The first chopper arrived fifteen minutes later and went into a hover above them, lowering a rescue basket. Cash and Colcord lifted the now unconscious Holder into it, spear still sticking through his shoulder. The bird hoisted him up and took off.
Not long afterward, two Black Hawk helicopters belonging to Denver PD landed in the meadow below, and a SWAT team poured out, along with EMTs and paramedics.
That was fast, Cash thought. She watched them with her binoculars but did not see McFaul in the mix of people exiting the bird. He wasn’t in good shape and wouldn’t be able to climb up the ravine anyway, she thought, which still left her in charge.
“I count twelve,” said Colcord, looking down. “Well armed.”
“I’m going back in with them,” said Cash. “You?”
“Damn straight. I need to lead them to Johnson.”
The sun was hanging low over the mountains, the valley filling with golden light. A fall chill was settling down. They waited for the SWAT teams to climb up to the mine entrance. The soldiers arrived, led by a young redheaded woman, who gave Cash a crisp salute. “Lieutenant Commander Graves,” she said. “Denver PD.”
Cash covered up her surprise at seeing a woman SWAT team commander and then upbraided herself. “Agent in Charge Cash. And this is Eagle County Sheriff Colcord. There’s a man down back in the mine. We need to get him out now.”
Graves organized her people efficiently, and they went in, six soldiers in front with Colcord and Cash, and the rest behind with two medics and a stretcher. Colcord called out directions.
Going back into the mine set her on edge, but she found her fury at the killing of Johnson drove her forward. The men had bright headlamps that starkly illuminated the tunnels, reaching every hole and crevice. They moved quickly and silently, passing through the series of tunnels that led to the open gallery. As they came out into the large room, Cash could see it for the first time in sharp relief, the irregular space where, apparently, a large ore body had been removed and then turned into a staging area. Derelict mining equipment lay about, as well as rotting piles of rope and timbers. The tunnels were silent, the sounds of laughter and chanting gone.
Colcord directed them to the small opening at the far side, and they entered the labyrinth of tunnels beyond. There was still the faint smell of smoke but no sign of the killers. Colcord continued calling out the directions until they came around a corner where Johnson’s body had been. There was nothing there but blood on the rocky floor.
“Bastards,” said Colcord darkly, the lights playing on a small pool of blood, with a long trail behind it. “They took his body.”
There was a moment of silence. Cash struggled to master her own rage, mingling with a sick feeling of horror at what they might do to the body. She turned to Graves. “We need to sweep these tunnels. We need to run these fuckers down.”
“How big is the mine?” Graves asked.
“It’s big,” said Colcord. “I’ve got JPEGs of maps on my phone.”
“Can you Bluetooth them to the team?”
He did so.
Cash turned to Graves. “We should break the group up into teams to increase coverage.”
“Right. Three teams of four. You two go with whichever teams you wish.” She turned and issued the orders.
“I’ll accompany your team,” Cash said.
Graves called up the map on her phone and looked at it while Colcord explained where they were. “It’s not complete,” she said. “Where do the tunnels go from this point?”
“The guy who drew this map didn’t explore any farther.”
“Okay. We’ll divide it up into sectors.” She proceeded to do so, assigning leaders and navigators to each team and explaining the rules of engagement. “Unfortunately,” she said, “we can’t be in radio contact. We meet back here without fail at 2000 hours.”
The three teams set off, Cash’s team taking a tunnel to the left off the gallery. It appeared to be another feeder to the big space and the ore body beyond. They soon hit it, the tunnel branching into many side channels, vertical shafts, and crawl spaces. Where the seams broadened out, columns of rock had been left, with roof-shoring beams that looked rotten. The air became close and clammy, and the ceiling got lower, so much so that they had to stoop as they went along. Cash could almost feel the weight of a billion tons of mountain above her, and it set her on edge. She kept up near the front, next to Graves, scanning the cave floor with her beam, but there were no signs or marks of passage.
Every few minutes, they stopped to listen, but the only sounds they heard were the dripping of water and the occasional creaking of the mountain. As they swept the tunnels, it was all Cash could do not to think of those brutes desecrating Johnson’s body. At a certain point, the ceiling dropped farther, until they could not proceed unless they got down on their hands and knees. They crawled forward, the gritty, fractured rock floor digging into Cash’s knees. The entire tunnel began to slope upward, getting steeper so that they were half crawling, half climbing—until they abruptly emerged into a large cavity.
Now Cash faintly smelled something burnt drifting in the thick air. She signaled a stop, and they listened intently. Nothing.
They continued on. It was strange, she thought, that nothing seemed to live in the cave—none of the usual spiders or rats. They came to a partial cave-in—not on the map—and had to scramble over loose boulders and rocks, below other rocks still hanging precariously from the ceiling. Beyond, a small stream flowed along the bottom of the tunnel, the wet rocks stained orange, red, and green with metal oxides. The burnt smell grew stronger, acrid and metallic. Cash signaled at Graves, pointing to her nose, and Graves nodded.
Graves stopped, checking the map on her phone. “By my reckoning, we’re approaching the edge of the map now, or maybe a little beyond.”
The tunnel ended in a vertical shaft, with several chains hanging down, swaying and clinking back and forth in a strange movement of air. There was no way to cross. Graves edged up to it and gingerly shined her light down. She suddenly stepped back, her hand over her mouth, her face expressing shock and disgust.
Cash looked down.
The shaft ended about thirty feet below in a tangle of old iron cables and rotting wood. Among the detritus, Cash could see a horror—a scatter of dismembered limbs, a torso, and a debrided human skull in two pieces, with much of the flesh and hair still on it. Torn pieces of an Erebus security uniform lay scattered around.
Johnson.
“Good god,” said Graves.
Cash averted her eyes and backed up, struggling to suppress the sudden nausea that rose in her gorge.
The others came and looked down, issuing quiet expressions of shock and rage.
This was followed by silence.
“We’ll need special equipment to retrieve these remains,” said Cash. “And a forensics team. For now, I think we should keep going—if you agree, Commander?”
“I do agree. We need to run down the freaks who did this.”
But first they would have to cross the gap formed by the shaft. Cash could see there was a ledge, about a foot wide, running along the wall on one side of the pit. She turned and pointed to one of the team, who had a rope coiled up and attached to his pack. “You a rock climber?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Cross that ledge and set up a fixed rope at either end so the rest can edge across, clipping on to the rope as a safety.”
The man immediately went to work. Anchoring the rope at one end on an old beam, he worked his way across and tied it to an iron ring projecting from the rock, which he tested and found sound. He tightened it.
“Okay, let’s cross,” Cash said. “Cover both directions; this is a point of vulnerability.”
They crossed, one at a time, using a harness and carabiner clipped to the fixed rope, and continued on. The tunnel now plunged downward and narrowed vertically, as if following a vein into the mountain, becoming so tight they had to turn sideways in places.
“By my reckoning,” said Graves, “we’re now definitely off the map.”
“At every dividing point from now on,” said Cash, “we’ll lay down a marker.”
But the narrow tunnel did not branch. It ran straight for what seemed like hundreds of yards. Suddenly, Cash saw a flash and gleam in the distance. They stopped and crouched, playing the beam down the long crack—and as they moved their light, the light at the end of the tunnel moved accordingly.
“Something’s reflecting,” murmured Cash.
They went forward and moments later found themselves in front of a polished, stainless steel door that blocked the tunnel.
Cash was astonished at the mirrored surface of the door, seeing her own dirty, outraged reflection staring back.
“What’s this?” Graves asked. “This looks totally new.”
“I’m pretty sure this leads to the Erebus labs,” said Cash. “Built into the mountain. The Erebus security director said they had blocked some tunnels with steel barriers.”
Graves frowned. “What should we do … knock?”
Cash shook her head. “Nah. Why warn them? They can’t open it anyway. We need to get a warrant—and surprise the hell out of them.”