The Templar Chronicles (35 page)

What could do that to a man? They’d already eliminated the known candidates. Could it be a new species, something they’d never encountered before? He was tempted to take off his gloves to try and use his Sight, that psychometric power given to him during his encounter with the Adversary several years ago, but knew it would be pointless. The bodies had been down here for over forty-eight hours; anything residual information the corpse might have held was now long since out of reach.

Movement to his left caught Cade’s attention. Duncan had drawn his combat knife and was moving toward the rest of the bodies, seemingly intent on cutting them down as well. Cade stood quickly and grabbed his arm, stopping him. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

“But we can’t just leave them here like this!” the young sergeant protested quietly.

Cade gently turned the other man around so that he was facing away from the corpses, forcing him to pay attention to what was being said. “We have to. I don’t have the manpower to watch over the bodies and we can’t spare the time to take them back through the tunnel to the surface.” Duncan opened his mouth to protest but Cade shook his head, silencing him. “It’s only temporary, Duncan. I promise you. We’ve got to focus on the mission, to complete what we came here to do, but we’ll be back to give these guys the proper respect and care that they deserve. You have my word.”

Reluctantly, Duncan nodded. He knew the commander was right; they didn’t have any other choice. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Conscious that the dead men had been fellow knights, Cade ordered Olsen to collect their signet rings. He would turn them over to Captain Mason as evidence of their fate, just in case something happened to the bodies before they could return.

Once that had been accomplished, the team continued their advance, moving through four more cars without incident before coming to the end of the train and exiting out through the service door in the rear.

The tunnel stretched on before them in the darkness and they continued on their way, this time with Olsen and Cade on point.

*** ***

Behind them, in the darkness of the tram car, one of the slumped “bodies” sat up and got to its feet. It walked to the end of the train and stared out into the darkness of the tunnel in the direction Echo Team had gone moments before. As it did the flesh of its face began to twist and turn, features forming and then fading away again only to be replaced by a new incarnation seconds later, the skin melting and reforming like toffee in the hot summer sun, until at last it made up its mind and a new face emerged in place of the old. Two eyes, one steel grey, the other milky white, stared out of a face made of harsh planes and sharp angles. A wide band of angry scar tissue wrapped around the right side from the ear to the chin and was only partially covered by the long hair that covered the top of its head.

Satisfied with his new appearance, the lord of Eden stepped down off the train and began to follow the men of Echo Team back into the darkness of its temporary lair.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Echo emerged from the tunnel and found themselves in another underground station. The platform here was identical to the one they’d left behind at the other end, except that the shaft back up to the surface had been replaced by a steel security door. Climbing up out of the tunnel, the team advanced to take a closer look and as they did so, they could see that there was an inscription in Hebrew written above the entrance.

“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man that he had formed,” Cade read, translating for some of the others. While everyone in the Order was familiar with Latin, ancient Hebrew was another story. “Genesis 2:8.” The words had been cut deep into the steel with a blowtorch and were clearly a recent addition, but whether they’d been placed there by Vargas and his team when they’d taken over the facility or after the trouble had started Cade didn’t know.

He considered the inscription. He was familiar with the verse and those immediately around it, a key section of the Creation story, but he didn’t understand their relevance here. Had Vargas considered this his Eden, his garden of earthly delights? Or did it have more literal connotations, maybe suggesting that he considered what he was doing here his calling from God? Had it even been Vargas who had put it there? There was no way of knowing at this point, but still, Cade was troubled by it. The verse made him uncomfortable, though he couldn’t grasp why.

Putting it out of his mind for the time being, he turned to more practical matters. A numeric keypad was placed to the right of the door at chest height. A common sight at high security installations, both civilian and military, the unit was designed to provide limited access to the facility by requiring the entry of a nine digit password. The number of possible combinations was astronomical. If the person seeking entrance knew the proper code, the door would open easily for them. If not, they could grow old and die before they chanced on the right combination. Without the proper code, it was a dead end.

He experimentally tried a few buttons but the adjacent screen did not light up or acknowledge his efforts in any way. There didn’t seem to be any power running to the unit. Stepping back, Cade gestured to Olsen. “See if you can run a bypass.”

The sergeant pulled a multi-purpose tool off his belt and quickly gained access to the guts of the unit through its maintenance panel. With the wiring exposed, it took only a few minutes for him to splice a handheld computer into the lines. When he flipped the switch, the computer began running through all the possible numeric combinations. The viewscreen next to the keypad glowed red as the numbers churned past, one after another, until a nine digit combination had been selected. The screen turned green and something inside the door gave a sharp click.

“That should do it,” Olsen said, as he removed the computer and stashed it away in his belt pack. “Somebody give me a hand.” Using the edge of his combat knife, he pried apart the twin doors, creating a slight opening between them. With Chen’s help he was then able to shove the doors back along their tracks.

Inside it was dark. The air that drifted out to meet them was thick and musty, like a tomb that had been sealed up for centuries rather than the few weeks that it had actually been, letting them know that the air pumps had stopped working along with the electricity.

Olsen shone his light inside, revealing a short corridor that stretched ahead of them for roughly thirty feet before it ended at an elevator. The elevator doors were partially open.

With a nod from Cade, Olsen took point and advanced down the corridor. Riley stayed close on his heels. The two of them stopped about ten feet away from the open elevator doors and, as Cade watched, lowered themselves into a crouch and examined the situation before them. When they were ready, they quickly closed the distance to the open shaft and flattened themselves against either side. As one they spun into the doorway, Riley flashing his light into the darkness above while Olsen did the same below.

After a moment or two, Cade heard Riley’s voice in his ear. “Clear,” he said, and half a second later Duncan echoed him.

At their signal Cade moved up, the rest of the team behind him. Once he got closer he could see that the elevator doors were almost completely open, only a thin lip of each door showing on either side, and there was enough room for his two men to stand in the doorway side by side. Their lights revealed the shaft beyond to be empty. The car itself was four levels below them, at what appeared to be the bottom of the shaft, and the tangle of cables that covered its top like a nest of snakes at least assured them that it wouldn’t be headed up the shaft anytime soon. At this distance, it was impossible to tell if the car was intact or not.

“What do you think?” Cade asked, looking up and down the shaft.

Olsen was the first to answer. “The power plant’s bound to be on the lower floor,” he said. “We’re going to need to get the power up and running in order to cover this place properly, so I vote we head down.

Cade looked over at his exec.

“I agree,” said Riley. “It’d be a damn sight easier if we had some lights. We’re also gonna need to access the computer system and personnel logs, too, once we find them, and we can’t do that while the power’s out either.”

Cade thought it over for a moment and then nodded his head. It made sense and gave them a logical way to conduct the search, bottom to top. He quickly gave orders for Davis to guard the approach while Riley and Olsen got into position by the shaft. They would serve as climbing anchors for the rest of the team. Both men removed reinforced nylon ropes from their packs, tied one end off on built-in belaying devices on their harnesses, and settled down on either side of the doorway, their feet braced against the wall. The other end of each rope was then tossed down the elevator shaft, where they came to rest on the roof of the elevator car below.

“Chen. Ortega. You’re up,” said Cade.

The two men slung their weapons over their shoulders and grabbed a hold of the rope. They swiftly moved over the edge and, feet firmly planted against the wall of the elevator shaft, and began walking down the rope. Cade stood between them, his weapon at the ready, watching over their descent. When they reached the roof of the elevator car, Chen carefully tested it to see whether the car would hold his weight. When he was confident it would, he gave two tugs on the rope, released it and stepped to the side. Beside him, Ortega did the same.

“Chen, give me a sitrep,” Cade said via the radio.

“Looks good, Commander. The elevator car is intact and there’s an access panel in the roof. We’re opening it up now.”

Cade watched from above as they pried back the access panel and quickly checked out the interior of the elevator car. Ortega disappeared inside the car while Chen covered him and then the latter followed suit. Chen’s voice came back at him across the tactical channel a moment later. “It’s clear, Commander. We’ve got the interior door open and are holding position outside the car.”

“Roger that. Second team coming down.” Cade turned and looked back. “Duncan. Callavechio. You’re next.”

The process was repeated twice more, until only Riley remained at the top of the shaft. Fashioning an anchor with a couple of slings and a locking carabiner, he secured himself to the line and threw the other end of the rope down the shaft. Turning his back to the open shaft, he grasped the line and rappelled quickly downward. When he reached the top of the elevator car, he stepped clear and then pulled sharply on one side of the rope. The loose end snaked free of the anchor and came tumbling down to where he waited below. After that it took only a moment to swiftly wrap it up and stash it back in his pack, ready for the next time he needed it.

When he was finished he joined the others in the corridor outside the elevator. To the best of their knowledge, they were on the lowest floor of the facility. Ahead of them, at the other end of the hallway, was a door, which led to the base’s physical plant.

The roar of running water hit them the moment they stepped into the room. A large generator and operating station stood on one side. On the other was a concrete platform with a waist-high railing. The platform extended out over an underground river, the source of the noise that filled the room. A large pipe ran from the base of the generator, across the room, and down the side of the platform into the water below.

Following the pipe, which he guessed was a conduit for cables, Cade stepped over to the railing and looked down to find an electric turbine suspended just above the water’s surface. He had little doubt that when the turbine was lowered into the roaring water, the resulting electrical charge would be sufficient to fire the generators, which in turn would supply power to the entire base. The river itself was, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible, and therefore a brilliant solution to what might have been a difficult problem.

Cade’s radio crackled. “You’d better have a look at this boss,” he heard Riley say in his ear and he turned to find his exec waving him over to the control station by the master generator where Riley and Olsen awaited him.

Cade quickly joined them. “What have we got?” he asked aloud, and then quickly switched back to using the tactical radio when he realized he’d have to shout to have them hear him over the roar of the river.

In response, Olsen waved his hand at the control panel. From the look of things it had been repeatedly smashed with a heavy object, the various dials and levels either crushed or bent from the impacts. “Near as I can tell, someone simply took a sledge hammer to the thing. Bashed it up pretty good, too.”

“No way to fix it then?” asked Cade.

Olsen grinned. “I didn’t say that. They pounded the hell out of the main generator, so that’s toast, but they didn’t do that much damage to either of the emergency back-up units.” He pointed off behind the primary generator, to an alcove that Cade hadn’t noticed. “Give me a couple of hours and I’m pretty sure I can have at least one of them up and running. These old generators are pretty tough.”

“Good. Grab whoever you think can help and get to work.” Cade informed the rest of the team that they would be taking a short break and settled down to wait.

It took closer to three hours thanks to the lack of proper tools, but in the end Sergeant Olsen was as good as his word. After ordering everyone to stand clear, he threw the master switch on the control panel and then stepped back to watch with the rest of them. A high pitched whine filled the room and then the turbine lowered itself into the river where it began to turn, once, twice, three times, each successive revolution spilling more and more electrical current into the generator, until the turbine was churning along so quickly that it couldn’t be followed with the naked eye.

The lamps on the ceiling above flickered and then blossomed to life. Light returned to the Eden facility for the first time in three weeks. It was dim light, yes, but light nonetheless and Cade knew that every member of his team was glad to see it. The light would help push back the darkness and make searching the rest of the facility that much easier. The sight of it made him realize just how little he’d been looking forward to hunting that shadow thing in the dark.