Just as the companions entered the exit tunnel of the redoubt, the noise of the opening door abruptly stopped.
Instantly, Ryan raised a clenched fist and the others came to a halt behind him, their weapons armed and ready. Listening hard, the one-eyed man couldn’t hear anything unusual. The overhead fluorescent lights were humming softly, and there was a muffled shush from the air vents set along the wall. But that was all. Nothing more.
However, Ryan knew that there hadn’t been enough time for the blast door to cycle open completely. So what was going on here? He knew that at the end of that zigzag passage was the yard-thick nukeproof door that could only be opened with the proper alphanumeric sequence tapped onto a keypad. The code to enter the redoubts was one of their greatest secrets, and none of the companions had ever revealed it, even under torture. Access to the redoubts meant life itself to them.
“Mebbe the machinery that works the blast door is busted—” Krysty started, but was interrupted by the sound of a muffled gunshot.
“That was Jak’s Magnum.” J.B. frowned, turning in the direction of the stairwell.
“Or at least, it was a Magnum,” Mildred said hesitantly just as another shot came. This one louder than the first.
“Okay, now that was Doc’s LeMat!” Ryan confirmed, starting forward. “There’s no mistaking that hogleg. Let’s move!”
As the four companions charged across the garage, the sound of the opening blast door came again, slowly building in volume.
“Fireblasting hell, what is going on here?” Ryan demanded angrily, coming to a halt and glancing over a shoulder as the floor started to vibrate again from the cycling blast doors.
For a single long second, the companions stood undecided, torn between the two events.
“Fuck this. The rest of you go help Doc and Jak,” Ryan ordered, holstering his SiG-Sauer and sliding the Steyr SSG-70 rifle off his shoulder. Quickly, he worked the bolt to chamber a 7.62 mm round. “I’m going to recce that door.”
“Meet you back here in ten, lover,” Krysty said, sprinting for the stairwell door.
“Stay sharp,” J.B. warned, sliding the S&W M-4000 shotgun off his back and passing it to Mildred.
“Like a razor.” Ryan grunted, facing the tunnel.
“Watch your ass. This could be a trick,” Mildred cautioned, working the pump-action on the scattergun, then thumbing off the safety.
“If you see me running, just shoot anything behind,” Ryan muttered, walking into the access tunnel.
At the first turn he lost sight of the others, but the man could still hear them running between the cars, followed by the slam of a door being thrown open. The next zigzag turn of the tunnel took even that away, and the man proceeded onward in silence, straining to hear anything in front.
Keeping his blind side covered, Ryan stayed near the left wall. The same as before, the noise of the blast door opening soon stopped, only to return once more after about a minute. Controlling his breathing, Ryan tried to concentrate on anything else moving in the passage. But aside from the overhead lights and ventilation system, the access tunnel was deathly quiet.
At the last turn, Ryan paused at the unexpected smell of greenery. It lingered in the air for a few moments, then was gone, carried away by the ventilation system. Now suspicious, Ryan pulled a small plastic mirror from a pocket and carefully eased it around the corner for a look. At the far end of the tunnel he could clearly see the blast door, which seemed undamaged. On the wall alongside the massive portal was a small keypad for operating the exit. It looked normal. Searching for anything unusual, Ryan angled the mirror, but there was nothing else in sight.
Suddenly the predark machinery in the walls came alive and the nukeproof door slid out of the way. After a few seconds, a thin crack opened at one end, admitting a slice of bright moonlight. Then the portal ponderously ground to a halt and started to slide back into the recess of the jamb.
Pocketing the mirror, Ryan thoughtfully sucked his hollow tooth over that. There didn’t seem to be anybody outside trying to get into the redoubt. There had been no movement or shadows in that crack of moonshine. But for some reason, the blast door was cycling open and shut, again and again. Mebbe there was a short circuit in the keypad? Yet the base was supposed nukeproof, so what could possibly have damaged it?
Since there didn’t seem to be any danger from this direction, Ryan turned and started down the tunnel at a sprint to rejoin the others when a sharp whistle sounded from the garage.
Going flat against the wall, Ryan leveled the Steyr and prepared to fire as he gave two short whistles in reply. Then the man relaxed as two long whistles answered him back.
Resting the Steyr on a shoulder, Ryan nodded in greeting as the rest of the companions appeared from around a corner.
“Anybody hurt?” Ryan asked, looking them over. Nobody was visibly bleeding or limping. Always a good sign.
“Indeed not, my dear Ryan.” Doc’s deep voice boomed. “Although we have discovered a most perplexing mystery.”
“Prisoner in the brig,” Jak said succinctly, jerking a thumb. “Couple of officers with him.”
“They torture him?” Ryan asked, frowning.
“No sign of it,” Mildred answered, adjusting the strap of her med kit. “I think they were just asking him questions. The prisoner was handcuffed to a chair, but he didn’t seem to be harmed in any way.”
“Unlike the galley,” Doc muttered softly, suppressing a shudder.
“So what was the shooting about?” Ryan demanded.
“They blew off the lock to get inside,” J.B. explained. “The electronic lock needed a pass card to make it open.”
“Couldn’t find, so shot,” Jak corrected with a grimace. “Doc fired at a shadow.”
“I could have sworn something was moving,” the silver-haired man said, pursing his lips. “But when we went to look, there was nothing there.”
“Must have just been a trick of the lights,” Krysty suggested. “I could have sworn I saw something near the armory, but when I looked again, there was only some dust moving near an air vent.”
Ryan looked questioningly at J.B., and the man shrugged.
“The ceiling lights were flickering at the end of the hall,” J.B. said honestly.
Krysty looked past Ryan. “So what was with the door?”
“Come on, I’ll show ya,” he said, going back to the end of the tunnel.
As the companions turned the corner, the floor shook as the blast door started to cycle apart until the hair-thin span of silvery moonlight appeared, then it paused, closed once more.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a—” Mildred bit off the word. “Great, the only door out of here is broken.”
“Or is something trying to get in?” Krysty said, brushing back her bearskin coat to reveal her holstered blaster.
“I didn’t see anyone,” Ryan stated, heading for the keypad. “But there’s only one way to know for sure.”
Tapping in the access code, Ryan looked at the blast door, but nothing happened. He was starting to get concerned when the massive slab of laminated alloys finally began to slide across the opening. Keeping one hand on the keypad, Ryan half expected the door to stop again, but this time it kept going.
At first, the bright moonshine streamed in through the thin crack, but that soon became a flood of light as the blast door rumbled completely open. Prepared for anything, the companions raised their weapons and walked into a cool sweet wind that blew into the redoubt carrying the strong smell of green plants and fresh water. But some granite boulders and smashed masonry blocked their view of the world outside.
“Krysty, you better stay inside,” Ryan said, “in case the door closes early.”
The woman nodded and took a position near the keypad.
Spreading out in an arc so they wouldn’t offer a bunched target to any hidden enemies, the rest of the companions moved stealthily past the boulders.
Below the swell of ground was a field of wild grass that reached to a meandering river of clear blue water. In the far distance, the companions could dimly see foggy mountains to the north, a dark forest to the west, and the familiar coloration of a sandy desert to the south.
“This all seems vaguely familiar,” Mildred said, craning her neck. “Sort of like Ohio, or Indiana.”
“Even if it was daylight, there would be no way of telling where we are with so much cloud cover,” J.B. replied, squinting at the sky. The man touched the minisextant in his jacket pocket. With that J.B. could easily pinpoint their exact location anyplace on the planet, as long as he had an unobstructed view of the sun or stars.
“Not like clouds,” Jak said, sniffing the air. “Bad storm coming.”
“Acid rain?” Doc asked fearfully, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the bright moonlight shining through the banks of clouds overhead.
The albino teen shook his head. “Just rain.”
Satisfied they were in no immediate danger from anything outside, Ryan returned to the entrance and looked inside the door’s slot in the wall.
“Just as I thought, there’s something in there,” he said, running a hand along the interior. “Looks like a pressurized air tank, but its crushed smaller than a baron’s honor.” He gave an experimental tug. “It’s jammed in there solid.”
“Should damn well think so after a hundred years of being pounded by a ten-ton blast door.” J.B. chuckled, taking a glance inside. “Damn, that does look like an air tank.”
“Sounds like somebody was trying to jam the door open,” Krysty suggested from inside the tunnel.
“Or were they using it to smash the canister?” Ryan said, furrowing his brow. “Only a feeb would think anything that small could stop this door.”
“Bomb?” Jak asked, instinctively taking a step away.
“Could be,” J.B. added, moving around in the beams of moonlight and the fluorescent glow from the access tunnel. “Damn, I hate to use a flare for this.” Reaching into his munitions bag, the Armorer extracted a plastic mirror, and carefully angled it to reflect some of the silvery light into the shadowy recess. “Ah, that’s better. Okay, I can see a few touches of red paint on the canister, but no lettering…”
“Check the neck ring,” Ryan suggested.
“Gotcha.” J.B. shifted the mirror slightly and smiled in triumphant as a coded ID number came into view. Then the man went deathly pale. “Dark night, I know that ident code!” he breathed tensely. “That’s CVX-Nine, military nerve gas!”
“Nerve gas!” Doc gasped.
“John, you must have read that wrong,” Mildred scolded.
“The hell I did, Millie,” J.B. retorted, tucking the mirror away. “And I sure as nuking hell didn’t see any other of these things in the redoubt.”
“Me, either,” Ryan huffed, turning his back to the moon, and looking down the fluorescent lit tunnel of the redoubt.
Just then the blast door started to automatically close, and Krysty hurriedly tapped in the access code again. The titanic slab of metal paused, then receded.
“There’s a prisoner in the jail, and somebody hides a canister full of nerve gas in the doorjamb,” Ryan said. “That sure sounds like the redoubt was deliberately gassed. Just tuck the canister into the jamb as the door opens, and you’d have a good two minutes to get clear before the blast door cycled shut again to rupture the pressurized tank.”
“Two minutes easy,” J.B. agreed, pushing back his hat. “That would be plenty of time to get out.”
“And the ventilation system would suck the gas straight into the redoubt,” Mildred added with a disgusted expression.
“Who ever did this,” Doc advised, “knew an inordinate amount of details about how the top-secret base operated.”
“You got that right,” Mildred agreed. “The killer must have been worried that the prisoner was going to talk.”
“Triple-cold to ace a couple hundred people to get one,” Jak muttered darkly.
“Which makes the fifty-bullet question,” J.B. added. “Just who was that prisoner?”
“No way of telling now,” Krysty answered. “There were no dogtags or wallets. No ID papers on the two officers in the cell with him.”
“Were they carrying any insig?” Ryan asked pointedly.
She nodded. “Sure, one was a four-star general. The other a three-star.”
Two generals? “Then we can be sure it wasn’t some private found drunk on duty,” Ryan said with a hard expression. “Big brass means big crimes. Spy type mebbe, or a traitor.”
“Perhaps he was somebody working for Operation Chronos, or Overproject Whisper?” Mildred asked, glancing sideways.
Eloquently, Doc shrugged. “If he was, madam, I did not recognize him. But then again, in such a mummified condition, it would be hard to identify my own lovely wife, Emily.”
“Looks like just another damn mystery to add to the list about the redoubts.” J.B. sighed in resignation. “We’ll probably never know what really happened here that day.”
Ryan started to agree, but stopped. Some gut instinct told the Deathlands warrior that whatever had occurred here a century ago wasn’t over yet. Gas in a doorway. Hadn’t he heard about that trick before? Ryan narrowed his good eye as there slowly came to him a distant memory from when he was just a youth fighting in the Mutie Wars and…
Interrupting his thoughts, the blast door started to close again.
Quickly, Krysty tapped in the access code for a second time. “We’ve never done this before,” she said with a worried expression. “Tried to keep the blast door open for this long, I mean. I sure hope this doesn’t damage the machinery.”
“There’s probably a different code to hold the passage open,” Mildred rationalized. “But there’s no way to guess what it is.”
Jak stuck his head into the recess. “Getting this out be a triple-bitch,” he drawled slowly. “Maybe implo gren?”
“Don’t have any,” J.B. answered, patting his munitions bag. “Just a few antipers grens, one thermite and a couple of homie pipebombs.”
The teen clucked his tongue in disapproval. “Useless,” he declared, red eyes squinting.
“Well, we can’t leave it like this,” Ryan pointed out. “Sooner or later, the door motors will burn out, and then we’ll be trapped.”
“Were there any suitable tools in the garage, John Barrymore?” Doc asked, easing down the hammer on his LeMat to holster it.
Adjusting his glasses, the wiry man smiled. “Bet your ass, there are. Come on, let’s get moving.”
Mildred stayed with Krysty to guard the open doorway as the men moved down the tunnel. They soon came back armed with an assortment of iron pipes, two crowbars, a sledgehammer and an acetylene welding torch. The tank pressure was very low, but J.B. used the torch for as long he could to warm the smashed canister until the acetylene ran out. Then Ryan quickly hammered a crowbar around the edge of the softened metal, while Jak pounded in another on the other side. Doc slipped the iron pipes over the end of the crowbars to increase the leverage, and the men worked in pairs, throwing their full weight to the task.
However, the century of compression by the blast door had done a good job, and it took the men more than an hour to force the flattened canister loose. Only to discover that behind the first one there was a second canister with different markings. CVX-Four nerve gas. It was an unnerving sight. Two different types of lethal chems had been used. Even if the soldiers in the redoubt had been warned in time, they wouldn’t have stood a chance.