Earthcore, p.38
Earthcore, page 38
“So am I in trouble?” Alice asked quietly.
“That depends. All you have to do is help me.” Alice nodded as Kayla wrote down a number on a scratch pad next to the phone. She handed it to the woman.
“If they come back, you call that number.”
Alice looked over the top of her glasses. “That’s it?”
Kayla nodded. “That’s it.”
“But what about …”
“What about the money? Keep it, just call me if they come back.”
Alice nodded. She stood and held the scrap of paper with both hands, pressed it to her chest.
Kayla left without another word. It was all she could do to keep herself from sprinting to her Jeep.
That little prick Angus was more than she’d bargained for.
9:28 p.m.
The small shovel bit into the stony ground with the sound of metal scraping against unforgiving rock. An inefficient way to dig, but that wasn’t the point.
“Oh, lawdy,” Angus said, shouting the words. “I been diggin’ all the livelong day. Won’t somebody come and help me?”
He glanced at the KILROY WAS HERE sign lying on the ground next to him. Another inch of digging or so, and he could plant it. He wished he could see the look on Connell Kirkland’s face when this sign was discovered. Would have been priceless.
Well, priceless was a relative term. Especially considering how much Angus had spent on all of this shit. First paying Cho to look the other way, then triple that amount for the man to put on fake bandages and a little fake blood. Then, bribing a doctor and that fat, smelly nurse to seal off his room. Any of those things could have gone south, but none had.
Money was a wonderful thing.
He and Dirty Randy had stayed in the hospital for a couple of days, in case anyone from EarthCore showed up. No one had. The fuckers. During that time, Angus set up a relay on his hospital room’s phone, routing any calls to a cell Randy had stashed along with the other equipment.
When Kirkland finally called, Angus had been up on the mountain, two miles north of the camp. The relay had worked like a charm.
That arrogant prick might still be calling, for all Angus knew. He and Randy were too far down to get any signals from the surface.
He knew now that he wasn’t the first person in these tunnels. Some of the tunnels weren’t even natural — they had been chiseled into solid stone. It was disappointing he wasn’t first — even if the last people in them had died off hundreds if not thousands of years ago — but the mystery was still every bit as intriguing. Maybe Reeves’s “Chaltélians” were a real thing after all. Maybe they’d carved out these tunnels with primitive tools. It would have taken centuries. And there was the problem of how those people had managed the heat, but that was the least-important question concerning Angus at the moment.
The most important? What the hell were all those amazing little robots doing down here?
Randy had dubbed them “ALs,” short for “artificial life-form.” The silvery creatures lurked everywhere. The things seemed to be watching, sometimes even tracking Angus and Randy. Angus didn’t know what to make of their behavior, but there was only one way to see what made such clearly advanced machines tick.
Take one apart.
AL tracks dominated this area of the tunnel system, ubiquitous wherever a patch of dry silt covered stone. The tracks were far thicker here than anywhere else they’d seen so far. It seemed like the perfect place to catch one.
Randy would do the catching. Angus was bait. They’d already established that the four-legged robots reacted mostly to movement and noise. Randy lay half-buried under dirt and rocks, motionless, about twenty yards down the tunnel from Angus. They’d rigged a blanket from the ceiling and hoped to use it as a net.
Angus looked at his handheld monitor. It weighed less than a pound but gave an excellent readout with its four-inch display. The unit picked up data from the tiny, five-ounce motion sensors they’d placed about thirty yards down the tunnel. Angus had planned to use the motion sensors to keep tabs on EarthCore personnel, but the devices turned out to be invaluable for gathering observational data on the ALs.
The readout showed a scale map of the tunnels, covering a one-hundred-meter-diameter sphere. Angus stood at that sphere’s center. On the screen, a red dot slowly moved closer. Angus banged the shovel against the wall three times, letting Randy know the system had picked up an approaching AL. They had decided not to use walkie-talkies, as they had no idea how the robots communicated. Radio waves might give away Randy’s location.
Clearly, the ALs were the most advanced robots Angus had ever seen. He theorized they wandered in a loosely programmed pattern, probably utilizing some form of fuzzy logic to maneuver through the tunnels and collect data. Once they had enough info, the ALs likely returned to the surface to pass the info on to their masters — probably for the purpose of creating detailed maps of the tunnels.
Which meant that EarthCore wasn’t the only company after this particular pot of platinum at the end of the rainbow.
Angus wondered if Kirkland knew. If so, Angus hoped it pissed Kirkland off. A lot.
The red dot came closer. Angus gripped the shovel, waiting patiently. Just a few more feet … that’s it … annnnnnd … now!
He slammed the small shovel twice against the wall, tink-tink.
The blip moved a little more, then stopped.
“I got it!” Randy’s voice echoed down the tunnel. “Get over here!”
Angus felt a rush of adrenaline in his chest. He sprinted down the tunnel, feeling oddly like some primitive cave dweller deep into the hunt.
Randy stood over a blanket that seemed to squirm and kick with a life of its own. Long, thin whipping legs poked through the many slashes they’d cut into the fabric. Angus heard the whine of machinery.
“Help me,” Randy said. “Watch out for those feet, they have hooks that look sharp.”
Angus took a step forward, then a step back. He had no idea where to go from here.
“What do we do?”
Randy carefully snatched up two corners of the blanket, lifted them. The AL seemed to know it was in trouble: its wild kicking increased.
“We jump on it,” Randy said. “On one. Three, two—”
“Randy, I—”
“One!”
Randy threw himself into the squirming blanket. Angus did the same before he even knew he was doing it. They rolled the AL tighter in the blanket.
Randy bunched all four corners together, then stood and lifted it.
“Holy cats this is heavy!”
Angus grabbed the bunched-up corners, hefted it. Randy wasn’t kidding — the thing weighed a ton.
“Didn’t expect this much mass,” Angus said.
Randy nodded in agreement. “The way they crawled on the ceiling I assumed they were made from some alloy, maybe aluminum.” He smiled at Angus. “Well, we got it. What do we do with it?”
They both looked at the bag, listening to the whirring sounds emanating from within.
Angus smiled.
“Come on, buddy. You’ve had a biology class before, haven’t you? I think it’s time we had ourselves a good old-fashioned dissection.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
15,521 feet below the surface
9:43 p.m.
“Professor Reeves, wake up.”
The hand on her shoulder shook gently. Sleep danced enticingly around her head, calling to her to slip back into slumber. She felt the hand’s gentle strength squeeze firmly, pressing for her attention.
“Professor, we’re in danger.”
Her eyes were already stinging before they even fluttered open to see Connell’s face. He returned her look only for an instant, then his eyes flicked down the tunnel. He was tense, alert — and pointing a machine gun in the same direction. The gun’s barrel reflected the light of his headlamp in a thin, lethal, metallic line.
She sat up slowly. She reached to wipe sleep from her eyes, ground them against the thin face shield before she remembered it was there.
Connell wore Mack’s helmet. Veronica glanced around, saw Mack. He was still asleep. She suspected he’d suffered a concussion back at the river.
“I’m up. What’s wrong?”
“Silverbugs,” Connell said. “A bunch of them. Their behavior is making O’Doyle nervous.”
A bunch of them? The thought of even that single machine sent a shiver down her spine. It had moved so fast, like a big metal spider buzzed up on a highball of Red Bull and crack. And now there were more of them?
She reached over, pushed at her father’s gut.
“Pops, wake up.”
He grumbled, started to stir. She gathered up her helmet, flicked her light on, placed the helmet on her head and looked down the tunnel.
What she saw almost made her scream.
Past Lybrand — who stood at the ready, rifles in hand — was a line of silver bugs stretching along the floor of the rocky tunnel that led back to the river. One burnished body after another. At least forty of them in Veronica’s line of sight before the tunnel curved away, cutting off any view. But it wasn’t the number that chilled her as much as their actions.
The silverbugs bobbed in a sickening, snap-motion jerk toward the ground, paused for a moment, then popped back up. A choreographed nightmare, moving as one, as if they were on a unified timer, or — even more disturbing — parts of the same brain, the same organism.
“What the hell are they doing?”
“No idea,” Connell said. “We’re not sticking around to find out. You help Sanji with Mack so I can keep my gun ready.”
Her father had come fully awake, saw what they were facing. The two of them quietly roused Mack. The Aussie’s eyes were glassy, unfocused. Sanji dragged the man to his feet. Veronica slipped under Mack’s left arm, Sanji under his right. Their KoolSuits brushed together with rubbery squeaking noises.
Up ahead, away from the silverbugs, O’Doyle and Connell hovered over the map. Connell said something. O’Doyle nodded, his eyes flicking back every few seconds to check on Lybrand and the line of twitching machines.
Connell folded the map, put it in his belt. He jogged to her.
“We’re moving out,” he said. “About a hundred yards ahead, we’re taking a tunnel to the right. Looks like a steep vertical climb, but at the end it takes a sharp descent and moves us toward the Dense Mass.”
The fear in his voice didn’t do a whole lot to comfort her.
Sanji nodded at Connell. “We’ll take care of Mack. What about the silverbugs?”
Connell’s tongue peeked out for a moment, the tip hitting the inside of his plastic face shield, leaving a small dot of wetness.
“O’Doyle doesn’t want them following us. Let’s go.”
He headed down the tunnel, hands tight on the rifle.
Veronica and Sanji followed, moving as fast as they could under Mack’s weight.
9:48 p.m.
Patrick stared at the bobbing line of silverbugs stretching down the tunnel’s length. The machines’ clicks and whirs played off the rough stone walls, filling the tunnel with a light but persistent din.
“You ready?”
“I am,” Lybrand said.
He couldn’t think about her as a woman right now, as someone he cared for, wanted to love. She was a soldier, like him. It was up to the two of them to discourage pursuit.
What did these damn things want?
He slung his rifle.
“Use your sidearm,” he said, drawing his Glock 21. “You cover our backs. Don’t forget Connell and the others are up there. Keep your hand on my back so I know where you are. I won’t take my eyes off them unless we have to run, so you let me know what turns are coming up. Once the firing starts, we won’t be able to hear anything. Pat my left shoulder and I’ll go to my left, right shoulder and I’ll go to my right. Keep an eye on me — if I turn to run, you need to already be three steps ahead of me and booking it. Understand?”
“I understand,” she said.
Not sir, or O’Doyle, or even Patrick. Maybe she wasn’t sure anymore what she was supposed to call him. Maybe he wasn’t, either. He was calling the shots, but he wasn’t her boss. Not down here. They were more partners than anything else, the two people who could get everyone out alive.
He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Let’s see what happens.”
Lybrand put her hand between his shoulder blades, letting him know she was there.
Patrick aimed at the first silverbug. He let his breath out slow. When it was gone, just before he breathed in, he squeezed the trigger: the gun kicked in his hand.
The bullet ripped through the sphere with a spark and a pop. A smell like burning chocolate instantly filled the cave. The silverbug fell to the ground, two of its legs curling in while the other two twitched violently in random directions.
He fired again, aiming for the next in line, but the swarm was already in full retreat, scattering like enraged ants. His bullet missed the mark. A madly flashing blur of faceted reflections, and in seconds, they vanished behind the bend in the tunnel.
Was that it?
“They’re smart,” Lybrand said. “They made the decision to haul ass in like, what, half a second?”
“If that.”
She walked past him, toward the still-twitching silverbug.
“Don’t,” he said, the word coming out sharper than he would have liked. “Could be booby-trapped. Let’s move back, just like we planned.”
She got behind him, again put her hand between his shoulder blades. She tapped twice.
Patrick started backing up.
Far away, right at the tunnel’s bend, he saw a silverbug lurking. Patrick kept moving. He waited for a clear shot.
9:53 p.m.
When the killer had driven off, Sonny had watched her. He watched her drive through the camp, down the new road. He watched her head north, toward Route 21. He watched until he could see her no more.
Then, he’d moved.
Don’t you want to know? the insufferable little voice had asked. Don’t you?
He didn’t. He did. He couldn’t. He had to.
Not sure what he was doing or even why he was doing it, he’d left his spot. Walking down a mountain at night wasn’t the brightest choice even in normal times. He’d countered that dumb thing with a smart thing, which in itself was dumb: he’d used his flashlight.
Every step he waited for a shot to ring out. Was she really working alone? He didn’t know. Yet he kept going anyway. Kept going, and soon he’d felt that creeping tingle of the place he’d sworn he would leave behind forever.
He was back on Funeral Mountain. He had to do it. For Cho.
Sonny had meant to go through the killer’s hidey spot, but when he’d got there, he couldn’t do it. If he did, she’d know. She’d search for him. She’d find him.
By the time her headlights played across the camp ruins, Sonny was settled into a perfect spot about twenty-five yards away from hers. Boulders surrounded him, gave him a narrow peephole through which to watch her.
He needed something to identify her.
Maybe he’d get lucky.
10:23 p.m.
Kayla stomped toward her warren. She didn’t care about being quiet anymore. Screw that.
That little prick Angus Kool had thrown a major monkey wrench into her plans, but he wasn’t going to stop her. No way, no how.
What were Snoopy & Motherfucking Woodstock up to? They’d been dicking around with that underground mapping system. Were they looking for another way into the mountain? Maybe to steal some platinum for themselves? Had they gone in before the attack? If so, were they dead? Chopped to bits by crazy fucking acid-trip stretchy color-monsters?
She didn’t know. She couldn’t wait anymore. If those two jagoffs were still alive, if they saw the camp and called for help, her chance was gone.
Kayla slid into the camouflaged little space that had been her home for the past two weeks. She started punching numbers into the Harris COMSEC unit. To properly disguise her location — and that’s what this was all about, like some real estate agent’s wet dream, location, location, LOCATION — she needed to create a web of bounced signals and coded relays. As far as the NSA was concerned, her call would originate from a pay phone in Duluth.
She wished she could find Angus and Randy, put a bullet in their heads, but there wasn’t time to do things right. She had to act now, before the sunrise brought yet one more fuckup.
About an hour of programming, then she could make the call.
10:47 p.m.
Veronica Reeves could hike for miles. She could handle mountain trails with ease, leave bigger and stronger men in the dust. She often had, making her assistants at Cerro Chaltén beg her to take a break, to take it easy on them.
But when she’d done those things, she hadn’t been carrying a 180-pound man.
The incline itself would have been enough to exhaust her. Lugging Mack’s weight had wiped her out inside twenty minutes. She’d hated to ask for help, but she was slowing them down, and the sound of gunfire coming from the tunnel behind them removed any need for pride.
Connell had switched with her; she got the map and moved up front, he got to help carry Mack. He kept the rifle, though. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
Veronica tried to watch both her footing and the map. Maybe there was another way they could go. She had more sympathy for Mack now, though — this map seemed to make no sense. Why hadn’t Angus—
Another gunshot from behind made her jump.
Veronica kept going. The tunnel split in two: she could go up to the left, or down to the right. She studied the map, anxiety building as Connell, Sanji and Mack came up behind her. Connell and Sanji were exhausted, breathing hard, bodies sagging under Mack’s weight. Mack had his eyes up, though, which was a good sign.
“Ronni, which way?”
Left and up. No, right and down.
She pointed.
“That way,” she said. “Go, I’ll catch up.”
They took Mack into the tunnel. She noticed he looked a little stronger, was finally carrying some of his own weight. She hoped he could carry it all soon, or her dad might have a coronary and drop dead.
