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“No kidding.” Jason took off his backpack and sat down next to her before pulling two pairs of small binoculars out of his backpack. “Here.”
“Good thinking. I was just going to use the rifle scope.”
“Easy there, trigger finger. I don’t need binoculars to tell me there’s way too many people down there for us to take on alone. Besides, we don’t even know if these are the same people or not.”
“Oh they are the same people. Look off to the right side, near that big shed.” Dianne pointed and Jason swiveled his head to peer at the location. A few cars were parked near the shed at the far end of the parking lot along with a pair of large fuel trucks. One of the vehicles, a large SUV, appeared to be the same vehicle they had seen at the Carson’s house the previous day.
“Oh.” Jason whispered. “I guess we did find them.” Both he and Dianne were quiet for a few minutes as they watched the compound, studying its layout and the people inside intently.
“Hey, hey!” Dianne reached out and slapped at Jason with her left hand while watching through the binoculars. “Check out that small shack behind the building. Three people just walked out. Is that her?”
Jason turned his gaze on the location Dianne was talking about and gasped softly. “Wow. Yep. That’s Tina all right. She looks like hell, though!”
“What a pack of assholes, beating up an old lady like that.” Dianne paused for half a second and glanced at Jason. “Sorry. No offense.”
Jason chuckled. “Tina and Dave have ten years on Sarah and I. None taken.” His laugh was short-lived as he watched Tina being taken out of the small shed behind the gas station and unceremoniously lowered to the ground out next to one of the fires where food was being prepared. The pair of men that had carried her over left and one of the women tending to the fire squatted down next to Tina and appeared to be speaking to her.
“I really wish I could hear what’s going on.” Dianne sighed in frustration.
“Don’t need to hear it to know they’re doing something bad down there.”
“True enough. What do you think we should do?”
“Sit our asses right here and keep watching.”
“What about Tina?”
“We know she’s alive. She looks relatively unharmed and she’s still coherent. Look, she’s eating something right now. We can’t go off half-cocked on this. We need to gather as much information as we possibly can before we do anything.”
The sight of her friend being treated roughly in what looked like an enemy encampment boiled Dianne’s blood and made her want to take her rifle and start putting holes into every person she could see. Jason was right, though, and she knew it so she pulled out a pen and notebook from her backpack, got into a comfortable position on the grass and propped the binoculars up on her knees.
“Let the watching begin.”
Chapter 12
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Outside Colorado Springs, CO
Rick had forgotten about how small General Black’s office was until he, Jane and Dr. Evans were standing shoulder to shoulder inside of it. They had given up on trying to squeeze into the chairs across from the general and elected to remain standing instead. Across the desk General Black eyed them with a look that was a combination of suspicion and irritation.
The general glanced at his watch and shook his head. “It’s been fifteen minutes since you barged into my office demanding to tell me about a solution to the Damocles virus. All I’ve heard in the last fifteen minutes are theories about how maybe, possibly, if you can find a magical deus ex machina, then you can shut down Damocles and things will go back to normal.”
Rick looked over at Jane and Dr. Evans, then back at General Black. “General, that’s not at all what we’re saying. There are no guarantees here and this is far from a bulletproof solution even if we do find it. Dr. Evans and I have spent the last several hours working on this and—”
“Oh my.” General Black made a face of mock horror and put his hands to his cheeks. “Hours? Several of them? Well goodness gracious me, I’m so sorry I doubted you!” His look returned to one of pure annoyance. “Greater minds than the two of yours have been working on this problem since it started.”
“That’s just it, General.” Dr. Evans spoke next. “Everyone—including myself—was looking for a loophole. A way to beat this thing the easy way. There are no easy ways, General. The sooner we accept that the sooner we can start looking for a way to attack it head-on which is exactly what we want to do.”
“And you want me to give you a vehicle and enough supplies to head… where, exactly?”
“That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us, sir.” Rick pointed at a small stack of papers on General Black’s desk that they had given to him when they first came in. “That’s a summary of the information we think would be useful to have in order to locate the center where the NSA was working on Damocles before it was unleashed.”
General Black chortled as he picked up the pages and made a show of pretending to thumb through them. “What makes you think I would give you that kind of information if I even had it?”
“A sense of patriotic duty to your country?” Jane crossed her arms. “Or maybe you want to be heralded as a hero who helped save the world.”
General Black nodded upward at the ceiling and raised an eyebrow as he gave a slight smile. “There’s a mile of solid rock between the outside world and us. I am the king of this underground domain and quite happy to remain that way for the time being. I have my orders and they say for me to stay put, seal off the mountain in just under forty-eight hours and ensure that every soldier and
