"Sorry, I still can't find a helmet," Hayden said, shaking his head.
"Well, you were looking in the wrong place. Helmets are in the main storage facility," Jason said.
Jason led the way to the monitor and DVR for the surveillance system. Only one camera was still working, but they could see that it only captured activities at the processing facility from the screen. The visuals for seven cameras were disabled. Miles stepped forward to assess the memory. He was a little surprised that Jason allowed him access to it, but he discovered that the files had been corrupted after a minute on it.
Miles turned to Hayden and instructed him to carry the DVR.
"Can it be fixed?" Jason asked.
"I'm not sure, but let him try," Miles replied.
Miles, Hayden, and Jody didn't bother going into the mines anymore. They went back to the lodge where Hayden began to put his degree at M.I.T. to good use. Luckily for them, the hard drive was still there. In less than ten minutes, Hayden recovered some lost footage, including those dated back to six months ago. This was the first credible progress that Miles and his team had had.
The footage revealed ongoing activities both inside and outside the mine. Some groups were responsible for the ore taken to the processing facility, and others stood there to watch as it was pulverized and milled two to three times in the process. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
"One more thing," Miles said as they were still viewing footage of activities in various angles in the mine. "Create a backup for that, delete it entirely from the source, and replace it with this file." Miles handed the tech guy his phone with a video file on display.
Hayden connected the surveillance footage to a different device. They continued to watch and fast-forward the timeline to when the accidents occurred. Miles had Jody stand at the door. A moment later, she spotted Jason and two other men that looked very tanned, as if they had spent most of their lives offering their skin pigmentations to the sun. Miles quickly removed the flash disk where the backup for the surveillance footage had been stored.
As he had known all along, Jason didn't bother to do his signature one-tap on the door this time. He barged in, demanding that Miles hand over the DVR, including the hard drive.
"You think you're smart, having your boy walk into the surveillance unit without any authorization? I should have known when I saw his scarred face at the door. If that's how you Cornhuskers operate, well, we follow the rules here. You hear me?"
Miles was calm, probably aware that his response might have triggered the fuming mining supervisor. Hayden handed the DVR to him.
"You are clear now," Jody said after she had watched Jason and the two others fade into the distance. Miles went back to watching the footage. When he had moved the time log to a period of the accident, they saw the horrendous details of the blast that occurred. There were flashes of light from a source underneath one excavation point, pointing sporadically at different areas of the tunnel before an explosion occurred. Blinding light followed this.
Another clip showed where some miners fell off the scaffold even before the blast or flashes of light took place.
"What do you make of that?" Miles asked Hayden.
"It looks like an explosion of some sort. Maybe there was some form of radioactivity that was accidentally triggered."
Miles didn't say a word. He didn't counter the young man's opinion or agree with it, but the smirk on his face seemed to suggest that Hayden was close. Immediately, Hayden left; it seemed like Jody had been waiting for him to leave. She closed the door and sat beside Miles as if she wanted to catch up on whatever glimpse of the footage she had missed. Miles kept his eyes glued to the screen of the mini laptop on his lap. The screen was close enough for Jody to see, but her focus was on Miles. It wasn't until some minutes later that Miles stopped pretending like she wasn't there.
"You keep staring at that scar, but it won't talk back," Miles said, referring to a small scar hidden beneath his hairline at the corner of his forehead.
"What if it does?"
Miles smiled. "Well, if it does, it should say something like, 'Jody, please, go away; you're an irresistible distraction.'"
"Hm, irresistible distraction… I like the sound of that."
Their eyes were locked on each other. The distance between their faces began to close in. And then, they heard the sound of the mini laptop fall on the floor.
Shit.
They both knew how vital the device was at that point and how much they couldn't afford to crash it. Hayden might be good at many things, but replacing laptops in a place that was a bit far from civilization wasn't part of his job description.
___________
When Jason and the men returned to the surveillance unit, the three of them and a technician began to work on the DVR. The technician, a young man of Indian descent, connected the cables, and in good time, the content on the hard drive was ready to be viewed. They found a video file that indicated a few minutes over two hours. That was odd for a video recorder that was configured to save live footage uninterruptedly.
Perspiration had formed under Jason's khaki shirt, and he had to dampen a handkerchief around his forehead a few times. He was under pressure to make things worse when they clicked the video file, and the content was a movie titled Argo.
___________
The first day in the second week since their arrival in South Africa, the circumstances that had befallen Miles Cleveland's team might have been preparing them mentally for what was to come, or maybe it was an omen as Nicholas described it. Miles had spent the night going over the footage from the surveillance cameras. It was still dark at 6 a.m., and when the sunrise eventually peeked through his window, he dropped the mini laptop on the bed and entered the bathroom. His puffy eyes stared back at him in the mirror as he pondered on how to take on the looming situations that hung over his head. When the internet services were disabled at midnight, he knew it wasn't an accident. Either Jason or the men he was loyal to were trying to prove how helpless he would be without them. If only they knew he was in no mood to compete with anyone. Lives had been lost, and many more might be if someone didn't rebel against these men lurking in the shadows and causing unforgivable devastation.
There was a repeated knock on the door. Miles quickly rinsed the toothpaste in his mouth. He washed his face and went to answer the door. Jody was in a slouched position by the time he opened the door. She was panting from running several blocks.
"Miles!" she finally said as she tried to catch her breath. "Nicholas is missing."
Jody's words came out like a tolling bell, and it resounded all over again in his head even though Jody said it once. She only needed to say it once. Nothing was a surprise anymore. The mission had continuously proven to be a nightmare that would haunt him if he ever lived to tell it.
Miles went back inside the room. He changed into a simple shirt, casual pants, and a brown hat. He slipped into sandals and hurried out of the lodge. Jody followed behind. Jasper, Hayden, and a few others were already out, trying to see if they could get any service on their phones.
"I think they disabled the phone service," Jody said.
Last night, Miles thought it was just the internet that was gone. It turned out that they had cut off any possibility of reaching anyone outside the village. The major towns were about four hundred miles from their current location. The company vehicles were also seized. Time was of the essence. It might be a tactic to slow down whatever action the detective had in mind after reviewing the event that befell the victims in the mine.
Miles started his search at the motels around. He asked everyone that he saw, but no one admitted they had seen the dwarf in the last fourteen hours. A lot of them seemed honest with their answers. Samuel, the doctor, also joined in the search.
Miles tried to see if he could contact the local vigilante team that he used to see around. He did stumble upon one of them, and without comprehending what he said, his gestures and facial expression
suggested that he had no clue. When Miles had trekked as much as he could, he began to walk back to the mine facilities. The property was so large it would take not less than twenty-six hours to walk around the perimeter.
Miles joined the rest of his crew as he returned. Everyone except Miles was in complete chaos. Maybe Miles too, but he knew how to hide his uneasiness.
Zoe suggested it was all a game. "These rich folks like to put up weird stuff like this just to entertain themselves. I bet they're watching us via satellite feeds right now, and maybe Nicholas understood this earlier than most of us and left before any of us could change his mind."
"What about the bodies that were pulled out of the caves yesterday?" Hakeem asked.
"Nah. That's total B.S.," Hugh argued. "I think those natives aren't done with us. You know how Nick likes to shove his religious crap down anyone's throat. Maybe he caught a fish taller than him this time."
The conspiracy theories continued for half an hour as the search slowly shifted from the processing facility to the storage and toward the minefield. Judging from how the search was conducted, it was evident that most of them had envisaged seeing the corpse of their colleague if he was ever found at all. Some looked inside scrappy vehicles, uncompleted structures, an abandoned bakery, and even inside the tunnel just in case.
Miles moved along with Jody. They dared to enter the forest that was at the perimeter of the minefield. They ignored the sign on the wired fence that read, DO NOT CROSS in bold red letters and a symbol below it that was a poor attempt to draw a diagram of a skull and bones. Jody's confidence came into question when the squawking sounds of a few crows on a tree startled her.
"You don't have to follow me all the way, Jody. Stay with a larger number."
"Thanks for your concern, Miles. I'm not letting a bunch or a group of—"
"A murder," Miles corrected.
"What?"
"A murder of crows," Miles reiterated. He stopped as if he had seen something that appeared out of place. Jody noticed the discomfiture on his face and began to slow her steps.
At fifty yards by their left, behind a giant boulder, there was an opening, as if they were staring at a dark portal into nowhere.
"Oh my god, that looks scary. What could be in there?" Jody asked, as she stood side by side with Miles.
Miles hesitated to speak, and then he said, "Let's find out."
Miles hurried up toward it as if the answers to the questions in his head would be unveiled as he closed in on the strange doorway. He knew that Jody was scared, so he took her hand as they walked. Jody wanted them to stop as they got close. She held Miles with a firm grip as though she was pulling an unwilling horse to a stop. When Miles marched on without cessation, Jody forced her hands out of his. Miles didn't bother to look back. He got inside as Jody waited for him three feet away from the entrance.
Two minutes passed. Five minutes clocked in like a whole hour. Still, there was no sound of Miles, or birds or anything. Jody began to hear the sound of her breath. Thoughts ran through her mind in nanoseconds. She came to the conclusion that whatever took Nicholas must have taken Miles as well. She wanted to scream, but that too felt like a risk. When she summoned the courage to call Miles, the name came out like a whisper. While she stood wondering if the worst had happened to the detective, it suddenly dawned on her that she was in the middle of nowhere. Entering the dark cave began to feel safer than standing outside like helpless prey. She found herself inching close to the cave until Miles reappeared.
"Let's go. I've found a way to the gold mine."
They walked back to rejoin the others that had ended their search too. All eyes were focused on the east side of the road. Two big buses approached. They looked on as the buses stopped in front of them. Each one was loaded with passengers. Twenty-five people, all African natives, came out of the first bus and then the second bus.
Jason was on the second bus.
12
Chapter Twelve
Ave Fountain,
North Johannesburg, South Africa
September 2019
"Oh God, help me to make a good Communion. Mary, my mother, pray to the Lord for us.
"All you holy Angels and Saints, pray for us."
Someone in priest garments stood in front of close to sixty people at the mining facility, saying a prayer as others responded accordingly. Only one person from Miles's crew was among the crowd at what seemed like a small Mass service for the mining staff. Someone had come to inform all occupants at the lodge earlier in the morning about the communion service.
Miles had already noticed the frustrations on the faces of his crew. He was on the verge of asking Hugh why they looked so bleak before Jason walked in with an attitude too.
"I see you informed your crew about boycotting the service. You must hate God to keep ignoring his ways. I thought you're a Catholic. You can't even take the—"
"Cut the crap, Mr. Stooge. I don't know what part of America you're from, but where I come from, we don't force religion down anyone's throat. You and your minions can eat the communion, concoction, porridge, and whatever the hell Buddha serves you. Leave us out of it."
Jason stared at Miles for a few seconds. Miles was taller than him by a few inches, so he stared, facing up at him, and then without saying a word, he went back to join the others. The expressions on some of the men in the crowd showed that they had always wanted to express their opinion the same way, but they had to keep their jobs.
As expected, Jason did not take the rebellion lightly. A moment after the service was concluded, some of the occupants at the lodge began to complain that they couldn't make calls or use the internet. Communication was jammed. Company drivers were instructed to carry only products and nothing more when they taxied from the mining facility to the distribution center. Miles and his crew gave it some time, thinking it would be restored, but it began to get more serious than they had assumed.
While they were getting ready for a debrief with Jason, they discovered that Rhoda, the medic with them, was missing. It wasn't news that anyone prepared for. They dedicated some time, asking and going about the facilities in the area, looking for her.
Miles stopped Jason while he was heading for the main facility for the debriefing.
"Look, you and I can keep having different opinions on a matter. We can hate each other's faces all we like, but I will not condone any mischief. If anything happens to anyone on my team, you and I are going to have real problems."
Jason forced the collar of his shirt out of Miles's grip. "I'm starting to wonder what sort of detective you are. The fact that I'm the first person you'd look at whenever something occurs says a lot about your proficiency."
"Why? Because you're incapable of evil?" Miles asked rhetorically.
"I'm going to tell one of my men to file a missing person report. The local sheriff will be informed about it, but don't think I'm doing it for you."
After another hour, looking around to see if Rhoda would reappear, the group finally decided to put the fate of their colleagues in the hands of the police.
Jasper, Hugh, and others set out to enter the mine for the first time. They were connecting through the tunnel that Miles discovered at the east wing into the forest. Miles and Hayden hung around, looking for the map that was handed to them by Doug. Without it, navigating the channels inside the mine would be an uphill task. Jasper and Hugh wanted to confront Jason about the missing map, but Miles stopped them. It made no sense that Jason would steal or encourage anyone to make their lives difficult in their first task after the mine collapse. They decided to depend on wherever instinct led them.
Some natives observing the scenery from a vantage position around the forest stepped in to intercept the miners from taking further steps.
"Is this a joke?" Miles asked.
Jason walked up to one of them; there were about six of them. Jason had an agreement with the natives regarding the operations in a specific part of the property they used. Sin
ce activities had been moved from the main entrance to the forest region, tradition demanded that the natives be compensated.
Jason came back to Miles. "Sorry, those are the vigilante groups, and they're demanding that I pay at least five thousand rands. Usually, it was less than that, but um, they've gotten greedy lately."
Jasper had been listening to the conversation the entire time. "Bullshit. Miles, I say we go in immediately. Come on, and it's just six of them."
Five thousand rands seemed huge and easy money for a group of people that wouldn't lift a finger throughout the venture.
"Yeah, you're right," Miles said. "Fuck them."
Jasper smiled. Jason shook his head disappointedly. He moved toward the natives and asked them to leave. His intimidating look broke the language hurdle. They got the message without going physical about it. Starting with their leader, they got out of the way to the cheers of some of the miners.
Two-thirds of Jason's crew, including the recruits, chose to work at the processing unit in the outfield. That, of course, had something to do with the stories they'd heard about the last two incidences at the mine, and now that they'd made more enemies instead of allies, they chose safety.
While everyone was making sure they had their kits in place, Jason's voice on a megaphone abruptly resounded in the air, startling a few who were absentminded.
"May I have your attention, please? I understand that most of you are worried about the mine. It has come to my attention. But I'm assuring you that only the tunnel leading into a few extraction areas was affected, and engineers are working tirelessly on it to ensure we have hazard-free work. As a form of respect, we are going to accord our colleagues that lost their lives a minute of silence if that is not too much to ask."
The dead got their respect, and as soon as a minute expired, it was time to enter the cave.
Miles led the way through the tunnel he discovered. But as soon as they inched close to the entrance, the cloud over them turned dark. It turned to night in the daytime. It wasn't unusual to have occasional rain in summer, but the speed at which the cloud changed wasn't like anything they had seen. Some natives in the workforce didn't act too surprised. Soon, it started pouring down like the worst springtime. There was no doubt that it was artificially precipitated.
The Lost Treasure of the Aztec Kings Page 11
