The Explorer dropped back to a safer speed.
Elliot said, “Did Danny do all of that?”
“He must have.”
“He jinxed the guard’s phone, opened the gate, and jammed the submachine gun. What is this kid of yours?”
As they ascended into the night, snow began to fall hard and fast in sheets of fine, dry flakes.
After a minute of thought Tina said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what he is anymore. I don’t know what’s happened to him, and I don’t understand what he’s become.”
This was an unsettling thought. She began to wonder exactly what sort of little boy they were going to find at the top of the mountain.
Chapter Thirty-Five
With glossy photographs of Christina Evans and Elliot Stryker, George Alexander’s men circulated through the hotels in downtown Reno, talking with desk clerks, bellmen, and other employees. At four-thirty they obtained a strong, positive identification from a maid at Harrah’s.
In room 918 the Network operatives discovered a cheap suitcase, dirty clothes, toothbrushes, various toiletry items — and eleven maps in a leatherette case, which Elliot and Tina, in their haste and weariness, evidently had overlooked.
Alexander was informed of the discovery at 5:05. By 5:40 everything that Stryker and the woman had left in the hotel room was brought to Alexander’s office.
When he discovered the nature of the maps, when he realized that one of them was missing, and when he discovered that the missing map was the one Stryker would need in order to find the Project Pandora labs, Alexander felt his face flush with anger and chagrin. “The nerve!”
Kurt Hensen was standing in front of Alexander’s desk, picking through the junk that had been brought over from the hotel. “What’s wrong?”
“They’ve gone into the mountains. They’re going to try to get into the laboratory,” Alexander said. “Someone, some damn turncoat on Project Pandora, must have revealed enough about its location for them to find it with just a little help. They went out and bought maps, for God’s sake!”
Alexander was enraged by the cool methodicalness that the purchase of the maps seemed to represent. Who were these two people? Why weren’t they hiding in a dark corner somewhere? Why weren’t they scared witless? Christina Evans was only an ordinary woman. An ex-showgirl! Alexander refused to believe that a showgirl could be of more than average intelligence. And although Stryker had done some heavy military service, that had been ages ago. Where were they getting their strength, their nerve, their endurance? It seemed as if they must have some advantage of which Alexander was not aware. That had to be it. They had to have some advantage he didn’t know about. What could it be? What was their edge?
Hensen picked up one of the maps and turned it over in his hands. “I don’t see any reason to get too worked up about it. Even if they locate the main gate, they can’t get any farther than that. There are thousands of acres behind the fence, and the lab is right smack in the middle. They can’t get close to it, let alone inside.”
Alexander suddenly realized what their edge was, what kept them going, and he sat up straight in his chair. “They can get inside easily enough if they have a friend in there.”
“What?”
“That’s it!” Alexander got to his feet. “Not only did someone on Project Pandora tell this Evans woman about her son. That same traitorous bastard is also up there in the labs right this minute, ready to open the gates and doors to them. Some bastard stabbed us in the back. He’s going to help the bitch get her son out of there!”
Alexander dialed the number of the military security office at the Sierra lab. It neither rang nor returned a busy signal; the line hissed emptily. He hung up and tried again, with the same result.
He quickly dialed the lab director’s office. Dr. Tamaguchi. No ringing. No busy signal. Just the same, unsettling hiss.
“Something’s happened up there,” Alexander said as he slammed the handset into the cradle. “The phones are out.”
“Supposed to be a new storm moving in,” Hensen said. “It’s probably already snowing in the mountains. Maybe the lines—”
“Use your head, Kurt. Their lines are underground. And they have a cellular backup. No storm can knock out all communications. Get hold of Jack Morgan and tell him to get the chopper ready. We’ll meet him at the airport as soon as we can get there.”
“He’ll need half an hour anyway,” Hensen said.
“Not a minute more than that.”
“He might not want to go. The weather’s bad up there.”
“I don’t care if it’s hailing iron basketballs,” Alexander said. “We’re going up there in the chopper. There isn’t time to drive, no time at all. I’m sure of that. Something’s gone wrong. Something’s happening at the labs right now.”
Hensen frowned. “But trying to take the chopper in there at night… in the middle of the storm…”
“Morgan’s the best.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“If Morgan wants to take it easy,” Alexander said, “then he should be flying one of the aerial rides at Disneyland.”
“But it seems suicidal—”
“And if you want it easy,” Alexander said, “you shouldn’t have come to work for me. This isn’t the Ladies’ Aid Society, Kurt.”
Hensen’s face colored. “I’ll call Morgan,” he said.
“Yes. You do that.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Windshield wipers beating away the snow, chain-wrapped tires clanking on the heated roadbed, the Explorer crested a final hill. They came over the rise onto a plateau, an enormous shelf carved in the side of the mountain.
Elliot pumped the brakes, brought the vehicle to a full stop, and unhappily surveyed the territory ahead.
The plateau was basically the work of nature, but man’s hand was in evidence. This broad shelf in the mountainside couldn’t have been as large or as regularly shaped in its natural state as it was now: three hundred yards wide, two hundred yards deep, almost a perfect rectangle. The ground had been rolled as flat as an airfield and then paved. Not a single tree or any other sizable object remained, nothing behind which a man could hide. Tall lampposts were arrayed across this featureless plain, casting dim, reddish light that was severely directed downward to attract as little attention as possible from aircraft that strayed out of the usual flight patterns and from anyone backpacking elsewhere in these remote mountains. Yet the weak illumination that the lamps provided was apparently sufficient for the security cameras to obtain clear images of the entire plateau, because cameras were attached to every lamppost, and not an inch of the area escaped their unblinking attention.
“The security people must be watching us on video monitors right now,” Elliot said glumly.
“Unless Danny screwed up their cameras,” Tina said. “And if he can jam a submachine gun, why couldn’t he interfere with a closed-circuit television transmission?”
“You’re probably right.”
Two hundred yards away, at the far side of the concrete field, stood a one-story windowless building, approximately a hundred feet long, with a steeply pitched slate roof.
“That must be where they’re holding him,” Elliot said.
“I expected an enormous structure, a gigantic complex.”
“It most likely is enormous. You’re seeing just the front wall. The place is built into the next step of the mountain. God knows how far they cut back into the rock. And it probably goes down several stories too.”
“All the way to Hell.”