Gideon's Corpse

by Douglas Preston

  There was a long, smoldering hesitation. Their eyes met. Gideon could still see doubt, hesitation, and anger.

  “Alida,” he said, “I don’t know how else to convince you except to appeal to your intuition. Please, please believe me.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Alida went around and collected the pistols from the floor and brought them over to Gideon. He ejected the magazines from all but one and stuck the magazines in his pocket. Then he unloaded the weapons of their chambered rounds, put these in his pocket, and dropped the empty firearms to the ground. He jammed the gun with the blanks into his belt. All the while he kept one hand on the cutoff switch. Finally, with the one loaded pistol in his hand, he took his hand away from the switch and, covering the men, went over to the door into the hallway, shut it, and turned the bolt.

  Just in time—he could hear the thunder of feet in the hall outside.

  A moment later he heard them at the door, trying to get in. There were shouts, pounding. Another alarm began to sound, this one louder.

  “Everyone on the floor—except you.” Gideon pointed the gun at the hysterical operator.

  The man raised his hands. “Please. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “I know you will. Unlock the door to the accelerator tunnel.”

  The man scurried to the back of the room, hastening to obey. Using a magnetic key, he unlocked a small door in the rear wall and opened it. A faint green glow emerged. Beyond the door, a curved, tube-like tunnel stretched ahead, going almost to the vanishing point. To the right was a catwalk. To the left was a complex cylindrical device, stretching on into infinity, covered with wires and tubing, like the stage of some monstrous rocket. A deep humming sound issued from it. It was a small, straight-line accelerator, some two thousand feet long, but Gideon knew the accelerator tunnel connected to much older tunnels, dating back to the Manhattan Project. Where those tunnels went he had no idea—they were blocked off behind locked doors.

  And yet they remained his only chance.

  Gideon motioned Alida through the door. Then he took the magnetic key from the operator, relieved the second operator of his key, and followed Alida into the tunnel.

  The door shut and locked behind them.

  Gideon turned to Alida. “I need to know: are you with me or not? Because if you’re not one hundred percent convinced of my innocence, this is as far as you’re going. I can’t risk another Judas moment like that.”

  The silence was interrupted by a flurry of pounding on the door, shouts, and the sound of a third alarm.

  She stared back at him. “My answer to you is, we’d better start running like hell.”

  41

  THEY SPRINTED DOWN the metal catwalk paralleling the live particle beam. “You know where we’re going?” Alida cried, her feet pounding along behind him.

  “Just follow me.”

  Shouts, suddenly loud, echoed down the tunnel behind them. Damn, Gideon thought. He’d hoped it would take them longer to get through the door.

  “Stop or we shoot!” came the barked command.

  They continued on. The accelerator was throbbing with high energy, and if the pipe got punctured by even a single round…“They’re bluffing,” Gideon said, “they won’t shoot.”

  Thwang! The shot ricocheted off the ceiling above their heads, followed quickly by others: Thwang! Thwang!

  “Sure, they won’t shoot,” Alida muttered, ducking as she ran.

  Gideon could hear feet pounding on the catwalk behind them.

  Thwang! Another round glanced off the wall, spraying them with chips.

  Gideon stopped, spun around, fired back at them with the stage gun. Their pursuers hit the deck.

  They ran on another twenty yards until Gideon found what he was looking for: an ancient metal door set into the cement wall. It was padlocked with an old brass lock.

  “Shit!” muttered Alida.

  Gideon turned and fired again with the fake gun, sending the guards sprawling to the ground a second time. Then he took out the real .45, pressed the barrel against the lock, and fired. The lock exploded. Gideon threw his weight against the metal door. It groaned but didn’t open.

  Alida tensed. “On three.”

  They slammed into the door simultaneously, forcing it open with a loud crack, just as more shots clanged off the door. They fell inside, slammed the metal door shut—and suddenly faced pitch blackness.

  Alida flicked on her lighter, dimly illuminating a crude, branching tunnel. He grabbed her hand and took one of the tunnels at random, pulling her along at a run. The lighter went out with the movement.

  He heard voices, a fresh groan of rusted steel. The metal door was being opened.

  Still gripping Alida’s hand, Gideon jogged ahead in the darkness, blind. They must have gone a few hundred yards when his feet tangled up with something on the ground and they fell together. He lay there in the dark, breathing hard, fumbling around until he found her hand again. He could hear voices behind them, echoing down the tunnel, distorted. They were not far. Did they have flashlights?

  A lancing beam of yellow answered his question—but the sweep of the beam overhead briefly illuminated another branching tunnel in the nearby wall. As soon as the light passed, Gideon pulled Alida to her feet, and they ducked into the alcove.

  Alida briefly flicked on her lighter. It went about twenty feet to a dead end—but at the far end of the cul-de-sac, an old rusted ladder climbed the stone wall. Gideon groped his way forward until he found the ladder, and they began to ascend. The voices behind them were getting louder; excited, aggressive.

  Up they climbed, in the darkness. Below, Gideon saw a light flash into the alcove, but they had already climbed high enough to be invisible. They kept going, moving as silently as possible, until they reached the top of the ladder. Another flick of Alida’s lighter revealed a horizontal tunnel, crowded with ancient, rusting equipment, apparently left over from the original Manhattan Project.

  Gideon climbed out and helped Alida up, wondering how much of the stuff was still hot.

  “Which way?” Alida whispered.

  “No idea.” Gideon started down the dark tunnel, moving in what he hoped was an easterly direction, toward White Rock Canyon. There were scraping sounds and voices in the shaft behind them: someone else was now climbing the ladder.

  He stumbled over something on the ground. “Let me have the lighter.”

  She palmed it to him. He flicked it on and saw rail tracks laid onto the floor of the tunnel. An old handcar, or pump trolley, sat on a nearby siding.

  A volley of shots sent them diving to the ground. Flashlight beams lanced up and around them.

  “Get on the handcar,” Gideon whispered. “Quickly.”

  In a second Alida had leapt onto the cart. Gideon gave it a shove, running it onto the main track and up to speed, then jumped on himself. The pump handle moved up and down with a creaking of metal, rusty and covered with dust but still in working order. Gideon worked the handle to keep it going as more rounds ricocheted through the cavern. The car went squealing along the metal track, gaining speed as it entered a downhill grade.

  “Oh, shit,” said Alida.

  Gideon stopped pumping—but it made no difference. Faster and faster went the pump, its twin handles flying up and down on their own. The shots and cries began to recede.

  “This was a really bad idea,” said Alida, crouching and gripping the wooden sides of the handcar.

  The car was now barreling downhill, in utter blackness, heading for only God knew where.

  42

  THEY CAREENED ALONG the track, unable to see anything. A stale cave-wind whistled past Gideon’s head as he crouched in terror, groping for a better handhold, bracing for the inevitable crash.

  “A brake!” yelled Alida. “This thing’s got to have a brake!”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  He flicked on the lighter, and—in the brief spark before it went out—made out an old iron foot pedal on
the side of the car, between the sets of wheels. Desperately, he jammed down on it with his foot. There was an earsplitting screech, an explosion of sparks burst around and behind them, and they were thrown forward as the cart decelerated, vibrating wildly, threatening to jump the tracks. He quickly eased up and applied the brake more evenly, slowly increasing the pressure. The cart wailed and groaned and finally came to a shuddering halt.

  “Nice work, Casey Jones.”

  Gingerly Gideon got off, then flicked the lighter. The tunnel stretched on ahead, making what looked like the beginning of a long curve. Not far ahead, however, a large pile of rocks lay across the tracks, apparently having fallen from the ceiling. The tunnel was blocked across its entire width.

  “Jesus,” muttered Alida. “You stopped us just in time.”

  Gideon could still make out, far away, the distorted, echoing voices of the NEST team. They had only gained a few minutes.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand.

  He jogged forward to the rock pile and they began to climb it, Gideon flicking on the lighter every few seconds in order to orient themselves. He could hear the sound of distant running.

  “I don’t need hand-holding,” said Alida, trying to shake free of his hand.

  “I do.”

  At last they reached the top of the pile and clambered down the other side. They made their way on down the tunnel as quickly as they could, climbing over two additional cave-ins, until at last they reached one that blocked the tunnel completely.

  “Damn,” said Alida, staring up at the rock pile. “Did we pass any side tunnels back there?”

  “None,” said Gideon, staring at the pile of loose rocks. He held the lighter up. The ceiling was rotten, but there was no opening or way through. It was a dead end.

  “We’d better figure out something quick.”

  “Like I said, we didn’t pass any side tunnels. But we did pass some blasting supplies.”

  “No. Oh no.”

  “You stay here.”

  Gideon picked his way back. The voices were getting louder, and he thought he could see the faint flicker of light in the dusty air. Their pursuers were coming on fast.

  He reached the supplies—stacks of blasting mats, boxes of wadding, old drill bits, cord. There was a cache of wooden boxes in a far corner, and he ripped the rotten lid off one: blasting caps. He tried to lift the box but it collapsed, the caps spilling all over. Everything was rotten.

  Now flashlight beams were flicking about, piercing the rising columns of dust. “Hey! Over there!” came a shout, followed by a shot.

  Gideon extinguished the lighter, dropping into a crouch. If a bullet hit these blasting caps…

  Another shot, the light beams playing about, looking for him. They were too close; there was no time to jury-rig a bomb. Only one thing to do. Crouching, he ran back down the dark tunnel for a few hundred feet, then turned and knelt. Aiming the live handgun with one hand, he flicked the lighter with the other. It cast just enough illumination for him to take aim at the heap of blasting caps. Beyond, a crowd of flashlight beams danced in the murk.

  “There!” came a voice.

  A volley of shots rang out as he squeezed off his own shot. There was a violent explosion, then a roar that punched him backward, knocking the wind from him, followed by a shuddering crash as the ceiling collapsed.

  43

  SHAKING HIS HEAD to bring himself back to his senses, Gideon scrambled to his knees in the blackness and crawled back the way he had come. The ground continued to shake with secondary collapses, rocks and pebbles falling all around him. He finally managed to get to his feet and, with a few more flicks of the lighter, make it back to the spot where Alida was waiting. She was crouching, coated with dust, and furious.

  “What the hell did you do?”

  “They were too close. I had to shoot at the blasting caps, blow the tunnel up.”

  “Christ almighty. And that huge noise afterward? Was that a cave-in?”

  “Right. The ceiling collapsed, blocking the tunnel. Now we’re safe—at least for the moment.”

  “Safe? Are you nuts? Now we’re trapped!”

  They began retracing their steps toward the fresh cave-in, looking for side tunnels or shafts they may have missed. There was nothing. Gideon was exhausted: his ears rang, his head pounded, and his mouth was full of muddy paste. They were both coated with dust and could hardly breathe in the choking air. Arriving at the cave-in, Gideon inspected it with the flame of the lighter. It was a massive heap of rocks, wall-to-wall, impassable. Gideon peered up at the irregular hole in the ceiling from which the rocks had fallen.

  He snapped the lighter off and they were once again plunged into darkness. He could hear muffled voices from the far side.

  “What now?” Alida asked.

  They sat in silence for a while. Gideon finally removed the lighter, flicked it on, held it out.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for movement of air. You know, like they do in novels.”

  But the flame burned utterly straight. The dust was so thick he could barely see. He flicked it off again. “It’s possible,” he said, “this cave-in opened a hole in the ceiling up there. I’m going up to check.”

  “Be careful. It’s unstable.”

  Gideon climbed the pile of rock. Each footfall sent more rocks and pebbles sliding down, including some larger ones that detached from the ceiling and crashed onto the pile. The rocks led all the way up to the concave hole in the ceiling. He scrambled to the top, sliding back a little with each step, the dust choking him, invisible rocks raining down all around—and suddenly, at the very top, he found air that was fresh and clear. He looked up and saw a star.

  They crawled out into the dark and lay in a patch of sweet-smelling grass at the bottom of a ravine, coughing and spitting. A small stream ran down the ravine, and after a moment Gideon got up, crawled to the stream on his hands and knees, washed his face, and rinsed his mouth. Alida did the same. They appeared to be below the Los Alamos plateau, in the warren of heavily forested tributary canyons cutting down to the Rio Grande. Gideon lay back on the ground, breathing hard and looking up at the stars. It was incredible they had escaped.

  Almost immediately he could hear the throbbing sound of a chopper.

  Damn. “We’ve got to keep moving,” he said.

  Alida stretched herself out on the grass, her filthy blond hair in tangles around her face, her once-white shirt the color of a dirty mouse, even the bloodstains obscured by dust. “Just give me a moment to catch my breath,” she said.

  44

  WARREN CHU SAT at his desk, sweating profusely and wishing the whole thing would be over. The FBI agent paced in the small office like a caged lion, occasionally asking a question before settling back into yet another long, excruciating silence. The rest of the Feds and security agents had disappeared into the tunnels; at first he’d heard a fusillade of shots, then the noises had grown increasingly muffled and distant before ultimately fading to silence. But this agent, the one named Fordyce, had stayed behind. Chu shifted, trying to unstick his sweating buttocks from the faux-leather chair. The A/C in this billion-dollar facility was, as usual, barely adequate. Chu was aware his comportment during the hostage situation had not exactly been heroic, and that added to his uneasy feeling. He consoled himself with the thought that he was still alive.

  Fordyce wheeled around yet again. “So Crew said that? Exactly that? That somebody hacked into his computer while he was on vacation?”

  “I don’t remember exactly what he said. Someone had it in for him, he said.”

  Pace, turn. “And he claimed the emails had been planted?”

  “That’s right.”

  The FBI agent slowed. “Is there any way they could have been planted?”

  “Absolutely no way. This is a physically isolated network. It isn’t connected to the outside world.”

  “Why not?”

  Chu was taken aback by the question.
“Some of the most sensitive information in the country is in this system.”

  “I see. So there’s no way those emails could have been planted by someone on the outside.”

  “No way.”

  “Could someone on the inside plant them? Like, for example, could you have planted them?”

  A silence. “Well,” said Chu, “it wouldn’t be impossible.”

  Fordyce stopped pacing, stared at him. “How would one go about it?”

  Chu shrugged. “I’m one of the security administrators. In a highly classified network like this, somebody’s got to have full access. To make sure everything’s kosher, see. It would have taken a high level of technical skill—which I have. Of course, I didn’t do it,” he added hastily.

  “You and who else could have done this—theoretically?”

  “Me, two other security officers at my level, and our supervisor.”

  “Who’s your supervisor?”

  “Bill Novak.” Chu swallowed. “But look, all four of us have gone through stringent background checks and security reviews. And they’re watching us all the time. They’ve got access to everything in our personal lives: our bank accounts, travel, credit card statements, phone bills, you name it. As a practical matter, we’ve got no privacy. So for one of us to be involved in a terrorist plot—it’s just inconceivable.”

  “Right.” Fordyce resumed pacing. “Did you know Crew well?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “You’re surprised?”

  “Totally. But then, I knew Chalker, too, and I was floored when I heard about him. You never can tell. Both of them were a little off-kilter as human beings, if you know what I mean.”

  Fordyce nodded and repeated, as if to himself, “You never can tell.”

  There was a noise in the hallway, then the door burst open and a few of the security officers came back in, coated in dust, sweat beading their temples, bringing with them a smell of earth and mold.