Dangerous Ground

by Grant, Rachel

  Here the flow went to the sea, where the molten rock would sizzle and steam as it met frigid water, and entrances to these caves were impassible due to arctic-cold water pounding the shoreline. It was why only the upper entrance they’d used was accessible and also why, if they wanted to find an exit, they needed to follow tunnels that went up, not down.

  The amount of lava and the speed of the flow contributed to the cave’s depth and height. And when the volume of the lava increased, or if debris blocked the path of the tube, the molten rock under pressure, like toothpaste being forced through a blocked tube, could punch through the ceiling rock—opening “skylights” or cracks in the rock, creating new tubes and surface flows, that themselves could have been paved over by later flows.

  What they needed was to find one of those skylights that hadn’t been paved over.

  They set out again, walking single file and crouching more and more as the ceiling dropped. In a few places, they had to crawl, but then the tube opened up again, and they were back to hunched-over walking. It would have been an incredible tour if Dylan were along to narrate and explain more about the creation of these tunnels. He’d be able to identify which flows came first.

  She also had questions about the underground streams. Did they flow all the time, or was this the result of the rain yesterday? Were they fed by cracks in a caldera lake, the water seeping through rock, or was the flow just a collection of water runoff that seeped through a thousand cracks in the hardened magma?

  If they could follow a stream, she presumed they’d find an opening in the surface, but unfortunately, the water they’d seen couldn’t be followed. The source they’d found so far was nothing more than a flow that seeped through a fissure in the rocks too narrow to pass through.

  The basalt tunnels were cold, these lava tubes having formed thousands of years ago. There wasn’t any kind of sulfur smell to indicate magma chambers were in the vicinity. Dylan had told her the most active part of the volcano faced the land, and this seaward side was cut off from the main activity. The eruption fifteen hundred years ago that triggered the mudslide that covered the village had blown out the southwest flank of Mount Katin, much as the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980 had taken out a side in addition to the top of the volcano.

  Both were stratovolcanoes, so that made sense.

  She hadn’t been born yet when Saint Helens blew, but she’d grown up in Western Washington and heard all the stories. She’d hiked the mountain several times and explored lava tubes that were open to the public.

  Dylan had explained that the fifteen-hundred-year-old explosion was the reason there were more fumaroles on the southwest side of the mountain than on the northeast. It was one of the reasons the sub base would be placed along the eastern shore of the island, a fair distance from the bottom slopes of the mountain. That side of the mountain—and therefore the island—was more seismically stable.

  Mount Katin, according to Dylan, was relatively quiet, especially in comparison to other Aleutian volcanoes. He’d set up sensors to better monitor seismic activity, to determine if the mountain was becoming more active and, if so, whether it presented a problem for the engineers designing the base.

  They reached the end of the mapped tunnels and, as expected, found that the tunnel they were in continued; it was just much smaller. Probably too small for Dylan to continue without a partner.

  “We won’t fit with the packs on our backs,” Dean said.

  “I can wear my smaller pack on my chest, but the big one will have to be tied to a rope and pulled through.”

  “I’ll go ahead, without the pack, letting out paracord. If I get somewhere wide enough for the both of us, I’ll pull both packs through; then you follow. If I hit a dead end, I’ll crawl backward, and we’ll try a different tunnel.”

  “We might run out of paracord before you find a wide-enough opening.” They had several hundred meters of paracord, plus at least fifty meters of rope, but they couldn’t begin to guess how much they’d need.

  “If I start to near the end of the line, you need to tug on it. I’ll tie it to my waist.”

  “And what if the rope pulling the packs through gets caught on a sharp rock and snaps?”

  “Then I’ll crawl back, grab the packs, and back out, dragging them. You can crawl forward and push.”

  She nodded. At least they had a plan. It wasn’t a good one, but it was a plan. It was unlikely Dylan had ever explored this place alone, but maybe on his last trip, he’d been desperate enough to try. As desperate as they were.

  They both decided to remove their bulky coats for the crawl. It wasn’t warm inside the volcano, but without wind, rain, or snow, they’d both be more likely to break into a sweat while crawling than shivers.

  “We need a system for two-way communication,” she said. “In case you get so far away, we can’t hear each other through the tunnel.”

  “We’ll tie the paracord to your waist too, and I can spool it out as I crawl. That way, I can signal you with three distinct tugs, to make sure it’s not confused with the paracord getting caught on a rock. Things get bad for either of us, and we tug away. Shout as needed.”

  “Oh God. I really hope we don’t need this.”

  “Me too, honey.”

  In another situation, a coworker calling her “honey” or “sweetheart,” as he’d done last night, would infuriate her, but they weren’t coworkers and so far past any kind of normal. As it was, she liked the endearments, as much as she liked him calling her Fi. Regan had called her Fi.

  “Do you have any nicknames, Dean?” She wanted to give him the same comfort.

  “Not really. Dean doesn’t shorten well, except to D, and when your twin’s name also starts with D . . .”

  “On the flight from Whidbey, I dubbed you Hot Bird Man.”

  He grinned. “Did you, now?”

  “I did. But it turns out you aren’t a Bird Man at all.”

  His grin deepened. “But I am hot.”

  She laughed. “That you are.”

  He winked at her. “It was only a matter of time before you succumbed to my charms.”

  She rolled her eyes but silently agreed.

  She’d been warned by both Dylan and Dean that he engaged only in superficial flings. He might date a woman for a few weeks, but that was the extent of it. A few weeks of fun, then it was over except for friendship that may or may not continue.

  Could she ever do that? Have a breezy relationship with a friend she was deeply attracted to?

  It wasn’t a one-night stand—which she’d tried and enjoyed in the past but decided wasn’t for her because sex was simply better with an emotional connection. And it wasn’t friends with benefits, in which the sex was an ongoing part of the dynamic. It was a short-term liaison that had a beginning and an end and no deeper emotions allowed.

  No. She didn’t think she was capable of that. She’d find herself on the hurting end when it was over, all alone in her deeper feelings.

  She stared at the dark tunnel before them. This might not be the time to worry about starting something with Dean, considering they were trapped in a volcano.

  But one thing she did know she’d do if—when—they survived this: she’d take more risks. With her heart and with her career. With her friendships.

  She might even sign up for a dating app and meet new people. Go on uncomfortable first dates and take up rock climbing again.

  No. Rock climbing wasn’t an option. She scratched it off her mental list of risks she might take. Instead, she’d return to Jamaica and drink rum and dance in the sand to reggae music. Have a vacation fling with a handsome stranger.

  But first, she had to help Dean find a way out of this damn volcano.

  Crawling over jagged, rocky ground through a cramped tunnel wasn’t the most unpleasant thing Dean had ever done on assignment, but it ranked pretty high on the list.

  “You good?” Fiona called, her voice echoing down the tunnel. There had been a few serpentine curv
es, so she could no longer see him, but he wasn’t so far that they couldn’t talk. That was a relief. He didn’t like having her out of his sight—what if Victor hadn’t gotten out and would strike now that she was alone?—but it would be worse if he couldn’t hear her.

  “Fine,” he called back. If only they’d thought to grab the relay radios. But then, for all he knew, Victor could listen in if they used those.

  He rounded another bend, and the tunnel widened a bit. He crawled forward to see it widened more, and the ceiling was rising as well. Several feet later, it was wide enough for two people, then three. Finally, it was tall enough to stand, although he’d have to hunch over in some places.

  “Fiona!” he shouted.

  Her voice echoed back, distant now. “Dean?”

  “I’ve reached a larger room. There are”—he scanned the rock walls—“maybe two openings we could explore from here. I’ll see if they keep going. If they do, I’ll pull the packs while you push.”

  “Roger. We’re almost out of paracord.”

  He crouched low to reach one of the dark gaps in the rock, then directed the white beam of his flashlight into the void. It was a tunnel. Taller than the one he’d just crawled through but very narrow. Twenty feet in, something reflected off the light.

  He debated if he should enter. He could wait for Fiona.

  No way could he wait.

  He untied the paracord from his waist and hoped she wouldn’t freak out if she felt the slack. He’d be quick. He shuffled sideways, the rocks brushing his chest and back, and reached the piece of reflective material.

  He sucked in a breath. His light had caught the silver inside of a food wrapper. He picked it up and turned it over. It was the wrapper of a peanut butter fudge LUNA bar.

  Dylan’s favorite flavor.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Fiona followed the bags through the tunnel, pushing and unhooking them whenever they got caught on the jagged ground—which was often—but with Dean pulling the bags forward, it was a lot easier than she’d dared to hope.

  It took at least twenty minutes to make her way through the tunnel, and she spent each moment trying not to think about the cramped feel of it. She hadn’t been claustrophobic before, but this experience could change that. It helped to know there was a bigger room up ahead, and Dean was very excited by something.

  She couldn’t wait to find out what.

  At last, she reached the point where the tunnel began to widen, and she felt the pressure on her chest ease. She hadn’t even noticed that pressure until it began to lift. All at once, Dean was scooping the bags out of her way and she was on her feet.

  It was such a relief to be with him again. He must’ve felt the same way, because he dropped the packs and pulled her into his arms, giving her an exuberant hug. Or, at least, as exuberant as the low ceiling would allow.

  She pulled back to meet his gaze, and they both immediately blinded each other with the white light of their headlamps. In unison, they snapped off their lights; then he turned on a handheld light and directed the beam toward an opening on the opposite wall. “It’s just wide enough to walk through sideways. I found this in there.” He held up a LUNA bar wrapper. “It’s Dylan’s.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “It’s his favorite flavor.”

  “Blasphemy,” she muttered.

  “I know. But I love him anyway.”

  She knew he did, and she was afraid he was reading too much into one protein bar wrapper. “It could be Trevor’s. Or another volcanologist from the study last year, before Dylan was hired.”

  “But Dylan never added this segment to his master map. What if he made it this far that last day?”

  If that was the case, they might find Dylan’s body up ahead. Victor had said he’d been tossed in the sea, but she wasn’t about to put much stock in his veracity.

  Why would anyone hurt Dylan? And why had they trapped her and Dean in the lava tubes? Hell, why had they shot at them? And blown up the camp. And sabotaged her phone . . .

  It was an absurd list of things to happen. Was Victor a Russian agent? Was he trying to stop the submarine base from being built?

  At best, this sabotage would just delay construction. The new base would happen. The navy was eager to establish a stronger presence in the North Pacific and Bering Sea, so when global warming opened up that new Northwest Passage, it wouldn’t be entirely under Russia’s or China’s control.

  If that was the case, Victor and his allies had jumped the gun. They should have saved the sabotage for actual base construction.

  This only ensured that security would be tight when construction was underway.

  She wanted to share Dean’s excitement, but she was more confused—and worried—than before. Was it possible for them to find a way out of this labyrinth? And what would await them if they did?

  “We should explore the tunnel where you found the wrapper. If we hit a dead end, we should come back here and eat and think about setting up camp. It’s getting late enough that even if we find an exit, we might not want to leave until morning. We won’t have a vehicle, and we don’t really know where we’ll end up. And for all we know, a storm could be raging outside.”

  “You want to leave our supplies here?”

  She shook her head. “It would be faster, but too risky, I think.”

  “Agreed. We only leave our supplies if one of us scouts ahead. Like we just did.”

  It was hard to know what to expect, because Alaskan volcanoes weren’t known for having extensive lava tube networks. The only other volcano that she knew of that had them—according to Dylan—was Akutan Peak on Akutan Island. There was another volcano with lava tube caves in the Pribilof Islands, but that was much farther north, and as far as she knew, neither island’s cave network had been well explored.

  Dylan had said the entrance to these tunnels had been exposed by a storm five years ago. Prior to that, no one had known Mount Katin had such an extensive lava tube network, although the Unangas had likely explored and used these caves for burials.

  Fiona looked to the ceiling, where pointy spikes of lava hung down, looking a lot like stalactites, but this wasn’t a karst cave system, where stalactites and stalagmites formed as water eroded away limestone. This was primarily basalt with rhyolite, dacite, and andesite that came from the lava flows of the stratovolcano.

  She knew the basics of lava tube formation, but didn’t know if it was different here than from Hawaii’s shield volcanoes. Shield volcanoes were known for their vast cave networks, because that was how the mountain grew and formed, one layer of pahoehoe flow at a time, while Aleutian volcanoes were primarily stratovolcanoes, which were conically shaped because they had a central vent—a top crater—where eruptions occurred. They built their steep sides as lava erupted from the top and flowed down, depositing layers of lava, hardened ash, and anything else spewed by the central vent. Cone building, one eruption at a time.

  Stratovolcanoes could have smaller vents on their flanks. Mount Katin had such vents—fumaroles—which were mostly on the land-facing slopes of the island, where the volcano remained active. Any vents they found on this side—assuming they were still on the ocean side of the volcano—would be, hopefully, dormant, and their escape route.

  “What are the pointy things called?” she asked, her gaze on the ceiling. “Do you know?”

  “Dylan always called them lavacicles. I don’t know if that’s the official name.”

  They did look a lot like icicles. Except, ironically, they’d been made with burning-hot molten rock, not freezing-cold water. Opposite in every way. “It should be the name if it’s not.”

  “Need a break, or are you ready to go through the narrow tunnel?”

  “I’m ready.”

  Because it was too narrow to have their packs on their backs, they would carry them at their sides, dragging with cord if need be. Again, she followed Dean into the gap, glad she could stay close this time, see him every step of the
way.

  The lengths he would go to for Dylan were both heart melting and heartbreaking. She desperately wished they would find him alive and well. She wanted Dean to have the happy ending she’d been denied.

  She would love the chance to see the Slater twins together.

  They must’ve been quite a pair to hang out with, both brilliant in their fields, charming and appealing. Athletic and empathetic. Achingly handsome. The full package, both of them, and her attraction to Dean was growing by the minute.

  An inconvenient infatuation to have at this time, in this situation, but it was an unreasonable situation. Maybe she should just lean into it. Take joy where she could find it in the hours they had left.

  She knew they had a chance at survival, but her hopes diminished with each passageway that offered no exit. They climbed ever upward, the slopes getting steeper, which she wanted to believe meant they were closer to the surface, but there were no telltale cracks of light or streams of water. Nothing to indicate they neared any kind of exit.

  They inched forward in the narrow passage, until eventually they were both crawling and dragging their packs, but at last they reached a large, open oval chamber, with jagged lavacicle teeth pointing down from the ceiling.

  To the left on the far side of the chamber, it looked like there was an offshoot tunnel that continued into a dark, serpentine void. They hadn’t reached a dead end yet.

  The white light of her headlamp flashed on streaks along the basalt walls. It could be water seeping down. Before she could examine the walls, she needed to catch her breath. It had been a steady upward climb, and her thighs burned from the effort of lugging herself and the heavy pack ever upward, plus having to crouch. It was like doing a zillion squats in a row.

  CrossFit would be a breeze after this nightmare.

  She dropped the pack and collapsed next to it. “Break time. I need water and protein. And if you slipped that bottle of whiskey into your pack, I could use some of that too.”