Crown of Serpents (38 page)

Between a News10Now reporter’s van and a state police patrol car, Jake spotted the road leading to Rae’s Trooper station and airfield facilities. He drove right by. A jaunt further down 96A and he entered Willard, a small hamlet overlooking the bright blue waters of Seneca Lake’s eastern shore.

The town historical society was housed in the old railroad depot dating back to 1878 just outside an abandoned state agricultural college now converted into a probation violator’s boot camp and mental hospital. Instead of pulling in however, Jake drove to the end of the lane waiting to see if any black vehicles had tailed him. Feeling comfortable after a few minutes, he swung back around and parked in the society’s lot. He then gathered up his research materials, patted Rousseau’s confiscated Browning pistol hidden in his coat, and walked under the covered front porch. He took off his black beret and entered.

Several hours later as dusk crept over the area, Jake enthusiastically exited the front door. He shook the head historian’s hand and thanked the gentleman profusely for his time and the documents he was allowed to photocopy. The man told Jake to drive safe — that it was his pleasure to serve the Army and a fellow Brother.

Jake strode to his vehicle with a distinct feeling of confidence. The afternoon’s research was a complete success, allowing him to hopefully gain ground on Nero. If not for the historian’s due diligence in cataloging and organizing the Seneca Army Depot materials, he would have needed a whole week to sift through the information. He lucked out again. But in the same thought, he wondered how long his streak would last.

Settling in behind the wheel of his truck, Jake placed his cell phone in its dashboard cradle and dialed his uncle on headset. As he waited, he scrutinized the area around the parking lot making sure no one was staking him out.

“Joe? Yeah, Jake here. How’s Lizzie doing?”

“She doing okay,” answered Joe. He sounded tired. “She picked up a bit of a head cold last night from the weather while we were, ahh, you know, taking care of our two guests. But she’s strong. She’ll be alright. She’s safe.”

“Well, I guess I don’t want to know where our guests ended up.”

“We gave them a proper send off six feet under. Truly. Lizzie showed mercy and blessed them. She says they will accompany her on her journey beyond the sunset.”

“I see.” Jake didn’t want to know any more details. He quickly changed the subject. “Listen, how did you make out with the local intelligentsia on your end?”

Joe cleared his throat. “Well, I spoke with professors at Hobart and William Smith, Ithaca College, and Cornell University. Here it all is in a nutshell. Here’s what’s under Seneca County.” Joe went on to describe how after the one mile thick retreating glaciers of the last Ice Age — twelve thousand years ago — had cut deep steep-sided trenches in the existing river valleys, what was left were ten long parallel lakes oriented north-south as fingers in a pair of hands.

He added, “Indian legend has it that the Great Spirit placed his hands over this beautiful area as a blessing.”

“Indeed, it is God’s country,” said Jake, nodding to his cell phone. “The Finger Lakes are called the Switzerland of America for good reason.”

“Anyway,” continued Joe. “Seneca Lake is one of the deepest in North America at over six hundred feet deep, while Cayuga Lake is the longest of the ten lakes at over thirty eight miles. But legend has it that both of these large lakes have bottomless, spring-fed holes or cavities that are receptacles for the dead who drown in their waters.”

“I’ve heard that theory before too,” commented Jake. “That these two lakes rarely give up its dead. But they can’t be bottomless. I do know that the bottom bedrock of both lakes is well over a thousand feet below sea level, which is rather a mystery in itself. But on top of all that bedrock are hundreds of feet of sediment. Mud.”

Joe confirmed that. “And it’s also interesting to note that one of the deepest sections of Seneca Lake lies just off the old Sampson Naval Base — now the state park — across the road from the Seneca Army Depot. Right where the old village of Kendaia was razed. And these depths also happen to be adjacent to the narrowest landmass between the two lakes — the isthmus of Seneca County. So, if there were any type of subterranean river connecting the two lakes it would be in that general vicinity.”

“Uh huh,” agreed Jake. He took notes in his research binder. “And that is how caves are carved — by underground rivers.”

“Right. That’s what the professors confirmed,” said Joe. “But over millions of years. You see this whole area was once under a great receding ocean that contributed to the cave formation. There’s more to back that up. Let me read from my notes here. Just a second. Okay. Seneca County sits on mostly a thick stack of sedimentary rock made up of various types of clay, gravel, shale, sandstone, and limestone. But there are two layers of this limestone strata that are most likely to have cave formations — the Encrinal limestone and the Tully limestone — both of which run directly below the Army Depot and are over one hundred and fifty feet thick in some areas. So, there you have it. The conditions are ripe for caves.”

“Wow. Great work old chap,” replied Jake, in an old English accent. “You sound rather impressive spouting out all those academic and scientific terms.”

“Screw you Major!” Joe chuckled. “But seriously, remember when I took you to the Howe Caverns near Albany?”

“Yep, sure do.”

“Well, that’s what these academics said any cave network under the Depot would look like. Stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, vast caverns, a snaking river, placid lakes, waterfalls, rapids. Basically very, very beautiful, but also extremely dangerous as well.”

“Great,” said Jake, snidely.

“So, what did you come up with on your end? Find anything out about those underground bunkers?”

Jake turned to the first print out in his binder. It was of a bunker floor plan. “Oh, I sure did. Matter of fact you could say I hit the jackpot.”

“You’ve been holding out on me this whole time? Letting me ramble on and on?”

“Well, only out of respect for an elder,” countered Jake. He received a guffaw from his uncle. “Just let me take you through the other evidence I found first. It’s really very cool. Remember that story you heard about a well being dug on the base and hitting a current of water?”

“Yes sir. They added dye to it to check the direction of the flow.”

Jake nodded. “Yep, well I confirmed it. It took place in 1941 when Army engineers struck an underground flow at a depth of almost three hundred feet. The location was north of the airfield near the old base incinerator. They placed a dye in it and the very next day the dye came out due east in Cayuga Lake — near Canoga. Go figure.”

“Makes sense, since Seneca Lake is sixty feet higher in elevation than Cayuga Lake.” Joe said. “And gravity would pull water downhill. So what about the freaking bunker? You’re killing me.”

“I’m getting there.” Jake cranked the ignition of his SUV and pulled out of the parking lot. He headed back north up Route 96A toward the Depot. As he drove he explained his findings into his headset.

“Back in the early 1960’s at the height of the Cold War, the Army hired an engineering firm out of Rochester to dig facilities for deep burial of highly toxic chemical munitions. That firm also received a secret directive if you will, to also dig underground shelters for base personnel in case of a nuclear attack.

“During the digging, a construction crew at the lowest level of the main survival bunker blasted through a limestone wall and ended up in a void at a depth of one hundred and eighty feet below the surface. They reported finding Indian markings on the cave walls, several arrowheads, and broken pottery. They informed their escort-handler, an Army sergeant who wrote up the report, and he ordered them to seal the wall back up with masonry blocks. That was it. The report was then filed in the commander’s archives for all these years. Forgotten! But I now have the bunker number, the sub level floor plans and the construction report from 1963 in my hand, as we speak.”

“Holy crap!” shouted Joe.

“It even shows exactly where that lowest level room is and which wall was penetrated. We are in business big time!”

“Damn straight Jake. Damn straight!”

“Plus, I was able to print off a copy of the cave map photo I took back at Lizzie’s house. So we are all set. I’ve decided to head back up to the base right now to pull some recon of how I can sneak in and find that actual bunker. It just so happens to be in what’s called the Q-Area — where the most highly classified weapons, including nukes, were once stored.”

“Whoa! Hold on there,” responded Joe with genuine concern. “Wait until I get down there to help you out.”

“We’re under the clock,” said Jake. “I need to act alone. No offense but you’re too slow. It’s probably a matter of hours before Nero finds the cave entrance with his radar and his manpower anyway. Just trust me. Besides, the whole inner base area that Nero purchased is abandoned anyway. Not a soul around.”

“Okay. Okay,” said Joe, giving in.

“What I need from you instead is to go shopping again. There’s lots of tools and safety equipment we’re going to need. Then we can meet later tonight when you bring all the gear down. That’s when we’ll enter the bunker and try and locate the room in the report. But first, I need to establish the best route into the base without Nero and his boys noticing.”

“But what am I shopping for now?” asked Joe.

“For our spelunking trip. What else?”

32

Site of Wilhelm Van Vleet’s former homestead. Seneca Army Depot.

B
ASED ON HER map calculations, Anne Stanton had determined the most probable location of Wilhelm Van Vleet’s original homestead was just beyond the railroads tracks inside the Depot’s western outer perimeter fencing. Now it was a matter of finding out if any clue from the farm even remained from over two hundred years ago. Under her direction, Rousseau organized his eight security guards in a search party and for three straight hours the men trudged through mud and brush in a shoulder-to-shoulder line, desperately trying to locate any remnant of past inhabitation. But the past refused to reveal itself. The men grew agitated and sour. Even the weather refused to cooperate.

After such a gorgeous late November day with a high of sixty degrees, a line of squalls had moved eastward over the Finger Lakes showering the ground with drizzle. Soon, wind gusts kicked up to thirty miles per hour as thunderstorms approached under a heavy rain. The temperature dropped to the mid-thirties, threatening to turn the driving rain into ice. And while his minions endured the elements, Alex Nero kept warm and dry inside of his Hummer.

As night approached, the search party illuminated their target area with high-powered spotlights run by a portable generator. They outfitted themselves in cold weather gear to keep warm, donned radio-phones for communication, and snacked on power bars and coffee for energy. They inspected every log, rock, and terrain irregularity in several passes of a grid search pattern. On occasion, Rousseau rotated out an SUV patrol around the base perimeter road to ward off any troublemaking locals and to give his men a seated, heated rest.

As the rain finally turned to snow, their hard work suddenly paid off. One of the men tripped on several large stones laid out in a straight line. Clearing away dirt and brush, they revealed the corner of a stone foundation barely penetrating the earthen surface.

It was all that Stanton needed. She immediately repositioned the men two hundred yards across the field from the foundation and into a heavier wooded area. There they found a slight ravine about fifteen feet deep. Scattered down the sides of the ravine were thick, rotted, fallen oak trees of exceptional age. A trickling, two-foot wide brook flowed at the ravine’s base in a westerly direction toward Seneca Lake.

Same time. Q-Area. Seneca Army Depot.

Major Jake Tununda’s early evening reconnaissance of the Depot’s northern Q-Area had gone much smoother than he had expected. To start out, he logged onto Google Earth with his laptop and zoomed right in on the north part of the Depot. The Yale Manor B&B was merely a mile from the Q-Area. He could clearly see, in high resolution, the sparsely populated farmlands surrounding the base. Picking a spot on the map to park his vehicle was rather easy.

He chose to motor east down Yale Manor Road and then turned south along the abandoned, weed-infested railroad tracks at the northeast corner of the base. With dense woods on one side and a farmer’s tall hedgerow along the other side of the tracks, his vehicle was well hidden from any prying eyes.

Under cover of an approaching thunderstorm, with his M4 rifle slung across his chest harness and Rousseau’s Browning pistol concealed in a side pocket, he disappeared into the woods. Minutes later, he emerged from the woods and stood before the chain link outer perimeter fencing bordering the base property.

It was only at that initial entry point, along the asphalt outer perimeter patrol road beyond the fence, that he felt his presence in jeopardy. He spotted an SUV in the distance through his riflescope. Undoubtedly, it was Nero’s security team conducting a sweep. Fortunately, the patrol was too far away for them to have even noticed him. Within minutes the patrol disappeared back south of his position.

Had Jake tried to infiltrate the Depot when it was fully operational, when every conceivable weapon in the U.S. Army was housed there, he would have faced instant scrutiny from the Army. Overlapping defensive measures were designed to detect and kill him if necessary. The outer perimeter road, where he now stood, would have been patrolled 24-hours a day by jeeps mounted with .50 caliber machine guns and manned by a military police force of 250.

He now simply scaled the rusty fence and leisurely strolled through a tall grass field for about fifty feet. The grass then turned to gravel for another fifty feet where he met his next barrier.

There, at three consecutive rows of six-foot high barbed wire fencing, Jake faced his only true scare when a black and white striped Osprey swooped down on him after he startled her from her utility pole nest.