Nazi Bunker System
Task Force 38 Intelligence Area
Secure Area
Alfenwehr, Germany
1100 Hours
20 October, 2004

Vandemire walked up and looked at the wires, checking the colored plastic tags I'd put on them back in the day. I moved slightly so his body didn't block the light from the kerosene lantern. The tags were initialed, AMS, with the date, September of 1991, and with numbers to match them back up. He checked the box, checked the wires, and shook his head.

"All the commo was routed through here?" He turned around and looked faintly angry. I was sitting on a stack of MRE boxes, eating a chocolate bar that had been on the table. Sure, it was almost 30 years old, but the foil wrapper had been intact and I wanted the raw sugar.

"Except for the dedicated V Corps line," I said, taking another bite. "That was a shielded line, buried about ten to twenty feet down, with foam insulation and shielding so it could take a near hit up to one point five megatons."

"Could that be what our commo has been running off of?" He asked. He moved up to the table and looked at it. There was still the wreckage of a half-dozen MRE's on the table, a couple of field dressings scattered around, and a faded piece of paper with some felt tip pens around it. He picked up a sealed brownie and opened it.

"No way. Even if it went through, the ChemCorps liaison office has been shut down since like 1991," I told him through a mouthful of chocolate bar.

He bit into the brownie, obviously expecting it to be bad, and raised his eyebrows, "Huh, not bad," He said.

"Shit was made to take a nuclear blast wave and still be good to eat. Metallized foil to resist radiation, all that good stuff," I grinned, and took another bite. "Besides, I'll bet everyone forgot to think of one little thing when you all moved in," He raised an eyebrow, chewing on the food, "You moved in and found out the phones worked just fine, the trouble didn't start till about two weeks ago, but did you think of one thing?"

"What?" He asked, his mouth still full.

"Main post," I said, opening a box and pulling out a twenty year old can of soda. I cracked it and washed down the chocolate bar. "The German government destroyed everything, including the old phone relays and switchboards."

I passed him a can of root beer and he cracked it open, smiling at the sound of carbonation being released. He took a drink to wash it down then watched me while I moved over to the cans of fuel and water and started knocking on them.

"What are you doing?" He asked while I hefted a half-empty can of diesel.

"We need to warm up and have a small discussion," I told him, grabbing the attachment that went into the fuel can. I attached it, turned over the can of fuel and set it on the wooden bracket, then moved over to the stove.

"Why?"

"Because, like I said, you're the only one I can trust," I adjusted the fuel feed them opened the top of the stove. "Hand me those matches off the table."

"I really don't want to know what you guys were doing in here last time you were here, do I?" He asked me, picking the matches off the table and holding them out to me. I checked them and saw the heads were both crumbly and soft so I tossed them in the garbage can.

"There a plastic pack with matches?" I asked. He nodded and ripped open the plastic package before handing me the matches. I lit one and dropped it into the stove, watching the fuel catch, then closed the top. When I turned around he was picking up the MRE's and reading the contents.

"Christ, Beef Patty? I've never seen one of those," He hefted it, saw me holding out my hand, and he tossed it to me.

"Try chicken ala king, it's pretty much the same as it is now," I told him, tearing open the bag. "Beef patty is an acquired taste. They somehow managed to dehydrate the goddamn grease."

"Goddamn, I'm hungry," He said, tearing into the main meal package.

"Cold does that to you," I said. Our breath wasn't steaming out as bad, the heater putting out gentle waves of heat and thawing out the icy bunker. "Once we warm up I'll check the water, maybe drop some iodine purification tablets in some. You gotta watch out, it's easy to get dehydrated."

When it was warm enough, about halfway through eating, I stripped back down to my basic BDU's, taking off the Mickey Mouse boots (nickname for the extreme cold weather boots, since they looked like something the Disney character would wear) and dumping the sweat out of them before putting my sock clad feet up on a box to dry off. Vandemire followed my example.

"What did you want to talk about?" He asked me, belching after I finished pouring water from the cans and into the potable container.

"What might happen soon," I said, wiggling my toes. "Within the next few days something will probably pull the majority of the SOCOM force out of here, leaving behind a skeleton crew."

He nodded at that.

"Every time, something happened, leaving only a handful of people here," I told him. "Soon afterwards, a week at the most, the killing started. It can be anything from a single or pair of killers, to a full blown assault by enemy forces," I grinned at that, "The Soviet Union ain't around no more, Russia couldn't organize an orgy in a brothel any more, and I doubt some mud person is gonna assault us here."

"So what do you think it'll be?" He asked, rubbing his feet. "Damn, I wish I'd worn those goofy looking boots instead of my combat boots." He pointed at the cold weather gear I'd dropped on the floor. "How do you know that the gear in your room won't vanish?"

I shrugged, "I don't, that's why I came out here," I grinned. "After we found it, me and some friends quietly reloaded it in case of emergency. I've got uniforms, civilian clothing, underwear, survival gear, everything we'd need to survive a winter just here, repel an assault, or fight World War Three."

"Why?" He asked.

I pointed at my face, "I wasn't born with these scars, Vandemire," I tapped my eyepatch, "When I joined the Army I had two good eyes."

He nodded at that.

"We had to use it about a half dozen times," I told him.

"Aren't you worried someone will track you?" He asked.

"Our boot prints are pretty obvious, but after this we won't come out here unless we're in trouble, and if we're in trouble bad enough to need this place, tracking us will be problems all of its own," I told him. I moved over to an old Korean War era foot locker and opened it up. It said "STILLWATER" on the top, stenciled on there by Nancy to label all of our gear. I pulled the black combat boots, old Cochran II modified jump boots, out of the locker and set them on the table. He watched silently as I pulled gear out and set it on the table.

"How come you don't trust anyone else?" He asked.

I stared at the clothing for a long time, the BDU's smelling faintly of age. I sighed deeply and sat down, staring at Vandemire for a long moment, "I used to. I mean, I didn't really have any use for them, most of them I held in contempt, but that had more to do with personal bias. Every time I'd needed them, they'd dropped the ball and left us with our dicks hanging out then strutted around bragging. During Desert Storm half of the fucking SOCOM units were too goddamn stupid to bring cold weather gear because 'hurr, it's the desert, hurr' and then they fucking froze half to death."

I shrugged, "I realized I was having a bad case of confirmation bias after Desert Storm and reevaluated my whole attitude toward snake eaters." I shook my head, "Then I've had some bad experiences with them since the War on Terror started." I shrugged, "Not to talk shit, but there's so many of them that act like they fight the whole war by themselves and the rest of the military is just there to fill uniforms. Same as back in the day, same as Vietnam." I laughed, the sound harsh and self-mocking in the dim bunker, "I swear, one of these days I'll ask some Vietnam vet what they did and they'll tell me they were a cook or a reporter or a mechanic and I'll die of fucking shock."

Vandemire laughed at that.

"Add in the CIA are all over this, and I don't trust any of those nun-raping prisoner torturing scumbags. The CIA views the military as disposable assets, wear military uniforms so everyone blames the shit they do on the military, and wraps themselves in soldier's bloody shirts in front of Congress to get more funding. Not enough soldiers die, arrange for it to happen. Let a car bomb go off, a nightclub get bombed, some mid-level officer or some enlisted get murdered, call it a failure of intelligence, and ask for more money and more power," I realized my hands were shaking and grabbed my thighs below my knees. "In my eyes, anyone who willingly works with them is tainted."

"I've been doing commo for them up here," Vandemire said quietly.

"That's different. Take Hernandez for example," I told him, lighting a cigarette.

"What about her?"

"She's a medic. She's probably monitored prisoners while the CIA interrogated them. Now I've done enhanced interrogation, hell, I've cut answers out of people with my knife, but never at the behest of the CIA and always to get information I knew they were withholding that made an real and operational difference," I closed my eyes for a second, remembering interrogating an old friend who had sold her allegiance to the CIA. "She willingly works for them, turns a blind eye to their excesses, and now is trying to get all buddy buddy with me." I snarled, "She was chosen because an old friend and lover was half-Hispanic and a thick bodied girl. Because whoever read my file didn't realize it was her brain, who she was, not what she was that attracted me to her, they figured my brain would see her titties and shut right the fuck off."

He nodded at that. The shadows from the lamp made his face look harsh.

"They're also banking that I didn't get control of something, based on my actions since I left the service, without knowing anything about me," I told them.

"What's that?" He asked.

I blushed and shook my head, "I've got severe PTSD, bad enough I need major medication to handle it," I told him. I decided to be brutally honest with him, "I ended up with it as a teenager, hell, the VA says I have it from prolonged and severe mental, emotional, and physical abuse when I was a child, and when that happens one of the symptoms is hypersexuality."

He nodded slow at that and I continued.

"After we got out, Heather and I experimented a lot, and that's probably in my file," I told him.

"Experimented?"

I flushed again, "We got married young, we both went to college, so we engaged in some experimentation. She'd been pretty prim and proper in her youth, I was a little wild, and hell, college is all about experimentation," He still looked confused and I blushed further, "We tried group sex, cheating-not-cheating, bisexuality, all that stuff." I shrugged, "It was fun, but we quit when we hit our mid-30's. We didn't want to be those old people in the club, you know?"

He shook his head, "No, no I don't."

I sighed. "Hyper-sexuality and curiosity can do a lot. We did a lot of playing around, had a lot of fun, and the CIA or whoever probably picked up on it. Figured I was still thinking with my crotch." I poured some more water in a canteen cup and then poured in a packet of lime Koolaid from the MRE I'd just finished. I stirred it with a finger and stared at the cup. "So someone probably figured if she shook her ass at me or showed me her tits, I'd forget all about everything."

"Didn't they say you had sex with some German woman?"

"Odette, yeah," I said, "That's all wrapped up in my past, and had more to do with touching base with who I used to be to remind me, as well as a little bit of comfort with what I'm facing."

"What's that?" Vandemire asked.

"I'm probably going to die here," I told him honestly. "To be honest, I'd have been dead a dozen times over if it wasn't for two friends of mine." I reached down with my foot and thumped my heel on two different foot lockers. "Bomber and Nagle. Bomber always had my back, was always at my side. Good ol' boy from Texas, tough as bad beef jerky but a good guy. Nagle was tough too, hard core bitch, and knew enough medical stuff to keep me alive after I got shot up, or got stabbed, or got my skull broken. It's pretty much me and you, Vandemire. I don't know how you move, I don't know much about you, beyond you're some kind of commo tech and have a combat patch."

He nodded. "I haven't actually been in combat. Had a vehicle I was in get strafed, had a convoy I was in hit a couple of IEDs, got mortared a few times, but I have the feeling that all of that isn't the kind of combat you're talking about."

I shook my head, "No. I'm talking where the metal hits the meat, where the blade hits the bone. Up close and personal, close enough to look in their eyes when they die."

"The SF guys have that," he told me.

"And I can't trust them," I answered. He nodded at that.

"So what are you going to do?" He asked.

"We're going to wait here about an hour, then head back, by that time the commo should be back up," I grinned at him, "Otherwise they wouldn't be able to get whatever orders that are going to get them all to go down off the mountain and start the horror show."

"What the hell are we going to do for an hour?" He asked.

I was tempted to tell him 'fuck, duh', but decided he wouldn't think it was funny, so I pulled on the pair of boots I'd pulled out of my foot locker. They were already broken in, and still fit comfortably."Figured I'd give you a tour."

He nodded and stood up when I grabbed the lantern. We moved over to the steel door at the back that was marked with faded German telling me that it was authorized personnel only and "FUCK OFF" in English. I pulled it over in a shower of rust, revealing the short passage to the other bunker.

"This complex is three bunkers that lead to the outside, those are accessed on the left and right, this tunnel leads to the nine other chambers that made up this small complex," I told him, leading him down the hallway. There were old rusted signs on the arched tunnel, most of them old Nazi signs that were propaganda for the most part and reminders of security.

"This place was completely missed by the Allies when they took over this area, and we wouldn't have found it if me and Nancy weren't... um..."

Vandemire laughed at that.

"When we were sent back to stay back in the barracks because our levels were too high or there was a radiation leak at the site, we'd work on this place," I told him, stopping at the heavy door. "We managed to bring just about everything here up to speed and before we left we spend a couple of days putting this place in deep storage."

I grabbed the spoked wheel and spun it open, the bolts clacking back.

"A submarine door?" He asked, "Where the hell did you guys get a submarine door?"

"It's a U-Boat door, the Nazi's put it there. This place was designed to handle Allied bombings as well as any assaults," I told him, pulling open the door, "Same kind of work that went into the Eagle's Nest went into this place."

"Eagle's Nest?"

"Hitler's private bunker. The Waffen SS trained up here, some of the Nazi leaders came up here, hell, Hitler himself came up here," I explained, walking into the room. There were maps of all of Germany, all of them old maps from the 1980's, maps of the mountain and the Group area. Tables with chairs around them were scattered around.

"Christ, you guys were really planning on fighting a war from here?" He asked, looking around.

"The War Fighter Tunnels were compromised by the CIA and the KGB back in like 84, and Special Weapons believes in redundancy if nothing else. So we brought this place up to speed and made sure that if the War Fighter Tunnels were taken out, we had another area to fight from," I told him, moving further in.

"But you didn't tell anyone?" He said.

I shook my head, "No. I don't know why."

"PTSD induced paranoia," Van said, looking at the stenciled signs, "Jesus. Medical bay, barracks, environmental? You guys were serious."

"The nine of us worked on the Continuity of Government project for a little while, we knew how to build proper bunkers," I told him.

"Nine of you?"

"Six of us were Special Weapons, me, Nagle, Lanks, Bomber, Taggart, Stokes, then there was Cromwell, who started out as a medic, and Foster, who'd been commo, both went through Special Weapons school and Cromwell went through Field Surgery school, and lastly, Sawmoth, who was a heavy vehicle mechanic," I told him.

I could practically hear the echoes of everyone. Sawmoth had fixed the heavy diesel engines, Foster had made sure that if worse came to worse we'd still have radio, and Stokes, Nagle,and Cromwell had built a surgery bay out of an old barracks room. They'd insisted, and w both figured it damn well would be needed if push came to shove.

I gave him the tour, showing him the old PRC-77 radios and told him how to find the cover on the antennas and how to raise them up if we needed.

"You think this will be necessary?" He asked me after we shut everything down and went back into the main bunker entrance.

I nodded, "It might. Be better if you knew about it and we didn't need it than if you didn't know and we needed it."

"You Cold War guys are weird," He said as I turned off the stove and righted the can of diesel.

"It was a different time," I shrugged. I opened the door and we headed back to the barracks. I took the time to grab a fallen branch and drag it behind us to scrub away our tracks. The wind would erase the signs of the sweeping, and if I was right about the way the air smelled, the snow would cover that up.

The air smelled wet and heavy on the way back, and a glance up at the clouds showed me that they were gray and convoluted, heavy with rain or snow.

"Jesus, it's freezing out here," he said as we reached the road.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," I told him, "It can drop to fifty below with wind chill, cold enough to kill a man in seconds," The gravel on the road crunched under our boots. I looked at the vehicles in the parking strip below the motorpool and next to the road. Old 5-ton trucks and CUC-V's, and as we drew closer I saw three of the new cargo vehicles and four humvees, all but the last vehicles covered in two feet of snow.

"I can't imagine living up here," He said.

"Had to. If the Soviet Union tried to roll through the Gap we were right here. They'd have to counter us, dig us out of our holes, or we'd drop nuclear artillery rounds on their tank divisions and break their assault," I told him, glancing up at the peak again. The glacier was smaller than it was. Global warming in action, but still up there. "This place had to be manned."

He just nodded and we were silent as we walked up the steps to the inset porch in front of the CQ Area. The two Generals, one with one star, the other with two, were talking with three Colonels, including Colonel Sawyer. When I walked in a Captain behind the CQ desk slapped the desk.

"I don't know what you two did, but we got communications back about fifteen minutes ago," He smiled.

I glanced at Vandemire.

"The old lines can be a bit tricky," I said, "We went out to the old junction box, cleared away the ice, sprayed the wires with WD-40 and wrapped them in insulation. Commo might get spotty if it freezes up again, but it's an easy fix," I lied.

Vandemire nodded, keeping silent. Everyone ignored us while we stripped off the cold weather gear. I handed it to the CQ, asking him to put it on the table behind the desk. It felt good to just be in my BDU's. I clipped my flashlight to my belt and checked my watch against the clocks behind the CQ desk.

It was off by six minutes.

Colonel Sawyer broke away from the pack as the whole group moved way, the Special Forces Colonels looking happier than hell, pretty much excited, and I felt my heart plummet as I nudged Vandemire.

"The General's been told to take everyone down to the old main post area to train," Colonel Sawyer said, shaking his head, "Breach and clear urban combat in the few buildings remaining and other shit in the ruins."

"Of course," I said, shaking my head, "You saw down there, how many buildings are left?"

"He and his aides drove down there today, said there's about fifteen buildings they can use for training," Sawyer told me.

"Uh-huh," I grunted, turning and heading for the Middle Stairwell.

"What's wrong?" He asked quietly when I pushed through the doors and into Titty Territory. Vandemire followed us, silent.

"How's he getting down there?" I asked.

"He's debating on using Blackhawks or Chinooks, use that old helipad up there, so they can practice helicopter dismounts," He said, "They're apparently going to set up tents and be down there for about a week. He wants them trained in cold weather operations, mountaineeering, as well as urban combat."

"I'll bet," I grunted.

"You don't like this," He said.

"Who's staying up here?" I asked.

"He said he's only going to leave behind about a dozen or two people to keep operations up here running as well as get the place fully operational," Sawyer said.

"What about me?" I asked.

"Phones are working, he thinks it's all because you're working with Vandemire and you know this place better than anyone else," Sawyer said. "He wants you up here."

"So one or two dozen of us, left up here," I said, "What about all the head stompers and the CIA agents you brought with you?"

"They're leaving in a few hours," He told me.

"Curiouser and curioser," I said as we pushed through the doors and went into the stairwell.

"The General wants you to open up those tunnels while he's gone, take inventory and inspect them, so he knows what kind of resources he has," Sawyer told me as walked down the stairs. "Where are we going?"

"I want to inspect this place, top to bottom," I told him, "Sure, Vandemire and his team and whoever else inspected this place, but I can guarantee that they missed shit," I pushed open the door to the short hallway and stopped.

"You pop open all the doors?" I asked Vandemire.

He shook his head, "No. Some of these doors are armored and the Major in charge of inspecting this place didn't want to use explosives on the doors."

"I got keys," I told them, walking to the outside door. I turned to the left and looked at the office door rather than the storage room door. "This was the old QASI office."

"Quah-see?" Saywer asked.

"Quality Assurance, Safety, and Inspection," I told him, "They made sure the bunkers were stacked properly, anything we shipped out were according to safety regulations, and stuff like that." I turned to Vandemire, "You get this one open?"

"No, and we tried our asses off. We tried prying it open, bashing it in with a battering ram, even drilling the lock, nothing worked," He said.

I pointed at the door, "Really?"

The door was unmarred, the lock unscratched.

He nodded, "That shit drove the Major crazy. Toward the end, before the General got here, he was accusing us of coming down and replacing everything when he wasn't looking."

I nodded, pulling out my keys. I looked for any that I didn't recognize, spotted a few, and started trying them. On the third try I managed to unlock the door and push it open.

Desks sat there, with nameplates and paperwork on them, chairs behind them, and a map of West Germany with the old FSTS locations marked on them, as well as routes marked according to which units would take which routes to the sites.

"It's like you guys left yesterday," Sawyer said, shaking his head. "I know there's no way a bunch of paranoid troops from back then would leave all this paperwork just laying around."

I shook my head, "What we didn't send back with secure couriers, we burned out back in a burn barrel before MI swept the barracks, motor pool, dispensary, chow hall, and War Fighter Tunnels to make sure all the paperwork and data was gone." I chuckled, pointing at the map, "Could you imagine how the civvies would have freaked out to know there were nine sites of nuclear and chemical weapons on German soil? Or any of the other shit we got up to on the top of this mountain?"

Sawyer shook his head, "They'd have lost their ever-loving minds," he said. He pointed at the heavy vault door. "What's that?"

"Complete data for all NBC weaponry as well as deployment plans for the entire European and Atlantic Theaters," I told him. "Everything from boomers to the aircraft carriers to our own unit. Everything that could carry out MAD protocols if the balloon went up and the Soviet Union launched their ICBM fields."

"Jesus," Vandemire said from the hallway. "That's fucking crazy."

"Not crazy, MAD, but I guess it looks the same from the outside," I told him, walking through the office, looking at everything. I picked up each phone, listening to the dial tone before setting down.

Even the V Corps line was live. It rang twice before I hung it up. I really didn't want to hear who was on the other line.

But I did file away the information.

"How many rooms were you unable to check?" I asked, walking out of the room and shutting the door behind me once Colonel Sawyer left the room.

"Most of them. The Orderly Room area, that basement with the furnances, the offices on the upper floors," Vandemire said.

"None of the secure item rooms, the sub-basements, the secure information areas?" I asked.

"Nope."

"So the old weapons and gear might still be in those rooms?" Saywer asked the both of us.

"Maybe," I said, I looked at Vandemire, "I've got building plans in my room we can go over after we finish our sweep."

Vandemire nodded and the Colonel stayed silent as I opened up the door to the basement where they had held formation. The room was a quarter of a city block wide and a half block long, slightly bigger on the left hand side than the building, with a reinforced concrete slab designed to handle not only the building collapsing on it but the overpressure wave of an atmospheric nuclear burst up to the 2.5 megaton range. I checked each water heater, the water tanks, and the old coal fired furnace. I didn't make any comments that there was no reason for that big black furnace to be there, that it hadn't been there after the building was rebuilt.

I unlocked the door that led to the outside and the sub-basements.

"Couldn't get that goddamn door open either," Vandemire said.

"Three inch door, cement core, case hardened steel outer layer, two inch wide one inch thick dead bolt, inset hinges, designed to handle a blast wave or if the boilers explode," I told him, pushing the door open on the counter-weighted hinges.

The hallway was short, two doors on the left, one on the right, slanted up toward the back parking lot for the last twenty feet.

"What's in here?" Vandemire asked as we walked in.

"That, believe it or not, is the morgue," I said, slapping the door on the right.

"No shit?" Colonel Sawyer asked.

"No shit," I told him, "Handle a max of six hundred bodies, nobody really went in there."

"Gonna check it?" Vandemire asked.

"I don't really want to," I told them, my whole back erupting in goosebumps. "Lets check these two first," I slapped the first door, "Sub-basement access," I slapped the second door, "Generators, four sixty-kilowatt generaotrs and the over fifty thousand gallons of diesel fuel."

"Jesus," Sawyer let out a low whistle.

"The Pentagon figured if we survived the opening salvos of the war the logistics and intelligence command up here might be cut by Soviet forces for up to six months. They supplied the whole Group area to allow us to fight without any outside assistance for up to a year," I told them. "Hell, there were even protocols to rescue high ranking officers that might have gotten trapped behind enemy lines, all to fight World War Three."

I opened the door, and we checked. The generators were there, the fuel tanks were full. The room smelled of diesel fuel and age, but it looked clear.

"You guys cleared this room too, didn't you?" Sawyer said. I nodded as he kept talking, "This is, what, a quarter million dollars just in fuel in here? Plus those generators? No way the Army let you leave this behind."

"Nope," I said, leading them out and locking the door. I stepped in front of the morgue door and stared at it for a few minutes.

"We don't have to check that room out, if you don't want to," The Colonel said. "I'm not too keen on going into a morgue, in a building that shouldn't exist, if what you say about all the deaths that happened here is true."

I nodded slowly, still staring at the door.

"Worried your own body is in there?" Van asked. I nodded, wiping my mouth. I really wanted a drink. "Your body and the bodies of your friends?"

"That or the dead are waiting for me," I said quietly, knowing my voice was shaking. I turned away form the door. "I'm sorry, I can't. I can't do it."

"Fair enough," Colonel Sawyer said.

"I don't really care what's in there either," Vandemire said. "Not with what I've seen already."

"All right, let's go downstairs," Colonel Sawyer said, moving next to the other door. "What used to be down here?"

"Ammunition storage, NBC warfare equipment like radiation and chemical suits, access to the War Fighter tunnels, that part was never finished, deep storage shit, complete replacements for a lot of equipment, including medical equipment," I told them, unlocking the doors. "We used implosion charges here, fuel air weapons, helped set them up myself."

This time the door was tough to open. I had to use my room key to get the door open. Even then the door squealed when I pushed it open, rust showering down.

"This is different," Vandemire said when I managed to push the door open. It took everything I had, forcing me to put my back against it and use my legs. Blood was pounding in my head as I finally managed to get the door moving.

It reveal a dark stairwell. The florescent light was hanging on one chain, the other side hanging in the darkness.

I unclipped the old OD Green flashlight from my belt and turned it on, waving the beam around.

There was a crack in the roof about a handspan wide. I could see ice in it, a handful of icicles hanging down from it. The stairs were rusted and the air smelled of rust, mold, and old water.

"This is definitely different," Vandemire said.

I held my arm out to Vandemire, who grabbed it, then I stomped one foot on the metal grill that made up the landing. It boomed and rattled, rust showering down, but it held and I didn't hear any popping or grinding.

"Is it safe?" Colonel Sawyer asked.

I shrugged, "Like Vandemire said, it's different, and different here is dangerous," I told them. "Well, here goes nothing."

The stairs shuddered when I started down them, and when the Colonel and Vandemire walked onto the landing the whole thing groaned and shuddered. I glanced back, then waved them forward to follow me down the stairs.

When we rounded the first landing, the concrete landing of the first sub-level coming into view. The door was open still, chocked open to keep the counter-weights from closing it.

"Stop!" I said harshly, trying to keep my voice low.

Sawyer and Van bumped into me, forcing me to stumble down the last few steps and onto the landing. I dropped my flashlight onto the concrete landing as I put my hands out to stop me before I stumbled into what I had seen. It hit and bounced, but stayed lit.

"Sorry," Van said, hurrying down the steps. "You all right?"

"Goddamn it, stay back," I snarled, pushing myself backwards off the wall, half panicked. I fell against Sawyer, who grabbed onto me.

"What?" They asked. The flashlight was pointing at the stairs above us and the access point to the hallway that we'd come in. I pulled away from the Colonel and grabbed my flashlight.

The door boomed closed behind us.

"GODDAMN IT!" I yelled, then winced. "Keep your voices down, don't move fast. Don't shake the landing. Move very carefully into that door," I told them, shining my flashlight on the open doorway. I watched as they edged toward it, staring at me like I'd gone crazy.

"What the hell is a a propane tank doing down here?" Vandemire asked when he edged past it. "What the hell is it doing in the middle of the landing?"

"It's not a propane tank," I said, my stomach knotting as I stared at it.

"No, it's not," The Colonel said, his voice sick.

"Yeah," I said, wiping my mouth with my free hand and staring at the object.

It was as big as one of the 1,000 gallon propane tanks, with two smaller cigar shaped tanks on it. The paint was cracked and the bared metal was rusted.

"It's one of the implosion charges."