The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [176]
‘I don’t know, but they would have built the bunker deep enough to survive a nuclear strike . . .’ She tailed off.
‘What’s the matter?’ Eddie began, before some form of spousal telepathy - or realisation of the inevitable - gave him the answer. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You want to climb down there, don’t you?’
‘If the US military’s built you a mini-NORAD, you might as well make use of it. Whatever the Khoils are doing, that’s probably where they’re doing it from.’
‘It’s a bloody long climb!’
‘Well, we could take the elevator . . .’
Eddie made a disapproving sound, then grudgingly mounted the ladder. ‘All right. But for God’s sake don’t slip.’ He began to descend, boots clunking on the metal rungs.
Nina followed suit. The descent was easy at first, but after a few minutes her muscles started to ache - and the bottom of the shaft didn’t seem any nearer. ‘I just had a depressing thought.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I want to hear right now,’ Eddie said. ‘What?’
‘What if they dug the bunker out of the actual bedrock? The Greenland ice sheet is over two miles thick in places.’
‘If we have to climb down a two-mile fucking ladder,’ he warned, ‘I’m going to throw you down the quick way!’
‘I, uh, don’t think it’ll be quite that far,’ she said. All the same, she looked down the shaft with increasing frequency, hoping for some sign of the bottom.
It came after another few minutes - still some distance below, but a dimly lit rectangle of grey was now visible at the end of the trail of lights. The sight rejuvenated them, and they increased the pace of their descent.
Finally, they reached the bottom. Eddie stepped on to another walkway and went to the hatch at its end. The bottom of the shaft proper was about six feet below, a concrete block covered by icy water. As Nina climbed off the ladder behind him, gratefully resting her arms, he opened the metal door a fraction of an inch.
More drab grey concrete greeted his eyes as warm air blew past him; a wide corridor, lit by sickly fluorescent bulbs. The hatch opened into an alcove in its side, blocking his view down the passage. Gesturing for Nina to stay still, he took hold of his gun, then stepped through and peered round the corner.
The corridor was about thirty feet long. At its far end was a huge metal door, painted a dull institutional green. Another, larger alcove on the opposite side contained a desk, the sleek laptop on it in marked contrast to the Cold War clunkiness of the surroundings. An Indian man was passing the time in exactly the same way as any bored worker in a regular office: surfing the internet.
‘There’s one guy,’ Eddie whispered to Nina, ‘and a huge bloody door. We’ve found the bunker.’ He brought up the gun. ‘Wait here.’
He checked that the man was still fixated on the laptop, then slipped round the corner and advanced quickly along the corridor. Unless the guard had the peripheral vision of a boiler-suited sentry in a Bond movie, he would spot the intruder at any moment . . .
Eddie made it almost halfway before the man’s eyes flicked sideways. He jolted in his seat, startled, then lunged for a control box on the wall—
‘I wouldn’t,’ Eddie said, MP5K fixed on the man’s head. He froze, outstretched palm stopped a few inches from a large red alarm button. ‘Sit back down. Hands in the air.’ The guard obeyed. Eddie came to the desk, keeping the gun locked on him. ‘Okay, Nina,’ he called.
Nina hurried to him, pointing her own gun at the guard as Eddie frisked him. ‘I see what you mean about the door,’ she said. ‘It must weigh ten tons! How are we going to get inside?’
‘Let’s ask Chuckles here,’ said Eddie. He shoved his gun’s muzzle under the guard’s chin. ‘How do you open the door?’
‘You - you push that button,’ the guard stammered, indicating the control panel.
‘Which one?’
‘The one that says Open.’
Nina examined the panel, finding that one of the buttons on it was indeed marked