Chapter Five

 

 

" 'Emergency Escape Stairs,' " Ryan read. "Haven't come across that in a redoubt before."

 

The sign was in blue, block-printed letters on a white plastic board. The notice looked remarkably unfaded, as sharp and pristine as the day it was painted, probably some months before skydark.

 

Beside it was a heavy steel sec door, with a simple push-bar release.

 

"Think that only opens from this side?" J.B. queried. "Best be careful we don't go through it and then find there's no way back here."

 

"Could be." Ryan examined it carefully. "Air seems fresher here. So it could be that whoever opened up the redoubt beyond this door couldn't find any way of getting it open."

 

"Take load plas-ex," Jak said, tapping it with his knuckle. "Triple solid."

 

"Implode might rock it." The Armorer considered the door. "Buried deadlock hinges. Gren might move it, but it's designed to jam solid if anyone tries to force it."

 

"Can I open it, Dad?"

 

"No!" Ryan spoke louder and fiercer than he'd intended, making the boy jump. He continued in a gentler tone. "You should know better than to ask that kind of question, son. The door could've been boobied on the other side. Trader used to say that a man who rushes in gets himself carried out."

 

"Sorry. I wasn't going to rush in and start trying to open it, Dad."

 

Ryan patted the boy on the shoulder, ruffling his thick dark curls. "I'm sure of that. Better to be blown up than be a stupe. If you're not a stupe, then you won't get blown up."

 

Doc cleared his throat. "Forgive me, gentles all, but are we going to stand here and chop homespun cracker-barrel philosophy with one another, or are we going to get the door open and move on into the redoubt?"

 

"We're moving on. J.B., let's check the door."

 

It hadn't been booby-trapped. At least, as far as they could tell from a careful examination of the lock, the door hadn't been wired.

 

"Everyone go back around the corner," Ryan ordered. "Flat on the floor, eyes closed, hands over your ears and your mouths open. Minimize any blast."

 

Krysty stared at him. "You saying that you think there might be a blast, lover?"

 

"No. I wouldn't be going to push the locking bar if I really thought that. But there's always that long-odds chance. Go on, now."

 

They all moved away as he'd ordered, leaving him alone by the sec door.

 

The round push bar was cold to the touch, and he nudged it experimentally, crouching over it and peering at the revealed part of the mechanism when the bar moved. Ryan saw nothing to make him suspicious.

 

He edged it a little harder. Nothing much seemed to be happening.

 

Ryan finally gave the bar a steady push, feeling it click as the lock was triggered. He winced at the tiny sound, but no flesh-rending explosion followed. The door was now ready to open, perfectly balanced.

 

"All right?" J.B.'s voice echoed and bounced in the odd acoustics of the tunnels.

 

"So far" Ryan inhaled a slow breath, then wiped a trickle of perspiration from his forehead With the sleeve of his fur-trimmed coat.

 

If there was some kind of device linked to the door, it would be triggered now.

 

Ryan pushed the door open a couple of inches, seeing clear space all around the three sides. Nothing happened, and he could detect no sign of any problem.

 

He drew the SIG-Sauer and eased the sec door open a little farther.

 

"All right!" he shouted. "Come ahead."

 

Ryan heard footfalls behind him, but all his concentration was on what lay beyond the sec door.

 

As it opened, he could see more and more. A number of passages opened off, with what looked like the familiar kind of redoubt map standing at the center. The air was clean, this time with a definite current to it, blowing in his face, tugging at his hair.

 

Ryan held the door while the others filed through. He looked at the exterior lock.

 

"There's a small release button set into the bottom part of the handle," he said. "But it probably only works if the push bar's up on the other side of the door."

 

"Sure?" Krysty squinted at the impenetrable door. "Suppose you're wrong, lover?"

 

"Then we're stuck the wrong side of the gateway with no chance of getting to it. It's not the end of the world." He grinned at her, suddenly looking years younger. "On second thoughts, mebbe it is the end of the world."

 

"Check it," the Armorer said. "I'll go to the other side and we close the door. Test that button. If you haven't opened the door in thirty seconds, we know it doesn't work and I open her up again. And we have to consider our position."

 

Ryan nodded. "Sure."

 

J.B. vanished and the heavy door was swung shut again, the lock clicking home. Ryan pressed what he thought was the release button, and then J.B. carefully lifted the push bar, making sure it stayed up with the sec door locked.

 

Everything worked perfectly.

 

Despite the great weight of counterbalanced vanadium steel, Ryan was able to open it with one hand.

 

 

 

THEY STOOD TOGETHER to look at the map, which was an intricate maze of colors and coded numbers, all linked to a schematic plan below.

 

"We're here," Mildred said, pointing to a discreet green cross.

 

"And that's the gateway," Doc remarked, pointing at a section in pale pink marked Matter Transfer, which also carried the holographic message Entry Absolutely Forbidden To All But B12 Cleared Personnel.

 

"Armory," J.B. said. "Quite a way off, up three levels, behind the guard section. Close by what looks like the main sec control area."

 

"Any food anywhere?" Dean asked.

 

"Yeah." Krysty tapped her finger on a green hexagonal area. "Dining hall and supplies. That's where it would've been. But it seems certain that the whole place was swept just before skydark. I'd be surprised if we found anything worth having anywhere in the whole redoubt."

 

"Entrance there." Jak pointed. "Two levels up."

 

Ryan was trying to work it out. "The way in and out of the complex looks like it's above us. Mebbe there's another set of those emergency stairs, but I can't see any."

 

J.B. had polished his glasses again, putting them back on to peer at the plan. He traced their route from the gateway. "Guess you're likely right, Ryan. It must" He glanced behind them. "Over there. Short way along that tunnel."

 

The sec door was there.

 

Like the other one, it proved safe to use, and they left it tripped, ready to get back down toward the mat-trans section of the redoubt.

 

 

 

RYAN LED THE WAY UP the iron stairs, his boots rasping on the serrated treads of the steps. He guessed that there was probably a bank of elevators that they could have used to reach the ground level and the way out of the place. But he had a well-founded dislike and mistrust of elevators. At least nobody could jam a staircase with him on it. Or cut the cables and send him plummeting a thousand feet.

 

He looked up, seeing the silver-painted steps spiraling for at least another hundred feet. But that didn't give him much of a clue to how many floors that distance might mean, as all of the redoubts in the network were built to incredibly high-security defensive specifications.

 

The rest of the group was strung out below him.

 

The Trader had always insisted that any patrol should stick to the best pace of the slowest member of the unit. A situation where someone was being pushed that little bit beyond his or her limits meant danger for everyone.

 

Doc was the slowest.

 

"I don't suppose we might stop when we reach the top of the stairs, Master Cawdor?" Doc's plaintive voice bounced off the sec-steel walls of the shaft.

 

"I think we could take five after we get through the next door, Doc."

 

"Then you are truly a saint in human form, my friend."

 

 

 

THE THIRD DOOR was treated the same as the previous two, left open, ready for them to make their exit.

 

"One more floor and we should be up at ground level," Ryan stated, studying the new plan.

 

"Anyone smell anything?" Jak asked.

 

"What?" Krysty sniffed the air. "Can't pick anything up. What is it?"

 

"Cooking meat. Faint and far. Mebbe outside redoubt. Main doors could be open."

 

"Yeah," Dean said, turning his head from side to side, shuffling his feet with excitement. "Jak's right, Dad. Someone's roasting meat."

 

Nobody else had a good enough sense of smell to catch the elusive scent, but Ryan believed Jak and his son, though he didn't share their enthusiasm over the discovery. Not if it meant that a section of the sprawling military complex had been infiltrated and taken over.

 

It could mean trouble.

 

 

 

A WINDING CORRIDOR was marked on the plan as being only for Alternatively Abled Personnel.

 

"Wheelchairs," Mildred said.

 

"Cooking's stronger," Jak said when they'd gone about halfway up the gentle incline.

 

"Think I can smell it," Mildred stated. "like a barbecue on a Pleasant Valley Sunday. Yeah, I'm sure of it. Can you smell it, John?"

 

The Armorer stood still, pushing his battered fedora back off his forehead. "Not sure. Mebbe I can only smell what you've said I should be able to smell."

 

"It's strong," Dean said.

 

"Must mean someone's inside the redoubt." Ryan rubbed at the stubble on his chin with his thumb and forefinger while he considered the implications. "Odds are, they're going to be hostiles. Get our shooting in first, if we have to."

 

The outer wall of the circling ramp was badly scuffed at about eighteen inches from the dark brown carpet tiles. And at one point they found that the white plastic handrail had been pulled loose from the wall.

 

"Must've had a lot of crips," Dean said.

 

"Not very PC to say that," Mildred chided. "Politically correct, Dean. 'Crips' is not a good word for people who are disabled in some way."

 

"But everyone calls them crips, Mildred." The boy shrugged.

 

"And everyone once called black people like me 'niggers,' Dean. Saying it doesn't make it right."

 

The anger was cold and unmistakable, making the boy drop his head and mumble an apology.

 

 

 

"ANOTHER DOOR," Ryan reported to the others as they reached the top of the winding ramp.

 

"This should be the level with the main entrance," J.B. said. "And even I can smell that meat roasting."

 

"Buffalo," Jak suggested.

 

Krysty laughed. "Now you're bluffing us, Jak. Granted it's meat, but it could be snake or gator or possum."

 

"Buffalo," he repeated stubbornly.

 

"Soon find out," Ryan said on the wide landing in front of the sec door. "Got to be real close to us."

 

The simple push bar worked smoothly, and Ryan inched the door open.

 

Now the cooking smell was almost overwhelming, and he found himself salivating so hard with anticipation of food that he spit on the floor.

 

"Here we go," he said. "Soon as the door opens, we all fan out on both sides and keep on triple red. Can't see anyone through the crack. Some smoke wreathing by."

 

"I'll set the sec lock in case it slams shut on us," J.B. said.

 

Ryan nodded. "Right!"

 

He pushed the door open and erupted into a wide, open area, with a ceiling at least forty feet above. Ryan moved right and flattened himself against the wall, while the others poured out, blasters ready.

 

A heavy pall of cooking smoke billowed a few yards in front of them.

 

A disembodied voice came from behind the smoke.

 

"Who de fuck're you?"