Greg Bear - Quantico

‘What set it moving?’ Watson asked. ‘A timer?’

‘Our bot crossed the tape,’ Griff guessed. ‘A few seconds delay-then, bang, the fryers.’

The stick supporting the cutout slipped to one side and the silhouette fell to the floor, setting loose the toy to whir into a corner like a frustrated bug. It dragged the flat image in a half-circle. Then its motor stopped. The music player stopped as well.

The cellar was quiet-except for another, more distant whirring sound.

‘There’s no little girl,’ Watson told the people outside.

‘Copy that,’ Andrews said. He sounded exhausted.

Oddly, other than feeling hemmed in, confined in his own protective coffin, Griff was not doing too badly. He was no longer tired. This place was interesting. The trap door opened through the wood floor on the north end. Where he stood now, the floor directly above was probably four or five inches of reinforced concrete. North and south, the floor above was not concrete, but wood over frame-both ends of the barn.

He swiveled his light. In the beam the air looked foggy. He aimed the light higher. Back in the truck they would see the video. They would see almost everything he was seeing. (But what about the interference? He could not answer that, so he ignored it.) Glittery dark powder fell from a series of long wire racks suspended on ropes just below the concrete ceiling.

Somewhere, a small electric motor was humming with a ratchety rhythm.

‘Do you hear that?’ he asked Watson.

‘I do,’ she said. Her light fell on gallon-sized steel cans and bulging sacks piled in one corner, not unlike the sacks of flour and sugar upstairs, but wrapped in clear plastic. A toppled can had spilled brownish chunky powder across the otherwise bare dark gray floor. Griff lifted a can. He scanned the label. A stylized swallow hovered over the brand name and description,

Crumbled Yeast Product of France EU Export License 2676901

‘Yeast,’ Watson said. ‘You ever bake bread, Griff?’

‘I’ve made beer,’ he murmured. ‘Was that what they were doing down here? Hey, Becky-should we call in the revenooers?’

No answer. He chuckled just to give himself an audience.

Twelve workbenches had been arranged in rows along the south side of the basement. They looked worn and splintery and dark. Watson’s feet raised puffs. The floor was coated with the glittering powder, not yeast. Beyond the tables stood a long trough or sink and suspended beside the sink, a long wooden box topped with a sheet of transparent plastic. Holes cut through the sheet still held inverted black rubber gloves.

‘That’s a glove box,’ Rebecca said. ‘Look around that area.’

‘I don’t see any expensive equipment,’ Griff said after a moment. ‘Maybe they took it with them.’

Watson pinched a wrinkled blue and yellow piece of plastic off one of the benches. It unfolded into a protective hood with a transparent face-sheet. A corrugated plastic tube-made to be attached to an air supply-dangled from the back of the hood.

‘Part of a biohazard suit,’ Rebecca said.

‘What the hell were they making down here?’ Watson asked.

‘Not beer,’ Griff said. ‘Chambers didn’t drink.’

In the stall across the aisle, wooden boxes marked in Chinese had been stacked-supplies for fireworks, possibly. An ax leaning against the wall had been used to break some of the boxes into kindling. Molds covered a plastic shelving unit-bigger molds cut in half longitudinally from pieces of metal pipe, smaller ones carved from pieces of wood-for packing charges.

A regular clandestine whizbang factory.

Brewer, baker, candlestick maker…

In a stall to his right, he saw a pile of plastic parts, topped with what looked like the workings from a computer printer-thin bars of steel forming a track within a carriage, a plastic ribbon striped with copper leads dangling to one side. Three ink capsule holders lay near the back of the bench, wrapped in baggies.

‘Closer in, please,’ Rebecca said.

‘Some sort of computer printer,’ Griff said, and turned.

‘Go back, Griff. Let me see the brand.’

Griff obliged. ‘Epson, I think,’ he said. ‘Older model. What’s it to you?’

‘How many?’

‘Just this one, so far.’

In the next stall, two box kites leaned worn and ragged in a corner, frames snapped and tangled up with string.

For checking wind direction.

Griff shook his head, a useless gesture behind the helmet plate. A filthy gray place. Junk everywhere, but with a pattern, a selectivity-not the normal accumulation of debris from farm life. If only he could figure out the pattern.

His light stabbed down at something broad and white on the gray dirt floor. He tried to focus on it.

‘Can you guys see this?’ he asked. There was no answer, only a digital speckle of notes. He bent over, reached down as best he could-but his hand could not reach the ground. He would have to kneel. Slowly, gingerly, he got down on one knee and lifted the edge of a strip of paper. It was part of a city map. It had been torn in thirds, the rips following the folds, and leaving behind only part of the name of the city.

– esia, Ohio

‘Can you see this?’ he asked again, holding up the paper in his lamp.

‘It’s fuzzy,’ Schell said. ‘Not enough resolution, and besides, we’re losing-’

More digital bird-notes.

Watson peered over his shoulder. Her gloved hand touched the partial name of the city, brushing away gray dust and sparkles. ‘What are these?’ she asked, her thick mitt following red arrows and curved lines advancing over the interrupted streets.

‘Wind direction,’ Griff said. ‘Drift.’

The wire grid. The powder on the leaves. They could have been measuring wind drift in the yard. But what were they packing in the charges?

Yeast?

He got to his feet, trying to fold the map and put it in his pouch. He smelled something like ethanol and singed rubber.

Watson leaned back and again aimed her light high. The air was fogged by drifting curtains of sparkling dust. Griff saw it then. He saw it all. The frames hanging from the ceiling were being vibrated by an electric motor. A few yards in front of him, he saw and understood the device, the arrangement-a short rubber pulley, an off-center cam with a jiggling post, thin cords attached to all the frames. The dust was falling through fine holes punched in aluminum foil laid in the frame troughs.

The entire apparatus was like a gigantic flour sifter.

At the far end of the room, behind the workbenches, something sizzled. In the corner of his eye, Griff saw a tiny flash of light. In the suit, he had to move like the Sta-Puft marshmallow man. He faced the south wall with three ponderous steps. Two wires had been strapped vertically to the rough concrete wall, inches apart. They looked like copper centipedes.

‘That is sure as hell a spark gap,’ Watson said. ‘Let’s-’ She was interrupted by another sizzle as a loop of electricity surged. It curled and snapped between the ends of the wires and then stopped.

Griff let out his breath.

The strip of map fell from his gloved hands.

Fine dark gray powder lay an eighth of an inch thick all over the floor. The sifters had been vibrating for at least thirty minutes-filling the air with a fog of tiny particles.

He moved toward one of the stalls. ‘Rip-and-zip,’ he told Watson. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘It’s partly aluminum powder,’ Watson said. She held up her gloved hand and brushed it with a thick finger. Her voice was childlike, filled with discovery. ‘Mixed with shellac or rubber, maybe. Jesus, Griff-isn’t that what they use for solid rocket boosters?’