  Matt barely touched one fingertip to the scout's left shoulder. Slater was slowly turning his head first one way and then another, his eyes distant. Finally, he partially turned his head toward Strickland. "I heard something," he said whispered.

  "What?" Matt whispered in return.

  "I dunno. A click. Very faint."

  "Where?"

  Slater shook his head slightly. He didn't know.

  "Pressure plate under the carpet?" Strickland asked, thinking of explosives hidden in the floor, but hoping it wasn't so.

  "Huh-uh. Not the floor."

  They waited, tensed for instant response to an unknown threat. But nothing happened. Finally, Slater eased up out of his crouch and moved on, weapon at the ready.

  For eight feet. Until Leo, in a blue bolt more brilliant and blinding than a welder's torch, struck him down with the terrifying finality of 30,000 volts of electricity. The massive surge of raw power as it ran through his body reflexively snapped his fingers shut on his Ingram MAC-10 machine pistol and emptied the entire clip of 32 rounds into the corridor in a space of less than two seconds, filling the air with debris and a deafening roar. Fluorescent lights exploded, spraying glass slivers indiscriminately in all directions and bullets that plowed through the dry wall construction that dress
ed the rock walls ricocheted three and four times from side to side in the narrow hallway, creating a white, chalky fog. Instinctively, everybody leaped backwards and flung themselves to the carpet, expecting an assault force of terrorists to come running through the fire and smoke. Wide-eyed and with hearts pounding and breath coming in rapid gasps, they'd simultaneously flung up their automatic weapons and assumed forward-facing prone positions, to present the smallest possible targets.

  But there was no assault. Other than the surviving lights in the hallway that dimmed eerily for several long seconds before cycling back up, the only sounds were their own hyper breathing and the crackling of the small flames that still danced at the edges of the outline etched into the carpet on which the body of the fallen soldier lay. Acrid smoke from the carpet blended with that of the fused and brittle rubber wetsuit that Slater Franz had been wearing. The stench of burned flesh and hair was so pungent in the confined spaces of the corridor that even the most seasoned of them had to fight down the gorge that had risen to their throats.

  Major Matt Strickland leaped to his feet, the men behind him instantly following his lead. Holding up the signal for silence, Matt eased forward, with his right ear almost touching the wall at chest height. One by one, the members of the team uneasily skirted the blackened form sprawled on the carpet, trying not to see themselves in the gruesome remains.

  "Yes!" Fifteen feet down the hallway he heard the click. It was a foot below his ear, but it was there. He stepped back, leveled his automatic pistol at it, and chewed the wall and the motion-sensing switch that was behind it into fragments with a half-second burst of lead.

  "Very sub-tle, boss," someone behind him said. He ignored the jibe. He wasn't in the mood. He realized with a start that he should have someone checking the other wall for sensors as well, so he gestured the assignment to the man behind him.

  Checking as they went, the group made it to the end of the corridor with no further trouble. Strickland looked back to see his men lining both walls, weapons at the ready. He checked around the door seal for telltales, in case the door was booby-trapped, but found nothing. Finally, he leaned slightly against the door in a crouch, put his hand on the door knob and slowly turned it. The instant he felt the door give, he sprang forward with the strength of his legs, slamming the door back against the wall behind it. With his MAC-10 thrust out in front of himself, and sweeping it side-to-side rapidly, he burst into a six-foot hallway and found it empty.

  "Clear!" he called and stepped aside.

  Monk Jeffries rushed past him and threw himself into the blind space at the end of the hallway where it turned left. He held on point and yelled "Clear!"

  Matt rounded the corner and dashed the last ten feet where the corridor seemed to open out into a large, semi-darkened room. He stopped and hugged the wall, his weapon high and ready. Peeping quickly around the corner, he saw no one, nor did he draw fire. With his left hand, he held up two fingers. Almost instantly, two men shot by him, threw themselves into a diving roll on the black, spot-lit carpet, and came up into a crouched stance, facing in opposite directions, and weapons scanning the room. After two seconds, Matt gave the same signal and two more burst into the room, adding their firepower to whatever threat might be there.

  They held their positions, covering the four points of the compass, while Matt quickly circled the perimeter of the room. Finally, he waved the last man into the room and sent him to guard the only other door to the room he'd found at the far end.

  "Nice place," someone murmured.

  "Yeah. I could sleep on this carpet!"

  "Hey, check out the throne room over here!"

  Strickland strode over to the chair up on the raised dais. "This things got more gadgets on it than a space shuttle."

  "He's a tekkie, alright," came from across the room. "Look at this computer bank! Man, he's got it all."

  Matt reached out and touched a button on the chair arm labeled "VIEW ALL" and was astounded when the room lit up with beautiful, blue light from the walls that surrounded the entire room. He jerked his hand back.

  "Whoa, man!" Every man had instinctively thrust his weapon at a wall. A fish languidly swam down the length of one wall and disappeared, only to appear on the next a couple of seconds later.

  Strickland crossed to a wall and brushed his hand lightly along its surface.

  "What're we in, a fishbowl?" a voice asked.

  "No," Matt answered. "A movie theater. I saw this once, in an amusement park. But this is better. This stuff is state-of-the-art."

  At a finger-snap, they all instantly looked in the direction the sound had come from. Monk, guarding the far door, put a finger to his lips and crooked a finger at them. The group flowed to where he stood. He leaned close to Matt.

  "Looks like the door to a bank vault down the other end o' that hall," he said quietly, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "But it's standin' open a couple inches. Maybe somebody didn't have time to close it?"

  Strickland slid around him and peered around the corner. Another dog leg. This guy must not trust anybody. He slid around Jeffries and took a step, only to be roughly stopped by a big hand that spun him around.

  "Let's don't get careless," Monk said in a gently scolding tone of voice, as a father might use on his son. "These walls might have ‘ears’," he reminded his boss.

  Strickland hung his head in mock shame. "Thank you, daddy," he said grimly. But he took up a position on the right wall while Monk took the left.

  They ‘killed’ two more arming switches with bursts from their MACs before they got as far as the door.

  Forming an assault wedge, two men gripped the edges of the heavy door while the others prepared to storm whatever was beyond it.

  Strickland, at the head of the group, showed them all three fingers. Then, one at a time, he lowered them in a countdown. The two ‘doormen’ grunted and rammed the heavy door back against its stops. Matt leaped through the open door and checked up hard against a metal railing on what seemed to be a balcony. When the others piled into him, he had to grab whatever he could lay his hands on to keep from being thrown over the railing and into space.

  "Get back! Get back!!" Jeffries screamed, whirling and charging into the group, driving them back through the doorway.

  Matt saw it at the same time, but being sandwiched against the railing, couldn't move in time. A figure in black, running along a narrow catwalk far across a huge cavern, had whirled and raised one arm in what could have only been an intent to fire some kind of weapon in their direction.

  And fire he did. In a loud R-r-r-r-r-p! that reverberated around the big cave and that had to be a machine pistol, Matt saw the bright muzzle flash and, an instant later, found himself in a hailstorm of flying bullets and razor-sharp stone chips. One second later, Monk Jeffries's big fist snatched him by the back of his shirt, lifted him completely clear of the metal platform and violently flung him backwards through the doorway, followed closely by a second burst of automatic fire, several of which got through the opening they'd just vacated and ventilated the wall beyond them.

  "Am I gonna haf'ta keep savin' yo' butt, or do ya'll think ya'll can get yo' act togetha’?" Monk released him, brushed the rock dust brusquely from his hair and glared at his commanding officer.

  "If you had got your big butt back through that door a little faster, I wouldn't have needed savin’!" he retorted.

  "It's a good thing he was so far away he couldn't group his shots, or we'd all be climbing over both of you by now," a voice chimed in from behind them. They both turned and glared at him.

  "Can't even have a polite conversation any more without someone interrupting us," Strickland said. They both grinned. "Stay put. I'm gonna take another look."

  Matt snapped a couple of quick peeks out the door. The shooter was gone. He eased out onto the metal landing and did a quick recon, stepping back inside.

  "Okay, here's the skinny. That landing outside the door leads to what looks like some kind of elevator.
But it's exposed. Anybody going down it would be a sitting duck. The catwalk the guy who shot at us was using to get away must operate like a moat, ‘cause it looks like it's been pulled back and away from the landing."

  "You figure the shooter's the leader?" someone asked.

  Strickland nodded. "Makes sense," he agreed. "With the security we've seen so far, I'd say that whoever's in charge is afraid to turn his back on his own men. If that's true, then they wouldn't be allowed up here. And so, whoever we flushed out of here by sneaking in his back door was probably the boss. And if that was him that shot at us, we almost nailed him cold, ‘cause he sure didn't have much of a lead, did he?" There were murmurs of frustration at having come so close.

  "So, if we can't go down the elevator, and we can't tap-dance across that catwalk, there ain't but one other way for us to chase the rabbit, is there?" Monk voiced all their thoughts.

  Matt Strickland smiled grimly. "That's right. Hi ho, hi ho, it's through the girders we go."

  They clustered in the doorway and looked up at the network of structural steel that spanned the cavern's ceiling a few feet above their heads.

  "It must be thirty or forty yards across," someone observed quietly.

  "Lots of exposure to ground fire," someone else said.

  "All of the above," Matthew Strickland agreed matter-of-factly. "But, if I 'da thought it was gonna be easy, I 'da stayed at home."

  Something crashed behind them and they all spun around, thinking they'd been flanked. But a couple of seconds later, when the solid stone floor and even the walls began vibrating, they were even more startled. Finally, as the full-blown tremor began to rock them slowly to and fro and heavy jolts began to register through their feet, like mortar rounds landing somewhere close by, every one of them threw his back against a solid wall and went into a crouch, weapon at the ready. When it got worse, there were loud curses and quiet supplications, but there was no choice but wait and ride it out, whatever it was.