Blind Eye (32 page)

Waste Isolation Pilot Plan

C
hain-link fence with rolls of barbed wire on top. A security post and a gate. Dozens of buildings were spread out over a few acres. Spotlights illuminated every corner, making the facility shine like the moon in a dark sky.

Parked behind a low rise next to the other FBI vehicles that had set up surveillance on the facility, Mark Shaw was feeling a bit overwhelmed. He had no idea where to even start looking for Marion. He checked his phone to see if there'd been any other messages from her. None.

He looked down at the drawings that they'd received from TMC Corp. They'd gone through it with a fine-tooth comb, and there wasn't a single area where they could pinpoint any research lab.

Mark decided he had to get past the security gates. Once inside, he hoped that Harvey and Botello would have more specific information for him from the DOE.

He got out of the car and joined the other agents who were waiting in the darkness. He already knew everyone here was expecting to have a search warrant in hand by
eight o'clock tomorrow morning. To Mark, though, that was a lifetime away.
Killers on site
.

“There's only one person working security in the booth by the gate,” one of the agents told him. “We've received permission to tap into the phone lines. We can create a distraction…”

Mark reached for the phone vibrating at his belt. It was Harvey.

“We just had a sketch faxed to us from DOE,” the agent said.

“What have you got?” Mark asked, moving away from the others.

“There's another facility. It's a nuclear lab. Underground. It butts up against the WIPP facility, but DOE's documents show the facility was shut down back in the nineties.”

“Where is it? How do I get in there?” Mark asked.

“If you come back here, we're putting a team together now. Technically, it's still a government facility. We don't need a search warrant.”

“How do I get there from here?” Mark asked, impatient.

“You won't find any street signs out there. Get behind the wheel and I'll have one of my men here direct you to it via GPS.”

Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

M
arion had the first four test containers working, though each was at a different stage of the procedure. She couldn't get another one started, though, until the first came out of the oven.

She glanced at her watch. Two hours, forty minutes.

Sweat beaded on her brow. Her skin was crawling, and a feeling of pins and needles had spread across her shoulders and back. Lack of food, drink and sleep meant nothing. Fear was driving her. Her gaze kept darting uncontrollably to the door.

By now the attackers had to have realized something had happened to their partner.

This was her first chance to take a step away from the samples. She removed the gloves and went to the computer to read the e-mail she received.

Her heart kicked. She stared at the e-mail in disbelief. It was from Mark's cell phone number.

 

I'm in Roswell, NM. I know where WIPP is. But where are you exactly?

She didn't know how complicated it was to get through the Test Drift to reach where she was. She had to tell him that there was another elevator shaft. A different entrance.

But what about the killers? He'd run right into them.

Before she could type anything, there was the sound of another e-mail. This one was from Mark, too.

 

I found where the lab is. I'm coming.

 

Marion wanted to jump up and down in joy. This wasn't a figment of her imagination. He was really coming.

Her fingers started flying on the keyboard. There are at least two armed people at the top. Here to kill me. Everyone else dead. One killer below badly injured. She looked at the watch. Only two hours nine minutes left till disaster.

The lights on the door lock keypad lit up. They were here.

She pressed the send button.

Nuclear Fusion Test Facility
Ground Level

“T
he building looks deserted,” Mark said into the phone. The headlights from his car shone on the two-story building. He was parked in an opening in the fence where, at some point, the entrance to the facility must have been.

“Are you sure?” the agent on the phone asked him. “The drawings in front of me pinpoint the entrance of the lab as right where you're sitting.”

There was a click on his phone. “Wait a minute. I'm getting a call or a message. I have to check this. I'll call you back.”

Mark ended the call. He had a text message. It was from the same e-mail address Marion had contacted him from before. He read the text.

“She's here,” he murmured, immediately turning off the headlights of the car. He called the agent back.

“We have the right place.” Mark told him exactly what the message read. “I don't know what two hours and nine minutes means, but it doesn't sound good. I'm going in.”

“Wait for backup. It should be less than ten minutes before the first team reaches you.”

“I can't wait.”

Mark ended the call and got out of the car. Drawing the FBI standard-issue Glock 9mm from its holster, he started running toward the building.

He didn't know what the chances were that they hadn't seen his headlights. There was nothing he could do about that now.

What was left of the driveway circled around the structure to the back. Trying to stay low, he followed the path until he reached the back corner of the building. Peering around the corner, he saw the SUV parked by the line of garage doors. Mark looked around. The only way to get into the building seemed to be through one of those garage doors. The building looked like a fortress.

He decided he had to find a way to draw them out. His options were limited. He ran toward the car. There was no one inside and the doors were locked. He saw the red blinking light on the dash.

“Thank God for security,” he whispered under his breath.

He slammed the driver's window with the butt of the pistol and backed quickly away as the SUV's lights started flashing and the alarms started blaring.

Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

T
hey were either having trouble with the door code or they were worried that she might be armed.

Torn between continuing with the cementation process or standing by the door with her ax in hand, Marion finally laid the ax down on the table she'd moved in front of the door. She had to keep going.

The first container was now through the cycle. Marion had to keep moving all the rest through the steps and start the process on the fifth one.

She put the protective gloves back on and went to work. Her gaze never wavered too far from the door, though. They were out there, but they were hesitating. She'd moved a heavy cabinet and a table in front of the door, but she knew that wouldn't hold them for long—if at all.

She had the first in the series out of the oven when there was a loud bang against the door. She put the sample down and ran toward the door as the second bang moved everything an inch. The door was unlocked.

Marion looked around her for anything she could use as a weapon—anything that she could use to slow
them down. She'd have a hard time swinging that ax more than once.

The torch caught her eye. The portable rig was there for welding containers in certain test setups. She'd learned to use it in a lab two summers ago, but she never thought she'd be using it for this. She discarded the gloves, turned on the gas at the tank, and unrolled the torch's rubber hoses. Quickly, she moved with the torch and striker to the side of the door.

Marion jumped at the next smash to the door. This time everything moved a couple of inches. She spotted the man's hand slip through the crack. He was trying to wedge his arm in for leverage.

She fired up the torch and leaned over the table.

He screamed in pain, yanking his arm and hands out.

Marion slammed her body up against the table and shoved the door shut.

The sound of the machine gun outside startled her, but the door only vibrated with the shower of bullets. Nothing came through.

“Steel and lead layers, you bastards,” she murmured.

She didn't know how long she could keep them out. She could only slow them down. At least she was giving them reason to pause.

She glanced down at the watch again.

One hour and thirty-five minutes left.

She couldn't wait. Marion put the gloves on and went back to her emergency assembly line.

Nuclear Fusion Test Facility
Ground Level

A
s the garage door opened, Mark pressed himself flat against the building.

Taking the butt of Mark's revolver to the back of the head, the man inside crumpled against the vehicle and slid to the ground.

Mark swept the pistol around, peering into the open bay of the building. The place looked empty. Keeping one eye on the open door, Mark patted down the unconscious man. He found a well-used HK pistol inside the man's jacket and put it in his own empty shoulder holster. That was the only weapon the man was carrying. No wallet or ID, but he took the keys to the SUV and tossed them away into the darkness.

Leaving him on the ground, Mark moved inside the building.

The garage doors opened onto what looked to be a large shipping area. Other than stacks of folded cardboard boxes in a Dumpster against one wall, there was nothing else there. Straight ahead, he saw an elevator set in a cinder-block island in the center of the building. A
lit, glassed-in office was next to it and a set of stairs went up one side of the structure.

Moving across the open space, he could see the stairs led to a door on a small landing a flight up. The elevator machinery, Mark decided. A steel ladder continued to a door to the roof. Access to the crane.

Mark ran quickly to the empty glass office and slipped in. To his right, there was a line of computers and screens. The area was set up as a surveillance office. There were images on the screen. He moved closer. One view showed what looked like the feet of a corpse. His gaze swept grimly across the other screens. Dead bodies, scattered in a number of rooms, were visible on a few. Several screens were not functioning. Movement in one of them caught his attention. Two men were using a rolling table to try to shove open a door. They were both armed.

“Marion,” he whispered. That was where she had to be.

He ran to the elevator doors. On the way here, the agent had told him that the lab was more than two thousand feet below the surface.

His finger hovered over the elevator button. If he pressed it, he might alert the two armed intruders. They or another member of their group could be waiting for him at the bottom.

He forced open the elevator door. A gaping hole greeted him. He looked at the cables disappearing into the darkness below.

Leaning into the shaft, he looked up. Above him, half the space was open to the crane on the roof. He could see the hook in the dim light. The other half of the space was taken up by the platform holding the huge elevator wheel and the electric motor that turned it. The
cables, looped around the wheel, would begin to move as soon as the elevator started its ascent. If he was on the way down and someone started coming up, he was in trouble.

On the side of the shaft, a ladder ran down into the darkness. It would take him too long to climb down that ladder.

Mark made up his mind.

Going back into the surveillance room, he looked at the screen where he'd seen the men. One of them was crouched in the corner, holding his hand and arm. The other was staring at the door, gripping an Uzi.

In the corner of the room, a box of old maintenance tools sat, half-hidden under a greasy tarp. Yanking the tarp away, Mark found a pair of gloves. Digging deeper, he found something he could use. Pulling the chain wrench from the box, he slipped his pistol into his belt, donned the gloves and went back to the open elevator door.

It was going to be a long way to the bottom, but this was his best chance.

Wrapping the chain wrench around the elevator cable, Mark ratcheted it until it was nearly tight. It would need to work like a brake. He just hoped it was strong enough to hold his weight.

Holding the handle of the wrench in one hand, he grabbed the cable with the other and swung out into the open space. His legs wrapped around the cable and he began to slide.

By the time he had descended what he thought must be halfway, the muscles in his arms and back were screaming. The chain wrench helped Mark control his downward speed to some extent, but the friction on his other gloved hand and on his legs still burned right through the protective covering.

But Marion was at the bottom, he told himself.

Close to the bottom, his grip on the cable grew weaker and he felt himself starting to slip faster. Leaning more heavily on the handle of the wrench, he realized he was not more than twenty feet away from his destination and coming down too fast. Ten feet above the roof of the elevator, Mark put all his weight on the handle. The chain snapped. Clutching desperately for the cable, he tried to slow himself, but he couldn't. The pulley apparatus was just beneath him when he let go, and he hit the roof hard.

Even as the loud bang of his landing reverberated in the shaft, Mark shook off his gloves and drew his pistol from his belt. He stayed on one knee on top of the elevator for a long moment, flexing his hands and listening for any sound in the elevator or outside the shaft. Nothing.

It took him only a moment to find the emergency access door on the top of the elevator. Pulling it open, he ducked his head through the opening. Seeing no one, he quickly dropped down into the elevator and moved through the open doors into the research lab.

The putrid smell of the body in the open area hit him like a slab of bad meat. In front of a hallway leading into the facility, the body of a man in gray overalls lay facedown in a pool of blood. Moving to him, Mark started to check for a pulse, but stopped. The bullet wound in the man's temple told him all he needed to know.

Mark looked around him, deciding which direction he should go.

And then, the sound of gunfire sent him quickly down the hallway in front of him.