Return to Atlantis: A Novel (29 page)

“You’re kidding. What,
the
Area 51? Where they’re supposed to keep the aliens and flying saucers?”

“That’s the one. I’d love to poke around there, just to see if any of the stories are true.”

“You might get the chance,” said Nina as the plane tipped into a descent. “You think that’s where we’re going?”

He pressed his cheek against the window for a better view ahead. “Don’t think so. Looks like we’re heading for the hills east of it.” A frown. “Weird, I didn’t think there was anything out there.”

“Oh, so you’re an expert on Area 51?” Nina asked, teasing.

“Had a bit of an interest back when
The X-Files
and all that kind of stuff was big,” he admitted. “Used to buy magazines called things like
Alien Encounters
. Hey, come on!” he added, seeing her smirk. “Military secrets are a lot more boring in real life than on TV. It’s loads more fun to imagine you’re guarding a crashed UFO than a warehouse full of broken radio gear. And yes, I had to do that once. For a whole month.”

“Poor baby. So what
is
down there?”

“That’s the thing: nothing. That’s why they put Area 51 out here in the first place, ’cause it’s fifty miles from anybody who might be watching.”

The plane slowed, engines easing back as it continued its descent. “Okay, folks,” said Abbot over the intercom, “we’ll be landing at Silent Peak in five minutes. Put your seats and tray tables in the upright position, huh?” He laughed a little at his aeronautical joke.

Nina wasn’t amused, though. The message had hammered home the reality of what they were about to do. “God, if something goes wrong while we’re out here …”

“Bit late to start worrying now,” said Eddie. “But we got this far okay. All we can do is keep pretending we know what we’re doing.”

“Isn’t that what we always do?”

The Learjet kept slowing, dropping toward the rugged hills. Eddie looked for their destination. They were
heading into a closed valley, a single large rocky peak beyond, but there was no sign of anywhere they might land …

He blinked as the truth suddenly sprang from the background like the hidden image in a stereographic puzzle. The valley floor had at first glance appeared desolate and empty—but as the plane drew closer the giveaway parallel lines of human activity were revealed. A runway ran along it, partly hidden beneath sand and dust. The concrete had apparently been made from that same surrounding sand, the colors matching almost perfectly.

Such camouflage wouldn’t conceal it from the infrared vision of satellites, though. That probably meant it had been built before they came into common use. Some kind of Cold War facility?

They would find out soon enough. The Lear adjusted its course for the final descent, lining up with the long runway. “This’ll be bumpy,” Abbot announced, “so hold on tight.”

Nina’s nails were already digging into the leather of her armrests. “If I hold on any tighter, I’ll merge with the damn chair!”

The pilot had, if anything, underplayed the roughness of the touchdown, bumps and cracks in the dusty concrete making the jet judder like a bicycle riding over cobblestones. “Christ, I think I’ve lost a filling,” Eddie said as the shaking eased to merely uncomfortable levels.

Nina took in the view outside. “Where are we going?” she wondered aloud. There were no buildings along the runway, just the rising valley sides. “I don’t see anything here.”

“Must be something,” said Eddie. “If there isn’t, this is a really, really expensive version of the Mafia taking people out into the desert to kill them.”

“Thanks, Eddie. You’re always so reassuring.” But there were still no structures in sight …

The answer came as the Lear slowed to taxiing speed
and made a turn, bringing the cliff at the end of the valley into view. Set into the rock at its bottom was a door.

A very large one.

It took Nina a moment to take in its sheer scale. An opening at least three hundred feet across and sixty feet high had been blasted out of the mountain. “Jesus,” she gasped. “That’s a big-ass door.”

“You should see their draft excluder,” said Eddie, impressed.

The jet came to a stop. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Abbot, “welcome to Silent Peak.”

A military jeep took the couple from the stationary plane to the base’s entrance. The door itself didn’t open; rather, a part of it did, a smaller section hinging upward like a cat flap to let the vehicle through. Even this opening was on a giant scale, easily large enough to have accommodated the Learjet. Worryingly, a sign beside the entrance warned of the sanctions that would be taken against unwanted visitors:
USE OF DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED
.

But that concern quickly took second place to amazement. It was all Nina could do not to gawp at what lay behind the door. They had entered a vast underground hangar, at least seven stories high and lit by rank upon rank of lights in the ceiling, made so small by height that they looked like perfectly aligned stars. Several C-130 Hercules transport aircraft were parked along one wall, almost lost in the cavernous space. “Wow. This is incredible!”

The jeep’s driver took them to a clutch of portable cabins opposite the line of aircraft. Men in the blue berets of the USAF Security Forces stood waiting for them. “Ay up, it’s the goon platoon,” Eddie whispered to Nina.

“Don’t talk unless you absolutely have to—and even then, don’t!” she replied.

The jeep stopped, the military policemen surrounding
it. Another man, a lanky officer in wire-rimmed glasses, stepped forward to greet the passengers. “Dr. Wilde, welcome to Silent Peak Strategic Reserve,” he said, holding out a hand to help Nina from the vehicle. “I’m the base CO, Colonel Kern—Martin Kern. It’s a great honor to have you here.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Nina replied. Eddie climbed from the jeep beside her, remembering military protocol and saluting his superior officer. “This is my liaison from the Pentagon, Captain Tyler.”

“Sir,” said Eddie, making Nina cringe inwardly once more. Even that one short word sounded incriminatingly fake in his terrible accent.

But Kern was only concerned with his female guest. “Captain,” he said with a noncommittal salute of his own, before turning back to Nina. “I read about the role you played in saving President Cole’s life in India last year. That’s true heroism, if you don’t mind my saying. Something every American can be proud of.”

“Ah, thank you.” Nina’s awkwardness at the gushing praise was increased by the certainty that Kern would have a very different opinion of her if he knew the real reason for her visit. She changed the subject by presenting her pass. “Here’s my paperwork.”

“This’ll just be a formality—I know who you are,” said Kern with a smile. He briefly scanned the documents, then returned them before giving Eddie’s pass slightly longer scrutiny. “Okay, I imagine you’re keen to go down to the repository.”

“Down?” said Nina, surprised. She indicated the nearby cabins. “I thought those were …”

“These? Oh, no, these are just the administration facilities. You don’t know about the base?”

“No, everything was arranged at very short notice, and I didn’t think to ask. So, there’s even more of this place?”

Kern grinned. “Oh, there’s more! I’ll give you the tour personally. Log them in,” he told one of the men nearby, before beckoning for Nina and Eddie to follow him.

“Normally we’d take your phone and any other electronic devices, but you’ve got top clearance, so no need to worry.” That raised a warning flag in Nina’s mind: Why would Dalton have gone the extra mile for them? “This way, please. I think you’ll be impressed.”

He led them to a golf-cart-like yellow buggy nearby, the guards heading back to the cabins. Nina sat in the front passenger seat beside the officer, Eddie behind her. “So just how big is this place?” she asked as Kern set the little electric vehicle in motion.

“This level? One point two million square feet of floor space, more or less. And it’s not even the biggest. There are twelve levels in all.”

“Fu—Gee, that’s a hell of a size,” said Eddie—though it came out as
a hail arf a sars
.

Nina shot him a sharp look. “When was it built? For that matter,
why
was it built?”

“They started construction in 1954,” Kern told her. “It was designed as a way to ensure that the United States had a second-strike nuclear capability—no matter what the Soviets managed to achieve with a first strike against us, we’d have a backup bomber force able to be launched against them from a hidden base days or even weeks later. Problem was, by the time Silent Peak actually came online both sides had put ICBMs into service, making long-range nuclear bombers obsolete. So the base became a strategic reserve.” He indicated the aircraft across the hangar. “Basically, it’s a storage facility.”

“Lark the boneyaahds in Arizonah,” said Eddie, referring to the huge desert ranges filled with mothballed planes.

“Not quite—the vehicles there are just as likely to be scrapped or stripped for parts as returned to service. Everything stored here at Silent Peak can be made combat-ready within forty-eight hours, if needed. You’ll see our inventory on the way down.”

Nina looked ahead past lines of trucks and Humvees, but didn’t see anything that looked like a ramp or elevators, only a large black square on the hangar floor.
“How do we get— Oh.” Her eyes went wide as she realized what she was looking at.

The square wasn’t on the floor, but set into it, a separate entity. A gigantic elevator shaft.

“Isn’t that something?” said Kern, pride in his voice. “It’s two hundred and sixty feet on a side, and can bring a fully laden B-52 up from the lowest level in under five minutes. So I’m told, anyway. I’ve never seen it move anything that big myself—I only took command here last year.”

“That’s … quite a thing, yes,” Nina agreed. She wondered what future archaeologists, as far removed from the present as she was from the heyday of Atlantis, would make of Silent Peak. Would they have any comprehension of its original deadly purpose and the ideological conflict that spawned it?

She put such musings aside as Kern steered the buggy toward one corner of the open shaft. A metal cage marked a section roughly ten feet square. “Passenger elevator,” the colonel explained as he pulled up alongside it. “There’s one at each corner of the shaft. It can be a bit unsettling, but it’s a lot easier than taking the emergency stairs. Okay, step aboard.” The trio dismounted from the buggy, Kern opening a gate in the cage and walking through onto a platform with handrails around its edge. Once Nina and Eddie were on the platform, he closed the gate and went to a control panel. “The repository is on the lowest level.”

“The depths of the earth,” Nina remarked.

“Yeah, you could say that. Some people say that if you listen hard enough, you can hear Satan himself at work underneath.” Kern laughed briefly, then pushed a button. “Okay, here we go. Hold on.”

The platform dropped from the cage into a massive vertical shaft that fell away into oblivion. Nina instinctively recoiled from the edge, vertigo rising.

“Don’t worry, Dr. Wilde,” said Kern. “It’s perfectly safe. Nobody’s fallen down it—at least, not on my watch!”

“I think I’d still prefer more solid railings,” she said. “Or, y’know, walls …”

The elevator continued its journey. Great vertical tracks ran down the shaft’s sides; guides for the as-yet-unseen main elevator platform. At widely spaced intervals below were bands of light in the darkness marking the entrances to the base’s other levels. From the looks of it, the repository could be almost half a mile underground. Even in the vastness of the shaft, the thought gave Nina a claustrophobic shudder.

The first level was approaching. “Take a look at that,” said Kern, gesturing toward the hangar as it came into view.

It was full of aircraft. Bombers, the long, sinister charcoal-gray forms of a dozen, two dozen, more, B-52s packed into the space like lethal sardines. The eight engines of each plane were shrouded, the sleeping giants awaiting a new call to action.

“That’s … that’s a lot of planes,” Nina said. She hadn’t taken in the full meaning of the term
strategic reserve
until now. Just because a weapon was old didn’t mean it was useless.

“That’s only one level. We’ve got another three floors of Buffs—”

“Buffs?”

“Big Ugly Fat Fu—uh, Fellows,” Eddie told her.

The colonel smiled. “Three more floors of them, plus we’ve got Eagles, Hornets, Warthogs …”

“Sounds more like a zoo than a military facility,” said Nina.

“Ha! Yeah, I guess. And then we’ve got choppers, and a lot more general equipment—trucks, jeeps, bulldozers, that kind of thing. And more tanks than you can shake a stick at.”

“My tax dollars at work.” Even in 1950s money, the cost of excavating Silent Peak must have been as huge as the base itself.

They passed the hangar and continued down. The next level contained more B-52s, with Huey utility helicopters
nestled in among the colossi; the hangar below was packed with fighter aircraft. Then more bombers, this time joined by a trio of coal-black SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Never mind the base, Nina thought—the value of the mothballed hardware it contained was equally mind blowing.