Site Kilo-29
Military Area - Living Quarters
Winter, 1993
Day Two-Evening
Kincaid and Donaldson sat at the little kitchenette table facing me. We'd swept the living areas and found nothing out of place and the rest of the group had moved in. The Major had taken a spot in Officer Country like the 3 Suits, even though I'd tried to tell him he'd be better off nearer the rest of us. Kincaid had finished sketching what we'd explored on a couple of pieces of paper, Donaldson had written down his observations, and I'd added mine. While they'd moved their stuff into the lockers and made their beds I'd heated up an MRE.
It pretty much added up to the fact we didn't know jack or shit.
"You're sure this site would have some kind of purpose beyond survival, Sergeant?" Kincaid asked. I was a little blurred from having taken another dose of all the medications they'd given me, and was back to chewing on my boosters. My head was silent, and the three of us had been alone in the room for a couple hours.
I couldn't even smell the corn beef hash and brown gravy that Heather had cooked before she vanished.
"The more advanced sites do." I told him. I'd made a decision, and it was time to bring them inside.
I set my hands on the table, spreading my fingers. "OK, troops, listen up. It's crunch time and I need to know where you stand." Both of their expressions shifted, becoming more intent. "What are your clearances?"
"I've got a Confidential." Donaldson said.
"Secret." Kincaid added.
"OK, what we're looking at in here is beyond Top Secret." I waved at the room. "It requires special side clearances, periodic re-evaluation, mental health tests every few months, and all kinds of fun stuff." I looked at both of them silently for a long moment.
"If you want in, you leave the Army you've been serving in and enter the one I'm in, and you might be stuck there for the rest of your career." I told them.
"What's the difference?" Kincaid asked. Donaldson was chewing on his lower lip.
"You won't be an operator unless you later go through the schooling, but you might get tasked by SOCOM to run with them. At those times you might be referred to as 'the package' or 'support element' and the whole thing hinges on you, but you're still not an operator no matter how many runs you do. You're expected to keep yourself in a high state of physical fitness. If you have a unit, it'll be one that you see maybe 2 months out of the year." I grinned. "Most of all, nobody will believe jack shit that you've done, you won't get very many medals, and you might be called upon to kill whoever gets in your way."
"What's the weirdest thing you've seen?" Kincaid asked.
"Aside from someone fucking a Bigfoot?" I asked. Both of them looked at me like I was nuts and I grinned at them. "How about c-beams glittering off the Tannhauser Gate?"
Kincaid suddenly laughed. "Got it, Sergeant."
"If I vouch for you, you'll be re-investigated and they'll be climbing us your ass to see what you had for breakfast. Your relatives will be interviewed by FBI agents, you'll be under surveillance at odd times, and you'll be tasked for the stupidest and weirdest shit." I told them. "The biggest thing to remember, is that everything you know is wrong."
Both nodded. Kincaid looked like someone at Christmas. I locked eyes with him.
"In your Army, outside of combat, the penalty for failure is fairly light." I took off my glasses and flipped up my eyepatch. "In the Army I'm in, the penalty for failure is a little different." I put the eyepatch back and put the glasses back on.
"What went wrong and damaged your eye and the side of your face?" Donaldson asked. I stared at him for a minute until he laughed. "Got it. Questions aren't answered."
"Unless you were there." I told them. "So, you in?"
Both nodded.
"OK, as far as this site is concerned, I've got some ugly suspicions." I admitted.
"Like what?" Donaldson asked. Him and Kincaid copied me in pulling out the little green notebook.
"First of all, this place seems to have extra storage facilities. Then, we're missing about twenty people, maybe thirty." Kincaid held up his hand and wrote something down real quick on his notebook and then slid it to me.
"Is this right?" He asked.
Written on his notebook was "Camera behind you just went live and shifted" and I nodded.
"That's about right." I said. "Let's go check out command and control again."
They both nodded, and we put away our notebooks and grabbed our weapons before heading out. I'd moved a lot of the equipment from the Gypsy Wagon to the room. It was all field expendable as far as I was concerned. The only thing I'd bother grabbing if given a chance was my battered large infantry ruck.
Donaldson and Kincaid grabbed their new equipment that I'd given them a crash course in. The radiation detectors and the chemical detectors that were the easiest the use.
Instead of going straight to Operations we went to the NCOIC area first, checking the security room. It was empty. From there we jogged down to the Command Officer section and went into the Security OIC room.
It was empty, dust still undisturbed on the keyboard and on the joystick in the security monitor room.
We jogged to Operations. When we went into the egg, I caught the wiff of rotted meat, but no hint that anyone had been in there.
"What the fuck?" I asked, prowling around the monitor stations.
"Someone was using the cameras, and not from any of the stations we've found." Kincaid said. Donaldson nodded.
Upstairs had maps of the United States and Western Europe , obviously a tactical operations center. I took a quick look around and went down to the bottom and checked again. It looked undisturbed.
"You said there was parts we haven't found yet, Sergeant." Kincaid said. "Maybe a different level?"
I thought for a second. He was probably right, whoever was watching us hadn't been doing it from any of the places we'd found.
"OK, our biggest problem so far is the only maps we have are the ones we made." I told them. They nodded.
"Someone stripped them out. Maybe to deny them to someone else?" Donaldson suggested.
"That's what I've been thinking." I said, lighting a cigarette and looking around at the egg.
"OK, so what are they?" Kincaid asked.
"I don't know what they are now, but they were people." Donaldson said.
"The things that keep attacking are part of the group that is missing. I'd say no more than a dozen or so." I told them, turning away from the egg and heading out. "Thing is, remember that room full of rotting meat?"
"Ew, yeah." Kincaid said.
"They either took it from the civilian freezers, or from somewhere else." I said. "The freezers in this section are empty and the inventory sheets show they were never filled."
"Could they have brought them from outside?" Donaldson asked.
"Then that shows we've got another problem." I told them. "Guess."
"There's an access point open." Donaldson said. He sounded less than pleased. I agreed with the sentiment.
"Which means the main storage freezers for this section are on another level." Kincaid offered. I nodded.
"OK, let's search for an elevator or stairwell." I told them. "Kincaid, you map it as we go, I don't want to get lost in here." Kincaid nodded and pulled the small yellow spiral notebook out of his cargo pocket.
"I thought we were going to avoid elevators." Donaldson said as we left the egg.
"You're about to find out a secret." I told them. "It's in some of the high security sites, and should be here."
We moved through the cold and empty hallways. Most of the lights either gave out in a shower of sparks or didn't come on at all, meaning that a lot times the hallway was completely dark except for our flashlights.
"Wait." I said, holding up my hand. "I wanna check this, I've never seen this before."
The door next to us had "EVENT RECOVERY SECTION" on it. It had a keypad and a lever as well as a card reader. Unlike the heavy steel doors of the section, this one was an obvious blast door, not just a normal door made thicker and heavier.
I punched in my number and waited a second.
"ACCESS DENIED" flashed.
My code should have worked facility wide.
"Fuck it, I'll figure it out later." I told them. It took about an hour after that for us to find an elevator.
There were 4 of them, marked C1A through C1D, spaced about twenty feet apart. In between the second and third was a steel panel with a black and yellow border around it. I knocked on the panel and was rewarded with just dull thumps that made my knuckles ache. I ended up searching the whole bank until I found what I was looking for. A little rubber grommet covering a plug that was fairly familiar.
I dropped the rucksack off my back and dug out a Claymore clacker, pulled back on the ruck, and fitted the clacker to the plug. I waved them over next to me and waited till they were slightly behind me.
"Fire in the hole." I told them, then squeezed it three times in rapid succession.
There was a sharp crack and the plate shuddered for a moment before slowly and stately fell against the far wall. Smoke eddied out and the smell of cordite was mixed with rotting meat.
"Jesus, the stairwell was hidden?" Kincaid coughed.
"Yeah." I coughed, waving my hand. I could smell scorched asbestos and wrinkled my nose while I walked over to the now gaping opening. There was a metal grate landing, with stairs going down. I pulled out my loop of 550 cord, tied it off on a steel outcropping that didn't look rusted and the bolts looked good, then turned my attention to looking down while I looped the 550 cord through the D-ring and got ready.
Circular metal stairs looped into the darkness, vanishing below me. There were lime smears on the walls of the shaft, a rusted winch sat across from me with a greased steel cable on it.
The whole shaft stunk of rotted meat.
"Stay here." I told them. "The stairs are rusted, and some of the bolt heads don't look too stable." I checked my gear real quick, patting the rifle I'd slung on before leaving the room.
"What if the stairs collapse?" Kincaid asked.
"If I'm alive, I'll fire a red cluster." I told him, patting the M-203. "If I'm injured, I'll fire off a green cluster."
"And if your dead, then what?" Donaldson asked.
"I'll fire off white." Kincaid frowned, then laughed.
"Wait by the exterior doors. After another 72 hours or so, the code I gave you should open the doors." I told him, stepping out on the steel grate. The whole thing thrummed and something below me popped. I grabbed the railing and shook it back and forth, listening to the sounds of popping and creaking as I got the whole thing swaying. Huge springs that looked like they belonged on semi-tractors flexed back and forth, and something let go with a snap down in the darkness.
It only took three seconds for it to go back to rock solid.
"How far down you going?" Kincaid asked.
"To the bottom. I'll count the access points." I told them. I undid the 550 cord and handed it to Donaldson. If the stairs collapsed a thin nylon rope wouldn't do anything but tangle up the tons of falling steel that would crush me like a little grape.
"Wish me luck." I grinned, then started walking down the stairs.
The smell of rotted meat grew thicker the further down I went.
I'd overplayed the dangers of the stairwell. These things were designed to flex and shift when the earthquakes from nuclear hits rocked the mountain, they'd only been there for 40 years or so, not centuries.
If they collapsed on me it was because someone had rigged them collapse, and my little rope wouldn't do jack or shit.
A couple times I stepped on diamond plate steel and small little lights flicked on. Not enough to light up the whole shaft but enough to let me see the stairs without tumbling down them and breaking my stupid head open.
There were thick PVP pipes that I knew would be full of wiring and cables, steel pipes of all kinds of thickness. Ventings and ducts on the walls. Twice I passed massive air circulators and purifiers. Once I smelled the ozone smell of a working air purifier. Notices of high voltage were here and there on the walls as I walked steadily downward. More than a few warnings of hot pipes, or hot steam. Lime stained the walls here and there, but there were no cracks in the solid stone that surrounded me. Even where the three inch wide bolts that secured the staircase were set into the wall there were no cracks. Those bolts were three inches wide, with 1/2' deep threads, and I knew from previous experience that they were 10-15 feet long, only a few inches outside the rock.
According to my watch, it took me nearly 20 minutes to walk the whole the way down. I'd passed six "entries" for lack of a better word. I could see the charges on the door, carefully placed plastique charges that were designed to break the panel off and that was it.
At the bottom I sat on the steps and rubbed my knee.
Someone had popped the bottom panel off.
Not fired the charges, but knocked it clear. The panel was lying on the floor, and the small black and yellow striped squares were still fixed to the panel along with the wiring that was broken and laid across the door.
My knee ached, and I flexed it a couple of times, the metal brace on it creaking in the silence. Somewhere water dripped, but the bottom of the shaft below me only held an inch or so of clear water. I could see open ended pipes beneath the water. Looking up the way I'd came into the shaft wasn't even visible. Just meter after meter of darkness.
Something stunk of rotted meat, just a wiff of it.
I pulled the flashlight off my LBE and turned it on, moving up and looking out the door. Solid concrete walls, no steel this time except for where it held the concrete strips stable. I'd seen that kind of construction before, it was so that the hallway would flex, the structure would flex, instead of shattering if it was exposed to serious force.
You saw it in the subways of New York and below old buildings.
The corridor vanished off into darkness to my right and left and the air felt old and musty. Still, the smell of rotting meat was stronger in the hallway.
...Maybe now isn't the time to play the Lone Ranger...
...No shit, Bomber?...
I kept the light on and headed back up, shining my light on the walls. I was looking for torn ducting, or maybe and open vent, but found nothing the whole way back up.
The little square of light made me hurry faster. I could hear noises below me. Were those echoes of my own steps on the stairs, or was something coming behind me? I resisted the urge to turn around, half afraid that I'd look behind me, see nothing, and then find out that whatever it was had moved in front of me. Right before it bit my face off.
Still, I drew my knife.
When I reached the square Donaldson and Kincaid were relieved to see it was me.
"How deep is it? You were gone over an hour." Donaldson told me.
"Deep." I said, flashing my light over the ductwork above me. "Six, maybe eight levels below..." I trailed off.
Ducting, PVP pipe, and steel pipe filled the overhead about 15 feet above me, disappearing and reappearing from thick asbestos. I could see a large duct, labeled "PRIMARY AIR EXCHANGE 552" in stenciled letters that was buried in the asbestos, almost four feet wide.
My flashlight had caught the ductwork.
And the hole in it, as wide as I could reach across. The metal torn outward.
Two yellow eyes caught the light of my flashlight from inside the duct.
Something hissed, a bubbling sound.
"Shit."