P Deutermann - The Moonpool

We took off, running this time and making no effort to be quiet. From here we could see that the building was built in the shape of a capital B, with two air shafts, not just one. There was heating and air-conditioning machinery at the base of the air shafts, and we were running from the lower left corner of the B, across the base, and up to the middle area where I remembered the loading area ramps ought to be.

Then all the lights went out.

We stopped running but kept moving, using the light from the heating and air-conditioning machinery control panels. I visualized some Marines coming around the corner with their rat pistols and night vision gear, but hopefully they’d secured by now. I glanced at my watch-two ten. At least we were on my timeline.

We pushed forward in the darkened passageway, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were not alone. I wondered where they kept that rottweiler at night if not in the basement-outside the fence? I gripped the canister of Mace even harder.

Feeling our way along the wire mesh walls, we got to the corner of the first passageway and turned left. All the storage cages on our right appeared to be stuffed to the gills with cardboard boxes marked MEDICAL RECORDS. To our immediate left was a boxy, oil-fired boiler, whose orange flame was visible through the boiler front inspection port. The boiler room wasn’t really a room, but more of an area enclosed in wire mesh walls with chain-link fence doors. The area stank of heating oil, and wisps of low-pressure steam were visible in the nest of pipes leading up into the main building. Two ancient water pumps ground away in one corner of the enclosure.

I couldn’t see much of anything ahead, where the loading docks should be. We desperately needed some light, because the farther away we got from the boiler room, the less ambient light there would be in the passageway. Behind us we heard banging on the door jammed by that steel drum. We weren’t going to be alone much longer.

“Gotta hide,” I whispered to Moira. The question was: where? If they were wearing night vision gear, there wasn’t going to be anyplace to hide down here.

Except.

I grabbed her arm, and we turned around.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“The boiler room,” I said, as I started trying doors. “That flame will interfere with their NVGs.”

The banging was getting louder. It sounded like someone was using a fire axe on that door. The chain-link doors into the machinery room were padlocked.

“Climb, quickly,” I said, and we scrambled up the chain-link, bent over the tops of the wobbly door, and slid back down to the floor on the other side.

Up close the boiler gave off tangible heat over the sustained low roar of the burners. Down the passageway we heard that steel drum bang down onto the concrete floor and go rolling. We scrambled around behind the boiler and crouched down between two large air ducts. The place was littered with boxes of rags, tools, and spare valve parts all stacked behind the boiler, and we made ourselves a nest out of these.

For the moment we were safe, but that wasn’t going to last long. They’d spread out on NVG, search the entire basement area, and then realize that none of the doors to the outside had been opened. Since we’d jammed the elevator and the fire doors, they’d know we were still down there, somewhere in the basement area. They’d turn the lights back on and go cage to cage.

Or go get the dog.

There might be another set of fire stairs and elevators on the west side of the building, but they probably had people on those already. It was just a matter of time before they’d come in here. We needed a diversion, and quickly.

Moira tapped me on the arm and pointed. Between the two metal air ducts there was a space of about six inches, and we saw two ghostly figures slipping by in the glow of the burners. They walked by too fast for me to see if they were carrying weapons, but they were definitely wearing night vision headgear.

Just a matter of time.

A fuel pump lit off under our feet and the boiler ramped up in response to a demand from a thermostat somewhere upstairs. More air began to rattle through the combustion supply ducts.

“We need a diversion,” I said softly.

“A fire would do it,” she said, pointing to the glowing firebox. The machinery was making enough noise to mask our voices.

“Without a way out?”

“Fuck it,” she said. “I’m not going back inside. Besides, they’ll evacuate the building. They’ll have to turn off the security system to do that.”

That might be true, I thought. Or they might just isolate the basement, pull the handle on some kind of fire suppression system, and wait it out. Two more figures swept past the boiler room, walking slower this time. I thought I heard tactical radio voices.

Sooner, rather than later.

We had to do something.

“Okay, fire it is,” I whispered. I turned around and found a large ball-peen hammer. I slithered out of our nest of boxes and crawled to the boiler front. I looked both ways out into the passageway, but couldn’t see anyone. That, of course, didn’t mean they couldn’t see me, but that orange glow from the glass inspection port ought to show up as a bright, foggy plume on their NVGs, which would make them avoid looking in my direction.

The inspection port was a five-inch-diameter circle of heat-tempered glass. I turned over on my back, cocked an arm, and whacked it. The first whack produced a crack; the second one, harder, shattered the glass, at which point a jet of flame roared out of the hole and blew all the way out through the chain-link and into the passageway itself. It singed the sleeve of my jumpsuit, and I ducked back out of its way to the side of the boiler, which was now making noises like a jet airplane spooling up on the tarmac as the burners went unstable. Anyone on NVGs looking my way would be stone blind with all that light and flame. Then I smelled heating oil, and saw Moira whaling away on the fuel-supply line filter housing, which was already spurting thin streams of pressurized oil across the floor. Goddamned woman was a born fighter, but she might not appreciate what was going to happen next.

“Time to boogie,” I said, no longer trying to keep quiet.

We slithered through all the boxes at the back of the boiler enclosure to a side wall made of expanded metal screen. Then we waited. The jet airplane effect didn’t seem to be getting any bigger on the other side of the boiler, but it wasn’t getting any smaller, either. There wasn’t much smoke forming because that jet of flame had the entire basement’s supply of oxygen to play with. Then the spreading pool of heating oil must have made its way under the boiler and out to the front, where it found a partner in crime. The ensuing fireball easily engulfed our hideout, accompanied by an ear-squeezing whumping sound. And now there was lots of smoke.

I nudged Moira, and we began scrambling over the wire mesh wall, using the supporting studs as footholds. First one and then two fire alarm bells went off somewhere in the basement, followed by an entire chorus of smoke detectors. The fire was getting bigger by the second, and would soon discover all that paper piled up in the wire cages across the passageway.

We’d climbed from the machinery cage into the adjacent storage enclosure, which was empty. The passageway we wanted was right in front of us, but there would still be Marines out there, so we kept climbing through the row of cages, one after another, as the glare from the oil fire behind us got big enough to light up the whole basement. It was hard going, and the edges of the hardware cloth were tearing up our hands.

Then we saw the loading dock area, suddenly visible ahead and to our right-where four Marines were crouching down and talking anxiously on shoulder-mike radios. They had their NVGs pulled down, and their young, scared faces were orange in the reflected firelight.