She checked to see how close she was and saw Megan rotate her body to swing her legs over the rail and step down onto the balcony. Megan’s hurried movements telegraphed her anger and impatience to get to Dani before she could climb out of the hole.
Megan’s foot slipped on the smooth railing, and Dani could tell this time she wasn’t faking when she bent at the waist and threw her arms out to regain her balance. Powerless to intervene, Dani watched as Megan overcorrected, then wobbled and fell backward, arms flailing as she sailed through space. Her screams were cut short by sizzles and pops, followed by a plume of smoke that drifted up to where Dani still clung to the edge of the hole. In the space of a heartbeat, Megan’s campaign of vengeance ended. Moments ago, she had claimed to have no blood on her hands. Said that everyone who died brought it on themselves. In her final moments, did she realize that she had done the same? In the end, her need for revenge had destroyed her.
The acrid smell of charred flesh reached Dani’s nose, spurring her on. She would join Megan on the pressure plates if she didn’t get her ass up to the balcony floor.
A few more kicks and she hooked the heel of her boot on the edge. After that, she was able to pull herself up and roll onto her back. Dragging in gulps of tainted air, she knew she had managed only a stay of execution. Flames blazed above her, coming ever closer.
CHAPTER 67
Wu heard Patel’s sigh of relief when Vega finally scrambled up from the hole in the floor. He shared the sentiment but could not allow himself the luxury of celebrating the small victory. There was a much steeper mountain to climb, and he had to take a measured breath to slow his pounding heart and think clearly.
Vega was counting on him.
“I can’t believe that psycho bitch was going to shove Vega into the hole,” Flint said, still staring at the level-five monitor. “Only it didn’t exactly work out the way she planned, did it?”
Wu had ordered everyone out, but the detective had stubbornly refused to go, insisting that two sets of eyes were better than one. When Wu pointed out that both Patel and Johnson were hooked into the system and monitoring everything that happened, Flint switched tactics. He might be needed as backup in case something happened to Wu. He could get an electrical shock from the exposed and damaged wires hanging from the control panel.
Unwilling to waste any more time arguing, Wu had allowed him to stay. Benton and his team were topside, awaiting orders and monitoring the situation on another Patel-issued laptop.
“The fire has spread down to level four,” Patel said. “I’ll send Vega another message in Morse code, letting her know.”
“Hold off a minute,” Wu said. “I don’t want to give her any information that isn’t useful. She knows what’s going on. Why give her a blow-by-blow account of how close the flames are getting?”
“Agreed,” Flint said. “We should communicate when there is some action for her to take. Otherwise we’re just making things worse.”
He looked at the 3D schematic again. Now that Vega was no longer in danger of imminent electrocution, there was more time to study the facility.
“Did Johnson find anything about fire regulations?” he asked Patel.
As soon as the alarms began, he had asked his chief analyst to look up emergency fire contingencies for both the original silo and after the renovations had been completed. The government would have required protocols for such a structure.
Benton had asked the local fire captain the same question after the hook-and-ladder trucks showed up a few minutes ago. Unfortunately the captain had no information about the facility. He had also directed his firefighters to stand by for the same reason Wu had ordered his personnel up to the surface. Not only was it impossible for them to get down to the lower levels to rescue Vega, but the whole structure might explode at any second.
Johnson’s face appeared on the screen, crowding Patel. “I reviewed the fire regs, sir,” she said. “They were relying on the blast proofing and the pressure seal in the control room to prevent a fire from causing injury.”
“They never thought to have a system in place for the silo itself?” Wu said. “That’s where the fuel tank is. That’s where the missile goes boom to launch itself out of the ground.”
“Exactly,” Johnson said. “The silo was never designed to have people spending a lot of time in it. Scientists and engineers could go down and do routine maintenance and repairs, but they would stay in the control room and handle most of it remotely.” She looked apologetic. “When Brinkley renovated it, they required him to add some fire extinguishers on each level, but that’s it. If the fuel ignited, the original ventilation shafts were supposed to allow most of the pressure to escape.”
Wu massaged his temples. “How big are those shafts?”
“Not very big at all,” Johnson said. “They weren’t designed for people.”
“What’s the diameter?” Wu pressed.
She consulted her notes. “I can’t find that information.”
He addressed Patel, who was watching in the background. “Send a Morse code message to Vega. Tell her there are two ventilation shafts. We need her to check and see if she can fit inside.”
Patel’s face replaced Johnson’s, taking up the screen. “I’ll send it right away, but we don’t want her going toward the vent closest to the fuel tank.”
An idea occurred to him. “Can you control all the display screens on the bottom level?”
“Level seven is still functional,” Patel said. “But she’ll probably be disoriented.”
“Tell her to go down to the bottom and follow the arrows you’re going to put on those screens.”
“On it,” Patel said, and began typing commands.
Flint stepped beside him. “What if the ventilation shafts are too small?”
He turned and gave the detective a hard stare.
Flint held his hands up in mock surrender. “Forget I asked.”
CHAPTER 68
Dani glanced up at the panel to see a glowing red arrow pointing toward the end of another corridor. She had received the coded message ten minutes earlier and had followed the instructions, descending to the bottom level, where she had started the game.
She had been told that SAC Wu was guiding her, which was probably the only reason she had gone along with the idea. Every instinct she possessed screamed for her to head toward the surface, but she had to trust that her supervisor and her team knew she could make her way up through the shaft.
She reached the end of the hallway, where another wall-mounted screen awaited her.
“This screen is malfunctioning,” she said into the air. “The arrow is pointing straight down. I’m on the lowest level.”
The arrow flicked off. Then on. Then off. Then on.
“Okay, so it’s not a mistake,” she said. “But I’m not seeing anything that looks like a vent.”
She peered down at a solid metal panel painted gray and screwed into the concrete walls. She gave it a rap with her knuckles, and it rang hollow.
“It’s a piece of sheet metal,” she said. “I guess they covered up the vents for some reason.” She regarded it a moment. “This looks big enough for me to fit inside. Of course, the panel could be covering a six-inch-wide shaft.”
She had meant the remark to come off lightly, but the last word stuck in her throat. She had no illusions about her situation. This was her last hope. If the shaft was too small for her, there was nothing anyone could do to save her.
“Focus on the mission, Vega,” she muttered, and reached up to grasp the clip from her hair. She held it up to the camera for her team to see. “Tactical hair clip,” she said. “Never leave home without it.”
She stooped to put the flat head of the reinforced steel clip into the top of the screw. Painted tight. Cursing, she used the serrated edge of the clip to scrape away a thick coat of paint. After that, the screw turned easily, but she had to spend precious minutes scraping and cleaning all four screws.
She finally pried the sheet metal loose and let it clatter to the floor. “It’s big enough,” she said, giving a quick thumbs-up to the camera before sticking her head into the round hole in the wall.
Big enough was optimistic. The shaft could get narrower as it went up. Now that a possibility of escape existed, she considered the logistics. The silo had seven levels. She did the math.
“I’m going to have to climb more than seven stories inside a tube with smooth walls. I checked, and there are no rungs inside.”
Doubt crept into her mind. Then a thought occurred to her.
“If the shaft vents out at the surface, can someone throw a rope down to me?”
She looked at the screen, waiting for a response. Apparently this involved some checking, because she waited a full minute before she saw a plus sign.
Positive. She took that as a yes.
“Okay, so I can ask yes-or-no questions.” She worded her next one carefully. “Do you have enough rope to reach me?”
Minus sign.
“Will I have to push myself up more than twenty feet to reach the rope?”
Plus sign.
She blew out a sigh. “More than forty feet?”