Live Bait

by David Archer

  Everybody said goodbyes to those who were staying behind, then went to get their bags. Darcy walked along with Denny and even followed him to the bus, chatting with him for a final few moments.

  “Well,” she said, “I hope I get to see you again sometime. Maybe, if you want, you could give me a call?”

  Denny’s eyes lit up and he snatched out his phone. “I’d certainly like that, love,” he said, and then grinned as Darcy took his phone and put her number into his contact list.

  “I know you probably don’t get to D.C. very often,” she said, “but call me anytime, whenever you can. At least give me a call when you get back, let me know you got home safely, okay?”

  Still grinning, Denny promised that he would. Darcy handed his phone back and let her fingers linger on his for a moment before she turned and walked back inside.

  Darren, of course, couldn’t let the opportunity to tease his friend go by. “Well, would you look at that?” he asked. “Did you see that, Sam? I think Denny might have actually met a girl he really likes.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Summer said. “Denny won’t ever settle down, that would be too much like growing up.”

  “Yeah, really,” Jade said. “If Denny ever finds the right girl and gets married, I want to run a background check on her. You know, just to be sure she didn’t brainwash him or something. Denny’s the kind of guy who plans to play the field until he’s far too old to find his way to it.”

  Sam didn’t say anything, but Indie noticed an amused expression on his face. She leaned close to him and whispered, “What?” Sam glanced at her but didn’t say anything. He let one eyelid droop in a wink, which she took to mean that he would tell her later.

  The bus started moving and they were on the way to the airport. When they arrived, Roger drove right up to the charter flight gate so that their luggage could be loaded onto the plane, and a couple of luggage handlers hurried over to help. Five minutes later, they were all inside the big Gulfstream and getting comfortable as the pilot started up its engines.

  Within another fifteen minutes, they were in the air and the big jet was banking toward the west. All twenty of them settled back in their seats and quite a few managed to drift to sleep. The flight would be short, taking only about an hour and a half, but Sam envied them the ability to shut themselves off so easily.

  Because the flight was so short, the flight attendant barely had time to offer soft drinks. There was no meal served, but Indie did manage to talk her out of a bag of pretzels. The plane touched down at just before three thirty and taxied directly to the charter gate. Sam was the first off the plane, with Indie right behind him. A man in an army uniform stood beside the gate and waved at them, and Sam walked toward him.

  “You must be Mr. Prichard,” the man said, and Sam nodded in response. “Mr. Prichard, I’m Sgt. Douglas. I have transportation for you and your people out to Deep Impact.”

  “Deep Impact?” Sam asked. “I was told we were going to the Baldwin Ranch.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s correct. Deep Impact is the military code name for the place, and we had it long before the movie. My apologies if I confused you.”

  “No problem,” Sam said. He looked around, but didn’t see a bus. “You said you brought transportation? There are twenty of us.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s no problem. I have two vans, so there should be plenty of seating and luggage space.” He turned and waved a finger in the air, and three soldiers materialized from a shady spot beside the hangar. “Double time, hut, hut,” the sergeant said. “Get the luggage, use that cart over there.”

  The soldiers were quick about it, loading all of the luggage onto the cart and then pushing it to where two vans sat waiting outside the fence. In a matter of moments, they had it all loaded and were standing beside the open side doors. Rob and his men got into one of the vans, leaving the other one for Sam and his team. Sam let Denny take the shotgun seat while he sat in the next seat with Indie.

  “It just hit me,” Denny said. “We didn’t bring the bloody newshounds.”

  “No,” Sam said. “Somehow, I don’t think this is the kind of case we want documented on video. I’m going to leave it up to Uncle Sam whether anybody holds a press conference about this, but I have my doubts it will ever happen.”

  “I’d be willing to bet you’re right,” Reese said. “This isn’t the sort of thing the government would ever admit to.”

  “They might,” Walter said suddenly, sitting behind Sam. “Stopping a terrorist organization could be worth letting a few secrets out. They might talk about it.”

  Sam glanced around at him and shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, “but I’m not going to make that decision for them.”

  Summer, who was sitting with Walter and Steve, leaned forward. “So, Sam,” she said, “we’re supposed to be taking these people hostage, right? I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to look, right?”

  Sam nodded his head. “Yes, we’re supposed to be invading the place and then locking everybody up so that we can bring Heinrich and company down to see the bombs. Why? What have you got in mind?”

  She grinned, looking at Sgt. Douglas. “He looks suspicious to me,” she said. “Don’t you think you need to have me interrogate him rather thoroughly?”

  Sam smiled while Indie burst out laughing. “I think you will have to save your interrogation for another time,” he said. “Besides, he’s probably security. We don’t need him distracted when everything starts.”

  Summer frowned, but then she shrugged. “Okay, it was just a thought.”

  Sgt. Douglas climbed behind the wheel and started up the van, and then the two of them pulled out together. “It’s about an hour and a half’s drive out to Deep Impact,” Douglas said. “There’s a cooler with soft drinks behind the seats, if anybody’s thirsty. The chow hall down below is excellent, and you can join us for dinner. Only about two thirds of the actual tech people are being evacuated for this operation, but you should know that a few of them had to be ordered to go. They all volunteered to stay and try to be helpful.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Sam said. “We’ve got some of the finest soldiers in the world.”

  The van followed Interstate 10 for a while, then Douglas took an exit onto a smaller highway. Fifteen minutes later, he turned onto a gravel road that gradually became dirt. The desert landscape was barren except for various types of cactus, but they did spot a couple of large snakes basking in the sun.

  “Is that a bloody rattlesnake?” Denny asked at one point.

  “Very likely, sir,” Douglas said. “They seem to be everywhere out here. We all learned to watch where we step when we come outside. Scorpions, too, you have to watch out for them. And then, of course, you have the tarantulas.”

  “Tarantulas?” Jade squeaked from the rear seat. “You mean those giant spiders? Do they get down in the tunnels?”

  “You see them every once in a while,” Douglas said, “but the thing to remember is that they’re pretty much harmless. As long as you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.”

  Jade shivered, and Reese, who was sitting beside her, leaned close. “I know what you mean,” he said. “I can’t stand spiders either.”

  The ride was interesting, as Douglas pointed out the dry washes that could become raging rivers in a matter of minutes, in the phenomenon known as a flash flood. The area was surrounded by mountains, and when rain fell on the mountains and began running downward, it would collect into rivulets that would fill those washes.

  “You hear a sound sort of like a train off in the distance, and then you look up and see a wall of water and logs coming at you down the wash. By the time you see it, it may be too late to get out of its way. There have been people in cars that couldn’t move fast enough to escape the rushing water, so walking along the wash on foot is a pretty bad idea.”

  “You sound like you’ve been here a while,” Denny said. “Are you from this area?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Douglas
said. “I grew up in a little town in New Jersey. I’ve been stationed at Deep Impact for about three years now, though, and I’m the sort that likes to get out and explore.”

  The van entered an area that looked like a ghost town, with old buildings standing on either side of the road. The thought crossed Sam’s mind that it would make a great set for a western movie, and he voiced the thought.

  “It has been,” Douglas said. “They filmed about a half a dozen movies here back in the seventies. That little town was called Rockville, and the buildings you see are still standing from when it was built more than a hundred and fifty years ago. They had tours there for a while, but after the army bought the ranch back in the eighties, it sort of got forgotten.”

  “So that ghost town is actually on the ranch?” Sam asked. “I didn’t realize we had already entered the property.”

  “Oh, yes,” Douglas said. “The Baldwin Ranch covers about fifty thousand acres, more than eighty square miles. We came onto it about twenty-five minutes back. Deep Impact is about another thirty minutes up this road. It started out back in the 1860s as a gold mine, but the vein petered out about ten years later. There were a few other mines scattered around the area, but this was the only one that ever really produced any quantity.” He looked at Sam in the rearview mirror and grinned. “I was told that they actually discovered a whole new vein while they were building the Deep Underground Military Base, and pulled out almost a ton of gold. You can still find occasional tiny nuggets down there, just peeking out the edge of the wall. Most of us have a few little nuggets tucked away somewhere. I’ve got almost half an ounce altogether.”

  They rounded a bend a moment later and then the van began to slow. There was an old fence ahead, just wooden posts with some heavy barbed wire, and a wooden gate was closed. Inside the fence, Sam and the rest could see cattle wandering about, grazing on the sparse vegetation.

  “You raise your own beef?” Denny asked.

  Douglas grinned. “Darn right,” he said. “This really is a working ranch. The cattle are partly for camouflage, but some of them do end up in the freezers down below.”

  There was a shack near the gate, and a man dressed like a western cowboy, all the way down to the six-guns on his hips, stepped out of it as Douglas stopped at the gate. He sauntered lazily toward the van, but Denny and Sam exchanged a glance. Both of them could feel the crosshairs of other weapons aimed at them.

  “Help ya?” the cowboy asked, leaning on the gate.

  Douglas had rolled down his window and leaned out. “Only if your wife is better looking than you,” he said. He turned to Denny, and said so Sam could hear, “That’s actually Corporal Larsen, one of the guards. He and five others watch this entrance to the secure area, all dressed like that.”

  The cowboy grinned and swung the gate open, then walked over to the open driver’s window. He glanced at Denny, Sam and the rest, his eyes lingering on Indie, Summer and Jade for a second longer than necessary, then came back to Douglas. “You remember, Sarge?”

  “Of course,” Douglas said. He reached into his pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes that he passed over. “Had to get the long ones, they were out of the shorts.”

  Larsen took the pack and grinned. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said. “Okay, go on through. Nobody else coming out today, right?”

  Douglas shook his head. “Nope, this is it. We’re on lockdown until this is over. You guys know what you’re supposed to do?”

  “Yeah,” Larsen said. “We’re all buggin’ out to the line shack on the ridge as soon as you’re gone. Holler if you need us; otherwise, we get to relax for a couple days.”

  “Why would we need you?” Douglas asked with a grin. “You can’t even shoot that thing.” He took his foot off the brake before Larsen could answer and drove through the gate. The other van followed, and Douglas said, “The captain told them to make themselves scarce once you guys arrived. They’ll be watching from up on the ridge to let us know when your guests arrive, but they won’t engage unless they’re ordered to.”

  “Good idea,” Sam said. “We want Heinrich to think we’ve eliminated all security, so there shouldn’t be any sign of it when he gets here.”

  The vans came to a halt about fifteen minutes later and Sam saw the entrance to the mine standing open, right next to a large building that looked like a garage. Half a dozen more soldiers came out of the building as they parked and quickly removed all the luggage from the backs of the vans. When everyone was out and on the ground, Sgt. Douglas led the way into the mine itself.

  The virtual tour that Darcy had given them earlier didn’t prepare them for the nearly claustrophobic sensation of moving through the old, hand hewn tunnels. The main tunnel was about eighteen feet wide, with the ceiling roughly nine feet above the floor. It took about five minutes to walk through the tunnels to the false door that concealed the elevator, and Sgt. Douglas took a small radio out of his pocket when they arrived there.

  “Deep Impact,” he said, “this is Pigeon. We’re ready for the ride.”

  What looked like a solid rock wall in front of them suddenly slid back into itself and then moved aside. Douglas stepped forward and raised a grate that was on the front of the elevator, and everyone stepped aboard. As soon as he lowered the grate, the rock wall slid back into place and he keyed the radio again. “Pigeon and party, ready to go.”

  The elevator suddenly began to descend rather quickly, and just about everyone leaned against its walls. The stone shaft was visible toward the front, and they watched it slide rapidly upward. The elevator descended almost eight hundred feet before coming to a stop on Level 1.

  The grate opened and Douglas invited them all to follow him. They were taken directly to the main office for the base and introduced to Captain Howell, its commander.

  “Captain,” Sam said, “it’s an honor to meet you. I’m Sam Prichard.”

  “Mr. Prichard, the honor is mine,” said Captain Howell. “I had the pleasure of reading your file today, and I want to personally thank you for your work at Lake Mead. That contaminated water would’ve come directly to us if you hadn’t stopped that terrorist from achieving his goal.”

  Sam tried to brush it aside, but Captain Howell insisted on telling the other soldiers present how Sam had once stopped a terrorist from dropping a suitcase nuke into Lake Mead, getting himself shot and barely surviving in the process. While the bomb might have done some damage to the Hoover Dam, it would have contaminated the water supply for most of the southwestern United States. Millions of people would have been affected, and most of them would have had to migrate eastward, without jobs or income. The country would have been economically devastated, and might not have even survived.

  “Okay, okay, that was the past,” Sam said. “What we have to worry about is the present, and the immediate future. Tomorrow morning, a terrorist organization is going to show up here, hoping to lay claim to the most dangerous nuclear bombs that ever existed. This is a high risk operation to trap them, but their ambitions are so terrible that we have to do what it takes to put a stop to them now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Howell said. “Our technical people will be leaving in the next hour, after they have a chance to brief your folks on how to be convincing while impersonating them. There are five technicians, so we need five of your people to pull this off.”

  Howell’s cell phone rang suddenly, and he held up a finger to tell Sam to wait. He answered the phone, listened for a minute and then gave a short reply, and put it away.

  He turned to Sergeant Douglas. “That was Lieutenant Forney,” he said. “All gates are now standing open.”

  “Yes, sir,” Douglas replied. “I spoke with Corporal Larsen on the way in, and they were ready to move.”

  Sam was looking at Howell curiously when the captain turned back to him. “Cell phones work down here?” he asked.

  “We have a relay, connected to the nearest cell tower by a wireless setup on the surface. I'll show it to
you when we get to the control room.”

  The next few minutes saw each of Sam’s team assigned to a different technician for briefing. Walter was assigned to Corporal Mayweather, who was the base records officer. It took Mayweather about five minutes to show Walter how to enter notes into the computer, and then he simply got out of the way.

  Steve Beck was to pose as a scientist, and he worked with a man called Doctor Lincoln to learn how to operate an electronic microscope. A series of unimportant items were already set out, things that Steve could appear to be examining when Heinrich and the others arrived.

  Jade Miller would be the computer repair technician; Summer Raines was assigned to facility maintenance.

  That left Indie, and she was appropriately assigned to be the computer system operator in the control booth. Lieutenant Jacoby, the actual CSO, was prepared to show her how the computer worked, but realized instantly that Indie was fully aware of what she was doing. The computer was probably bigger than anything Indie ever used before, but it was still a computer. Within minutes, she could find her way into any part of it that she needed.

  “And that,” Captain Howell said, “is the cell phone relay.” He pointed to a large box with several lights on it beside the computer where Indie was sitting. “We keep it on most of the time so that emergency calls can come through, that sort of thing.”

  When everything was in place, the actual tour of the facility began. Sergeant Douglas walked them through all of Level 1,which housed the offices and surprisingly large medical facilities for the base, and then they took the elevator down to level 2. There they found maintenance shops for all of the equipment and the base PX, which looked like the interior of a normal convenience store. Since the chow hall was also on Level 2, they stopped there to have dinner along the way.

  Sam was surprised to see that it was set up like a smorgasbord, rather than a normal military mess facility. There were various entrées, and many different side dishes. He and Indie both went for roast beef and found it delicious.