Len Vey reached the heavy oak barrier of Junction Four. Then, he didn’t waste a single breath calling out or striking the iron-studded timbers.
The door was closed, dead, and barred from the far side. Three heavy padlocks of case-hardened iron hung through forged hasps. Across the seam between the two leaves ran a four-inch timber bar dropped into deep stonework sockets. Through the five-inch thickness of seasoned white oak came the dull, rhythmic hammering of Sergeant Karr’s crowbars and twelve-pound sledges, with the muffled shouts of defected guard post guards working from the outer hall.
Len pressed his right palm flat against the wood. The shaking of the sledge blows traveled through the grain into his skin. But the timber barely yielded a fraction of a tiny fraction of an inch. The doors had been built during the second spreading of the Star tower, framed from dense white oak cured in salt water and clad in cold-rolled boiler plate to seal the lower galleries against gas leaks from the coal beds. Even with three men swinging heavy sledges, cutting through forty tiny fractions of an inch of seasoned timber would take seven to ten minutes of unbroken labor.
Len didn’t have seven minutes. He had less than five.
