"Back with us, Jak?" she said, smiling at him. "By Gaia, but I shall never forget my first jump! Felt like my head was still a thousand miles behind me."
Jak nodded, pushing up until he was standing. The room swayed about him, and he staggered, nearly falling. With an effort he retained his balance.
"Don't push it, Jak," urged the sixth and last member of the group, the leader, Ryan Cawdor.
Ever since their first meeting, Jak Lauren had felt instinctively that Ryan Cawdor was a man he could follow. In the swamps he'd been leader, despite his youth, because nobody else killed as well as he did. Ryan Cawdor was something else.
Jak stared across the gateway mat-trans chamber at him. Ryan was stretched out on the floor, feet crossed, looking not terribly uncomfortable. He was the tallest in the party, about a foot taller than the white-haired boy, and lean-built, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. His hair was a mat of tight black curls, spreading over the white fur collar of his long coat of treated skins. Around his neck was a white silk scarf. Finn had once told Jak that there were lead weights in each end of the scarf that turned it into an excellent garrote.
The face was thin with high cheekbones. On the right side a long scar ran from the mouth to the corner of the eye, which was a chilling pale blue. The left eye was gone, the raw, weeping socket concealed by a leather patch. Finn had told Jak that Ryan's own brother had been responsible for the wound, but he didn't believe the fat man. Finnegan didn't always tell the whole truth.
Ryan wore a brown shirt and brown pants, with the bottoms slit so that they could slide easily over his combat boots. His right hand rested on the butt of a Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless fifty-shot automatic rifle with night-scope and silencer. Ryan, like Finn, wore a blade at his belt. But instead of a cleaver he carried a long steel panga, which was as broad as a machete. From the look of it, a strong man could behead an ox in a single stroke.
"You stare any harder at me, son, and you're going t'bore a hole through me." The words were said lightly, but Jak got the hint.
"Sorry, Ryan. Was looking at your handblaster."
The one-eyed man took the pistol out of his belt and lobbed it across the small room. Jak caught it easily in his right hand and studied it.
"Haven't seen one like this," he said. "SIG-Sauer, is it?"
Ryan glanced across at J.B. "You're the Armorer. You tell him all 'bout it."
In a flat, passionless voice, J.B. rattled off all the relevant details of the handgun.
"Model P-226. Nine mil. Fifteen rounds, push-button mag release. Barrel length 4.41 inches. Overall length 7.72 inches."
"Weight?" Jak asked.
"I'm coming to that, son. Keep your carriage behind the horse."
"Sorry."
"Weighs in at precisely 25.52 ounces. SIG-Sauer, like you said. Second half of the name's for J. P. Sauer and Son of Eckernforde. SIG is for Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft. Anything else you want to know 'bout the blaster?"
Finnegan gave a great bellowing laugh. "You mean there's fucking more?"
Jak joined in the general laughter, feeling his strength flowing back now that he was standing up and his brains were settling back into his skull.
"How come it's so cold?" he asked, shivering in his tattered canvas-and-leather coat and breeches, dyed brown, gray and green for camouflage. He felt the weight of his trusty .357 Magnum, satin finish with the six-inch barrel, strapped to his thigh in its holster.
"Yeah, it is kind of cold," Ryan agreed, standing up with the easy grace of a large cat.
"Mebbe find some warm clothes in the redoubt," Krysty suggested, uncoiling at his side and rubbing her hands together.
"Bracing is the word I would use. So much more healthy than the awful humidity of the swamps, whatever they were called."
"Atchafalaya," J.B. said, reminding Doc Tanner where they'd been.
"God bless you," the old man replied. "Gesundheit is what we used to say."
The Armorer stared at him, blank-faced.
"Where are we now?" the boy asked, stretching himself and pushing his mane of white hair away from his eyes.
"We're here," Ryan Cawdor replied.
"We always here," Lori said, looking around at the others to make sure they realized she was joking.
"Yeah," Finn grunted. "Guess she's 'bout fucking right. We're always here."
Most of the other gateways Ryan had passed through had been clean and orderly. Once everyone was on their feet, blasters cocked and ready, he reached out and opened the door.
For several seconds nobody moved or spoke. Then Ryan said, very quietly, "Fireblast!"
It looked bad.
Chapter Two
The room beyond the door was around five paces in length by three paces wide. The walls were painted a muted cream, faded with age. Virtually all the other gateways Ryan and his companions had been through had been thoroughly cleaned by the Americans nearly a hundred years ago. Kept immaculate and sealed, they had been so well hidden that nearly all trace of their presence had been long forgotten, all records lost.
But this one looked as if it had been vacated only thirty seconds ago. That was the first reaction from Ryan and the others.
Ryan's finger tightened instinctively on the trigger of the G-12, ready to spray the room with a veil of instant death. He could feel the tension all around him as everyone waited. He sniffed at the air.
"Doesn't smell right. Krysty?"
The girl was at his elbow, so close that her arm brushed against his. She shook her head slowly. "No. Can't hear anything. The air's stale. By Gaia, but it's years stale in here!"
There was a newspaper open on the plastic-topped table, with an aluminum can that once contained Coke resting on top of it. A plastic plate held the remnants of a meal, a maroon plastic knife and fork placed casually beside it, as if the eater had been interrupted moments before.
Several notices were pinned to a board near the far door, which, as Ryan saw instantly, was locked. A pack of chewing gum lay on the floor by one of the table legs. The room was totally, utterly still and silent.
"Looks like the Parody Club at five in the morning," Doc Tanner said, his memory leading him down some arcane corridor of his mind.
A large sign was screwed to the wall above the entrance to the gateway. Its message was the same as that of other redoubts: Entry Absolutely Forbidden to All but B12 Cleared Personnel. Mat-trans.
"All right, people, take care. Just a mebbe that something's boobied here."
J. B. Dix sucked at a hollow back tooth. "Don't see it, Ryan. No wires. No batteries. Nothing big enough to hide a gren. That's 'part from the cupboard there."
Against the wall next to the heavy vanadium steel door was a green metal cabinet.
"I'll look," Jak said, sliding past Ryan, eager to prove himself.
"Easy, Whitey," Finnegan rasped.
The boy moved slowly across the room. When he was about halfway to the cupboard, Ryan called out urgently for him to stop.
"Why?"
"Look at the floor."
None of them had noticed the dust. Jak's feet had left deep impressions in the velvet-soft layer, nearly a half-inch thick.
"Sloppy fucking housekeepers they got here," Finnegan muttered.
"Has to be untouched for years. Maybe decades," Ryan said. "Look at the table. It's everywhere."
The young albino flicked a finger at the door of the cabinet, as if he feared an electric shock. His fingers made the faintest pinging sound as it brushed the metal. He hesitated only a second, then grasped the handle and swung the door open.
It was full of paper.
There were six shelves on the left and five on the right, each filled with neat stacks of paper in different colors and sizes, along with folders and envelopes in cream and white and light brown.