“We should go to the bomb shelter,” Tasha interrupted him. “Ted made me memorize the entry code, in case there was trouble. Seven two two eight. I thought he was being paranoid. Or at least mildly obsessed with the idea that someone would try to kill him to take power. Like, he’d watched too many episodes of Game of Thrones—”
“Wait a minute,” Thomas interrupted her. “Back up. Rewind. Bomb shelter? This compound doesn’t have a bomb shelter.”
“Yeah it does,” Tasha said. The moon had come out again, brightly enough this time so that he could see her face, even through the branches. She was completely serious.
“I think maybe Ted was...” He shook his head.
“Punking me?” she asked. “No. Ted isn’t... He wouldn’t... Look, he said it was nine-hundred and twenty-four meters from the northwest corner of the lodge—he made me memorize that, too.”
She said it as if that precise detail proved it was true. But the best con jobs were extremely explicit with the fake info given. “It wasn’t in any of the blueprints I saw,” Thomas told her.
“Well, it wouldn’t be if it was, you know, purposely kept secret,” she theorized.
“From the entire security team?” Thomas couldn’t believe that. He didn’t dare, because God, a bomb shelter would be stocked with food and water and warm blankets and clothes. And it would absolutely have a working radio.
“Ted told me his grandfather built it back in the early 1960s—during Bay of Pigs,” Tasha told him. “And his uncle—his namesake, who was the Crown Prince, but he died...? He updated it in... the 90s, I think. He used it, right up until he died—the original Tedric—as a, well, a private place to have sex with his friends’ wives. Well, I guess friends isn’t quite the right word, is it? Subjects? Victims? Uncle Tedric was a major asshole.”
And okay. “I’m gonna go check it out.” Thomas picked up the rifle, and held it out to her.
But she didn’t reach to take it. In fact, she leaned away from him, giving him full-on stank face. “Not a chance that I’m carrying that for you, Lieutenant, because I’m coming, too,” she said.
“If it’s not there—”
“It’s there,” she insisted, pushing aside the branches overhead as she stood up and stepped out of the hide.
“—our best shot has us checking out that cave. And if that doesn’t work as a shelter, we’re heading back to the airfield. I’m trying to save you a coupla extra miles of walking.” He followed her, tucking the weapon under his right arm.
“It’s. There. Also? Hello. I’m not the one with a head injury, who hasn’t slept in two days,” she pointed out, stamping a bit to warm her feet.
“I’m fine,” he said for what felt like the thousandth time.
“Great,” Tash said. “I am, too. Let’s do this. Let’s go.”
She gestured for him to lead the way back to the burned out compound, so he did, hoping like hell that Ted hadn’t been bullshitting Tash, but already finessing his Plan B, just in case.
Chapter Eleven
“I’ll be damned,” Thomas said, true wonder in his voice. “Ted wasn’t kidding.”
The bulkhead door, a smallish rectangle of metal surrounded by a bulwark of concrete, was built directly into the side of the hill. It had a simple pull handle and no obvious lock.
He tried it, but it didn’t open. It didn’t even budge.
“There should be a keypad around here somewhere,” Tasha said.
The heavy clouds were finally thinning enough for the moon to go from hazy to bright and back as she searched the edges of the concrete for...
“Here it is.” It was old-school, with a flip-up cover—the kind of keypad you might see on the outside of a garage, to access an automatic garage door opener. And suddenly the low-tech four-digit security code made sense. Tasha opened the cover and keyed the numbers in.
Nothing happened. No light switching on, no whirring motor—nothing but a very small, barely audible click.
That seemed to be good enough for Thomas, who pulled on the handle again. This time, the door creaked open. “I’ll be damned,” he said again. “Thank you, Ted.”
Concrete steps—five of them—led down to what looked like a small concrete landing. Tasha ducked her head and stepped inside. Her movement triggered a motion sensor, because low-level lights clicked on, revealing another set of stairs—a longer than full set—leading down toward darkness.
“Tash, wait for me,” Thomas ordered, twisting his shoulders to get himself through the hobbit-sized opening, and then pulling the door closed behind him.
There was another keypad on the wall by the door, and as he flipped that cover up, Tasha told him, “Seven two two eight.”
“I remember,” he said, already done keying in the numbers.
There was another small click—slightly louder from in here. Thomas tested the door, and yes, he’d locked it behind them.
For the first time since the roadblock, they were at least marginally safe, and Tasha’s relief was immediate. Which left her yawning hunger front and center—more powerful even than the pain from her blister. “Please God, let there be a pallet of survivalist supplies in here.”
She started for the stairs, but Thomas caught her by the arm. “I’m on point,” he said, which was SEAL-speak for Me first.
It made sense because he was carrying their only weapon. Still... “I’m pretty sure we’re alone in here.”
“I agree,” he countered. “But until we’re both absolutely sure, I’m on point.”
She stepped back, letting him go ahead, which was just as well. If there were spiders, he’d meet them first.
Except, this place was cobweb free. In fact, for a dank hole in the ground, it was very clean. The concrete had been recently painted. No dust, no dirt. And it was much warmer than she’d expected. Even if these stairs led nowhere, they could sleep on this landing and not freeze to death.
As Tasha followed Thomas down the rather steep stairs, more lights powered on. Now she could see another smaller landing about twenty more steps down, with a door that was far more bomb-shelter appropriate than the little metal thing that let them in from the outside. This door was heavy and thick, with a lock that looked suitable for a bank vault.
It was shut, but not locked, thank goodness. It creaked loudly as Thomas pushed it open.
“That’s a sound that makes you wonder if you’ve accidentally become a character in a horror movie,” she whispered.
Thomas might’ve laughed—it was hard to tell, because he’d jacked up the already high volume of his inner Navy SEAL. As she watched, he went through the open door in full kick-ass mode: weapon up, his body tight and ready for whatever was lurking there in the darkness.
It was hot as hell, even with him dressed in... what had he called it? His clown clothes.
But his movement triggered more of those sensors, and lights flickered on, revealing...
Graceland...?
The avocado green shag carpeting was missing, and there were other obvious updates, but the modest-sized room definitely had an Elvis’s-finished-basement-rec-room feel. It held a huge leather sectional sofa that must’ve been built down there, and a 90s-era projector TV with an entire wall dedicated to the screen. Another wall had a built-in bookshelf filled with VCR tapes, DVDs, and paperback novels.