have a very different opinion of her if he knew the real reason for her visit. She changed the subject by presenting her pass. ‘Here’s my paperwork.’
‘This’ll just be a formality – I know who you are,’ said Kern with a smile. He briefly scanned the documents, then returned them before giving Eddie’s pass slightly longer scrutiny. ‘Okay, I imagine you’re keen to go down to the repository.’
‘Down?’ said Nina, surprised. She indicated the nearby cabins. ‘I thought those were . . .’
‘These? Oh, no, these are just the administration facilities. You don’t know about the base?’
‘No, everything was arranged at very short notice, and I didn’t think to ask. So, there’s even more of this place?’
Kern grinned. ‘Oh, there’s more! I’ll give you the tour personally. Log them in,’ he told one of the men nearby, before beckoning for Nina and Eddie to follow him. ‘Normally we’d take your phone and any other electronic devices, but you’ve got top clearance, so no need to worry.’ That raised a warning flag in Nina’s mind: why would Dalton have gone the extra mile for them? ‘This way, please. I think you’ll be impressed.’
He led them to a golf-cart-like yellow buggy nearby, the guards heading back to the cabins. Nina sat in the front passenger seat beside the officer, Eddie behind her. ‘So just how big is this place?’ she asked as Kern set the little electric vehicle in motion.
‘This level? One point two million square feet of floor space, more or less. And it’s not even the biggest. There are twelve levels in all.’
‘Fu— Gee, that’s a hell of a size,’ said Eddie – though it came out as ‘a hail arf a sars’.
Nina shot him a sharp look. ‘When was it built? For that matter, why was it built?’
‘They started construction in 1954,’ Kern told her. ‘It was designed as a way to ensure that the United States had a second-strike nuclear capability – no matter what the Soviets managed to achieve with a first strike against us, we’d have a backup bomber force able to be launched against them from a hidden base days or even weeks later. Problem was, by the time Silent Peak actually came online both sides had put ICBMs into service, making long-range nuclear bombers obsolete. So the base became a strategic reserve.’ He indicated the aircraft across the hangar. ‘Basically, it’s a storage facility.’
‘Lark the boneyaahds in Arizonah,’ said Eddie, referring to the huge desert ranges filled with mothballed planes.
‘Not quite – the vehicles there are just as likely to be scrapped or stripped for parts as returned to service. Everything stored here at Silent Peak can be made combat-ready within forty-eight hours, if needed. You’ll see our inventory on the way down.’
Nina looked ahead past lines of trucks and Humvees, but didn’t see anything that looked like a ramp or elevators, only a large black square on the hangar floor. ‘How do we get— Oh.’ Her eyes went wide as she realised what she was looking at.
The square wasn’t on the floor, but set into it, a separate entity. A gigantic elevator shaft.
‘Isn’t that something?’ said Kern, pride in his voice. ‘It’s two hundred and sixty feet on a side, and can bring a fully laden B-52 up from the lowest level in under five minutes. So I’m told, anyway. I’ve never seen it move anything that big myself – I only took command here last year.’
‘That’s . . . quite a thing, yes,’ Nina agreed. She wondered what future archaeologists, as far removed from the present as she was from the heyday of Atlantis, would make of Silent Peak. Would they have any comprehension of its original deadly purpose and the ideological conflict that spawned it?
She put such musings aside as Kern steered the buggy towards one corner of the open shaft. A metal cage marked a section roughly ten feet square. ‘Passenger elevator,’ the colonel explained as he pulled up alongside it. ‘There’s one at each corner of the shaft. It can be a bit unsettling, but it’s a lot easier than taking the emergency stairs. Okay, step aboard.’ The trio dismounted from the buggy, Kern opening a gate in the cage and walking through on to a platform with handrails round its edge. Once Nina and Eddie were on the platform, he closed the gate and went to a control panel. ‘The repository is on the lowest level.’