4
The cave-in spot was part of the roof of the main laboratory that was weak from rust and the weight of the ice on it. Ted’s stumbling had made it weaker, thus the collapse.
Ted recovered fast from his accident. Olivia took more photos of the hole in the ice.
Miller ordered that tarpaulin be cut and spread on the edge of the hole. It was so dark down there that even the sun’s rays could not penetrate. However, a little way down, it became clear that this was a spherical hole, and there were metal rungs on the side.
“How are we going to get down there?”
Liam Murphy said, “I guess that’s why I’m here.”
Liam proceeded to prepare harness and hooks, such that mountaineers use. He made points in the ice around the hole and drove huge, long pins into the points. Then he tied ship ropes on them.
“Who wants to go first?” he asked.
Frightened faces stared back at him. He shrugged. “I guess I’ll just show you all how it’s done.”
He hooked both hands around ropes and lowered himself on one of the rungs. He tested its stability.
“Careful there,” Miller said.
All eyes were on Liam Murphy. He looked up at the group again. “Let me go down three rungs then the next person can join. Just take the harness and strap it to your body, like I did, and you’ll be okay.”
Then his brown hair disappeared into the darkness below. He called a few minutes after. “Next? It’s perfectly okay down here, it’s just the smell. Fucking awful!”
Then he was gone out of sight.
Hung up faces checked each other. Frank Miller took a harness and started down. When he was out of sight, Ted Cooper took a harness too. He looked around the faces, glanced at Olivia, and said, “Let's do this for the lady.”
He stretched the harness over the hole at her.
“Come on, can’t leave you out here with these men.” He smiled. “Your turn.”
Olivia’s mouth dropped open. She bent her head, puzzled.
Peter Williams took the harness. “Give it to me you son of a—”
“Peter?” Olivia gave him a look. Then she reached for the harness again. “I’d really like to go now.”
She threw Ted Cooper a severe look as her feet caught the first rung.
Olivia’s Dictaphone went to her lips. “It is 1536 and I’m descending down a hatch. Below me is Frank Miller, Liam Murphy, and darkness, and who knows what else. It smells like old damp clothes. It smells like…” She hesitated.
There was a smell like damp clothes. A homely one, that which you get when clothes are left in the bin for too long when you take them out of the laundromat.
There was another smell, underneath the wet one. It was almost indistinguishable in the dark, rising warmth of the place below. She inhaled, just to see if some memory would come flying from somewhere to identify it.
There was only that sourness.
Ambient light all around her rose from the gloom, or maybe her eyes just got used to the dark. She felt a touch when she had gone after what seemed like a long time.
It was Frank Miller.
Olivia looked around her; they were two frightened frozen orbs in her face. She walked past Miller as the man called for the next person.
Into her recorder she spoke, “One after the other we are climbing down with ropes, like mountaineers. Only this time, we are descending, not ascending. What will we find down here?”
She kept the recorder away and touched cool concrete wall. She heard scratching sounds ahead of her. She hoped it was Liam Murphy.
It was. She saw the light of his torch zigzagging on the walls. They were in a long hallway. It stretched on for about ten yards before it broke left into darkness. Liam vanished in that direction.
Behind she heard more feet fall as others joined.
“Olivia?”
“Yeah,” she answered in a measured tone.
“Wait up,” said Peter’s voice.
She didn’t.
“What’s that smell?”
Anabia Nassif coughed repeatedly, doubled over. He retched, covering his nose with a napkin that had gone from white to brown. Victor Borodin slapped him on the back.
“Keep up,” he said.
“Smells like a taxidermist shop down here.”
They clustered in an enclosure that Liam Murphy found at the end of the long hallway. There was a metal door in front of them. Liam had tried it but it wouldn't budge, stiff with rust.
Itay Friedman threw himself against it. Dust fell in showers from the edges. The door stood.
“There’s something in there,” said Olivia.
Ted Cooper asked her how she knew that. The others looked at her.
Borodin said, “She’s right.”
Miller shone his torch at the door. There was a slight incline, a dent where Friedman’s shoulder had collided with it. The door looked so thick and it filled the frame such that it was not certain where the hinges were — if the useless handle wasn’t there, that was.
The billionaire tried the handle again. It too won’t move. Not even an inch.
“There is no echo,” Borodin said. He looked at Olivia, who nodded. “I think we are at the back of the complex. That makes this room something like a store or something. It’s probably filled with things, hence, no echoes when you hit it.”
“Except…” someone said.
They all turned at the voice. It was Nicolai. At his feet were two cases. He shrugged.
In broken English he said, “Except it is room for machines or weapons.”
Ted sneered, “It is a laboratory, for God’s sake. You don’t think they made guns and shells.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” Nicolai opened one of the cases at his feet. “We blow it and hope it doesn’t blow us back.”
“Are you crazy?” Ted capered. He laughed, glancing at the others.
“I don’t see that we have another choice,” Miller said.
The rest of the crew — except Ted — seemed to agree. They moved back down the way they had come. Nicolai went about setting up small explosives.
“Wait.”
Peter shined his torch at the ceiling. He ran the light across it, back to where the crew was standing away from the door. There were cracks in the concrete.
“How about that, we’d be buried down here for sure,” said Peter. “Look at those cracks.”
Nicolai groaned. “Shit.”
He looked at Frank Miller. “What do we do?”
“We hack it down then,” Miller said.
“Or we go back, there’s gotta be another way,” Friedman suggested.
“No, it’s going to take longer.” There was an urgency in Miller’s voice that wasn’t there before, and wariness in his eyes too.
Olivia noted it. She felt her hands around the walls again. Then she looked up at the concrete over them.
“It won’t fall,” she said in a small voice.
They turned to her. In Miller’s eyes there was a new light. He looked at her appreciatively.
“How do you know this?” Miller approached her.
“These walls are as old as the ceiling, right?”
“Yes,” Miller agreed.
She contracted her shoulders. “Well then the roof will hold. Those are reinforced concrete, the lines are stress cracks. They are all over the story buildings in the city.”
Miller turned to Nicolai. “Blow it!”
The soldiers felt the explosion, more than heard it.
They just ditched their snowmobiles behind a hill not far away and were making their progress on foot when the ground vibrated.
ThooM!
It was a single sound but the trained ears of the shoulders could tell that a bomb had just gone off. And it wasn’t hard to know where it happened. The leader flipped his goggles up to his forehead. He raised his fist. His men stopped.