Hostile Borders

by Dennis Chalker

  Approaching one of several large clusters of creosote bushes, Reaper decided that this was about as close as he could bring the Prowler to the mine entrance without detection. The vehicle ran quietly, but there was no reason to push his luck at that moment, he might need all of it later. The rest of his approach would be done on foot. Hiding the rugged little vehicle from casual view, Reaper slung his pack on his back and secured his submachine gun to the shackle of his Chalker sling. Patting his hands around his body, Reaper did a quick touch-check on all of his equipment.

  The mouth of the Blue Star mine was only a short quarter-mile hike away on the other side of the ridge. The terrain he was crossing was rough to walk, but not so much that it slowed him down at all. Reaper was glad of the tough cloth the 5.11 tactical pants were made of. No matter how carefully he moved, the brush and cactus seemed to reach out for him with their thorns and spines. He had earlier turned down the sleeves of his shirt to help protect his arms from the nasty plant life. The Kevlar and leather Hatch SOG-L Operator gloves he had over his hands kept the bulk of the thorns out of his skin. In spite of the extra warmth of the gloves and long sleeves, he was glad he had them on as he crouched down low to approach the crest of the ridge.

  The hot sun beat down on the black DSC/Cobra logo baseball cap Reaper had picked up back at Diamondback Tactical. He took frequent sips of water from the drinking tube of his water bag. Getting dehydrated out in the open desert was easy and could be as lethal as a bullet. Reaper was not going to make the mistake of not taking in enough water.

  Crawling over the top of the ridge, Reaper started his final approach to the mine. Raising his head next to some brush, he scanned the area around him as well as the mouth of the mine only a few hundred feet away. There was no visible activity at all. Even the truck that had been there the night before was nowhere in sight.

  The time had come to get up close to the mine. With his MP5 in the ready position, the GemTech Raptor suppressor secured in place over the muzzle, Reaper slipped up to the wooden shedlike structure that surrounded the actual entrance to the mine.

  Standing so that his back was almost against the gray, weathered boards, Reaper held still and listened. Even in the bright daylight, your ears could warn you about things well before your eyes ever saw them. His SEAL training and experience had taught Reaper that rule well. So he stopped and just listened.

  There was no other noise in the immediate area except for the sound of his own breathing. In spite of the loudness of his own breath in his ears, Reaper knew that sound couldn’t be heard more than a foot away from him. There was the rustling of a light breeze blowing across the desert and nothing else. Even the sounds of traffic on the main road was muted by distance.

  After a full minute had passed, Reaper had still heard nothing out of the ordinary. Moving along the wooden wall, but not touching it, Reaper slipped past the piles of rubble and scrap from the mine. Unidentifiable bits of abandoned machinery, piles of dried-out old timbers, and a twisting, coiling, mass of rusted cable was all around Reaper as he covered the last ten feet between himself and the opening to the mine. When he looked around the corner of the shack, a wide steel gate, chained and padlocked shut, was the first thing he saw.

  There hadn’t been a gate visible the night before. Not even a sign of one. But here it was, blocking his way, and there was nothing he could do about it. Whoever had moved the truck had probably closed the gate behind them.

  There wasn’t space enough to go around the gate and into the mine. Even climbing over it couldn’t be done, the gate extended all the way up to the low ceiling of the shack. The gate wasn’t across the mouth of the mine itself, only the front of the shack was closed off. That was something Reaper could work with.

  Moving back along the outside wall of the shack, Reaper found a low door that had been padlocked shut. This door was locked, but the lock was old and rusted. There wasn’t any way he was going to open that lock with the tools he had at hand, but the hasp the lock was secured to, that was another matter.

  Kneeling down, Reaper took his SwissTool out of the pocket of the knife sheath. The Victorinox engineers who had designed the tool had put a lot of thought into what was included with the folding tool along with the pliers. There were screwdrivers, cutters, knife blades, a file, hacksaw, and a thick, blunt prybar tip. Unfolding the prybar tip and locking it into place, Reaper slipped the chamfered edge of the tool back behind the lock hasp.

  When the nails began to pull out of the old wood, they screeched and groaned. A squirt of water from his Camelbak drinking tube, and the water wetted down the wood enough to eliminate much of the noise. Folding the SwissTool and putting it away, Reaper took out his broad-bladed Gerber Silver Trident knife. The thick, strong blade went behind the lock hasp and levered the whole mechanism out of the way. Now, Reaper used the tip of the knife to pry open the edge of the three-foot-square door.

  The dry wood cracked and splintered under his onslaught, but the door opened for the first time in decades. The way into the Blue Star mine was now open for Reaper’s exploration. He slipped the knife back into its sheath and snapped the thumb break strap to secure it in place. Crawling through the low door, Reaper made his way into the mine.

  The mouth of the Blue Star faced southwest, so a good deal of afternoon light came streaming in through the barred gate. Kneeling in the sunlight, Reaper picked up a handful of the crushed rocks and gravel that made up the floor of the mine. Holding the handful up to his eyes, he could plainly see the glinting of smashed blue azurite crystals in the rubble. Dropping the grit and brushing his hand on his thigh, Reaper knew that this was indeed the mine that the ambushers had come from.

  The sunlight brightly lit the front portion of the mine, and grew gradually darker as Reaper went farther down the main tunnel. The tunnel was fairly wide at this part, enough so that carts and horses or mules could have passed each other and not crowded men on either side. As the tunnel turned to follow the original ore vein, the light faded quickly.

  As Reaper turned the corner of the tunnel, he came across the two John Deere Trail Gator utility vehicles. The small six-wheeled transports were immediately familiar to him. The U.S. Army had been using a modification of the Gator, called the M-Gator, since late 1999. He had seen footage of the M-Gator in use during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan.

  Even in the dim light, Reaper could see that these were most likely the two vehicles whose tracks they followed into the barn the night before. With the aid of his flashlight, Reaper removed all doubt about the identity of the two transports. The deep cargo boxes on the back of both Gators had dark stains in them. The stains were almost black, even in the bright light of the SureFire. They were dried blood—and there was a lot of it. The dogs had done some serious damage when they had come to the rescue of Hausmann and Reaper during the ambush.

  The brilliant white beam from the SureFire tactical light had clearly illuminated the bloodstains. But the light had also been dazzlingly brilliant to Reaper’s eyes. He stood by the Gators for several minutes with his eyes closed, listening to the dark and giving his eyes a chance to readjust to the dim light of the tunnel.

  Putting the flashlight back into the upper right pocket of his vest, Reaper decided that he was going to stop using white light for a while. The SureFire tactical lights were great illuminators, but the brightness of the beam took too long to recover from after using it in the dark. He would be using the SpecOps light sheath instead. The blue-green shine-thru-bottom feature would give him enough illumination to see by without blinding himself with his own light. The SureFire 6V fore-end weapon light that Hausmann had fitted to his MP5A3 would do very well if Reaper needed white light for aiming a weapon or lighting up a target.

  The rails that ran down the center of the mine tunnel stood out as two straight lines in the dust. Kneeling down, Reaper could see that the rails were shiny and smooth on the top and inside surfaces. The outside surfaces of the steel rails were rusty and rough. The rail
s had been used regularly, and recently, too.

  Moving through a dark mine can be an experience, even for a combat experienced SEAL. Reaper had no backup at hand, no Teammate he could depend on to watch his back. He shook off the momentary chill that ran through him, blamed it on the coolness of the tunnel, and concentrated on the task at hand. He had moved several hundred feet into the main tunnel from the mouth of the mine and there was no end in sight. When he stopped and listened every few feet, Reaper couldn’t hear anything that told him what was ahead. But he did feel a strange breeze flowing up against his neck. The air was moving into the mine from the mouth of the tunnel. There had to be further openings in the darkness ahead.

  The light from the mouth of the tunnel was nearly gone as something loomed up from the darkness ahead. As Reaper approached, the confusing mass before him started to come together and make sense. It was the support structure for a mine elevator. A small cagelike door had been drawn down to cover the opening to the shaft, it would keep the unwary from stepping off into nothing.

  The elevator cage itself was missing. The rails that ran across the floor simply ended in black nothingness, and then continued on the other side of the elevator shaft. The open mouth of the shaft yawned in front of him as Reaper stepped closer. Suddenly he was very wary of booby traps, tripwires, or electronic warning devices. He saw nothing as he leaned out over the shaft. Then, as he looked down, he could see something. It was light! Far below him there was light shining into the elevator shaft. And the breeze that he felt faintly blowing against him was now flowing down into the shaft. There was no question but that he would have to descend into the lower levels of the mine.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  With his SureFire light in the SpecOps light sheath, Reaper looked around the open mouth of the elevator shaft. The light far below was visible, even fairly bright, but it did nothing to show the details of the deep shaft. There were greased and well-maintained cables running up the center of the shaft. They went up over a pulley system and down to the side where they wrapped around the drum of a winch.

  The fact that the cables were obviously cared for was just another piece of data to add to the evidence that the mine was far from abandoned. As Reaper further examined the elevator shaft, he saw that there were I-beams running vertically along each corner and extending down to the bottom of the shaft. The central channel of the beams were smeared with grease and had shiny marks in the steel. That told Reaper that they were used to guide the platform as it rode up and down the shaft.

  The greased cables and I-beams were useless in helping Reaper climb down the shaft. The cables were far too greasy and slippery to allow him any kind of sure grip. And the I-beams were also too slick for him to climb down them with toe and hand jam-holds. He also didn’t want to rappel down the open hole, not that he couldn’t. But using the rope that he had brought with him meant a long, slow climb back up that same rope when he returned. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to try to bring the elevator platform up to his level and use it.

  He had just about decided on rappelling down when Reaper spotted a ladder built into the side of the elevator shaft. The ladder was nothing more than a long series of forged iron staples driven into the rock walls of the shaft. But they extended down into the darkness as far as Reaper’s light would reach. He could faintly see the rungs of the ladder reappear from the gloom far below.

  Snugging up his MP5, Reaper slipped the hi-port weapons-catch around the front of the submachine gun and held it diagonally across his chest with the Raptor suppressor up near his left shoulder. Getting on the ladder involved lying on his belly and slipping his legs over the side of the shaft. Reaper didn’t allow himself to think about the long drop if he slipped from the ladder. Instead he concentrated on just getting his feet properly in place on the damned thing.

  When the soles of his boots hit the rungs of the ladder, Reaper slipped backward and let his weight press down on one of the rungs. The old iron staple held solidly in place. Taking his next step, Reaper began his long descent into the depths of the mine.

  The ladder passed several more tunnels as Reaper descended. But the level that held the most interest for him was the lit one far below. The steps seemed to go on forever as he climbed down into the lightless hole. Having reattached his light sheath to his belt, Reaper was enveloped in darkness as he stepped farther and farther down, each step taken by feel alone.

  In spite of their apparent age, the simple iron steps remained strong. For safety, Reaper only let go with one of his hands after his foot was firmly on the next lower step. In a steady rhythm, he continued just concentrating on each step. If he let his imagination run away with him, it would seem as if Reaper was climbing down a great chimney into the furnaces of Hell itself. He shook off his momentary morbid thought and went back to concentrating on the task at hand.

  Finally, after what seemed an eternity of steps, Reaper went past the upper framework of the elevator platform and stepped onto the solid wood-plank floor. The rails that he had seen on the floor of the main tunnel were duplicated on the floor of the elevator cage, and they matched up with more rails extending far off down the long tunnel in front of him.

  This is weird as hell, Reaper thought. The entire tunnel was illuminated by a string of electric lights attached to the ceiling. The lights were bare bulbs in sockets, but they appeared to go on forever. The end of the string wasn’t in sight, they just dipped down and looked as if they disappeared into the floor.

  The lightbulbs were small low-wattage ones that probably needed little maintenance. In the darkness of the tunnel, they were bright enough to show everything. There was another section of the tunnel that continued on behind Reaper. It was on the far side of the elevator platform and also had a set of rails running along it. In spite of his urge to follow the lit tunnel, Reaper went back through the elevator to check on the other tunnel.

  It didn’t take long to see that the rails along the floor on the other tunnel were corroded and covered with dust. But a short section near the elevator shaft had no dirt on the rails and showed the shiny marks of recent usage. There wasn’t much question of which direction he had to take. Releasing the MP5 from the hi-port weapons catch, Reaper held it in the ready position and started to move on down the lit tunnel.

  Whoever had placed these lights was supplying the electricity from some other source than the power grid aboveground, Reaper thought. The lines the bulbs hung from ran along the ceiling of the tunnel but stopped at the elevator shaft. Power had to be coming from the far end.

  The tunnel was a long sonofabitch, Reaper decided, as he moved down its length. He’d covered more than a quarter of a mile by his pace count, and there still wasn’t an end in sight. The tunnel was gradually sloping down, which explained why the lights had seemed to disappear in the distance when he first looked down the long tube in the earth.

  There was nothing on the walls of the tunnel but the evenly spaced support beams. The tunnel rock was solid, there were no signs of cracks in the rock that made up the walls and ceiling. No rubble covered the floor of the rails that ran along it. There wasn’t a sound except for the crunch of Reaper’s boots in the gravel on the floor.

  He could hear the pounding of his heart in his ears and the sound of his breath moving in and out of his nose. But other than that, Reaper could have been buried alive for all of the activity that was going on around him. That was a frightening thought and he pushed it out of his mind as he moved ahead.

  He came to a point where the walls of the tunnel took on a different texture. As the tunnel sloped downward, the walls were no longer as rough as they had been. It was as if water had scrubbed at them over years. As if he had passed a line, the tunnel walls suddenly became very rough. The chips in the rock were sharp-edged and looked fairly recent, much more recent than any other work Reaper had seen since leaving the elevator shaft. The rails on the tunnel floor looked almost new, with very little corrosion on the outside of the ste
el. Then, the tunnel ended.

  It was astonishing. The mine tunnel had suddenly opened up to a huge cavern. There he could hear the sound of dripping water, and the echoes gave the impression of a vast underground chamber. The rails continued down a small wooden trestle. Instead of climbing down the timbers, Reaper stepped off the side of the tunnel mouth and down the pile of scree and broken rock that made up the slope of the cavern wall.

  The cavern smelled of wet rock and water. There was an underlying stink, kind of a sweetish rotten smell, in the air that Reaper recognized. It was the smell of death, of decomposing human flesh; something that once smelled, as Reaper had on the battlefields of Bosnia, could never be forgotten completely. Someone had died in the cavern, and the body hadn’t left the area.

  In the cavern, the lights were held up on poles that ran along the rails as they extended down to the cavern floor and off into the distance. The ground was smooth and an easy walk, so Reaper made good time moving in the direction of the rails. Even though he was paying close attention to where he was going, the SEAL’s eyes kept being drawn to one natural wonder after another in the huge underground arena.

  As a kid, Reaper had watched the Jules Verne movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth. The surrounding stalactites and stalagmites in the cavern as he could see them, reminded him of that old film. He certainly didn’t expect to run into any dinosaurs like in that movie, but the long cones of the growths down from the ceiling and up from the floor did resemble long, sharp fangs lining a gigantic mouth.

  Reaper could see why the lights were left on. Anyone who came into the cavern without the chain of illumination would be lost in an instant. Whatever kind of train it was that followed those rails probably had headlights, and bright ones. But the long line of lights along the rails gave reassurance that that was the way out. Or the way in as Reaper looked at it.

  The ground he was walking on was rock worn smooth by running water. But there was no water anymore. The area was dry. It looked as though the original waterway had traveled along and then ended in a black sinkhole Reaper was coming up to. Whatever it was, that hole was where the horrible smell was coming from. Taking out his light, Reaper stepped up to the mouth of the hole while holding his breath. The brilliant white light illuminated a scene straight out of a nightmare.