Part 11 (2/2)

'There was something big going on down here. Don't you feel it? I'd like to know what it is, wouldn't you?'

'No,' Andrews said.

'Screw it, Griff,' Rebecca said. 'I'm not seeing anything of interest. Get out. We'll do everything we can to grab evidence later.'

'Griff, everyone here-' Sch.e.l.l was saying.

'Well, I'd like to find the girl and look around a bit, and then I'll get out, p.r.o.nto.' Silence on bombnet. Griff could imagine Sch.e.l.l stomping and cursing in that faraway room, or just standing there-shaking his head.

'We're on our own, Alice,' Griff said. 'You feeling depressed?'

'No, sir,' Watson said. 'I want to see what's down there.'

'A bas.e.m.e.nt beneath an old barn. I'm sure it's a wonderland.'

Watson grinned. But then, she was always grinning. Her mishap had left her looking like death's girlfriend.

He reached the toe of his boot under the trap door and worked to push it aside. It sc.r.a.ped out a hollow groan as it moved. Watson aimed her light. The ramp was a long one. The bas.e.m.e.nt was big.

Griff fought back against the sensation that the suit was clamping down on him. Fear is the mind-killer, Fear is the mind-killer, he told himself, quoting from a novel he had read as a teenager. he told himself, quoting from a novel he had read as a teenager. Fear is the Little Death. Fear is the Little Death.

But another voice was telling him, f.u.c.k that. The Big Sleep is a lot worse than the Little Death. f.u.c.k that. The Big Sleep is a lot worse than the Little Death.

'The brain's a b.i.t.c.h,' Watson said, 'you know that?'

Griff chuckled. That's why he had chosen Watson. When they worked these situations together, she always seemed to know just what he was thinking. The ramp board was wide and thick and felt st.u.r.dy. He figured it could hold him and the bomb suit, but not the both of them. 'I'll go first,' he said.

'By all means,' Watson said, with a stuffed-sausage kind of curtsey. She steadied his arm as he got up on the board. From that point on it was an awkward little ballet, shuffling sideways, feeling the board bend, wondering if carpenter ants or termites had been busy down there.

Watson watched as the darkness swallowed him. His helmet light plunged off into the gloom like a smudge of white chalk. After an impossibly long time, hours it seemed, he reached a solid floor.

'All right, I'm down.'

'Back off the board. I'm coming,' Watson said.

He turned to his right. The stalls above were echoed by stalls below. He turned left. Just a few feet away, something moved-something he could not make out, that he saw but that his brain could not a.n.a.lyze. The plastic in the face-plate reduced and distorted visual cues. He lifted his head slightly to put the outer glow of helmet light on the object.

Watson seemed to descend in record time. Her light flared across his own.

'Jesus H. Christ. Hold off,' he said, raising an arm.

'What is it?' she asked.

He began to take a step forward, then stopped. Attractive objects lured you through tripwires. You never reach the object or solve the puzzle. 'I found our little girl.'

A cardboard cutout of a child with a red wig on top had been mounted on a motorized toy offroad vehicle. The big toy was still faintly whirring and b.u.t.ting against a concrete wall. The vehicle had followed the taped path, carrying the bewigged shape out of an upper stall, through the barn, and down the ramp like a target in a shooting gallery. Simple enough and effective. A small music player had been ducttaped to the back of the toy. It was still making weak little sobbing sounds.

'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 bas.e.m.e.nt. 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 h.e.l.l were they making down here?' Watson asked.

'Not beer,' Griff said. 'Chambers didn't drink.'

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