The general public had the certain conviction that their esteemed leaders had folded their tents and stolen softly into the night. In fact they'd stolen, according to Prothero, to the Strategic Air Command headquarters near Omaha, Nebraska--an impregnable underground installation that had been constructed to protect SAC from nuclear attack, and which might have been custom-built to serve as a command and communications center for "Washington" and the Pentagon. The air in Nebraska was still breathable, with the additional safeguard that the SAC HQ was a sealed enclosure with its own self-contained oxygen plant.
The siren's harsh blare would have woken the dead, so Chase was prepared for the bleary-eyed faces peering out of the rooms as he ran for the elevator. He didn't waste breath on explanations; everyone had been drilled in the emergency procedure. He thumbed the button, fretting as the huge elevator rose with ponderous slowness to the upper level. If the attackers were from one of the nearby townships they might be merely a bunch of guys filled with liquor and frustration who'd decided to find out what was going on at the old Desert Range MX missile site. That was his hope, because their security force was more than adequate to deal with what might be a straightforward policing situation.
And then again, maybe they weren't just curious, and that could be bad.
All year long there'd been a steadily growing exodus from the south. This corner of Nevada, mostly desert scrub and dried-up water holes, wasn't exactly hospitable, and so the stream of immigrants kept right on heading north, looking for a better place to settle. Chase hadn't seen any of them with his own eyes, but he'd had reports. Among the dispossessed families and the anoxia and pollution victims were looters, drug-crazed youngsters, and, worst of all, freaks with deranged minds that had been eaten away by chemicals and cancer. He'd heard tales of bloody battles on the road and of small towns terrorized by demented mobs. His fear was that some of these had accidentally stumbled across the site, in which case they could be in for real trouble.
The grain of comfort he nurtured and jealously clung to was that even at this moment Frank Hanamura was setting up the pilot plant on the Scripps' research vessel in San Diego. At least Hanamura and his team were well out of it and able to carry on the work.
Sam Drew looked up from the map table as Chase entered the operations room. Drew was ex-army, like most of the others in the security force--all of whom had been carefully screened and chosen for their commitment to the project. A guard in dun-colored camouflage gear stood at his elbow and there were three radio operators wearing headsets at the communications console, receiving reports and issuing instructions to the other command posts, nine in all, throughout the complex.
Drew brought Chase up-to-date on the situation. He was a compact stocky man with a frizz of prematurely graying hair. They occasionally played chess together, with Drew invariably the winner. "All other access points are secure--no signs of attack," he said, circumscribing the layout of the Tomb with an outspread hand. "Either they don't know about the other entrances or they've decided to concentrate on this sector." He suddenly raised his hand. "Listen!"
From thirty feet above their heads came the muted rattle of small-arms fire. The operations room was on the topmost level, yet still protected by a thick slab of reinforced concrete and a series of leadlined steel doors.
"Any chance of them getting in through the silo door?" Chase asked worriedly.
"Not a snowflake in hell." Drew shook his head. "Not unless they've got a nuke warhead handy. The retracting cover weighs over seven hundred tons. No, their only hope is through the personnel entrance, and I've posted six extra men there. We can pick 'em off like wood pigeons as they come through. That's if they can break down the door --which is about as likely as a cow giving processed cheese."
"It's like being a rat in a trap."
"A pretty damn secure rat." Drew didn't seem too concerned, which Chase found reassuring.
"Any idea who they are?"
"Buchan got a peek at them through the scope, but the light wasn't good enough to make out any detail." Drew nodded toward the clock on the slabbed wall, which read four forty-seven. "Still dark up there."
"How long before dawn?"
"About an hour. But it should be light enough to identify them before then if you want to risk putting the scope up."
"Is that their gunfire or ours?" Chase asked.
Drew grimaced. "Them, the crazy bastards. They're taking potshots at the door. I wouldn't worry about it; they're going to need more than a forty-five to even put a dent in it."
