Eyes of Darkness (33 page)

“He’s trying to figure out who the devil we are,” Elliot said. “He’s never seen us or the Explorer, and this isn’t the sort of place where there’s a lot of new or unexpected traffic.”

Inside the hut, the guard plucked a telephone handset from the wall.

“Damn!”
Elliot said. “I’ll have to go for him.”

As Elliot started to open his door, Tina saw something that made her grab his arm. “Wait! The phone doesn’t work.”

The guard slammed the receiver down. He got to his feet, took a coat from the back of his chair, slipped into it, zippered up, and came out of the shack. He was carrying a submachine gun.

From elsewhere in the night, Danny opened the gate.

The guard stopped halfway to the Explorer and turned toward the gate when he saw it moving, unable to believe his eyes.

Elliot rammed his foot down hard on the accelerator, and the Explorer shot forward.

The guard swung the submachine gun into firing position as they swept past him.

Tina raised her hands in an involuntary and totally useless attempt to ward off the bullets.

But there were no bullets.

No torn metal. No shattered glass. No blood or pain.

They didn’t even hear gunfire.

The Explorer roared across the straightaway and careened up the slope beyond, through the tendrils of steam that rose from the black pavement.

Still no gunfire.

As they swung into another curve, Elliot wrestled with the wheel, and Tina was acutely aware that a great dark void lay beyond the shoulder of the road. Elliot held the vehicle on the pavement as they rounded the bend, and then they were out of the guard’s line of fire. For two hundred yards ahead, until the road curved once more, nothing threatening was in sight.

The Explorer dropped back to a safer speed.

Elliot said, “Did Danny do all of that?”

“He must have.”

“He jinxed the guard’s phone, opened the gate, and jammed the submachine gun. What
is
this kid of yours?”

As they ascended into the night, snow began to fall hard and fast in sheets of fine, dry flakes.

After a minute of thought Tina said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what he is anymore. I don’t know what’s happened to him, and I don’t understand what he’s become.”

This was an unsettling thought. She began to wonder exactly what sort of little boy they were going to find at the top of the mountain.

35

WITH GLOSSY PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHRISTINA Evans and Elliot Stryker, George Alexander’s men circulated through the hotels in downtown Reno, talking with desk clerks, bellmen, and other employees. At four-thirty they obtained a strong, positive identification from a maid at Harrah’s.

In room 918 the Network operatives discovered a cheap suitcase, dirty clothes, toothbrushes, various toiletry items— and eleven maps in a leatherette case, which Elliot and Tina, in their haste and weariness, evidently had overlooked.

Alexander was informed of the discovery at 5:05. By 5:40 everything that Stryker and the woman had left in the hotel room was brought to Alexander’s office.

When he discovered the nature of the maps, when he realized that one of them was missing, and when he discovered that the missing map was the one Stryker would need in order to find the Project Pandora labs, Alexander felt his face flush with anger and chagrin. “The
nerve!
”

Kurt Hensen was standing in front of Alexander’s desk, picking through the junk that had been brought over from the hotel. “What’s wrong?”

“They’ve gone into the mountains. They’re going to try to get into the laboratory,” Alexander said. “Someone, some damn turncoat on Project Pandora, must have revealed enough about its location for them to find it with just a little help. They went out and bought
maps
, for God’s sake!”

Alexander was enraged by the cool methodicalness that the purchase of the maps seemed to represent. Who were these two people? Why weren’t they hiding in a dark corner somewhere? Why weren’t they scared witless? Christina Evans was only an ordinary woman. An ex-showgirl! Alexander refused to believe that a showgirl could be of more than average intelligence. And although Stryker had done some heavy military service, that had been ages ago. Where were they getting their strength, their nerve, their endurance? It seemed as if they must have some advantage of which Alexander was not aware. That had to be it. They had to have some advantage he didn’t know about. What could it be? What was their edge?

Hensen picked up one of the maps and turned it over in his hands. “I don’t see any reason to get too worked up about it. Even if they locate the main gate, they can’t get any farther than that. There are thousands of acres behind the fence, and the lab is right smack in the middle. They can’t get close to it, let alone inside.”

Alexander suddenly realized what their edge was, what kept them going, and he sat up straight in his chair. “They can get inside easily enough if they have a friend in there.”

“What?”

“That’s it!” Alexander got to his feet. “Not only did someone on Project Pandora tell this Evans woman about her son. That same traitorous bastard is also up there in the labs right this minute, ready to open the gates and doors to them. Some bastard stabbed us in the back. He’s going to help the bitch get her son out of there!”

Alexander dialed the number of the military security office at the Sierra lab. It neither rang nor returned a busy signal; the line hissed emptily. He hung up and tried again, with the same result.

He quickly dialed the lab director’s office. Dr. Tamaguchi. No ringing. No busy signal. Just the same, unsettling hiss.

“Something’s happened up there,” Alexander said as he slammed the handset into the cradle. “The phones are out.”

“Supposed to be a new storm moving in,” Hensen said. “It’s probably already snowing in the mountains. Maybe the lines—”

“Use your head, Kurt. Their lines are underground. And they have a cellular backup. No storm can knock out all communications. Get hold of Jack Morgan and tell him to get the chopper ready. We’ll meet him at the airport as soon as we can get there.”

“He’ll need half an hour anyway,” Hensen said.

“Not a minute more than that.”

“He might not want to go. The weather’s bad up there.”

“I don’t care if it’s hailing iron basketballs,” Alexander said. “We’re going up there in the chopper. There isn’t time to drive, no time at all. I’m sure of that. Something’s gone wrong. Something’s happening at the labs right now.”

Hensen frowned. “But trying to take the chopper in there at night . . . in the middle of the storm . . .”

“Morgan’s the best.”

“It won’t be easy.”

“If Morgan wants to take it easy,” Alexander said, “then he should be flying one of the aerial rides at Disneyland.”

“But it seems suicidal—”

“And if
you
want it easy,” Alexander said, “you shouldn’t have come to work for me. This isn’t the Ladies’ Aid Society, Kurt.”

Hensen’s face colored. “I’ll call Morgan,” he said.

“Yes. You do that.”

36

WINDSHIELD WIPERS BEATING AWAY THE SNOW, chain-wrapped tires clanking on the heated roadbed, the Explorer crested a final hill. They came over the rise onto a plateau, an enormous shelf carved in the side of the mountain.

Elliot pumped the brakes, brought the vehicle to a full stop, and unhappily surveyed the territory ahead.

The plateau was basically the work of nature, but man’s hand was in evidence. This broad shelf in the mountainside couldn’t have been as large or as regularly shaped in its natural state as it was now: three hundred yards wide, two hundred yards deep, almost a perfect rectangle. The ground had been rolled as flat as an airfield and then paved. Not a single tree or any other sizable object remained, nothing behind which a man could hide. Tall lampposts were arrayed across this featureless plain, casting dim, reddish light that was severely directed downward to attract as little attention as possible from aircraft that strayed out of the usual flight patterns and from anyone backpacking elsewhere in these remote mountains. Yet the weak illumination that the lamps provided was apparently sufficient for the security cameras to obtain clear images of the entire plateau, because cameras were attached to every lamppost, and not an inch of the area escaped their unblinking attention.

“The security people must be watching us on video monitors right now,” Elliot said glumly.

“Unless Danny screwed up their cameras,” Tina said. “And if he can jam a submachine gun, why couldn’t he interfere with a closed-circuit television transmission?”

“You’re probably right.”

Two hundred yards away, at the far side of the concrete field, stood a one-story windowless building, approximately a hundred feet long, with a steeply pitched slate roof.

“That must be where they’re holding him,” Elliot said.

“I expected an enormous structure, a gigantic complex.”

“It most likely
is
enormous. You’re seeing just the front wall. The place is built into the next step of the mountain. God knows how far they cut back into the rock. And it probably goes down several stories too.”

“All the way to Hell.”

“Could be.”

He took his foot off the brake and drove forward, through sheeting snow stained red by the strange light.

Jeeps, Land Rovers, and other four-wheel drive vehicles— eight in all—were lined up in front of the low building, side-by-side in the falling snow.

“Doesn’t look like there’s a lot of people inside,” Tina said. “I thought there’d be a large staff.”

“Oh, there is. I’m sure you’re right about that too,” Elliot said. “The government wouldn’t go to all the trouble of hiding this joint out here just to house a handful of researchers or whatever. Most of them probably live in the installation for weeks or months at a time. They wouldn’t want a lot of daily traffic coming in and out of here on a forest road that’s supposed to be used only by state wildlife officers. That would draw too much attention. Maybe a few of the top people come and go regularly by helicopter. But if this is a military operation, then most of the staff is probably assigned here under the same conditions submariners have to live with. They’re allowed to go into Reno for shore leave between cruises, but for long stretches of time, they’re confined to this ‘ship.’ ”

He parked beside a Jeep, switched off the headlights, and cut the engine.

The plateau was ethereally silent.

No one yet had come out of the building to challenge them, which most likely meant that Danny had jinxed the video security system.

The fact that they had gotten this far unhurt didn’t make Elliot feel any better about what lay ahead of them. How long could Danny continue to pave the way? The boy appeared to have some incredible powers, but he wasn’t God. Sooner or later he’d overlook something. He’d make a mistake. Just one mistake. And they would be dead.

“Well,” Tina said, unsuccessfully trying to conceal her own anxiety, “we didn’t need the snowshoes after all.”

“But we might find a use for that coil of rope,” Elliot said. He twisted around, leaned over the back of the seat, and quickly fetched the rope from the pile of outdoor gear in the cargo hold. “We’re sure to encounter at least a couple of security men, no matter how clever Danny is. We have to be ready to kill them or put them out of action some other way.”

“If we have a choice,” Tina said, “I’d rather use rope than bullets.”

“My sentiments exactly.” He picked up the pistol. “Let’s see if we can get inside.”

They stepped out of the Explorer.

The wind was an animal presence, growling softly. It had teeth, and it nipped their exposed faces. On its breath were sprays of snow like icy spittle.

The only feature in the hundred-foot-long, one-story, windowless concrete facade was a wide steel door. The imposing door offered neither a keyhole nor a keypad. There was no slot in which to put a lock-deactivating ID card. Apparently the door could be opened only from within, after those seeking entrance had been scrutinized by the camera that hung over the portal.

As Elliot and Tina gazed up into the camera lens, the heavy steel barrier rolled aside.

Was it Danny who opened it? Elliot wondered. Or a grinning guard waiting to make an easy arrest?

A steel-walled chamber lay beyond the door. It was the size of a large elevator cab, brightly lighted and uninhabited.

Tina and Elliot crossed the threshold. The outer door slid shut behind them—
whoosh
—making an airtight seal.

A camera and two-way video communications monitor were mounted in the left-hand wall of the vestibule. The screen was filled with crazily wiggling lines, as if it was out of order.

Beside the monitor was a lighted glass plate against which the visitor was supposed to place his right hand, palm-down, within the existing outline of a hand. Evidently the installation’s computer scanned the prints of visitors to verify their right to enter.

Elliot and Tina did not put their hands on the plate, but the inner door of the vestibule opened with another puff of compressed air. They went into the next room.

Two uniformed men were anxiously fiddling with the control consoles beneath a series of twenty wall-mounted video displays. All of the screens were filled with wiggling lines.

The youngest of the guards heard the door opening, and he turned, shocked.

Elliot pointed the gun at him. “Don’t move.”

But the young guard was the heroic type. He was wearing a sidearm—a monstrous revolver—and he was fast with it. He drew, aimed from the hip, and squeezed the trigger.

Fortunately Danny came through like a prince. The revolver refused to fire.

Elliot didn’t want to shoot anyone. “Your guns are useless,” he said. He was sweating in his Gore-Tex suit, praying that Danny wouldn’t let him down. “Let’s make this as easy as we can.”