“Sorry,” Milla said. “It’s the best I can do. Without the power being active, I can’t bring the lift up.”

“It’ll do, Milla. If we can get a power source down there, do you think you can recharge the system?” Savoy cut in.

She thought it over for a brief moment. “Probably. The system should be a standard reactor.”

“Good. We’ll have to lug the power packs down there, so let’s get started,” Savoy decided, eyeing the pit in front of him. His finger caressed the firing stud of his rifle, the blackness below impenetrable to even his suit lights and night-vision systems.

CHAPTER 15

DRAGGING FIVE 100-POUND power packs down a vertical shaft that had apparently been built precisely to spec at one hundred meters depth wasn’t the easiest job in the world, but after a few hours, Savoy and his tech team had managed it.

Four of them found themselves standing on the roof of a lift car, waiting as Milla found the access panel and opened a hatch in the lift, allowing them to drop through and hand the packs down one at a time.

Inside the small lift, Savoy looked around. “What’s on the other side of the doors?”

“They open up directly into the shelter. I wouldn’t recommend you ask Mr. Burke to open this door.” Milla’s voice was dry, but some sense of humor managed to make it through the translation algorithms.

“I doubt that will be necessary,” Lieutenant Savoy told her, chuckling as he looked up at the hatch. “Jackie, would you hand me the pry bar from the tool pack?”

He took the tool as it was offered, then sized up the door for a moment before moving.

Taking the pry bar firmly in one hand, Savoy rapped out a pattern on the door, paused for a moment, and then rapped the pattern again. After repeating the pattern several times with no response, he jammed the pry bar into the crack between the doors. The two soldiers who had squeezed into the lift with them took up flanking positions on either side as Savoy put his weight into the bar and began to force the doors open.

Sweat beaded on his forehead from the strain of leaning into the bar by the time the door was a quarter of the way open. Sweat that turned cold when an unfamiliar, but unmistakable, barrel of a weapon was pushed up against his visor from the other side of the lift doors. The titanium-alloyed bar clanged to the ground as Savoy cautiously raised his hands ahead of him, palms out, in an attempt to placate whoever was on the other side of the doors.

Harsh words rang out, mostly indistinguishable by their translators except for the word open. Savoy had little time to reflect on the situation as the lift doors slid open, exposing him to another person wielding a rifle-type weapon.