Although he knew he had only found one small piece of the puzzle — the tip of the proverbial iceberg — Dodge knew he had found the answer to the questions that had plagued him. Anya had jumped from the train because she had known about this concealed turnaround. The thing that had come out of the tunnel, and evidently obliterated his Asian assailant — the ghost train — had to have been a locomotive, probably an electrically powered car, concealed in this siding. Anya would have known about that, too. She had probably been driving it.
“What the hell is going on here?”
This time his voice didn’t echo.
Mindful of the fact that there was now a serious break in the rails on a major train line, Dodge ventured into the siding and located the switch that would rotate the turnaround back to its normal position. No attempt had been made to conceal it here. He pressed the button and hopped off the turnaround as the false wall slid back into place, sealing him within the siding.
As the noise of the machinery fell silent once more, Dodge realized that he was now no longer in the world of the familiar. The turnaround and this secret tunnel were evidence of some greater conspiracy. He was an intruder, trespassing on what he could only assume was enemy territory. How long before the men — and perhaps women — who had hewed out this tunnel and laid these rails became aware of his presence? Or did they already know?
Dodge switched off the light and stood in darkness, straining his senses for any hint of approaching footsteps or any other source of illumination. Nothing. He was alone in the heart of the mountain.
He side-stepped until his outstretched hand located the rough tunnel wall. Maintaining contact with it, he started walking. His progress was slow and cautious; he could ill-afford a stumble in the darkness. Sensory deprivation played havoc with his sense of the passage of time, but immersion in the total darkness heightened his perceptions such that he was soon able to detect a pinpoint of light ahead: the end of the tunnel. As that spot grew larger, he quickened his pace.
He felt reborn as he emerged into daylight and into what appeared to be a box canyon. The valley floor was sparsely vegetated, but the surrounding hillsides were dense with trees. The setting seemed idyllic at first glance, but the parallel rails were a reminder that he was not simply walking in the woods. The tracks led out of the tunnel and across the flat terrain as far as the eye could see.
The rails eventually brought him to a vantage point overlooking a secondary depression within the valley. Nestled in that low area was unquestionable evidence of human occupancy of the hidden valley, several small buildings and a single enormous structure that looked suspiciously like an aircraft hangar but much larger than any Dodge had ever seen. Dodge’s eye, however, was drawn to something else, or rather the absence of something.
The floor of the depression, like the valley, was more or less flat, with patches of grass and brushy areas. But at the near end, a stone’s throw from where Dodge now stood, the ground had been completely denuded of foliage. The patch was almost perfectly circular, and at least a hundred yards in diameter. As he studied the area, Dodge realized that it was not just that the plant life was been cleared; the ground itself seemed unnaturally smooth, as if pounded flat by heavy machinery. The circle bore the scars of a few disturbances, divots and scorch marks, as though an airplane had crashed there at one point, but otherwise the ground was as flat as the infield of a baseball diamond.
Dodge tore his gaze away from the strange circle, and studied the hangar and the surrounding compound for some hint of activity. There was none; the secret facility seemed to have been abandoned. Nonetheless cautious, he followed the railroad down to its terminus in the depression.
Up close, he saw that the buildings were not merely abandoned, but on the verge of collapse. The smaller buildings, nothing more than tar paper hastily tacked up on wood frames, were completely empty of furnishings or any other embellishments.
The hangar wasn’t in much better shape; a roof of corrugated metal, already starting to rust, stretched over a Quonset hut style frame, but unlike the smaller buildings, the hangar was not empty. As he stood in the doorway, Dodge gaped incredulously at the thing that almost completely filled the belly of the structure.
It was a dirigible.
Dodge had seen airships in the sky above the city, but never up close, never close enough to touch. It was too large to take in with a single glance, like the hull of an ocean liner in dry-dock. Yet, as he got past the initial surprise of the discovery, he saw that the airship, like everything else in the compound, was suffering from serious neglect.
The gondola and attached engine nacelles, which looked a little like an enormous twin-engine airplane with the wings removed, rested on the floor of the hangar. The gas envelope from which the gondola was suspended, sagged like tent with broken poles. Dodge realized that he was looking at a blimp, an airship that did not have a rigid internal frame like a zeppelin, but was more like a balloon, keeping its distinctive shape by virtue of gas pressure alone. This blimp had already lost enough of its lighter-than-air gas to make lift impossible.
Dodge thought about the letter he had received from Jim Perdue. He had already discovered the secret of the ghost train, and now it seemed he had a plausible explanation for the strange lights that residents of Burden Valley had observed in the sky.
He had the “how,” but no hint of the “why.”
And then there was the matter of “who.” Anya had known about the ghost train siding. He could only assume that her insistence on traveling aboard the Broadway Limited had been for the purpose of coming here, and of course, getting away from him. Could he trust anything she had said?
Dodge recalled Hurley’s message. Newcombe and Lafayette were with Barron; that much at least seemed to be true. So, was Anya working against Barron, as she claimed?
It was difficult to imagine a group of dynamite-throwing anarchists building a secret railroad and airfield in a Pennsylvania valley; that was something that could only be accomplished with a lot of money, and access to material and human resources on a grand scale.
Barron.
More pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. Barron had built the secret facility in the valley as a proving ground for some secret weapon — his death ray, perhaps?
But why had he abandoned it?
There were still missing pieces.
Dodge pushed under the sagging blimp and made his way to the gondola. From the front, it looked ordinary enough, but as he moved along its length, he saw evidence of catastrophic damage. The aft section of the fuselage had burst open like an overripe fruit, and the edges of the metal were oxidized — scorched, Dodge realized. He cautiously slipped through the gaping wound and entered the gondola, where the damage was even more pronounced. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside.
That’s why he needs Newcombe. His death ray blew up in his face; he needs the Doc to help him figure out how to fix it.
But why take him overseas?
Dodge shook his head. The answer to that question would not be found here. He turned to leave the gondola…
… and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.
His gaze flickered up, but before he could focus on the face of the person holding the gun, the barrel moved, swiping toward his head, and everything dissolved into blackness.
Two rhythms in conflict pounded through Dodge’s skull, driving him out of the pain-free refuge of unconsciousness. As soon as he groaned aloud and opened his eyes, one of the beats — an external tempo measured out by a series of short, none-too-gentle, but nonetheless insistent slaps against his cheek — ceased immediately. The other however — the throb of pain that radiated from the side of his head where he’d been pistol-whipped — continued to pulse in time with his heartbeat. The source of both, the gunman who had taken him unaware, crouched in front of, with one hand raised as if to resume slapping.