Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (29 page)

Rastowich
and his squad had made their way into the basement at about the same time that
the remaining garrison forces did. The Colonel pulled his men back and watched
from the shadows of one of the mechanical rooms while twenty or thirty men,
some wounded, some unarmed, winched the metal doors of the old garage open.
They chased down those horses that would be caught; many were panicked by the
explosions, and some ran pell-mell when the gates opened. The CDF men saw brief
scuffles break out over mounts when the quickest had gone, leaving more men
than horses.

“We
could take them easily, sir,” Ortega growled. Rastowich shook his head.

“Let
them run. Waste of ammunition,” the Colonel said. He wrinkled his lip in
distaste. “Once the cowards clear out, we’ll close that door. I want to check
the lower levels after that.”

Ortega
nodded, turning to scan his men where they crouched in the shadows among a
rusting Gordian knot of pipes and meters. He turned away, then back, squinting.
The Sergeant moved quietly to one of the meters and tapped it with a knuckle.
He grunted when the needle quivered but stayed at the midpoint of its dial. He
returned to the Colonel’s side.

Rastowich
was watching the last of the garrison, a trio of wounded men on foot, leave the
basement.

“Sir,
we should let the engineers know that there might be-”

“Later,
Sergeant, let’s go.”

“Yes,
sir,” Ortega said.

Rastowich
found the access doors to the subbasement chained and padlocked. He fumed
silently while Ortega and another soldier left to scavenge something to open
the doors with. They returned with a five-foot section of heavy steel L-frame.

“Borrowed
it off an old truck in the garage bay, sir,” Ortega reported, while two burly
squaddies worked the bar’s end into a tight loop of chain and began to twist.
The bar slipped and the pair dropped it, one sucking his bleeding knuckles as
the bar belled on the concrete floor.

Ortega
sighed and raised his voice to a gravel-filled growl.

“That
chain is quarter-inch welded steel. The door handles are fifty years old and
held on with three or four potmetal bolts.”

“Oh,”
muttered the one with the bleeding hand. “Right, Sarge, on it.”

The
handles came free under the twisting with sharp snaps as old bolts sheared.
Ortega had the men remove both. Once they were off, he crouched before the
doors, holding a lantern in one hand and a pair of needle nosed pliers in the
other. After a brief spate of hammering and fishing with the pliers, Ortega
stood.

“Doors
should open now, sir,” he said.

Rastowich
approached, laying his hands on the bubbled, peeling paint of the doors and
giving them a shove. They swayed but wouldn’t separate. He stepped back and
kicked out with the sole of his boot, and the doors swung open, thumping loudly
off the walls. The stairwell beyond was dark, but the lamplight allowed the
colonel to read the legend painted on the wall in neatly stenciled letters, now
gnawed at the edges by time:

Larson
Homeland Security Facility - Project Augur, records storage. Authorized
personnel only beyond this point.

“This
is it,” Rastowich said, eyes glinting. “What we did upstairs made this corner
of the west safer, but this. This is where we make the world better.” He
laughed. “Are any of you big readers?”

A
runner arrived with a tiny amber-colored kerosene lantern for light. He carried
a handful of messages from Nakamura at the command post, and a report that the
fires upstairs were dying out. Rastowich thumbed through the stack, scanned the
casualty list, and pocketed the other reports unread.

“We’ve
got three dead and five injured, which is astonishingly good news,” he said,
thinking aloud. “That’s going to leave us four full squads, and we have close
to three dozen prisoners, the last I heard.” He ran a thumb along his moustache
and stared at the messenger. “Get word to Lieutenant Boroughs; tell him that
his squad is to move the prisoners to a secure ground floor room for tonight.
We’ll sort the rest out, tomorrow.”

The
runner saluted and trotted off.

The
colonel led his squad from the stair head, down a double flight, to a musty
hallway crowded with shelving and trash. Mixed in among the boxes of old
Homeland Security dross were books. Rastowich stopped and opened several,
scanning their flyleaves and smiling.

Ten
yards down the corridor it branched left and right. Red steel doors with inset
panes of wire-reinforced glass stood another fifteen yard off in both
directions. Someone had cleared the trash at the foot of the door to the left,
and Rastowich turned and walked to it.

“Give
me that light, Sergeant,” he said. He pressed his face to the narrow slit of
glass in the door, a hand span wide and twenty inches tall. Holding the lantern
above his head, enough light spilled through to illuminate the end of a tall
rack of shelving filled with rank upon rank of books: Books of every size and
shape.

The
Colonel tried the door’s brushed steel knob. It turned, and he pushed with no
effect.

“Hinges
on this side, Sir,” Ortega drawled from behind Rastowich.

Though
Rastowich felt the comedy took the edge off a historic moment, he took a breath
and pulled the door open.

“Gentlemen,
I give you the Library of Congress.”

With
the door open, the lamplight revealed additional rows of shelves fading into
the shadows. Rastowich felt his heart pounding.

Yes!
He
exulted silently. He thought he might cry.
So much is saved, right here.

 The
door had opened soundlessly, but there was a ringing noise as something small
and metallic bounced on the concrete floor. Rastowich looked down. A pair of
wire rings with cotter pins attached lay on the floor at his feet, connected to
the door’s inner handle by fine strands of braided wire.

The
Colonel leaned forward and peered into the room, twisting his head to the left.
Ortega stepped up and looked over his shoulder. A white hundred-pound propane
tank stood there, its top level with his eyes. Someone had stacked several
plastic jugs about its base, each full of a dark liquid. Two dark metal eggs
were wired to the tank.

“Asshole,”
Ortega said.

Creedy
would have been thrilled. He’d simply wanted to kill whoever had forced him to
the unpleasant necessity of moving. He hadn’t known about the slow leakage of
natural gas into the drainage system beneath the subbasement, where it lay,
heavier than air and only slowly sublimating off as fresh leaks kept the catch
basins full. He was unaware, too, of the still pressurized system, linked to
deep tanks buried underground beyond the walls, meant to power the facility in
the case of a devastating terrorist attack. The system, terrorist proof or not,
had died as easily as anything else with its controlling computers fried, but
the pipes, the tanks and the gas were still there.

The
Larson facility swelled, its walls heaving outward on the surface of an orange
fireball. The concrete skin of the building fragmented, pieces the size of
automobiles flying for hundreds of feet. Sections of roof seemed to hover
mystically in the air before shattering.

Captain
Nakamura, who had turned to meet a young soldier escorting a raggedly clad
woman, slammed to the ground. Lying there, mouth agape, he watched a steel beam
two stories tall flip end over end against the glare of the fireball. It
plunged like a spear into the soil and stood, a mute, smoking obelisk, a
hundred yards from the facility. The fireball rolled up into an incandescent
mushroom that towered over everything, faded to red, and was gone. The thunder
of its voice echoed off the hills and dunes, and then it too was gone. Blinded
by the glare, the Captain could only hear the crackle of fire and the screams
of the survivors as a blizzard of burning paper began to rain down. He heard
someone bellowing orders. It took him a minute to recognize his own voice.

“Everyone
who isn’t hurt, get over there and start helping the injured,” he heard himself
shout as he struggled to his feet. “Move it!”

Two
of the Company’s three medics had been inside. The remaining one, a thin young
man in spectacles, looked at the blaze, his satchel hanging from one hand, his
face ashen. The lenses of his glasses were orange with reflected firelight.

“Soldier,
do your job,” Nakamura said. The medic blinked, saluted and trotted off,
skirting the scattering of grassfires that were blooming everywhere. The rest
of the men at the command point followed. Some grabbing blankets, water and linen
rags for bandages, others sprinted off with the few stretchers the company had
been equipped with. Nakamura shuddered and moved to stomp out any small fires
that threatened the tents.

“Captain,”
a female voice said. Nakamura turned to see the strange woman looking at him
intently. Her lip was bleeding and he wondered if she’d bit it when the blast
knocked everyone down. “I need to see the Colonel immediately. Tell him it’s
Ahab.”

Nakamura
opened his mouth, but shut it without speaking. He raised a hand and pointed to
the burning pile of rubble.

The
woman raised a hand to her forehead and her shoulders sagged.

“The
Colonel filled me in. It’s all for nothing, now, isn’t it?” Nakamura asked as
black flakes of ash settled softly around them, worms of fire glowing at their
edges. The woman cursed under her breath.

“Maybe
not,” she said. “Creedy took something out of here yesterday. Old cases. They
may have been from the subbasement.” She shook her head and pulled herself
erect. “It can wait until dawn. What do you need me to do?”

Nakamura
fetched an armload of blankets from the supply tent and gave her half. They
were scratchy green wool and smelt faintly of mothballs.

“Help
me with the wounded. Do I call you Ahab?”

“Call
me Sam.”

“God
fucking damn it,” Hollis snarled, as two men carried the body of one of the
sentries into the firelight and dumped it. A bullet had taken him in the chest,
entering under his right arm and exiting beneath the left, which was missing
from the elbow down.

It
had been three days of mud and endless drizzle since the bridge, and each day
had seen a death among the guards as whoever was tailing them struck and
drifted away. It had been rifle fire each time, precise and from distances that
made it hard to determine where the shooter had been.

“We’re
never going to get north with these wagons,” Hollis said. The lean woman,
Gregor and Creedy sat at their own fire, while the men guarded the trailers,
walked the perimeter and hid their own bedrolls and small fires behind rock
outcrops.

Gregor
sipped at a cup of barley tea and said nothing.

Creedy
glanced at the trailers, then turned to stare at Hollis.

“Those
trailers are full of ten years of work,” he said, his voice bland. “Silver,
gold, guns, ammunition, food, drugs. You think we should just ride off and
leave them?”

Hollis
spit into the fire and locked eyes with Creedy, her face intent. His remained
expressionless.

“It’s
not like we can spend it if we’re dead.” She reached down beside the rock she
sat on, scooped up a handful of clay-rich mud and watched it slide between her
fingers. “Even if it doesn’t start raining again at sunrise, we’re lucky to
make ten miles a day in this slop. The horses are worn out, the wagons are
impossible to move, and whoever is following us is good at what they do.”

Creedy
tilted his head to one side, inquiringly.

“You
have a suggestion, my dear?”

She
nodded. “We take the cases and head south. If they’re what you think they are,
we can sell it to the cartels. They’d want it for bargaining with the army.”

Creedy
pondered this, sipping his own tea and grimacing.

“You
think they’d want it? I wouldn’t know who to contact, though,” he said. “What
few cartel leaders I’ve met, I’ve generally killed.”

Hollis
flicked the mud from her fingers.

“I
have a contact,” she said. “In Chico.”

Creedy
smiled and Gregor stirred where he sat, rolling his shoulders.

“Now
why would one of my trusted captains have a cartel contact in Chico?” he asked.

“Business,”
Hollis said, smiling thinly. “You are a genius at extortion. Esteban is good at
drugs. A girl has to earn some mad money. It’s a tough old world.”

Creedy
laughed.

“You
were always the best.” He tilted his mug back, draining the last of the sour
brew. “Pride will fuck a man if he’s not careful. We’ll take the cases and head
south, but I want to try to bait whoever is after us at Chelan, so they can die
trying to stop us on the bridge there.”

Gregor
grunted and emptied his mug into the fire, watching the steam rise.