Return to Atlantis: A Novel (32 page)

Eddie rounded the corner, emerging in the next aisle in time to see Nina jump to the floor. “Are you okay?” she asked, hurrying to him.

“Yeah, but there’re more of ’em out there. Let’s find the stairs.” They headed for the nearer of the hangar’s long side walls.

Ogleby’s voice came over the loudspeakers. “You morons!” he shouted at the airmen. “They’re getting away! They’re in area seven. Stop them!”

“Shit, he can see us!” said Nina. There had to be security
cameras somewhere above. If Ogleby could guide the troops after them, they had no hope of escaping.

Eddie looked ahead. They were coming up to another intersection, a set of points clacking to direct an approaching shuttle. He snatched a box file from a shelf. “What are you doing?” asked Nina.

“Putting things on the wrong track.” He kicked at the points to force the switch open, then jammed the box into the gap. “Down here, get back.”

They retreated into the cross-aisle as the shuttle rumbled into the intersection. With the points out of position, it tried to continue straight ahead where it should have turned—then hit the box. The metal container was crushed by the shuttle’s weight, but it was enough to jolt the entire machine …

And send it off the tracks.

The thirty-foot crane tower made it very top-heavy. The shuttle wobbled before finally overbalancing and crashing against one of the stacks—which itself toppled, containers sliding off its shelves in a cacophonous chorus. It hit another stack, and that too fell, a giant domino reaction sweeping inexorably across the hangar.

But it wasn’t only the stacks that were falling. The top of the shuttle’s tower snagged the power grid as it tipped, tearing down a section. It slapped across the tracks—

There was a loud bang and a huge spray of sparks as the system short-circuited. The sudden overload blew out other parts of the Cold War–era electrical system—and the entire hangar abruptly fell into darkness. Ogleby’s horrified cry at the sight of the destruction of his library was cut off with a squawk of feedback.

“Wow,” said Eddie as the last echoing slam of a felled stack faded away. “That worked better than I thought.”

“It doesn’t really help us, though, does it?” Nina complained. “We can’t see anything either!” But as her eyes adjusted, she realized they were not in total blackness. Amber emergency lights high overhead had come on, casting a dim fireside glow across the great chamber.

She could just about make out Eddie’s grin. “We can
see enough. Come on.” He took the lead as they ran into the gloom.

With the power off, they no longer had to worry about the repository’s machines, and in short order they reached the side of the hangar. About fifty yards away, an illuminated box shone red above a recess in the wall: an
EMERGENCY EXIT
sign. They ran to it. Behind them, their hunters shouted across the stacks, but they were having enough trouble locating one another, never mind their prey.

Eddie barged through the door at the back of the opening. More sickly lights revealed a metal staircase switch-backing upward into a tall shaft. No sign of movement above, but he still paused. “Can you hear anyone?”

Nina strained to listen, picking out a distant clamor of feet pounding on steel. “Someone’s there, but they’re a long way up.” Eddie nodded and started up the steps. “Whoa, wait! I know your hearing’s not great, but didn’t you hear what I just said? They’re probably waiting for us at the top.”

“Good job we’re not going all the way up, then. Come on, give it some high knees!” He set off again, Nina following in confusion.

“What do you mean?” she panted. “How are we going to get out?”

“Not by running up three thousand bloody stairs, for a start.” As they climbed, another sign came into sight: the next level. “That big lift was on this floor.”

“I think it may be a little hard for them to miss us if we ride up on that!”

“Depends what we ride up
with
.” They reached the landing; Eddie checked that nobody was lurking beyond the door before entering.

Lines of dark and silent armor lined up inside the vast space greeted them. The main lights were still on in this level, but the brightest illumination came from the portable rigs set up around the tank undergoing maintenance. Nina cautiously peered around one of the M60s to see the two mechanics standing by their charge, talking
animatedly; they had heard the alert, but seemingly had no idea what was going on. “We’ll have to go past those guys to reach the elevator.”

“I’ll take care of ’em,” Eddie assured her.

“How? As soon as they see you they’ll raise the alarm.”

“Why?” He indicated his now rather untidy uniform. “I’m an officer, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but the second you open your mouth they’ll know saahmthang’s wraahng,” she said, imitating his attempt at an American accent. “What are you going to do, use sign language?”

Eddie cracked his knuckles and gave her a devilish smile. “I think they’ll get the message.”

I
n the administration block, Colonel Kern listened to a crackling report over the intercom from Silent Peak’s lowest level. “We still haven’t been able to restore full power down here, sir. We need a maintenance crew to fix the breakers.”

“We’ll have to call a team in from Groom,” said Kern, concerned. “What about the intruders?” From the moment the alert had come through directly from the Pentagon that their security clearances had been forged, his honored guests had been reduced in status to targets.

Ogleby came on the line. “They’ve wrecked the place!” he cried. “Kern, I hold you entirely responsible for this fiasco. How the hell did you allow them to just stroll in here?”

“I see from the system that you approved their clearances too,” Kern replied irritatedly, checking a monitor. “But it looks like security’s been breached at a very high level. There’ll have to be an investigation—”

“Sir!” his lieutenant interrupted, pointing excitedly at a status board. “The main elevator—it’s coming up!”

“I think we’ve found them,” Kern told Ogleby before ending the call. He turned to his subordinate. “Assemble
a group, everyone armed, then get to the elevator. But keep the guards at the main door in case it’s a ruse and they’re trying to escape some other way.”

The lieutenant acknowledged and rushed out. “Keep monitoring things here,” Kern ordered a corporal as he headed for his office.

He opened a desk drawer and took out his sidearm. Silent Peak’s quiet obscurity and official status as a reserve facility meant that only its security personnel were routinely armed, but right now he wanted every man on the base to have a gun at the ready. Whatever Nina Wilde and her companion were doing here, it was going to be stopped. Flicking off the Beretta’s safety, he hurried after the lieutenant.

In the control room, the corporal’s eyes bugged as he saw on a CCTV screen what the enormous elevator was carrying. “Uh, sir?” he called, but his commander had already gone.

Kern met his men outside the cluster of cabins, where the lieutenant had rounded up twelve troops. Some were support staff armed only with pistols, but the majority were members of the base’s security detail, carrying M4 rifles. “Okay, everyone with me,” he ordered, starting to run. The men fell in alongside him. “We have two intruders who infiltrated the base using falsified credentials, and gained access to the repository. They’re to be considered armed and dangerous.” He hesitated before continuing, but the command from the Pentagon had been clear. “You have shoot-on-sight authorization.”

The responses from the running men showed that few, if any, shared his misgivings.

They raced down the length of the hangar, passing the parked aircraft and vehicles. The great chasm of the shaft opened up ahead as they neared it. A deep mechanical grumbling grew ever louder—the massive elevator platform was approaching the top.

“Spread out,” said Kern as the group reached the
shaft. “I want every part of the platform … covered …” His voice trailed off as the elevator’s cargo rose into view.

The corporal’s nervous voice sounded over the PA system. “Uh, Colonel Kern, sir! They’ve, ah … they’ve got a tank.”

The M60’s main gun was pointing directly at Kern. “Yeah, I noticed.”

“Okay, we’re at the top!” Nina announced, standing in the commander’s position to peer through the narrow portholes in the armored cupola atop the turret. “And we’ve got a welcoming committee.”

Eddie, in the driver’s seat inside the cramped forward compartment, had also seen the troops through the three slot-like periscopes in front of him. “Doesn’t look like they want to give us tea and biscuits,” he said as weapons came up. He switched his foot from the brake to the oversized gas pedal and shoved it down. The twenty-nine-liter diesel engine roared, the tank jerking forward with a piercing squeal from its tracks. He saw Kern dive aside as the M60 cleared the platform and accelerated down the hangar.

Nina yelped and instinctively ducked as bullets clonked against the turret. “Whoa! That just made them mad.”

Eddie wasn’t worried—not about the gunfire, at least. Against the inches-thick steel armor, Kern’s men might as well have been firing Ping-Pong balls.

His real concern was the line of parked military vehicles. He had checked the M60’s fuel gauge during the ascent, and found it had only the bare minimum needed to power it for maintenance. It would soon run out—meaning that the troops could simply drive after them and wait for the engine to die.

He turned the steering yoke to the right. The brakes on that side shrilled, the tank making a juddering change of direction to head for the trucks.

Nina yelped again as the unexpected turn jarred her heavily against some of the cabin’s many hard-edged protrusions. “What are you doing? You’re going to crash into those trucks!”

“Not into ’em—
over
’em! Get into the gunner’s seat!”

“I thought there wasn’t any ammo?”

“This thing’s got a twenty-foot steel battering ram—it doesn’t
need
ammo!”

Nina understood what he meant, but was still uncertain as she clambered awkwardly across the cabin into the gunner’s position. The primary controls consisted of another aircraft-style yoke. “How does it work?”

“It’s not rocket surgery! Just turn it and see what happens!”

There was a periscope lens above and to the right of the controls; she peered into it, seeing the view ahead. The M60 was thundering straight at the first truck. She hesitantly turned the yoke a little. With a skirl of hydraulics, the turret turned in response. A vertical twist of the handgrips and the main gun rose, the view through the periscope also tilting upward.

She swung the turret back to its original position—to find the truck looming in her sights. “Hold on!” Eddie shouted.

The M60 slammed into the truck’s front quarter. It was shoved sideways until it hit its neighbor—and the tank then rode up over it, crushing it flat. The second truck suffered the same fate, glass exploding everywhere as steel tracks chewed through its cab.

Eddie turned the yoke back to the left. The M60 lurched around as if grinding the remains of the trucks beneath a treaded heel, then advanced on the first of the Humvees. There were two rows of the big four-by-fours, too widely spaced for the M60 to squash them all in one go; Nina braced herself, rotating the turret and lowering the main gun to hit the second line.

The Humvees were smaller than the trucks, but the ride over them was no less bumpy, throwing Eddie and Nina about in their seats. The back ends of the leading
row were flattened into scrap. Those in the second line fared little better, the M60’s gun barrel slicing into their engine compartments and tearing off wheels.

Eddie turned the tank again to demolish one last truck, then swung it back toward the giant hangar doors. There were other guards ahead, but they were already scurrying for safety. The way out was now clear. The M60 was at its full speed of thirty miles per hour. Hardly blistering performance, but with so much weight behind it the armored vehicle was almost unstoppable. He kept his foot down, glancing at the fuel gauge.