Strangers

as deep as night.
        

        
        As they drove up the two-lane road through the broad snow-covered meadow toward the massive blast doors, Colonel Falkirk sat in the front passenger's seat of the Wagoneer, thinking about the catastrophe that would ensue from the revelation of Thunder Hill's secret.
        From a political perspective, this would make the Watergate mess look like a tea party. An unprecedented number of competing government institutions were involved in the cover-up, organizations that often operated in jealous opposition to one another - the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, the United States Army, the Air Force, and others. It was a testament to the degree of potential danger that these groups could work together with nary a hitch and without a single leak in more than eighteen months. But if the cover-up were uncovered, the scandal would extend throughout so much of the government that the faith of the American people in their leaders would be severely shaken. Of course, very few in any of those organizations knew what had happened, no more than six in the FBI, fewer in the CIA; most of their men involved in the cover-up didn't know what they were covering up, which was why there had been no leaks. But the numero uno of each organization - the Director of the FBI, the Director of the CIA, the Chief of Staff of the Army - was completely in the know. Not to mention the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the Secretary of State. And the President, his closest advisers, the Vice-President. A lot of prominent men might fall from grace if this affair was not kept under lock and key.
        The political destruction wrought by the release of the secret would be only a small part of the devastation. The CISG - a think-tank of physicists, biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, theologists, economists, educators, and other learned people - had pondered precisely this crisis at great length and depth, years before it had arisen here in Nevada. The CISG had issued a 1220-page top-secret report on its conclusions, a document that offered some disturbing reading. Leland knew that report by heart, for he was the military representative to the CISG and had helped write several position papers included in the final text. Within the CISG, the opinion was unanimous that the world would never be the same if such an event were to occur. All societies, all cultures would be radically changed forever. Projected deaths over the first two years ranged in the millions.
        Lieutenant Horner, who was driving the Wagoneer, braked twenty feet in front of the giant blast doors that were set in the sudden steep upper slope of the meadow. He didn't wait for the huge barriers to open, for he was not driving directly into Thunder Hill. Horner turned right, into a small parking lot, where three minibuses, four Jeep wagons, a Land Rover, and several other vehicles stood side by side.
        The twin blast doors, each thirty feet high and twenty feet wide, were so thick they could be opened only at a ponderous pace, producing a rumble that could be heard a mile away and felt in the air and in the ground at least half as far. When a truck - loaded with ammunition, weapons, or supplies - pulled up in front of the drive-in entrance, the doors required five minutes to roll apart. Opening those hangar-sized portals every time a lone man needed to walk in or out was unthinkably inefficient, so a second, man-sized door - nearly as formidable - was set in the hillside thirty feet to the right of the main entrance.
        There was no better vault than Thunder Hill in which to keep the secret of July 6. It was an impregnable fortress.
        Leland and Lieutenant Horner hurried through the bitter air to the walk-in entrance. The small steel door, almost as blastproof as the massive versions to the left, had an electronic lock that could be disengaged only by tapping the proper four numbers on a keyboard. The code changed every two weeks, and those entrusted with it were required to commit it to memory. Leland punched in the code, and the fourteen-inch-thick, lead-core door slid aside with a sudden pneumatic whoosh.
        They stepped into a twelve-foot-long concrete tunnel about nine feet in diameter and brightly lit. It angled to the left. At the end was another door identical to the first, but it could not be opened until the outer door was closed. Leland touched a heat-sensitive switch just inside