The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3

by Christopher Cartwright

“More than,” Jenn muttered.

  “Giddy-up,” Tom offered.

  Sam put the big vehicle in gear and cautiously edged its nose out of the tunnel opening. “Okay, Jenn. You’re the navigator. Which way do we go?”

  “That way, I think.” She pointed to the right.

  Sam turned slowly, getting the feel of the truck with the four-ton stone on the back. He picked up speed as he got more comfortable with the stone’s stability.

  “Better keep it slow until we hit the road,” Jenn cautioned. “Some of these mesas, you can’t see the fissures and canyons until you’re right on top of them.”

  Sam immediately slowed, and flicked his eyes at her. She wasn’t grinning. “You’re serious.”

  “Yep,” she said.

  “I think it’s time to hear your story, Jenn. Who are you? Where did you come from? And why don’t you know whether there’s a canyon between us and the road?”

  “Thanks for saving me. I think,” she started. She quickly told them what she’d been through, ending with running back into the tunnel to escape the motorcyclists, whom she’d taken to be cartel members come to meet her and the man she’d killed.

  “Is that his blood all over you?” Sam asked. He was impressed in spite of himself. That story was worthy of Genevieve or Elise. She was a simple, honest-working, ranch woman, but damned resourceful if she’d killed her captor with a penknife as she’d claimed.

  “I guess so. It isn’t mine.”

  Sam threw his head back and guffawed. Priceless answer. The woman — Jenn — was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  “Well,” he said. “One way or another, we’ve got to get to civilization. Where do you think we’re headed?”

  “Pretty sure we’re headed south,” she answered. “If I’m right, there’s an old dirt track up ahead that will lead us west to my boss’s ranch. I should be able to see landmarks in the distance soon. I’m just not as familiar with this side of it, because of that deep canyon that cuts it. I’ve lost track of time, but it can’t be more than a day or so since I entered the other end of that tunnel.”

  “What makes you say that?” Sam asked.

  “We walked the whole time,” she said. “I’d be done in if it was more than a day. And I’m hungry, but not starving.”

  Her remark woke Sam’s own hunger. The train hadn’t been stocked with much food. It had been maybe forty-eight hours since he and Tom had eaten. His stomach growled in response to the thought.

  “And you’ve never known of that cave system, or tunnel, whatever it was, before now?” he asked. It didn’t seem possible. But then, looking around as he drove with one eye on the ground a few yards ahead, maybe it was. The surrounding terrain was an expanse of reddish-colored, sandy soil, dotted with lone bushes and scrubby-looking trees.

  Here and there, lumps of sandstone and blacker stones that could have been lava intrusions rose at random from the ground. Some as large as the locomotive he’d just left, some smaller than the Humvee. The latter he drove around. The former, he tried to skirt without going too far off a straight line.

  “Before today, or maybe it was yesterday or the day before, I never knew about any of this,” she answered. “But I can tell you what I do know. This tunnel system is used by drug dealers.”

  Sam gave Tom a significant look over his shoulder. Drugs for weapons? Weapons for drugs? It made sense. Jenn’s fight was probably their fight.

  “Okay, so where’s your ranch?”

  “Don’t know that either, until I can get my bearings. But I think it’s to our west.”

  Sam worried that they were leaving a clear track in the sandy soil for the motorcyclists to follow. He worried that they were somehow going in a different direction than Jenn thought, though the sun seemed to confirm her claim. And he worried that they’d never find the road she thought was up ahead, and were driving into a trackless waste where they’d eventually run out of gas, and out of time. But he drove on.

  The sun was clearly sinking to their right when Sam spotted tracks crossing their path. He slowed, and then came to a stop with the front wheels of the Humvee atop the tracks he’d seen. “Where do you suppose these go?”

  Jenn must have fallen asleep, but was drowsily coming to when he stopped. She stretched, yawned, and then said, “Why did we stop?”

  “Tracks,” Sam explained. “Right below us, going east and west. Where do you think they go?” Inside he was seething. If they’d missed their turn because she wasn’t alert… But then, he hadn’t noticed her falling asleep, either. He was desperately in need of some food, some sleep, and some answers.

  Jenn leaned out of the vehicle. “This is it!” she cried, suddenly sounding excited. “This is the road I told you about.”

  Sam leaned out of his side. Below the truck, tracks disappeared beneath the undercarriage. Maybe five or six tracks made by smaller vehicles, if he had to guess. “This is a road?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Well, not a road, but yeah, it’s the four-wheeler trail I told you about.” She sat up, then climbed out of the vehicle and turned, looking into the distance. “There it is.” She pointed.

  Sam couldn’t see anything that looked different from what he’d been driving through for the past three hours. “Where? What?”

  Tom opened the door and rolled out of his jump seat, rubbing his butt. “Man, they didn’t build this thing for comfort,” he grumbled.

  “Church rock,” Jenn said, mysteriously.

  “Church what?”

  “Church rock. I know that formation. Come on, it’s going to be dark soon, and we’ve got about twenty miles to go.” She climbed back in and sat as though she hadn’t just dumbfounded Sam again.

  “Ma’am, I don’t see anything that looks like a church.”

  “You will. And it’s Jenn, please.”

  It was only a few minutes when Sam spotted it for himself. A round dome of sandstone, with a smaller sandstone cap that looked like a bell tower. As they drew near, he could see what looked like an arched opening carved a few feet into the south side of the rock.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “This is what people come to see out here,” Jenn explained. “Both from Durango and from down in New Mexico. We shouldn’t be far from a main road, now, but there’s a back way onto the ranch that comes off this trail, about three miles up the road. From there, we’re on my boss’s land, and it’s fifteen to the ranch house.”

  Relief swept over Sam like a warm shower, which he also needed. He urged Jenn to tie up some loose ends in her story. “By the way, if you didn’t know anything about that cave system before, what were you and your brother doing when you found it?”

  “Oh, I guess I didn’t start at the beginning. Well, he found it, actually. Terrible thing.” She recounted the story of Malcom’s hat being swept away and then the man himself being drawn into the cave by a strange wind.”

  Sam turned around and looked at Tom, whose mouth was wide open. He turned back to watch the track for a turnoff. “Stetson hat?” he asked.

  “Yeah. How’d you guess?”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” he began.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  It was almost another hour on the rough track leading to the ranch house before Sam could see it in the distance. He wasn’t surprised when Jenn spotted it first. She’d already proven her eyes were sharper than his, or more attuned to the landscape where she lived. He preferred to think the latter.

  She’d been in a brown study since he’d told her of the fate of the hat, and probable fate of poor Malcom, whom he suspected to be the former owner of the body he’d found wedged in the lava tube. No wonder the man had looked almost boneless, with contusions from head to toe and his clothes in shreds. What he must have gone through, helpless in the wind on that journey. Sam could only hope he’d been dead for most of it.

  Jenn suddenly sat straighter and said, “What’s that?” She was pointing at the sky ahead.

  Sam, who w
as taller, had to duck to see what she meant. A thrill of fear shook him as he recognized three black helicopters, though he couldn’t make out their insignia.

  “Choppers,” he said sharply. “Tom.”

  “I see them. What do you think?”

  “I think they’re about to land at the ranch house we’re heading for.” Tom glanced, casually upward. “Unless they’re the bad guys out hunting us.”

  His first prediction proved to be true as they watched. They were still too far away to make out who the people were who got out of them, but their moves weren’t suspicious. Sam decided to continue to the compound. “Is there somewhere I can hide this vehicle before we get to the ranch house?” he asked Jenn. “Maybe a barn or something?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You can’t see it from here. It’s behind the house. Just swing wide right now, and we can approach it from the other side.”

  He followed her directions, skirting wide around the back of the ranch house. With luck, the occupants were busy with their company, and not looking out the back, where they might see the plume of dust the Humvee kicked up. Before long, he’d pulled the vehicle into the back door of the barn. It wouldn’t stay hidden for long, since Jenn told him there were normally about a dozen horses stalled there, rather than the three she identified as hers, her boss’s, and the unfortunate Malcom’s ranch-owned mount. The hands were probably all out doing whatever ranch hands did.

  “Well, Jenn. Shall we go let your boss know you’re safe?”

  Jenn’s eyes were troubled. “Yes, of course. I have to find out if my brother is safe as well.”

  “What are you going to tell him about us?”

  “I’ll just say you rescued me. What you tell him is up to you. I owe you.”

  Sam nodded, satisfied. “Then let’s do it.” He walked beside Jenn out the front door of the barn and up to the house, with Tom following only a step behind. He spared a glance at the three helicopters dominating the front lawn, if it could be called a lawn. They bore the insignia of someone he knew well. This was an interesting turn of events.

  As they entered the front door, a Native American man and woman with striking red hair pulled up in a crisp bun and emerald eyes, looked up at him. The woman wore the sour expression of disgruntlement, as though her time had been needlessly wasted.

  Sam spoke as her face betrayed recognition. “Good afternoon, Madam Secretary.”

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Sam had never seen the Secretary of Defense at a loss for words.

  Today was no different. She composed her face and answered coolly. “Good afternoon, Sam. I was told I might find you loitering in these parts.”

  “Really?” It was Sam’s turn to be surprised.

  “I figured it would take more than half a million tons of rocks to dent that thick head of yours.” Her eyes glanced at Tom. “Besides, you were with Tom, so I figured he’d keep you from doing anything too stupid. So, I asked Elise to work out where the lava tube was likely to resurface.”

  Sam’s lips, curled into an incredulous, wry smile. “And her first suggestion was an old cowboy ranch in Colorado?”

  “The first one she bothered to bring to me. There was an article in the paper about a report of a cowboy from New York being mysteriously sucked into a sipapu. There was a photo of the man.”

  “She matched it with the image of the cowboy we’d found in the tunnel on Big Diomede island?”

  “Exactly.”

  Sam glanced at Jenn, waiting silently. “I’m sorry. This is Jenn, she helped guide us out of the tunnel.”

  The Secretary of Defense shook her hand politely. “Pleased to meet you.”

  He then turned to the Native American man and offered his hand. “Sam Reilly and this is Tom Bower. You must be the owner?”

  “Ben Whitecloud,” the man nodded as he took Sam’s hand. “Thanks for helping get Jenn out.”

  Jenn turned to face Ben, as though the words reminded her of something vitally important. “Did Brody get out? Is he safe?”

  Ben shook his head. “I’m sorry. We haven’t heard from him since we left the sipapu. He must still be out there.”

  That made Sam think of the riders. “On that note, there were a number of motorcycle riders who attacked us in the tunnel. Some of them got away. I believe they’re linked with the same group who attacked us on Big Diomede Island.”

  “Where are they now?” The Secretary of Defense asked.

  “I couldn’t tell you.” Sam spoke truthfully, although he suspected the riders may have regrouped and returned to the train. “Somewhere out there along the mesa most likely.”

  “All right,” she said, with authority.

  Sam smiled. “All right, what?”

  “Let’s go get them.”

  Sam, Tom and the Secretary headed outside toward the helicopters.

  “Tom, you can take the co-pilot’s seat in the lead and navigate for the pilot.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  The Secretary then looked at Sam. “And you can come with me. There’s more I still need to discuss.”

  Sam followed her into the middle helicopter. Assigned to the elite Army 12th Aviation Battalion, it had been fitted with a rich and luxurious interior, appropriate to the daily commuting needs of the powerbrokers from Congress and global dignitaries. While the other two were armed, and ready for war.

  The three Black Hawks, filled with Marines, took off in unison. They flew in formation in the direction of the mesa and tunnel leading to the steam train.

  The Secretary looked him directly in the eye. “Well? Do you have it?”

  “No. I’m afraid the Gordoye Dostizheniye was buried under half a mile of rubble.”

  She stared at him, her eyes questioning him. “You never found it?”

  “No. We found it, but the explosion caused a secondary cave in and everything was buried in the process.”

  “Some things can be dug out.”

  “Not this.”

  Through pursed lips, she leaned forward and said, “I told you to protect it with your life.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe if you’d told me what it was I was protecting, I could have removed it earlier?”

  “It wouldn’t have changed a thing. I just wished you’d done your job.” She took a breath. “You’d better pray one of these riders has the answers I’m looking for.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t you the least bit curious how I turned up three thousand miles from where I entered the ancient lava tube?”

  Her response was predictably curt. “No. I just care about the contents of shipping container 404.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Tom directed the pilot to follow the tire tracks made by the Humvee.

  He said, “Follow this trail for about three clicks. Keep your eyes out for a second one that breaks off and swings north. That’s where we came from. Watch for it… we were breaking trail before that, so it won’t be as clear.”

  “Check.”

  Flight time was a lot less than driving time, and despite the vibrations of the aircraft, a lot more comfortable, too. Tom watched the tracks intently. If they missed the place where the Humvee had crossed the four-wheeler trail, they’d be miles off-course.

  He had some time to decide what to do when they got to the mouth of the tunnel where they’d exited. From memory, the motorcycle tracks had been plentiful there, and had led north, in the direction he’d seen the taillights disappear. But how far, and whether the terrain would let them follow, was another question. He’d just have to play it by ear.

  The pilot asked, “Do you live around here, Mister–?”

  “Tom Bower.”

  The pilot smiled, recognition in his voice. “I’ve heard that name. You work for that crazy bastard, Sam Reilly, don’t you?”

  Tom grinned. “That I do. That’s our turn.” He pointed ahead, where he could clearly see the Humvee tracks crossing the 4-wheeler trail, then backing up for a three-point turn.

 
The pilot swung north as directed, and dropped a few feet so they could see the fainter tracks more clearly. He didn’t speak again until the Humvee tracks led back into an escarpment.

  “You came from there?”

  “Inside a cave system, yes. Keep going. We’re looking for those.” He nodded his head in the direction where multiple motorcycle tracks crisscrossed each other, leaving a more visible mark on the landscape.

  “Bad guys on motorcycles?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Five minutes later, they located the riders. Seven of them. Their headlights flickered as they rode straight toward the chopper.

  The pilot said, “If they’re the bad guys, why are they riding straight toward us?”

  “I have no idea.” Tom stared at the riders. “Maybe they were expecting to be met by someone else, and are about to be shocked when they see who we are.”

  He spotted the flashes first.

  Then the sound of bullets raking the side of the Black Hawk’s tail.

  “Shit!” the pilot yelled. He banked away and then climbed. “You didn’t tell me they were armed!”

  “I told you they were bad guys!” Tom said. “What did you expect?”

  The pilot ignored him and circled around, speaking into his headphones he said, “Black Hawk squadron Alpha One. We’re taking fire from multiple bogies on the ground. On my lead, commence attack formation Delta Three.”

  Tom heard the pilots of the trailing helicopters acknowledge the command.

  A moment later, the pilot circled inward and dropped the nose.

  The UH-60 Black Hawks were equipped with twin M60D machine guns on their M144 Armament Subsystem – one on each side of the helicopter. The pilot lined up the nose with the ground riders, and depressed the firing button.

  And the Gatling-style miniguns began to fire.

  At converging angles, the other two helicopters targeted on the riders. Tom felt the vibrations of the twin machine guns working through more than a thousand rounds per minute. The electronically fed ammunition belts whirred, and below them the thick sand was churned into a cloud of dust.