“You think we could still find it? Maybe locate the wagon tracks and trace them back? Trouble is, wagon tracks tend to get wiped out in a hundred years.”
“I think we might find it another way,” Leaphorn said. “Did you ever take a look at those notices posted on chapter-house bulletin boards? The Environmental Protection Agency put them up. They have maps on them showing where the EPA is going to be flying its copters back and forth making surveys of old mine sites.”
“I’ve seen them,” Chee said. “But they’re surveying to map old uranium-mine sites. Trying to locate radioactive dumps.”
“Basically, yes. But what the monitors show is spots with high radiation levels. Coal seams out here are often associated with uranium deposits, and the one Mortimer told me about must have been a pretty big operation. I don’t have any business in this, but if I did, I’d call the EPA down in Flagstaff and see if they have a mine-waste map for that part of the Reservation.”
“I guess I could do that,” Chee said, sounding doubtful about it.
“Here’s the reason I’d be hopeful,” Leaphorn said. “Coal seams out here vary a lot in depth. Some right on the surface, some hundreds of feet down, and all depths between. You couldn’t haul it down the canyon bottom to the river. Too rough. Too many barriers. I’m thinking the Mormons must have got tired of hauling it up to the top after digging it, and dug down to the seam from the top of the mesa. They hoisted it to the top with some sort of elevator like they still do in most tunnel mines.”
“Which would explain how our Ironhand could fly from bottom to top,” Chee said. “How our Badger could have two holes.”
He picked up the telephone, dialed information, and asked for the Environment Protection Agency number in Flagstaff.
Chapter Twenty
On the fourth call and after the sixth or seventh explanation of what he wanted to various people in various DOE and EPA offices in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Flagstaff, Arizona, Sergeant Jim Chee found himself referred to a New Mexico telephone number and enlightened.
“Call this number in Farmington,” the helpful person in Albuquerque said. “That’s the project’s fixed base. Ask for either the fixed base operator or the project manager." That number took him right back to the Farmington Airport, no more than thirty miles or so from his aching ankle.
“Bob Smith here,” the answering voice said.
Chee identified himself, rattled off what he was after. “Are you the project manager?”
“I’m a combination technical guy on the helicopter and driver of the refueling truck,” Smith said.
"And I’m the wrong guy to talk to for what you want. I’ll try to get you switched to P.J. Collins.”
“What’s his title?”
“It’s her,” Smith said. “I think you’d call her the chief scientist on this job. Hold on. I’ll get her.”
P.J. answered the phone by saying, “Yes,” in a tone that busy people use. Chee explained again, hurrying it a little.
“Does this involve that casino robbery? Shooting those policemen?”
“Well, yes,” Chee said. “We’re checking on places they might be hiding. We know there’s an old coal mine in Gothic Creek Canyon, abandoned maybe eighty or ninety years ago, and we thought that perhaps -"
“Good thinking,” P.J. said. “Especially the “perhaps” part. That coal up in that part of the world is uraniferous. Well, all coal tends to be a little radioactive, but that area is hotter than most. But that’s a lot of years for the radioactive stuff to get washed away, or lose its punch. However, if you can give me a general idea of where the mine might be, I’ll tell you if we’ve surveyed that area. If we have, I can get Jesse to check our maps in the van and see what hot spots showed up. If any.”
“Great,” Chee said. “We think this mine was dug into the east slope of Gothic Creek Canyon. It would be somewhere in a ten-mile stretch of the canyon from where it runs into the San Juan southward.”
“Well, that’s good,” P.J. said. That’s on the Navajo Reservation, and that’s what our contract covers. The Department of Energy has hired us to help ’em clean up the mess they left hunting uranium. They provide the copters and the pilots, and we provide the technicians.”
“Do you think you’ve surveyed there yet?”
“Possibly today,” she said. “We’ve been up there south of Bluff and Montezuma Creek this week. If they didn’t cover that today, they probably will tomorrow.”
Chee had been feeling foolish during most of his earlier telephone conversations, his skepticism about this idea reviving. Now he found himself getting excited. P.J. seemed to be taking the notion seriously.
“Can I give you my number? Have you call me back? I’ll be reachable tonight and tomorrow and however long it takes.”
“Where you calling from?”
“Shiprock.”
“The copter will be coming in about an hour or so. Calling it quits for the day and downloading all the data they’ve collected. Why don’t you drive on over and see for yourself?”
Why not, indeed. “I’ll be there,” he said.
Chee had given up on putting on his left sock, and was easing a sandal on that foot when he heard a vehicle bumping down his access road. It stopped, the west wind blew a puff of dust past his screen door, and a few moments later Officer Bernadette Manuelito appeared. She was carrying what seemed to be a tray covered with a white cloth, holding the cloth against the breeze with one hand, tapping on the screen with the other.
“Ya’eeh te’h,” she said. “How’s the ankle? Would you like something to eat?”
Chee said he would. But not right now. He had a can’t-wait errand to run.
Bernie had been looking at the sandal on his left foot, frowning at it. It was not a pretty sight. She shook her head.
“You can’t go anywhere,” she said. “You can’t drive. What do you think you’re doing?” She put the tray on the table.
“It’s just over to the Farmington Airport,” Chee said. “Of course I can drive. Why not? You use your right foot for the gas pedal and the brake.”
“Take off the sandal,” Officer Manuelito said. “We’ll wrap it up in the bandage again. If you think it can’t wait, I’ll drive you over there.”
Which was, of course, what happened.
The woman who Chee presumed was P.J. turned out to be the same small, slightly sunburned blonde he’d noticed at the helicopter when he’d come to talk to Jim Edgar. She was standing beside the craft holding a black metal box, the box being linked by an insulated cable to the big white pod mounted on the copter’s landing skid. When she noticed Chee limping up, her expression was skeptical. Not surprising, he thought. He was wearing his worn and wrinkled ‘stay at home’ jeans and a blue T-shirt on which some of the mutton stew Bernie had brought him had splashed when she drove too fast over a bumpy place.
Chee introduced Officer Bernadette Manuelito, who looked uncharacteristically neat and spiffy in her uniform, and himself.
P.J. smiled. “I’m Patti Collins. Just a minute until I get this data unloaded.”
Jim Edgar was leaning on the doorframe of his hangar watching them. He held up his hand in salute, shouted, “Heard you found Old Man Timms’s airplane,” and disappeared back in the direction of his workbench.
P.J. was unjacking the cable. “You got here fast,” she said. “Let’s take this into the lab and see what we have.”
The lab was a standard-looking Winnebago mobile home, its white exterior badly in need of washing but the interior immaculate.
“Have a seat somewhere,” P.J. said. She connected her black metal box to an expensive-looking console built into the back of the vehicle and did those incomprehensible things technicians do.
The console made computer sounds. The attached printer began spewing out a roll of paper. P.J. studied it. “Well, now,” she said. “I don’t know if this is going to help you much, but it’s interesting.” She detached a couple of feet of paper and laid it on a
large scale U.S. Geological Survey map spread across the tabletop where Chee and Bernie were sitting.
“See this,” she said, and traced her finger down a tight squiggle of lines on the computer printout. “That coordinates with this." She traced the same fingertip down Gothic Creek on the USGS map.
It was meaningless to Chee. He said, “Oh.”
“It shows there’s been a distribution of radioactive material downstream from here,” P.J. said, tapping her finger on the h in Gothic Creek on the map legend.
“Would that suggest the mine waste dump might have been there?” Chee asked. “That would be interesting.”
“Yeah,” P.J. said, studying the printout again. “Now my problem is whether it’s interesting enough to divert the copter a couple of miles tomorrow to get a closer scan.”
“It would be a big help to us,” Chee said.
“I’ll talk to the pilots,” P.J. said. “It would just take another twenty minutes or so. And if it’s hot enough, we ought to get it on the map anyway.”
“Would there be room for me to go along?”
P.J. looked at him skeptically. “You were limping along on that cane. What’s the deal with your ankle?”
“I sprained it,” Chee said. “It’s just about healed.”
She still looked skeptical. “You ridden in a copter before?”
“Twice,” Chee said. “I didn’t enjoy it either time, but I’ve got a good stomach for motion sickness.”
“I’ll let you know,” she said. “Give me the number where you’ll be tonight. If it’s go, I’ll call you and tell you where to meet the refueling truck.”
Chapter Twenty-one
For once Chee came out lucky with the timing. As promised, P.J. had called him. Yes, they would revise their schedule for the next day a bit and divert a few miles to do a follow-up low-level check of the Gothic Creek drainage. He could go along. Everything had been more or less cleared and approved. However, it was one of those ‘less said the better’ affairs. Why run the risk that some big shot far removed from the scene might suspect this rational interpretation of regulations could cause trouble? The most economical and convenient time to do this diversion would be the final flight of the day. Chee should be at the refueling truck at 2:40 P.M., at which time the truck would be at the same place Chee had seen it previously, parked beside the road leading to the Timms place on Casa Del Eco Mesa.
“Thanks,” Chee said. “I’ll be there waiting.”
And he was. He’d gotten down to the office in the morning, caught up on paperwork, handled some chores for Captain Largo, had lunch, bought himself some snack stuff (including an extra apple to offer to Rosner) and headed west for the mesa. By two-fifteen, he and Rosner were sitting in the shade of the truck snacking and watching the copter land. It was the same big white Bell with radiation-sensor pods on its landing skids, and the pilot put it down far enough away to avoid blasting them with dust.
Rosner drove the truck over. He introduced Chee to pilot, copilot and technician, and started refueling.
“P.J. told me something about what you’re looking for,” the pilot said. “I’m not sure she had it right. Mine opening up on the canyon wall. Is that it?”
The pilot’s name was Tom McKissack. He looked a weather-beaten sixty or so, and Chee remembered P.J. had said McKissack was one of those army pilots who’d survived the risky business of rescuing wounded Air Mobile Division grunts from various Vietnam battles. He introduced Chee to the copilot, a younger fellow named Greg DeMoss, another army copter veteran, and to Jesse, who would be doing the technical work. All three looked tired, dusty and not particularly thrilled by this detour.
“Sounds like P.J. had it right,” Chee said. “We’re trying to locate the mouth of an old Mormon coal mine abandoned back in the eighteen eighties. We think it has a mouth fairly high up the canyon wall. Probably on a shelf of some sort. And then on top, maybe the remains of a tipple structure where they hoisted the coal up and dumped it.”
McKissack nodded and looked at the Polaroid camera Chee was carrying. “They tell me those things are a lot better now,” he said. He handed Chee a barf bag and a flight helmet, and explained how the intercom system worked.
“You’ll be sitting on the right side behind DeMoss, which gives you a great view to the right, but nothing much to the front or the left. So if your mine is on the east side, your best chance to see it will be when we’re going north, down the creek toward the river.”
“OK,” Chee said.
“We normally fly a hundred and fifty feet off the terrain, which means our equipment is scoping a swath three hundred feet wide. Down a canyon it may be lower, but we rarely get closer than fifty feet. Anyway, if you see something interesting, holler. If the situation is right, I can hover a minute so maybe you can get pictures.”
McKissack started the rotors. “One more thing,” he said, his voice coming through the intercom now. “We’ve been shot at a few times out here. Either people think we’re the black helicopters the Conspiracy Commandos are taking over the world with, or maybe we’re scaring their sheep. Who knows? Are we likely to get shot at in this canyon here?”
Chee considered that a moment and gave an honest answer. He said, “Probably not,” and they took off in a chaos of dust, motor noise and rotor thumping.
Later Chee had very few memories of that flight, but the ones he retained were vivid.
The tableland of multicolored stone, carved into a gigantic labyrinth by canyons, all draining eventually into the narrow green belt of the San Juan bottom. Multiple hundreds of miles of sculptured stone, cut off in the north by the blue-green of the mountains. The slanting afternoon sun outlining it into a pattern of gaudy red sandstone and deep shadows. The voice in Chee’s ear saying: ‘You can see why the Mormons called the Bluff area “the Hole in the Rock,” and the tech saying: 'If there was a market for rock, we’d all be rich.'
Then they dropped into the Gothic Creek Canyon, flying slowly north, with the rimrock of Casa Del Eco Mesa above them and the great eroded hump of the Nokaito Bench to their left. The pilot’s voice told Chee they were about two miles up canyon from the point their censor map had shown the streaks of migrated radiation along the canyon bottom.
“Be just a few minutes,” McKissack said. “Let me know if you see anything interesting.”
Chee was leaning his head against the Plexiglas window, seeing the stone cliffs slip slowly past. Here runoff erosion had sliced the sandstone. Here a rockslide had formed a semi-dam below. Here some variation of geology had caused a broad irregular bench to form. In places, the wall was almost sheer pink sandstone. In others, it was layered, marked with dark stripes of coal, the blue of shale, the red where iron ore had colored the rock.
“It ought to be close,” McKissack said. “I think we can presume the radiation from the old tailings was washing down stream.”
Gothic Creek Canyon had widened a little, and the copter was moving down it slowly and almost eye level with the rimrock to Chee’s right. Chee could see another bench sloping up from the canyon floor, supporting a ragtag assortment of chamisa, snakeweed and drought-stunted salt bush. It angled upward toward the broad blackish streak of a coal seam. Then just a few yards ahead and just below Chee saw what he was hoping to see.
“There’s a fair-sized hole in that coal deposit up ahead,” McKissack said. “You think that could be what you’re looking for?”
“Could be,” Chee said. They slid past the hole, with Chee taking pictures.
“Did you notice that structure above? Up on the mesa?” McKissack asked.
“Could you go up a little so I can get a picture of it?”
The copter rose. Almost directly above the mouth of the mine was the mostly roofless remains of a stone structure. Some of its walls had fallen, and a pyramid-shaped skeleton of pine timbers rose from its center.
“Well now,” said McKissack, "does that do it for you?”
“I’m finished, and I thank you,” Ch
ee said.
“Unfortunately you’re not quite finished,” McKissack said. “We have to drag this all the way down to the San Juan, and then back, and then we go back over the mesa and finish our mapping there.”
“About how long?”
“About one hour and thirty-four minutes of flying four miles north, making a sharp climbing turn, and flying four miles south, and making a sharp climbing turn and flying four miles north. Doing that until we have the quadrant covered. Then we land, get the tanks rejuiced and do it all over again. Except this time it will be quitting time and we’ll knock off for the day.”
The next voice was the technician’s. “And then we come back tomorrow and do it all over again with another four-mile-by-four-mile quadrant. Only time the monotony gets broken is when somebody shoots at us.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Joe Leaphorn cleared away his breakfast dishes, poured himself his second cup of coffee and spread his map on the kitchen table. He was studying it when he heard tires rolling onto the gravel in the parking space in front of his house. He pulled back the curtain and looked out at a dark green and dusty Dodge Ram pickup. The truck was strange to him, but the man who climbed out of it and was hurrying up his walk was Roy Gershwin. Gershwin’s expression bespoke trouble.
Leaphorn opened the door, ushered him into the kitchen, and said, “What brings you down to Window Rock so early this morning?”
“I got a telephone call last night,” Gershwin said. “A threatening call. A man. Sounded like a fairly young man. He said they were going to come after me.”
“Who? And come after you for what?”
Gershwin had slumped down in the kitchen chair with his long legs stretched under the table. He looked nervous and angry. “I don’t know who,” he said. “Well, maybe I could guess. His voice sounded familiar, but I think he had something over his mouth. Or he was trying to talk funny. If it was who I think it was, he’s one of those damn militia people. Anyway, it was militia business. The fella said they’d heard I’d been snitching on ‘em, and I was going to have to pay for that.”
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