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mountains.” He paused. “Not sure why that’s messing with thermal imaging for the buildings, though. Best I can advise is to proceed with extreme caution.”
    â€œRoger that.”
    Bunny swore softly and then faded to the left side of the main door; I took the right side. I reached out a hand and knocked on the door. Even when you know it’s a waste of time, you go through the motions in case you’re wrong. And, sometimes you do the expected thing in order to provoke a reaction.
    We got no reaction at all.
    I reached for the handle. It turned easily and the lock clicked open.
    Bunny mouthed the words, “So much for the concept of a ‘secure facility.’”
    I waved my hand for Top. He turned off the snowcat, dropped down to the ice, and came up on our six, fast and steady.
    We entered in silence, moving quick, covering each other … and then stopped. Just inside the metal doorway was a small vestibule, and the back wall of it was one mother of a steel airlock.
    â€œBug,” I said. “Tell me why I’m looking at an airlock.”
    â€œHuh? Um … I don’t know, it’s not on the schematics for the old radar station. And there’s nothing in the materials purchases or requisitions about it.”
    â€œBalls.”
    Top ran his hand over the smooth steel. “Ten bucks says it’s a Huntsman.”
    I nodded. In our trade we get to see every kind of airlock they make. And, unfortunately, we get to deal with what’s behind most of those airlocks. Fun times.
    â€œThere’s a geometry hand scanner, too,” said Bunny. “Pretty sure it’s a Synergy Software Systems model. The new one that came out last December.”
    â€œGood,” said Bug, “that gives me a starting point. Sergeant Rock, put on a glove and run the scanner.”
    Top took a polyethylene glove from a pocket and pulled it onto his right hand. It looked like the blue gloves worn by cops and airport security, but this one was veined with wires and sensors that uplinked it via satellite to MindReader. He placed his hand on the geometry scanner and let the lasers do their work. Normally they create a 3-D map of the exact terrain of the whole hand, but the sensors hijacked that process and fed the scan signature into MindReader. The computer fed its own intrusion program into the scanner and essentially told it to recognize the hand. Sure, I’m oversimplifying it, but I’m a shooter, not a geek. I’m always appropriately amazed and I make the right oooh-ing and ahhh-ing sounds when Bug shows me this stuff, but at the end of the day I just want the damn door open.
    The damn door opened.
    â€œYou da man,” Bunny said to Bug.
    We stepped back from the airlock as the two-ton steel door swung out on nearly silent hydraulics. I expected a flood of fluorescent light and a warm rush of air. Instead we saw only darkness and felt a cold wind blow out at us like the exhalation of a sleeping giant. It was fetid air, though, and it stank of oil and smoke and chemicals. But it was more than that. Worse than that.
    It was a meat smell.
    Burst meat. Raw meat.
    Like the inside of a butcher’s freezer.

 
    INTERLUDE THREE
    OFFICE OF DR. MICHAEL GREENE
    EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK
    WHEN PROSPERO WAS ELEVEN
    â€œProspero,” said Greene, “we need to talk about your dream diary.”
    â€œI figured we would,” said the boy. He sat on the floor between the potted ficus and the couch.
    â€œWhen I asked you to start your dream diary it was with the understanding that you shared your own dreams.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m doing.”
    â€œProspero, if these are your own dream images, then what should we think about this?” Greene had his laptop open and he turned it so they could both see the screen. Then he held up one of the boy’s drawings, which showed a pair of giants kneeling in water. The giant on the left was