The Buried

by Brett Battles

  “Where are you?”

  “We blew past Meriden about a minute ago,” she said. “If we’re lucky, the highway patrol will pull him over.”

  “That puts us about three minutes behind you. We’ll try to—”

  “Hold on, he’s slowing,” she said. “Dammit, I’m going to have to drive by him or he’ll suspect something.” She said nothing for a few seconds. “He’s turning down a dirt road.” She gave a quick description of where the road began. “Okay, he’s out of sight. I’m going to double back.”

  “Just wait at the turnoff until we get there,” Quinn said.

  No response.

  “Orlando?”

  “She hung up,” Nate said.

  “Get her back.”

  Nate called her again but was sent straight to voice mail.

  Quinn squeezed the steering wheel.

  Dammit!

  __________

  ORLANDO HEARD WHAT Quinn wanted her to do, but screw that. Who knew where the dirt road went? Orbits could be out of reach by the time the others reached her.

  “Orlan—”

  She turned her phone off and circled back to the turnoff for the dirt road. Orbits’s sedan had kicked up a small cloud of dust obscuring much of her view, but if she was having a hard time seeing him, he’d have the same problem with her.

  She turned across the highway and headed down the road.

  Not quite a mile in, she came to a T-bone intersection. Once again, it was dust that gave Orbits away. She followed for at least another mile until the dirt cloud disappeared. Ahead, the road was empty.

  Had Orbits hidden while she drove by? She twisted around as far as her body would allow, but she could see she was alone.

  She backtracked to the point where she estimated his dust trail had ended, but there was nowhere for him to go. It was as if he had vanished.

  She killed her engine and climbed out of the car. After a few seconds she heard a motor somewhere in the wilderness on the east side of the road.

  She walked down the shoulder, trying to judge exactly where it was coming from. About thirty yards back, she spotted an opening in the brush, just wide enough for a car. On the ground were two wheel ruts, overgrown with grass, and nailed to old fence posts on either side, half hidden by the brush, were faded NO TRESSPASSING signs.

  She had no idea what could be back there, but Orbits must have known. He’d headed directly here.

  She hurried back to her car.

  __________

  ORBITS PARKED IN the same spot he had the night before. It was different here in the daylight, not quite as eerie.

  He opened the back door and felt around under the front seat until he found his gun. After he put it back in his holster, he cut the ties holding the girl’s feet together and pulled her out. “Recognize this place?”

  If she did, she showed no sign of it.

  Grabbing her arm, he said, “This way,” and pushed her into the woods.

  After a few minutes of walking, they came to the barbed-wire fence.

  “Sit,” Orbits commanded her.

  Once she was down, Orbits looked around until he found a couple of suitable branches of similar size and used them to separate two of the wire strands, creating a hole wide enough to duck through. As soon as he was sure the braces would hold, he made the girl go through first before following.

  When they had reached the door in the middle of the clearing, the girl looked at it with a sort of awe, which made him think maybe this was her first time here.

  He moved her over to where the tumblers were, pushed her to her knees, and flipped open the Plexiglas lid. “Open it,” he said.

  Through her gag, she said, “Go to hell.”

  “We don’t have time to mess around. Open it!”

  She stared at him, unmoving.

  He pulled his gun out and placed it against the side of her head. “You either put in the combination or I pull the trigger. That’s a promise.”

  When she didn’t respond, he fired a bullet into the ground next to her leg and then aimed the gun at her head again. “Open it now.”

  __________

  DANI AND MARIANNE had never discussed this possibility. The assumption was that the location would never be found. That was their job, to keep it out of the hands of others.

  She remembered once asking Marianne why they couldn’t just forget where it was and have it be forever lost? But she already knew the answer. The promise they’d made in memory of their mother and to each other. The promise to, if not balance the scales, then tip them a little bit in that direction. It was their duty, their familial penance.

  If her captor were not alone, she would have chosen death rather than let him inside, knowing she wouldn’t have a chance of escape. But no one else was here and the man was clearly agitated. He’d likely make mistakes she could take advantage of.

  Live, Marianne whispered. Finish our work.

  Dani leaned over the tumblers and, with her hands still tied, turned them one by one until she’d input the full combination.

  From below the steel rose a soft hum.

  Dani jumped back as the hydraulic hinges began lifting the door open.

  “Nice!” the man shouted.

  When the door was out of the way, he and Dani looked in. A set of footholds were cut into the concrete wall below the door, running down like a ladder to a wide landing about eight feet down. On the left side of the landing was a door.

  “What’s down there?” the man asked.

  Dani said nothing.

  “There’s gotta be some lights.”

  She pointed at a junction box that could be accessed once they were on the landing.

  “You sure?”

  She shrugged.

  Hell, yes, she was sure. Though she had never been here, she knew every inch of this place. Marianne had drilled it into her.

  He studied the inside for a moment longer, and then said, “Here’s how we’re going to do this. I go first, but you come right after me. I’ll be holding on to you, so don’t even think about trying anything.”

  A hand around her ankle, he lowered himself through the opening until only his upper body was still outside.

  “Now you,” he said, giving her a yank.

  She moved her leg through the opening until her foot found the uppermost cutout.

  The man switched his hand from her ankle to the waist of her pants and gave it a tug. “Other leg.” When both her feet were on the cutout, he said, “How do we close this thing?”

  She made a sound to remind him she still had a gag in her mouth. The man reached up, untied the cloth, and let it drop to the landing.

  “Controls are there,” she said, pointing at three gray buttons just below the lip where the door would nestle.

  He reached toward them.

  “Wait,” she said. “It’s been a while since it was last opened. The door can come down pretty quick.” She didn’t know if the last was true or not, but an idea had begun to grow in her mind, and for it to work she needed to be the one who pushed the button. “Unless you want to get knocked the rest of the way down, we should get below door level first.”

  He pondered this for a moment before saying, “Fine. Let’s move it.”

  Once Dani’s head was lower than the door frame, she pushed the middle button, hoping she was remembering correctly.

  The first to open. The second to close. The third to lock.

  The third would turn the dials back to zero, and the combination would have to be entered again into the matching set of tumblers on the underside of the door, increasing the time it would take the exit to open again. She didn’t want that.

  Her plan was to sneak away when he was preoccupied and escape out the top. After she shut the metal door again, that’s when she would scramble the tumblers and lock him inside. Wait a month and he’d be dead for sure. She could then return and do the work she’d come back to the States to do.

  As the door swung down above her, sh
e shot a quick glance at the tumblers to make sure they hadn’t reset to 1. With relief, she saw the combo was still in place.

  “Hurry up,” the man said, pulling on her belt loop.

  She continued down.

  __________

  THE ROAD WAS so rough at times that Orlando was sure, despite her condition, she could have walked it faster. Though she tried avoiding the worst of it, the bumps and dips still banged at the undercarriage, threatening to rip the axles off. It became so bad that she had to focus all her attention on the tire ruts immediately in front of her, and didn’t notice Orbits’s car until it was right in front of her.

  She slammed on the brakes, ready to throw the car into reverse, but the other vehicle appeared empty and a scan revealed no one standing around. She retrieved her gun and stuffed an extra mag in her pocket before climbing out. In her head, she could hear Quinn telling her to stay in the car, but she knew the others might not arrive in time to help Dani.

  Keeping an eye on the woods in case Orbits was still around, she moved over to his car and double-checked inside. It was empty.

  A quick search of the area revealed fresh tracks leading to the northeast along what was left of the road. Orlando followed them to a barbed-wire fence, where a couple pieces of wood had been braced between two strands, creating a pass-through. She eased her way between them, and congratulated herself when she reached the other side without cutting herself or falling on her butt.

  Her celebration was short lived, however, as she was hit with another false contraction. This one was the most intense so far. About the only good thing was that it didn’t last too long, and soon she was moving again. The trail continued through the trees to the edge of a meadow.

  She stopped and looked around. Unless Orbits and Dani were lying in the grass, they weren’t in the meadow. She did see something odd. In the center, near two blocks of concrete that peeked up above the grass, was a pile of dirt that looked dark and rich, like it had recently been turned.

  She stepped out from the protection of the trees and cautiously approached the pile. What she found was certainly not what she’d expected. A metal door lay between a concrete frame, the dirt clearly having covered it until very recently. She was able to lift it about half an inch, but it was too heavy to move any further. Clearly it was unlocked, but it must have some sort of assist mechanism to get it open.

  Maybe she needed to reenter the combination to trigger the opening mechanism.

  After smoothing out part of the dirt pile, she wrote in it the numbers showing on the tumblers and then turned the dials, mixing them up. When she was done, she reinput the sequence.

  When she input the final number, she heard something hum inside.

  __________

  “THAT’S GOTTA BE wrong,” Quinn said.

  “No,” Nate told him. He was looking at the phone locator app on his cell. Even though Orlando’s phone was off, she hadn’t pulled her SIM card and they could still track it. Nate pointed out the window. “She went right through there and is about a half mile back.”

  “Is it just me,” Ananke said, leaning over Daeng so she could see out his window, “or does that look like a road someone would take at the beginning of a bad horror film?”

  Quinn didn’t like the looks of it, either. Orlando should have waited for them.

  He switched the Explorer into four-wheel drive and turned down the road.

  “Do you hear them?” Ananke asked.

  “Hear who?” Daeng said.

  “Everyone in the theater yelling, ‘Don’t go that way! Don’t go that way!’”

  Quinn pushed the SUV, not worrying about what damage he might be doing to the suspension. Even then, the going was slow, and it took nearly five minutes before Orlando’s sedan came into sight.

  “There’s another car in front of hers,” Nate said. “Looks like Orbits’s.”

  The Explorer skidded to a stop. Quinn jumped out, gun drawn, and rushed over to Orlando’s car.

  Empty.

  He circled the sedan, looking for any signs of struggle or gunfire, but there were none.

  Orbits’s vehicle was also deserted.

  “I’ve got tracks over here,” Daeng yelled. He had moved down the road beyond the two cars.

  They all converged on his location.

  Nate looked at his cell. “That’s the direction her phone’s in, too.”

  Without a word, they headed deeper into the woods.

  CHAPTER 40

  THE SPIRAL STAIRS had walls on both sides, preventing Orbits from getting any sense of what they had entered.

  An old mine? Was there anything to dig for in this part of Kansas? He didn’t know. The last time he’d been in the state was on a road trip with his parents when he was thirteen. All he remembered from back then was that the place seemed like one giant farm.

  “This had better open up into something,” he said.

  Walking a few steps in front of him, the girl remained silent.

  Round and round they went, each section looking exactly like the last. At one point he heard a faint noise coming from behind them. He’d made Danielle stop while he listened, but after several seconds of quiet, he told her to get moving again.

  Finally, the stairs ended at another landing. It, too, had a door, though this one was on the wall they’d been circling.

  As Danielle reached for the handle, Orbits said, “Wait.” He grabbed the back of her shirt. “Okay, open it. Slowly.”

  The door opened inward, so Danielle had to step over the threshold as she pushed it. Orbits dashed in behind her.

  “Where’s the lights?” he asked.

  Except for the light spilling in from the stairwell, the space was dark.

  Danielle stepped over to a box on the wall near the door, identical to the one on the upper landing, and flipped on the switches inside.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then high above them a vapor light flickered to life, and then another and another and another. It took several seconds for them to come to full strength, but even before they reached that point, Orbits could see he and the girl were inside a giant tube, with pipes and steel grating hugging the sides all the way up. The entire floor was clear, though there were scars in the concrete where things had been anchored. Equipment, perhaps?

  He almost asked what the hell this place was when it dawned on him.

  Frowning, he said, “This is what all the fuss is about? Some damn empty missile silo? I got news for you. You can buy one of these off the Internet for a couple hundred grand. Why would someone want to pay fifty million so you could guide them here?”

  __________

  FOR A FEW seconds, Dani forgot she’d been brought here against her will. She stared upward into the vast space above them as the lights came on, hardly believing she was finally seeing it with her own eyes.

  There, just like Marianne had described them, were the gantries that would be lowered when a missile was in place for technicians to work on. Next to them, the conduits that carried the wires controlling the concrete doors at the very top, now buried under several feet of dirt. Off to the right, near the floor, was the hatch covering the service tunnel. And there, straight ahead, was the unassuming door behind which was her father’s unwanted legacy.

  When her captor started talking, reality came crashing back. “Why would someone want to pay fifty million so you could guide them here?”

  She’d been so conditioned to protect the secret that her arm felt like it weighed a ton as she lifted it and pointed at the door across the room.

  The man’s gaze followed the motion. “Yeah? So? It’s a door. What about it?”

  Her throat had never felt so dry, and she was sure she wouldn’t be able to answer, but her only hope lay in getting him into the other side of the facility. She swallowed. “It’s what you came for,” she said, forcing out the words.

  He grimaced, his expression turning annoyed. “And what exactly would that be?”

  “It’s easi
er if…if I show you.”

  She started toward the door, hoping he would follow. After a brief hesitation, he did.

  __________

  KNOWING THAT BEING underground would interfere with the ability to track her phone, Orlando set her cell on top of one of the concrete blocks and climbed down the hole, leaving the door open. Descending the built-in ladder was not fun. If there were any more like it, she wouldn’t be going far. At least the baby hadn’t taken that moment to remind her it was almost time.

  On the other side of the landing door, she found a spiral staircase.

  Okay, she thought. This, I can do.

  As she moved downward, she detected the echo of footsteps ahead. How far away was hard to tell. It wasn’t long before they went silent.

  Around a hundred steps down, she stopped for a breather.

  Quinn’s voice in her head was even louder now, repeatedly telling her this was a bad idea.

  Bad or not, she wasn’t going to turn around now. She just prayed there was an elevator she could take back to the top.

  __________

  ORBITS ONCE MORE made Danielle open the door.

  A hallway, circular like a pipe, but made from corrugated metal. More a drainage pipe than sewer, Orbits thought.

  About thirty feet in, it bent to the left. After they rounded it, they walked about the same distance before coming to another door.

  “This had better be it,” he said, his patience all but gone.

  Without looking back at him, she said, “It is.”

  Danielle opened the door and turned on the lights.

  “There are three more floors like this,” she said.

  The room was full of stacked wooden crates of varying sizes, all in tidy rows.

  “What do we have here?” he asked.

  “See for yourself.”

  He walked over to a stack of boxes that were three times as long as they were thick.

  “How am I supposed to open this?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” Danielle.

  He considered it for a moment longer, and then said, “Screw it.”

  It took two shoves to move it far enough for gravity to send it crashing to the floor. Though the top didn’t come all the way off, it ripped from two of the sides, creating a gap through which he could see the barrel end of a rifle. He worked the weapon out the hole.