She tied the rope around her waist. “I’ll secure it to something stable once I open the hatch.” She grasped the ladder’s thin metal sides and gave it a shake, not impressed with its sturdiness. “On top of everything else, I’m going to have Rob Harris write up a safety violation for this ladder once we get out of here.”
Garibaldi coughed as he tried to stop laughing.
With the rope trailing at her side, she climbed the ladder, didn’t look down, didn’t look back. Staring only at her hands, she relaxed into a clockwork motion of reach, step, reach, step, and soon found herself at the granite ceiling. The round access hatch rotated up into the shaft; a lever on the door served as a handle.
Keeping a hand on the ladder, she reached up and grabbed the lever, tried to turn the handle — and the lever didn’t move at all. She grunted and tried harder, but still nothing. Her heart pounded. After all this, they were stymied by a stuck handle?
Trying not to panic, she inspected the area around the lever, dreading that a padlock might secure the hatch — which made no sense at all, but considering the intersecting red tape of the classified SAPs, she wouldn’t have been surprised if some mid-level clerk had added a lock for “extra security.”
She struggled again to turn the handle, and in the process, pushed straight up. A spring-loaded mechanism popped, released the latch, and the metal hatch swung up into the shaft, recessed into the rock wall. “Oh,” she said, embarrassed as she realized that the handle was only necessary to pull the hatch back down into place.
She climbed two more rungs and poked her head into the vertical shaft bored up through the rock ceiling. Four metal ducts vented into the shaft, directed upward. She could smell the residue of stale, oily fumes; this must be where the diesel exhaust from the crane engine and other heavy machinery was vented.
LED lights ran up opposite walls of the shaft and disappeared high above, showing an endless line of steel rungs that went up to a vanishing point. Safety mesh lined the shaft’s inner walls to keep dislodged rocks and debris from tumbling into the cavern. The walls and rungs were covered with layers of grime, dust, and dark grease. Adonia couldn’t guess the last time anyone had entered the shaft.
Shawn called from below. “Everything all right?”
She untied the rope around her waist, looped it around the lowest two rungs in the shaft, and securely tied it. She gave it a quick yank and climbed back down far enough to poke her head out. “Ready. The line’s secure.”
From below, Shawn gave it a tug, then turned to the weary scientist, securing him with the rope. “Up you go, sir. Hold on to that ladder.” With a grunt, Garibaldi began the thirty-foot climb on the open ladder toward the rock ceiling, rung over rung. Keeping two rungs behind, Shawn called up. “I’ll follow him, Adonia. You keep climbing, and we’ll be right behind you. I’ll close the access hatch after I’m inside.”
Adonia started up the metal rungs, giving the other two enough room to follow her. The lines of LED lights converged high above her head, but since she had no points of reference, she couldn’t gauge how high the shaft actually went. Somewhere up there the shaft had to vent to the outside. When she’d first arrived at the guard gate that morning, she remembered how high and rugged Hydra Mountain had seemed.
They might really have some climbing to do.
A loud feedback noise squealed throughout the underground cavern, a clicking sound, then another sharp staccato of feedback boomed from old-fashioned facility loudspeakers mounted on the rocky walls.
Garibaldi hung on to a rung, pausing. “The intercom system must be active now. Harris is trying to contact us.”
“About time,” Shawn said. “If the intercoms are working again, maybe the reboot is almost over.”
But none of them were prepared to hear the voice that came over the loudspeakers.
42
The speakers blared through the enormous cavern, and the voice sounded like a pronouncement from Olympus. “Ms. Rojas? Colonel Whalen? I don’t know if you can hear me. Dr. Garibaldi?”
Adonia couldn’t believe it. “That’s not Harris — it’s Stanley!”
“Van Dyckman’s alive?” Shawn held himself steady on the ladder. “How did he get out of the vault and the sticky foam?”
Garibaldi asked, “And how did he get out of the cavern?”
The voice continued to boom out. “I hope against hope that you managed to survive. I’m afraid Undersecretary Doyle is dead, but I made it out through a maintenance shaft. I’m back in the operations center now.”
Shawn hung on the lower ladder and yelled, “We’re here!”
“He can’t hear you,” Garibaldi said. “Loudspeakers aren’t made for two-way communication.”
“If you’re alive and can hear me, please stay where you are,” van Dyckman continued. “You’ll be safe. The system reboot will be over in eighty-seven minutes, and then we’ll finally have access to the facility’s inner storage levels. We’ll rescue you, don’t worry. Specially cleared recovery and decontamination crews are waiting just outside Hydra’s main entrance, as well as NEST teams. We have everything under control out here. There’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“If Stanley escaped, then he would have told the rescue teams exactly what they’ll find down here, the cooling pools and the nuclear devices,” Adonia said, feeling great relief. “They’ll be prepared when they enter.”
“But he doesn’t know about the leaking pool with the damaged fuel rods,” Garibaldi pointed out. “Or the Senator’s body plugging the breach.”
Van Dyckman’s voice sounded pompous, and much too loud. “I have assumed control of Hydra Mountain and relieved Site Manager Harris of his responsibilities for gross negligence. He is being held, pending arrest. I’ve already announced this to the rest of the facility—”
Adonia realized he wasn’t speaking for their benefit at all. She was rattled. “He’s relieved Rob Harris? Arrested him?” She remembered how van Dyckman had held that ill-advised press conference after the extremist attack on Granite Bay and claimed credit for supervising the recovery effort. “Harris wasn’t the one playing fast and loose with regulations.”
Over the loudspeaker, van Dyckman’s voice sounded businesslike and commanding. “I’m doing everything in my power to bring you safely out on the assumption that you’re still alive, and then we can determine what to do. Once Mountain operations get back to normal, I’ll work with the staffs of Senator Pulaski and Undersecretary Doyle to make appropriate decisions. We will find a way to preserve Valiant Locksmith for the good of the country. Again, I don’t know if you can hear me—”
“He sounds more concerned with his nuclear storage plan than with our well-being,” Garibaldi said, then added more ominously, “It would be a terrible inconvenience to him if we were still alive.”
Van Dyckman’s amplified voice grew harder. “You must be very careful not to let word get out, which could cause a widespread panic. All Hydra Mountain internal matters must remain at the highest level of secrecy, until we can determine a proper framework for disseminating any information.”
“What’s he talking about?” Garibaldi said, appalled.
Van Dyckman rambled, probably assuming that he was speaking to an empty chamber full of dead people. Was this a sort of confessional for him?
“—far greater ramifications than this temporary setback. A black mark on the program now could turn Valiant Locksmith into another expensive political disaster like Yucca Mountain, and we can’t let that happen.”
Shawn frowned. “He’s covering his butt faster than he can rescue us.”