—
The sun rose higher in the sky, eventually passing zenith, as they continued to hike. "It sure didn't look this far on the map," Caine complained once as they broke for a ten-minute lunch.
"Uphill climbs never do," Kanai puffed, as out of breath as any of them despite his high-altitude acclimation. "For your full expedition out here, Lathe, I suggest you make the jump-off point a little closer. Reger isn't really going to learn anything useful about your destination, no matter where along the road his driver lets you off."
"You may be right," Lathe conceded. "Anyway, the worst part is over. I read the entrance as being just on the northern side of the peak over there." He pointed.
Caine looked and sighed. "What's that, another two or three hours?"
"One hour tops," Lathe promised. "Let's go. I want to find the entrance, figure out what we'll need to get it open, and be back at the pickup point before dark."
Lathe's estimate turned out to have been on the optimistic side, but not by too much. Exactly an hour and fourteen minutes later they came to a halt beside a rocky overhang and the ventilation tunnel intake.
Caine had wondered how the hell a two-meter grille could have remained unnoticed all these years, but now that he was here he realized that it wasn't nearly as unlikely as he'd imagined. Shielded from above by the rock overhang, its surface covered by strategically placed grasses and other plants, the actual intake openings scattered in an irregular pattern instead of a normal crosshatching—the more he studied it, the more he realized that even someone searching for the damn thing could walk right by without noticing it.
Lathe might have been reading his mind. "Lucky for us you knew precisely where this was located," he commented to Bernhard. "Wasn't it?"
"Yes," the other said shortly. "Hadn't you better get busy on your studies?"
"Yes, well, we're actually not in as much of a hurry—"
"Shh!" Kanai cut him off. Caine froze with the others, straining his ears....
"Behind us," Bernhard murmured, drawing a shuriken. "Someone's coming."
"A lot of someones, actually," Skyler told him stepping over to examine the grille. "It's Mordecai and the rest of the group."
"What?" Kanai frowned, peering into the distance. "But you said—"
"I guess he lied, didn't he?" Bernhard snarled, jamming his shuriken back into its pouch. "That's all.
Lathe's just making sure we all know who the boss is around here. All right, Comsquare; we're properly impressed. You going to level with us now?"
"Sure." Lathe nodded at the grille. "We're going in. Now."
"In other words, you never planned to make any preliminary studies." Kanai's face was beginning to redden with anger. "I thought we were allies now—you had no cause to lie to us."
"Maybe, maybe not," Skyler put in before Lathe could answer. "But we've been at least as truthful as your leader was. Haven't we, Bernhard?"
Kanai spun on him. "And I've also had about enough of that—"
"This supposedly hard-welded grille's already been cut free," Skyler interrupted him coldly.
"What?" Kanai frowned, his anger cooling into confusion. "That's impossible... isn't it?"
"Done fairly recently, too, I'd say—certainly since the war," Skyler continued. "It's being held on by twisted wires at a dozen or so places."
"Twisted from...?" Caine asked.
"The outside."
"Well, well." Lathe turned back to Bernhard. "This remarkably well-hidden door, and someone managed to find it. Any ideas on how they might have done that, Bernhard?"
Bernhard's face had become a mask. "As you said, someone else must have stumbled on the place."
"Someone else who?"
"How should I know?" the other countered.
Lathe snorted. "Right." Turning his back on Bernhard, he joined Skyler and Kanai by the grille.
Fifty meters back, Hawking came around a clump of scraggly evergreen trees, the other blackcollars and Caine's teammates following in his wake. "Any trouble?" Caine asked as they approached.
Hawking shook his head. "Saw another of those Security guards after Skyler came back to warn us about them."
"Did you have to take him out?" Lathe asked.
"No, he was way to the south of us, sitting on a flat rock jutting out from the hillside. They're definitely guarding something, though."
Lathe grunted. "Well, whatever it is, it shouldn't be our problem. Braune, Colvin, Pittman—get busy assembling those rope ladders. We're going to need them right away. Hawking, Alamzad—come up here and check this thing out for booby traps and alarms."
But whoever had jury-rigged the entrance apparently hadn't thought to leave any hidden deterrents behind. By the time Caine's teammates had the rope ladders ready, Hawking and Alamzad had removed the grille and made a visual examination of the first part of the tunnel beyond.
"You see that mesh lining the inside?" Hawking pointed it out. "Looks like a multistage electric barrier, with potentials starting at the slight-jolt stage out here and going up to lethal on the last ring."
"Sensors?" Lathe asked.
"Between the rings—there and there. Probably mostly passive types: sound and motion detectors and maybe photobeam or laser bounce reflectors. You don't want sensors this close to the surface that use lots of current or throw off detectable electromagnetic fields. That stuff will be deeper down."
"What about the stage-one weapons Bernhard mentioned?"
Hawking pointed. "Right at the end there, where the tunnel starts going vertical. At least one reasonably heavy laser and what look like a pair of flechette repeaters. Probably got gas and acid jets hidden behind the electrical mesh, too—I think I see where the metal has been acid-protected."
Caine licked his lips. "How likely is it the stuff's running on automatic?"
"It's not," Bernhard said. "Everything but the electric mesh was manual control, and the fuel cells for the mesh probably drained themselves years ago."
Lathe cocked an eyebrow at Hawking. "True?"
"Probably." The other shrugged. "Hard to tell until we try going in, though. The mesh, at least, doesn't seem to be responding to pressure anymore."
"In other words, we've learned all we can from out here," Lathe said. "Let's suit up, then—full flexarmor, including gas filters." His eyes shifted to Bernhard. "And we'll let our guide go first."
Kanai gave the comsquare a long, hard look. "I thought we were going to be allowed to leave once we got here," he said. "Just another lie?"
"The grille's been opened," Lathe told him. "Bernhard's the only one we know of who knew how to find it. You can draw your own conclusions."
Bernhard snorted. "Oh, I see—you think I came up here five years ago and added new traps to the tunnel in case someone from Plinry forced me to let him in someday. Come on, Lathe—you're being ridiculous."
"You're right, of course," Lathe said. "Let's just say I've grown accustomed to your company." He hesitated. "Though on second thought, there's no real reason you have to come along, Kanai. If you want, you can leave now."
Kanai seemed to consider that. Then, with a glance at Bernhard, he shook his head. "Thank you, Comsquare. But as long as I'm here anyway, I might as well see it through to the end."
"All right." Lathe took a deep breath, glanced around the group. "Mordecai, you'll stay up here on guard duty. The rest of you... let's go."
Chapter 34
Bernhard went first, unrolling the rope ladder before him as carefully as if setting out a fur-skinned runner for a visiting eminent. But nothing fired at him, blew up under him, or sprayed lethal fluids toward him, and by the time he tilted the rest of the bundle over the edge of the vertical shaft Caine was starting to breathe again.