"The computer takes common readings and cancels them out,” Sanji said. His brilliant white teeth flashed in the desert sun. “Those signals are displayed as shades of brown. The yellow marks are anomalies. Angus programmed it to pay close attention to anything linear."
Veronica could scarcely believe her eyes. Hundreds of two-dimensional images appeared. Most were nothing more than a splotch of yellow, and yet she could clearly make out some objects: a human hip bone, a pan, a broken pickax, possibly half a crescent-shaped knife, even an old gun. The GPR screen created a road map of where to dig.
"This is amazing.” She felt her pulse race. The edge of the GPR image showed a deep black that contrasted with the lighter brown surrounding the yellow artifacts. She pointed to the black edge. “What's that?"
"That is how this program displays undisturbed earth,” Sanji said. “The brown represents disturbed earth, which is less dense than the black, undisturbed areas."
Black graced only the plateau's perimeter — most of what they now stood on showed signs of disturbance. She frowned, thinking of that first Cerro Chaltel site where she'd discovered the massacre's long-buried remains. She had a bad feeling that they had found something similar.
"Well it won't dig itself up,” Veronica said. “Let's get started.” Everyone in the party moved with purpose. The thrill of discovery poured from Veronica and Sanji like water from a fountain, infecting the EarthCore workers.
Fifteen minutes of digging confirmed her suspicions.
Chapter Fifteen
Connell followed Mack around the mine, carefully echoing the Aussie's footsteps, ever conscious that a million tons of limestone hung over their heads. The poor lighting made walking difficult. The place amazed him. It had been a long time since he'd actually been inside a mine, and he'd forgotten how detailed the process was.
Connell knew his job was little more than to find a site, find people, and fund the mine, sort of putting all those pieces together in a mixer and hitting purée. He was a paper pusher and a people manipulator. Although he excelled at those tasks, Connell held true admiration for the people who really made a mine happen; people like Mack.
Mack moved through the safe areas of the shaft, constantly turning to make sure Connell stayed close. Connell marveled at Mack's ease within the stone cavern's confines. It was little things, mostly; like how Mack didn't watch the ground, yet never stumbled on loose rock, or how Mack's hard hat stayed naturally plastered to his head while Connell's continually bobbled no matter how many times he adjusted it.
"Watch your step, Mr. Kirkland,” Mack said, his voice echoing slightly off the rough stone walls. “We've got some poor footing here. The vertical shaft is just ahead."
Smells of oil and diesel fumes filled the long tunnel. A long horizontal shaft — known as an adit — separated the tunnel entrance and the vertical shaft. The adit sat about seventy-five yards from the camp, and about forty feet higher in elevation, making for a fairly demanding incline to reach the mine.
Squat diesel tractors, designed for mines and less than four feet tall from ground to the cab top, hauled loose rock, equipment, and supplies to and from the vertical shaft. Mack had planned the shaft to come very close to a natural tunnel. Once at that level, another short horizontal dig would let the miners enter the massive subterranean complex that started over two miles below the surface.
The cavern surrounding the vertical shaft spread out before them. The cavern was big, but obviously crafted by a master. Everywhere Connell looked the walls allowed just enough room for the machinery installed within. There was little extra space. It reminded him of opening a walnut and seeing how the inside of the shell perfectly mirrored the contours of the nut.
"How deep is it?” Connell asked, his voice quiet and reverent.
"We've reached ten thousand feet; almost two miles,” Mack said. “We'll be able to break into the tunnel system in one more day."
Connell peeked over the edge. Powerful lights burned every hundred feet down the shaft's length, a glowing line of giant pearls reaching farther than he could see. The shaft was just wide enough for the massive 17-foot by 17-foot freight elevator. The elevator's giant winch mechanism perched black and spiderlike over the mouth. Connell looked up at it, amazed at impossibly thick spools of inch-thick steel cable, spools that were bigger than a semi truck. They had to be that big to lower the 300-square-foot platform to the shaft bottom. A large swivel crane could swing the elevator platform clear, allowing the laser drill head to descend on the same cable.
Angus's invention utilized a pulsed plasma laser array to drill a perfect twelve-foot diameter ring. The array looked like a giant lawnmower blade, twenty-four feet long with a huge rotor in the middle. The twelve-foot-long “blades” held 144 laser heads, each with a beam radius of one inch. Behind the blades sat a long, liquid-ring vacuum pump (yet another of Angus's creations). The rotor spun the blade, the lasers fired in a computer-controlled sequence that vaporized the rock in a perfectly level pattern, and the vacuum instantly sucked up the vaporized limestone before it could damage the laser array.
The end result? A perfectly round shaft with sides as smooth as poured concrete.
Mack's walkie-talkie squawked harshly, speaking a garbled version of his name between bursts of white noise. He pulled it out of his belt and thumbed the send button.
"Hendricks here."
"Mack, is Mr. Kirkland with you?” the voice squawked
"Yes he is, Jerry. What's up?"
"You'd both better get back to camp fast,” said the static-laden voice. “There's been an accident at the lab. Mr. Kool is hurt; so is Mr. Wright."
It was different this time. And not just from the bodies. It was this mountain. It had a feeling, perhaps an emotion all its own. A dark emotion, one that draped over the sprawling rocks and sand as a shroud drapes over the face of a corpse. Veronica had felt it right off the bat, but mentally drowned it out in favor of the feverish excitement of exploration. Now, however, the sweet taste of discovery soured in light of their recent find, allowing the dark, creeping, tickling emotion to crawl to the forefront.
Mass graves were nothing new to her. They dotted Cerro Chaltel like a giant case of measles. Five times Veronica had excavated such sites of violence and death. Many were far worse in scope than the Wah Wah — but this time it affected her in a way she'd never expected.
She was furious.
The Cerro Chaltel massacres were of a distant, exotic, ancient people. Primitive people who were dead thousands of years before modern civilization even began.
The remains of the destroyed camp she had just unearthed belonged to Americans. Her people. She now saw the Chaltelians in a different light — they were a violent, savage, ruthless tribe bent on murdering anything that crossed their path.
Once word of the mass grave filtered back to camp, Sonny McGuiness came on the run. Sonny helped examined the artifacts: a rusted pistol, a mining pan, and the termite-ridden remains of what he said was a sluice, used to wash valuable metal from plain old dirt. Sonny determined in all probability that the mass grave belonged to the Jebadaiah Jessup mining camp, a camp that had disappeared in 1865. Just 150 years ago.
The thought that descendants of her Cerro Chaltel culture roamed the plains and mountains of the Southwestern U.S. should have thrilled her beyond imagination. Instead, it bothered her. It even scared her a little. It all hit a bit too close to home. According to her findings, the Cerro Chaltel civilization had ended around 1500 b.c. If it was indeed descendants of the same culture that massacred Jessup's mining camp, then the Utah version of the Cerro Chaltel culture had existed right up through the turn of the century.