Conviction

37

Fisher knelt down before the lock and realized it was more than brand-new. It was a Sargent & Greenleaf 833 military-grade padlock — six-pin Medeco biaxial core, anticutting and grinding ceramic inserts, liquid nitrogen resistant.

“This must be one special meteorological station,” Hansen whispered. “Can we pick the lock?”

“If we had a few hours, maybe. Semtex would do the trick, too, but we’d probably have company before the smoke cleared. Fisher stood up and backed away from the hut. “Not big enough,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s not big enough to hold the 738 Arsenal.”

“Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it’s not here.”

Fisher shook his head. “Why did the Sikorsky land here? And why the lock? If the arsenal isn’t here, then it’s just Qaderi’s laptop and phone sitting inside this hut.”

“That may be, but we’re not getting past that door.”

“Let’s find another one, then.”

They retreated to the trees and crouched down in a circle. Fisher briefly explained what they were looking for, then assigned each of them a search area. “One hour. If we don’t find anything, we regroup here.”

Forty minutes later, Valentina called, “Got something. Three-quarters of a mile north of the hut. Placing a marker on the OPSAT now.”

They converged on her position: a narrow, six-foot-deep ravine bordered by scrub pines. Fisher whispered to her,

“Where?”

“Dead ahead, about twenty yards. See that rock outcrop sticking up beside the stump?”

Fisher followed her outstretched arm with his eyes. It took him a moment to see it — a nearly perfect circle of melted snow around the outcrop. Fisher signaled for the group to wait, then donned the night vision goggles and crept ahead. He was still six feet away from the outcrop when he felt the warm breeze. He continued forward, extended his hand, and stuck it into a niche in the rocks. His hand touched something metal.

It took minutes of painstakingly quiet work to move the rocks away from the air vent. It was roughly the size of a manhole cover and consisted of steel crossbars. Fisher stuck his fingers through the gaps and felt around the edge. He found neither a locking mechanism nor alarm wires. He pointed to Noboru and together they squatted over the cover, gripped the bars, and lifted. It came free. They crab-walked it a few feet away and gently set it down. Fisher put his NV goggles back on and leaned into shaft. Beyond ten feet he saw nothing but darkness.

Gillespie already had her rope coil detached from her pack. Hand over hand, she lowered the end into the shaft. She stopped and reeled in the rope, counting turns on her arm as she went. She held up three fingers, then five fingers. Thirty-five feet to the bottom.

Fisher gave her the nod.

Once they had the rope tied off to the trunk and measured out thirty-five feet, plus another five for safety’s sake, Gillespie severed the remainder and tied the rope to a Swiss seat rappelling harness. After a few adjustments, she secured herself in the seat, gave the group a nod and a smile, and lowered herself into the shaft.

A minute later her voice came over their headsets. “Down and clear.”

Fisher went next, followed by Valentina, Noboru, and then Hansen. Having already cleared the space with her night vision, Gillespie had set one of her LED flashlights upright on the concrete floor, casting a pale cone of light on the ceiling.

The room was ten feet long and roughly triangular, with the ceiling angling away from the overhead shaft to a half wall into which was set a doorway. Running down the middle of the floor was more vent grating. Warm air gusted past them and rushed out the shaft above. Somewhere below they could hear the faint pumping of machinery. Fisher turned on his headlamp and walked through the other door. He emerged thirty seconds later.

“It’s a utility room. There’s another door. I checked the circuit panel. Some of the lights are on somewhere.”

“More signs of life,” Hansen said.

“How big is this place?” Noboru wondered aloud.

Fisher replied, “Judging by the panel, damned big. There were a few hundred switches. A service tag read March of ’62.”

“Almost fifty years old,” Valentina said. “Cold War era. What do you think — bunker, test facility?”

“Either or both. Let’s pair up and do a little recon. Hansen and Gillespie; Noboru and Valentina. Stay sharp and stay in touch. Any trouble, we collapse back here.”

“That leaves you on your own,” Hansen observed.

Fisher smiled. It was strange to hear a fellow Splinter Cell talk about solo work as if it were an aberration. Kids these days. Then again, he reminded himself, there was something strange about working and living alone and considering that normal. He’d been under too long.

“I’ll get by,” he said.

Once through the utility-room door they found themselves in a wide, low-ceilinged corridor. On the concrete floor painted lines in fading green, red, and yellow led away in both directions. Stenciled on each line were what looked like three-letter Cyrillic acronyms. There were no lights. Everyone donned their night-vision headsets.

Fisher flipped a mental coin and pointed the others down the corridor to the left; he would take the right. With nods, the groups parted company and headed out.

Fisher hadn’t gotten fifty feet before Hansen’s voice came over his headset. “Sam, I’ve got something you’ll want to see.” He checked his OPSAT and saw the four of them were clustered together in the main corridor, fifty yards to the south. “On my way,” he replied. When he got there, he found the group standing before the wall, shining their flashlights on a four-foot-square Plexiglas placard. It was a map of the facility.

The complex resembled a geometric cloverleaf. At its center was what looked like four concentric circles; Fisher leaned closer and read the faded label: RAMP TO LEVELS 2, 3, 4. Situated in each quadrant around the ramp were the clover’s leaves, each one called a “zone”; each of these was divided into four “areas.” Running between each zone was a corridor like the one in which they stood, and inside each zone smaller halls divided the four areas. Squares within squares, Fisher thought. The Soviet military had always been fond of geometry.

Gillespie stepped closer and read the Cyrillic labels beside each zone: MEDICAL, ELECTRONICS, WEAPONS, BALLISTICS. “It’s a test facility. I assume ballistics means missiles and rockets.”

Fisher nodded his agreement.

“This place is massive,” Noboru said. “Take a look at the scale.”

At the bottom of the map was a gradated line in alternating gray and black. Each unit indicated fifteen hundred meters, or five thousand feet. Using his index finger and thumb as calipers, Fisher measured the complex from end to end. “Twelve hundred meters,” he announced.

“That can’t be,” Hansen said. “That’d make it a square mile.”

Valentina replied, “Four levels. Four square miles.”

Fisher did the mental math. “The east side of this place runs under Lake Frolikha.” He tapped the placard. “Ballistics and electronics. If you were experimenting, you’d want access to water for cooling and fire suppression.” He turned to the group. “We’ll clear it as it’s laid out, by zone and level, starting here and moving down. He assigned Hansen to the medical zone, Valentina to electronics, Gillespie to weapons, and Noboru to ballistics. I’ll loiter at the ramp area and play free safety. Questions?”

There was none.

“Lights off. Night vision on. Let’s go.”

At the ramp they found a freestanding elevator shaft that presumably led to the hut they’d found in the meadow. Fisher took his post beside the ramp railing while the others split up and disappeared down the corridors leading to each zone. Fisher listened to their progress over his headset: “At the entrance to the weapons zone… flexicam negative… entering zone… ” One by one, over the next few minutes, they each reported clear or no activity. Hansen was the last to report in. “Sam, meet me in level one medical zone.”

“On my way.”

In the greenish white glow of his night vision, Fisher found his way to the correct corridor. Two hundred yards away he saw a figure crouched beside a door. Hansen raised his hand and Fisher walked to him.

“Some weird stuff inside,” Hansen said.

“Describe weird.”

“See for yourself. It’s clear.”

Fisher stepped through the door and found himself in yet another corridor, this one narrower. Fisher poked his head through the door of the first area. It was a laboratory: long black workbenches, sinks, rolling stools, and gray metal shelf units along the walls. Fisher clicked on his flashlight. In the narrow beam he could see that the shelves were full of glass jars of varying sizes. Some were empty, some filled with amber or yellow liquid, and some containing formless, organic-looking blobs.

Fisher moved on to the next area. It was a hospital ward. Dozens of steel-framed beds were bolted to the walls, each equipped with shackles at the head and foot. Rolling IV stands stood clustered in the far corner like stick-figure mannequins. The floor was covered with litter, towels, and skeins of gauze bandages. A bank of X-ray light boxes lined one wall like a row of dark windows.

Fisher moved on to the last two areas and found more of the same: laboratories and hospital wings. He returned to the main door and crouched down beside Hansen, who asked, “Human experimentation, you think?”

Fisher nodded. “There were a dozen or so gulags within a hundred miles of here. There’d always been rumors of prisoners disappearing and either never coming back or coming back… different.”

“Christ Almighty.”

“Did you get to the end?” Fisher asked, pointing down the corridor.

“Yeah. It’s a ramp to the outside. It’s been plugged with enough cement to make a Wal-Mart parking lot.”

Fisher spoke into his headset: “Status report.”

The rest of the team checked in with an all-clear. They regrouped at the ramp a few minutes later. Gillespie said, “Found an indoor target range — fun lockers, sandbag tables, a lot of pretty-good-sized chunks taken out of the concrete walls.”

Valentina reported, “Standard electronics stuff: cabinets, testing benches, old capacitors, switches, wiring…” She looked at Noboru.

“Blackboards and drafting tables are all I found,” he said. “What about you, Ben?”

Hansen explained what they’d found in the medical zone.

Gillespie muttered, “Okay, now I’m officially creeped out.”

“Big shop of horrors,” Valentina replied.

“Let’s keep going.”

At staggered twenty-foot intervals they started down the ramp. It was wider than it had looked above, almost fifty feet from the wall to the guardrail — large enough, Fisher suspected, for the transport of heavy equipment, including rocket engines.

Forty vertical below level 1, the ramp opened into level 2.

Suddenly Fisher raised a closed fist. Behind him the others stopped and crouched down. Fisher pointed to his ear, then toward the railing overlooking the next level. He signaled to wait, then crept up to the rail and looked down. After a minute he returned to the group, gestured for them to follow, and led them a safe distance down the corridor.

“Two guards stationed at the entrance to the ramp below. Both armed with AK-47s. No night vision that I could see.”

“Where there are two, there are more,” Hansen said.

“Agreed. Let’s check this level and regroup here.”

Over the next half hour they each searched their assigned zones and found more of the same: experimental equipment and supplies. Noboru was the last to report in: “Sam, come down to ballistics.”

“Coming. Everyone else regroup.” He got three “rogers” in reply. As he had with Hansen, Fisher found Noboru standing outside the main entrance to the level 2 ballistics zone. Fisher stepped through. Instead of finding four areas divided by hallways, he found a man-made cavern. Measuring roughly two football fields in length and width, the area was filled with row upon row of engine-test scaffolding ranging in size from a VW Beetle to a commercial bus and each equipped with truck-sized tires. Fisher did a rough count and came up with thirty-six units. Four of them still held rocket motors.

“Check the far end,” Noboru said.

Fisher got out his binoculars and zoomed in as best he could with the night-vision goggles. Near the east wall, more than an eighth of a mile away, were what looked like four garage-sized concrete sewer pipes lying on their sides and spaced evenly across the width of the space. The wall behind the pipes was charred.

“Blast funnels for rocket exhaust,” Fisher guessed.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too, but I’m not talking about that. See the dark lump between the second and third funnel?”

Fisher panned the binoculars and zoomed in. It took him a few moments to realize what he was seeing — a pyramidal stack of military-grade Anvil cases. “I’ll be damned.” Then, over the radio: “Everybody converge on ballistics.”