John Ringo - Ghost

He left his bag and weapon on the fan and shimmied past the stuck blades, then lowered himself further into the gloom. He cut his light as he descended in case it got spotted. But there still wasn’t any sound from below. Finally, he hit another ninety-degree turn and crawled forward in stygian blackness until his questing hand hit another grate. This one was lighter than the top-side ones and slid out at pressure from his hands. He caught it before it could drop and slid out of the airshaft onto a concrete floor.

He turned on his light and flashed it around. Plain concrete corridor with some doors. Nobody in sight. No lights. Ran about thirty meters to a large metal door on the south end. Concrete wall on the north end.

He put the grate back on and went to the door at the south. There was faint light coming from under it and he could hear sounds, machinery in the distance, more of a rumble through his feet than anything, and a sudden blat of a PA system announcing something. Going out the door was clearly not an option.

He moved down the corridor, to one of the side doors on the left and tried it. It was unlocked and he cautiously opened it. Broom closet. With a sink. He considered that for a moment and then tried the tap. The water ran brown at first but then cleared up and he drank deeply, then washed his hands and face. The water was probably lousy with pests and he knew he was courting Montezuma’s Revenge, but he had to have water and he had drugs to counteract the trots. When he was done, he drank some more then left. The door opposite on the right led to an empty room, maybe some sort of unused office. The next one down on the left was locked with a padlock and hasp. The opposite door was another empty office. The last one on the left was unlocked and had a variety of crates and cardboard boxes stacked in it as well as a couple of toolboxes. He opened one of the toolboxes and was happy as hell to find a big damned adjusting wrench. Getting in the other grates just got easier. There was also a crowbar and he started putting that to work on the crates.

Military uniforms, some of them gaudily ornate. Why in the world would anyone have a purple camouflage field uniform? One of the bottom crates turned out to be full of old Russian chemical uniforms, the horrible rubber kind. There was also a box of old gas masks. Both were an ominous sight, but the gas mask filters, at least, were sealed and might still be useable. There were some boxes of just junk from offices, pens that didn’t work anymore, paper covered in Arabic writing. Forms. There was a box of railroad flares, though. His penlight was going to run out of light sooner or later; the flares might come in handy.

He gathered a few things he thought might be useful, including the whole box of railroad flares, and put them in a corner, then went out to the airshaft and retrieved his bag and weapon. He pulled stuff out of his bag, thoughtfully. He didn’t need the laptop, that’s for sure. It was just extra weight. He put that in one of the cardboard boxes. Most of the rest of the stuff he kept and he added some of the railroad flares.

When he was done sorting he took the crowbar and went to the locked room. What he wanted to do was open the lock, or pull the hasp, in such a way as it could be made to look as if it was still functional. He inserted the crowbar in the lock and pulled down, hard. The lock was apparently pretty flimsy and it popped open at the first pull without much sound.

When he opened the door, though, he had to whistle.

“Oh, baby,” he muttered, looking around the room: it was an ammo bunker.

He could see boxes he recognized as holding 7.62x39, the common “AK” round. Lots of those. He hunted around and quickly found a case of a thousand rounds of 9mm. Standard 9mm was not as quiet as the subsonic rounds in the MP-5, but it was ammo. He took four hundred rounds out and stuffed them in his bag then kept hunting. There were cases of frag grenades and he took one. One was usually more than enough with frags. But towards the back he hit real pay dirt: cases of Czech Semtek plastic explosive and, in a clear safety violation that made his skin crawl, a case of Skoda detonators stacked on top.

Skoda weren’t as good as NONEL, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He pulled open a case of Semtek and stuffed his bag with about ten kilos of one of the best and most stable high explosives on earth, then carefully pulled out a handful of detonators in protective sleeves and, in another safety violation that made his skin, not to mention balls, crawl, put them in his pocket.

He knew that the mission was just to find the girls. But… having the capability to really blow the shit out of the place, not to mention plenty of ammo, finally, just made him happy-happy. At the last minute, he grabbed a few more blocks of Semtek, just to be sure. There was never such a thing as “too much demo” in his opinion.

He carefully covered up his pilfering and reset the lock so it looked as if it was locked, then moved back to his hide. Once there he thought about what he could do next. He hadn’t gotten much of a look at the local workers, but his stubble was getting to proper Mideastern lengths and if he could just find some material he could tie a keffieh to cover his hair. Pants were still wrong.

One of the crates of uniforms, however, had been filled with khaki uniforms and he pulled that one back open and sorted through them until he found a pair of pants that were too big. That was better than too small so he pulled it out and rubbed it around on the dust of the floor. A little crawling would get it properly dirty so he’d look like a local. He put that on, using some string from one of the boxes of office supplies as a belt. He needed some cheap plastic shoes so he could stuff his feet in them and push the heel down like slippers. And a ratty polo shirt. Then he’d look like a local, he was pretty sure.

He was wearing a black T-shirt, unadorned, and that was sort of good and bad. Black was pretty common among muj but not among the workers, at least in T-shirts, and it showed his build. But. One of the khaki blouses worked to cover his build. He cut the bottom of the pants while he was at it and frayed the ends then worked some holes into it and frayed those. Now he looked like either a nineties teenager or an oppressed local worker. He hoped. All except his shoes, which were just too good. And his hair, which was too short and cut wrong.

He knew he had to leave the hide, but not yet. It would be daylight up top and no way to move around. Getting out the door to the corridor was problematic as well. So he had to wait and he might as well use the time wisely. Sleep beckoned, but there were more things he could do. He lit one of the railroad flares, turned off his penlight and got to work.

He took out the Semtek and rolled it out on the ground into sheets about an half an inch thick using one of the railroad flares. Then he pulled out some more uniforms and cut them up for the cloth. Using the sewing kit from his bag, he sewed a sort of harness that would go over his shoulders and around his middle and then stuffed the rolled-out Semtek, with paper separating the sheets, into a sort of bag in the harness. This gave him about ten kilos of high explosive strapped to his stomach. It made him look fat but with some prodding and pressing to get it in place, it didn’t really show otherwise. The detonators were then broken up and strapped to his calves with rigger tape. He always carried a small, half used, roll in his bag. Rigger tape had thousands of uses. Now all he needed was an appropriate target and some electrical current.

He refilled his empty magazines with regular 9mm and secured all of them, and the MP-5, under the khaki jacket along with a few of the flares. He had to break the 5 down for it not to really show, but he could work with that given the situation.