Despite the camp destruction, the wreckage yielded a treasure — one of Angus's “Marco” locators, designed to track down anyone lost in the caves. Flames had charred the metallic surface, but it still worked like a champ. She'd spent over two hours tearing through the lab's rubble hoping to find one.
The Marco unit gave her a far more accurate body count than she'd managed on her own. Without the unit, counting skulls was the only way to tally the dead; but most skulls were smashed into pieces and buried fairly deep. She had to hand it to Angus in one category — he did quality work. His little “Polo” transmitters worked just fine, even after the bodies they were attached to burned to cinders.
All told, there were twelve people unaccounted for. Twelve names missing from the mangled corpses buried in the camp's ruins. The list read like a who's who of camp personnel.
Professor Veronica Reeves. Professor Sanji Haak. Bertha Lybrand. Patrick O'Doyle. Mack Hendricks. Sonny McGuiness. Connell Kirkland. Fritz Sherwood. Lashon Jenkins. Brian Jansson.
And, of course, Angus Kool and Randy Wright.
They had to be dead, of course. All of them, except for Angus and Randy, had been in the caves when the monsters attacked. Even if the survivors had somehow avoided the bloodthirsty creatures, they were trapped under miles of rock with no way out. She didn't want to assume anything, but at this point she had to write off Connell and the others.
Cho appeared to be the only one to make it out of the camp. She'd chopped him into little bits with a broken crescent-shaped knife left buried by the attackers, then burned his body. By now he was indistinguishable from the rest of the victims.
But what about Angus and Randy? What about them? They were still in a hospital in Milford… they might come back at any time. She had to deal with them, and quickly. Just to be sure. She didn't have much time left. Soon Barbara Yakely would send someone to find out why Connell didn't respond. When that happened, the game was up.
She had to contact the NSA soon, before anyone from EarthCore showed, and make sure all camp personnel were dead by the time the NSA arrived. The NSA would flinch at something as simple as killing a few survivors. Kayla knew that from experience. Hard-earned experience, the kind that had cost her a promising NSA career.
It was a race against time. She needed to serve this up gift-wrapped and on a silver platter, with no complications. She had only one chance, and that was to make sure NSA director André Vogel was the one to take this information to the president. Such a coup would give Vogel's political career a turbo-boost. He'd control the discovery, probably be one of the main people reporting to the president even though the on-site work would be handled by the Air Force and staff from Nevada's Area 51.
Kayla went to work on the COMSEC unit. The time had come to make contact and make her pitch, but she couldn't have the NSA picking her location. She'd have to set up several satellite relays for her signal, make it impossible for them to triangulate her position. This location was her only bargaining chip. She meant to keep it secret until they met her singular demand.
And before she made that call, she had to take a quick trip to Milford Valley Memorial Hospital.
Connell stood with the others, staring at the violent impasse before them.
"Well, so much for walking in standing up,” Lybrand shouted — everyone had to shout to be heard over the river's roar.
"I knew I'd heard that sound,” Mack said. “I've seen underground rivers before, but nothing like this."
The party's lights played about the water's dark surface, a 75-foot-wide undulating band of angry onyx. The river ripped through a chasm that had towering vertical walls reaching up at least a hundred feet. The walls showed sandwich lines of various petrified sediments, all in shades of gray or red or tan. Up at the top, where their headlamps cast only a dim illumination, a flat sandstone layer sparkled with pristine white gypsum, a ceiling fitting the grandeur of the limestone chasm and roiling river. About twenty yards downstream, the water roared off jagged rapids, making it impossible to traverse. And downstream was the direction they needed to go.
Connell looked at Mack. “Suggestions?"
"I thought we'd take this all the way to the Dense Mass, but the map didn't say anything about the river,” Mack said. “We're going to have to cross, then work the tunnels on the other side."
Connell nodded. O'Doyle walked over and looked at the map with Mack. As the two tried to figure out the next step, Connell looked for a place to sit and rest his knee. The constant crawling over rock had his old car-accident injury screaming with complaint. He sat at the water's edge, his headlamp playing about the shallows.
He knelt with a small wince of pain and dipped his hand beneath the surface. The water looked black and cold, but he could feel the heat even through his KoolSuit gloves.
Connell stared downstream, the direction that would lead them to the Dense Mass. The river curled angrily, dark and hungry, waiting to devour. He walked over to O'Doyle.
"Couldn't we rig something and go down the river?” Connell asked. “I mean, it will take us right to it."
"Don't even think it, Mr. Kirkland,” O'Doyle said. “We don't know how deep it is, and look at that current. We've got to cross, it's the only choice."
O'Doyle began stripping out of his KoolSuit. The muscles on his arms twitched with every motion, as did the fat around his waist and stomach. Everyone stared at the plethora of small flag tattoos that covered O'Doyle's back and arms. Connell recognized a handful of them: Brazil, Argentina, France, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Australia, Russia, Columbia, Algeria. The flags lined up in regimented rows and columns, covering his entire back from below his neck down to his waist and even spreading to his upper arms.
"What are you — poster boy for the United Nations?” Veronica said.
O'Doyle laughed. “Something like that, Professor."
"Why are you stripping?” Lybrand asked, concern showing in her eyes.
"Because I won't be able to swim right across.” O'Doyle stepped out of the suit, unashamed of his nakedness. He gestured to a frothing wave curling up over a jagged rock-fall at the river's far side. “Look where the current is going. I'll probably smash up on that shoal. It'd be sure to rip the suit, and then even if we did make it across I wouldn't last long in the heat.” The KoolSuits kept them all somewhat oblivious of the scorching temperature of the cave, which now topped just over 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
"Christ,” O'Doyle said, a sheen of sweat breaking out over his body. “It's pretty fucking hot down here."
"You don't have to do this, O'Doyle,” Connell said.
O'Doyle flashed a reassuring smile. “Sure I do. We have limited supplies, Mr. Kirkland. We can't afford to backtrack."
Connell cupped his gloved hands into the river, then put his face into his hands. The water felt only a little cooler than the air.
"This water is probably 150 degrees,” Connell said. “You're not going to last long."
"Then I'll have to get across quick,” O'Doyle said.
O'Doyle gesture to Lybrand for some rope. She brought it to him, touching his hand and looking at his face. O'Doyle looked back at her with a quick, confident smile, then looked up at the rest of the party.
"I'm going to tie this around me,” he yelled, slipping into his lecturing drill-sergeant voice. He held the rope as if it were a feature of show-and-tell. “If I'm sucked downstream and I don't make it across, you need to reel me in just like a big fish."