Earthcore, p.14
Earthcore, page 14
“Styles himself,” Kirkland said. “Such a way with words. I asked you if you were somewhere you could speak. Are you?”
Not exactly a question someone asked if they wanted to talk about the weather. But Mack didn’t want to talk about the weather, or anything else this man wanted to discuss.
“Don’t know what you’re playing at, but I’m not happy,” Mack said. “And while I’ll probably never see you face to face, you better pray that I don’t, because using my sick mum to get me on the phone is—”
“We’re breaking the three-mile barrier.”
Three miles. Just under five kilometers.
“Bullshit.”
“Truth,” Connell said. “We’re doing it, we’re doing it fast, and I want you to run it. Come work for me.”
The balls on this guy.
“You’re crazy,” Mack said. “You pull this stunt to get me on the phone because you know if you came after me through normal channels, either I wouldn’t talk to you or Euromine wouldn’t let me talk to you. I can’t just walk away — I run the deepest mine in the world.”
“Not for long. We’re going deeper. I want you because you’re the best. But the guy right behind you ain’t too bad, either. If you’re not in Denver tomorrow, I know Klaus Honneger would love to break your record.”
The mention of that name kicked off storm clouds of anger and jealousy. Honneger ran the Mponeng Mine. At four kilometers deep, it had held the world record — until Mack had convinced Euromine to let him add another kilometer to Ventersdorp. But there was no financial benefit to taking Ventersdorp any deeper. If Kirkland was for real, and Honneger went that deep, Honneger would hold the record — possibly for good.
“What’s your answer, Mack?”
“Just hold on a fucking second. I’m willing to listen, mate, but slow down! You haven’t even given me a chance to think about this.”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry here,” Kirkland said. “If you’re not in my office tomorrow, Honneger will be.”
Which could be total bullshit. Kirkland clearly had no trouble lying to get what he wanted. Would Honneger fall for the same line of high-pressure horseshit?
“At least tell me what you’re digging for.”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. In person.”
“So you want me to quit my job and come see you without knowing any details? Are you just screwing with me?”
“Jesus and Mary. Are all Australians such fucking babies?”
Now Mack really want to make that trip. Not just for the possible job or the world record, but so he could flatten Kirkland’s nose.
“You must instill such loyalty in your employees.”
“I do,” Kirkland said. “With money. And a permanent percentage. Euromine didn’t give you that, but I will.”
A permanent percentage? No, Euromine had not given him that. It wasn’t like they didn’t pay well — by the standards of Mack’s youth, he was a rich man — but they could shit-can him anytime they liked. He’d designed the world’s deepest mine, yet he didn’t own anything but the record.
“You don’t have to quit,” Kirkland said. “Are you telling me it’s not worth burning a few sick days just to find out if I’m real?”
Mack didn’t know Kirkland, didn’t know what kind of a man he was. How had he found out about Mum? How had he known Mack would stop everything he was doing if a call like that came in? How had he known about Mack’s compensation?
“You’re an arrogant fuck, you know that, Kirkland?”
“Come on, Mack. What I said wasn’t arrogant. Arrogant would be something like, oh, I don’t know — my private jet is sitting at Klerksdorp, right now, waiting for you, because I already knew you were going to say yes before I even bothered to pick up the phone.”
Cutthroat. Maybe that was a good nickname after all. Why get into business with a man like this?
Because of the record.
Of all the people in all the world, no one had ever done what Mack had done. He was the best in history. They called him “King of the Deep.” That title would last right up until someone went just a few feet deeper.
“I assume someone will be waiting for me at the airport?”
“Your house, actually. See you tomorrow.”
Kirkland hung up. Mack looked at the phone as if it had some strange power.
“Just a couple of days,” he said to himself.
Call in sick. Not that big a deal, really. A couple of days in the States. What could it hurt? And if it didn’t work out, at the very least, he could show Kirkland just what a good Australian lad thought of being called a fucking baby.
• • •
In the modern age, smart companies paid whatever it took to keep their computer systems secure. But even the smartest of that bunch could forget one small detail — the person you hire to build those walls is the best at finding ways around them.
After ten hours of probing, Kayla finally cracked EarthCore’s security programs. It should have only taken her two hours, but Kirkland had hired someone after hiring her, trying to make sure she couldn’t get in. Paranoid fucker. Was there no trust in this world anymore?
The other firm he’d hired had done a bang-up job. A whole helluva lot better than Euromine’s security, at least. EarthCore’s firewall was top-notch, enough to keep out the world’s best black hats. But Kayla — former darling of the National Security Agency — wasn’t some off-the-shelf Doritos-munching fat boy hiding in his mama’s basement.
The NSA’s mission revolved around protecting U.S. communications or intercepting foreign communications. She’d spent countless hours training in COMSEC, which was military parlance for “communications security.” Part of her job entailed making sure U.S. communications were free from the prying ears of foreign intelligence operations. The other end of the NSA mission was just the opposite — SIGINT, or “signals intelligence.”
SIGINT involved intercepting messages from foreign governments and exploiting such information as needed for national security purposes. She’d been trained to pick off signals sent by phone, radio, microwave, laser or — especially — computer. The NSA had turned her into a communications expert, an artist in data espionage and a hacker extraordinaire.
The interrogation parts of her job? She’d learned those skills on her own.
Daddy would have been so proud.
Kayla pushed away any thoughts of that bastard. She’d come far in life, didn’t need his bullshit haunting her anymore.
She carefully worked her way through EarthCore’s confidential files. Plenty of goodies in there, for sure, but she’d already seen most of that info. She was looking for something new. A billion-dollar find. All she had was that phrase and a name: Sonny McGuiness. Not what people in the trade would call “actionable intelligence.”
Kayla looked. And looked. And looked. The longer she spent on it the angrier she became. A creeping suspicion: she couldn’t find any files because there weren’t any, because Connell hadn’t made any.
The new project: as far as EarthCore’s computers were concerned, it didn’t exist.
There was paranoid, and then there was paranoid.
She had to wonder — was that because of her?
The thought stuck for a moment, then she shook it away. Of course not. If he was really onto something that big, the major platinum producers wouldn’t like it very much. The South Africans, in particular, seemed to take it almost personally when platinum was discovered in other countries. And the Russians? You did not want Sergei Berehzkov to think his oligarchiness was in such jeopardy that a glut of platinum would gut the per-ounce price. In platinum, at least, supply and demand ruled.
The shit was rare.
Rare enough to make Connell Kirkland follow a different level of secrecy.
“Naughty boy,” Kayla said. “You didn’t send me my decoder ring.”
Acting on a hunch, she switched tactics and slipped into Accounting’s travel records. Any company’s accounting files often provided a warehouse of knowledge if you knew what to look for, knowledge that few companies spent much effort protecting. After all, who gives a crap if the competition sneaks a peek at your travel logs or expense reports?
Connell’s company jet. Recently, just one trip to Johannesburg. Well, that made sense; most of the world’s supply of platinum came from South Africa. APA to KXE and back. Was Connell dumb enough to think he could start a new dig on South African soil?
Was he paranoid? Maybe. Was he sexy? Certainly. Was he dumb? Not even close.
Kayla called up all purchase orders Connell had authorized in the past two weeks.
Bingo.
Over $10 million of state-of-the-art mining equipment told her she was on the right track, but that wasn’t the real find. What made her smile was the $356,312.35 paid — in advance — to Southern Air Freight of Phoenix.
She exited EarthCore’s system, erasing all evidence of her presence, and quickly hacked into Southern Air Freight’s system. Air Freight’s computers had off-the-shelf protection, which held her up for all of fifteen seconds. She called up the customer account for EarthCore. Southern’s big cargo planes were scheduled to make deliveries to Milford Municipal Airport, in Utah. From there, the company force of five freight helicopters was scheduled for a day and a half of work shipping those deliveries to a specific, roadless area. Kayla noted the delivery coordinates: 38 degrees, 22 minutes, 50 seconds north latitude; 113 degrees, 35 minutes, 19 seconds west longitude.
A spot in the southern Wah Wah Mountains.
Book Two: Camp
Chapter Eleven
August 13
Randy Wright sat in the backseat, sweating like a pig. Despite the air conditioner’s valiant efforts, a slimy film covered him from head to toe. He could almost hear the Land Rover’s paint bubbling under the angry sun. They’d reach the camp soon, and they’d have to get out — an act his mind ranked as slightly more fun than having a wisdom tooth extracted.
He looked out the back window. Dust billowed up behind as if the Land Rover were a bi-wing crop duster, swooping in low over the ground to drop clouds of noxious pesticide. The view out the front wasn’t much better — an endless vista of brown and yellow, dotted every now and then with scrub or other vegetation so tough it looked as if it would flourish on the surface of the moon.
They’d left Milford Municipal Airport an hour and a half ago. Thirty-five minutes on State Route 12, then almost an hour on an inhospitable, unnamed road that was nothing more than two tire tracks in the dirt — and they still had another twenty minutes of driving where there weren’t any roads at all.
Welcome to the middle of nowhere.
He pushed his glasses into place for the hundredth time; the rough, catapulting ride had the frames constantly sliding down his sweat-slick nose. He didn’t mind the constant bouncing in the seats, but this heat could suck the fun out of a clown.
The bumpy ride bounced Randy in all directions, but it didn’t seem to bother the Rover’s other occupants. The driver, a stocky, serious brunette named Bertha Lybrand, took the bumps without complaint. O’Doyle sat in the front passenger seat. He didn’t seem to have any problem with the ride – it would take a wrecking ball to jostle that man.
The camp’s helicopter landing pad wasn’t ready yet. Maybe tomorrow, the contractors said. Until that was done, the way in and out of the camp was to drive. Drive, then hike — construction on roads directly to the site wouldn’t even begin until Angus verified that the Dense Mass was, indeed, platinum ore.
Randy had driven one Land Rover out from camp, Cho Takachi another. They’d gone to Milford Municipal to pick up the latest arrivals: three security guards, along with Angus and O’Doyle. The guards all looked like serious business: Lybrand; a tall, skinny, coal-black man named Lashon Jenkins and Bill Crook, fair-haired and so fair-skinned it looked like his skin was burning after just fifteen minutes in the sun.
Takachi had taken Jenkins and Crook with him. O’Doyle told Lybrand to drive Randy’s Rover, made Angus and Randy ride in back.
Angus, of course, had immediately started whispering, making fun of the two people in the front seat. Randy was caught between trying to ignore Angus — something that was just not done — and being part of a catty conversation about people he barely knew. When Angus had called Lybrand a “linebacker factory,” Randy had raised his eyebrows and nodded, like an idiot, hoping that mean name would be the last of it.
Fortunately, Lybrand didn’t seem to hear. Neither did O’Doyle. Not that they could hear anything over their own rapid-fire conversation. They’d both served in the same area overseas, apparently. Randy didn’t want to be part of that discussion, either. The more he could avoid O’Doyle, the better. Rumor was the big man had served in some secret Green Beret infiltration unit. Rumor also had it he’d once killed five men with his bare hands.
Angus tapped Randy on the shoulder, waved him closer, that mean grin on his face again. Randy did not want to hear this. He glanced forward: O’Doyle babbling away, Lybrand listening and driving.
Randy leaned in.
“Changed my mind,” Angus whispered. “That right there is a gorilla with tits.”
Randy’s face flushed hot. He leaned away, stared out the side window, not knowing what else to do. Lybrand was right there, for crying out loud.
Angus tapped on his shoulder again.
This time, Randy shrugged his shoulder away, continued to stare out at the desolate landscape.
“Oh my God, Mister Politically Correct,” Angus said. “Why don’t you go blog about your feelings and how fucking offended you are?”
Sometimes it was hard being friends with Angus Kool. He could be kind of a jerk. Randy had gotten over the weirdness of having a boss that was almost ten years his junior. Angus was in charge, had been for a few years, and he was still the youngest guy in the lab. That rubbed some people the wrong way, but Randy didn’t mind so much.
Yeah, it was hard, but being friends brought fringe benefits, more than just preferential treatment at work. Angus was a genius. Not the hey, my friend is really smart kind of genius, or my kid is already in the upper third percentile kind of genius, but rather the textbook definition of the word. Randy had never met anyone like Angus. Watching Angus do what he did — invent things, figure things out, see things no one has seen before — it was shocking and thrilling. Sometimes Randy wondered if he knew exactly how Thomas Watson had felt when he was Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant.
And that was just the stuff in the lab. The real thrill was spelunking. Together, they had discovered new caves. They had literally been the first human beings to ever set foot in those places. Angus invented tech that gave him the edge over more experienced cavers.
That same tech was about to be put to use in the world’s largest cave system. Angus — and Randy with him — would be the first people to see much of it.
Sure, being friends with Angus was hard, but they were friends. Randy hadn’t known many of those in his thirty-five years. Among the few that he’d had, not one of them would have done something like this, something so special. Not one of them would have taken him along on a trip of pure discovery. This wasn’t just finding a small branch of the Mammoth Caves that no one had seen — this was on another level altogether.
Angus and Randy would be the first. They would know the feelings of Columbus, Magellan, Armstrong, Lief Eriksson. They would know what it was like to discover something no one had ever seen, something that essentially wasn’t there before they found it.
There was power in discovery, a form of immortality. In this case, his immortality would be on a map — part of that subterranean maze would be forever known as “Wright Cavern.” That thought brought a smile to Randy’s lips.
So was something like that worth putting up with occasionally immature behavior? With the attitude and the bloated ego?
In a word: yes.
“Oh my God, Randy,” Angus said. “What did you eat?”
Randy opened his mouth to ask what Angus was talking about, but as soon as he did, he smelled it. He tasted it.
“Oh, wow,” Randy said, waving his hand in front of his face to chase away the fart. He glared at Angus, who was pinching his nose and silently laughing.
O’Doyle turned in his seat, glared at Randy.
“Something’s wrong with your ass, boy,” he said. O’Doyle shook his head in disgust, then faced forward.
Angus shook with laughter.
Randy sighed.
Yeah, friendship with Angus was hard. And some of those times were harder than others.
Chapter Twelve
August 15
Veronica Reeves held the satellite phone to her ear, although she was barely aware it was still in her hand. Part of her still tracked the cold, the mountain wind, the warmth of her jacket and the chill in her toes that never went away no matter how many pairs of socks she wore.
He’d said six words. Six words that had scrambled her thoughts.
“Veronica?”
That voice on the phone. Was she holding a phone? Yes, she was. That hand was cold, because it wasn’t wearing a glove. Her other hand was wearing a glove. Why was one glove on and one glove off? And that voice … was that her dad? Yes, Sanji Haak, that lovely, lovely man who had raised her like she was his own flesh and blood.
“Veronica, are we still connected?”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry, Dad. I just came out of the caves, maybe I heard you wrong. I … can you say what you said again?”
“What, the part about us being connected?”
“No,” Veronica said. “The part before.”
“Oh. Of course. I said, they found a knife in Utah.”
Yep, the same six words. Words that made no sense.
In the past seven years, the word knife had lost its conventional meaning. She now associated it only with the double-crescent weapons she and her team had found scattered in and around Cerro Chaltén — the local name for the peak also known as Mount Fitz Roy. The knives were evidence of a unique culture that had likely dominated the southern tip of the Andes around 5000 BC.
