CHAPTER 36
Summer kept an eye on Horton as Wicks pushed him through the door and out into the hallway. She couldn’t hear what Krista and Horton had just talked about, but it looked important. The bearded man seemed to have been focused on the radio the whole time. Or perhaps Lipton. Maybe both.
Krista walked to Summer with her head angled down, as if she were in a deep state of thought.
“What’s going on?” Summer asked when she arrived.
“Just checking a few things.”
“And?”
“Nothing you need to be concerned about.”
“Ah, in case you forgot, I’m in charge here.”
“I haven’t forgotten. Though technically, I’m part of the new Ruling Triad. Along with Liz and you. We all have a say.”
“Yeah, we all have a say. But for that to happen, we all need to know.”
“And you will. I just need to vet the information first. So please be patient while I figure a few things out. Don’t want to worry you or Liz about something that may turn out to be a great big nothing burger. The last thing we need is to waste our time on a witch hunt.”
“Does it have something to do with the radio?”
“Yes, but I don’t know why.”
Summer wasn’t sure how to take those words. They seemed out of place, at least based on the twist of ideas floating inside her head. “If you’ll just clue me in, I might be able to help.”
“Normally I would, but I need to ask for some leeway here. I need to run with this for a bit first.”
Summer wanted to know, but in the spirit of their new alliance, she decided to not press the issue. “If you think you need to—”
“I do. This is precisely in my wheelhouse and I need to see where it goes. If anywhere. I don’t want to waste your time, or Liz’s. You two have enough on your plates.”
Summer hesitated for a few beats. She didn’t like all the secrecy but figured Edison would have given Krista the latitude to check and make sure. “Okay, but as soon as you have something, let me and Liz know.”
“I will. You have my word.”
Krista turned and walked back to her post by the door, keeping the pistol angled down at her waist.
“Okay, that should do it,” Lipton said, pulling his hands free from the radio. His back arched and he yawned, stretching his arms high into the air. His head turned in Summer’s direction. “Time to light the fires and kick the tires.”
“Yeah, I saw that movie,” Summer said in a sarcastic tone. “When I was like seven. Edison had the DVD at his house.”
Lipton brought his arms down. “What movie?”
“The movie with that rapper guy. Can’t remember his name, though. But he was cute,” she said, thinking of Fletcher and his chiseled physique.
Lipton held still for a moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know, the one with the aliens and their ships over the cities, right before they attacked.”
Lipton’s face ran blank, but at least his lips weren’t flapping.
“Never mind,” Summer said, walking to the worktable, standing only a foot from the man. She picked up the microphone and held it out. “Show me how this thing works.”
“It’s simple, little squirrel. Once the frequency is set,” he said, pointing, “all you need to do is press the transmit button and say what you need to say. If someone’s in range and listening, they’ll hear you.”
“Don’t we need a big antenna or something?”
“It would certainly help extend the range.”
“What about the Command and Control Center?” Krista said, leaving her position at the door and joining them. “They had a lot of comms back in the day. I’m sure one of those leads connects to something on the surface.”
“Good idea,” Lipton said, standing from the chair. “Someone will need to carry the unit, though. That’s not in my job description.”
Just then, Wicks returned to the lab, his rifle slung diagonally across his chest from high to low.
“Ask and ye shall receive,” Lipton said. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Summer recognized the latter of those two phrases, too, but chose not to mention it, even though a vision of a man with a cigar and a decked-out van danced in her memories. They had work to do and it started now. Anything else was a waste of time.
Krista turned to Wicks. “Need you to carry the transmitter up to C-n-C.”
“You got it, boss.”
Summer carried a set of twelve-foot-long electrical wires in her hand as she walked around the aging command chair in the former Missile Control Center.
That chair was once the single most important duty station in the entire complex. A place where Air Force personnel used to sit for hours on end, watching the blinking lights and performing drills as they ran through countless checklists, all the while waiting for an Encrypted Action Message to come through the squawk box.
Summer was thankful none of those orders were ever issued, but she admired the men who remained vigilant all those years in this underground bunker.
They were obviously well-trained and mentally prepared, needing to select one of three targets pre-programmed into the computer system, assuming what Edison had taught her was correct.
Fire and fury would ensue once they pressed the launch button, incinerating thousands of people at ground zero when the three-hundred-thousand-pound Titan II missile delivered its nuclear payload. Somewhere in Russia she figured, given the Cold War that dominated the geopolitical spectrum back then.
Lipton spun his backside and took a seat in the command chair as Wicks deposited the radio on the surface in front of him. The mountain of a man turned it a few degrees before he bent down and plugged the power cord into an outlet not far from the command station.
Wicks then turned and went to his post near the exit that spilled into the connecting corridor. The man never said much, but Summer found it comforting to know he was there, keeping an eye on everything.
Sure, they’d had their altercations in the past, but now that she was in charge, she needed to rise above the pettiness and keep Nirvana moving forward. Wicks, like Krista and Liz, would be an integral part of the process.
More so now that they needed to solve the bacteria problem killing their food supply. The EOD number would continue to tick down to zero, bringing them ever closer to their own version of Armageddon.
She knew there would have to be some hard choices made in the coming month, unless this transmitter experiment brought them some new possibilities.
Summer stopped in front of the wall of equipment and held up the wires. “Where do I connect them?”
Lipton pointed another foot to her right, toward the end of the electronics bank. “That junction box over there.”
Summer went to it and popped the latch open on the side, allowing the door to swing open. A plethora of wires was hanging free inside, with a hunk of metal running vertically down the middle. It was the size of a chalkboard eraser.
“Connect them to the terminals,” Lipton said, his tone confident. “They’re part of the bar down the center.”
She bent down and brought the bare ends of the wires to the center, but held before contact. “Does it matter which end goes where?”
“Red on top. Black on the bottom,” Lipton said, giving Krista a pair of alligator clips. “She’ll need these.”
Krista brought them over and held them out in the palm of her hand. “You’re supposed to use these.”
“Thanks,” Summer said, taking the connectors. She pinched the end of the first one, using its open jaws to connect the red wire to the screw at the top, then did the same with the bare end of the black wire, only this time she pinched it to the bottom. “Okay, all set.”