Drake’s first thought was that he had stepped on a mine. He’d worked around mined areas along the border between Iraq and Iran, seen hundreds of boys and men missing arms and legs. Then he started remembering what he’d been taught about land mines. He squatted down without shifting his weight and gently felt the surface around his feet. It felt like a manhole cover. Feeling around the circumference of the metal plate, he found an opening, wide enough for four of his fingers to lift the cover.
“Mike, you won’t believe this. I know how our smoker disappeared. I’m standing on top of a manhole cover. He must have surfaced from somewhere underground for a smoke break.”
“If they’re hiding something underground, they’re not going to be happy the hired help is using it to sneak out for smokes.”
“I’m going to try and lift this cover, see if he left it open for his next break. It might be my way in,” Drake said.
“You sure you want to do this? If you trip an alarm, you’ll have a hell of a time getting back out.”
“If I’m wrong and ISIS is running a legitimate operation, they’ll just call the cops. You can bail me out. If I’m right and don’t make it out, you’ll know my hunch was right. We win either way.”
Drake stepped off the manhole cover and wedged his fingers in the half-inch crack around the edge. He lifted the cover and saw a soft red glow lighting a concrete shaft with a steel ladder leading down.
“Mike, I’m going in. The cover wasn’t secured. Looks like a tunnel leads back toward the buildings. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, or signal I’m in trouble.”
Drake climbed down the ladder, closing the cover behind him. The tunnel led to a metal door fifty yards away. He moved quickly down the tunnel, took a moment to slow his heart, and pulled the door open with his right hand.
He saw a long hallway with unfinished concrete walls, doors on each side, and industrial-type lighting overhead. Drake moved quietly to the first door on the left and listened. Easing it open, he found the room empty except for a bed, a small desk and a military gray, portable metal closet against the far wall. It looked like some of the barrack quarters he’d occupied over the years.
The door across the hall opened onto a large sleeping bay, with enough empty bunks lining each wall to sleep twenty or thirty men. He saw showers and sinks at the far end. Whatever this place is, Drake thought, it’s built to accommodate a lot of people.
Back in the hallway, he checked the next two doors on the left. Both rooms looked like the first he had entered. The next room on the left, however, looked like it was being used. The bed was made in military fashion, and on the desk was an open Koran. He saw a prayer rug on the floor and, on the side of the gray metal closet, a uniform was hung. Stepping closer, he saw that it was a security staff uniform with a Umatilla Depot patch on the left shoulder. The name tag sewn above the right pocket said the uniform belonged to Jameer Williams.
Drake felt a chill run up the back of his neck. The Umatilla Depot was one of seven U.S. Army installations in the United States currently storing chemical weapons. It was located two hours east, six miles south of the Columbia River. A new chemical agent disposal facility had been built in 2001, to incinerate the twelve percent of the nation’s chemical weapon stockpile housed there. So far, only thirty percent of the stockpiled Sarin (GB), nerve agent (VX), or mustard blister agent (HD) had been destroyed.
While he didn’t consider himself Islamophobic, learning that ISIS was housing or training security personnel from the nearby chemical weapons depot unnerved him.
In the next room, Drake found another prayer rug and another security staff uniform belonging to one Mohammed Marcus. As he started to search Mohammed’s desk, he heard voices in the hallway. Two men, who sounded like they were headed his way.
“You see them girls? Those brothers having themselves a time tonight.”
“Just a taste of paradise, like Kaamil said. Gonna be all I can do to let them party alone.”
Drake stood behind the door, hoping he wasn’t in one of their rooms. When the two men passed, he eased the door open and watched them walk toward the sleeping bay. They were wearing tricolor camo fatigues and desert combat boots, like the ones worn by the National Guard units in and around Portland. Both men were tall and appeared to be in their twenties, black, with close-cropped hair.
Before they entered the sleeping bay, one of them said “Kaamil only gave us five minutes to hit the head, we better hurry. Hope Yousef hurried up his smoke break. He won’t wanna miss the show.”
As soon as both men were out of sight, Drake slipped out and turned left. He wanted to see the party area the two men were talking about. Just then, the double doors at the end of the hallway started to open. Another man in camo fatigues was backing through the door, holding a large cardboard box in his hands.
Drake had just enough time to open the next door on his left and duck into the room. It was the same as the other two, except for a framed picture of a beautiful woman on the dresser.
When the man with the box passed the room, Drake inched the door open and snuck a quick peek down the hallway. The first two men were just coming out of the sleeping bay. The man with the box stood waiting for them to clear the doorway.
“You two better hurry, you’re going to be late. I’ll make sure Yousef is back.”
Drake pulled the door closed as the two men came running past. If someone went looking for Yousef and found the manhole cover unsecured, he’d have to find another way out. He had to make a run for it and hope the man with the box didn’t come out before he reached the other end of the hallway.
In college, he was first team, weak side linebacker, and the quickest on the team in closing a hole or chasing down a runner. He could still run a mile in five minutes and fifteen seconds. But tonight, when he needed to reach the tunnel in a hurry, it seemed like he was running in quicksand.
“Hey, what the hell you doing here,” the man with the box yelled, as Drake ran past the sleeping bay door. “Stop or I’ll shoot your ass.”
Drake barely broke stride, seeing the box man wasn’t armed, and pushed through the steel door. He ran down the long tunnel and scrambled up the ladder out of the underground bunker.
“Mike,” he whispered loudly, as he threw open the manhole cover and broke into a run, “I’m gonna have company shortly. Where should I go?”
“I see you. Lights are going on all over. Angle to your left, toward the shooting range, where it’s dark. From there, you have a pretty clear path to my ridge.”
Drake ran toward the covered firing line of the shooting range, then angled up toward the ridge. No one seemed to be chasing him. Another hundred yards and he would reach the fence, then the ridge beyond.
“Bad news, Amigo. They’re sending dogs. Three packs of Dobermans, one of them is headed your way, be there in half a minute. You want me to take them out?”
“No, I’m gonna make like Mel Gibson,” Drake said between pants, “and stare them down. Hell yes, shoot them.”
From the ridge, Drake was two hundred yards away and covering ground quickly. The Dobermans, though, were closing faster. The problem was one of timing. Mike would have to hit all four dogs in a matter of seconds.
“If I say ‘down,’ get behind a rock or something. You may have to help me here. Commencing fire now.”
Behind Drake, four large Dobermans were running straight at him, like greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit. The lead dog was slightly ahead. The other three were flanking him.
Twenty yards behind Drake, the lead Doberman went down in a rolling tumble, knocking the dog to his right momentarily off course. Then the dog on the left did a somersault when his head exploded.
Drake didn’t turn to look, but he heard the sound of another dog fall. He knew he wouldn’t hear the whisper of the 7.62mm rounds coming from Mike’s suppressed M24A2.
“Down,” he heard, and dove behind a small boulder. He looked up as the last Doberman went airborne, like a guided missile aimed straight at his face. He rolled to his right, looking up in time to see the last dog’s head explode.
“Come on, Kemo Sabe,” Mike said, “no time to be lying around. You have more dogs headed your way.”
Drake got up and ran for the fence, deciding to tell his friend he thought he’d cut it a little close with that last dog.