Badwater

42

Hap had to help Walter to his feet.

We went single-file, first Walter then me then Hap. Hap had retrieved Dearing’s subgun and he wore it slung across his back. Oliver’s subgun rode in his hands, as I discovered when I slowed and its hard mouth bit into my spine.

Walter stumbled once but all Hap said was “watch your step.”

We came to a junction and bore left into a larger tunnel, a tunnel with a cathedral ceiling and four-square timbering and intact rails. An important tunnel.

I oriented myself. There was daylight at the far end. We were on level two, heading for the exit where, beyond the locked gate, was the rubble pile, and beyond that was the path leading down to level one and the valley, and beyond that the ridges and then Cherokee Canyon and our waiting vehicles. And beyond that, the way back to the Inn to find Soliano and then soak our feet.

I fought down the vision.

We nearly made it to the exit. Hap stopped us a dozen yards short, where a side tunnel branched off. It was gated. I angled my headlamp to illuminate the metal sign wired to the bars: No entry. Hazardous. Deteriorating explosives. Broken machine parts. Hap stood us against the far wall. He brought out a keyring from his capacious pants pocket.

I focused on the problem of the locks, desperate to occupy my mind. Hap or Roy had changed the Park Service locks because they did not want any patrolling rangers to come in here and find their stash. But Chickie turned up instead, come to find out what Jardine had been hiding, come to get in on the blackmail. Single-minded in her greed. Methodically, I ticked off the gates we’d seen, the locks we’d tried. Two entrance gates had been locked. The top-level gate had been unlocked. Either Chickie had picked that lock, or Hap or Roy had been sloppy. I didn’t much care. I cared about this gate, this lock, and what lay beyond.

Hap didn’t need his key.

The side tunnel was unremarkable until we passed an alcove containing a winch and a spool of neon purple cable, both on wheeled dollies. The growing knot in my stomach tightened. Up ahead was a larger intersecting tunnel. Some kind of fat snake crawled out of that tunnel, into ours — and Walter stiffened — but as we drew nearer I identified the snake as a bundle of wires. The bundle ran along our tunnel wall then snaked to the right, into a room.

Hap directed us to follow the bundled wires.

It was a cavernous room filled with rusting machinery. It took me some moments to sort the tangle by the light of our headlamps. I identified the twin flywheels of an old drum winch. A cable spool lay flat with its guts unwinding. Wheels and gears were scattered about, like the sprung works of a giant wristwatch. Hap followed the bundled wires to the corner where a small generator sat. It too was rusted but Hap brought it to life, illuminating a string of bare light bulbs.

I had to squint.

Hap directed us across the room. We skirted crates of supplies no miner would have dreamed of: bottled water, freeze-dried food, sleeping bags, hazmat suits and SCBA gear. And then there was a box of putty-like cylinders that any modern-day miner would presumably recognize. I thought, so that’s what plastique looks like — play-dough, like Chickie said. It should look scarier.

Hap told us to take a seat on the cable spool.

He turned to the splintery table against the wall. He removed a rotting burlap sack to reveal a machine no miner would have dreamed of: a laptop computer. Its cable joined the wire bundle. He switched on the machine. He sat on a crate in front of the table and rested Oliver’s submachine gun across his lap, snout to us. He tapped the keyboard. He angled the monitor. “Look around the corner.”

The creepy thing was, we could.

Around the corner was the large tunnel. The picture on the computer screen was a long shot, looking uptunnel, which was lit by bulbs that hung like bats from the ceiling. The camera, as well, must have been ceiling-mounted because we had a gods-eye view. I oriented myself, first, by locating the wire bundle which powered the room. Traversing the tunnel were rusting rails where ore carts used to run, but clearly Hap had no need for carts to haul his loads. A beastly telehandler squatted beside an ore shaft. Attachments were at the ready: tools to unbolt and detorque the cask lid, invertible forks to hook into the cask lifting lugs. The telehandler was ready to empty the next load of resins, but the swap had ended. The stockpile was, de facto, complete.

My attention shifted to the ore shaft.

As if Hap understood, he changed the picture. The gods-eye view closed and then a new window opened onscreen. It was a view inside the shaft, a view that brutally tied off the knot in my gut.

Resin beads filled the shaft, lapping nearly to the top. So that’s what they look like. I’d seen them in the borax tunnel but they’d been coming at me like cannon-fire and I hadn’t paused for a good long look. I took it now. Looked more like sand than beads. Or, even, bath salts. They gave off a warm amber glow. They should look scarier. They should sound scarier—beads was too benign a word. There should be better words. TripleX shitload of mayhem carrying cell-destroying gentlemen.

There were no words. There was only fear.

I averted my gaze from the screen. It fell on the crate of hazmat gear, next to Hap. The lid was propped open but I guessed it had been closed when Chickie found her way in here. I guessed she’d had to fight the latches to open the lid, picking up the grains of rust I’d scraped from beneath her nails. Here’s where she’d found her moonsuit. And then, suited up, believing she was good to go, she’d gone looking for Jardine’s cache. And there, in the shaft, she’d found it. She’d known we were hunting for it, and now she could take a pack full of beads to show Soliano she’d found it, and bargain for her million-dollar reward. She certainly worked hard for it. It must have been an awkward job. She must have been on her hands and knees, reaching down into the shaft to scoop enough to fill her pack. Maybe she stirred up the beads enough to go aerosol, and if her facepiece wasn’t snugged up real tight, maybe she breathed in the murderous dust. I hoped not. From what I’d seen, she was already paying dearly for her crime.

I whispered to Hap, “What do you want?”

“Compensation for my hard work.” He swiveled to face us. “Speaking of which, you can’t get good help any more, can you?”

I could not think what to say. Yes? No? I could feel well enough — the rough wood biting into my backside, the shirtsleeve throttling my wrists — but I could not think which answer would satisfy Hap. Nor, evidently, could Walter.

“This tying your tongues?” Hap hefted the subgun. “We’re just going to talk. About lousy help. You paying attention?”

I was paying exquisite attention.

“Problem starts with Ryan when I tell him tonight’s the night.”

My attention focused on Ryan Beltzman. What’d the radwaste driver do? Can Walter and I avoid doing it? I spoke, asbestos-tongued. “He tried to back out?”

“He smoked too much damn dope.” Hap rested the weapon across his knees. “Too wasted to do his bit, so Roy gets incensed and then there’s the fight and the chase and the crash — y’all know that bit — and then Roy turns out damn near useless as Ryan. Sits in his pickup wringing his hands. Which leaves me no option but to take care of Ryan myself.”

So it was Hap, not Roy, who shot Ryan. Shit.

Walter said, “I see your point.”

“What’s my point?”

“Your partners botched it.”

“You got that right. But that’s not my point.” Hap fingered his ring. All that showed now was the gold band. “After the fiasco we’ve got problems. I tell Roy to go home and stay put. Knew we’d have the Feds on us soon enough — told him I’d play along, decide when it’s safe to make our move. Afraid I didn’t anticipate a couple geologists following talc and mud and whatnot.” Hap gave us a rueful smile.

I returned an icy look. “Who sent Chickie after us?”

“That’d be Roy. Seems he thought I mighta been thinking of selling him out. Boy starts going freelance on me. Still, he didn’t do half-bad — stealing your soil samples, that is. Don’t rightly approve of stranding you out there. You could’ve died. I wanted you dead, I’d have taken care of that myself.”

Walter said, brittle, “C4.”

“Whoa, that was Roy too. Overkill, if you ask me. Borax mine was set up for Milt — original plan was to send him in, let him find the cask. That irony thing, let him know where he stood. Of course, nothing went exactly as planned, what with y’all and Hector and Scotty getting into it.”

Walter said, “And the water tank at the Inn?”

“Pure Roy. Bragged about that one, on the way up here. Damn his eyes, I mighta gone for a swim last night.” Hap gave me a long look, then winked.

I sat dense as rock.

“Tried my best to rein him in. Chatted on the phone, now and then. But I was kinda pinned down, keeping watch on y’all. And it turns out being on the team was a real bonus. Got to volunteer tidbits, like the borongate story, to keep Hector’s focus on Roy. Tried to keep your focus on the radiation risks — tell me, did that work? Undermine your confidence, just a wee bit?”

Yeah that worked, but damned if I would tell him so.

“My concern was real, Buttercup. Hate to see good guys like you and Walter get crapped up.”

Walter grunted.

“Must admit, though, I mostly hated the idea of y’all finding this place before CTC agreed to pay.”

I sat up straight. “So it is about money?”

“Ain’t it always?” He nodded at the computer. “Streaming live to CTC.”

“The extortion email? That was you?”

“Was the both of us.” Hap sighed. “Thing is, Roy wanted to settle his grudge along with his payday and I guess that made him a mite unstable. Sure turned on me. Anyway, like I told you, I end up trussed like a turkey, he goes Rambo and collects himself the FBI shooter.” Hap unslung Dearing’s subgun. “Not the way I envisioned getting here but all’s well that ends well.”

I said, “Why didn’t he kill you?”

“Two hostages were better than one.”

“Where’s Milt?”

“Down some tunnel. Like I told you.”

“Why should we believe anything you tell us?”

He shrugged. “You can pick it apart afterward, for inconsistencies.”

My heart turned over. Afterward?

“Caught that future tense, did you?”

“Then you’re not going to…”

“Kill you? What if the cavalry comes?” He gave a slight smile. “Two hostages are better than none.” He raised the subgun. “Now get down and kiss the ground.”

I held onto the thought we’re of value as we floundered down. With my cheek to the rock, I watched as Hap put aside his weapons. He took the keyring out of his pocket. He moved to the hazmat crate and I watched, sick, as he began to dress out.

I said, “What about us?”

He put on booties and gloves and taped himself into the suit. He hunched into the SCBA harness and cinched the waist belt. He hooked a large pouch to the belt. He clipped a multi-tool knife to his keyring, and clipped the keyring to the belt with a big carabiner. He considered the two subguns. He selected Oliver’s, snapping on Dearing’s magazine to double his ammo supply. He used a carabiner to attach the subgun sling to his right shoulder strap. He gave himself a little shake; subgun and belt pouch and keyring held fast. He muttered “effing Christmas tree.” He picked up the last item of equipment — the facepiece. He put it on, adjusted the head straps, then pushed it up to rest on top of his head, electrifying his hair.

He looked nothing like a Christmas tree.

He swung his attention to me. “About you? Take care. Don’t end up getting zapped like Grandma.”