9
El Paso was dark and there was a section of the town, on the northern-most end, where tourists never went and the locals left at night. Only a small handful of people were there and of those, none of them wanted to see or hear what anybody else was doing. It was the best place in the city to meet when you didn’t want other people butting their noses into your business.
Dana had her van parked on the curb when the door opened and Miguel Almanza hopped in. She put it in drive and pressed the accelerator button on the steering wheel. She was, every single time she drove, grateful she lived in a time when her disability didn’t make her immobile.
“Are you trying to get me killed?” Miguel said.
“Did anyone follow you?”
“No.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
He looked out the window. “I shouldn’t be talking to you.”
“That’s fine, Miguel. You don’t have to. I’ll just have a couple of agents pick you up for the distribution charge and we’ll let word slip that you’ve been feeding us information for the past couple years but that now that relationship is over. I’m sure your boss will be more than pleased that you’ve been speaking to me so much.”
“It would be death. You would kill me because I didn’t want to help you?”
“I’m not the one killing you, my conscience would be clear.”
He shook his head. “What do you want?”
“El Sacerdote met with a man named Jim Park recently. Do you know anything about it?”
“No.”
“Miguel, you are a really bad liar. Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll drop you off at your car and that’ll be that. You won’t see me again.”
“Until you want something else.”
“Well, we can’t predict the future, but for right now all I want to know is why your boss is meeting with Jim Park.”
“I don’t know. He sending something to Canada on one of that man’s trucks.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fine, I’ll just drop you off in the middle of Old Town and wave bye to you with my badge around my neck.”
“I swear, I don’t know nothing. He wouldn’t tell me. He just said it was death.”
“Death?”
“Yeah, that’s what he say.”
She looped back around to where she had picked him up and parked in an alleyway. “Anything else?”
“No, I know nothing else.”
“When you find out which shipment it’s going to be on, I want you to call me.”
He rubbed his lips.
“Miguel, I’m not kidding. One phone call. Just tell me what shipment it’s going to be on and where it’s going. That’s it. And then I promise I will leave you alone.”
He scoffed. “You cops are a lot like the dealers you know. You lie to get what you want and think it is not a problem.”
Miguel jumped out of the van and walked down the alleyway before disappearing. Dana watched him go and then backed up and drove away.
10
Antarctica. From the deck of the ship, it looked like a translucent hallucination. The ice was mostly blue, not transparent. The weather was good right now, about twenty degrees, and it wasn’t snowing.
After the yacht had docked, a crew of three had begun unloading their equipment. The location they were hiking to was two and a half miles away. Snowmobiles couldn’t help, George had assured them, because it would be uphill and some of the terrain was rocky.
Everyone checked and rechecked their packs before George put on his beanie and smiled, and turned to begin walking. Dillon looked to James who slapped his shoulder and he began trekking behind George.
In some spots, the landscape wasn’t all that foreign. An open valley surrounded by small hills of snow and ice. But in others, it appeared like a foreign planet. Huge monoliths of blue ice tore out of the ground and towered above them, like guardians holding some secret they couldn’t know.
In other places, you could see actual trees. They were frozen stiff and pure white, but the comfort of something familiar in an alien landscape was inescapable. Dillon could feel it. At one point they had to put on crampons and get out their ski poles as they were now traversing pure ice directly up a large mountain. George stopped for a moment at the base.
“It’s up here,” he said. “Now look, I’m not stupid. You’re here because if there’s any treasure you want a piece. Well that’s fine, but keep in mind this is my find. Anything you guys want to take has to be cleared by me. We’re not here to spend a ton of time. I’m here to document what there is and what there isn’t and I’m coming back with men I trust later in the year. But for now, you can have some trinkets as long as it’s cleared by me. Do we understand each other?”
“Perfectly,” James said.
“Good. If I catch you guys stealing anything that wasn’t cleared with me first, I’ll leave you here. I’m not kidding. I have no obligation to take you back on my yacht.”
“We understand, Mr. Anston,” James said. “We’re not here to step on anybody’s toes. Anything we wish to possess will be cleared by you first.”
George looked to Dillon. “What about you, hotshot? Do you understand?”
“Don’t take anything unless you say so.”
George nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”
Dillon looked back to James and held up his hand, which had his gloved fingers crossed. James smiled as they continued up the blue mountain.
Near the top of the mountain they stopped and drank hot tea from canteens. It was snowing now and the weather was gray. They had hiked for nearly three hours, and Dillon couldn’t see anything but ice and snow in every direction. Even the sea was out of view now.
George pointed out a hole the size of a manhole cover.
“This is it,” he said.
“This is what?” Dillon asked, out of breath from the hike and the altitude.
“This is where we enter.”
The three crewmen began bolting cables and rope into the ice. They threw the cables down the hole and got out repelling equipment. Dillon strapped in as George and James did the same. Niles and the three crewmen would be staying up here.
“It’s an easy repel,” George said. “Just take it slow.”
Dillon waited for George to go down first and then he climbed into the hole feet first. He slid at first and then had to catch himself on the rope. He began to gently push back with his legs and slid down a couple feet at a time.
They were in a cavern of sapphire ice. The hole opened up and he could see the massive space. On one side was the chaotic aftermath of an avalanche. That must’ve been how George discovered this place. On the other side was what looked like a narrow pathway.
Down below, maybe fifty feet, George was already unbuckling his harness.
Dillon reached bottom and unbuckled before helping James down. They looked around. The cavern went on toward the east and seemed to grow larger and larger. George lit an electric lamp and began walking without a word, his crampons crunching the ice beneath his feet.
Dillon followed, making sure James was okay. He was breathing heavily and his face looked flush.
“Why don’t you hang back,” Dillon said.
“Surely you’re joking. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Riches aside, I am an explorer at heart. Don’t forget I began as an archaeologist.” He looked to George. “Something’s not right though, Dillon.”
“What d’ya mean?”
“He knows more than he’s telling. There’s too much confidence in his steps. He’s been here several times before.”
Dillon followed George slowly, hanging back to ensure James wasn’t pushing himself too hard. Eventually, George’s lamp just became a pinpoint of light up in the distance. James pulled out a flashlight and illuminated an area about twelve feet in front of them.
The cavern grew so wide and tall, Dillon thought you could fit skyscrapers in here. And then
it began to shrink. It narrowed down to a corridor about ten feet high as they climbed a path that went slightly up and then fell in a steep decline. George was waiting for them at the end of the decline.
“It goes down now about half a mile. Stay close. I’m not sure what’s all down here.”
11
The decline took longer than Dillon thought it should. Part of the problem was that they were on a bridge. It was about six feet wide, wide enough that he didn’t have to worry about falling off the side as long as he stayed in the middle, but the drop on either side just went on and on into darkness. It could easily have been thousands of feet.
The cavern now opened up into something otherworldly. It appeared like a massive dome as the bridge led downward. Dillon had to lean back. A trick he had learned in his stint as an ultra-marathon runner. On downhill slopes, you lean back, relax your legs, and let gravity do the work. Otherwise, your quads could give out and leave you so fatigued you would have to stop and rest for a prolonged period.
He glanced back to James, who was winded, and then kept his eyes forward.
“Just think,” George said, seemingly not affected by the hike, “this place has been untouched by man for thousands of years. I was only down here an hour or so and didn’t really look around all that much. We’re really the first people to look at this place.”
Dillon and James didn’t respond. They were focused on not collapsing from exhaustion or falling over the side into the dark.
The bridge soon began to widen and they entered what looked like a covered corridor. It was sculpted completely out of ice, but it was too smooth. Too well proportioned. It had to be manmade.
As they made their way down the corridor, they saw George’s light stop. They came upon him and before them was a forest of shadows. They were symmetrical and evenly spaced with empty air between them. Even from this far and in little light, Dillon could see what they were: buildings.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he mumbled.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” George said.
James looked like he might pass out. His mouth was open as he slowly ran the flashlight over the building closest to them. They were white and smooth, made of the same material as the exterior corridor.
“This,” James said, quietly, “is the greatest archaeological discovery in the history of our species. Do you understand what this means, Dillon? They will have to rewrite every textbook on history, geology, archaeology, anthropology…maybe even literature and philosophy, mathematics. Who knows what knowledge is held here?”
“Easy big fella,” Dillon said softly, “remember why we’re here.”
“I almost don’t want to disturb it.”
“James, tell me you’re joking.”
“I said almost, my young friend.”
George said, “There’s a path right through here. I think it used to be one of their streets. I took it down like thirty feet and then turned back last time.”
James took out his thermos and took a long swig of tea before replacing it and saying, “Time’s wasting gentlemen,” and headed out first. Dillon let George go next and he followed them into the maze of ancient buildings.
The streets weren’t covered in snow since the entire city was protected by a dome. They could easily maneuver and there was enough room for all three of them to walk side-by-side and maybe have enough space for a few more men.
The buildings didn’t have any windows but they did have entrances without doors. James stopped at one and glanced inside.
“Dillon, look at this.”
He poked his head in. The interior was laid out like a modern apartment. Tables, chairs, and even rugs. A vase was up on the table and Dillon, carefully, stepped inside. The vase was the same white material as everything else. He took off his glove and lightly touched it. It was warm to the touch.
“Um, guys, this thing’s warm.”
James stepped inside and took off his gloves and touched it as well. “Amazing. It feels almost like…something is running an electric current through it. It’s the warmth you feel with a doorknob that has an electric lock on it.”
Dillon walked into another room. It was the bedroom. The bed wasn’t soft. It was a hard, gray material that felt uncomfortable. There was nothing else here. He went around to another smaller room and found a table with things strewn across it. He felt an overwhelming sensation of history just now. He was looking at something, an arrangement, that someone had left over six thousand years ago. And no one had seen it since. His stomach was all butterflies.
On the table were what appeared to be tablets made out of that white material. He ran his finger on it…and it moved.
He jumped back. He waited a moment and then walked close and took out his thermos and used the cap to run across the tablet. It left a mark and when he ran it over again, it erased the mark. It was a tablet used for writing.
There were several of the tablets and most of them were filled with writing he didn’t recognize. “James, come in here please.”
James came in and stood beside him. Dillon wrote his name on the tablet.
“They had writing,” James said, barely able to contain his excitement. “Dillon, they had writing!”
“Look at all these.”
He showed him the tablets with the writings on them. James stared at them a long time in silence. “This is mathematics. Look at this arch and the symbols underneath. That’s the catenary equation. It’s a graph of the hyperbolic cosine function. This is advanced geometry, Dillon.”
“Gentlemen,” George shouted from outside.
The two men looked at each other and then ran out of the building. George’s light was across the city now and they ran to it. He was staring up at a tower. It seemed at least five, maybe six stories tall. They stood in front of it. It was covered with symbols.
“I think it’s the tallest building in the city,” George said.
“Is there an entrance?” James said.
“I walked all the way around, I don’t see one.”
Dillon walked to it and pulled out his own flashlight, holding it up to the symbols. They were diagrams and long series of squiggly lines and curves. He touched the tower. It was warm, like the vase.
“I think we’ve done enough for today,” George said. “Let’s go make camp before nightfall. We can come back tomorrow.”
Dillon didn’t move. Something about the tower…it was electric. He was about to push on it when he felt James’ hand on his shoulder.
“He’s right. We don’t want to be caught without camp at night here. Let’s go.”
Dillon turned back to the tower, staring up at it as he took a few steps and then turned and followed the men out of the city and onto the bridge leading to the surface.
12
Dillon warmed his hands by the fire in front of his tent. The air was cold but it had a dryness to it that was almost like a desert. The environment changed so quickly he wondered how it was that anyone could spend more than a few days here. He glanced up to the sky. He had never seen anything like it. Each star was bright, almost a moon in itself, and he could see the cloudy coloring of the Milky Way—something he’d seen before in the middle of the jungles of Peru, farthest away from civilization.
James came out of the tent and bent down over the fire. He was looking directly into it and Dillon could tell he had something to say.
“Dillon…”
“I know.”
One thing Dillon had learned about James through the years was that he wasn’t a man that showed emotion. It was the way he was, the way he had been trained in the British Armed Forces all those decades ago. He thought a man shouldn’t show emotion if he could help it, that it was somehow weak to do so.
He rose from the fire and put his hand on Dillon’s shoulder. “Goodnight, Dillon.”
James went inside as Dillon stayed and stared into the fire. Dillon had lived on the street since he was eleven years old. Thrown out by an alcoholic father. His
mother had been killed in a car accident, a drunk driver, and his father, unable to cope, turned to the bottle. Soon, his mind fragmented and he was unable to deal with reality. Everything became Dillon’s fault, including the death of his mother.
His father would go on long benders and have them end with intense beatings. Dillon was the only other person in the house and any girlfriends his father had didn’t stick around for very long. He became the object of his father’s hatred and depression.
At one point, he was beaten so badly he blacked out on the kitchen floor and woke up the next day, his head slowly bleeding onto the linoleum. Before his father would take him to the hospital, he made him clean up the blood.
The last time he saw him, his father had tried to break his head open with a baseball bat. Though young, Dillon knew he would have a better life on the streets of Honolulu than living with this man. So he left.
James found him one night in his house, burglarizing it. He had snuck in through an outside air vent, disarmed the home alarm, and cracked the small safe James kept in the bedroom. James had been so impressed, he didn’t call the police. And in fact started giving Dillon odd jobs. He came to the boy’s shelter one day when Dillon was thirteen and sat down on the cot next to him: there were only a handful of rooms and each of those were shared by six boys a piece. So everyone else just got a cot in a gymnasium.
Dillon would never forget how he felt when he saw James walk in. He was dressed immaculately, in a gray suit with crisp white shirt and green tie. Dillon thought he looked like a king. James came and sat down on the cot that was provided for the boys.
“Dillon, I would like to take you away from here. I’ve spoken with your counselor about your situation. My understanding is that you have been thrown out of several foster homes. I understand your rage, I can see it within you, but let me tell you something young man, rage harms only you. It never harms the object of your rage. Do you understand?”
Black Onyx Duology Page 4
