Riley's eyes flickered about, searching. The three were making enough noise to alert any Synbat within a half mile. The light was also a dead giveaway, but he had access to only one set of night vision goggles and they'd never make it in time with Merrit and Giannini stumbling around blindly in the dark. His M16 rested in front of the cart in the child's seat and his pistol was snug in its shoulder holster. Giannini had discarded her jacket, and a rather large Colt Python was riding under her left arm.
"How we doing for time?" Giannini asked.
Riley glanced at his watch. "We're just a little behind."
The DIA guard had been pulling the ten to six graveyard shift for the last three days; the novelty had worn thin within two hours of the first shift. The entire building had been stripped bare and all the equipment and supplies piled up in the main foyer. They were due to be picked up tomorrow morning and taken away.
The guard leaned back in his chair and flipped the page on the paperback he'd started the first night. As his eyes registered the first word something flickered across his line of sight. He started forward, but a cloth tightened around his mouth and he reflexively sucked in a large breath. He was unconscious within five seconds.
Like taking candy from a baby, Sergeant Major Powers thought as he grabbed the guard by his armpits and dragged him out of the building and across the parking lot. Powers tied him to one of the light poles and blindfolded him for good measure. He figured the guard would be out for at least six hours, but Powers didn't believe in taking chances.
Powers recovered his pickup from its hiding spot a quarter mile down the road and drove it up to the lab, parked next to the front door, and began unloading his equipment.
The tunnel began descending slightly and the air grew increasingly damp. Small droplets of condensation plopped off the ceiling onto the floor, forming a small rivulet of water. Riley kept them going until the tunnel began rising slightly. "This is it."
Merrit looked around. "You're sure we're under the river?"
Riley nodded. "Pace count and direction add up. We just went down about five extra feet, and I'd say it's pretty damn damp in here."
"Now what?" Giannini asked. "You know what to do?"
"You think I'd take you all the way down here and not know what to do?" Riley asked as he lifted the first pipe out of the cart.
"Hey, I've seen stupider things done," Giannini replied as she pulled out her revolver and ripped the tape off one of the flashlights. "I'll cover the way we came."
Riley paused and handed Merrit his pistol. "Take the other light and cover in that direction."
Riley pulled a mini-mag light off his vest and clenched it between his teeth as he worked on the first pipe. He carefully took a nonelectric fuse and wrapped a length of detonating cord eight times around it, then he placed it inside the small opening on the base of the pipe and pressed it into the ammonium nitrate-gasoline mixture. Using normal TNT as a blast factor of one, this mixture had an effectiveness of only.42 — thus Riley's insistence on using a larger amount than his calculations told him would do the job.
Finished with the first pipe, Riley placed it back in the cart, fuse end facing down, concave end up. He carefully threaded the det cord through the blood-stained grate at the bottom of the cart and coiled it, keeping it out of the water on the floor. He did the same to all eight pipes. Then he tied all eight fuses along another length of det cord, and left the last piece dangling.
When he was done, he tied a large flat cake pan, layered with a half inch of explosive, about a foot below the bottom of the cart. He primed the charge with another fuse and det cord.
Giannini would occasionally glance over her shoulder and watch Riley work, his hands expertly twisting the explosive rope into knots and handling the fragile detonators. She searched for something humorous to lighten the mood a little and then gave up, focusing on the dark corridor that stretched up and out of sight.
Riley stood slowly and held both pieces of firing cord in his hands. "I'm ready to wire this up to the ignitors."
"Why two?" Giannini asked.
"You always have a dual firing system." He held up the piece of det cord tied into the pipes. "This is the primary. It should set off all eight pipes at once. If that fails," he held up the other cord, "then this one is set to go off five minutes later. It blows the explosive on the pan below the pipes. That explosion ought to be enough to initiate the fuses in the pipes."
"Then what?" Merrit asked, diverting her attention for the first time.
Riley pointed at the pipes. "Those are called shaped charges. I don't know exactly how it works, but the concave shape on the top of the charge focuses the blast."
"Don't you have to put it against whatever it's going to blow up?" Merrit asked.
"No. You need stand off for the blast to focus." He looked up at the pitted ceiling. "I don't know how thick the concrete up there is, but it can't be more than a few feet. There's a layer of dirt on top of that, and then the river. There's enough explosive here to go through at least five feet of reinforced concrete — and this stuff isn't reinforced — and about ten feet of dirt. It will do the job."
"Let's stop talking and get out of here," Giannini suggested.
Riley looked at his watch. "It's almost two. Seay will be moving his people out in a couple of minutes. I'm going to wait until then to hook this up to the ignitor."
Doc Seay and the other six members of ODA 682 stood up and moved out of their defensive positions as the second hand swept by the twelve, marking the hour.
"Let's get out of here," Seay ordered.
When the DIA agent in charge started to protest, Seay shrugged. "You can stay here and die, or you can go to the surface with us. It's your choice."
"What do you mean 'stay here and die'?" the DIA man asked.
"Stay here and find out," Seay replied cryptically as he and his men set off down the tunnel. The three DIA men looked at each other briefly and then quickly set out behind the Special Forces soldiers.
Powers placed the bags of mixture throughout the first floor of the building, taking special notice of the equipment stacked in the main foyer, particularly the computers. Next to each bag he placed a small charge of C-4. He primed it with a blasting cap and linked them together with detonating cord. Then he ran the det cord back to the front door and hooked it into a radio-controlled fuse ignitor.
The C-4 would explode the aluminum and flour mixture, which would blow out, causing a total vacuum on the inside of the building. Air pressure on the outside of the building would implode the structure, effectively destroying everything inside. Powers would have preferred to simply blow up the building, scattering it over the countryside, but the amount of C-4 required to do that was more than had been available in the bunker. The expedient dust initiator mixture would have to serve.
Powers used the guard's key to descend to the lower level and do the same thing, hooking the charges into another remote fuse ignitor on the same frequency as the one above. He took the elevator back up and made his way out of the building.