“Could be.”
He took his foot off the brake and drove forward, through sheeting snow stained red by the strange light.
Jeeps, Land Rovers, and other four-wheel drive vehicles — eight in all — were lined up in front of the low building, side-by-side in the falling snow.
“Doesn’t look like there’s a lot of people inside,” Tina said. “I thought there’d be a large staff.”
“Oh, there is. I’m sure you’re right about that too,” Elliot said. “The government wouldn’t go to all the trouble of hiding this joint out here just to house a handful of researchers or whatever. Most of them probably live in the installation for weeks or months at a time. They wouldn’t want a lot of daily traffic coming in and out of here on a forest road that’s supposed to be used only by state wildlife officers. That would draw too much attention. Maybe a few of the top people come and go regularly by helicopter. But if this is a military operation, then most of the staff is probably assigned here under the same conditions submariners have to live with. They’re allowed to go into Reno for shore leave between cruises, but for long stretches of time, they’re confined to this ‘ship.’”
He parked beside a Jeep, switched off the headlights, and cut the engine.
The plateau was ethereally silent.
No one yet had come out of the building to challenge them, which most likely meant that Danny had jinxed the video security system.
The fact that they had gotten this far unhurt didn’t make Elliot feel any better about what lay ahead of them. How long could Danny continue to pave the way? The boy appeared to have some incredible powers, but he wasn’t God. Sooner or later he’d overlook something. He’d make a mistake. Just one mistake. And they would be dead.
“Well,” Tina said, unsuccessfully trying to conceal her own anxiety, “we didn’t need the snowshoes after all.”
“But we might find a use for that coil of rope,” Elliot said. He twisted around, leaned over the back of the seat, and quickly fetched the rope from the pile of outdoor gear in the cargo hold. “We’re sure to encounter at least a couple of security men, no matter how clever Danny is. We have to be ready to kill them or put them out of action some other way.”
“If we have a choice,” Tina said, “I’d rather use rope than bullets.”
“My sentiments exactly.” He picked up the pistol. “Let’s see if we can get inside.”
They stepped out of the Explorer.
The wind was an animal presence, growling softly. It had teeth, and it nipped their exposed faces. On its breath were sprays of snow like icy spittle.
The only feature in the hundred-foot-long, one-story, windowless concrete facade was a wide steel door. The imposing door offered neither a keyhole nor a keypad. There was no slot in which to put a lock-deactivating ID card. Apparently the door could be opened only from within, after those seeking entrance had been scrutinized by the camera that hung over the portal.
As Elliot and Tina gazed up into the camera lens, the heavy steel barrier rolled aside.
Was it Danny who opened it? Elliot wondered. Or a grinning guard waiting to make an easy arrest?
A steel-walled chamber lay beyond the door. It was the size of a large elevator cab, brightly lighted and uninhabited.
Tina and Elliot crossed the threshold. The outer door slid shut behind them—whoosh—making an airtight seal.
A camera and two-way video communications monitor were mounted in the left-hand wall of the vestibule. The screen was filled with crazily wiggling lines, as if it was out of order.
Beside the monitor was a lighted glass plate against which the visitor was supposed to place his right hand, palm-down, within the existing outline of a hand. Evidently the installation’s computer scanned the prints of visitors to verify their right to enter.
Elliot and Tina did not put their hands on the plate, but the inner door of the vestibule opened with another puff of compressed air. They went into the next room.
Two uniformed men were anxiously fiddling with the control consoles beneath a series of twenty wall-mounted video displays. All of the screens were filled with wiggling lines.
The youngest of the guards heard the door opening, and he turned, shocked.
Elliot pointed the gun at him. “Don’t move.”
But the young guard was the heroic type. He was wearing a sidearm — a monstrous revolver — and he was fast with it. He drew, aimed from the hip, and squeezed the trigger.
Fortunately Danny came through like a prince. The revolver refused to fire.
Elliot didn’t want to shoot anyone. “Your guns are useless,” he said. He was sweating in his Gore-Tex suit, praying that Danny wouldn’t let him down. “Let’s make this as easy as we can.”
When the young guard discovered that his revolver wouldn’t work, he threw it.
Elliot ducked, but not fast enough. The gun struck him alongside the head, and he stumbled backward against the steel door.
Tina cried out.
Through sudden tears of pain, Elliot saw the young guard rushing him, and he squeezed off one whisper-quiet shot.
The bullet tore through the guy’s left shoulder and spun him around. He crashed into a desk, sending a pile of white and pink papers onto the floor, and then he fell on top of the mess that he had made.
Blinking away tears, Elliot pointed the pistol at the older guard, who had drawn his revolver by now and had found that it didn’t work either. “Put the gun aside, sit down, and don’t make any trouble.”
“How’d you get in here?” the older guard asked, dropping his weapon as he’d been ordered. “Who are you?”
“Never mind,” Elliot said. “Just sit down.”
But the guard was insistent. “Who are you people?”
“Justice,” Tina said.
Five minutes west of Reno, the chopper encountered snow. The flakes were hard, dry, and granular; they hissed like driven sand across the Perspex windscreen.
Jack Morgan, the pilot, glanced at George Alexander and said, “This will be hairy.” He was wearing night-vision goggles, and his eyes were invisible.
“Just a little snow,” Alexander said.
“A storm,” Morgan corrected.
“You’ve flown in storms before.”
“In these mountains the downdrafts and crosscurrents are going to be murderous.”
“We’ll make it,” Alexander said grimly.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Morgan said. He grinned. “But we’re sure going to have fun trying!”
“You’re crazy,” Hensen said from his seat behind the pilot.
“When we were running operations against the drug lords down in Colombia,” Morgan said, “they called me ‘Bats,’ meaning I had bats in the belfry.” He laughed.
Hensen was holding a submachine gun across his lap. He moved his hands over it slowly, as if he were caressing a woman. He closed his eyes, and in his mind he disassembled and then reassembled the weapon. He had a queasy stomach. He was trying hard not to think about the chopper, the bad weather, and the likelihood that they would take a long, swift, hard fall into a remote mountain ravine.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The young guard wheezed in pain, but as far as Tina could see, he was not mortally wounded. The bullet had partially cauterized the wound as it passed through. The hole in the guy’s shoulder was reassuringly clean, and it wasn’t bleeding much.
“You’ll live,” Elliot said.
“I’m dying. Jesus!”
“No. It hurts like hell, but it isn’t serious. The bullet didn’t sever any major blood vessels.”
“How the hell would you know?” the wounded man asked, straining his words through clenched teeth.