Pulaski looked displeased when he looked down at his socks, flexing his toes, while van Dyckman retracted the box cutter’s sharp blade and then pocketed the tool.
Garibaldi placed his hands on his hips and regarded the portal they had just left, the masses of foam, and the flashing alarm light. He looked like a captain at the prow of a ship. “Well, at least we’re safely out of that mess.”
“No we’re not,” Victoria said, her voice shaking. “We’ve got to move down the tunnel, fast.” She pointed at the ceiling. “Look.”
A new hissing sound filled the air and Adonia looked up. A plume of yellowish gas jetted out of ceiling nozzles inside the portal.
21
The noxious vapors curled around the top of the tunnel, then started sinking toward the floor — and them.
“Not tear gas again!” Adonia groaned, hurrying them away down the tunnel. “We have to move.” They stumbled along, all of them spattered and coated with remnants of the hardening sticky foam.
“It isn’t tear gas.” Victoria sounded beaten. “That’s halothane — an old, potent knockout gas. A big enough whiff, and it’ll drop you in your tracks.”
“Going to sleep sounds better than getting fried by a wall of microwaves,” Pulaski said. “Kinder and gentler.”
“If you don’t get taken out of the gas quickly enough, you might never wake up,” Victoria said.
Victoria continued as they backed away, looking at the gas swirling down from the ceiling, “Halothane gas is one of the final-tier military systems to stop any intruders who might manage to get past the guard portal. I think the designers assumed that only a full-fledged enemy force could possibly get this far in, so these nozzles are spraying enough gas to diffuse down the tunnels and knock out an army before they got to the plutonium pits that were stored in the lower assembly area.”
“Then we have to keep ahead of it,” Shawn said. “Get moving.”
Garibaldi pointed back at the nozzles, frowning and preoccupied. “Halothane is colorless, an invisible old-style anesthetic, been around for years — and it’s deadly in large concentrations. But that gas is clearly visible. Are you sure it’s halothane, Ms. Doyle?”
“It’s mixed with a smoke marker so it can be seen, a psychological edge to scare the hell out of intruders,” Victoria said. “Like I said, it was DoD’s last line of defense inside the Mountain.”
“I… I didn’t know about this!” van Dyckman said, looking from person to person. “Or about the sticky foam either. I swear.” He shook his head. “And this is my Mountain!”
“Have your arguments later,” Adonia said. “Since we can see the gas coming, let’s avoid it.”
The vapor wafted down from the nozzles, spreading out as it diffused to the floor. Adonia had no intention of dropping unconscious where she would lie for hours, breathing more and more of the dangerous gas. No rescue team could get to them in time.
Tear gas was a standard deterrent with no lingering effects, good for crowd control; her own site at Granite Bay kept it on hand as a nonlethal defense in case a protest got out of hand. But since Hydra Mountain was designed to store nuclear weapons, its security systems would be much more aggressive against any intruder who managed to penetrate this far inside. She supposed it made sense, on paper.
She caught a whiff of an unusual, almost pleasant smell — which meant they were all inhaling it. “Hurry, before it starts to affect us.”
Van Dyckman said, “Keep moving down to where the tunnel widens. We’ll be on a high bay above the lower grotto. The farther we go, the more the gas will spread out and diffuse.”
“But halothane is heavier than air, and the vapor is rolling downhill, so don’t underestimate the concentration,” Garibaldi said. “We’ll eventually need to get well above it.”
Stumbling along, Pulaski glanced at the roiling plumes of gas curling after them. “My God, doesn’t this ever stop?” He began coughing as he hobbled forward in his stocking feet.
“Storing nuclear weapons requires many security layers, Senator,” Doyle said. “And sometimes they’re inconvenient to the good guys.”
Van Dyckman persisted, “And look, it’s working! This is what Hydra Mountain was originally designed to do. We aren’t supposed to be down here. No one should be able to break into Valiant Locksmith and steal the nuclear waste.”
“Not even those of us who were sent here to inspect it?” Garibaldi asked.
The cloyingly sweet odor thickened in the air. “We can’t afford to have anyone pass out.” Adonia breathed shallowly, but she was starting to feel dizzy. “We’ve got enough troubles without having to carry anyone.”
“And once the first person falls, we’re all going to follow in quick succession,” Shawn said. “Keep moving. We can outrun it.”
The tunnel was a wide thoroughfare, built to accommodate transport vehicles hauling twenty-foot-high waste containers, so there were no sharp corners or abrupt inclines. The gradual slope headed ever downhill and deeper into the Mountain.
Garibaldi kept talking as if it helped him to stay calm. “Harris did say the countermeasures would be more severe on this side of the guard portal. Halothane is nasty stuff. Even at less than fatal doses, it can trigger cardiac arrhythmia and cause liver damage. I wouldn’t recommend we breathe too much of it.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Doyle said with an edge in her voice. “I’d prefer to stay awake, and alive.”
They finally outpaced the dissipating gas, and after they had gone well beyond the yellowish mist, they paused to pluck at their foam-encrusted clothes. The Senator, Garibaldi, and van Dyckman had already discarded their suit jackets, and now Adonia and Undersecretary Doyle peeled off their blazers. With an expression of disgust, Pulaski removed his socks, holding on to van Dyckman’s shoulder for balance. His limp was more pronounced as he moved again, barefoot on the concrete floor.
They couldn’t rest for long, though. Adonia saw the first forerunner wisps of halothane drift like fog, fading as it spread out. “It’ll keep rolling downhill. I don’t know how potent the gas is now, but we shouldn’t just stay here. It’ll pool as it reaches a low point, and we want to be above it.”
“We shouldn’t have left the door open behind us,” Doyle said. “The gas keeps coming.”
“You’re welcome to go back and close it,” van Dyckman retorted, and she scowled at him.
“Let’s just get to the lower level,” Shawn said in a weary voice. “There should be enough room that we won’t have to worry about the gas.”
Van Dyckman looked inappropriately pleased. “Once we’re down in the lower grotto, I can finish showing you the operations. That’s why we brought the team here in the first place.”
Garibaldi gave him a disbelieving look. “That’s your priority?”
He shrugged. “We have to wait for the lockdown to end anyway, and this is important.”
Adonia sniffed the air, caught a hint of the sickly sweet aroma. “Let’s go.” She set off in the lead.
Garibaldi offered his arm to support the tall Senator. “You’ve already had your turn, Colonel Whalen. I’ll help him now.” Though Pulaski looked embarrassed, he grudgingly accepted the assistance.
Adonia used the older scientist’s gesture to boost their morale. “We’ll reach the lower level soon, and be safe while we wait for Rob Harris’s people to show up.”
Victoria Doyle looked uncertain. “How exactly is a team supposed to reach us now? That guard portal was an intentional bottleneck, a single point of entry as a defense against intrusion. The tunnel is now filled with sticky foam. They’ll have to clear that away just to get to us. It’ll take even more time.”