Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series)

by Toni Dwiggins

  My pulse quickened. If she indeed walked here, then how had she got inside? I moved to the gate inset in the tunnel walls. I took hold of a crossbar and leaned into it.

  The gate swung open.

  38

  Walter shined his flashlight. “That’s worth a closer look.”

  We stood at the open gate. His beam had caught a bull quartz vein, creamy and white, deep in the throat of the tunnel. Where the tunnel took a turn, a streak of silver intruded the white.

  “Look all you want from here,” Oliver said. “Soliano says you don’t go in.”

  Walter waved his flashlight. “I believe he meant, don’t go exploring. I don’t believe he’d say, don’t nip in there and collect a critical mineral sample.”

  I said, “I’m willing to stipulate that’s a telluride.”

  “You’ll stipulate? When the answer’s fifty yards away?”

  I said, “We don’t have a gas detector.”

  Walter shifted his beam to illuminate a shaft that cut through the ceiling like a stovepipe. “It’s ventilated.”

  “I don’t care if it’s air-conditioned,” Oliver snapped, “you don’t go in.”

  “Mr. Oliver,” Walter said, “my feet hurt. I’ve been running around all morning. So you’ll understand that I want to sample that vein, and if there is any justice to be had we will ID this place and turn it over to Scotty so he can clean up the damnable mess and we can go back to the Inn and soak our feet.”

  “Amen,” Dearing said, lifting the toes of his boots.

  Walter opened his pack and retrieved his headlamp.

  I sighed and got out my own headlamp.

  Oliver stiffened. “Hold on just a goddamn minute.” His obsidian face turned rock-hard. “Why am I here? I’m here because you’re looking for the mess. You go in there, I’ve gotta go too.”

  Walter shook his head. “I’ll just nip in and out.”

  “I’ve seen guys like you. They make it personal.”

  Walter fitted his headband.

  “You’re not the goddamn bad guy,” Oliver said. “You got nothing to do with the mess.”

  Walter considered. “Strictly speaking, I do.”

  “The hell’s that mean?”

  I fitted my headband. It means Walter makes it personal. It means he’s Walter. I said, “He consumes power. Nuclear’s part of the nation’s power grid.”

  Oliver just shook his head. He told Dearing, “Take the watch and call Soliano.” He switched on the flashlight built into the forward grip of his submachinegun. He shoved around Walter to take the lead. “So you wanna live in the Stone Age?”

  No we don’t, I thought. They didn’t have French press coffeemakers and scanning electron microscopes in the Stone Age.

  Or Geiger counters. I took it out, just in case. We’d brought it along because Scotty told us to monitor outside every mine and if the count rose above background to get the hell away. We hadn’t expected to be going into a mine, which was why we hadn’t brought hazmat suits. And even if we’d wanted to bring that heavy equipment we’d have needed a couple of RERTs to schlep it, and RERT was tied down at the Inn.

  Well, we’ll just nip in and out.

  We entered the tunnel, abandoning day for night. At first the rain-gray light seeped along with us but within a few yards it yielded to the dark. We traveled on three thin beams. My hair stirred as we passed the ventilation shaft. As we penetrated deeper into the tunnel, I glanced back. The entrance seemed to have shrunk, like the mine was shutting down for the day. Closing time, everybody home to soak their feet. I turned to peer ahead. Maybe half a minute to the bend, couple minutes to sample, then another couple to get the hell out. That Clementine song started up in my head. In a cavern, in a canyon.

  “Here we are,” Walter said.

  Oliver pointed his light and his ammo uptunnel while Walter inspected the silver-flecked vein and I sampled a stretch of thin ground soil. I did not take the time to search for grains of sylvanite in the decomposed quartz. I did think mechanics. Chickie comes in here with wet boots and wet soil plugging the waffle soles. She is a walking glue stick.

  Walter peered over my shoulder. “Well?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Outside.”

  “I think...”

  “Shut up,” Oliver snapped. “Listen.”

  We listened. I could hear nothing but my breathing. Walter’s and Oliver’s breathing. And then, a thudding. Thud thud thud thud. Silence. Thud thud thud thud. Rhythmic. It was not the sound of somebody walking. Nobody walks like that. It came from around the bend. Deeper within the tunnel. Thud thud thud thud.

  “Out,” Oliver hissed, “now.”

  We tried to move on cat feet so as not to telegraph our position but then we just gave in and ran. Oliver followed, covering us, and I would have to say they don’t pay him enough.

  I thought, running, heart pounding, it had sounded like some kind of machine with some moving part that caught every so often on something it shouldn’t—thud thud thud thud—and then it worked itself free until it caught again, but if there was a machine running somewhere in this mine, that said there was somebody who started it, only why didn’t he hear the thuds and come fix it?

  Walter reached the entrance first and stopped short, blocking me.

  Not, however, before I saw what he had tried to stop me from seeing.

  First I saw the feet, the boots toes-up, and then I moved and saw the rest of Dearing. He had come just inside the mouth of the tunnel. Maybe he’d tried to get free. His arms splayed, like he’d been startled. His head tipped, sunburned nose in the air. Mouth open to argue. Chin jutting. The cut was neat, wide and deep, splitting the band of white muscle. Blood still ran, leaking at the corners. The soil beneath his neck was saturated with red leachate.

  I fell to my knees and held my head.

  I saw Oliver’s boots, rooted.

  When I looked again, I saw the satellite phone. Dearing must have begun to unpack it from its protective case, to make the call to Soliano. The caved-in sat phone lay against the gate post. A grapefruit-sized rock lay nearby.

  Dearing’s submachine gun was missing.

  Oliver said, voice thick, “Bro.”

  39

  Oliver shoved us. And then we found our footing and ran ahead of him back the way we’d come, back down the throat of the tunnel toward the thudding machine.

  “I’m carrying an MP-five submachine gun,” Oliver bellowed, “and I’m prepared to open fire on anyone who does not announce his presence loud and clear and he goddamn well better announce it on his knees with his hands in the air.”

  Air air air echoed down the tunnel.

  I ran sickened. Walter in front of me ran hunched over and I knew as well as I knew anything what he was carrying. A load of guilt. And that psycho outside was carrying a blade and that’s what I fixed in my mind, instead of the memory of Dearing’s peeling nose.

  We came to the ventilation shaft and Walter abruptly stopped to peer up but there was no ladder and no one larger than a child would have fit.

  Oliver crowded me up against Walter. “Shut off your lights.”

  We killed our lights and listened. No thudding. No footsteps. Just heartbeats. And then there was a shusshing sound.

  I went queasy with fear.

  Walter grasped my arm.

  Oliver’s light flicked on and his subgun swung up and steadied on a timber bracing the air shaft. A small figure clung there, wings hanging like an open coat. Its eyes gleamed milky in Oliver’s light. We backed away from the air shaft. No need to bother analyzing the telluride soil. Bat’s telling us what we want to know. Its nesting ground is fouled. It found the mess.

  The bat shrieked and its teeth suppurated blood. Like Soliano, I knew I was going to have dreams of teeth.

  The thuds began again.

  Oliver muttered a curse and took the lead. We advanced uptunnel toward the rhythmic thuddin
g, which was only slightly less insane than retreating downtunnel and exiting to the ledge where the blade-wielding psycho had perhaps settled in.

  If he hadn’t already come into the tunnel.

  We passed the telluride vein and turned the corner and Oliver led us into a side tunnel that ran leftward. He stopped us there and shut off his light.

  The thuds were louder, here. I wanted to scream for somebody to fix the damned machine. In the pitchy dark, I couldn’t tell forward from backward, up from down. I went dizzy. I reached for a wall. My hand closed on air. I needed to see. Where was Oliver? Where was Walter? I could not hear their breathing over my own. I found Oliver by his smell. I could differentiate his smell from Walter’s. We all shared a wet dog sweaty smell but beneath that Walter smelled of lemon drops and Oliver smelled of gun oil. I knew what I smelled of. Raw fear.

  And then Oliver’s mouth was at my ear. No lights, he breathed, no noise. I breathed the message to Walter. And so we moved on, my hand on Oliver’s waist and Walter’s hand on mine. Quiet as mice, blind as bats. Slow as snails, feeling out the bumps and cracks of the ground.

  My hair stirred.

  Oliver veered to the side of the tunnel and we snaked behind him. The breeze was stronger now. Oliver put on his light. We’d found another shaft, this one with a ladder. Oliver aimed his beam downward but the shaft swallowed his light before it reached bottom. We listened to the thuds. There was no longer any question where they came from. My heart pounded in synch. My mind raced. Whatever lay thudding down there was a mystery. What lay behind us was not.

  We put our heads together, whispering.

  “Winze must go down to level two,” Walter said.

  “Winze?” Oliver said.

  “Shaft’s called a winze when it descends.”

  “Who cares?” I hissed, “it goes down.”

  “Winze ladder look solid to you?” Oliver asked.

  “No obvious rotting,” Walter said.

  “I did ropes and ladders at Quantico.”

  “I trained on a submachine gun. National Guard. Eons ago, but...”

  “Good man,” Oliver said.

  “And you.”

  They swapped—Walter’s headlamp for Oliver’s subgun—and guilt and blame over Dearing’s death seemed to go by the wayside. I hoped that mattered. I moved to the edge of the winze and switched on my headlamp to spot Oliver down.

  Oliver inched his way, dipping a foot to test each rung.

  Walter stood watch, feet spread, holding the weapon like it was his garden hose.

  At long last Oliver called “come down.”

  Down down down echoed as I got on my knees and fished a leg down. My boot connected with a rung. I glued my eyes to the wall behind the ladder, comforted by old rock if not by old wood. The winze took a long time to swallow me and when my feet at last connected with the floor I called up to the pinpoint of light “okay.” I lit Walter’s way while Oliver stood watch. It was not until they’d exchanged gun for headlamp and we’d moved from the winze alcove into the new tunnel that I noticed the thudding had stopped.

  We hesitated. One passage branched left, one branched right, and between them tongued a third.

  I brought out the Geiger and painted the walls with the wand, picking up only background noise. I was putting it away when the thudding started again. It came, distinctly, from the right-hand tunnel. It grew louder, less rhythmic. It grew frenzied. Clearly, no machine.

  Oliver shouted, “I’m carrying an MP-five and I’m prepared to open fire if you don’t knock off that goddamn noise.”

  The thudding stopped.

  “Stay put,” Oliver whispered. He advanced into the right-hand tunnel and disappeared around a bend.

  It doesn’t want to get shot, I thought, but it definitely wants to get found.

  “Come ahead,” Oliver called. “You won’t believe this.”

  40

  He lay on his back, bound with silver duct tape. Ankles were crossed, knees pressed together, hands taped in prayer at the waist, mouth gagged, eyes squeezed shut against our lights. No need to wrap the eyes, down here in the dark. Otherwise, it was a thorough job.

  I got out my pocket knife and started at his ankles. He wore river shoes and no socks and his feet through the mesh were icy to the touch. I sawed through the tape, postponing the mouth and its Buttercup-baiting yak. I freed his knees and then his hands, and he flinched when I pulled off red wrist hairs along with the tape. I fingered the duct tape on his cheek. The mouth was going to hurt. I said “I’m sorry” and pulled.

  He flinched. He rolled to one side and pushed himself up to a sit. His arms trembled and he went no farther.

  Oliver moved in. “You got a bulletproof reason for being here?”

  He rasped, “Water.”

  I unholstered my bottle and gave it to him.

  He nodded a thanks and drank, greedy. He cleared his throat, eyeing Oliver’s gun. “I’m the victim.”

  Oliver grabbed Hap’s arm and twisted it up behind his back, forcing him forward over his knees. “Cut the crap. Who did this?”

  Hap gasped. “Roy.”

  Oliver released Hap’s arm. He placed a boot on Hap’s calf, securing it in place. He reached down to Hap’s right ankle and tugged at the severed duct tape. It clung to the parachute pants. He repeated the experiment on the left ankle, as if there could be any doubt that the tape had in truth been binding. He removed his boot. “Now tell your story.”

  Hap curled his legs away from Oliver. He took a sip of water, holding it in his mouth like a rare wine.

  Oliver snatched the bottle. “From the get-go, Miller.”

  Hap’s eyes narrowed as he swallowed the last of the water. “Get-go’s at the Inn.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat, tried again. “Vegas doc comes so I bug out. Run into Milt. We’re hungry. Whole place is locked down so we find our way to the kitchen and make sandwiches. Take them to the garden for a picnic. All of a sudden here’s Roy. Armed. I’m more than on his list now. I’m in his sights.” Hap gave a helpless shrug. “Roy takes us to this service road. There’s a ranger truck. Roy gets in back with Milt and tells me to drive. Key’s under the seat.”

  Oliver said, “There was no ranger truck in the canyon.”

  “Didn’t come that way. Took a utility road. Hiked from there.”

  “You try to run?”

  “And get shot? Roy was talking hostages and that sounded better to me.”

  Walter said, “Where’s Milt?”

  “Down some tunnel?” Hap cradled one wrist, then the other. “Milt’s a joke most of the time but I do hope he’s alive.”

  “My partner is dead,” Oliver said, cold. “Somebody cut his throat.”

  Hap paled.

  “You’ll lead us every goddamn step you took with Jardine.”

  Hap rolled to his knees and, cautious as a cat, rose to his feet.

  Walter said, “What about Pria?”

  Hap’s attention remained on Oliver’s gun. “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “Did you see her on the road? Anywhere?”

  Hap lifted his palms.

  Walter’s stony face said he did not believe in Hap’s ignorance. I had to differ. Like Hap, I couldn’t see what Pria had to do with this. It made no sense. Hap’s story made a certain sense. I believed in Jardine, because of Dearing. I believed Jardine had bound Hap, because it was a physical impossibility for Hap to have done it to himself. Beyond that, I was not willing to go.

  Nevertheless, I found myself in line behind Hap and Walter—with Oliver bringing up the rear—following Hap through the rocky maze.

  We filed down the tunnel to the intersection and Hap without hesitation took the left fork tunnel. The rocky floor here was lined with timbered rails capped with iron straps. This raised my hopes. I hoped the rails went out. In another few yards I had my answer. The rails fed into a shaft with a wooden ore chute. Walter looked in, as if it might still contain yesteryear’s ore.

 
; We continued past the chute.

  I concentrated on the noise we were making. Too many feet, too little care. Sound travels, as we’d learned from the thuds. Even whispers travel. I remembered a family trip to Washington DC—I’d stood on a spot in the rotunda of Congress and whispered, and the people nearby did not hear but my dad standing on the sweet spot across the rotunda heard me perfectly. I pictured Jardine, standing on the sweet spot in another tunnel, listening for us. I tried to tread more softly. I focused on my feet. My socks rubbed. Like Walter, I yearned to return to the Inn and nurse my feet.

  We passed a little alcove and like Walter, I rubbernecked. I saw a crushed cardboard box with faded lettering that said Trojan, and then dynamite. My thoughts jumped from decaying dynamite to modern plastique.

  I began stepping with more care.

  Within a few yards the rails reappeared, in broken lengths, and we navigated cautiously around the dagger ends and the splintered crossties. Something skittered underneath. I heard Oliver stop. I smelled his metallic sweat. I listened for the rat. Or the snake. I heard Oliver’s wet palm slap his subgun. Oliver and Walter, fellowship of the phobic. We moved on but Oliver’s footsteps slowed now, cautious ninja on the lookout for snakes. Soon the rails improved and my hopes spiked again. Our tunnel and the rails took a hard right and as I followed Hap and Walter around the corner I saw another shaft, this one descending from level three, above us. I spared a cursory look at the large storage bin on the floor of the shaft, then my attention snapped back to the rails. Sooner or later, I hoped, they’d lead us out.

  But as I turned away, something registered. Something I’d glimpsed. Had I really seen that? A shadow cast from my headlamp, stretched across the back wall of the shaft, distorted by the rungs of the shaft ladder. A shadow rising from the storage bin in that micromoment when I’d looked away. Stretched and distorted, but had that been a head? A ponytail?

  Reflexively, stupidly, I looked again.

  I looked him full in the face.

  Just below, at chest level, his arms rested on the top of the bin and the muzzle of Dearing’s subgun looked me full in the face.

  I focused on his shirt, behind the gun. The beam of my headlamp caught on his breast-pocket shiny buttons and they gleamed like eyes.