The Shadow Project (21 page)

T
he Lake of Unt was a sea of flames. It was set in a wasteland of black volcanic rock (the desert had completely disappeared) interspersed with boiling mud pools and glowing, thready lava streams. Danny opened his eyes to find Dorothy already awake and standing silhouetted against the fiery glow. He looked around. “How did this happen?”

“It's this place,” Dorothy said without looking around. “Very obliging at taking you where you want to go.”

“This is it?” Danny asked. “This is the lake where Farrakhan has stashed the spear?”

“Should be.” Dorothy still hadn't turned around. “Danny, I want to talk to you about something.” She sounded serious.

He pushed himself to his feet. The others were still sleeping. Michael was flat on his back, his mouth partly
open. A little distance away, Opal was curled up like a rolled prawn. “What is it, Nan?” He moved to stand beside her and the heat from the fiery lake struck him like a furnace.

“You got offered a place at Cambridge, didn't you?”

It took him completely by surprise. “How did you find out?”

“Hector told me.”

“How did
he
know?”

“Sir Roland at the Project mentioned it. Doesn't matter. I know about it now. You going to go?”

“To Cambridge?” He shook his head. “No…”

“Why not?” Dorothy asked sharply.

“Can't afford it.”

She turned to glare at him. “Don't you lie to me, Danny Lipman. I'll find the money, same as I did for your private school. Or I expect your precious Shadow Project might give it to you since they seem to want you so much. Want you even more if you had a decent education. Course, they don't know what a lying toad you are.”

Danny grinned at her sheepishly. “It's not just the money, Nan. I wouldn't fit into a place like Cambridge. Full of toffs.”

“You'd fit, all right. Got the brains for it—that's all that counts these days. It's me, isn't it?”

Danny gave her an innocent look. “What you mean, Nan?”

“You know rightly what I mean!” She snorted. “You don't want to leave me on my own.”

“Course I don't want to leave you, Nan. I love you.”

This time it was Dorothy who shook her head: slowly, with pursed lips. “Don't give me that! None of your soft soap. You don't want to leave me because you think I can't look after myself—that's really it, isn't it?”

“Nan,” Danny said seriously, “you're not getting any younger.”

“Neither are you!” Dorothy snapped. “I want to tell you a couple of things, Danny—you listening?”

“Yes, Nan.”

“First thing is,
nobody's
getting any younger. Not me, not you. One of these days you're going to look in the mirror and find you're middle-aged. I know you don't believe it now, but you will. You want to look back then and think, ‘I wasted everything I had, never got a decent education, now I'm just an ignorant twit with no future and no prospects'? You want to think that? You want to think you had the chance and threw it away? Next thing is, you don't owe me, Danny. You don't owe me nothing—”

“Yes, I do, Nan,” Danny interrupted. “You're the one who brought me up.”

“No, you bloody don't!” said Dorothy with force. “That's what one generation does for the next—brings them up. It's just what you do. What else are you
supposed
to do?” She took a deep breath. “And the
next
thing—”

“That's three things,” Danny said, grinning. “You said you wanted to tell me a couple.”

“Don't get smart. The next thing is I want you to look at me. Go on, look at me.”

“I'm looking at you, Nan,” Danny said.

“No, look at me properly. Step back and look at me. What do you see?”

Funny thing was, she looked even younger than she had yesterday. The gray had gone out of her hair and it had taken on a reddish tint, although that might just be a reflection from the flames. But the biggest change was in her face and body. She was still his Nan, but she hardly looked much more than thirty—and a fit thirty at that. “What you telling me, Nan?” Danny asked quietly.

“That's how I am inside,” Dorothy said. “Astral plane does that to you. Shows the way you are inside. Longer you stay, the clearer it gets. That's why you're taller here, and stronger. That's why Michael's starting to look like a bit of a hero when he's so quiet on the outside. That's why Opal doesn't look as pretty as usual—poor thing's not as confident as you might think. Me, I'm younger. Inside I got the feelings and the energy of a woman half my age.
And
I'm tough as old boots. I don't need you looking after me, Danny, throwing away your chance to get a decent education.”
Danny said, “Shouldn't we wake up the others?”

“They'll wake up when it's their time. That's another thing about this place. Are you listening to me, Danny?”

“I'm listening, Nan,” Danny said.

“I don't need you looking after me. You hear that?”

“Yes, Nan.”

“And I want you to stop thieving, Danny. You thought I didn't know about it, but I do. I want you to go to Cambridge. I'd be
proud
to have my grandson studying at Cambridge. You hear that too?”

“Yes, Nan,” Danny said. “I hear you.”

Behind him, Michael groaned and sat up. Opal stirred as well, then propped herself on one elbow. They looked around at their new surroundings. Michael seemed a lot less perplexed than Opal, whose face had taken on a look near to astonishment.

Dorothy's fierce glare softened into the fondest of fond smiles. “You're a good boy, Danny, really.”

Michael said briskly, “Now everyone's awake, I suppose we'd better get on with the job of rescuing the spear.”

It was a relief not to be talking about Cambridge.

Danny said, “Any idea where to find it?”

“Shenlu Chamber, according to the Flame Lord.” Michael turned to look over the fiery lake.

“Know where that is, do you?”

Still staring out across the lake, Michael said, “I think it might be over there.”

Danny followed his gaze. Through the fire and the smoke he could see a blackened island of rock jutting perhaps twenty feet above the surface of the lake. “That's where we find the Shenlu Chamber?”

“I think so.”

“How do we reach it?”

Michael said, “We swim.”

Danny grinned, then looked at Michael's face and realized he was serious.

S
ir Roland Harrington was in the upstairs library when he heard the sound of gunfire. He ran to the window and looked out cautiously, standing clear of any line of fire. The floodlights had come on, a possible sign of trouble, but from the angle he was at, he could see nothing amiss. He was debating whether to shift to a more vulnerable position when the firing stopped.

Roland stood stock-still. The Project complex with its offices and operations rooms lay directly underneath the old house, which served as a disguise. The main entrance to the Project, with its massive provisions lifts and personnel elevators, was hidden in the grounds, away from prying eyes, carefully disguised in its own right, and permanently guarded. At any given time there were ten men in combat gear stationed in the bushes, armed and ready to give warning of anybody approaching too close to the entrance tunnel and even,
if necessary, to act as a temporary front line of defense. These perimeter guards were issued with Belgian M249 SAWs, a particularly vicious light machine gun. Roland couldn't be sure, but the burst of gunfire sounded as if it might have come from a SAW. If he was right, it meant the guards had fired on someone. The question was why.

Standard procedure required perimeter guards to remain hidden unless there was a clear and present danger of the tunnel entrance being discovered by an intruder. Even then, they were required to alert the guard contingent within the complex itself, then attempt to head off the intruder without use of lethal force if at all possible. Only if personally attacked, or in face of a direct attack on the Project complex, were they authorized to open fire.

Roland felt himself chill. Was the Project under threat?

Even though no shots seemed to have hit the house, he dropped to his knees below the level of the window and crawled to the library table, where he used the coded phone to put through a call to George Hanover.

“Where the hell are you?” Hanover asked at once. “We're under attack.”

Christ!
Roland thought. “What's happening, George?”

“Not sure yet.” He must have checked the location
button on his console because he added, “Get down here, Roland. We can't guarantee the security of the library.”

Roland cradled the phone and headed for the lift. George was there to meet him when he emerged. “Carradine thinks it's Sword of Wrath,” George said without preliminary.

Of course it was Sword of Wrath. It had to be. No other organization had the resources. “Brief me, George,” he ordered shortly.

“Seven men down and the possibility of other casualties.”

Seven men? One brief burst of gunfire and they'd already lost
seven men
? “What do you mean—
possibility
? Don't you know?”

“Seven guards at the entrance barrier are dead—we have that on CCTV. But none of our frontline boys are answering their intercoms. Whoever's done this certainly got past them.”

There were ten frontline men concealed in the grounds. They couldn't all be dead, not all of them. The Project simply could not have lost seventeen men in a matter of minutes. But they weren't answering their intercoms….

They were running down the corridor as Roland said, “Where's Carradine now?”

“Security control center. He'll bring you up to speed there.”

The Project's security control center was dominated by a bank of closed-circuit TV screens looking down on tables packed with communications equipment manned by a small team of operatives. Roland's eyes swept across the images that defined virtually every inch of the Project, but he could see nothing amiss.

“There's a camera out in the entrance tunnel,” Carradine told them.

“Why?”

“Stray bullet, I think. One of ours.”

“How many of them are in there?”

Carradine looked pained. “Not sure, Sir Roland.”

So it was
Sir
now that the pressure was on. “Why not?”

“Nothing's showing on the surveillance tapes. The outer perimeter men were concealed, of course, but we've definitely lost two that I know of, and frankly I think we've probably lost the rest,” Carradine said. “One of our men heard gunfire and went to investigate. He reported back that two of the boys were dead—Ron Wheeler and Bill Griffin.”

“Jesus!” Roland breathed. “Griffin's got a wife and children. Gunshot wounds?” Details could help them estimate how many enemies they were facing.

But Carradine was shaking his head. “That's the odd thing: he said it looked like a knife attack. Or a machete.”

“Wheeler and Griffin, weren't they armed?” George Hanover asked.

“Of course they were armed,” Carradine said a little testily. “Standard-issue M249s.”

“So how did anybody get close enough for a knife attack?” Roland asked.

“Beats me,” Carradine said sourly. “There's—” He hesitated.

“What?” Roland asked at once.

Carradine suddenly looked tired. “There's one peculiar detail. The chest cavities of both men had been opened and their hearts removed.”

“What!” George Hanover exploded.

It's started,
Roland thought.
Thank God Opal got out.
Aloud he said, “What about the men at the barrier? Same pattern?”

“Not sure. They're lying facedown. I told our main Project contingent to hold back until we know exactly what we're facing. There are reinforcements in the tunnel.”

“What do the tapes show?” Roland asked impatiently. The whole entrance area was under constant CCTV surveillance. All Carradine had to do was press
a button to find out exactly what had happened.

“That's what I started to tell you,” Carradine said. “Nothing's showing on the tapes. Routine footage of the barrier, then you can just about hear the distant gunfire—Wheeler and Griffin, presumably—then you have the guards' bodies, but nothing in between. We know one of the entrance guards called in a gunfire report and went to investigate, and from the position of the bodies, some of the others must have left their posts, but there's no footage of what actually happened.”

“That has to be sabotage,” George Hanover said, frowning.

“Thank God we're not short of manpower,” Carradine said. “If this is typical Sword of Wrath, they'll be able to field six, a dozen men at most. Our boys will clean them up in no time. I've issued orders to try to take at least some of them alive—might get some useful information.”

“This sort of frontal attack
isn't
typical of Sword of Wrath, Gary,” George said. “You sure it's not a cover for a bomb?”

Carradine said, “We're on top of that. I've strengthened perimeter security and locked down the main house. Once we sent the troops out, we sealed the tunnel this end—those are bombproof doors, you'll recall. There's nothing getting in.”

“How about a detonation in the tunnel itself?” George asked.

Carradine pulled a sober face. “Messy. Very messy if it's near our troops. But it's not going to do any real damage. Frankly, I'm not too worried. Their objective has to be the Project. A bomb in an underground entrance tunnel doesn't hack it. No disruption of our work and no propaganda value. If they are carrying a bomb, they'll want to get it inside; and they won't get it past our boys to reach the elevators—there are more than eighty troops in that tunnel now. Even if they did get past them, they can't get through the doors—six inches of solid steel. And if they did, they'd still have to fight their way across the car park to the elevators.”

“Unless it's the tactical nuke we talked about,” George remarked quietly. “The one we think the Skull might have bought from his friendly neighborhood arms dealers.”

For just the barest second Carradine looked taken aback, then he shook his head. “Oh, no, George, that's one thing I don't think we need to worry about. If they
do
have a nuke—and frankly our investigations so far don't confirm that—they're not going to waste it on us. They'll want a high-profile target. It'll be New York or Washington or London. We're too far out here to do the job.”

Roland said, “Are you armed, Gary?”

Carradine blinked in surprise. “Sorry?”

“Armed. Personally armed. Are you carrying a weapon?”

“Sure,” Carradine said.

“What is it?”

For some reason Carradine looked vaguely embarrassed. “Colt M1911.”

“Cowboy weapon,” George Hanover murmured.

“Semiautomatic, actually,” Carradine said.

Roland said forcefully, “I'd like you to issue one to George and myself, then come with us to the tunnel. I want to inspect those bombproof doors.”

“Listen, I'm really needed here—” Carradine began, then caught Roland's expression and amended hastily, “Yes, of course, Sir Roland.”

The subterranean garage was full of soldiers. “Called out the whole army, did you?” George said to Carradine.

Carradine shrugged. “Backup for the reinforcements. Why take chances?”

Roland strode toward the bombproof doors that now sealed the exit tunnel. He'd never seen them closed before, and from close up they supported Carradine's confidence: they looked designed to stop a tank. “Six-inch solid steel?” he said to Carradine.

“Could be more,” Carradine said. “Enough, anyway.”

There was a sound for all the world like a sonic boom, then the great doors bulged inward.