Nightwatch

Chapter 57

“Tire in the hole!”

Thomas wasted little time reacting to Sergeant Reed’s warning, and he alertly ducked down behind a shoulder-high, elongated limestone shelf, alongside Ted Callahan, Ranger Glickman, and Captain Christian.

There was a deafening, gut-wrenching blast as the last of the bangalores detonated. Even though they were a good three hundred yards from the blast itself, debris still peppered off the pockmarked face of the ledge they hid behind.

“All clear!” yelled Reed, this being all Thomas and the others had to hear to leave their shelter and head toward the blast site.

As expected, the bangalore had cleared the last of the obstacles leading to the cave — a hastily em placed double-coiled strand of extremely sharp concertina wire, which had been booby trapped with claymores. Sergeant Reed had already picked his way through the breach, and they joined him in front of a section of locked, chain-link fence.

“And that’s where our trail of footprints is headed,” he told them, pointing to the fence’s far side.

The oval-shaped entrance of the cave could be seen from here. A protective barrier of iron bars extended from the irregular limestone ceiling to the rock floor. Several feet beyond this barrier, blocking the entrance itself, was a sealed doorway constructed of tempered steel.

“We can cut through this fence with wire cutters and use plastic explosives to penetrate the bars,” said Reed, who scanned the remaining barrier with his flashlight.

“That inner vault, though, could be the showstopper. Our best bet appears to be to hit those side hinges with our remaining hundred pounds of C-4.”

“You know, there’s a secondary entrance to this cave system,” remarked Jody Glickman.

“It’s on the other side of the hill, and we use it to count the cavern’s population of endangered Indiana bats.”

“Then you’ve actually seen the abandoned underground command post?” asked Thomas.

Glickman answered while shaking her head no.

“The cave system beneath Tater is immense, and my explorations have been limited to the cavern where the main bat population is located.

But I’m almost sure we’ll be able to access the portion of the cave where the government facility was supposedly situated.”

“Ranger, me and my MPs would be willing to join you there to learn this fact for certain,” offered Jay Christian.

“And you can count me in,” Thomas added.

“I’ll stay here with Sergeant Reed and his Sappers,” said Callahan, who looked at his watch and added an urgent “Let’s do it!”