As Good as Dead

by O. J. Anderson

Chapter 11

J-9 Military Reservation
Surface Level

conclusion

When the escalator car reaches the surface, Jack and his men are not on it. They are under it, doing a listening recon of the loading area. Looking up through the opening of the shaft, Jack can see a high rock ceiling reinforced with steel girders. It’s a cave, man-made, built into the side of the mountain; about the size of a small aircraft hangar. A couple of Hummers are parked near the large sliding doors. Through the windows in the doors, Jack can see bright lights. They wait.

It is silent. No men come rushing over. Jack moves up and slowly raises his eyes over the lip of the shaft. Does a 360 scan of the area.

No one in sight. He waves his men out quickly, before someone else does show up. Jack is down to his last magazine. No grenades. It’s time to just slip out the back and disappear. The men move in threes, swiftly past a row of large wooden crates, some covered with green canvas tarps.

From what he has seen and gathered thus far, Jack has to assume that this is not a main influx point of goods and supplies. It isn’t set up for that. The base is obviously connected by tunnel to other bases where building materials and manpower are brought in and out via mag-lev subways, as David explained; all part of what he said is known as the web: an underground network of cities, bases, prisons, farms, storage facilities, et cetera. A subterranean world. Gonna need a lot more explosives, Jack thinks as he holds up his team near the last crate.

The only way out appears to be the two doors at the mouth of the cave. The large sliding doors — not an option — and the regular-sized door off to the right marked as an exit. Both doors open out into the lighted open area. Jack looks through the frosty glass window in the door, sees that the storm is still raging; but they can’t just waltz right out and leave through the front gate. Need some backup.

Normally, this would be a point of high tension, but not when Jack Creed’s on the job. The winner is always the same; that part has been predetermined long ago. Jack establishes radio contact with the demo team on the snow machines. Finds out which one has eyes on the military reservation, or is close to it. They also establish a link-up point two kilometers to the north, past a good-sized terrain feature.

Fifteen minutes later: “Black Ace, this is Black Bear... in position, over.”

Jack: “Do it.”

“Roger.”

Somewhere in the mountains there are nine puffs of smoke that no one sees or hears. The Z-rods descend rapidly through the earth... rock... concrete.

A rumbling rises up from below. Violent tremors. Simmons, buried now in a sniper position, fires the laser rifle at the generators and lights. There seems to be no communications between the underground base and the topside base, so it will probably resemble an avalanche accompanied by a power outage, nothing unusual. But if not, so what.

Jack and his men jog along the rock wall in the darkness to the fenceline. Rivers cuts them a hole with the wire cutters. Behind them comes the sound of doors opening and closing. Voices. Then nothing. Once everyone is on the far side of the fence, they spread out and begin trudging uphill through the deep, fluffy snowpack.

Everything is quiet again as the six men in white move invisibly, soundlessly through the falling snow; billions and billions of unique shapes, drifting through darkness, then building into a collective, luminescent whole. None of the men uses GPS navigation or night vision devices now. None of them needs them. They know exactly where they are heading.

Open Challenge 283...