"This must be one special meteorological station," Hansen quipped in a whisper. "Can we pick the lock?"
Fisher said the job would take a while, hours probably, and that the station itself was hardly big enough to hold the arsenal. The only thing they might find inside was Qaderi's briefcase. Nevertheless, the bots' signals were strong. They were sitting right on top of it.
There had to be something more underground, and Fisher said they'd take an hour to look for another entrance.
FORTYminutes later, Valentina called over their makeshift comm system to say she'd found something about three-quarters of a mile away and directly north of the hut. She placed a marker on their OPSAT maps, and they converged on her location, a simple ravine about six feet deep and cordoned off by pine trees. About twenty yards ahead lay a near-perfect circle of melted snow. Fisher donned his night-vision goggles, crawled to the spot, then signaled for the others to come.
It was an air shaft, and warm air was being piped up from somewhere below. The shaft was protected by a steel grating, and they found no locking mechanism or alarm system. Fisher and Noboru double-teamed the grating, and with some considerable tugging, it finally pulled free from its rusted framework.
Gillespie moved in behind him with her rope coil already removed from her pack. She lowered the rope down to the bottom, rolled it back up, and said, "Thirty-five feet." Fisher gave her a nod. They set up a secure line, and one by one descended down to the bottom of the shaft courtesy of a Swiss seat rappelling harness that Gillespie had tied off for them. She was first to descend, and Hansen pulled up the rear.
Gillespie's LED flashlight revealed a roughly triangular room, about ten feet wide, with ceilings angling up and more vent grating overhead and in the middle of the floor. Warm air blew past them and rushed up through the shaft, and from somewhere above, Hansen detected the faint hum of machinery. Fisher moved ahead to a door, eased it open, vanished a moment, then returned with the news: He'd checked a circuit panel and some lights were on somewhere. They were in a utility room, and judging from the size of the panel the place was damned big.
Fisher also said a service tag on the panel read "March 1962."
Valentina guessed they were in a Cold War bunker or some kind of test facility.
"Either or both," Fisher said. He suggested they pair up and do a little recon. Hansen would branch off with Gillespie, while Valentina and Noboru would serve as a second team.
That left Fisher alone, and Hansen voiced his concern.
Fisher grinned. "I'll get by."
Hansen was almost embarrassed by the question. He'd grown so used to working with his teammates that it suddenly seemed unnatural for a Splinter Cell to be working alone. With a curt nod, Hansen turned back and headed off with Gillespie.
40
NEAR LAKE FROLIKHA, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
ONCEHansen and Gillespie left the utility room, they came into a wide corridor with a low ceiling barely seven feet high. The floor was painted with faded red, yellow, and green lines that fanned out away from them, not unlike the lines Hansen had seen on some hospital floors. Three-letter Cyrillic acronyms were stenciled onto each line. They donned their night-vision goggles and took Fisher's order to head down the corridor to the left. Noboru and Valentina fell in behind.
They moved quickly down the hall, keeping tight to the wall, rifles at the ready, until Hansen spotted something and called for Fisher to come to their position.
They were staring at a map of the complex, protected by a sheet of dust-covered Plexiglas. Cobwebs extended up from the sign and rose to the ceiling. Hansen wiped a gloved hand across the glass. The complex was shaped like a cloverleaf with four concentric circles at its center. A label read RAMPS TO LEVELS 2, 3, 4. Each leaf was marked as a zone, and each zone was divided into four areas interconnected by more corridors.
"Medical, electronics, weapons, ballistics," said Gillespie, reading the labels for each zone. "It's a test facility." She hoisted her brows at Valentina, who'd made that guess earlier on. Valentina nodded curtly.
"I assume ballistics means missiles and rockets," Gillespie added.
Fisher nodded, and Hansen glanced over at Noboru, who said, "This place is massive. Take a look at the scale."
Hansen watched as Fisher used his thumb and finger to check the map's gradated line, then measure the complex from one end to the other. "Twelve hundred meters."
With his jaw falling open, Hansen said, "That can't be. That makes it a square mile."
Valentina shook her head. "Four levels. Foursquare miles."
Fisher squinted hard at the map, deep in thought. "Ballistics and electronics. If you were experimenting, you'd want access to water for cooling and fire suppression."
Hansen agreed.
"We'll clear it as it's laid out, by zone and level, starting here and moving down."
He assigned Hansen to the medical zone, Valentina to electronics, Gillespie to weapons, and Noboru to ballistics.
"I'll loiter at the ramp area and play free safety. Questions?"
They were good to go and started off, but not before discovering a freestanding elevator shaft that Hansen thought might lead up to the "meteorological" hut they'd found in the meadow. Fisher took up a position beside the ramp railing while everyone else split up.
HANSENpicked his way down to the medical zone, the corridor festooned by overhead piping that dripped here and there. He ventured about two hundred yards farther and came to a pair of doors marked with a laboratory number. He tried the handle: open.
Tightening his grip on his rifle, Hansen eased the door open, braced himself, and slipped inside, sweeping the rifle over what was, in fact, another, shorter corridor with doors on both sides. Hansen poked his head inside the first open door and saw a laboratory with workbenches, sink area, rolling stools, and complicated networks of Pyrex tubing, test tubes, and beakers. He shoved up his goggles and flicked on his small LED flashlight. Gray metal shelving lined the walls. On the shelves were large glass jars filled with a yellow liquid. Hansen drew closer, wiped the dust from one of the jars, and something inside it shifted and pressed against the glass.
Hansen blinked hard. Cursed.
Was that a tiny human head? A nose? He gasped and backed away from the jar. "Sam, meet me in medical zone one," he called over the headset.
Within a minute, Fisher arrived and they moved on into a hospital ward where the long rows of beds were equipped with shackles. They moved on to the next two areas, encountering more laboratories and hospital wings.
"There were a dozen or so gulags within a hundred miles of here," Fisher said. "There'd always been rumors of prisoners disappearing and either never coming back or coming back . . . different."
Hansen swore under his breath.
Fisher called for a status report, and the others checked in. They regrouped at the main ramp, where Gillespie said she had found an indoor target range. Valentina said she'd found a test area full of antique electronics, even some stuff equipped with old vacuum tubes. Noboru just shook his head: drafting tables and workbenches. No high-tech arsenal.