Opposing Force: Book 01 - The God Particle (21 page)

Yet this made their mission more time consuming. They had to search for stairs to take them to sub-6, then either a stairwell or an elevator shaft to go to sub-7, and again to get down to sub-8.

Franco, Galati, Wells, and Moss moved into the hall at angles, almost like a game of leapfrog, with the rearmost team member moving forward while covered by the others. Then the next, then the next—each sweeping his zone of fire, looking for targets and covering the others in the process.

"Clear," came Franco’s voice over the headset. He was only a few yards away but the static was intense.

"Let’s go." Gant moved the others ahead, with Campion still guarding the rear.

Franco and Wells stood at a junction of halls. This made for a good stopping point, not only due to the convergence of passages but because of what they saw ahead: emergency lights mounted high along the wall, shining so brightly it seemed their bulbs were brand new.

Those lights shined in sharp beams creating alternating patches of very bright light and complete darkness. A couple of overturned equipment carts cast long shadows, and doors—some knocked off their hinges, others closed tightly—lined the hall.

Gant did not welcome the extra illumination. He did not like the sharp shadows it created. If it were darker, they could use their night vision or flashlights. If all the interior lights worked, then, well, things would be easy. This was a halfway compromise that seemed to favor all the negatives.

Or, of course, it might just be his nature to be a pessimist.

"Keep moving, Sergeant. We have a long way to go."

"Door right," Franco ordered, and Moss stuck his weapon and its attached tactical light into a storage area, finding buckets, mops, and rusting containers of ancient cleaning supplies.

"Door left," Franco ordered again, and Jupiter Wells used the barrel of his SCAR-H to push open a partly shut door. He found a file room where it appeared someone had once—long, long ago—used old paperwork to start a fire.

"Thom," Twiste said, kneeling and shining his flashlight directly on the concrete floor, revealing a pair of spent ammunition cartridges. "Looks like 5.56 to me."

Ahead of them, Franco continued to use the men to check each side door, every shadow. They found a military boot, lots of papers, pens, clipboards, and several toppled computer terminals. Exactly the type of leftovers one would expect in an evacuated laboratory.

No signs of any threats, but nonetheless Gant let Franco and his team work several paces ahead, knowing that he needed to keep Twiste and the gear he and Campion carried well out of harm's way. If something leapt from a shadow, Franco's group would be on their own.

They are expendable.

After two more minutes of moving forward, the scout team stopped again and Franco signaled for consultation.

Pearson and Campion remained with Twiste a ways behind the vanguard while Gant moved forward to survey the situation. He found Moss and Wells standing to either side of the hall with their weapons trained ahead where a solitary emergency light cast a glow over stacks of desks, chairs, and file cabinets thrown into a messy pile.

Gant squinted and realized this was not a mess but, rather, a hastily constructed barricade. Someone had taken refuge behind that spot and—

The floor, ahead of them and around them, was stained crimson. Old and faded, covered in dust, dried and decaying—but recognizable nonetheless. He moved his flashlight into the shadows unreached by the small spotlight and saw more gore, including an ancient patch splattered among the pipes and wires running along the ceiling.

Meanwhile, Franco and Galati eyed an open stairwell that led in the only direction the designers of Red Rock had allowed: down, one floor at a time.

Gant turned around and glanced back in the direction they had come, seeing a long corridor of light and dark. Particles of dust kicked up by the newcomers' boots floated in the air. He knew the duplicate vault room and vestibule were not too far back there, yet it felt as if they had marched a mile.

He turned back around, sighed, and looked to the stairs. It seemed darker down there, but somehow he knew they would find enough working lights to find their way, although he did not take comfort in that fact.

"Sir?" Franco waited for orders.

"No reason to wait, Sergeant, move us down."
 

Liz stood on the wrong side of her desk, having ceded the position of authority to General Borman, who was making it quite clear that her appointment as facility commander at Red Rock meant very little anymore, if it ever had at all. Nonetheless, she refused to back down.

"How are you even going to know if they’re successful?"

"Not your problem, Colonel. You have one job—"

"Yes, yes," she said, waving her hand and dismissing his words. "To keep that door closed. Well, you opened it, General. Maybe I should have stopped you."

"Stopped me? I own this place and I own you!"

"Do you own the mess that happened down there, too? Is that what this is all about? This is all about cleaning up a mess you made, isn’t it? All about covering your ass!"

Borman stepped around the desk and at her so fast that she instinctively retreated a step. Before she knew what was happening, his sidearm was aimed at her forehead.

Liz stood perfectly still. Time slowed and she became incredibly aware of her surroundings, as if her senses had quadrupled in acuity. She heard the tick of the wall clock, the flow of air through the ventilation ducts, the beating of her heart.

General Borman pulled the slide on his semi-automatic pistol. A bullet chambered with what was, in reality, a short and sharp
click
, but to her ears it sounded like a boom of thunder.

She noticed a soft gleam on his skin and realized he perspired; a sheath of moisture covered his cheeks and gave his skin a plastic-like appearance, as if Harold Borman were more mannequin than man. Except for the eyes, of course. His eyes were wide and white and full of something that was most likely fury but might also pass for desperation.

He spoke through clenched teeth, and as he did, Liz Thunder realized that at that very moment he would not hesitate to murder her. General Borman might very well pull that trigger, because he so clearly believed that—yes—he owned Red Rock and everything within.

Or does Red Rock own him?

"Listen … very … carefully. When I’m here, I rule. I am the undisputed dictator of this world. I decide who lives and who dies and no one—
no one
—ever asks me why or how. I put you in this office to babysit. Nothing else. Stay out of my business or I will bury you."

He pushed the automatic into her forehead, leaving a mark on her skin. She closed her eyes to retain at least some outward image of calm, but everything inside went haywire. Confusion. Fear. Anger.

Over the years she had faced a fair number of loaded firearms, from patrolling sentries offering challenge to unbalanced patients desperate for a way out—escape—from nightmares of her conjuring.

This felt different. She could not talk him down, she could not reason with him. Her survival depended on his insanity blowing over, if that was even possible. So Liz Thunder stayed quiet and as motionless as her shivering body allowed.

His breath huffed out in adrenaline-filled snorts, like a bull facing a torero.

Then the pressure was gone. She heard his gun return to its holster and then the click of his shoes. When she finally opened her eyes, General Borman had disappeared.

Still, she remained frozen in place for four … five … ten seconds until the wretch in her gut forced her to seek the wastebasket.

As she struggled to keep the contents of her stomach down, she also struggled with the idea of walking right off base and getting as far away from the Red Rock Mountain Research Facility as possible.

She had already felt that her life was in danger from whatever lurked in the sublevels below, and now she knew that General Borman could put a bullet in her head as easily as ordering lunch from the canteen. When faced with bodily threats, retreat—running—made perfect sense. In this case, she might be able to find someone at the Pentagon willing to listen. They might even send an investigator … who would get here in two to three weeks and who would need to cut through General Borman's long and illustrious history dealing with threats most of the military brass simply did not understand.

Sure, that will work.

Or she could do exactly what she had done last time: just do her job as defined by her superiors and let others worry about the fallout.

Who are you kidding, Liz? That was as much an act of abandonment as walking away.

She pulled herself together and leaned against the desk. Both choices—staying and following orders to the letter or running off for help—meant leaving Thom to his fate.

That gave her pause, and she wondered what secrets they might already have discovered deep below her feet beyond the steel-reinforced concrete, the EMP shielding, the sealed vents, and the welded door. She wondered if they were still alive.

Liz sensed a hint of weight in her pocket; the weight of a cigarette pack. How nice it would be to sit here and enjoy a smoke. Yes, that might just put her mind at ease.

Her fingers slipped into her pocket, touched the half-pack of Virginia Slims … and stopped.

No.

Liz's eyes darted around the office to find something to focus on other than a craving from the past. She saw a pile of file folders on a side table; personnel folders, one for each of the soldiers she had come here to confuse and stump to see if they were focused enough to handle the pressure. She wondered how well she would do in such a test.

One file sat by itself to the side of the rest. She vaguely remembered Sanchez leaving it for her last night, but she had not given it much thought. It was not, after all, like all the rest. Instead of boiling the personality of a man into numbers and words, this folder contained information regarding the Archangel mission into the quarantine zone. Nothing of real interest, just the type of paperwork required of the bureaucracy to ensure the proper documentation of all actions inside Red Rock.

Inside the file she found an inventory of the team's items. It seemed Borman had treated this mission like a NASA moon shot; noting—ad nauseam—every item, including the clothes on the back of each man. She even saw a listing for the Twinkies Sal Galati had stuffed in his kit. Borman must have had base security interview each man, perhaps even search them, prior to their load-out session before entering the vault.

She scanned the columns and sentences and numbers page by page. The weapons list included the standard stuff: rifles, pistols, knives, plenty of ammunition, ballistic armor, fragmentation grenades, one old-style flamethrower, and more.

An idea came to mind. She paged past the information on rations and first aid equipment and personal effects to Captain Twiste’s gear. She found the listing for the variable accelerator antimatter delivery device, or V.A.A.D. for short. There was only a brief description of the thing's size and shape, noting the separate battery packs needed for operation. Under the general column requiring an item's particular function were the words "bombard target area with antiparticles."

That was it. The most important piece of equipment on the mission received no more description or account than Sergeant Franco's boots or Specialist Pearson's gold chain.

Frustrated, she slapped the folder on her desktop and huffed. She knew the Tall Company's representative on-site—that Vsalov guy—probably knew everything about the V.A.A.D., but she also knew he would tell her nothing. That was par for the course; no one at The Tall Company ever provided much help.

Now that's not exactly true, is it?

She did know one person over there who might be willing to talk.
 

Sergeant Franco navigated down the stairs by the tactical light attached to his USAS-12. Scattered emergency lights—a few dim red ones marking exits and even fewer bright spotlights mounted in corners—also helped provide just enough illumination that he and the others could put aside their night vision equipment.

As much as he appreciated them, Franco understood that working lights deep inside an underground bunker that had been quarantined for twenty years suggested more bad news than good.

Of course I'm the guy out in front,
that angry part of his mind pointed out.
I don't see the major's pet sticking his neck out or any of the “brothers” from the team. No, leave the crap stuff for Franco. Think they'll
have my back when the shit hits the fan? Yeah, right.

Regardless of how he perceived things, the sergeant was accompanied by Wells, Galati, and Moss as part of the lead element. The others—Campion, Twiste, Gant, as well as Pearson with his flame unit—waited behind at the top of the stairs on sublevel 5.

Franco brushed aside his thoughts and raised a fist in the air. The scout team crouched in the stairwell. They had arrived at the next sublevel. Another hallway loomed. A variety of light sources—-spotlights and emergency lights—created a confusing pattern of dark and bright ahead. Franco waited for his eyes to adjust.

He pressed against one wall and descended the last two steps, then quickly peeked around the corner, darting his head out and then back. In that short glimpse he captured a snapshot of the hall to the right: doors along the corridor, debris here and there, and a smashed light panel hanging from the ceiling by its electrical cords.