"Far be it for me to argue with a superior officer."
"What about you, Major?" She returned the large burger to its container and drank from a paper cup. "You're from Georgia, right? A nice southern fried steak more up your alley?"
Gant enjoyed the first bite of his lunch but her question sent him back through the years. He told her, "Not exactly. Given the choice I would begin with a bowl of she-crab soup. Nice, creamy, sort of a bisque. Or maybe a seafood boil if we are talking about dinner."
She eyed him for a moment and then understood.
"You lived on the coast?"
"No, but my mother came from a town near the South Carolina border. She brought the low country with her, as long as she could find good seafood. Charleston rice, catfish stew, and if it got cold she made a baked macaroni that would warm you from the inside out. Of course, every New Year's Day she served Hoppin' John. For good luck, you understand."
Despite the flood of memories, Gant worried this might be another of her psychological tests, just as she had purposely tried to annoy him when they first met. However, she offered a short smile in appreciation for his culinary history and that smile made him feel that her interest was genuine. In fact, there was something in her demeanor that made him feel more at ease this time. He tried to figure out what it was.
"You might want her to cook some up, because I think we're going to need some luck."
One of the rusty wheels on her chair squeaked as Liz bent over to retrieve a stack of folders and envelopes from the floor. He helped move aside the lunch containers to make room on the desktop.
"The information is all here," she said and stole another bite from her burger.
He eyed the pile of folders. Some appeared rather new, others ancient, judging by their torn and bent edges.
"That is a dreary looking pile of file folders."
"Dreary is the perfect word for this place," she responded after swallowing.
Her guard dropped for a moment and a bout of exhaustion swept over her face. He noticed her eyes appeared a little red, with bags underneath.
"I will venture a guess that you were up all night researching these folders. I would have been more than willing to lend a hand."
"General Borman had these files delivered to me, but only to me. He said that as the commander of this base I'm entitled to them, but no one else except on a need-to-know basis. So letting you go through all the files with me would have been against the general's orders. But now I can pick and choose select nuggets of information that I think are important for you to be aware of. All a part of you helping me keep a close eye on your men and in the interest of security at this facility."
"So it is acceptable for you to relay this information to me, but it would not have been acceptable for me to look over your shoulder while you went through the files the first time."
"Now you’ve got it, soldier."
His head tilted, a grin tugged at the edges of his mouth, and he said, "Colonel, I appreciate your approach."
Liz referred to notes written on a yellow tablet as she rummaged through the files. Gant chowed down on his sandwich while listening.
"Work started on November 15, 1969, on the Red Rock Mountain Command and Control Center. They billed it as a new army storage depot but that wasn’t the intent. Red Rock was to be a state-of-the-art bunker designed to keep our top brass safe and secure if the Cold War got hot. It seems this place is far enough away from the big cities to be out of the blast zone but close enough to get to in a hurry. In any case, construction wasn’t completed until four years later, with the complex officially opening on July 2, 1973. But hold the phone — two months before they turned on the lights the purpose of the facility was changed. In May of ’73, the Red Rock Command and Control Center became the Red Rock Mountain Research Facility. I guess they didn’t think Pennsylvania was a nice place to spend a nuclear winter."
"Not enough skiing, I suppose," Gant said sarcastically as he recalled passing dozens of ski resort billboards during the drive in.
"In November of 1973 they set about a complete reconstruction of sublevel 8 to turn it into a high-tech ‘Red Lab’ facility." She paused and cocked her head. "I admit that the first time I heard that term was here. I believe I mentioned that to you yesterday when we first spoke."
He told her, "As you can probably guess, a Red Lab is an area that is liable for one hundred percent containment if an experiment goes bad or a dangerous specimen breaks loose. Basically, there is a big door that slams shut and locks everything inside. To work in one you receive a thorough orientation on the idea that you may end up stuck inside and left to rot. Or, maybe, subjected to poison gas, fire, flooding, radiation, or whatever the guys on the outside think it will take to eliminate the problem. The researcher, or scientist, or security guard is expendable."
The lieutenant colonel replied, "I have been in similar settings but I don't recall the term 'Red Lab.'"
"I believe it originates with The Tall Company. Over the years it has spread out from them."
Her eyes narrowed and she stared at him in reaction to the tone in his voice, forcing him to explain, "I am not a big fan of that outfit."
"Well, that's in keeping with what happened here. Or, at least it explains that big vault door. Like I told you yesterday, a researcher by the name of Briggs conducted an experiment on June 22, 1992. That experiment began at 8:20 a.m. in the Red Lab on sublevel 8. At 8:35 a.m. containment procedures were activated via a voice command from Briggs himself. The choke point for expanded containment happened to be several floors up, however, on sublevel 5—just about where our vault door is today. As far as I can tell, that was the last communication from inside the quarantined zone."
Gant considered. She saw the puzzled look on his face.
"Yes, very creepy, isn’t it?"
"That’s not what bothers me," he said. "You don’t understand. The guys who work in a Red Lab, the last thing they want to do is trip an alarm and seal themselves in. Most of the time when containment is initiated it comes from some remote viewing station. It is a lot easier to push that big red button when you are not going to be trapped inside. It would be like volunteering to be entombed."
"So what?"
"So it surprises me that Briggs would be the one calling for containment. Most guys would head for the exit, then shut the door behind them."
Thunder thought aloud: "So either what happened was so nasty that Briggs just reacted or he was some kind of hero for sacrificing himself to save the rest of the base."
"I suppose so, yes."
Thunder pushed aside several sheets of paper, searched through the mess, then scanned an official-looking document the edges of which had yellowed with age.
"The CO waited for about two hours. When he didn’t receive any communication from the lower levels he sent in a Hazmat team."
Liz put away that particular report, bent over, grunted, and then produced a box of additional folders.
She explained, "Each of these contains a general description of the team, equipment inventories, objectives, and more."
He asked, "Those are reports documenting entry teams? How many have gone in over the years?"
"Near as I can tell, several in the first few months after the incident, then that was it. I haven’t been able to go through all the details; there’s just too much paper here. But I did gather enough preliminary information to get the gist of things. The first cleanup crew went in blind. They had no idea about the nature of the accident. Radiation? Biological? Hazardous waste? The only thing they knew was that Briggs had called for expanded containment, and that was that."