Ghostwalk. James Axler

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      “Speaking of them, where are the locals?” Grant asked.

      Gray gestured out toward the sand dunes. “We gave them jobs, put them to work with our excavation crew.”

      “Right,” Kane drawled. “I remember the employment opportunities offered by the Millennial Consortium. Another name for it is forced servitude. Just what are they excavating out here?”

      Gray shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure about anything specifically. But this whole part of New Mexico was a testing site for all sorts of predark research—weapons, aircraft, even genetics.”

      “We know,” Brigid said grimly, her face not betraying the involuntary surge of revulsion as she recalled the bioengineering facility known as Nightmare Alley hidden deep beneath the Archuleta Mesa. Several years ago, she had participated in its complete destruction.

      “The consortium found a facility in almost pristine condition,” Mr. Gray declared.

      “A COG redoubt?” Grant asked skeptically. “Like the one you millennialists occupied in Wyoming?”

      The predark Continuity of Government program was a long-range construction project undertaken by the U.S. government as the ultimate insurance policy should Armageddon ever arrive. Hundreds of subterranean command posts were built in various regions of the country, quite a number of them inside national parks. Their size and complexity ranged from little more than storage units to immense, self-sustaining complexes.

      The hidden underground Totality Concept redoubts were linked by the Cerberus mat-trans network to the COG installations.

      The Totality Concept was the umbrella designation for American military supersecret research into many different arcane and eldritch sciences, from hyperdimensional matter transfer to temporal dilation to a new form of genetics. The official designations of both the COG facilities and the Totality Concept redoubts had been based on the old phonetic alphabet code used in military radio communications.

      In the twentieth century, the purposes of the redoubts were classified at the highest secret level. The mania for secrecy was justified since the framers of the Totality Concept feared mass uprisings among the populace if the true nature of the experiments was ever released to the public.

      Before the nukecaust, only a handful of people knew the redoubts even existed. That knowledge had been lost after the global mega cull. When it was rediscovered a century later, it was jealously and ruthlessly guarded. A couple of years earlier in Wyoming, the Millennial Consortium had discovered a COG-related storage depot.

      Mr. Gray considered Grant’s questions for a few seconds, then shook his head. “Don’t think so. It’s aboveground, not like most of the redoubts. It’s more like a station of some sort, set in a little valley between Phantom Mesa and another one. Very well hidden, unless you know where to look.”

      “If that’s the case,” Kane said, “how’d you know where to look?”

      Gray shrugged. “Our section chief knew where to look, not us grunts.”

      “Who’s that again?”

      “We just call her Boss Bitch…not to her face, though.”

      Kane’s eyes narrowed, recalling the last time they had questioned a couple of millennialists. They had referred to a female section chief, too.

      “How did she know?” Brigid asked.

      “She took over from another chief…Mr. Breech. He laid the groundwork.”

      “And where is he now?” Grant inquired.

      Gray hesitated before saying in a low tone, “A lot of us would like to know that.”

      Edwards edged closer. “What about Philboyd?”

      Mr. Gray blinked up at him curiously. “What about him?”

      Edwards bared his teeth in a silent snarl. “Where the fuck is he?”

      “I don’t know. He was taken away to be questioned. But he was alive.” Gray coughed and asked, “Could I have a drink? That pill is stuck in my throat.”

      Kane nodded to Edwards. “Give him your canteen.”

      The big ex-Mag scowled, but he didn’t object. Kane glanced meaningfully toward Brigid and Grant and jerked his head. The three people walked away, out of earshot of the consortium man.

      Kane asked softly. “Do we believe him?”

      Brigid sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I don’t see why not. If the consortium is out here, something big has attracted their attention.”

      “I don’t mean that,” Kane retorted impatiently.

      “He could be giving us wrong directions.”

      Grant narrowed his eyes against the glare of the setting sun. “Even so, we’ve got to check out his story, no matter what.”

      Brigid smiled wryly. “Unfortunately.”

      Kane worked his shoulder up and down, wincing in pain. “Dammit.”

      Brigid eyed him questioningly. “What?”

      “That son of a bitch shot me. Didn’t get penetration, but it hurts like hell.”

      “Let’s make sure,” Brigid suggested.

      Kane shucked out of his field jacket and opened a magnetic seal in the upper half of his bodysuit, peeling it down over his right shoulder. His upper torso still burned where the bullet had punched him.

      A livid red-and-purple bruise spread in a star-shaped pattern around the impact point.

      Brigid probed with gentle fingers at the injury. “I think you’ll be all right, but your arm will be probably be very stiff in a couple of hours. When we get back to Cerberus, have DeFore look at it.”

      Kane resealed the seam, setting his teeth against a groan of pain. Brigid and Grant wore identical midnight-colored garments under their BDUs. Although the material of the formfitting coveralls resembled black doeskin and didn’t seem as if it would offer protection from flea bites, the suits were impervious to most wavelengths of radiation.

      Upon finding the one-piece garments in the Operation Chronos facility on Thunder Isle several years earlier, Kane had christened them shadow suits. Later they learned that a manufacturing technique known in predark days as electrospin lacing had electrically charged polymer particles to form a single-crystal metallic microfiber with a dense molecular structure.

      Kane maintained the shadow suits were superior to the polycarbonate Magistrate armor chiefly for their internal subsystems. Also, they were almost impossible to tear or pierce with a knife, but a heavy-caliber bullet could penetrate them. And unlike the Mag body armor, the shadow suit wouldn’t redistribute the kinetic shock.

      Turning, Kane called to Edwards. The man strode toward him swiftly. “Sir?”

      “Me, Baptiste and Grant will scout out ahead.”

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