The Templar Chronicles Omnibus

by Joseph Nassise

  “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 t
o 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.

  Olsen walked over to him, wiping his greasy hands on a rag he’d found somewhere as he did so. “Without the power of the main generator, the emergency lights are the best I can do.”

  Cade clapped him on the back and let a grin spread across his face. “Trust me, I’ll take it. Good work. Riley’s got some grub waiting for you. We move out in twenty.”

  As his sergeant walked away, Cade looked up at the ceiling and considered the levels carved out of the rock above. Something was waiting for them up there, something dark and dangerous. He could feel it, watching, waiting, like a spider hunkered down in the dank recesses of its web, patiently biding its time before the arrival of the fly.

  But this time, the fly had come prepared to route out the spider. And it had teeth of its own.

  “Ready or not, here we come,” Cade said softly to the ceiling above him, felt his pulse quicken at the thought, and then turned back to prepare his men for what lay ahead.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Behind a door on the other side of the generator room, a staircase led upward. Ortega had found it during the initial sweep of the room and it was to this that Cade led his men when it was time to resume their investigation. He was uncomfortable with the confining nature of the stairwell, but it was a damn sight better than trusting the elevators to carry them to the upper floors.

  There were four sets of steps between each floor with a small platform between each opposing staircase. The dim lighting allowed them to see what was ahead of them clearly for the first time since entering the underground section of the base and for that Cade was grateful. The stairs disappeared upward as far as he could see, which suggested that they extended all the way to the top floor of the facility. That posed an interesting tactical problem for him, as he wasn’t sure how he was going to keep anything from slipping down the stairs passed them while they explored each level. Posting a guard at the stairwell was the likely solution, but he was against leaving any one man on his own and that would mean the point team would be two men short. Still, it didn’t look like he had much of a choice.

  He sent the team upward in groups of two, with a few feet between each group. Olsen and Riley went up first, with the latter in the lead. He and Duncan followed next. Behind them came Chen and Gardner. Davis and Ortega brought up the rear.

  They climbed the stairs to the second floor without incident. Cade contacted Davis and Ortega over the tactical channel. “I want the two of you to stay here and keep an eye on the stairwell. If you get any kind of movement, let us know immediately. I’ll let you know when we’ve secured the level and have you rejoin us then.”

  With that issue resolved, Cade turned back to the others and gave the signal to advance.

  Knowing the enemy was still out there somewhere, they came through the door leading to level two as if it were a hot entry, moving fast with guns drawn. The lights, dim though they were, made it much easier for them to rule out potential threats and it wasn’t long before the calls of “clear” reached Cade over the tactical channel, letting him know that there weren’t any immediate problems that had to deal with. After that, Echo began to make a slow, detailed search of the level before them.

  The first six doors on either side of the corridor led to a series of storerooms, each one filled with an amazing variety of materials, twelve storerooms in all. It was as if Vargas had believed they would be down here for some time and wanted to limit contact with the surface as much as possible. Cloth, lumber, dried foods, medical equipment, potting soil, plastics; you name it and it was there, packed up and stored for later use. Most of it was in marked crates and after verifying that the markings matched the contents on the first few in each room, Cade ordered that the crates themselves be left alone. They gave no real indication of what the facility had been designed for and they didn’t help them uncover the nature of their enemy, so as far as he was concerned they were superfluous.

  The corridor turned left after the storerooms and Echo found itself standing at one end of a massive kitchen area. Large preparation stations ran through the center of the room, with racks full of shiny steel pots hanging above them, and a row of ovens stretched down the left-hand wall. On the right, four refrigeration units stood next to the entrance to an industrial size walk-in freezer.

  “All right, you know the drill. Top to bottom and let’s be swift about it.”

  The men of Echo moved into the kitchen.

  *** ***

  As the others began hunting through the pantry and cabinets, Duncan stepped up to the freezer. Cold air wafted out when he opened the door, surprising him. The power hadn’t been restored for that long; there was no way the freezer could have gotten this cold in such a short time.

  The place had obviously been stocked for the long haul. Large steel shelving units stood on either side of the central aisle and many of these were covered with foodstuffs, from large bags of vegetables to frozen turkeys. To Duncan, it looked like enough food to feed a good sized group for several months.

  He grabbed a carton off the nearest shelf and used it to prop open the door. Satisfied that he wouldn’t be accidentally locked inside, he cautiously moved deeper into the space.

  If the power had been turned off for any length of time, most of the contents here would have defrosted and begun to rot by now. Duncan could immediately see that wasn’t the case. Water dripped off many of the packages, pooling on the floor beneath his feet in wide puddles, but the few items he touched were still mostly frozen.

  Which meant whoever had trashed the generator had done so only a few hours before their arrival.

  The thought was not a welcome one, for it was another clue that pointed to the fact that their arrival had been anticipated.

  Past the shelving there was a large section of the freezer serving as a meat locker, with more than a dozen slabs of beef hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Here, too, the puddles were forming, but the beef was still coated in many places by a thick sheen of frost.

  Just beyond the meat, Duncan found the first body.

  The man had been in his mid-fifties, with a wide doughy face and only a thin wave of hair covering his scalp. He had pulled himself into a corner but kept his face turned toward the door; as if afraid something would follow him inside. His eyes were open wide and staring; Duncan could see ice crystals still formed over their surfaces.

  He was dressed in a blue jumpsuit and had black athletic shoes on his feet. On his right shoulder was a patch showing a green and vibrant earth over which the word EDEN was superimposed. Duncan couldn’t see any wounds on the body, nor where there any bloodstains on the floor nearby. It looked as if the man had simply frozen to death.

  A quick call over the radio and seconds later Cade and Riley had joined him beside the body.

  “You haven’t moved him at all?” Cade asked, as he moved around the body, studying it carefully.

  “No, haven’t touched him. That’s just how I found him.”

  Riley pulled a digital camera out of a pouch on his belt and took a couple of shots, documenting the find and gathering evidence that they might need later to reconstruct what had happened here.

  Once he was finished Cade squatted down in front of the body and stared at it for several long moments and then, after checking to be certain his gloves were firmly in place, reached forward and tried to move it from its position against the wall, without any success. “Give me a hand,” he said and Sgt. Riley stepped forward. Between the two of them they were able to peel the body away from the wall to which it had become frozen and lay it gently on the floor. Cade then began going through the man’s pockets, looking for identification or anything
that might tell them who he was or what he was doing here, but came up empty.

  “Ever seen that patch before?” Duncan asked and both of his teammates shook their heads.

  “Considering the quote we found back at the entrance, I’m guessing it’s the name of the project or of the facility itself,” Cade replied absently, his attention still occupied with the corpse in front of him.

  Riley snorted. “Yeah, a real garden of paradise. And this one apparently comes with its own serpent, too. Why am I not surprised?”

  Cade stood suddenly and walked back over to the freezer entrance. Putting his foot against the carton Duncan had placed there, he kicked it free and watched the door swing shut in his face.

  “Hey!” Duncan cried, rushing over. “You’ve locked us in!”

  “No, I didn’t,” Cade said without turning and reached out and opened the door from the inside to illustrate his point. “See?”

  “Oh,” Duncan replied sheepishly and then hesitated, turning back to look at the corpse behind them with a puzzled expression on his face. “Wait a minute,” he said. “If the door isn’t locked from the inside, why didn’t he just get up and leave?”

  No one had an answer and they remained lost in their individual thoughts for several long moments until Riley voiced the question that was hanging unspoken in the air between them.

  “What makes a man so scared that he would rather remain in here and freeze to death than face whatever was on the other side of those doors?”

  “I don’t know, but I think its time that we find out, don’t you?” Cade said. He propped the door open again and then, turning, walked back over to the body. Kneeling beside it, he pulled the flesh colored gloves he wore off both his hands.