Chapter 72 - Beneath the Bedrock Sump
With raw, terrified desperation, Melissa threw her entire body weight against the heavy iron lever. The rusted gears screeched, groaning under decades of corrosion, but the linkage held.
Jared moved with surgical precision. Using his wire cutters and a can of emergency freon from his tactical pack, he froze the timing circuits on the three thermite charges strapped to the manifold, snapping the ignition leads before the chemical reaction could ignite the cores.
As the last timer died, a heavy pneumatic thud echoed from the depths of the drainage pipe. The vibration beneath the floorboards eased from an ear-splitting hum to a steady, controlled rumble.
"The pressure is venting into the secondary runoff basin," Jared breathed, wiping sweat from his forehead despite the freezing air. "The shop won't blow. But the retrieval bell is already at the surface."
He turned back toward the bunker entrance. In the valley below, through the shattered roof of Bay 1, the violet beam of light had ceased pulsing. Instead, a brilliant, blinding emerald flare shot into the low-hanging winter clouds, painting the snow on the mountainside in shades of jade and bone.
"What is that?" Melissa whispered, leaning against the cold concrete wall, her chest heaving.
"The secondary transponder," Jared said, checking the magazine of his Colt and chambering a round. "The vault is open."
Leaving Melissa under strict orders to stay hidden in the secondary bunker, Jared moved rapidly down the access road toward the repair shop. The perimeter fence had been flattened. The yard was littered with broken cinder blocks, shattered glass, and twisted sheet metal.
He slipped through the side entrance of Bay 4—the heavy steel roll-up door was bent outward at a forty-five-degree angle, providing just enough clearance to crawl beneath.
Inside, the silence was unnatural. The constant hum of the shop's air compressors and fluorescent fixtures was gone. The only sound was the slow, steady drip of hydraulic fluid from the elevated lifts and the faint, rhythmic ticking of a cooling nuclear core.
In the center of Bay 1, resting atop the pulverized wreckage of the concrete floor, sat the 1962 ARPA containment bell.
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Its three-foot-thick outer hull had unlocked like the petals of a metallic flower. The interior chamber was illuminated by an array of amber vacuum tubes and analog gauges, surrounding a single, central pedestal of polished green serpentine stone.
And resting on that pedestal was a locked titanium courier case, stamped with a serial number that matched the tattoo on Jared’s grandfather’s forearm.
