But first she would have to rest. Her legs barely supported her, and her upper body was beginning to tremble. She knew she was close to exhaustion, as much because other immersion in the cold water as from the fear, and she wasn’t sure she could make the climb back up to the ledge. But even wet, that blanket would be warmer than nothing. She could use the ChemLights to provide ambient light and save the flashlight batteries for later. The main thing was that she could see. That made up for damn near everything. The water rising to her shaking knees reminded her that she need to get a move on. She walked over to the ladder rungs and began the long climb up.
Browne McGarand pulled his truck through the barrels just after sundown.
He was still furious that Jared had gone chasing skirt when they were so close to finishing the hydrogen project. The intruder was an unwanted complication, but Browne wasn’t willing to forgo another day.
There was pressure in the truck tank now, which meant he was getting
close. The target wasn’t going anywhere, but if someone was snooping around, his setup here on the arsenal might be in jeopardy. He drove up the entrance road toward the main gates, slowed when he got there, turned off his headlights, and then turned onto the fire-access road as usual. And then he stopped. Something about the main gates was different.
He put the truck into reverse, backed up in the direction of the gates, stopped, set the hand brake, and got out. He left it in reverse so that the glow of the taillights illuminated the guard shed and the rolling chain-link gates. They were closed and locked as usual. No, not locked. That was it.
The padlock and its chain were hanging on the center post of the gates.
That’s what had caught his eye.
Now what the hell? Were those security twerps in there? At night? He stared at the padlock. Then he went up and tested the gates, which, in fact, rolled back when he tugged on them. He walked over to his truck, shut it completely down, and listened for the sound of their truck, which he could usually hear when it was in the industrial area. There was nothing but the sounds of occasional traffic out on Route 11. Had they come in and then left, leaving the place unlocked? Not likely—he had never seen them do that.
The intruder? He got his flashlight and examined the padlock, but there were no signs of damage. Whoever had opened it had known the combination, and that had to mean the security people. Logically, then, they were in there. He looked down the main road inside the arsenal. It led through dense trees for about two miles before getting to the industrial area. The road curved as soon as it got into the trees, so there was no way to see headlights. For that matter, they might be on their way back to the front gate right now, having gotten a late start on their tour, or had trouble with their truck. He decided to go in this way and save himself a long walk up the rail line. He really wished Jared was here.
He went back to his truck, got the food for the girl and his night pack, and brought the stuff through the main gate, where he stashed it out of sight. Then he drove his pickup as quietly as he could back down the access road to the main gate, through the barrels, and out onto Route 11.
He drove a mile south on Route 11 to a Waffle House, where he parked his pickup at the far end of the diner’s parking lot. Waffle Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, so there were always vehicles in the lot.
Then he walked back along Route 11 to the arsenal, waited for all
traffic to disappear from sight, and turned back up the main access road. If anyone was in there, listening, and they’d heard his truck, they should now think he had come up to the gates and then gone away.
He walked to the gate and let himself through, rolling the gates shut again as quietly as he could. He hefted his pack and started walking down the side of the main road, stopping every few minutes to listen for any signs of the security truck. He still couldn’t believe they were in here at night, but he would have to be careful, especially if they suspected intrusion and were waiting to see if anyone showed up. He thought about going back home, but that would mean admitting Jared had been right about waiting awhile to let the place cool off. He was damned if he was going to wait. He’d do a thorough look around the main street of the industrial area and then—he stopped dead.
Jared had left a trap.
Damnation, he thought. Those fools might have driven their little pickup truck over that steel plate and gone down into the Ditch. Great God, he thought, now that would be a real complication. They’d made their required weekend tour the previous weekend, so they should not have been here yesterday. But there was no getting around that padlock. And that would certainly account for their still being here, dead or injured in their little pickup truck at the deep end of the siphon chamber. He would have to check it out as soon as he went in, and then he might have to move the whole operation the hell out of here, like tonight. If the security patrol failed to report in, there would be a mob of cops and maybe even federal people out here pretty quick. Or would they? It was early Saturday night. He might have twenty-four, thirty-six hours. Appalled, he hurried down the dark road.
Kreiss listened to the vehicle noise on the access road and rechecked his position. There was a small concrete switch house just inside the interior rail-line gate, and he had set up shop behind it. The night was dark and clear, with decent ambient starlight. He planned to take the guy down right after he came through the interior rail gates, probably while he was occupied with looking at the electric-eye counter. When the vehicle noises subsided, he became still and listened hard. The sounds had stopped short of where those two had been parking their truck before.
Now what the hell were they—no, not they anymore—what was he doing?
He waited for fifteen minutes. He was dressed out in the same crawl
suit rig he’d used on his first reconnaissance of this place. He’d thought about bringing Jared’s .45, then decided against it. Guns were just extra weight, and he shouldn’t need any firearms once he took this guy down, especially since he knew there would be only one of them this time. If Jared did show up, Kreiss thought with a grim smile, it would definitely be time to get the hell out of here. He closed his eyes to concentrate on what he was hearing. There were the usual night sounds coming from the forest outside the arsenal fence, but no more manmade sounds. Was this guy taking extra precautions because of the counter hits? Or had he discovered Jared? Kreiss wanted to go up the rail line into the industrial area. He decided instead to wait some more, and he concentrated on the rail line outside the gates, from which direction he expected the man to come.
Assuming he hadn’t changed his mind and driven away.
Janet crawled to the intersection of the main tunnel and the siphon chamber by the faint green light of a ChemLight stick, only to discover that the ledge was at least ten feet below the lip of the main tunnel. There were no ladders visible, nor any other apparent way to climb up to the main tunnel. She sighed out loud and lay down on the ledge, wrapping the soggy blanket around her. Below, the water, invisible several feet down, was rising again. She hoped it stayed down there.
After what seemed to her like a few minutes, she looked at her watch and found it was almost 7:00 P.M. Her eyes opened wide—she must have slept for almost two hours. She shivered at the thought: What if she’d rolled off the ledge? The trusty ChemLight was still going, so she held it out over the siphon chamber, and gasped. There was the water, right there, perhaps two inches below the ledge. The surface was smooth, but the great cold bulk of it felt as if it were compressing the air around her.
She switched on the flashlight and pointed it to the left. The water level was almost up to the top of the siphon chamber, which should mean it would not rise all the way up to the ledge. Should mean.