Typhoon Fury (Oregon Files 12)

Max chuffed good-naturedly but said nothing as he extended an antenna and set it on the ground. Then he checked that the audio feed was working, and Juan heard Max’s voice echoing in his earpiece. Satisfied that everything was ready, he used the handheld controller to set the Crawler in motion. It silently glided away, only the occasional crackle of leaves betraying its location. Juan was impressed at how Max had eliminated the motor’s whine.

“What’s the range on that?” Juan asked.

“Since we have a direct line of sight into the tunnel, I’d say it could get two hundred feet inside before we lose the signal, depending on how many turns it has to make.”

The Crawler reached the entrance and went inside, hugging the concrete wall as Max drove it over the smooth tunnel floor. For a moment, the screen went dark as the sensor adjusted to the change in light. Then Juan could make out a string of lights going down the tunnel, bare bulbs hung from the arched ceiling. Piles of debris and pockmarks in the walls were reminders of the intense World War II battle to retake the fortress.

When the Crawler had gone another twenty feet, Juan heard the sound of machinery and voices, but he still couldn’t see anything but empty tunnel. The sound of a motor grew louder. The Bobcat came around the corner fifty feet away, its bucket trailing dirt that overflowed its sides.

Max maneuvered the Crawler into a small notch in the wall and let the Bobcat pass by. Seconds later, the Bobcat emerged from the tunnel and dumped another load on the pile before disappearing back inside.

“This is perfect,” Max said. “We’ve got our own escort.”

As the Bobcat passed, Max switched the Crawler into high gear, and it shot forward, racing after the Bobcat, until it was underneath the loader.

“Nice work,” Juan said.

“Gotta earn my keep somehow.”

The Bobcat made a left turn to go back the way it had come. Max deftly guided the Crawler to match course. A few seconds after that, Juan could make out people at the end of the tunnel. All of them, dressed in hard hats and colored vests like any normal construction crew, were digging or operating machinery, exc

ept for one man who stood off to the side directing their efforts. When Juan saw him, it confirmed that this was no ordinary archaeological dig.

“Is that Locsin?” Max asked.

“That’s him,” Juan said. “If he risked coming here himself, they must be close to breaking through.”

The Bobcat stopped next to a man operating a hydraulic rock hammer that was pounding away at the collapsed heap of concrete blocking the way. Some of the men tossed what they had already loosened into the bucket of the Bobcat while the rest unloaded beams from a trailer to shore up the dirt walls of the tunnel that they’d already dug out.

“We’ll lose cover once the Bobcat comes back out,” Juan said.

“I’ll move the Crawler under the trailer,” Max said.

“You read my mind.”

Max waited until all the men had moved away from the Bobcat and raced the Crawler across the open space to the underside of the trailer, the rock hammer masking the sound of the high-speed motor. Max switched it back to low gear and moved the Crawler around until it had a good view of the worksite while remaining in the shadows.

“If they get through, will you be able to move over that debris?” Juan asked.

“No, it’s too jagged, but it won’t matter,” Max replied. “I’m getting a really low signal from the Crawler. If it goes in any farther, we’ll lose it.”

“Then all we can do is watch and wait. But, either way, we’re taking them when they come out.” Juan radioed the rest of the team to report what he and Max had seen so they could prep for the upcoming ambush. They’d wait until Locsin and all his men were clear of the tunnel.

Juan and Max settled in and watched their tiny monitors like they were catching a game on TV, the most boring one they’d ever seen. There wasn’t even a good beer commercial to liven things up. The monotony, however, didn’t last long.

Twenty minutes and two more Bobcat runs later, the man operating the rock hammer shut it down and yelled to Locsin. He pointed at a black hole in the debris.

Locsin climbed up and shined a flashlight through the opening. When he looked back at his men, he was smiling. They had broken through.

45

The quick view of the area past the blockage didn’t show Locsin much, so he was eager to get inside and retrieve what they had come for. It took another ten minutes before the hole was wide enough for him to squeeze through. Without waiting for his men to shore up the hole, he climbed past the obstruction, leaving his men to widen the opening.

He shined the flashlight around and saw nothing at first. He walked several yards and then spotted a desk with papers and files piled on it and some lab tables holding a variety of equipment. All of it had corroded from the moisture leaking into the tunnel where the concrete had been blown away. A blanket of dust coated everything.

The Typhoon pills that they’d recovered from the other Japanese lab on Negros Island had been carefully packed in tins and sealed with wax, which was why the drug had maintained its potency. The records they found implied there was a much larger stash on Corregidor, which had been the primary laboratory facility during the World War II occupation.

Locsin yanked open all the desk drawers, looking for the same kind of tins, but all he found were more files. He desperately searched the rest of the tunnel, getting angrier and more frantic as he went. He tossed aside microscopes and smashed vials, shouting in frustration at the fruitless hunt.