Submerged (14 page)

“You okay?” Janet asked.

His eyes looked red. “Yeah, I’m fine, Deputy.
Just making a phone call before I was out of cell phone range.”

“There are cell towers all along the
highway.”

“I know.”

She studied him some more. “That beast back
there belong to you?”

“The Hummer? Yeah, it belongs to my
company.”

“Sachs Engineering?”

“That’s right.”

Engineering companies were not unusual in
Nevada, although she didn’t recognize the name. If she didn’t
already have a purpose for being out, she would have asked more
questions. “You sure everything is okay?”

He smiled, and she went soft in the middle.
“Everything here is peachy.”

“Peachy, eh? Okay, be safe.” Janet pressed
the accelerator pedal and resumed her course. She wished everything
was okay with her.

“I can’t take you anywhere,” Jack said as
Perry returned to the Hummer. “I let you make a phone call, and the
police show up.”

“She was just making sure we weren’t
stranded. It’s good to see someone doing their job.”

“Hey, is that some kinda crack? You saying
ol’ Jack doesn’t carry his own weight?”

“You’re the one behind the steering wheel,
and best I can tell, we’re not moving.”

“Oh.” Jack started the car, dropped it into
gear, and steered onto the highway. “You think your new friend
would mind if I drove as fast as she is?”

“I wouldn’t risk it. I thought we would be
answering questions for the next half hour. She seemed in a rush.
Maybe she’s on a call.”

Jack studied Perry for a second, then
returned his eyes to the road ahead.

Perry answered the unasked question. “No
change in his condition. They’ve put him in isolation.”

Jack nodded, and Gleason leaned forward from
the backseat to give Perry a pat on the shoulder. Neither spoke,
but Perry considered his friends the most eloquent people he
knew.

Carl stayed along the tree line, not daring
to move through the open band of shore that circled the lake.
Moving through open territory, especially one so narrow, was
begging discovery. In some ways, Carl was surprised he hadn’t
already been hunted down, despite his caution.

What Carl couldn’t figure out was where the
so-called “Colonel Lloyd” and his merry band of mercenaries were
holed up. He had hoped he would see smoke from a cook fire, or that
his night-vision goggles would gather the faint light of a
flashlight or electric lantern. Nothing. If they were camped out,
they had hidden themselves well.

Carl tried to put all the pieces together,
but the puzzle wasn’t cooperating. Lloyd’s team had rolled up in a
military Humvee. A vehicle that size would be hard to hide; it
couldn’t be driven through the tight spaces between trees. It would
be good for bringing men and supplies to the lake and even driving
around in some of the clearings, but its range would be limited.
They would keep that next to the road. That could be good and bad.
A vehicle the size and weight of a Humvee made noise. Carl would be
able to hear it coming, just like last time. Men, however, could
move with stealth, especially trained men.

If Captain Whitaker had been more police
officer and less politician, he would have ordered a helicopter
flyover in-stead of demanding that Carl walk away from the
confrontation. Carl didn’t know how to walk away. He wondered if
he’d still have a job tomorrow.

He retraced his steps to the road, where he
had first encountered Lloyd and his men. That road was rough, but
it was still the best path in the area and the most likely place to
leave a Humvee and set up camp.

Find the camp and see what
the yokels in uniform are up to,
Carl told
himself
.
Then he could decide his next
step. He had taken less than twenty steps when he heard something.
Dropping to a crouch, Carl tilted his head, trying to determine the
direction of the sound. The noise was rolling across the lake, the
water acting like an amplifier. He raised his binoculars and
scanned the thin road.

His heart rattled in its cage. The familiar
form of the small SUV he had driven to the site yesterday appeared
on the road.

“It can’t be,” he whispered.

It was. The vehicle stopped and, through the
binoculars, he watched Janet exit. When she looked around, he knew
she was searching for his truck.

She was being stupid. Granted, the road she
was on was the sole one that led straight to the lake, but to pull
up to the very spot where they had both been taken to the ground
and he’d been handcuffed—

What he saw next stunned him. Janet leaned
into the car. A second later, the red and blue light bar began
splashing color on the tree-and-shrub-dressed slope and on the
rippled surface of the lake.

His rumbling heart tripped and seized. The
lenses of

the binoculars brought the sight of the black
Humvee. Men in black BDUs poured from its doors. At this distance,
he couldn’t hear words spoken, but the body language said it all.
Lloyd marched forward and stood just a foot or two from Janet.
Janet said something. Lloyd glanced over his shoulder, then around
the lake. He nodded, then backhanded Janet.

She stumbled back a step. Lloyd took a long
step forward, seized Janet by her uniform shirt, spun, and threw
her into the side of the patrol car. She reached for her gun, but
Lloyd slapped her hand away. Again he grabbed her and then threw
her to the ground.

From across the lake, Carl watched as Lloyd
pulled Janet’s weapon from its holster and placed the barrel to her
head.

Carl dropped the binoculars and began to run
around the lake, stripping off his pack as his boots pounded the
ground. His heart was a piston driven by the fuel of fear. He
sprinted just inside the tree line, trying to conceal his presence
as long as possible. He was making enough noise to frighten a bear,
but he had no choice. At this point, all he wanted to do was make
sure he wasn’t an easy target. He couldn’t help Janet if he were
facedown on dirt and pine needles, dripping blood into thirsty
soil.

He ran. He pushed. Limbs of bushes grabbed
for his feet, limbs of smaller trees tried to wrap him up, but
nothing short of chains or a bullet was going to stop him.

Chapter14

1974

With the manhole
above
and who knows what below, Henry lowered himself one
rung at a time. He had expected a straight vertical descent, but
the shaft angled. He estimated the incline was about fifteen
degrees. It was enough that, if he wanted to, he could lean back
against the wall with his feet on a rung and rest. He had no desire
to relax.

Fifteen feet down, the metal tube that
surrounded him gave way to smooth stone. The rungs of the ladder
that had been welded to the inside of the large pipe were replaced
with a metal ladder. Light from the surface washed down through the
opening but faded with every foot of descent. Yet there was still
enough light for Henry to see his first puzzle.

Everything was smooth.

He had expected the inside of the metal pipe
to be smooth. Whoever had control of this site had inserted the
metal sleeve and welded the hinged manhole cover to it. Nothing
mysterious there.

Once he crossed the threshold into a simple
stone shaft, he could see that its surface was as smooth as the
metal sleeve. Henry knew there were several cutting devices used to
make tunnels, but they didn’t leave a smooth surface like this. It
looked as if someone had rubbed the surface as flat as glass.

Someone kicked Henry in the head. “Hey, ease
up.”

“Sorry.” Henry recognized Zeisler’s voice.
“You taking a lunch break or something?”

“The stone around us is smooth,” Henry
said.

“So?”

“So, smooth is not natural. Water can smooth
stone over time, but digging leaves marks. Have you ever been in a
mine?”

“Why would I go in a mine?” Zeisler retorted.
“Keep moving before Monte steps on my hands.”

Henry did, but he did so with a sense that he
was descending into a world he couldn’t imagine.

Fifty feet farther down the “rabbit hole,”
Henry reached the end of the ladder. Waiting for him were Nash and
McDermott. Each held a flashlight. “Having fun yet?” Nash
asked.

“Oodles,” Henry said. “You going to be the
only guys with lights?”

“For now, but we won’t need them for
long.”

“Well, let me borrow one.” Henry reached
forward, but neither Nash nor McDermott moved. “Okay, when the
others are down, I’ll be heading back up.”

Nash laughed. “No, you’re not. Guys like you
can’t resist this kind of stuff. I heard what you said about the
smooth rock. Most people wouldn’t even notice.”

“I’m not most people.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” Nash surrendered his
light.

Henry held the light in front of him and did
a slow circle, letting the beam wash over his surroundings. He was
in a cylindrical room, which gave Henry the impression that he was
standing at the bottom of a tank set on end. The walls appeared as
smooth as the shaft he had just descended. The beam traced the
walls, then disappeared.

Henry moved forward, flashing the light from
side to side until he had traced the opening that appeared to
swallow the beam.

“Please wait for the rest of the crew, Mr.
Sachs,” Nash said.

Henry was standing at the mouth of a
ten-foot-wide, round corridor. He directed the light down and saw a
descending stone stairway. The sides of the treads melded into the
curved walls. He could not see the end of the corridor.

Without entering the tunnel, he bent and
touched the first tread. It was hard and cool to the touch, just as
he expected stone to be.

“Someone cut each of these treads out of
stone?” Henry said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Why is that?” Nash asked.

“Yeah, Henry, why is that?” Zeisler had
arrived.

“Stairs are used to bridge a difference in
elevation in a short span. I can’t see the end of this tunnel, but
I can see that the downward grade is pretty shallow. Why spend the
time and energy to cut stairs out of . . . what is this,
granite?”

“It’s granite,” Nash said.

“Someone spent a lot of energy doing this. A
ramp would have been easier to build and taken less time.”

“What would take less time?” asked a voice
from behind Henry.

Henry turned and shone his light into the
face of Monte Grant.

“Point that somewhere else. You’re blinding
me,” Grant complained.

Nash spoke up. “Let’s hold the dialog and
questions until everyone is here. No sense in explaining everything
multiple times.”

Henry had questions—scores of them—but he
held them at bay. He suspected that more questions were on the way.
The ten minutes it took for the rest of the team to enter what
Henry was now thinking of as “the lobby” trickled by. Patience had
never been one of his strengths.

Ed Sanders was the last one down. Henry did a
quick head count. “Where are Sanchez and Buckley?”

“Topside,” Sanders reported. Henry watched as
Sanders looked up the shaft, his face lit by the dim light that
poured from it, and shouted, “Okay.”

There was a
clank
,
and the light from the shaft was gone. They had been closed in.

“I don’t much like this,” Cynthia said. “No
one said anything about being buried alive.”

“Just a security precaution,” Sanders
replied.

“Someone throw the light switch,” Zeisler
said. “I’m getting a little claustrophobic.”

“Very well,” Sanders said. “Mr. Sachs, you’re
the closest to the staircase. Would you step on the first
tread?”

Henry turned his flashlight back to the
corridor, then down to the floor. He saw the first tread, which he
judged to be eighteen inches wide, far wider than it should be. He
estimated the riser was six inches. He placed a foot on the
tread.

There was an explosion of light. Startled,
Henry took a step back, and everything went dark. He thought he
heard Sanders and Nash chuckle.

“What . . . how . . .” Zeisler was
speechless.

Henry stepped on the tread again, and once
more light filled the long corridor. This time Henry held his
ground.

“Stay there,” Zeisler ordered. In an instant
the electrical engineer was standing next to Henry. “Must be some
kind of sensor, like those used for automatic doors. Maybe you
broke a light beam, which triggered the switch.”

Henry watched Zeisler examine the step and
the corridor wall. “See anything?”

Zeisler shook his head. “There has to be
something that responds to your presence, but I can’t find it.”

“Nash said we didn’t need flashlights. I
thought he was toying with me.”

“I was,” Nash admitted.

Sanders pushed his way forward. “Come along,
folks. Come along and be amazed.” He started down the hall. “Pace
yourselves. It’s a long walk.”

“How long?” Cynthia asked.

“About two miles.”

“Two miles?” Henry said.

“And that’s just this corridor.” Sanders
moved on.

Henry looked at Zeisler, who returned the
same flabbergasted look.

Then Zeisler shrugged. “In for a penny, in
for a pound.”

Henry’s legs hurt. He was fit and accustomed
to hard work, but the odd width of the treads made walking
difficult. He had to either stretch his stride or take two tiny
steps per tread. He had been doing the former. Judging by the
grunts and complaints of the others, they were having trouble, as
well. Only Sanders, Nash, and McDermott didn’t complain. That
irritated Henry.

They had been walking for twenty minutes when
Henry said, “It’s time for an explanation.”