Then a concealing door locked into place above and brilliant illumination snapped on, flooding the underground space with light. It was as busy as the desert above had been empty. Two other chopper bays sat vacant to one side, and beyond that a small motor pool of open-topped jeeps. In a far corner of the cavernous space, she saw a machine shop through a row of windows. A gowned worker came up, pushing a stretcher in front of him. Toth was placed upon it, and the sides were raised.
They were led down a wide corridor. Nora’s hands were still bound painfully behind her back, one soldier leading the way and another bringing up the rear. She looked around, trying to get a sense of where they were, what exactly this place was—but the shock had not yet worn off and it was almost too strange to process. From the markings on the walls and the sterile, spartan appearance, it was obviously military, and much more recent than the ruins above. The walls and floor were made of poured concrete, painted light green. Now and then, they passed open doors or large windows, some dark, others affording views of soldiers hunched over workstations or, in one case, a larger server farm. Here and there, other corridors branched off. At the first of these, the gowned worker turned and wheeled the protesting Toth away. The main impressions Nora had were of immense size, comparative emptiness—and singular purpose. But what that purpose was, she couldn’t begin to guess.
The soldier in front of them stopped at a door. A number had been stenciled on it in black paint, and nothing made it in any way distinguishable from dozens of similar doors they’d passed already. The soldier rapped twice with the butt of his weapon, then—with effort—slid the door open. It rolled into a pocket in the concrete wall.
Nora felt a rifle barrel in the small of her back prodding her forward. She and Tappan stepped into a large, bare, circular room. Long windows of dark glass, gently curved to conform with the walls, were set just beneath the high ceiling.
In the middle of the room was a table of bare wood, as spartan as the rest of the place, and three chairs. Behind was a single chair in which sat a man. Unlike the others, he was in uniform rather than fatigues, gold eagles on his epaulettes. As they came forward and were steered in front of the desk, the man remained seated. He was blade-thin, with pale eyes, gray-white hair cut short, and high cheekbones that could have been fashioned with a hatchet.
The soldiers each stepped to one side, taking up flanking positions, weapons at the ready. Once the guards were in place, the man nodded briskly at Nora and Tappan in turn.
“My name is Colonel Rush,” he said. “I have some questions for you.”
54
THE CHOPPER ROSE again as soon as Watts and Skip had been strapped into the webbing. Night had fallen. As they gained altitude, Corrie looked south and could see a bank of lights illuminating the dig at the crash site. Farther to the south, on Diablo Mesa, she could make out the much larger cluster of lights that signified the base camp. The rest of the landscape was a vast bowl of darkness.
The chopper reached altitude and then accelerated north. She waited for it to make a turn to the south, but it didn’t. As she was about to ask Lime why they weren’t heading to the camp, she saw a massive flash of light burst out from that direction. A moment later, a shock wave hit the chopper: a boom that caused the craft to sway in the air as a roiling ball of fire punched up into the sky amid a swiftly expanding cloud of dust, luridly illuminated by a sudden inferno below.
“What the hell was that?” Corrie cried in horror, staring out the window.
“Holy shit!” Skip said, face to the glass. “Was that the camp?”
The pilot stabilized the chopper from the wave of overpressure. When Corrie turned around to look back at the others, she was struck dumb: Lime had unbuckled himself and was standing, weapon out and pointed at her. The soldier, likewise, had his weapon covering them.
“Remove your sidearm,” Lime said.
“What—？” Corrie couldn’t process this rapid, unexpected series of events.
“You too, Sheriff. Slow and easy, with two fingers. Hold the weapons out and the soldier will take them.”
Corrie stared, still flabbergasted.
“Do as you’re told,” said Lime, “or you’ll be killed. This may be hard to understand, but trust me, it’s your duty. As a patriot.”
She still could not speak. Skip was staring at Lime, eyes practically bugging out of his head.
Watts recovered first. “Corrie said you were her boss,” he told Lime, face dark. “Who are you really working for?”