The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen (40 page)

The people inside the building turned on their headlamps.

“Five,” she began. “Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One—”

The overhead lights cut off.

“Outgoing and incoming radio signals are jammed,” Cyclone said beside her. “Once we're down the shaft, I'll take care of the unit-to-unit comm inside the base.”

A moment later Tempest's voice came through Solstice's headset. “It's done.” But since the interior of the building was already dark, it wasn't exactly a noteworthy announcement.

“Good,” Solstice told him. “Come back inside and let's get ready to go down.”

With the electricity out, the maintenance building was now illuminated only by the streaks of light shining from her team's headlamps.

Solstice aimed hers at the sedan.

Their means of getting into the base.

I stepped into Natasha and Lien-hua's room while Tessa waited for me in mine. Lien-hua was there, Natasha was gone.

“I had no idea that Jake was going to do that,” Lien-hua said apologetically, “to follow you. When he left he just told us he needed to check on something.”

“Honestly, I don't really blame him. If I was in his place, I probably would've done the same thing. I'm just glad Alexei's behind bars, but I hope it didn't harm our chances of finding Kayla.”

For a moment neither of us spoke; it seemed to be a way of honoring Kayla's plight. Then I told Lien-hua about Torres and the SWAT guys, we exchanged cell phones so that we each had our own once again, and I returned her Glock to her. “What else do we know?” I asked.

She ticked off the items one by one on her fingers. “Natasha's with Linnaman at the morgue. Jake's in his room making some calls. I didn't see anything unusual out there by the ELF site.” She sighed. “Doesn't surprise me, though. If there is anything there, it's not going to be sitting out in the open.”

“True,” I acknowledged, “but we needed to have a look.”

“It's possible that the ELF connection is just a red herring.”

Yes, it was possible, but the farther we moved into this case, the less likely that seemed. “I'd like to visit the area myself in the morning.”

A nod. “Listen, some state troopers found two families of stranded tourists out on the highway. They brought 'em here to the motel.”

“I saw them in the lobby. No rooms available.”

“Right. So here's what I'm thinking. Tessa's things are all back at your brother's house; everyone's been cooped up here all day. Amber's been acting a little, I don't know . . . something's on her mind. I told her I wasn't upset about last night, that I really wasn't, but she seems rattled being here. I was anticipating that you'd want to go out to the ELF site tomorrow and . . . well, from here it's a haul but—”

“From Sean's house it's a lot closer.”

“Yes. You and I could head out first thing in the morning. I talked to Sean, and he has cross-country skis we could borrow—if that would work with your ankle. Maybe if we taped it really well?”

Last night I'd downplayed to her how badly my ankle was bothering me. Honestly, I couldn't even imagine cross-country skiing on it, but I buried that thought for the moment. Lien-hua was right about one thing: the location of the Moonbeam really was working against us. It hadn't been a bad choice when we were investigating the Pickron residence and the site of the snowmobile's disappearance on Tomahawk Lake, but now the focus of the investigation was shifting toward the ELF site and the area surrounding Elk Ridge and the Schoenberg Inn.

If Natasha and Jake stayed at the Moonbeam while Lien-hua and I went to Sean's place, it would give us a strategic, two-pronged approach for searching the region both for the Eco-Tech people that Alexei had told me about and for Kayla Tatum and Donnie Pickron, who, as far as we knew, might both still be alive somewhere.

“That might not be a bad idea,” I said. “We should all be able to cram inside the cruiser.”

“Amber's car is here too.”

“Okay.”

Lien-hua went to tell the desk clerk that two rooms had just become available—mine and Amber's—and I went to touch base with Jake and then grab my things.

Solstice peered into the sedan. She envisioned something from a Get Smart or a James Bond movie, with a seat that would flip backward and then shoot the driver through a chute that led to a secret high-tech military base.

It wasn't quite like that.

Not quite.

“All right,” Solstice said to Donnie. “You're on.”

“I don't have my keycard,” he said. “I've been telling you that—”

“There's an override. Right before the retinal scan.” She told him the access code she'd gotten from Chekov, that he'd gotten from Rear Admiral Colberg. “Type it in.”

“How did you . . . ?”

“We have your wife and daughter,” she said irritably, “and we will not hesitate to kill them if we need to. Now get us into the base.”

Still in handcuffs, Donnie climbed into the driver's seat and flipped down the windshield sun shade. A key dropped into his lap, and, though the car was on cement blocks, he slipped it into the ignition. When he turned the key, rather than the engine starting, the radio flipped around in the console, revealing a numbered keypad. He typed in the code, and the car's trunk clicked open.

Solstice studied the concrete. “Where is it?”

Donnie pointed to one of the uniform rectangles formed by the cracks near the front of the car.

“We go in two groups,” she called. “Eclipse, Tempest, Cyclone, you're with me. Squall too. Tempest, bring Donnie over when he's done.”

The crack that outlined the rectangle was nearly a centimeter wide. Solstice had been a little worried about the width, but it looked big enough to allow the web router's relay line to pass through. She was prepared to deal with things either way, but it would make everything a lot simpler, of course, if her team could remain online the whole time while they were in the base. She tested her weight on the section of concrete. It felt as solid and ungiving as the rest of the floor.

While she waited for the people she'd just called to gather, Donnie, guarded by Tempest, went to the car's trunk, rooted around beneath the carpet until he came out with another key, then returned to the driver's seat. When he inserted this one into the ignition, a small light came on in the lower corner of the dashboard, and he stared into it while a small laser scanner swept across his retinas.

Cyclone connected the comm line to one of the legs of the workbench, then unreeled it and brought the remaining coil of wire to the concrete slab beside the car.

When the retinal scan was down, Solstice heard the deep grinding sound of giant gears crunching against each other.

Slowly, the slab began to lower.

The initial incursion team packed in around her on the platform.

Tempest grabbed the keys and manhandled Donnie onto the platform, which was beginning its methodical, controlled descent through the maintenance building's floor.

As the slab lowered, rough cement walls appeared on each side of them, with one wall showing the reticulated steel track that supported whatever beam or cantilever rested beneath their concrete platform.

When Solstice tipped her light down the narrow slit between the edge of the slab and the shaft walls, she saw only uninterrupted darkness stretching into the earth.

The communication relay line trailed above them, snaking up through the opening. Squall, the slim man who'd counted the money that Chekov had brought to the meeting yesterday, watched it nervously. “Let's hope it doesn't get cut when the opening closes.”

“It won't get cut,” Cyclone assured him.

Solstice wasn't quite so sure.

After they'd descended about fifteen feet, she shone her light up and saw another concrete puncheon, identical in size to the one on which they stood, and supported on long, sturdy hydraulic arms, unfold from the side of the shaft and rise to cover the opening. The comm relay line was pressed to the side, but threaded comfortably through the crack between the second concrete barrier and the rest of the maintenance building's floor.

It appeared to be fine.

Cyclone checked her equipment. “Good to go.”

“All right,” Solstice said. “There'll be at least one Master-at-Arms waiting for us in the entry bay.” She spoke rapidly, restating what she'd briefed them about earlier in the day. “The others should be down on the command level. But be ready. There's a small arms locker in the crew quarters, and it's possible the warfare information officers will be armed as well. And don't forget about the MA who's off-duty.”

As they descended, Eclipse and Tempest readied their AR-15s. Everyone else pulled out Tasers or sidearms. Solstice unholstered her FN Five-SeveN single-action autoloading pistol—fifty-meter range, twenty-round magazine firing a 5.7x28 mm cartridge. A nice little package.

“Remember, I want them alive, if at all possible.”

Cyclone recalibrated the portable tactical radio frequency jammer so that whoever they might encounter on the top level of the base would not be able to communicate with the other sentries throughout the facility.

They were now about fifty feet down, just over halfway.

A few moments later, a sliver of light emerged in the narrow space between one side of the slab and the wall. Solstice already knew that the other three walls would remain closed off, just like in a real elevator.

The thin strip of light grew brighter as they neared the bottom of the shaft.

“Donnie, you don't say a word,” she warned. “We'll do the talking.”

As they finally edged past the end of the shaft, light spread around them, and the cavernous room on the top level of the base came into view.

Solstice called out, “Set down your weapons, we have Lieutenant Commander Pickron!”

“Run!” Donnie yelled suddenly. “Get the—”

Solstice swung her sidearm violently at him, a harsh pistol-whip to the side of the head. He dropped to the concrete like a spent cartridge.

A sole Master-at-Arms stood twenty feet away with his sidearm drawn, a look of shock on his face. “Put down your weapons!” he yelled unconvincingly.

The slab settled onto the ground.

Whatever the MA might have been expecting, it was undoubtably not a team of people holding his friend at gunpoint. And it was almost certainly not having two assault rifles with laser sights aimed at his chest.

He looked at Donnie. “Commander.” His voice cracked. “You all right?”

“He's fine,” Solstice answered.

The MA turned his gaze to the semiautomatic in Tempest's hands. “Let him go,” he managed to say, but his voice was faltering, uncertain. Solstice wondered how someone this easily rattled had ever gotten this assignment.

“Set down your weapon,” she told him firmly. Donnie had pushed himself to his knees, and now she pressed the barrel of her FN Five-SeveN to his forehead. “Or I'll make you watch him die. I'll give you five seconds.”

Donnie squeezed his eyes shut. Trembled in fear.

While Solstice waited for the MA to comply, she took in the cavernous room.

It was an octagonal Spartan chamber twelve feet high, sixty feet across. Lit by fluorescent lights and supported by a dozen thick concrete columns, the space reminded her of the lower level of a parking garage. The eight tunnels containing the electromagnetic transmission nodes merged with the entry bay, fingering out in all directions, one from each wall. Thick cables snaked down each of the tunnels.

Solstice noted narrow gauge railroad tracks in two of the tunnels, and based on the orientation to the elevator shaft, she calculated that the one on the left would be her escape route. In addition to the tunnels, a stairwell to her right led to the second level of the base. A nearby utility closet housed the hydraulic lines and machinery override for the concrete freight elevator and power supply relay station for the transmission nodes.

Bypassing a countdown and not really wanting to let on that she was bluffing about killing Donnie right now, she nodded toward the MA and told Tempest, “Take him.”

The former Marine slipped his AR-15 around his back on its shoulder sling and moved unflinchingly toward the MA. “Set down your weapon and you won't get hurt.”

The man wore a radio on his belt, but it had an attachment with the speaker mic clipped to the front of his shirt collar beside his chin. As Tempest approached him, the guy went for his radio. Tempest kicked the gun from his hand, then spun and smashed his face with the heel of his other foot. The MA went down hard. Only then did Tempest tase him.

He let it go on for a while.

At last he cuffed the dazed man.

“Why didn't you tase him first?” Squall asked.

“What's the fun in that?”

Solstice was really beginning to like this guy and realized she should have used him against Chekov rather than that useless thug Clifton White.