Deep by James Axler
Deep by James Axler
Chapter One
Coburn and the pursuing posse were closing fast through the snowy Colorado evening, but Ryan Cawdor and his companions had made it to the massive locked sec doors of the redoubt. All of them were close to the ragged edge with fatigue and the effects of the altitude. Doc Tanner was on hands and knees, breath rasping in his throat, shoulders shaking with exhaustion.
“By the three Kennedys, my brothers and sisters,” he panted, “but somewhere to lay this old gray head would be most damnably welcome to me.”
Ryan reached up and pressed the control panel at the side of the right-hand door, punching in the familiar code of 3-5-20.
“Open sesame,” Mildred said.
The whole group was filled with a tense energy, knowing that the horrors of the past couple of weeks were safely behind them and security lay just ahead.
“What?” J. B. Dix asked.
Ryan pressed the numbers again.
And again.
Nothing.
He tried a fourth time, though he was only too aware of the futility of the gesture. If the comp lock hadn’t worked the first time around, then it wasn’t going to work at all.
Nothing happened. The vast sec-steel entrance remained immovably locked against them.
“Fireblast!” Ryan swore.
There wasn’t time for much of a discussion or argument. J.B. summed it up in his usual combat-wise, concise way. “Coburn won’t risk coming closer. He knows we’re well armed and hold the high ground. Can’t get behind us. Can’t get above us. He’ll figure we’re stuck up here, like hogs on ice. So, we got the dark hours on our side.”
Ryan nodded. “They can’t easily get up at us. We can’t move down from this place. Only hope is for one of us to climb up the cliff face. In through where the earth slip opened the interior corridor walls. Try and open up the sec doors from inside.” He paused a moment. “Have to be me.”
Dean’s face was a pale blur in the icy gloom. “But, Dad. The worms.”
“Yeah, son. I know.”
None of them could forget the worms.
THE TRADER USED TO SAY that if a man was going to get hurt, then waiting wouldn’t make it any better. Ryan left the walnut-stocked Steyr SSG-70 bolt-action rifle behind with the others, taking the SIG-Sauer P-226, snug in its holster, and his old and trusted eighteen-inch panga in its oiled sheath on his left hip. His thin-bladed flensing knife was concealed in the small of his back.
The snow was falling again with a serious intent, settling on the rocks all around him, on the faces of his companions and on the flaming hair of Krysty Wroth.
“Take care, lover,” she whispered, kissing him once on the cheek, her lips like fire on his skin.
“Don’t I always?”
“What if you can’t get in? Or you can’t make it to the main doors? Or you can’t work the lock from inside?” Michael Brother bit his lips. “What then, Ryan?”
“Then, young fellow, you’ll all have some tough decisions to take.”
Doc shook him by the hand, his grasp surprisingly powerful for such an old man. “Test every foot and handhold, there’s a good chap. Some mountain-climbing fellow told me that, back in about 1890. Or, was it 1980? I fear that I disremember, Ryan.”
“I get the message, Doc. Thanks.” He looked at the circle of friends, nodding to Mildred, who gave him a thumbs-up sign. “Right. Here goes.”
ONCE HE WAS ouT of the shelter of the plateau, Ryan encountered the full force of the wind, biting in from the north. It plucked at his long coat, ruffling the white fur that trimmed it, and made his good right eye water, probing under the patch across the raw empty left socket.
Despite the bitter cold, Ryan knew better than to try to climb with gloves on. Though his fingers were cold, he kept moving them, fighting off numbness. In the shrieking maelstrom of the blizzard he couldn’t see how far he’d climbed, nor how far there still was to go up the jagged face.
His memory put the ascent at two or three hundred feet. He moved cautiously, making sure that every foothold was secure before shifting his boots to the next one, testing the crevices and outcrops of granite with his fingers. Ideally he knew that he should always have either a foot and two hands on, or a hand and two feet.