Zero Day (John Puller 1)

Puller skirted the hide of the Bunker, walked north till he reached the end of the concrete, and then headed west again. He checked his luminous watch. He was two minutes ahead of schedule. Sometimes on the battlefield being early was just as bad as being late. He slowed his pace just a bit.

When they finally reached the edge of the woods, Puller squatted on his haunches and Cole did

the same, coming to a stop on his right.

Dead ahead was the firehouse.

Puller pointed to the right of the structure. “Phone line comes in to that spot. There’s a jack in the office on the second floor.”

Cole had a thought. “The passageway from the firehouse to the Bunker wasn’t on those plans.”

“That’s right,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

“But why not?”

“For a very good reason. Back door in they didn’t want to publicize.” He rose. “You ready? Because it’s time to do this.”

Cole rose. Her legs wobbled a bit, but then regained their steadiness. She swallowed a lump the size of a fist and said, “Let’s roll.”

CHAPTER

87

THE FIRST PART of the mission went exceptionally smoothly. They entered the firehouse through a back door. Puller noiselessly attacked the lock and the wood swung back shortly thereafter.

“They teach you breaking and entering in the Army?” Cole said in a low voice.

“It’s called urban warfare,” he replied.

They made their way up the steps to the second floor after confirming that the first floor held nothing that was breathing. Puller spent ten minutes rigging the phone cable into the wall jack. He pulled from his knapsack what looked like an old-fashioned SAT phone the size of a large brick.

“Where did you get that?” asked Cole.

“Army. They never throw anything away.”

He attached the cable to ports on the phone. He hit a button on the phone and held it up to his ear.

“We have a dial tone,” he said.

“Is your call going to be long-distance?” she said, managing a weak smile.

“The longest,” he replied.

They walked back down the stairs and reached the set of lockers that David Larrimore had told him about. These lockers were all secured and looked like they hadn’t been touched since the place had closed down.

He shook off his knapsack and said, “Time to dress for the show.” He pulled out two hazmat suits and accompanying filtration gear.

“The guy said plutonium has a half-life of twenty-four thousand years,” said Cole.

“That’s right.”

He handed her the suit. She stared down at it. “He also said these suits probably wouldn’t protect us against direct exposure to that crap.”

“These suits are a lot better than anything he had back in the 1960s. But you can stay here if you want and cover my rear flank. It might actually be a better plan than you going in there with me.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” She started to put on the suit.

When they were done she gazed up at him. “We look like astronauts ready to do a moonwalk.”

“Maybe not so far from the truth.”

Puller broke open the last locker, found the pressure point for the panel, pushed it, and the little door popped open. He felt for the catch. He hoped that after all these decades the mechanism would still work.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he heard a pop and then a slight rush of air and the wall of lockers swung away from the wall. It did so with a screech. The thing probably hadn’t been opened since the 1960s. This made him smile. Whoever they were up against had not used this way to get into the Bunker. They’d gone through the shaft.

Cole hit the opening with her light. Revealed was a set of stairs.

“You looked disappointed,” said Puller through his mask.

She started and stared up at him.

“Hoping we might not be able to get in?”

“Maybe,” she admitted.

“Facing fear is better than running from it,” he said.

“What if it’s fear you can’t beat?”

“Then it might be better to be dead,” he answered.

He pulled out two pairs of night-vision goggles. “The place will be pitch black inside presumably, so this is the only way we’ll be able to see. Once we confirm we’re the only ones in there, we can use our flashlights. I’ll show you how to use the goggles. They take some getting used to. And if something happens to me, you’ll need them to get out as quickly as possible.”

“If something happens to you, it’ll probably happen to me too.”

He shook his head. “Not necessarily. We have to buck up the chances that at least one of us will survive.” He explained how the device worked and then slid it over her head and flipped the eyepieces down over Cole’s clear mask shield. He powered it up and took her through what she was looking at.

“Okay, you’re officially night-vision goggle certified.”

He powered up his own goggles and slid them down in front of his eyes. He handed her the roll of cable. “Spool this out as we go.”

“I got the longest length I could. Think it’ll be enough?”

“We have to go with the equipment we have. If it’s not long enough, we’ll figure something else out.”

She nodded.

He led the way down the stairs, his field of vision reduced somewhat because of the green that made him feel like he was in a dirty aquarium. But certain details were enhanced beyond what his naked eye could ever pick up.

Puller liked details. They were often the difference between walking out of a situation and being carried out of it.

They reached the bottom of the steps. They were now in a long hall formed from concrete painted yellow. They had traveled half of it when he began to see the filtration equipment. He tapped Cole on the shoulder and pointed ahead. “Filtering station.”

She tapped him on the back to indicate she’d seen it too.

The machinery they encountered was large, elaborate, and was probably state of the art for its time. Puller faced next what he had expected to, even though the filter station had not been on the facility plans. A large fan. Twice as tall as he was. This would be a tricky part. At least they didn’t have to worry about the thing starting up. He contoured his body to get past it and then helped Cole do the same. They were careful with the phone cable so that it was not against the blades of the fan. The last thing they needed was a cut line and no communication. No cell signal could work from under three feet of concrete. Puller worked the line down to the bottom of the floor so that the only thing it was touching was the base of the fan, which was rounded smooth metal.

They continued on another hundred feet or so. In his head Puller calculated distances and concluded that they were close. He shifted his knapsack to a better position and lifted his forward M11 from its holster. The MP5 rested against his chest and he could deploy it on target in seconds. He looked back and saw that Cole had her Cobra out too.

The inside of the facility was large enough not to be classified as close quarters, but an MP5 was a devastating weapon in virtually all encounters that did not involve long-distance killing. But if there was a sniper in here with the same green glasses Puller had, he and Cole were probably dead.

They made their way through two more barriers, one of which Puller had to dismantle, and then they stepped out into a space that was enormous by most definitions. It was also totally dark. Without the goggles they would be operating blind. They had about three hundred feet of phone cable left. He hoped it was enough. He immediately stepped to the right and took cover behind a long metal workbench. Cole scooted along behind him. The place smelled of mildew and rot. What the concrete bunker above could not protect against was moisture from below.

Puller looked around at the walls of the building. They were high, windowless and built of brick. The ceiling was about thirty feet above him. It was solid, with fluorescent lights hanging from support poles. There were additional floors above this one. The plans had shown that. Probably admin and other support offices. But they appeared to be in the main work area of the facility.

And overlying the entire building was the dome of concrete. Puller felt like he was inside a building that was inside an egg.

“We have to grid-search this place,” he said through his mask.

>

“What exactly are we looking for?”

“Things breathing, fifty-gallon lead-lined barrels, and something that looks like it shouldn’t be here.”

“And what is that exactly?” asked Cole impatiently.

“Something that looks new,” he answered. “You go left and I go right. We’ll work our way to the center.” He handed her a walkie-talkie. “These will work in here. They’re not bouncing off a satellite somewhere. But they’re not secure either, so someone could be listening.”