Assignment — Angelina

by Edward S. Aarons

  "I can't tell you."

  "Was it Slago?"

  "Yes."

  "Come on out," he said again. His voice, though soft, held harsh command. She looked blankly at him. There were scratches and dirt stains on her face, and her dark hair was a long, unkempt tangle framing the pallor of her face. "Where are they?" he asked.

  "Down below."

  "In the mine?"

  "Whatever it is," she said.

  "It isn't a mine?"

  "No."

  He didn't like the look in her eyes, the altered expression of her mouth. He helped her out. She was very careful to keep the dress closed at her throat. She shrank from his touch. "Don't, Sam."

  "It's all over. They won't hurt you again."

  "They don't have to. It's all been done. I'm so dirty, dirty..." Her eyes stared into terrors he did not recognize. "You'll have to forget about me, Sam."

  "You're alive, aren't you?' He didn't like her obsession with what had happened. "I was afraid you wouldn't be."

  "I wish I were dead."

  He shook her lightly. Her flesh cringed away from his grip. "How did they go in?"

  'Through there." She pointed at the shack. "I almost got away, you know. There was a man, he said his name was Amberley, or something like that, and they made him tell about it. I tried to help him get away..."

  "He's all right," Durell said. "I found him."

  "I'm glad. And now — you've found me. I was afraid you would."

  He wasn't sure, from the way she looked at him, that she really understood what was happening. He had felt a great relief at finding her. Now he was aware of anger throwing, because of what had been done to her. He didn't know the details, but he could guess. His anger shook him badly and he fought it down, knowing that this was no time to get impulsive.

  "Angelina, you've got to help me, too."

  "Don't touch me, please."

  "Hell, I'm going to kiss you."

  "No!"

  He caught her to him and held her rightly when she tried to squirm away. He couldn't think of any other way to force her back to reality. "There's nothing so wrong that it can't be made right again, Angelina. Do you understand? Do you know what I'm talking about?"

  "You can't imagine what he... what Slago..."

  "You wanted to revenge Pete once. You wanted to kill Slago, didn't you? Then let's go after them." He saw her shudder. "You're not afraid now. Come on."

  He didn't want to leave her; he wasn't sure where everyone in the Corbin group might be, and he couldn't let them get her again. He saw her staring at him with great tears rolling slowly down her bruised face. "Oh, Sam, I've spoiled it all by being such a fool..."

  "That's over with now. Let's go."

  Impatience spurred him. Every moment spent was time irretrievably lost. He couldn't be late again. He walked away from her, hoping she would follow. He was at the door of the shack before he heard her quick steps behind him. He listened for sounds from inside the building, but all he heard was the humming and the pulsing and a dim, muted hissing sound.

  He turned his head and looked at Angelina. She brushed at her eyes and smiled.

  "All right, Sam."

  The door was partly ajar. He kicked it open all the way and went in fast.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was an inner door, and he burst through that, too. He was not prepared for the brilliant light flooding the mine shack beyond. It came from a powerful lamp in the ceiling; there was electricity still in the mine workings, although he had not spotted any power cables. A small atomic generating plant, perhaps — but he had no time to pursue the thought.

  Erich Corbin came away from the opposite wall in a frantic rush.

  Durell took it all in with one glance: the false roof that was really a ventilating grate covering almost the entire top area of the shack; the opposite wall of grated ducts, sucking air inside with a force powerful enough to make him feel the heavy draft of air that blew his hair almost as if he were in a wind tunnel; the twin pressure tanks Corbin had been fiddling with, the nozzles hissing into the grated openings.

  "Hold it," Durell said.

  Corbin's rush could not be stopped. His rimless glasses splintered light from the glaring floodlamps overhead, and his pale eyes looked wild. Durell's hand slid out, caught the waving gun in the chemist's grip, twisted it away and down as it went off with a shattering crash. A stream of German curses came from Corbin as he tried to wrench free. Durell would not let him go.

  "It's all over now. So take it easy."

  "You cannot stop us!"

  Durell chopped at him with a short left that caught Corbin behind the ear. Corbin reeled back, and Durell clipped him with another left, and then a right that made the man's gun fly from his fingers. Corbin fell against his tanks and began to cough and small wads of saturated cotton fell from his nostrils. Durell went past Corbin while the man was still gagging, clawing at his throat and chest where Durell had chopped at him. Durell turned the tank nozzles off with several quick twists and the hissing sounds ended. Turning he saw Angelina in the doorway.

  "Pick up his gun," Durell said.

  She just stood there. "They've killed two soldiers."

  "Soldiers?"

  "They look like soldiers. They're in army uniforms."

  "Where?"

  "Out behind this shack."

  "All right. Pick up Corbin's gun. We have a lot to do. Can you use that Luger?"

  "If I pick it up," she said carefully, "I'll kill him. Don't you know that?"

  Durell scooped up Corbin's Luger and thrust it into her cold hand. "You won't do anything unless I tell you to." He looked at Corbin. The man was still coughing, half strangled from the effect of Durell's blow against his larynx. "All right, Erich, where are your friends?"

  "They are too far — ahead of you."

  "Where?"

  "Down below."

  Durell picked up the nose wads, sniffed at the astringent chemicals that saturated them, and said: "How do we get down there?"

  "We?"

  "You lead the way."

  "But the gas..."

  "I imagine these ducts will sweep it out fast enough."

  He saw by the look on Corbin's face that he had guessed correctly. The man coughed again, and rubbed his throat. "You know what dais place is?" he whispered.

  "I can guess," Durell said grimly.

  "But do you know?"

  "How did you find out about it?"

  "Jessie has ways of learning things." Corbin's voice was steadier, stronger. "You are a stubborn man, Mr. Durell, but there is no advantage to either of us in fighting one another. Jessie told me of your proposition. If you were clever enough to follow us here, you are clever enough to be useful. I am sure something can be arranged."

  "No more deals. Show us the way down." Durell turned his head. "Angelina?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "Shoot him if he doesn't start at the count of five."

  "I'll be glad to." She sounded all right now, in command of herself.

  Corbin looked from Durell to the girl. His thin nose looked pinched and white. He shrugged. "As you wish. Follow me."

  * * *

  He went outside. The colliery and dilapidated mine workings still looked abandoned and ghostly. But as they walked down the rough shale of the slope, Durell saw that most of the effect of abandonment was due to a clever job of camouflage. The buildings leaned as if they were ready to topple before the next mountain storm, but they had been designed to lean that way. The roads that looked disintegrated from a distance were actually hard-packed and firm. As far as the townspeople and any occasional trespassers were concerned, the mine was only a monument to a commercial failure. And Durell doubted that anyone was ever given a chance to determine otherwise.

  Corbin led the way to another building farther down the slope that looked like a power relay station, but the cables had been removed and no outside power was wired to the mine workings. Still the humming and pulsing pe
rsisted, and when Corbin went inside, Durell saw only an expanse of dusty floor with odds and ends of rusted mine machinery heaped about. Two men in civilian clothes lay bound and gagged to one side of the threshold. Their eyes were wide and frightened.

  "Which way now?" he asked Corbin.

  "The elevator."

  Durell saw no sign of an elevator, but Corbin crossed the wide, dusty room, moving through the dim shafts of sunlight that came through the grimed windows, and when he opened a door Durell saw instead the trim, modern interior of an elevator cage. Soft, indirect lighting shone down on the controls.

  "How many men did you have to knock out?" he asked.

  "Over a dozen."

  "And how many below?"

  "I have not been below. But any others are taken care of by the gas."

  "For how long?" Durell asked.

  Corbin shrugged. "I increased the intensity and concentration of the formula." He looked at his watch. "All will be quiet for another half hour."

  Durell waved Angelina into the elevator. Her eyes were wide with wonder and confusion. She started to speak, then bit her lip and slid past him into the gray metal cage. Corbin licked his lips nervously and said: "Look here, we can be reasonable. There is enough for all of us. We are on the point of a great success. We will share with you..."

  Durell hit him, swiftly and expertly. Corbin's legs buckled and he sagged to the dusty floor. Corbin would not trouble them for at least thirty minutes or more. He left the man where he was and went into the elevator with Angelina.

  She was huddled against the back wall of the cage. Durell smiled tautly and considered the controls and punched the single Down button. She whispered a question he did not hear, and then she repeated it. "Sam, where are we?"

  "In a coal mine."

  "It's much more than a mine."

  "Yes." The elevator began to descend with only a soft whining noise from its motors. Durell closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at the girl. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm frightened, I guess."

  "So am 1, a little," he said. "We're going to get a look at the future."

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "We're going to see how Atomic Man will live."

  "I still don't understand you."

  "Maybe I should have said the Underground Man."

  "Sam, please."

  His mouth was bitter. "The outfit I work for is supposed to have access to everything. There isn't one plan for our defense that is supposed to be kept from my boss. But this was. Somebody in Washington has the idea that a secret defense headquarters is too vital to be known to anyone — probably even to the general staff that's supposed to man this place in time of emergency."

  "You're not making any sense."

  "I'm angry, that's all."

  * * *

  The elevator had been descending slowly and steadily deep into the rocky heart of Kittitimi Mountain. It gave no sign of stopping yet. Durell sighed. "The men who are supposed to calculate for and take care of every contingency that might arise in our defense plan thought up this place and had it built. There was never any real resurgence of mining here. It was carried on by the government, from Washington. Probably the workers who rebuilt all this didn't have much of an idea of what they were doing, and those who did were taken care of by top security clearances."

  "But what were they doing?"

  "Building an underground defense headquarters. Or a tomb."

  "A tomb?"

  "For the Atomic Man. The Underground Man. The children who inherit the future. Living like moles, away from the sun and the fresh air. Cowering and hiding in fear of the bombs."

  Angelina was pale. "I think I see..."

  "Jessie Corbin found out about this place. It stands to reason it had to exist. Someone had to think of continuing the government in case Washington was wiped out. So you can call this Washington Underground."

  The elevator halted and the doors opened automatically.

  An army corporal sprawled on the floor just beyond the shaft. Durell sniffed cautiously at the air. The ventilating pumps had scoured the place clean of Corbin's gas in the minute it had taken to descend to this level. It smelled fresh. He waited a moment, not trusting his senses, and not trusting Corbin's words. It could nave been a trap. But nothing happened. He stepped out of the elevator.

  A vast corridor carved out of living rock reached away before them. Indirect tubular lighting made a bluish glow everywhere. Softly lighted signs pointed to an intersecting tunnel about a hundred feet ahead, saying, Reception, Integration, Services, and there were numbers and arrows as in an office building, 1001-1051, and numbers and more arrows on the opposite side. A gray metal desk with a sign saying Stop Here to Register was apparently the fallen army corporal's station. It was equipped with a new typewriter and a teletype machine, together with a dictaphone, a file card rack, and a BAR rifle in a niche in the wall. Durell moved to the card index rack and flipped the heavy metal leaves over. All the cards were blank, waiting to be filled.

  From somewhere up ahead a bell clanged softly and the teletype machine began to clatter. Durell felt Angelina grab at his arm. She was shivering, although the air was warm and comfortable.

  "Where is everybody?"

  "The men stationed here are just a skeleton crew, and they were all knocked out by Corbin's gas. That doesn't stop all these machines from duplicating what's going on in Washington at this minute." He paused. "Don't talk too much. We have to find the others, and our voices may carry."

  Durell's flesh crawled. There was no sound except the muted beat of the power plant far below, which he was sure now was an atomic installation; and now and then there came the muted clang of a signal bell, the rattling of a teletype machine somewhere, and the ever-present hiss and pressure of air being pumped in and out of the ducts. They passed office after office, all silent and empty, all equipped with desks, machines, chairs, maps, filing cabinets. Ghost offices waiting for a ghostly personnel who might never survive to man this place. Durell hoped they would never have occasion to run for it.

  He paused at the first intersection of the main corridor. To the right was the medical department, and he walked a short distance down the tunnel, glancing into empty examination rooms with fully equipped surgical cabinets, a small pale-green surgery, and a long series of wards and private rooms, each of which was equipped to the last possible detail. His feeling of eerie chill persisted when he returned to the intersection with Angelina.

  No one was in sight.

  He looked at his watch. There were only twenty minutes left, if he could believe Erich's remark about the potency of the gas. In that time, Jessie and Fleming would have planned to finish their raid and be out of here and away. He had to find them. There were obviously miles of tunnels, corridors, apartments, offices and barracks in Kittitimi Mine. He had only twenty minutes — nineteen, now.

  * * *

  Angelina had walked off in the opposite direction and turned a corner of the tiled corridor opposite the medical wards. He heard her soft call of surprise and ran after her. She stood before a heavy steel door with yellow lettering painted on it. Restricted Area. OnlyAuthorized Personnel Permitted. Show Your 22 Card.

  One leaf of the heavy door stood ajar. Two men in army uniforms lay sprawled on the floor, victims of Corbin's gas. Angelina was peering beyond when Durell caught up with her.

  "What is it?" he whispered.

  "Look at those names."

  There was a long series of office doors beyond the steel portal. Painted on each was the insignia of various congressional committees. Durell walked past to another door that barred his way.

  The Senate. The House of Representatives.

  He looked briefly into the big chambers beyond, carved out of the solid rock, softly lighted, the chairs ranged in semicircular tiers around duplicate speakers' rostrums. He felt a dryness in the back of his throat. Everything was too empty, too obviously waiting.

  Angelina whispered, "Th
ey thought of everything, down to the last..."

  There came a dull thumping sound, like a muffled explosion. Durell felt the pressure wall, like a puff of warm air, strike the left side of his face. He turned instinctively in that direction. Angelina put her hand on his arm.

  "Sam, what was that?"

  "They're down there somewhere. Back the way we came."

  He ran, his feet light and silent, from the legislative chambers to the main tunnel again. Pausing, he turned left once more, and came to a wide, steel spiral staircase that bored still lower into the bowels of the mountain. The walls here were painted a bright blue. He ran down the steps as fast as he could with silence, leaving Angelina farther and farther behind. On the lower level he paused, breathing quickly and lightly. The gun felt slippery in his hand and he dried his palm on his thigh. There was nothing to see. Ahead was a sign that read Communications. The doors were open. He stepped inside and saw banks of teletypewriters and a large electronic computer. Lights winked solemnly at him from the faces of the machines, and the teletypewriters occasionally belled softly and rattled, with no one to read the messages that rolled out on long strips of yellow paper. Durell paused to look at one of them. It was a routine news dispatch from Los Angeles apparently concerning the production figures of a new jet fighter. It was headed for the attention of ComSecDef. He frowned, wondering if another machine in Washington was repeating the identical message for the information of a congressional committee or a staff officer in the Pentagon. He saw a pattern in the installations that repeated, on each machine, the activity going on at every moment in Washington. Everything that could be duplicated in the essential functions of government had been reproduced in this hollow mountainside. In this labyrinth the government functioned oa automation, kept up to date to the split second, guarded by a select skeleton crew of maintenance men who were ready at any moment to receive the fugitive officials from any wartime catastrophe that could rain paralyzing, annihilating bombs upon the nerve centers of the United States. Everything had been prepared for. The jobs of defense, rehabilitation, and restoration of normal life were waiting here.