Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers
Page 91
Dom and Jack could scurry off, lie in the snow, hide. However,
obviously little traffic passed through here, for the snow around the
smaller door was smooth and undisturbed when they arrived; therefore,
the fresh tracks they left would guarantee apprehension as surely as a
tripped alarm. They had to get inside quickly-if they had any hope of
getting inside at all.
The smaller single door to the right of the blast doors looked no less
formidable than those giant portals, but Jack was unperturbed. He had
brought along an attachs-sized computer called SLICKS, and although
Ginger had forgotten exactly what the acronym stood for, she knew from
Jack that it was a device for penetrating electronic locks of various
types and that it was not for sale to members of the general public. She
did not ask where he had gotten it.
They worked in silence. Ginger kept a lookout for incoming headlights
from the main gate and surveyed the snowy expanse of the meadow for a
foot patrol, though they were confident no guards were on prowl. Dom
held a flashlight on the ten-digit codeboard that was the equivalent of
a keyhole in an ordinary door, while Jack employed the probes of the
SLICKS in search of the sequence of numbers that would gain entrance.
Crouching on one knee in the snow, alert for trouble, Ginger felt
exposed-and much farther than twenty-four hundred miles from her life in
Boston. The wind stung her face. The snow melted in her lashes and
trickled into her eyes. What a cockamamy situation. Meshugge. That an
innocent person could be driven to such a state as they'd been. Who did
this damn Colonel Falkirk think he was? The people who gave him his
orders-who did they think they were? Not true Americans. Real
momzers-that's what they were, all of them. She remembered the picture
of Falkirk in the newspaper: She had known at once that he was a
treyfnyak, a person not to be trusted, not an inch, never. And she knew
something else, too: Whenever she began to pepper her thoughts or her
speech with this much Yiddish, she must be in deep trouble or very much
afraid.
Less than four minutes after Jack set to work, Ginger was startled by a
whoosh of compressed air behind her. She turned and saw the door had
already slid into its recess. Dom stumbled back in surprise. Jack fell
on his butt. When Ginger went to help him up, he showed her that the
door had slid open so suddenly and with such force that he had not had
time to withdraw the SLICKS probe from the mechanism; it had torn the
probe right out of the computer.
But the door was open, and no alarms were ringing. Beyond was a
twelve-foot-long concrete tunnel, about eight or nine feet in diameter.
It was lit by fluorescent bulbs. It angled to the left, where it ended
at another steel door.
"Stay here," Jack said, stepping into the tunnel to look around.
Ginger stood at Dom's side, and though she knew part of the plan was to
give themselves up as hostages, she also knew that, on instinct, she
would bolt and run at the first sign of trouble. Dom apparently sensed
her thoughts, for he put an arm around her as much to restrain her as to
reassure her that she was not alone.
After a minute or so, when still no alarm bells or sirens had split the
night, Jack stepped back out into the storm and joined them where they
stood six or eight feet from the door. "Two surveillance cameras on the
ceiling of the tunnel-"
"They saw you?" Dom asked.
"I don't believe so, no. Because they didn't track my movements. I
suspect you have to close the outer door before there's any hope of
getting the inner door open, and as soon as you do close the outer door,
the cameras are activated. I also noticed some gas jets concealed along
the lighting fixtures. Way I see it-you close the outer door, and the
cameras look you over, and if they don't like what they see, they can
hit you with either a knockout gas or something deadly."
Dom said, "We're ready to be captured, but not gassed like moles."
"We aren't going to close the outer door unless we've already got the
inner one open," Jack said.
"But you told us that wasn't-"
"There may be a way," Jack said, winking his cast eye.
The first step was to pile their rucksacks out of the way and cover them
with snow. Jack did not think they would have any further need of his
high-tech devices and would only be slowed down by the weight. The
second step, after they entered the tunnel, was for Dom to lift Ginger
so, instructed by Jack, she could use a knife to saw through the wires
on the surveillance cameras, putting them out of commission. Again, she
expected an alarm to go off, but none did.
Leaving the outer door open, Jack led them to the inner barrier. "This
one has no keyboard to disengage the lock, so it doesn't matter that the
SLICKS was damaged."
"Should we be talking in here?" Ginger asked nervously.
"Aren't there liable to be microphones?"
"Yes, but I doubt anyone's monitoring until that outer door closes,
because that's probably what engages the computer's
attention and starts the clearance program for anyone trying to enter.
And even if there's a guard beyond this door, he's not going to hear our
voices through all this steel. Not even if we shout," Jack said, though
he spoke barely above a whisper. He pointed to a panel of glass set in
the tunnel wall to the right of the door. "That's the only way to
unlock it. They were just starting to install locks like this in
high-security installations when I left the service eight years ago. You
put your palm against the glass, the security computer scans your
prints, and if you're authorized to enter, the door opens."
"And if you're not authorized to enter?" Dom asked in a whisper.
"The gas jets."
"So how can you open it?" Ginger asked.
"I can't," Jack said.
"But you said-"
"I said there might be a way," Jack told her. "And there might." He
looked at Dom and smiled. "You can probably open it."
Dom stared at Jack as if the ex-thief had lost his mind. "Me? You
serious? What would I know about sophisticated security systems?"
"Nothing," Jack said. "But you have the power to peel thousands of
paper moons off walls and send them dancing through the air all at once,
and you can levitate a score of chairs and perform other nitty tricks,
so I don't see why you can't . . . reach into the mechanism of that
door and cause it to slide open."
"But I can't. I don't know how."
"Think about it, concentrate, do whatever you did to move the salt
shaker last night."
Dom shook his head vigorously. "I can't control the power. You saw how
it got out of hand. What if it runs wild here?
I could hurt you or Ginger. I might inadvertently activate the gas jets
and kill us all. No, no. Too risky."
They stood in silence for a moment, with the wind huffing and whistling
eerily at the open outer door.
Jack said, "Dom, if you don't try, then the only way we'll get
inside is
as captives."
Dom remained adamant.
Jack walked back to the outer door. Ginger started to follow him
because she thought he was leaving: But he stopped just inside the mouth
of the tunnel and raised his hand over a button on the wall. He said,
"This is a heat-sensitive switch, Dom. If you won't try to open that
inner door, then I'll touch this switch and close the outer door,
trapping us here. That'll start the computer's entry-clearance program,
and when the computer discovers the surveillance cameras have been put
out of commission, it'll sound an alarm that'll alert the security men."
"One of the reasons we came here was to be caught," Dom said.
"We came to have a look around and then get caught, if possible."
"Well," Dom said, "we'll have to settle for just getting caught."
The tunnel's heat had escaped into the night. Their breath plumed from
them again. Those smoking exhalations heightened the impression that
the two men were engaged in a battle, though it was a battle of wills
rather than one of physical strength.
Standing between them, Ginger had no doubt who would win. She liked and
admired Dom Corvaisis more than any man she had met in a long time,
partly because he seemed to embody both the drive and determination of
Anna Weiss and the modest shyness of Jacob. He was good-hearted and, in
his own way, wise. She would have trusted him with her life. In fact,
she had already trusted him with it. But she knew Jack Twist would win,
for he was used to winning, while Dom, by his own admission, had been a
winner only since the summer before last.
Jack said, "If they can't see us, they'll gas us for sure. Maybe they'll
just sedate us. But maybe, to be safe, they'll use cyanide gas or some
deadly nerve gas that'll penetrate our clothes because, after all, they
can't be sure we're not wearing gas masks."
"You're bluffing," Dom said.
"Am I?" Jack said.
"You wouldn't kill us."
"You're dealing with a professional criminal, remember?"
"You were. No more."
"Still got a black heart," Jack said, grinning, and this time there was
a disconcertingly maniacal note to his humor and a cold glint in his
misaligned eye that made Ginger wonder
if he actually might risk killing them all if he didn't get his way.
"Our dying isn't part of the plan," Dom said. "It'll screw up
everything."
"And your refusal to help-that's not part of the plan, either," Jack
said. "For God's sake, Dom, do it!"
Dom hesitated. He glanced at Ginger. "Step as far out of the way as
you can."
She moved back beside Jack Twist.
"Dom, if it does come open," Jack said, still keeping one hand raised
over the heat-sensitive switch that would close the outer door, "go
through fast. There's a guard in there somewhere. He'll be real
surprised when the door opens because the entry-clearance program hasn't
been run. If you can knock him down quickly, I'll be right behind you
to silence him. That'll improve our chances of getting deeper into the
installation and seeing what's to see before they nail our asses."
Dom nodded, faced the inner door again. He looked over the frame, put
one hand to the steel, moved his fingertips back and forth in the manner
of an old-time safecracker feeling for the telltale vibration of falling
tumblers. Then he turned to study the glass panel that read palmprints
and fingerprints.
Jack lowered his hand from the switch that he'd threatened to hit, and
glanced at the stormy night beyond the outer door. He whispered so
softly to Ginger that Dom, at the far end of the tunnel, could not have
heard: "I get a creepy feeling that, any minute now, the giant's going
to come down the beanstalk and stomp us all flat."
She knew then that he would not have risked their destruction, that he
would probably just have led them out to the guardhouse at the main gate
and asked to be arrested. But with his murderous glower, he had been
thoroughly convincing.
Abruptly, the inner door whooshed open. Even though Dom was the agent
of its movement, he was so startled that he jumped back a step instead
of rushing through immediately, as Jack had told him to do. He realized
his error as he made it, and he leapt across the threshold, into the
subterranean world beyond.
Jack hit the button to close the outer door even before Dom was across
the inner threshold, then ran after the writer.
Ginger followed. She expected the sounds of struggle or gunfire, but
heard neither. When she stepped out of the concrete tunnel, she found
herself in another, huge tunnel with natural rock walls, where lights
were suspended from scaffolding overhead. The passage was about sixty
feet across, at least a hundred yards long, beginning inside the massive
steel blast doors, and ending far away at what appeared to be banks of
elevators. Three yards in from the door, a guard's table was cemented
to the concrete floor. A watchman's log was chained to the table. A
few issues of recent magazines were stacked beside the log. There was a
computer terminal as well. But no guards were in sight.
In fact, the entire tunnel was deserted. The place was as still and
silent as a mausoleum. Not even the drip of water from a stalactite or
the rustle of batwings in the vault above. But Ginger supposed that a
multibillion-dollar facility designed to weather World War III would not
be plagued by either condensation or flying rodents.
"Should be guards," Jack murmured. His voice echoed sibilantly off the
rock walls.
"What now?" Dom asked shakily. Clearly, he had been surprised by his
ability to focus his power so soon after the near-catastrophe in the
diner last night.
"Something's wrong," Jack said. "I don't know what. But no guard . .
. something's wrong." He skinned back the hood of his ski suit and
pulled the zipper down a few inches, and the others did the same. Jack
said softly, "This is just the cargo-receiving area. Trucks come in and
unload. The main part of the installation must be below us. So . . .
I don't like this emptiness . . . but I guess we go down."
"If we've got to go, then let's stop shmoozing and get a move on,"
Ginger said, heading toward the far end of the tunnel.
She heard the inner door swish as Jack closed it.
They went farther into Thunder Hill.
2.
Fear
They made hardly more noise than three mice easing past a dozing cat,
yet their footsteps echoed in the rock-walled vault.
Not loudly. The echoes did not sound like footsteps but rather like the
whispers and murmurs of conspirators hidden within the shadowed niches
on all sides.
Dom's uneasiness grew.
They crept past a couple of enormous elevators. Each of them was
seventy feet wide and nearly as deep, open platforms that were raised
and lowered by synchronized hydraulic shafts at each corner, more than
big enough to move fighter aircraft in and out of the bowels of the
mountain.
They passed smaller cargo lifts, too, and finally came to a
pair of standardsize elevators.
Before Jack could press the call button for the lift, Dom was hit by
another flash of memory. As before, it was sufficiently vivid to
displace current reality. This time, he recalled the crucial event of
July 6: the white-to-scarlet metamorphosis of the moon, which suddenly
proved not to be the moon at all but a head-on view of the rounded bow
of a descending ship. It was a plain cylinder with few features, none
remarkable, almost homely in a way, yet he sensed immediately that its
journey, ending here, had not begun anywhere on this world.
When the initial power of the memory faded enough to allow reality to
impinge upon him once more, Dom found himself leaning against the closed
doors of the lift with both hands, his head hanging down between his
arms. He felt a hand on his shoulder, turned, and saw Ginger. Jack was
standing behind her.
She said, "What's wrong?"
"I remembered . . . more.
"What?" Jack asked.
Dom told them.
He didn't need to convince them that contact with an extraterrestrial
craft had been made that summer night. The moment he reminded them of
what they'd seen, their own memory blocks crumbled as quickly as his. In
their faces, he saw the singularly unique blend of awe, terror, joy, and