“What is it?”
He pointed into the darkness. “There’s a rock wall a hundred feet down there. And there’s a damn door built right into it.”
“Let me have a look.”
He slipped her the optics and she saw what he had.
Robie said, “This is the other end of that ridge we passed. Most of this area is flat, but they have these elevated portions, too.” He shined his light on the ground. “And the vehicle tracks run all the way here.”
Reel added, “Okay, if my geography is right this ridge backs onto the eastern edge of the Atlas silo facility.”
“I think you’re spot-on.”
“That door has to be really secure, Robie. And maybe monitored.”
“They might already know someone is here,” he said.
“So do we stealth it or do a bull run?”
Robie said firmly, “I don’t like bull runs.”
“Well, neither do I. I like as much intel as possible before I commit myself.”
“So where do we get intel from? Unless the Agency’s satellite can look through rock I don’t think they’ll be much help.”
“What about Derrick Bender?” said Reel.
“You think he knows something about this?”
“If he knows about the door he might be in on whatever’s going on in there. But I don’t think he is. He was genuinely pissed about what happened to Malloy. And he seemed totally surprised when we told him what had happened to Luke and Holly.”
“But how can he help us?” said Robie.
“He gives us a third gun and the weight of the law.”
“The weight of the law apparently means jack shit here.”
“And he can give us some local information. Maybe about how this door can hook up with the Atlas missile site.”
Robie thought about this in silence for a few long moments. “But just him. We don’t need the state police charging up here. For all we know they’ll screw everything up or else get us all killed.”
“And their response time in the past hasn’t been exactly stellar. By the time they got here, we might be ready for retirement.”
“You want to call him?”
“No, you do it,” replied Robie.
“Why me?”
“He likes you better.”
“Okay, but just so you know, I haven’t slept with the guy.”
CHAPTER
63
To his credit Bender didn’t ask many questions when Reel called him on his cell phone. He said he would be on his way in a few minutes after Reel told him exactly where they were located.
Robie kept a watch on the door with his optics while Reel went back down the road to await Bender’s arrival.
One hour later Robie heard someone coming. As they rounded a slight bend and came into full view, Robie relaxed the grip on his gun. He stepped out so Bender and Reel could see him, noting that Bender had a shotgun with him along with his sidearm.
“So what do you think we got here?” he asked as they walked up to Robie.
“You tell us. Who owns this quarry?”
Bender looked around. “Long time ago it was a company based in Nebraska. Then whatever stone they were hunting for here ran out.”
“So no one’s been working it for a while?” said Reel.
Bender shook his head. “Hell, it’s probably been decades.”
“It backs up to the second Atlas silo site. A second site!” Robie added for emphasis. “Why didn’t you tell us about it? Did you know even about it?”
“Yeah, most folks around here do. But I didn’t think it was relevant to anything. It was just an abandoned government site.”
Robie said, “Why would somebody want to buy the site? And pay double what Lambert paid for the one he developed?”
“I don’t know,” said Bender. “I didn’t even know somebody had bought it. But why are you so interested in it?”
“There’s a door built into the rock wall about a hundred yards down that path. You can see where there’s a road cut through the trees.”
“Hell, they cut roads all over the place up here when they were doing the quarrying. And I know the door you’re talking about.”
“You do?” said Reel.
Bender nodded. “When I was a kid me and my buddies would come up here. We weren’t stupid enough to dive down into the water at the bottom. There’s crap and stone and everything in there. That would be suicide. But we’d ride our dirt bikes up here.”
“And the door?” persisted Robie.
“There’s an old storage room in there.”
“So you’ve seen it?” asked Reel.
“When I was a kid, yeah.”
“What was in there?”
“Just crap. Old boxes, broken tools.”
“How’d you get in?”
“There was just an old padlock on it. We used a crowbar to pop it.”
Robie handed him the night optics. “Come on. I think somebody might have upgraded security.”
Robie led them back down the road and through the trees, drawing to a stop a hundred feet from the door.
“Take a look and tell me if it’s changed from when you were a kid.”
Bender put on the night optics and Robie powered them up.
“Well?”
“That door’s metal. The one when I was a kid was wood. And that lock looks pretty new.”
“And pretty secure,” said Robie. “I recognize the lock on that door because my Agency uses something similar to secure its facilities. You’re not popping it with a crowbar or a stick of dynamite.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means the purpose of that room has changed,” said Reel. “Tell us about the adjacent missile site.”
“I don’t know much about it. It’s been abandoned forever. But nobody ever went near it. When we were kids we heard it was contaminated. You know, radiation. We didn’t want to start glowing in the dark. It wasn’t until after Roark built his out that anybody thought differently. And even then, we knew he’d spent a fortune cleaning the place up.”
“Is there any way someone could have connected up that second missile site with whatever’s behind that door?” asked Robie.
Bender rubbed his chin as he thought about that question. “Now that I think about it I remember Roark talking at a get-together at my mom’s about this site. He said he actually preferred it to the one he developed.”
“Why?” asked Reel quickly.
“It had more acreage for one thing. And he said it had more buildable space underground. So he could maybe sell more of those units.”
“So more underground space presumably might mean that the site extends close to the ridge.”
“Or, Robie, maybe it goes into the ridge,” suggested Reel.
Bender said, “You know, that’s possible. And I remember that storage room from when I was a kid. It went really far back, but we never went that far in. No lights and too spooky.”
“So it could be that with a little work a tunnel could have been dug connecting the two,” reasoned Robie.
“What for?” asked Bender. “I mean if you bought the missile site you could use that door. Why mess with the hassle of connecting up with this place?”
“The site is sort of out in the open. So you’d do that if you didn’t want anyone to know you were accessing the missile site. You’d come in this way instead and no one would be the wiser.”
“But why all the secrecy?” asked Bender.
Reel answered. “Well, if you’re bringing prisoners in here you wouldn’t want anyone to know.”
“Wait a minute, you think those prisoners are being held in the missile silo?”
“It would make sense of the drawing Walton left behind in the muzzle of his gun,” said Robie. “He obviously wanted to draw our attention to it.”