As soon as they were gone, he got Book's attention and pointed at the mine entrance behind the gas station, signalling, I'm going there. You wait here.
Book nodded.
Schofield then flicked on the small barrel-mounted flashlight on his Desert Eagle pistol and swam out through the rear window of the office, heading for the mine entrance at the base of the cliff.
He came to the boarded-up mine, and found that some of its rotting planks had been removed — possibly recently.
He swam inside.
Darkness met him. Impenetrable underwater darkness.
The narrow beam of his flashlight revealed rough rocky walls, submerged support beams, and the pair of mine-car tracks on the floor, disappearing into the shadows.
Schofield swam quickly through the mine tunnel, guided by the beam of his flashlight.
He had to keep track of how far he had gone. There would come a time very soon when he would have to make a choice: go back to Book and get some more air from the hose, or keep going, and hope he made it to a part of the mine that wasn't filled with water.
The only thing that convinced him that he would find such an air source was Botha. The South African scientist wouldn't have come here if he couldn't…
Suddenly Schofield saw a narrow vertical shaft branching off his tunnel. A rung ladder ran up its length.
He swam over to the shaft, pointed his flashlight up into it. The shaft went both up and down, disappearing into blackness in both directions. It was an access shaft of some sort, allowing quick and easy movement to all levels of the mine.
Schofield was running out of air.
He did the math.
The lake was about ninety feet deep here. Hence, ninety feet up that rung ladder, the water should level out.
Screw it.
It was the only option.
He turned back to get Book.
Two minutes later, he returned to the mine tunnel, this time with Book II — and the Football — beside him, plus a new lungful of air.
They headed straight for the vertical access shaft, used its rung ladder to pull themselves up it.
The shaft was a tight cylinder, with earthen doorways opening off it every ten feet or so.
Climbing it was like climbing up a very narrow sewer pipe.
Schofield led the way, moving quickly, counting the rungs as he climbed, calculating one foot for every rung.
At fifty rungs, his lungs began to burn.
At seventy, he felt bile crawling up the back of his throat.
At ninety, he still saw no sign of the surface, and he started to worry that he had got it all wrong, that he had made a fatal mistake, that this was the end, that he was about to black out — then suddenly, gloriously, Schofield's head exploded out of the water into beautiful cool air.
He immediately swung his body to the side to allow Book II to surface next to him. Book burst out of the water and both of them gulped in the fresh air as they hung from the ladder in the tight vertical well.
The shaft still rose into darkness above them — only now it was no longer filled with water.
Once he had regained his breath, Schofield climbed up out of the water and stepped through the nearest earthen doorway.
He emerged inside a wide flat-floored cavern, an old administration chamber for the mine.
What he saw inside the chamber, however, stopped him cold.
He saw boxes of provisions — food, water, gas cookers, powdered milk — hundreds of boxes.
Hundreds and hundreds of boxes.
A dozen fold-out cots lined the walls. A table covered with fake passports and drivers' licenses stood in one corner.
It's a camp, Schofield thought. A base camp.
With enough food to last for weeks, months even — for however long it would take for the United States government to stop searching Lake Powell for the men who had stolen the Sinovirus and its prized vaccine source: Kevin.
Then, once the coast was clear, Botha and his men would leave the lake and make their way back to their homeland at their leisure.
Schofield looked at the stacks of boxes. Whoever had done this had been bringing stuff here for a long time.
'Geez.' Book II joined Schofield in the chamber. 'Somebody came prepared.'
Schofield looked at his watch.
9:31 a.m.
'Come on. We've got twenty-nine minutes to get this briefcase back to the President,' Schofield said. 'I say we go for the surface, and see if there's a way to get back to Area 7.'
Schofield and Book II climbed.
As fast as they could. Up the vertical access shaft. Schofield with Botha's small Samsonite container. Book II with the Football.
Within a minute, they reached the top of the ladder and stepped up into a wide aluminum building of some sort, kind of like an oversized shed.
A set of mine-car tracks began over on the far side of the shed, disappearing into the earth. They were flanked by a collection of rusty loading trays and old conveyor belts. Everything was covered in dust and cobwebs.
Schofield and Book raced for the external door, kicked it open.
Brilliant sunlight assaulted their eyes, wind-blown sand blasted their faces. The sandstorm was still raging.
The two tiny figures of Schofield and Book II stepped out of the mine shed…and they found themselves standing on a gigantic flat-topped desert peninsula that stretched out into Lake Powell. They looked like ants against the magnificent Utah landscape — the magnitude of the earth around them dwarfing even the large aluminum shed from which they had emerged.
Strangely, though, there was another structure on this vast flat-topped peninsula. It stood a bare fifty yards away from the mine shed: a small farmhouse, with a barn attached to its side.
Schofield and Book ran for it through the storm-tossed sand.
The letterbox at the gate read: Hoeg.
Schofield bolted past it, into the front yard. He came to the side of the farmhouse, crouched underneath a window, peered inside, just as the wall beside him exploded with automatic gunfire. He spun to see a man dressed in denim overalls come charging around the corner of the farmhouse with an AK-47 assault rifle in his hands.
Blam!
Another shot rang out above the sandstorm and the farmer dropped to the dusty ground, dead.
Book II appeared at Schofield's side, his M9 pistol smoking.
'What the hell is going on here?' he yelled.
'I'm guessing,' Schofield said, 'that if we live through this, we'll find that Mr. Hoeg is a friend of Gunther Botha's. Come on.'
Schofield ran for the barn, threw open its doors, hoping against hope that he would find some kind of transportation inside it…
'Well, it's about time we had a bit of luck,' he said. 'Thank you, God. We deserved a break.'
Standing there before him — glistening like a new car in a showroom — was a vehicle common to the farms in these parts: a beautiful lime-green biplane, a crop duster.
Three minutes later, Schofield and Book were shooting through the sky, soaring high over the snakelike canyons of Lake Powell.
