The Outsiders Gambit by Kevin Tumlinson

Author:Kevin Tumlinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Happy Pants Books

CHAPTER

FIVE

HUASHAN CAVES | HUANGSHAN MOUNTAIN, ANHUI, CHINA

Finding the exit had taken the better part of an hour. Not because it was hidden—it was just that there seemed to be no way to open the damn thing.

Kotler had meticulously traced the seams of the door, which was built from two massive, riveted plates of steel set on tracks in both the floor and ceiling. If there’d been any doubt that someone from the modern world had intruded on this ancient cave network, it would have been immediately dispelled with one glance at these doors.

There was an indication of some motorized mechanism above. It was out of reach for Kotler, without some kind of very tall ladder. But he was certain there would have to be a control panel for it here, somewhere.

The size of these doors made sense. Some of the equipment being stored here was massive in its own right. And though nothing Kotler had seen so far was tall enough to have given any challenge to getting it through the doorway, it seemed likely that other equipment, such as tall cranes for moving and positioning vehicles and equipment, might have been in and out of the place at some point.

Kotler wished he had one of those cranes right now. Or a ladder. Or a jetpack. Anything that could get him up to eye level with the mechanism for the doors, so he might stand a chance of opening them.

There was at least one beacon of hope, since he’d begun searching an hour earlier. And it was almost a literal beacon. He’d found a row of switches that controlled the lights in this place. And throwing them one by one, he blinked into the dazzling brightness, his eyes watering from the sudden assault on his senses, after spending most of the day in darkness with limited light. He turned off his flashlight then and clipped it back to his vest.

With the lights came a distant hum. It didn’t sound like a generator—Kotler was fairly certain this place was running on a battery bank charged by the hydroelectric dam they’d located nearby. There might be a generator—it seemed likely, as a back up. But this sound wasn’t it. It lacked the droning, pulsing vibration of a generator in motion.

This sound was more of a hum.

His exploration of the doors and the area immediately surrounding them was turning up nothing useful, so he might as well go see what that noise was.

Just to be on the safe side, he pilfered a nearby toolbox, removing a pry bar. Hefting it in his palm, satisfied that it would make a decent weapon, he trudged on.

The space felt vastly different now that he could see it in full light. The walls of wooden crates, stacked nearly to the ceiling, seemed less ominous. As did the jeeps and helicopters.

But the tanks…

He hadn’t seen them on his first pass through. They were on the far side of the cavern—or the hangar, as Kotler had come to think of it.

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