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“So what do you think we got here?” he asked as they walked up to Robie.
“You tell us. Who owns this quarry?”
Bender looked around. “Long time ago it was a company based in Nebraska. Then whatever stone they were hunting for here ran out.”
“So no one’s been working it for a while?” said Reel.
Bender shook his head. “Hell, it’s probably been decades.”
“It backs up to the second Atlas silo site. A second site!” Robie added for emphasis. “Why didn’t you tell us about it? Did you know even about it?”
“Yeah, most folks around here do. But I didn’t think it was relevant to anything. It was just an abandoned government site.”
Robie said, “Why would somebody want to buy the site? And pay double what Lambert paid for the one he developed?”
“I don’t know,” said Bender. “I didn’t even know somebody had bought it. But why are you so interested in it?”
“There’s a door built into the rock wall about a hundred yards down that path. You can see where there’s a road cut through the trees.”
“Hell, they cut roads all over the place up here when they were doing the quarrying. And I know the door you’re talking about.”
“You do?” said Reel.
Bender nodded. “When I was a kid me and my buddies would come up here. We weren’t stupid enough to dive down into the water at the bottom. There’s crap and stone and everything in there. That would be suicide. But we’d ride our dirt bikes up here.”
“And the door?” persisted Robie.
“There’s an old storage room in there.”
“So you’ve seen it?” asked Reel.
“When I was a kid, yeah.”
“What was in there?”
“Just crap. Old boxes, broken tools.”
“How’d you get in?”
“There was just an old padlock on it. We used a crowbar to pop it.”
Robie handed him the night optics. “Come on. I think somebody might have upgraded security.”
Robie led them back down the road and through the trees, drawing to a stop a hundred feet from the door.
“Take a look and tell me if it’s changed from when you were a kid.”
Bender put on the night optics and Robie powered them up.
“Well?”
“That door’s metal. The one when I was a kid was wood. And that lock looks pretty new.”
“And pretty secure,” said Robie. “I recognize the lock on that door because my Agency uses something similar to secure its facilities. You’re not popping it with a crowbar or a stick of dynamite.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means the purpose of that room has changed,” said Reel. “Tell us about the adjacent missile site.”
“I don’t know much about it. It’s been abandoned forever. But nobody ever went near it. When we were kids we heard it was contaminated. You know, radiation. We didn’t want to start glowing in the dark. It wasn’t until after Roark built his out that anybody thought differently. And even then, we knew he’d spent a fortune cleaning the place up.”
“Is there any way someone could have connected up that second missile site with whatever’s behind that door?” asked Robie.
Bender rubbed his chin as he thought about that question. “Now that I think about it I remember Roark talking at a get-together at my mom’s about this site. He said he actually preferred it to the one he developed.”
“Why?” asked Reel quickly.
“It had more acreage for one thing. And he said it had more buildable space underground. So he could maybe sell more of those units.”
“So more underground space presumably might mean that the site extends close to the ridge.”
“Or, Robie, maybe it goes into the ridge,” suggested Reel.
Bender said, “You know, that’s possible. And I remember that storage room from when I was a kid. It went really far back, but we never went that far in. No lights and too spooky.”
“So it could be that with a little work a tunnel could have been dug connecting the two,” reasoned Robie.
“What for?” asked Bender. “I mean if you bought the missile site you could use that door. Why mess with the hassle of connecting up with this place?”
“The site is sort of out in the open. So you’d do that if you didn’t want anyone to know you were accessing the missile site. You’d come in this way instead and no one would be the wiser.”
“But why all the secrecy?” asked Bender.
Reel answered. “Well, if you’re bringing prisoners in here you wouldn’t want anyone to know.”
“Wait a minute, you think those prisoners are being held in the missile silo?”
“It would make sense of the drawing Walton left behind in the muzzle of his gun,” said Robie. “He obviously wanted to draw our attention to it.”
“But, Robie, he asked to take a tour of Lambert’s silo,” Reel pointed out. “Not this one.”
“He may not have known at which place they were being held. But if it were Lambert’s there would have to be a lot of people in on it, and that sort of widespread conspiracy just becomes too unrealistic. But that’s not the case with this Atlas site.”
“And it could be that if he was brought here the other missing people were, too,” added Reel.
Bender glanced in the direction of the door. “So what do we do? Get a warrant and search the place?”
Robie shook his head. “That’ll take too long, and tongues seem to wag here, so word might get out and the prisoners, if they are in there, might get moved. Besides, I don’t even know if we have enough probable cause to get a warrant. What do you think, Bender?”
The deputy looked uncertain. “Well, I’ve found judges around here aren’t too fond of the Fourth Amendment. They like people to be able to keep their property free from unnecessary searches. And I saw all the NO TRESPASSING signs when I was coming up here. That’s technically what we’re doing, trespassing.”
“Well, that answers that,” said Reel.
“Can you open that door?” asked Bender.
Robie looked at Reel. She patted the duffel she had taken from the truck and said, “I brought some stuff that will handle it. The question is are we prepared for what might be on the other side of that door?”
“We’re going to have to be,” said Robie. “Because the only other way in is through a blast door, and I don’t think you have anything in your duffel that will crack that one.”
She looked at him. “So what about not liking bull runs?”
“I think time is running out for Blue Man.”
“Who?” said Bender.
“Never mind,” said Reel, keeping her gaze on Robie.
He held out his hand for the duffel and added, “And sometimes people are worth dying for.”
Reel and Robie held gazes for a moment longer before she broke it off and handed him the duffel.
“So let’s run with the bulls,” she said with finality.
