Ghost Ship (NUMA Files 12)

“What happens to them when we fire off the gas?”

“They get frozen in place,” Calista replied, “which will keep them from getting in the way.”

Done asking questions, Egan left the control room as Calista made one last check of the system and patched command of the system to a remote unit she’d brought for just this purpose.

From there, she made her way to a tram that sat at the entrance to a long tunnel. With an open top, it looked more like an ore car than the passenger tram so familiar to most airport travelers.

She climbed in as Egan dragged the hackers from the rear of the second truck.

Xeno9X9, ZSumG, and Montresor were powerful men in the underworld of computing but were less than magnificent to behold in real life. Three scrawny, scruffy-looking specimens. Their faces were pale, their eyes sunken, and their arms and legs thin and spindly. There seemed little about them to suggest danger or the ability to bring down nations all around the world. Not one of them had offered any resistance since their capture, though that probably had more to do with the sisters, wives, and children being held at the Brèvard compound than any sort of docile natures.

“Get in,” she growled.

They climbed onto a tram that rested just in front of the platform on which the first trailer had been deposited.

With Egan in front, Calista took the rear seat, keeping the hackers between them. By typing a code into the remote, she activated the equipment, and the sound of a powerful generator spooling up reached everyone’s ears. When a light flashed green on the remote, she pressed the go switch and the tram began to accelerate down the long lighted tunnel.

“They’re gone,” Kurt said. “They took off down some tunnel. Now’s our chance.” He made his way to the door and unlatched the panel on the back of the trailer. Hopping out, he took a quick look around. There were only dead men left in the control room. Dead men and blinking computers that Calista had tampered with. If he guessed right, anyone watching the room from a remote location would get nothing but a report that said Situation normal.

“We’d better arm ourselves,” he suggested, grabbing a pistol from one of the dead men. Joe crouched by one of the other bodies and did the same. Then they left the control room to take a quick look around.

The space was huge, the size of an aircraft hangar. On one side, the big rig that had hauled them sat alone on an octagonal platform. Stripped of the container that had once been on its back, it looked small, out of place.

“Reminds me of a turntable in the railroad yard,” Joe said. Kurt agreed. He looked up. An empty shaft, matching the dimensions and shape of the platform, ran upward into the darkness. The walls of the shaft were notched, and huge wheeled gears that must have intersected these notches sprouted from four of the platform’s eight sides.

“I’d guess those gears move it up and down,” Joe said. “Like an incline railway, only vertical.”

Kurt had to agree. “That explains how we got down here, but it doesn’t explain why.”

Looking for the answer to that question, he moved to the horizontal tunnel, the one Calista and her friend had vanished down on a silent tram. It seemed to run on to infinity, colored in bands of white and gray where the overhead lights and the shadows between them alternated.

“What do you make of all this?” Joe asked.

“I’m not sure,” Kurt admitted, “but I’m getting the idea that Than Rang isn’t quite as neutral as Colonel Lee and the CIA seem to believe.”

“You think this tunnel goes under the DMZ?”

“It’s the only conclusion that makes any sense,” Kurt said. “For one thing, we’re right up against the border. For another, the North has been digging tunnels under the DMZ for years. I can’t remember how many have been found, but there are at least three or four major ones. Most were smaller and designed for infiltration, but supposedly the largest of them was capable of handling a division of men and light equipment in an hour or so. From the pictures I’ve seen, even that has nothing on this place.”

Joe nodded. “I thought the South was always listening for signs of more tunneling. Shouldn’t they have heard this thing being excavated?”

“We’re directly under a landfill,” Kurt pointed out. “With all those bulldozers moving around, not to mention the cranes, the dump trucks, and the compacting equipment, this place is a constant source of noise. I’m guessing that any stray sounds detected from this area could easily be written off as coming from the landfill. Beyond that, we’re down here pretty deep. That has a tendency to muffle noise as well.”

“Gotta hand it to them, the landfill’s a perfect cover. Even gives them a place to hide all the dirt and rock they had to excavate.”

Kurt nodded but didn’t reply. He was gazing down the long tunnel and had caught sight of movement. There was no sound like a subway train screeching down the rails, but something was definitely headed their way.

“Take cover,” Kurt said.

He and Joe crouched down and readied their guns as the approaching target continued to race toward them. It had no wheels or cables. It simply seemed to be flying.

“Maglev,” Joe said, using the short term for “magnetic levitation.” “That explains the high-voltage generators.”

“Another way to keep the operation quiet,” Kurt said. “It’s almost silent.”

The car slowed rapidly the last hundred yards and was almost motionless as it exited the tunnel and slid onto a platform similar to the one their shipping container now rested on. As the sound of the humming generator waned, the new arrival dropped several inches, settling onto the platform with a surprisingly dull thud.

Kurt waited but no one came out.