‘Hope you don’t mind me not helpin’ you load this stuff,’ the old man said as Stratton took hold of one of the large bottles. ‘Truth is I’m too goddamned old.’
‘That’s okay,’ Stratton said. ‘I need the exercise.’
‘Gonna be a cool night, I think,’ the storeman said as Stratton placed the last container onto the back of his pick-up, pushed it forward and then climbed onto the truck’s bed to secure the load. As he moved across the bed he accidentally caught the tarp in his foot, pulling it enough to expose some of his previous load which the old man caught sight of as Stratton straightened it out.
‘So where you from?’ the old man asked. ‘English if I had to guess. We get a few a’ them around here.’
‘That’s right,’ Stratton answered as he jumped down, lifted up the heavy tailgate, slammed it home and placed the securing pins in either side. ‘Well, gotta get going,’ he said as he headed for the cab. ‘Oh. Where can I get some dry ice around here?’
‘Pete’s refrigeration. Down that way,’ the old guy said, nodding in the direction.
‘Thanks. You take care now,’ Stratton said as he climbed into his cab.
‘You too,’ the storeman said as he boarded his tug, started the engine, took a look at the registration number under the pick-up’s tailgate and headed away.
He stopped at the hangar doors as Stratton turned out of the lot and onto the main road. The old man switched off the engine, climbed off the tug’s seat and walked into the reception block. He picked up a pen beside an order book and scribbled down Stratton’s registration number, pausing halfway through to think. Then he crossed it out, started again, studied it some more and shook his head. ‘Damn it all,’ he muttered, cursing his memory.
He dug a notebook from a pocket, found a number, picked up the phone, dialled and waited. He looked out of the window but Stratton was well gone.
‘Hank. It’s Joe, down at Alan’s Chemicals. I got something you might be interested in. You guys sent us a letter some time back about letting the cops know about people buying suspicious combinations of chemi cals and stuff. Well, maybe I got one for yer. Had a guy just bought some nitric acid, a lot of it, and in the back of his truck he had a whole bunch a’ fire tablets. Fire tablets are made out of a chemical called HMT – hexa-methylene-tetramine. Mouthful, ain’t it? When I was in the service I was in EOD so I know a little about explosives. You mix nitric with that stuff and you got somethin’ that’ll go bang, I know that much. The guy was also lookin’ fer mercury metal. Now you mix mercury and nitric and you end up with that stuff kids use in cap guns. Course, you gotta know what you’re doin’. Yeah, he’s gone. Left a couple minutes ago in an old grey GM pick-up. I didn’t get the licence complete – RJ479P, I think. English guy. Paid cash, too. Sure, I’ll be here till five if you wanna send someone down. Not a problem.’
Joe put the phone down and took another look at the registration number. ‘Boiler stripper, my ass,’ he mumbled.
Stratton made two more stops in the industrial complex to buy a large block of dry ice, a flashlight, a couple of petrol lights, a twenty-foot reel of small-gauge plastic piping, twenty gallons of water, a therm ometer and a large tin of glue. Then he got back onto the highway and headed east out of Bakersfield.
Half an hour later he stopped in the town of Arvin, inhabited totally – or so it appeared – by Mexicans, to fill up his fuel tank and purchase a couple of days’ supply of food. From there it was an easy climb north-east up the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains and into the folding hills that hid the small town of Caliente.
As Stratton drove through the sparsely populated settlement he tried to imagine Vicky living there as a little girl. Apart from the occasional modern car the sleepy, arid place looked like an old turn-of-the-century western movie set. There was one liquor store, one general store, a bar, a post office and a railway depot, all well spaced along a broad stretch of road, the only sign of life being a couple of dogs and an old man sitting on a chair outside the depot.
The farming appeared to be strictly arable, the countryside hilly, rocky, parched and dotted with Cali fornian oak trees, a smaller, brittle, less majestic version of its splendid European cousin. Past the town a newly metalled road followed a broad, winding creek that cut deep into the hills, its sides steep and rocky. Where they could get a foothold, pine and oak trees grew.
Twin Oaks, a few miles further on, was even more sparsely settled than Caliente. Stratton consulted his map as he passed a collection of houses that looked abandoned and then a bar set back from the road with a couple of pick-ups parked outside. He had to slow for several cows meandering along the road, then, a mile beyond the last house, he reached a distinct hairpin bend where a dirt track headed towards higher ground and woodland half a mile away. He turned off the metalled road and followed the track to a fork at the entrance to the wood, glanced at the map and took the right-hand route. A couple of hundred yards later he stopped in front of an old wooden gate that barred his way.
Stratton climbed out to inspect the gate where the wood crowded in on both sides. A bleached wooden sign with barely readable letters and fixed at a jaunty angle to one of the gateposts warned of an abandoned mine ahead and stated that entry was not permitted. A rusty chain looped around a post was all that secured the gate and he unravelled the links, picked up the end and pulled it open.
He drove the truck a few yards past the gate, climbed out, closed it, replaced the chain, and drove on. The wood remained close on both sides and a couple of hundred yards around a gradual bend the track gave way to a large open space tightly packed with derelict old wooden constructions of various sizes.
As Stratton drove slowly in among the buildings he spotted a barn with one of its double doors lying on the ground and what appeared to be rusting machinery of some description inside. The structure had enough room for the pick-up and he eased it in. When he shut off the engine a near-total silence descended.
Stratton pulled the high-powered flashlight from its box, climbed out of the cab and stepped into the sunshine. The air was warm and dry.
He took a walk around, his footsteps clearly audible as his boots crunched on the soft sandy soil. He inspected each building in turn. Most were completely empty with unreliable-looking floors, some had the odd piece of furniture and machinery and one shed contained dozens of rusting spades, picks, hammers and boxes of heavy spike nails. The mine had been closed for a hundred and thirty years, according to the Internet site, abandoned when the cost of extracting the gold had exceeded the value of the yield. There was apparently still a fair amount of the precious metal to be had but it would only become a viable operation again when it reached $1,000 an ounce at today’s money value which was apparently unlikely.
Stratton finally came to the towering wooden derrick that supported aloft the massive wheels that the trolley drag cables looped over before disappearing into the winch house. Near the foot of the derrick was the main entrance shaft itself. A thick metal pipe ran out of the mine into another building close by that contained a couple of rusting water pumps. Flooding had apparently been a problem at the mine’s lower depths and the water had had to be pumped out twenty-four hours a day.
He felt the heavy, sturdy timbers surrounding the entrance that was a good ten feet square and, turning on the flashlight, he walked inside, checking the ceiling and supports as he made his way cautiously down the gradual incline. It became noticeably cooler and only slightly narrower and three hundred feet inside the passage suddenly opened out into a low-ceilinged cavern which was a meeting point for three other tunnels. The ground was level at this junction, the tunnels leading off it steeper than the entrance shaft. Stratton checked the supports that surrounded and held up the centre of the cavern and decided that this would be a good place to set up the ‘kitchen’.