“Seven. Eight,” Krysty amended. “Might have been more in the tunnel that made it through after we left.”
“The tunnel might not have even gotten blocked good,” Ryan stated. “Could be they’re coming and going through there as they please.”
“Even if we went back,” Doc said, “there is the possibility that the tunnel is blocked. We would have nowhere to go. And if we did, escaping across the desert with the mad major at our heels is not an event I would look forward to.”
Ryan glanced at Mildred. The others seemed reconciled to their present lot.
“Okay,” Mildred replied. “If we’re going to do it, let’s do it now.”
“How are we fixed for supplies?” Ryan asked.
“Plenty of self-heats and ring-pulls,” Krysty answered. “We take too much and it’s going to slow us down, though. There’s also jackets. I didn’t check the sizes as I went through the boxes, but I think we’ll be in good shape.”
“Ammo for the blasters?” J.B. asked.
Krysty nodded. “The people that put this together had a siege mentality. They got ammo stored, high and tight, and blades that you can carry and that you can conceal. I found a dozen pop-up tents that haven’t even been taken out of the package. Looks like they sleep four if the people in them don’t mind sleeping close. They’re made of nylon. Not insulated, but they’ll be easy to carry. Sleeping bags and blankets, too. And there’s backpack frames made out of aluminum.”
Ryan nodded. “Take two tents. A sleeping bag for everybody and a couple of blankets. As much ammo, self-heats and ring-pulls as is safe to carry if we have to move fast and quiet.”
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, the companions were ready to go. They stood in the mouth of the cave looking down at the winter landscape. Night still hung over it, and there was no way to tell how soon morning would come. Jak had reported no movement except for a few nocturnal predators.
Ryan shifted the backpack frame and tried to find a position where it didn’t dig into his kidneys. A couple more tries and he succeeded.
“Jak,” Ryan said.
“Yeah.”
“You got the lead.”
Without a word the albino surged forward, disappearing into the lush foliage.
Ryan went second, with Krysty a half step behind him, spread out enough that a surprise attack couldn’t take them out at the same time, but close enough to talk without their voices carrying too far. J.B. brought up the rear.
“You find out anything about that colonel while you were prowling his office?” Ryan asked. They went down the side of the mountain at an angle, taking their time because a fall could result in a serious injury that would hold up the whole group. The frost lay over rock and holes with treacherous smoothness.
“His name was Walker,” Krysty replied. “He was shot, probably while he was at his desk. Not much else I learned. There wasn’t much time once things started happening.”
“Walker,” Mildred said. “That journal I’m reading mentions a Colonel Henry Walker.”
Ryan pushed aside a limb that was icicle encrusted. The icy layers cracked with a series of pops that echoed around them. The brush was so thick at the lower level of the mountain that it was hard to see more than a few feet in any direction. He was following Jak’s footprints, and realized then that if any of Burroughs’s coldhearts did make it through the gateway after them, they’d be leaving a clearly marked trail.
“What did it say about him?” Ryan asked.
“Man was hated by nearly everyone at the complex,” Mildred answered. “He was a bureaucratic watchdog, had his nose up everybody’s ass. Flexed liaison muscle to get funding and extensions on project development, and ran interference when there was a problem. A man like him in a position like that could make a lot of friends or enemies.”
“I surmise that the colonel, given his grievous exit from this mortal plane,” Doc said, “seemed to lean more in the direction of making enemies.”
“The woman who wrote the journal referred to him as a cast-iron son of a bitch,” Mildred said. “He was more interested in currying continuing favor with government leaders than representing the project developers and supervisors.”