by Ed Kovacs
“No, it’s just that my transponder light appears to be intermittent. I was wondering if you were painting me okay.”
“Everything looks fine here, sir, but would you like a transponder check?”
“Negative, center, we’ll check it on the ground.”
“Roger that. Have a good day, sir.”
“You too, center.”
Declining the controller’s offer to check his transponder ensured the demise of AFKAI-1 77. Daubert would not have executed the procedure during the C-21’s communications with the Air Route Traffic Control Center and all the accompanying attention a transponder check would bring it just as it flew into the target area. But now, there was nothing to stop him but his conscience, and that had stopped functioning a long time ago.
###
Astute observers would have been amazed at how fast certain security units arrived on the scene to seal off the flaming hillside crash site. But even the most astute would perhaps not have understood the significance of the arrival of an Allied Van Lines tractor-trailer at a secretive research center in rural Virginia not long after the crash. The facility, rumored to be heavily involved in particle beam weapon research, was quasi-governmental, but weighted to the private sector and a company called Nile Securities, a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of S.E.T. Nile Securities’ board, controlled by Simon Forte, included top members of the current administration as well as intelligence and military power brokers.
A successful field test of a particle beam weapon spun as a “tragic accident” would go a long way to insure a massive influx of black-budget research funds, and substantial stock bonuses for the board. Of course, a shipboard version of the weapon installed on the Sven Carlsson pelagic freezer trawler had already been successfully tested on Air Mobility Command Flight SPAR 87, but that was another matter.
###
Wilder and Hunt returned to camp just before dawn. It only took seconds to power up and send a burst transmission radio check to Tasnee at exactly 06:30. Over breakfast with Ping and the three young ladies, they agreed the girls’ future in Burma looked bleak, a conclusion that applied to much of the country’s population. Through his wife, Ping knew of a program in Thailand for displaced hill tribe peoples. Job training and placement was provided to give girls options to the flesh trade. The three young Burmese girls were afraid, but agreed they would go to Thailand; getting them there would be a problem to deal with later.
For now, they set up a second small encampment just for the teens, hidden on three sides by rock-face and thick bamboo. The girls well understood the dangers they faced. And they knew better than to ask why two Caucasians and a Thai had come to this dangerous place.
By 8:00 A.M. the scuba gear and tools were shuttled to the house. Ping hid himself several hundred meters up the trail with a two-way radio to watch for soldiers. The girls had said that the tatmadaw came two or three times a week. Occasionally they came two days in a row, but seldom. After spending the night, the soldiers had left a little more than twenty-four hours ago, so Wilder felt they had an excellent one-day window to find the tablet unimpeded by visitors. But it would have to be recovered today. When the soldiers returned to find the girls missing and their hot tub disturbed, the game would be over.
If the soldiers did return today, there would be very little time to slip away. Diana considered booby traps, demolitions, even mining the road near Ping, but the time it would take to set defenses would be precious time not used working to recover the tablet.
“Ready to go for broke?” Sky asked lightly, as he slipped on a pair of dive gloves.
“Not really. The truth is, we’ve degenerated into a gun-and-run kind of op that relies more on dumb luck than smart planning. Everything feels rushed and that's when mistakes are made. I’m not at all comfortable with you going into this water, in the middle of a Burmese army brothel.”
“Hey, we’re close. Let’s grab the brass ring and get the hell out. Dinner in Bangkok tonight, on me.”
“Sky, our little survey of the ninety minute boiling cycle is pathetically inadequate at best,” she insisted, ignoring his flippant attitude. “It’s not like we’ve been monitoring the water for weeks. The boil seems to come every ninety minutes, but maybe there are one or two random boils thrown in every day or so.”
“The thought occurred to me, but it’s now or probably never. Are we going for the third tablet, or not?”
“Like I said before, you’re the key man here. My job is to keep you alive. Once you get to depth, if a random boil comes along, you’ll be shabu shabu. That is unacceptable. As security officer on this mission, I am ordering you to let me go in. I’m a better swimmer than you, anyway.”
He was taken aback by her intransigence, none of which she had voiced the night before. He realized she was simply worried about him. “Who says you’ve got the easy part by staying here?” He gently took her hand in his. “You are the only thing between me and the Burmese army. I’m counting on you to cover me.”
Before she could respond, the boil came. They checked their watches. “Eight-ten, right on time, correct?”
“Yes,” she said, giving in. “I’m not going to enjoy being up here worrying, so don’t waste time.”
“Scout’s honor.”
He checked his wrist dive computer and set the timer. He wore a vest-style buoyancy compensator and weight belt, and carried bags, underwater camera, knife, pry bar, hammer, pitons, flares, and chemical light sticks. A hands-free light was strapped to his head and another dangled from a D-ring. He slipped into the water, and in less than five minutes managed to pry lose sheets of corrugated tin that comprised the floor of the pool. Diana hauled the heavy, algae-covered metal pieces out of the water and dumped them on the floor of the main room.
Finally, with one end of a polyethylene test line tied to his vest, he gave her the thumbs-up and submerged. She played out the line and manned the two-way radio. Three quick tugs on the line meant he should surface immediately.
As he descended, the possibility of a random boil wasn’t the only concern gnawing at him. The other danger had to do with the nature of thermal springs and geysers, the bastard son of which he currently explored. Geysers are actually quite rare, with complex plumbing systems existing in volcanic rhyolite rock. A lot of water and plenty of heat are also required. This spring, of course, wasn’t a geyser—nothing spewed—but the relationship remained close and problematic. Obviously, very hot water flowed up from great depths into the system, and, Wilder assumed, mixed with cooler water from other sources. Possibly, the super-hot water built up in a pocket under the much cooler water, and every ninety minutes briefly forced its way to the surface in an explosion of steam bubbles.
Sky figured the system wasn’t water and pressure tight, which might be the only thing keeping this from being a true geyser. But what if he encountered a hot water pocket? It might even be a chamber of hot water. Getting through something like that worried him as much as anything else. Thermal-dynamics notwithstanding, the underground river he swam against narrowed, and as this happened, the force he opposed became greater. As he snaked deeper into the earth, the passageway shrank further.
As he pressed on, his head light illuminated phantasmagorical-colored bacteria lining the rock walls. He snapped a photo of these organisms, which could live and reproduce near the temperature of boiling water, one hundred degrees centigrade. Boiling point temperature however, was not a constant and depended on elevation and pressure, and here in the thermal depths the BP might be lower. Regardless, he recalled there were about fifty species of thermophilic bacteria that tolerated or required water temperatures near the boiling point, their discovery having shattered previously established biological notions which held that living things would not tolerate temperatures anywhere near eighty degrees centigrade.
These bacteria were ancient microorganisms that some bold scientists regarded as a separate kingdom of life. Sky related to the researchers because they too cha
llenged the scientific establishment.
An astonishing number of bacteria existed on Earth, most living underground. The thermophiles were extraordinary because their enzymes work in high temperatures where chemical reactions occur more quickly; thermophile-derived enzymes are widely used by food processors to transmute corn into sugar, a rather sweet form of alchemy that perhaps even Hui would appreciate. Wilder mentally cycled through all this mostly as a distraction from what was beginning to knot up in his gut—pure fear.
Could I really have been a tomb robber in another life? He admitted it provided a cold logic to his inexplicable claustrophobia and panic attacks. Disappointed by his suggestibility, he assumed Diana’s play-by-play description penetrated his mind and registered as vivid images. Her claim that he was a double-dealing scribe who knew Hui... it was all too outrageous, even though he’d felt something. He'd heard the reincarnation argument that unresolved relationships from one lifetime would have to eventually be resolved in a future one. It sounded poetic, but could it really be true?
The passageway leveled out and the current surged strong enough that he hammered pitons into the soft rock for handholds. He moved forward past small arteries depositing cool water into the mix; the water temperature in the main channel grew warmer as he left these small tributaries behind.
The water flowed hotter but he swam on a few more meters and found the passageway open into a submerged chamber the size of an automobile. Two other passageways emptied water into the chamber: one carried hot water which Sky avoided; the other passageway was tepid and he swam through, hopeful it led in the right direction.
A short swim took him into a fair-sized cave room, perhaps seven-by-ten meters. He surfaced near an underground waterfall, the opening of which looked too small for a human to navigate, were there a way to do that, which there wasn’t.
But this was a special cave room. Up on a bank of solid rock stood a terracing of rimstone pools, stunning calcite deposits that looked like a frozen waterfall. Time permitting he would have loved to explore this room, but it was a dead end, there was no altar. He swam closer to the bank, then felt a tug at his back. Diana signaling? No. He checked his wrist computer, made a fast calculation, then realized he’d run out of line. Since this was a dead end, he’d have to go back and swim up the hot water passageway.
One last sweep of this damp room with the hand-held light and then... he saw something.
He thought his eyes might be playing tricks on him, but he had to be sure. He sank a piton into the wall and tied off the end of his line. He swam to the rock bank but it was too slippery to climb up, so more pitons went in, the air tank came off, and he got the gear and himself up onto the bank. The humid air smelled good here, balmy and fresh as it came in with the warm waterfall. Then his light caught something he hadn’t seen clearly from his position in the water: an algae-covered altar, carved from the living rock. Crusted onto it sat a scepter, glazed now with algae and bacteria, but a scepter Sky knew to be gold.
“Thank you, Opet.” He took a few snaps with the underwater camera. There was no time for delicacy and it only took seconds for him to pry the scepter free and rub down a spot to shimmering gold shine. He placed the royal baton into one of the dive bags. Nothing else was on the small altar, so he searched the room finding no sign of the tablet as he ran his fingers along the slimy, algae covered, easily weathered limestone.
He rejected the notion that someone had already liberated the tablet. Any interloper would have taken all of the treasure, especially gold artifacts. He turned to the terraced rimstone, two meters deep by perhaps three meters across and almost as high, whose pools were mostly dry now. Had this marvelous rimstone formation somehow engulfed the main altar, which held the third and final tablet of Hui? If the tablet had been hidden here centuries ago and left untouched, then quite possibly it lay cemented under the rimstone. No other conclusion made sense.
Theoretically, it was possible. Water could have worked its way through the rock, collapsing the main altar. Then, over untold years, the water running over the altar’s debris lost carbon dioxide to the atmosphere of the cave and precipitated calcite crystals. The flowing water had waves on its surface formed by irregularities of the rock over which it flowed. The thin waves formed the precipitated calcite into semicircles, similar to how the wind forms sand dunes. A series of terraced rims were formed, each rim holding a pool of water. These small pools sat empty now; the water above the cave room had shifted several meters, probably due to some change in pressure, and burst through, forming the waterfall now flowing into the room, several meters away.
Wilder enjoyed no solace from his deduction that the rimstone pools formed relatively quickly. Like with the thriving bacteria he’d seen while swimming in, high temperatures caused chemical reactions to occur more quickly, so the rimstone formed in a relatively short time.
“Forget about a quick grab,” he muttered to himself. “This will be a major excavation project.”
Regardless of the Egyptian treasures, the cave room was a major find, although he knew it was doomed to destruction at the hands of Simon Forte. He snapped a photo of the pristine rimstone, said a silent prayer, begging God and Man for forgiveness for what he was about to do. Retrieving his pry bar and hammer, he set about smashing the elaborately beautiful rimstone pools to pieces, in the assumption that Hui's tablet lay buried beneath.
###
Diana first became concerned when the entire four hundred feet of line played out. But now, she frantically gave the rope three sharp pulls, which she had been doing every minute for the last five minutes. She could only assume the rope caught somewhere along the line or... or she could make other unpleasant assumptions.
“Hitchhiker, do you copy?”
“Yes, copy,” answered Ping.
“I’ll be out of radio contact for awhile. Over and out.”
She wore her one-piece and knew she could swim much better than Wilder, who might be in trouble. Her everyday watch was a Tag Heuer Aquaracer dive watch, and she checked it as she grabbed a mask, dive light and a rock pick. She eased herself into the water, hyperventilated for two minutes to clear her lungs of carbon dioxide and fill them with oxygen, then submerged. She would follow the line for ninety seconds. If she hadn’t found either Sky or an air pocket by then, she’d have just enough air to swim back, since she'd never held her breath underwater for longer than three minutes.
Down she went, legs kicking in quick-time like a high-strung wind-up toy. She knifed through the water, more quickly, she assumed, than he had. In what seemed like no time at all, she slithered into the narrowing passageway where the current strengthened, and she pulled herself along using the line for added thrust.
Soon, a glance at her watch told her it was time to go back, she had barely enough air to make it. She paused for a moment, then swam on, out of hope or fear, she knew not. She must get him out, she would not let him be boiled alive. Surely, she reasoned to herself, she’d find an air pocket or catch up to Sky and share his oxygen.
Diana passed the passageways flushing in the cooler water, feeling her lungs slowly empty. Finding the chamber, she felt the hot water flowing in and twisted away from the inflow, trying to surface, but there was no surface, no air pocket, a waste of several seconds. Lightheaded now, dizzy, she dove down to grab the line and entered the other passageway, lungs exploding now, out of air, kicking frantically she prayed to God for help. Her watch screamed she’s gone over three-and-a-half minutes without air. Somehow she found the end of the line tied to a piton, but no Sky, just more water ahead.
Losing consciousness she kicked forward against a warm current and thought she saw light. She was dying. This was the tunnel of white light at death, she was sure. She had read about it in all the NDE—near death experience books—and there was nothing to do but go with it. Reunite with her dead parents and grandparents. She reached up in surrender and went blank.
###
The constant roar of the waterfal
l disguised most sound in the cave room. But as Wilder intently chipped away, something made him look up, and he saw a hand rise out of the river flow, then sink back down. He dropped the tools and jumped into the water, reaching Diana in precious seconds. He got her unconscious body up on the bank, then went to work with CPR for an agonizing two minutes, rotating between chest massage, ventilation, and checking her cardioid artery for a pulse. Finally, she vomited up a mouthful of water and coughed for a good minute. He helped her sit up. She’d swallowed water, but apparently little had gone into her lungs.
“You’re okay, you’re okay.” He pushed hair back out of her face. “Diana, what were you thinking?” She flashed her blue eyes at him, then slapped him. “Um... you’re welcome.”
She slapped him again, too weak to make it really sting, then he locked her into a bear hug and nuzzled her neck. She started to sob, but they both looked up when a loud hissing sound filled the cave room, drowning out the patter of the waterfall. Steam bellowed in from the entrance with the hiss of a thousand snakes. Sky helped her stand and they backed away, against the slimy far wall. The water level in the room began to rise.
“You’re wearing the most high-tech dive computer and timer... did you ever think to look at it?”
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
The steam continued to spew into the room and the temperature shot up twenty degrees in seconds. “Are we toast?”
“I don’t think so. I think this is the back blast from a pressure cooker that’s filling up that chamber we swam through. The superheated steam is keeping this water from flowing through for the moment, that’s why the water here is rising. When the venting stops next door, we’ll be back to normal.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” she muttered.
“You came to save me, huh?” He enveloped her in his arms as wisps of steam licked at their flesh.
