“No,” she replied. “Just a thin line between being paranoid and—”
“Getting kidnapped off a moving train in the middle of the night?”
Nellie glanced over. “Something like that.”
Sammy pointed at a sign. “Pull into that gas station.” He looked back as they slowed down. “Definitely following.”
He was right. The BMW was signaling to pull in, too.
“Park by the shop,” said Sammy. “I’m going to grab some snacks. Want anything?”
“Are you serious?” But Nellie did what Sammy said.
She watched the BMW from the mirror. It was waiting at the other end of the parking area.
Sammy was taking his time.
There were two guys in the car. Neither looked interested in getting out.
Nellie jumped as the door burst open. Sammy slid in and handed over a half-empty bag of marshmallows. “Want one?”
“What is going on?”
“Just drive.” He had a grin on his face that meant trouble for someone.
Nellie twisted the keys and began to reverse out. “You ate those real quick.”
Sammy held up the bag. “No. I’ve had two. Most of them are shoved up the exhaust pipe of that beautiful car.”
“What?”
“Oh, and an orange, too. Just to be sure.”
Nellie laughed as they rejoined the autobahn. She could just glimpse the BMW, still stationary in the parking area. “Why the marshmallows?”
“To stop the orange from rolling out. The exhaust was hot, the marshmallows would melt in seconds, and you know how sticky a molten marshmallow is. You don’t need to be a genius to think it through.”
Nellie glanced over to him. “But it helps, right?”
Sammy grinned. “It does indeed.”
Sammy hoisted his backpack out of the trunk of their rental car. “Looks like we’re walking from here.”
Nellie looked into the forest and decided she was totally a city girl. It looked grim and foreboding. Her red hoodie seemed like an omen. “But Granny told me to never, ever stray off the path.”
Sammy grinned. “What does your granny know about forests? She grew up in Brooklyn.”
Nellie buckled on her own pack and joined Sammy at the edge of the road. “How far is it?”
Sammy inspected the map, then pointed. “Eleven miles, northwest. We’ll be camping out tonight.”
“Then we’d better get a move on,” she said.
The canopy blocked out the sun but trapped in the heat. The breeze didn’t make it down to ground level, making the air thick and heavy. Insects busied themselves, and the forest was filled with their monotonous droning.
Nellie’s new boots chafed and she felt the sweat trickle down her back. She reached for her water bottle and found it already half empty. How far had they gone? Not even a mile.
It felt old, this place. Old and full of memories. The trees crowded around them, their branches creaking in the breeze, as if they were old men whispering among themselves. The boughs loomed low, with spindly, long fingers, dark and twisted. The moss-covered rocks had sunk in deep—they had settled there since the last ice age and weren’t in the mood to go anywhere soon. The trees that had died left their rotten trunks and were a breeding ground for yellow and green toadstools. The musky smell made Nellie think of predators.
She chattered at first, keeping them both distracted from the hard slog. And hard it was. The earth was soft and each step needed to be dragged out. There were fallen trunks to be clambered over and streams to be jumped. The ground rolled up and down, forcing them to scurry up slopes on their hands and knees and creep down slopes, watching for roots and holes that could easily snap an ankle if they weren’t careful.
After a couple of hours her talk ceased. Nellie walked, head down, breathing heavily as they plowed on. The pair stopped every few minutes to check their GPS and the map, try to smile at each other, then march on.
Nellie’s clothes were drenched. She wanted a cool dip in some lovely, fairy-tale pool. But the only water they found was brown and algae-covered and stinking.
Sammy stopped by a mound of ivy covering what appeared to be a boulder. “Look at what I’ve found.”
“Let me guess. A gingerbread house?”
He pulled at a handful of vine. “It’s a Jeep.”
Nellie helped drag off the upper layer of foliage. After a few minutes they’d revealed the hood and a twisted, broken windshield.
The rust had eaten away much of the metal but what was left remained an army green. Sammy got out a utility knife and scraped away at the license plate. “Registration’s from 1965. Military.”
“Think it’s got something to do with the research facility?” Nellie asked. But there was nothing else around here except for trees and more trees. Certainly no buildings or any signs of an encampment or base. She sighed. Maybe there was nothing left here to find; it had been over fifty years.
Sammy tapped his map. “Grace kept these coordinates for something.” He stood up. “Come on. Let’s get as far as we can before nightfall.”
They managed to cover another five miles before the shadows took control of the forest. The lack of light turned the uneven ground into an obstacle course. They stumbled over hidden roots every dozen yards, and tripped over a buried rock every twenty.
Sammy took off his backpack. “That’s it, Nellie, we’re not going any farther.”
“But we’ve only got another four miles left.”
He stretched. “And we’re averaging two miles an hour. We stop here and hit our goal tomorrow morning. I’ve read too many fairy tales to go wandering around forests at night. This place gives me the creeps.”
Nellie took off her own backpack and flipped open the top. “There’s only one way of dealing with the creeps.” She dug deep into her pack and found her stash. She pulled it out and handed it over. “Here we go.”
“Candy?” said Sammy. “I was expecting something with a trigger.”
“Not mere candy, Belgian chocolate. Made in Bruges.”
Sammy snapped the bar and peeled off the wrapper. “I don’t see—”
“Wait a minute. You do not just stuff handmade chocolate with eighty-five-percent cocoa content in your mouth like that.” She shook a packet of ground coffee. “Get a fire started.”
* * *
“This. Is. Amazing,” said Sammy.
The sun was long gone. The tent was up, a green camo number that they’d grabbed on the way up here. The fire was bright and warm and working on getting their dinner ready.
“For a science geek, you’re pretty outdoorsy,” said Nellie.
“Plenty of trips out into the desert to view the stars,” Sammy replied. “You bring the chocolate, I’ll bring the telescope.”
Nellie watched the dancing flames. Her head dipped. A yawn stretched out of her mouth. She knew she should move to the tent but her limbs were just too heavy to be bothered to carry her the three yards to where her sleeping bag lay. She let the flames warm her toes, wiggling free after a day packed in her hiking boots.
Sammy sat up. “Hear that?”
Blinking, Nellie shook the sleep fuzz out. “What?”
Sammy didn’t speak. He stood up slowly, quietly, back to the flames so he could search the darkness.
A crack of a twig. The groan of a branch bending and leaves shaking as something brushed past.
Nellie gripped a frying pan.
The air quivered with a soft, predatory growl.
A wolf?
Nellie swallowed. Meeting a wolf in the woods was not on her bucket list.
The line of trees broke up the cast of the firelight. The unsteady flames made the ground seem to move, the shadows jump.
But there was definitely something out there.…
And it was big. Really big.
A bear?
Pale yellow eyes stared out from under a shadowy brow and Nellie shivered as the creature snarled, its cracked lips parting to r
eveal crooked, ivory fangs.
“I wish you’d packed a bazooka,” whispered Sammy, trying to hide his fear in a bad joke.
It prowled at the edge of their campfire; Nellie dared not move. The best she could do was slant sideways and see the sweat trickle down Sammy’s forehead.
The creature snorted, and then the twigs crunched and trees shook as it lumbered away.
And Nellie breathed again. “What was it?”
Sammy stared at his shaking hands and turned them into fists to try to still them. He met her gaze. “Nothing good.”
Somehow Nellie slept. She woke with the birds, and the glow of morning sunlight filled the tent.
Sammy’s sleeping bag was empty.
She jerked up and ran out. “Sammy? Sammy?”
“Here.”
Nellie went to where he was crouched and slapped his head. “Do not go off like that. I thought—”
“Look at this.” He pointed to a mark on the ground.
The leaves had been pushed into the mossy earth. The shape had sprung back an inch or two, but it was some sort of paw print. Sammy spread his hand over it. “Not even close. The thing was huge. A monster.”
“They have bears in this part of the world.”
“Have a look.”
Sammy was right; they were big paw prints, and the beast had claws longer than her finger. But there was something odd about them.…
She frowned. There had to be an explanation. “Maybe it doubled back a few paces.”
Sammy shook his head. “No. See how the front paws are sunk deeper in? That’s because it was moving forward. So that raises an important question, doesn’t it?”
Nellie recounted the prints in the mud. “What sort of animal has six legs?”
Despite the creeping heat, Nellie shivered. “I don’t want to hang around here any longer. Let’s get this over and done with.”
Sammy stood up. He didn’t look well rested. “Whatever’s out here better be worth it.”
It didn’t take long to pack and be on their way. Their gear was lighter; there was less food and water, and Nellie hoped that they’d make it back before things got desperate. But if she’d hoped they’d make quicker time, she was sadly mistaken. The ground became rougher and denser as they ventured deeper into the heart of the forest.
It was midafternoon when they came across it.
The fence.
Vines had crawled over the links and the bare metal was rusted through and through. The upper section had been wound with barbed wire, but that was now just covered in windblown moss, great clumps hanging down from the spikes like some green headdress.
A rusty sign dangled from its one remaining nail.
“ ‘Verboten,’ ” read Nellie. “Forbidden.”
“Yeah, kinda guessed that.” Sammy pointed up high. “Check out the watchtowers.”
They slipped through one of the tears in the perimeter fence and came across what had first appeared as small hillocks but were actually outbuildings, now covered in foliage. They had rotted through, their roofs collapsed and broken up by the relentless mark of time and tree roots. The whole site had a damp, forgotten odor. Nellie spotted another abandoned Jeep and, hidden within the trees, a few more outbuildings. The forest had claimed this place back, and it hadn’t taken long.
Sammy spotted a rusty tank. He hammered it, listening to the dull echo, then pointed up to a vine-covered flue. “Generator. Still has some fuel.”
Twenty or so yards beyond was a hillside with a steel door set into it. The wind had blown decades’ worth of leaves and other detritus up against it, and it was pitted with age and corrosion.
And it was open.
“I’m not sure that’s good or bad,” said Sammy.
“The pneumatics look like they corroded,” he said, inspecting the doors. “No pressure to keep them shut so they just rolled open.”
They approached the main building. It was windowless, built of solid concrete, and seemed to extend into the side of a low hill.
Nellie kicked the wall. “Looks like a bomb shelter.” She wrinkled her nose as she peered into the darkness beyond. “You smell that?” It was more than just stale air. It was foul, like a chemistry experiment gone wrong.
“It would be hard not to.” He unclipped his flashlight from his belt. “Well, this is the address. Let’s go check it out.”
Cobwebs surrounded the lighting fixtures. The walls and floor were bare concrete, painted a faded khaki. Long tin ducts ran along the ceiling and there was a vast web of wiring, crisscrossing above them, strung out from old trunking down corridors that branched off from this central spine. Alongside the ducts were lines of pipes, big, small, color-coded. Doors, steel-plated, ran along both sides, neatly and identically spaced with regimental precision.
Sammy gazed around in awe. “Wow. A bona fide Cold War secret base. I’ve read about them but never thought I’d ever get a chance to explore one.” He clicked with his cell. “Now, this is going on my Facebook page.”
“Be serious, Sammy.”
“Hey, if it isn’t on Facebook it never happened.”
Nellie brushed aside a cobweb from a signboard. “It’s in German and English.”
“We’re on the side that would have been West Germany, so that’s not odd. If we’d been across the border, the signs would have been in German and Russian,” Sammy noted.
“But why is it here? And what was Nathaniel up to?”
“See these pipes?” Sammy stuck his thumb up.
“Yes. What about them?”
He reached up and tapped one. “This is nitrogen oxide. This is oxygen. Then we’ve got carbon dioxide in here and methane in this one. All empty by now, but this is identical to what we’ve got running along the corridors in our university science department.”
“You’re saying we’re in some laboratory?”
Sammy nodded. “And this is where I tell you I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Look.” He shone his flashlight along the wall. “A place like this would have emergency backup.”
The light swept onto a large steel control panel. Sammy wiped off the dust and cobwebs and inspected the buttons. “And let there be light.” He flipped a row of switches.
The wiring over their heads crackled, and sparks jumped from the sockets. From outside Nellie heard the old generator splutter to life, its pistons pushing against decades’ worth of grime. But fitfully some of the lights came on.
There was still plenty of darkness, like in the corridor to their left. Sammy checked it with his flashlight.
The corridor ended with a steel doorway. Beside it was a row of moth-eaten hazmat suits and a shower, used in case of contamination. Beneath the suits were rubber boots, all rotted through and home for mice.
“Uh-oh,” muttered Sammy, staring at the sign on the steel door facing them.
The door was marked with the yellow-and-black trefoil, the international symbol for radiation.
“You think we should go in?” said Nellie.
“I’d rather not.”
Nellie picked one of the suits off its hook. There was a name tag sewn onto its breast. “I really think we should.”
She showed Sammy the tag.
It read MAJOR NATHANIEL HARTFORD.
Shanghai, China
The audience made their way into the control room. They were stunned into silence.
“Please, no photos,” said Dr. Lin. “The owners would like to keep their technology a secret for now.”
“Owners?” asked Amy.
“A partnership between the Chinese government and private industrialists.”
Amy gazed up. “And this reactor is right under Shanghai?”
“One hundred and four meters,” answered Dr. Lin. “As I previously said, transmission losses through cabling can reduce supply by around thirty percent on average. So by building stations closer to point of use, we save considerable energy, allowing us to build smaller, more cost-effective stations. What you see here is as mu
ch a research facility as it is a power station. We intend to solve the riddle of fusion once and for all.”
“Nuclear fusion?” asked Ham.
Dr. Lin smiled at him. “All nuclear power stations at present operate on the principle of energy released through fission, splitting atoms. But fusion, the reaction that powers the sun itself, releases energy by joining atoms. And the energy produced by fusion is three times greater than by fission.”
“And it’s clean,” added one of the other scientists as he inspected the control panels. “You’ve managed to do that?”
Dr. Lin frowned. “The system is in place, and we have had moderate success. It provides a small percentage of the city’s energy, almost five percent.”
“And the rest of the time you run on good old fission?” said Jonah.
Dr. Lin met his gaze. “By the end of the year we are on target to double the fusion output.” She clapped her hands. “Now for the tour. Would you follow the guides to the elevators outside? I have the head of engineering waiting below to show you the turbines.”
There were only three elevators and everyone was trying to be first. Dr. Lin smiled apologetically at Amy. “They are like schoolboys, yes?”
Amy grinned. If Sammy was here he’d have been deep in the scrum, too.
Dr. Lin shrugged and pointed to an elevator off to the side of the corridor. “Let’s take the freight elevator. It’s just as quick, and a short walk will have us in the engineering department ahead of the rest.”
She took her ID tag and swiped the keypad. The doors opened and they stepped into a plain box lined with dented sheet steel.
The door closed.
Dr. Lin pressed the lowest level. Amy noticed her hand tremble. “We’re going farther down?” asked Amy.
Dr. Lin smiled stiffly. “Yes.”
She’s sweating. Something’s wrong.
Dr. Lin backed into a corner.
“Ham … ” Amy warned.
“On it.” Ham pushed her and Jonah behind him.
The elevator stopped.
The door opened.
It happened so suddenly, so quickly, Amy didn’t even have time to scream.
Alek Spasky was waiting. He held his pistol close to his body but pointed at them.
Mission Atomic Page 8
