Deep Fire Rising

AREA 51, NEVADA

Knowing his destination only deepened the mystery surrounding Mercer’s clandestine trip.

What little he knew about Area 51 came from cable television. The secluded facility, along with Nellis Air Force Base and the Yucca Flats Atomic Test Range, encompassed a territory larger than Switzerland and had first been used for flight testing the U-2 spy plane in the 1950s. Since then most of America’s premier aircraft had gone through flight trials at Groom Lake, the massive dry lake bed on which Area 51 was built. The SR-71, the F-117 Stealth, the B-2 Spirit bomber and the F-22 Raptor had all first taken flight here. Rumors persisted that they were currently developing a hypersonic spy plane to replace the Blackbird, called Aurora, and that it was stationed at Dreamland. While the military continued to deny the existence of the base, these were the most acknowledged facts about Area 51.

Mostly, however, the legend of Area 51 grew from the myth that a flying saucer, which reportedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, had been transported to this isolated desert facility for study. Conspiracy theorists took the government’s denial as proof it really had happened. They strung together reports of strange lights, the testimony of charlatans and crackpots, and their own paranoia into a fantastic story of reverse engineering on the ships and bizarre medical experiments on the crew.

Mercer didn’t believe a word of it. Area 51 was simply the place where the military developed our next-generation aircraft in secret. Disregarding the absurdity that an advanced civilization was clumsy enough to crash on earth, the idea that the military could keep such a secret for half a century defied belief.

The one part of the story he did believe, however, was that the security forces at Area 51 were authorized to use deadly force. He had no idea if this directive had ever been needed, but he’d heard of cases where backpackers and aircraft watchers were escorted from the region by hard-looking well-armed men they’d derisively dubbed Cammo Dudes.

The window shade snapped closed like a guillotine. When Mercer looked up, Captain Sykes’s eyes held equal measures of displeasure and resignation. “You shouldn’t have done that, Doc.”

Before Sykes could say anything further, the copilot emerged from the cockpit. “Captain, a word.”

Sykes joined him at the front of the cabin and listened for several seconds. He nodded once then returned to his seat. The copilot closed the cockpit door behind himself.

Before sitting, Sykes reached into an overhead storage bin. He retrieved a helmet and tossed it onto Mercer’s lap. It resembled a welder’s helmet, but the face shield was completely opaque. With it on Mercer wouldn’t be able to see a thing. “You’re going to have to put that on when we land,” Sykes said.

“Captain, I know where we are. Is this really necessary?”

“If you pretend you don’t know where we’re landing, I don’t have to pretend to fill out a ton of useless reports. Call it a favor. Seems we’ve hit a bit of head-wind on our way here. Usually we’d land and you’d be transferred to a blacked-out van. But we’ve missed our schedule, and in about ten minutes a Russian spy satellite will be passing overhead. We’re going to be landing normally, but we’ll taxi straight into one of the hangars.” Sykes’s voice took on an earnest tone. “Security at this installation is the tightest in the world, Doc. Standing orders are to shoot first and don’t worry about the questions afterward. You reading me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m telling you this to save your life. When we get off this aircraft, I’ll guide you along. Do not remove that helmet. You do and they won’t just pull a gun on you. They’ll drop you where you stand.”

Mercer let a sarcastic retort die on his lips. Sykes was telling him this for his own good. He twisted the clumsy-looking helmet on his lap. “Just tell me when to put it on.”

The plane continued its descent, leaving the glare of Las Vegas a hundred miles astern, and made its approach on the longest runway in the world, a strip of reinforced concrete more than twice the length needed to accommodate the space shuttle. The Gulfstream touched down more gently than any commercial flight Mercer had ever been on. In a race to hide from the spy satellite coming over the horizon, her engines barely seemed to slow as the pilot looped them across the apron for a distant hangar.

The sudden deceleration when the aircraft reached its destination chirped rubber from the tires and jolted Mercer in his seat. The executive jet seesawed on its landing gear as the engines wound to silence.

“Okay, Doc, might as well get that face shield on,” Sykes suggested. “I’ll take care of your bag.”

Mercer slipped into his jacket and settled the helmet on his head. His world went gray. The lack of vision was momentarily disorienting. Not until he tipped his head back could he see the tops of his shoes and the plush carpet. “Feels like we’re going to play a bizarre game of pin the tail on the donkey.”

Sykes laughed. “So long as the guards don’t play pin the nine millimeter on the geologist. Okay, come toward my voice. There’s enough headroom so you don’t need to duck. That’s good. All right, turn here. You’re almost at the boarding stairs. There’s four of them to the tarmac.”

Sensing a change in lighting as he neared the exit, Mercer paused, gave Sykes’s warning a half second’s consideration, and pulled the helmet from his head.

What he saw took his breath away.

The hangar was several orders of magnitude larger than the one at Andrews, lit with powerful lights recessed in the ceiling ten stories over his head. The huge doors, easily large enough to accommodate a commercial airliner, had already closed behind the Gulfstream. It wasn’t the building’s multiacre dimensions that caught his attention; they barely made an impression. Nor did the matte-black snout of a B-2 Stealth bomber as it loomed like some nightmare creature, its knife-edge silhouette interrupted only by the integrated engine nacelles and her two-man cockpit.

What drew his attention was the saucer-shaped aircraft hovering a short distance to his left. The craft floated soundlessly a couple feet above the concrete floor. It was just there, impossibly hanging in space. The saucer was roughly thirty feet in diameter and maybe eight feet tall, composed of a silvery material with a sleek texture.

Then Mercer did a double take and burst out laughing even as Sykes came bundling up behind him. What he thought was alien writing on the side of the aircraft was actually a very stylized font that spelled out ACME SAUCER COMPANY. The hovering disc was an elaborate model, some technician’s idea of a joke. The cables suspending it from the ceiling became apparent when Mercer looked for them.

There was no sign of the armed security Sykes had warned him about.

Who was waiting there made Mercer do his second double take. Ira Lasko stood off to the side with a woman in a white lab coat. They were beyond easy conversation range, so Mercer turned his head to address Sykes. “Thought you’d never met Ira.”

Sykes shrugged. “Hell, I’m not really your escort either. Admiral Lasko sent me to D.C. yesterday and I just happened to catch this flight back.”

Mercer descended the boarding stairs and crossed the fifty feet to Ira. The deputy national security advisor was in his mid-fifties, painfully thin, but with unbelievable strength for his size. He kept his head completely shaved in a tactical retreat from pattern baldness. It leant him a determined air that augmented his pugnacious jaw and penetrating mind. His eyes were a watchful brown under silvering brows. He wasn’t particularly tall at five feet seven, but his authority was not in doubt.

Ira wore khaki pants, a matching shirt and a Navy bomber jacket. The temperature in the hangar barely reached fifty degrees. Despite its desert location, Area 51 lay nearly five thousand feet above sea level.

“I told the security chief that you wouldn’t wear the helmet if the plane had to park in here.” Ira waved toward the far side of the hangar, where futuristic-looking shapes — aircraft, no doubt — were hidden under large tarps. “That’s why the really interesting stuff was covered up.”

Mercer’s anger at the tactics to get him here had been replaced by a sense of awe. He was being granted a peek at the innermost sanctum of government secrecy. If the conspiracy nuts were correct, things went on here even the president didn’t know about. Still, he wouldn’t give Ira the satisfaction of showing that the surroundings had shaken his composure. He took Ira’s proffered hand. “Are you going to explain why you felt it necessary to have me shanghaied? A phone call and a plane ticket to Vegas would have sufficed.”

“I’ve been calling your place for two days,” Ira replied. “I didn’t leave a message because Harry kept answering the phone.” He and Harry had swapped war stories on several occasions. Ira had spent his early naval career aboard submarines, and Harry had spent his dodging them in the Pacific. “You think if I let on that you were coming here that he wouldn’t be on the next plane out?”

Mercer couldn’t deny that possibility, no, inevitability. “Maybe he should be out here. Don’t forget, he saved my ass in Panama last fall.”

“And ran up about six grand in gambling debts on your credit card.”

Mercer’s smile turned to a frown. Ten thousand was closer to the truth.

“Besides,” Ira continued, “you won’t need him watching your back. You’re out here for a straightforward job. Nothing fancy, but something you’re eminently qualified for. A job that we consider vital.”

Mercer cocked an eyebrow. “We?”

Ira turned to the woman standing at his side. “This is Dr. Briana Marie. She’s heading the project. She’ll explain everything.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Doctor.” Mercer shook the petite brunette’s hand. She wore no makeup; her girl-next-door appeal didn’t need any. He laughed to himself when she used her left hand to unnecessarily wipe at the lapel of her lab coat. Her wedding ring flashed in the bright light. Then he considered the situation from her perspective. There were probably a hundred men for every woman here and an early declaration of her marital status must have become habit. “Are you an M.D.?”

“Nuclear physicist,” she replied in a remarkably deep voice.

The answer surprised Mercer. He looked to Ira.

“A lot more than testing aircraft takes place here,” the admiral explained. “All of it under complete compartmentalization. Hell, I only know a few things under development and I’m on the president’s staff.”

“A case of the right hand not knowing what the left is up to?” Mercer joked.

“The personnel here don’t even know there is a left hand,” Dr. Marie deadpanned.

“Even with your top secret clearance,” Ira went on, “I had to pull some strings so you’d know the details of this operation. The men you’ll be working with have no idea.”

Mercer got a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the weather. He’d spent enough time with Ira to fairly judge his moods. The stress lines around his eyes and on his forehead hadn’t been there the last time they’d shared a drink at Tiny’s. And his pallor went far beyond a normal end-of-winter hue. “What’s going on here, Ira?”

Briana Marie answered, “There’s been an accident. People are dead. We need you to carry on with their work.”

The whistle of wind beyond the hangar doors sounded like a mourning dirge.

Mercer learned he’d be spending the night at the main complex. Tomorrow he’d be taken to an even more secret base on the Area 51 grounds, a place Ira called DS-Two. Ira asked Captain Sykes to show him to his billet in a building behind the hangar. A metal roof covered the walkway, presumably to hide foot traffic from orbital observation.

The room was like any hotel Mercer had ever stayed at, only the door locked from the outside. To leave, he had to buzz a uniformed staffer seated in the barracks’ reception area. He took his first shower since Canada, thirty-six hours and roughly five thousand air miles ago. Returning west had fortunately nullified his jet lag. As the scalding water sluiced across his body, he thought of the old joke about a harried tourist on a package tour. “Oh, it’s Monday. Then this must be Rome.”

By the time he’d toweled dry, he’d figured out what Dr. Marie was working on. With Yucca Mountain only a short distance away, the answer was obvious.

Sykes was waiting for him at the reception desk when the corporal on duty allowed him out of his room.

“Is this your regular posting?” Mercer asked as Sykes led him across the facility.

“Nah,” Sykes drawled. “Me and my team have been here a month.”

“Team?”

“Delta Force.” This was the army’s elite hostage rescue team. “If you don’t mind a little free advice, Doc, I’ve learned you get along better out here if you don’t ask too many questions.”

Despite their awkward introduction, Mercer found he liked the soldier. He’d already realized his slow demeanor wasn’t laziness. Rather, Sykes possessed a cool deliberation, as if he knew when he woke each morning every action his body would take and every word he’d need to speak. It was only a matter of doling them out at the right time.

“And let me guess,” Mercer commented, “one question is too many?”

Sykes grinned. “You’re catching on.”

Sykes led him to a nondescript building, a slab-sided office cube with the architectural flair of a Soviet apartment house. Most of the base had been built in the 1960s and substantially expanded in the ’80s, yet it retained the Cold War sterility of its roots. The buildings Mercer could see were laid out in geometric blocs. There was no ornamentation, no landscaping and certainly no streetlights.

Nor, he noticed, were there any people. It was like walking around a postapocalyptic ghost town.

“Kinda creepy, huh?” Sykes seemed to be reading Mercer’s thoughts as they reached the building’s door. “I guess the isolation really gets to some of the people out here, having to live under cover all the time. A couple days after I got here, a bunch of the younger soldiers were given permission to put on a show for a Chinese spy satellite.”

“What’d they do?” Mercer followed Sykes to a flight of stairs. The building’s interior was as drab as the outside.

“They laid themselves out on the runway in nothing but their birthday suits. They used their bodies to spell out ‘Up yours, Mao.’ ”

Mercer laughed. “Would the Chinese be able to see it?”

“Shit, they’ve stolen enough of our technology to be able to tell which ones were circumcised.”

At the head of the stairs, Sykes opened a paneled door into a conference room, then told Mercer that Ira would escort him back to his room. The two men shook hands at their parting.

Heavy drapes were drawn over the room’s picture window, and banker’s lamps reflected puddles of cherry light off the burnished table. Along one wall were photographs of the U-2 spy plane. Ira sat at the head of the table, his jacket draped over his chair. He’d had the foresight to bring a bottle of his favorite Scotch and a bucket of ice.

Mercer accepted a glass gratefully. Though not a Scotch drinker, this had shaped up to be one of those days. Dr. Marie, on Ira’s left, drank from a bottle of water.

Sitting opposite the physicist, Mercer saluted them both with his drink, knocked it back in two quick swallows then shredded their veil of secrecy with his accurate hypothesis. “You’re building a subterranean repository for undocumented nuclear waste, like what the Department of Energy is constructing at Yucca Mountain.”

The silence had the weight of lead.

Dr. Marie finally managed to stammer, “How did you…,” before her voice failed her.

Ira merely laughed.

For half a century America’s nuclear power plants had been splitting untold tons of radioactive material to extract its energy. The result was a vastly more concentrated product than what went into the reactors, a deadly waste that wouldn’t lose its lethality for millennia. The short-term solution had been to store this waste in cooling pools at the plants. The only viable long-term disposal method was to find a suitable place to bury it and hope to God that they could put a heavy enough cork on it to keep the nuclear genie in its bottle.

Work was currently under way to construct a pair of fourteen-mile tunnels a thousand feet below Yucca Mountain. The waste would be stored in rooms excavated off these tunnels. Even with the water table lying a further thousand feet below the repository, extraordinary measures were to be taken to prevent seepage from coming into contact with the impenetrable casks that would contain the radioactive materials.

The forty thousand tons of nuclear waste currently stockpiled would be moved to the facility over the next two decades. When the repository reached its seventy-seven-thousand-ton capacity, there would be a century of additional monitoring before the complex was completely sealed in 2116.

Mercer gave Dr. Marie an ironic smile. “To answer your almost asked question, it’s the only thing that makes sense. We’re maybe forty miles from Yucca Mountain, you’re a nuclear engineer and my principal job is digging tunnels. That adds up to only one thing. Throwing Ira’s presence into the mix just gives this situation the right touch of subterfuge.”

“I resent that defamation of my character,” Ira grumbled without malice. “And your assessment is a bit off. The waste we plan to store here is documented. What we want to do is bring in most of the really nasty stuff before anyone knows it’s on the move.”

“By nasty you mean the waste left over from our weapons program and by anyone you mean terrorists?”

“Exactly.” Ira recharged Mercer’s glass. “We want to do the same thing they did when they transported the Hope Diamond.”

Mercer knew that story well. The last time the fabled diamond was moved from its home at the Smithsonian to New York City for a thorough examination and cleaning the security had been unprecedented — armored cars, police escorts and a large contingent of guards. Yet when they arrived at Harry Winston’s Jewelers in Manhattan, the box containing the fabulous gem was empty. What no one knew, not the guards, not the media or the public, was that the security entourage had been a ruse to throw off potential thieves. The stone had actually been sent in a nondescript package through the regular mail.

Dr. Marie leaned forward in her chair. “We’ll use standard shipping casks and all the regular safety devices, but we want to avoid the media attention that would tip off terrorists or anyone else who wants to derail the operation. By shipping material in secret, we eliminate the temptation.”

“How long do you plan to keep the waste here?” Mercer asked.

“It’ll be moved into the permanent repository over time. Because of the heat generated by the material we’ll be storing here, it has to be spread out all through the Yucca Mountain facility.”

“What we’re looking to build,” Ira interrupted, “is a temporary holding area away from media attention and out of reach of terrorists. Nothing will remain here by the time the main site is sealed.”

Leaning back, Mercer digested what he’d learned. He grasped the need for what Ira wanted to do. He knew that a great deal of nuclear policy was based on emotion rather than science, although he didn’t discount the horror if there ever was a major catastrophe, or even a minor one. By moving the worst of the waste before anyone knew it was happening, Dr. Marie felt she could cut the nation’s anxiety levels as well as better protect the shipments. It made sense because one way or the other the material would be transported.

He understood the need for secrecy. What they hadn’t explained is the urgency, and he was willing to wait for hours before asking that question. While it was Ira’s nature not to divulge any more than necessary, Mercer wouldn’t agree to help until he knew the whole truth. He didn’t take it personally. It was the price he paid for his friendship with a professional spy.

Neither Ira nor Mercer showed the least discomfort sitting next to each other in silence. Dr. Marie, however, felt the urge to fill the lull. “We had an accident two days ago. A cave-in. We’ve been running twenty-four hours a day in three shifts, ten men per shift. The collapse occurred during a shift change. Fifteen men, including two shift supervisors, were killed.”

“The other five?” Mercer asked.

“Escaped unharmed,” she replied. “For security reasons, we don’t want to bring in any more miners. However, we all felt that we needed a second engineer. When our request reached Admiral Lasko, he said he had the right person. You’re a mine engineer who already has a high enough security clearance to work here.”

Again, Mercer noticed, nothing was said about the urgency.

“Listen, Mercer.” Ira’s voice deepened. “We’re already two months behind schedule. The tunnels should already be done and contractors brought in to handle water seepage problems. The first load of waste will be arriving in one hundred twenty-one days.”

“Why so precise?”

“Because a storage pool at Oak Ridge won’t be able to take any more spent fuel rods and they’re scheduled to replace the current fuel assemblies in an experimental fast-breeder reactor in a hundred twenty-one days. We want to bring what’s in the pool here rather than shuffle it to another facility.”

Satisfied with the answer, Mercer asked the next question that was bothering him. “I was told I’d be here for a week. Obviously that’s bull. I’m in the middle of a contract with De Beers. How long do I have to put them off? Am I here for the two months you said you’re behind?”

Marie shook her head. “Our remaining shift boss says we’re no more than two weeks from breaking into the subterranean chamber we’re planning on using. It’s a natural pocket in the rock. Our original geologic survey said it’s a hollow space left behind after an intrusive magma dike subsided.”

That’s where the seepage Ira mentioned came into play, Mercer thought. Though not common, such a dike — basically a tongue of molten rock injected into the surrounding strata — can drain back into the central magma chamber that spawned it. In this situation, it leaves an empty cavity in the earth that often fills with water. Once they got the hydrology handled, it made sense to use this natural chamber for their short-term repository.

“Who did the original survey?” he asked, doubting they’d found a drained dike. It was more likely a sill or laccolith, which ran with the grain of sedimentary layering rather than against it.

“Gregor Hood.”

Mercer nodded. “I know him. He takes a while, but he’s good. What about the other shift supervisor? Who have you got?”

“Donald Randall, he’s a professional miner from Kentucky.”

It took a moment for the name to sink in. “Donny Randall?”

“He prefers Donald,” Dr. Marie said primly, as if maintaining such niceties could somehow lessen the feeling of loathing Randall created.

Mercer’s eyes bored into Ira’s. His voice went flint-hard and accusatory. “You hired Randall the Handle? Do you know what an effing psychopath he is?”

Ira looked away. “We’ve had some complaints about him, but it’s too late. He’s already here and we can’t bring in anyone else.”

Donny Randall, Randall the Handle, got his nickname in South Africa before the end of apartheid. He’d gone there because his reputation for quick violence had gotten him booted from the United Mine Workers and blackballed from every mine in the States. South Africa became a perfect place for him. It wasn’t so much that he was racist, he was simply sadistic. Back then the black miners had no way to redress labor issues so he could be as brutal as he wanted without fear of retribution.

Standing six feet six, with a build to match, Randall delighted in fighting any man who challenged him, though he preferred to use the handle of a pickax rather than his fists, thus his moniker. Mercer had heard that he’d killed at least six men in the mines around Johannesburg and had beaten dozens more. It was also in South Africa that Randall had found another application for his two-inch-diameter piece of hardened hickory. He’d use it to sodomize workers too young or too small to defend themselves. Because of the permissive attitude of the courts, he hadn’t been tried for any of his acts. He’d left the country when Nelson Mandela assumed the presidency. Some said he was asked to go, but Mercer believed the story that he’d fled from a mob of black miners who’d wanted to give him a Soweto necklace — a burning tire around his neck.

His name had come up from time to time in the years since, but Mercer hadn’t known Randall had returned to the States. The last he’d heard, Donny was in a Russian prison following an attempt to steal diamonds from the Mir mine in northern Siberia.

Mercer finally stopped staring at the top of Ira’s bald head and allowed his eyes to sweep across Dr. Marie. If she thought all mine engineers were like Randall, no wonder she’d been chilly toward him. “I’ll help with your project,” he said, and Ira looked up, “on the condition that I can square things with De Beers—”

“We’ll take care of that.”

“—and that you make sure Randall knows I’m in charge. You’ve got enough men for two shifts working eight- to ten-hour days. Once we’re settled I don’t even want to see that son of a bitch.”

Ira and Briana Marie realized the emotion in Mercer’s voice wasn’t fear of Don Randall. It was fear he’d kill him.

“Thank you, Dr. Mercer,” Briana said. “You don’t know what this means to us.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Ira added, a couple of the tension lines in his forehead subsiding. This time he filled three tumblers with Scotch and they toasted each other.

The following morning, Mercer and Ira boarded a Chevy Suburban identical to the one that had taken him to Andrews Air Force Base. He idly hoped the government received a volume discount on the massive SUVs.

There was one difference, he quickly discovered. This vehicle had heavy curtains drawn over the windows and an opaque screen dividing them from the driver. Despite what he’d seen the evening before, it was obvious he wasn’t cleared to view other parts of Area 51. Then he thought that maybe Ira wasn’t cleared either. An interesting notion.

When he asked about Dr. Marie, Ira explained that she now worked out of Washington and had only come to Nevada for the briefing the night before. She wouldn’t be needed at the secret repository until well after the tunnel had been excavated. As the darkened truck rolled away from the base the two men passed the time drinking a thermos of coffee and reminiscing about their first meeting in Greenland almost a year ago.

Once the van reached an area beyond the immediate perimeter of Groom Lake, the unseen driver lowered the partition so they could see out the windshield and Ira drew back the curtains.

The mountains held a distant chill even if last night hadn’t been cold enough for frost. The few plants, cactus, yucca, and sage mostly, were stunted by their harsh environment as though life in the barren stretches was an experiment that was slowly failing. This was a land of rock in a thousand shades that changed and shifted as the sun rose higher. The dome of sky hinted that it stretched far beyond the horizon but seemed contained by the jagged hills.

Their destination was two hours from the main base, tucked at the end of a box canyon. Mercer recognized that the mounds of tailings, the material excavated from a mine shaft, had been spread evenly along the canyon floor to disguise that any work was taking place. The camp was nothing more than several battered mobile homes situated close to the towering canyon walls. An overhang of rock at the canyon’s lip kept the facility in perpetual shadow and hid it from aerial observation.

The camp was as forlorn as a West Texas trailer park, Mercer thought, although he’d worked in much, much worse. A tumbleweed skittered from between two trailers, whirled in a crosscurrent of wind, then dashed past the SUV like a frightened animal.

Then he spotted a natural cave at the end of the canyon. It was at least seventy feet wide and nearly half as tall. It appeared to stretch a hundred feet or more into the mountain. Powerful arc lights mounted on scaffolds lit the interior and highlighted the machinery at the top of a twenty-foot-square hole driven into the living rock. The two-story hoist allowed overburden to be dumped directly into trucks that spread it on the desert floor. Nearby were massive ventilator ducts to keep fresh air circulating underground and several box trailers for storage. Near the mouth of the cave were two large generators for power and the massive outlet of a down-hole water pump to handle drainage.

Mercer was impressed with the security as well as the efficiency of what Ira had created here. “Put in a golf course and some condos and you’d have a nice spot for a retirement community.”

“Hell Hollow Home for the Aged?”

Mercer laughed, grateful that the Ira he knew was coming back. “I was thinking Desolate Digs for the Near-Dead. Harry could be your spokesman.”

The Suburban braked at the first of the trailers. Ira stepped to the dusty ground as the trailer door swung open. The man standing at the threshold in jeans, cowboy boots, and a white T-shirt seemed as apropos as the tumbleweed that had crossed their path. As dried and tough as a piece of beef jerky, he squinted at Mercer and then nodded when he recognized Ira. “Howdy, Mr. Lasko. This our new boss?”

“Hey, Red.” What little showed of Red’s hair from under his hat was brown. “This is Mercer.”

“I heard of ya.” Red’s voice twanged like an untuned guitar. “You’re that fella what found a new diamond mine in Africa a couple years back.”

They shook hands while Ira continued the introductions. “Red Harding was the number-two man on the shift that lost half the crew during the cave-in.”

“You didn’t want to take over?” Mercer asked, needing to know now if this guy resented him for taking a job he felt he might have deserved.

“Hell, son” — Red was perhaps fifteen years older than Mercer, although it wouldn’t come as a surprise if he had fathered some children in his mid-teens — “comes a time in a man’s life where he don’t wanta give the orders no more. It’s a piece easier just takin’ ’em.”

“Tell me what happened?” Mercer invited.

Red paused, giving the question thought despite the days he’d already had to consider the cause of the cave-in. “A chunk of hanging wall that had no reason to crack loose cracked loose. Came down in a flat piece about eight feet thick that spanned the entire drive. Crushed everyone under it. Fifteen men.”

Mercer got the sense that Red wasn’t comfortable with this vague description of the accident. Not that he was holding anything back. It was just that there was something about it he didn’t understand. “You hadn’t bolted the hanging wall?” Hanging wall was mining parlance for the roof of a tunnel. Bolting was what it sounded like, screwing long bolts into the ceiling to help stabilize the rock.

“No need. We’re boring through some serious hard-rock. No water seepage, no fissures, nothing.”

“They’re bolting it now,” Ira offered.

Mercer expected no less.

After being shown his room in one of the trailers, Mercer changed into his miner’s coveralls while Ira was loaned a spare set by Red Harding. With no place to hide his pistol in the utilitarian room, Mercer decided he’d keep it with him. He tucked it against the small of his back under the coveralls and planted his helmet on his head.

Ira had to keep his baseball cap on to prevent the helmet Red had given him from slipping across his hairless scalp. He suffered the ignominy in silence.

The cavern was markedly cooler than the canyon, even with the excess heat generated by the diesel-powered equipment.

As they waited for the personnel lift to trundle up from underground, Mercer examined a fist-sized chunk of rock that had spilled from the ore shoot. He always marveled at the fact that in the millions, or even billions, of years since this innocuous lump of stone had solidified in the earth’s crust, not one human had ever seen it. He was the first to give it any thought at all. It made him feel like a Golden Age explorer peering at a newly discovered continent. He’d worked in mines since his teenage years in the granite quarries of Vermont, and that thrill had never left him.

The cage hoist arrived with a clang of bells and the three men stepped into the roomy car. The small scope of the project meant that one mine shaft could be used for hauling material from the depths as well as transporting the men to and from work and provide forced air ventilation through enormous ducts secured to the side of the hole.

The bells rang again and the bottom fell out from under them.

Ira clutched at a safety rail while Red and Mercer suppressed knowing smiles. The first descent into a mine was a terrifying experience that many could never repeat. Lasko finally released his grip on the railing when he’d regained his equilibrium.

“And I thought commuting to work around Washington was bad,” he said to cover his apprehension. “Is it always like that?”

Red shook his head. “The horizontal tunnel we bored off this shaft is eight hundred feet below us. In South Africa, some of the men work ten times deeper. To get them there quickly, you damn near free-fall the whole way.”

“Hell of a way to make a living,” Ira remarked as they dropped into impenetrable darkness.

Mercer ignored the sarcasm. “It sure is.”

Several minutes later, the rattling car slowed and a yellowish glow seeped up from around the elevator’s edges. They were nearing where men drilled and blasted toward the subterranean cavity the Department of Energy planned to use as their temporary storehouse.

Red threw open the gate when the car stopped bouncing at the end of its eight-hundred-foot tether. The chamber was the size of a railway tunnel and well lit. They were that much closer to the earth’s core, so the workings were appreciably warmer too, though not uncomfortably so. In ultradeep mines, ventilated air was forced through massive refrigeration units just to maintain a temperature of one hundred degrees. Littering the antechamber were hydraulic compressors for the drills, mechanical scrapers and other specialty equipment designed to operate in the claustrophobic confines of the tunnel.

At the far end of the room was the main tunnel, lit by a string of bulbs that vanished far into the distance. “How long is the drive?” Mercer asked.

“Twelve hundred feet,” Red said as he stepped over snaking coils of hydraulic lines and power cords as thick as his wrist. “The lab coats who told us where to dig wanted the access shaft sunk fifteen hundred feet from the pocket.”

“What about the sump under the hoist?”

“The shaft bottoms out three hundred feet below this level.”

Meaning they could store more than a hundred thousand cubic feet of water below the level of the drive. “Why so deep?”

“The lab coats again. They say we’re blasting toward an underground lake. When we cut through they want to keep as much water as possible. Some sort of irrigation project, right, Mr. Lasko?”

“That’s right, Red.” Ira gave Mercer a significant look. Red didn’t know the details of the project. Mercer cut short his questioning.

Once they stepped out of the well-lit antechamber, the three men switched on flashlights and continued deeper into the guts of the mountain. The ceiling was a roomy eight feet and the passage was fifteen feet wide. Mercer assumed it was sized to accommodate the nuclear containment casks. Under the beam of his light, the stone was a featureless gray.

Ira asked about the puddles of dirty water on the floor.

“You use water to cool and lubricate the drill bits. Nothing to worry about,” Mercer replied, then added, “It’s when you see clear water that you should be concerned. This far down any sediment in the water has been distilled as it percolates through the rock. Clean water means seepage.”

A thousand feet down the tunnel, they came to where part of the hanging wall had let go. The debris and the bodies had been removed so the area looked sanitized. The only evidence of the tragedy was that the ceiling was double its normal height. The break where the stone had split appeared clean, as if the section that collapsed had been a separate piece of rock waiting for eons for its support to be taken away.

Mercer looked at Red.

“Like I said,” the Texan drawled, “weirdest damned thing.”

The bolt heads recently shot into the stone were silver bright.

They continued deeper into the tunnel. Heavy beams supported on timber balks had been placed every twenty feet. They used wooden columns because the fibers made popping sounds long before they collapsed, giving workers plenty of time to reshore the area or, if need be, to clear out entirely.

As they neared the working face, the sound of mine work became a teeth-shattering combination of steel on stone and the grind of heavy equipment. They passed several small mechanical shovels and a string of ore cars mounted on solid wheels. The awkward train, with its low-slung electric tractor, resembled a metallic centipede. Nearby was an even stranger insectlike machine, a four-drill drifter. The drifter was a platform mounted on crawler treads that could precisely position four of the heavy rock drills. The drills themselves were roughly the same size as machine guns and had the same wicked appearance. Hydraulic cables snaked from the machine like arteries.

The men at the tunnel’s limit worked in pairs using slightly smaller hammer drills to bore more holes into the stone. Rock chips and lubricating water spewed from the hundred-pound tools in a stinging rain. Sullen rainbows caught in the lights seemed to resent being caged in this stygian realm.

Mining had come a long way from the days when men hand-packed sticks of dynamite into drill holes and hoped for the best. Advances in explosives and techniques meant miners could peel rock with near-surgical precision. Here the men used the drifter to drill out the larger holes at the center of an expanding spiral pattern. The rest of the holes were hand-drilled using notes on depth and angle determined by the shift boss. This intricate arrangement allowed the explosives in the middle to core out a void in the rock face. Timed with microsecond delays, the next ring of charges blew debris laterally into the cavity, expanding it and creating space for the rubble from still more shots. The explosions corkscrewed out like a blooming flower and gave the men unprecedented control over how much material they excavated with each shot.

Red broke away from Mercer and Ira to tap the shift boss on the shoulder. With the drillers working full out, it was impossible to hear over the din.

Even before he turned, Mercer recognized Donny Randall just from his size and the slope of his wide shoulders. His blocky head made his helmet look like a finger bowl.

They’d met once in Botswana, at a retirement party for the underground manager of the Orapa mine. Donny had been at the stylish affair because an incentive contest gave an invitation to the shift boss whose gang held the monthly record for most ore removed. He’d basically brutalized his way in. As he partied that night, one of his men was in a hospital bed recovering from a slenectomy while another was learning to eat without front teeth, all thanks to Donny’s pick handle.

Mercer had learned about this and some of his earlier exploits in South Africa later, although even then he could sense Donny’s brute stupidity and elemental savagery. As one of the only Americans there, Donny had tried to speak with Mercer. He’d been drunk when he’d arrived at the hotel ballroom and could only slur his words.

The incident was one of the few times Mercer’s memory had failed him and for this he was grateful. He couldn’t recall what was said during their minute-long conversation, but he did remember that Donny had been thrown out of the hotel by a half dozen guards, most of whom went home with bruises or black eyes as souvenirs.

Randall had a brutal face, heavy brows and a mouth perpetually twisted into a smirk. His nose looked so often broken and reset there was little cartilage remaining. His hair was dyed jet-black and he sported sideburns like a latter-day Elvis. His eyes were dark and disturbing. It wasn’t their shade that was so unsettling, it was their feral quickness. They twitched from person to person as though he was a cornered animal seeking escape, or a liar waiting to be found out.

Mercer knew him to be both.

Randall’s eyes finally settled on Ira and he gave a mock salute. The fact that Admiral Lasko signed the paychecks did little to impress him. Red indicated that they should move back down the drive to get away from the din.

“What are you doing back here?” Donny demanded of Ira. Like many paranoids, he never understood that his brusque suspicion contributed to the cycle of animosity he encountered.

Ira let the lack of respect slide. “I’m here with the new shift boss to replace Gordon and Kadanski. This is Mercer.”

Donny made no move to shake hands, nor did it appear he recognized the name or Mercer’s face.

“We’re down to sixteen men, including him.” Randall tossed his head in Mercer’s direction. His voice was a strange combination of menace and petulance. “Because you won’t get more miners you can’t expect me to make your schedule.”

“I’ve seen the progress reports,” Ira replied evenly. “Even when you had three shifts you guys weren’t making three shots a day.”

“That wasn’t my fault. Gordon and Kadanski didn’t know what they were doing. Hell, if I hadn’t picked up their slack we wouldn’t have moved ten feet from the main shaft.”

Red Harding’s derisive cough wasn’t necessary. Mercer knew Donny was blaming the dead men to cover his failure.

It had taken only moments, but Ira had had enough, remarkable since Mercer had rarely known him to get upset. Randall had that effect on people. Ira stiffened, his bearing becoming that of a thirty-year naval veteran dressing down a subordinate. “Mercer will be in charge from now on, so you don’t need to worry about my schedule. All you have to do is work where and how he says or you’re through. Are we clear?”

Donny Randall muttered something unintelligible.

“What was that?” Ira snapped.

“I said yeah.”

“You will say, yes, sir.”

Donny’s defiance lasted a fraction of a second. It was a murderous spark that blazed behind his eyes, a savage glimpse into his capacity for rage. It vanished as abruptly as a cage door slamming. His expression shifted to an empty smile. “Yes, sir.” He stepped closer to Mercer to shake hands. “Welcome aboard. Good to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Mercer choked.

Fifteen hours later, Ira had returned to the main Area 51 complex for his flight back to Washington. Mercer had his crew working nights, leaving the day shift to Donny Randall.

The night sky was suffused with a blur of stars so startlingly close they appeared to hang just overhead. The air was still, timeless. Moonlight electrified the drab landscape, highlighting features with its silvery glow while outlining others in deepest shadow.

Don Randall gave no indication he saw the ephemeral beauty, let alone gave it any consideration. He strode across the desert with the single-minded determination of a migrating animal, driven by instinct rather than intellect.

He’d created elaborate excuses for the hour-long walks he took every couple of nights, although none of the men had shown the slightest interest in his activities. He took their silence as respect for his privacy, never considering they were glad for anything that got him out of the communal recreation hall.

His boots dug deep into the loose scree as he panted his way up a hillock two miles from camp. At the top of the hill he checked the loose piles of boulders he’d stacked around his cache. None of the tells he’d left appeared disturbed, nor were there any footprints that didn’t match his size-thirteen feet. He grunted his satisfaction and tore into the pile, heaving fifty-pound rocks as though they weighed no more than bricks.

Ten minutes after beginning his work, his fingers closed around the plastic handle of an armored suitcase and with one jerk he freed the case. He was careful to dust off the lid before opening it.

While the electronics within the case were state-of-the-art microminiaturization, the banks of batteries gave the crate its size and considerable weight. Also nestled inside the case was a compass. He set the box on the ground and rotated it until the retractable antenna pointed ten degrees east of due south, as he’d been taught. When he switched on the electronics he was greeted by a series of green indicator lights and the machine emitted a high-pitched tone. It had found the satellite hanging twenty-two thousand miles from Earth.

The complexities of the heavily encrypted satellite phone were beyond him. All he knew was what direction to point it and how to turn it on. He’d tried using it once to dial a phone sex service, but the machine wouldn’t access the number. It could only reach the people who’d paid him to make reports about the mine.

He snatched the handset from its cradle, hit a button that activated the phone and waited for a single ring for an electronically muffled voice to answer.

“Go.”

Donny licked his dry lips. The voice had always given him an uncomfortable feeling, like there was nothing human behind it, like he was taking orders from a machine. “We’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?”

“The replacement for Gordon and Kadanski is here.”

“We expected there would be one. You know what to do.”

“It ain’t that easy. The new guy — it’s Philip Mercer.”

For the first time in all his conversations, the person/ machine paused. “Very well. Do nothing for now. We will deal with him when the time comes.”

“Okay,” Donny replied, but the connection had already been cut.