C9 Chapter Nine

Flynn guided NOMAD forward under the garage door and into the building proper. He advanced the robot into the center of the room and then brought it to a halt. With all of its onboard cameras active, he slowly turned it through a 360 degree arc, giving him a good look on all sides.

The facility appeared just as it had in the video footage they’d seen; a central common area surrounded by eight bays for servicing vehicles, four on the left and four on the right. It was the last bay on the left that they were most interested in, for that was where Jackson’s squad had located the mysterious hatch. They were going to have to check all the bays out to be certain the facility was secure before venturing inside themselves.

Though heaven knew just what they were looking for, he thought.

He switched NOMAD’s video cameras into infrared mode and did another slow 360 degree turn, checking for heat signatures that the visible light camera might have missed.

Nothing unusual showed up on any of the screens.

Flynn nudged one of the controls with his thumb and the camera tilted upward until it was pointed at the ceiling. He repeated the same sequence of action, a visible light search followed by an infrared one, but again found nothing unusual.

“Looks clear,” he said to Cade, who was watching over his shoulder.

“All right, let’s check the bays. Start on the right and work your way over to those on the left.”

“Roger that.”

Flynn directed NOMAD into the first bay on the right, scooting it around the vehicular hoist in the center and taking care to check behind the oil drums stacked against the rear wall. He used the manipulator arm to open the doors of the tool cabinet and to check under a discarded tarp in the corner.

Not finding anything of interest, Flynn drove NOMAD back out of that bay and into the second, repeating the search in the same manner as the first. One by one, he declared each bay empty of any noticeable threat.

Finally, he came to the last bay on the left.

Flynn brought NOMAD to a halt just outside the entrance to the bay and used the spotlight to examine the interior, just as he had with each of the others. The vehicular hoist seen elsewhere was missing here. Gone, too, were the barrels and tool cabinets. In their place was the floor-level trapdoor that Jackson’s squad had uncovered during their ill-fated sweep. The hatch was still open, just as the squad had left it.

Flynn took his hands off the controls for a moment and flexed his fingers, working out the tension that had built up during the last half-hour of work.

“Take us in closer,” said Cade. “Let’s get a good look inside that hatch.”

Flynn did as he was instructed, bringing NOMAD to within a foot of the open hatch. From there he raised the telescoping arm and extended it out over the floor until it was able to look down into the opening. They had a quick glimpse of a vertical shaft that disappeared into the darkness below and then, without warning, NOMAD’s cameras went dark.

“What happened?”

“Not sure yet,” Flynn answered. He checked the fiber-optic leads, figuring one of them had gotten tangled and simply pulled free, but they were still securely attached to the control unit. When those checked out he moved on to the camera controls themselves, just in case he’d accidentally turned something off that he shouldn’t have, but that too turned out to be a bust. In fact, he could see that he was still receiving a signal from the camera, it just wasn’t showing anything through the viewfinder. He explained as much to Cade.

“Switch to infrared,” the commander suggested.

Flynn did so, but that, too, was inoperable. Concerned that they were going to lose the unit, he powered up the motor and backed the robot away from the hatch. The minute NOMAD left the repair bay the camera began transmitting a signal again, as if nothing had happened.

“You want me to run it through a complete diagnostic, see if it’s a software bug or something?” he asked Cade, but the commander shook his head.

“I think it’s time we gave it a look for ourselves.”

Cade ducked back inside the cab of the HWMMV and sent a final radio transmission to Captain Mason, just in case he was still receiving them. Then the Echo Team leader used the tactical communication system in his helmet to order his men to assemble next to his vehicle and prepare for entry into the structure.

The Command Squad would go in first, with Ortega’s First Squad watching their backs. When they reached the repair bay, First Squad would form up in a semi-circle facing outward into the common area while Cade and the others checked the hatch.

It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it would at least provide them with some measure of warning should that the enemy show itself and they’d therefore be better prepared to deal with it than Jackson’s squad had.

Cade looked at the men assembled around him, checking to be certain they were prepared for what lay ahead. He needn’t have worried; they were all professionals and more than ready to step off into the darkness to face the unknown. Riley must have guessed what was going through Cade’s head, for he gave him a quick smile and racked the slide on his combat shotgun, signaling his readiness to get underway.

Flicking the safety off his own weapon, Cade stepped toward the building, his men in position around him.