They were modern.
Or at least part of a modern age. By no stretch of the imagination could she call such an incredible display of savagery “modern.” Just as at the Argentinean sites, Chaltelians had cut the Jessup party to pieces. The longest human remain discovered thus far was a piece of femur just over eighteen inches. Veronica even found thin scraps of fabric around some of the bones. One tough leather shoe still surrounded a mummified foot.
They hadn't even been able to count the number of people murdered, although Sonny figured it to be eight, based on newspaper reports he'd studied earlier in the month. Sanji had struck on the idea of counting feet (they couldn't use heads — skulls were smashed into hundreds of pieces). So far they had twelve feet, seven left and five right. Body parts lay scattered everywhere. It was almost as if the attackers had carved up the bodies and made sport of their remains, tossing them back and forth until the plateau was covered with blood and bits of bone and savaged body parts.
Just like the massacres at Cerro Chaltel, all traces of the mining camp were buried a good six to ten feet underground. Sonny found the discovery mesmerizing.
"Sonofabitch,” he'd said with awe and visible excitement. “Jessup didn't lie. The mine is right where he said it was. It was just buried. Sonofabitch.” Veronica didn't share Sonny's elation over the discovery.
"Roni,” Sanji called out, breaking her daze. “I found another foot. A right one, I think."
Veronica shuddered quietly, suddenly wishing — for the first time in her career — that she wasn't digging up the secrets of those long-dead and forgotten.
She wondered if perhaps forgotten is where the dead should stay.
Connell held on for dear life as Mack whipped the Jeep through the camp, shot up the trail to the landing pad, and skidded to a dusty halt only three feet from the cliff's edge. They both hopped out of the Jeep and sprinted to the helicopter, its long blades already spinning up to full speed and kicking up clouds of annoying dirt and grit.
O'Doyle and Cho finished loading Randy into the chopper, Angus was already inside. Both men had bloodstained white gauze wrapped around their heads and a few other places on their bodies. Angus had a huge, bruised goose-egg under his left eye. Neither man was conscious.
"What happened?” Connell shouted over the helicopter's roar.
"One of the lab machines blew up,” Cho shouted back. “Rotary separator or something, it came off its axle and tore itself apart, they were both standing in front of it."
"Are they okay?"
Cho nodded. “They should be fine, but they both had head-wounds, and you don't screw with those. I'm sending them to Milford Valley Memorial Hospital for observation."
Connell hated to lose Angus and Randy for even a day, but Cho had been a doctor, and Connell wasn't about to argue with his expertise. They ran to the edge of the landing pad as the helicopter lifted off and headed west.
"Check out the accident, O'Doyle,” Connell said. “See what you can find.” He found it a bit too coincidental that a lab accident took out his top two scientists. Maybe a rival company was on to them, trying to sabotage the camp and get to the Dense Mass from another entrance somewhere on the mountain.
And if that was the case, he was running out of time.
Kayla Meyers focused her binoculars, watching the helicopter head south. This place grew more interesting every second. A small blast had rocked the lab, followed by thin black smoke that seeped out the roof. The oriental guard rushed in immediately after the explosion. Lybrand was there seconds later.
Kayla slipped back into her tiny, camouflaged dugout and returned to cleaning her weapons. A cloth lay spread out on the sand, her Steyr GB-80 pistol on top of it, loaded and ready to go. She loved the weapon, mostly because it held eighteen rounds in the mag and one in the chamber for nineteen shots of 9 x 19mm stopping power. Her Israeli-made Galil ARM submachine gun lay in spotless, well-loved pieces on top of the cloth. She, like many others, considered it the best submachine gun in the world. Like the Steyr, she loved the Galil mostly for its ammo capacity — a fifty-round magazine of 45mm shells.
Her hands knew each of the weapon's pieces intimately. She paid close attention to the process, guarding against tiny grains of windblown sand. Couldn't take any chances on weapon reliability out here. She had a growing feeling the weapons would come into play before this little desert soap opera was over. She wouldn't mind using the weapons, not one bit.
She smiled as she finished assembling the spotless Galil ARM and popped in a fresh magazine. Her hands caressed the worn grip like a hand tenderly smoothing the small of an old lover's back. Her smile widened.
Nope. Wouldn't mind at all.
The setting sun dangled just above the horizon. Its molten orange color shrouded the mountain range with a thick, smoldering glow. After two hours of hunting, Sonny McGuiness finally found his prey. Angus and Randy knew nothing about covering their tracks. Sonny had found the secret spots, the hiding places, the hidden treasures of men who had mastered the desert (and who'd been dead a hundred years). Uncovering the footsteps of a pair of corncob-up-the-ass lab rats was a comparative cakewalk.
He stared in amazement at their secret. He had to hand it to the two little weasels. They'd found another way in. While the financial might of EarthCore struggled to sink a multimillion-dollar shaft, Angus Kool already had a way in — a way he kept to himself.
Like the loose fist of some stone giant, a small projection of greenish limestone camouflaged a clearing. Little more than a flat slab of rock, the small clearing protruded from the mountain, ending in a fifty-foot drop straight to a jagged outcropping below. Surrounded on three sides by large, weather-worn boulders, the tiny mesa offered a stunning view of the sprawling desert. At the back edge of the mesa sat a small, irregular, dark opening no more than two feet high and three feet wide. Above the entrance, Sonny spotted writing chiseled into the limestone. He read the small letters, and his blood ran cold.
S. Anderson, D. Nadia & W. Igoe Jr. 1942.
This was the place Anderson wrote about in his last report. This was his tunnel. This was where he'd found the platinum knife, probably where the three boys disappeared. A thin film of sweat beaded across Sonny's forehead, sweat not caused by the blistering heat.
The tiny tunnel entrance beckoned, taunting Sonny's curiosity like a grade-school bully. Come on, it seemed to chant. Don't be a chicken. Don't you want to know what's in here, you cowardly sonofabitch? Sonny wanted to know — perhaps had to know — what lay inside that tunnel.
Slithering into the tiny opening appeared mandatory. The black space squatted dark and foreboding. But he had to know. He turned on his flashlight, stroked his Hopi charm once for good luck, and crawled in on his belly.
At first he had plenty of room to crawl and lift his head, but the tunnel rapidly bottlenecked to a space no more than fifteen inches from floor to ceiling. Creeping fear gripped his chest. Sonny forced himself to breathe slowly, to calm down. The thought of turning back filled his head, but he knew that once in the sunlight he'd never enter this tunnel again. Not for any price. If he wanted to see where it went, he had to continue now.