“They wired it for audio and video surveillance,” Jimbo said and plucked the Coors from his chest before sitting up. “They were watching you, monitoring your progress as you went along. They didn’t need you to show them how it all worked because they were following your process all along.”
“I didn’t see any cameras,” Morris said.
“You wouldn’t,” Jimbo said. “You weren’t meant to.”
“Did you check it out, Jimbo?” Dwayne asked.
“Yeah. After we got back from The Then, I snooped around. They had full coverage of the Tube building. They saw and heard everything we did. Probably had the same deal in the reactor building.”
“And the resident hut?” Caroline asked in a low voice.
“I didn’t see anything there,” Jimbo lied.
“You wait till now to mention this?” Dwayne said.
“I thought it was them.” Jimbo gestured with the beer to Caroline and Morris.
Caroline began to object and Dwayne stood to cut her off.
“We were talking about gold, right?”
8
Desert High
They left the vehicles in a dry streambed and covered them with camo netting. It was a three-mile hike from the two four-wheel-drive trucks to the cave site and the Rangers timed it so the march was in the cooler hours of the early evening. The group of five followed a wall of rock around to the natural bowl of land where, a thousand centuries ago, a village of protohumans thrived.
The setting sun threw their shadows ahead of them as dark streaks on the blazing ground. They kept their boots on the rock scree to prevent any chance of a dust cloud that might give them away to anyone watching the horizon.
“Is all this really necessary?” Caroline said. She was having no trouble keeping up with Dwayne and Chaz. Jimbo walked point and Dr. Morris Tauber brought up the rear, struggling under his forty-pound pack.
“All what?” Dwayne said.
“This,” she said and gestured to take in the weaponry and the ammo vests the Rangers were wearing over their civilian clothes. This was traveling light for them. M4 rifles with four mags each for Dwayne and Chaz. Jimbo shouldered his favorite Winchester bolt-action with the 30x scope.
“Yes,” Dwayne said and picked up his pace to join Jimbo.
“If they were surveilling the compound electronically, they could have left some eyes behind,” Chaz said and slowed his pace to allow Caroline to keep up more easily and let her brother close the gap. “And tracks show they did make some patrols around their perimeter before they took off. They might want to discourage lookee-loos. They’d do more than that to us.”
“More than what?”
“Discourage.”
“Seems overly cautious,” she said.
“And who’s been hiding under an assumed name the last month?” Chaz said. “You sure seem squirrely about this Sir Neal. And we think you’re right. It wouldn’t take much to make him decide it was a mistake to let us all walk away.”
“And he’s got to be pissed about the reactor.”
“That, too.”
The path along the foot of the natural wall turned south to reveal a wide, flat plain of sand and scrub enclosed by a half-ring of rock face extending out from below the looming mesa. It was in blue shadow now as the sun fell. The temperature was dropping along with the sun. The sand and rocks cooled quickly as the night moved in. Twenty minutes brought them to the mouth of the cave and it was full dark by then.
In the failing light, Jimbo checked the ground all around. The only sign of recent human activity was the tracks left weeks ago by Morris when he excavated the cave with the help of the pair of Iranians. Piles of fresh earth were heaped before the cave mouth in a berm.
They unpacked in the gloom and set up a rudimentary camp before putting on NODs―night-vision lenses. They couldn’t risk a fire, the light of it would be seen for miles.
Caroline fought a chill she knew had nothing to do with the falling temperature. She was standing at the edge of what would have been a collection of huts all those years ago; the village that was home to hundreds of primitives now long gone and forgotten by history.
There was, of course, no sign of the aborigines who killed her friends and held her captive. Time had erased their existence. The place they once inhabited was barely recognizable, bare rock and desert sand where there was once forest running down to the shore of a massive lake. Only the half-circle of cliffs that once sheltered the village remained to remind her of the time and place where she had expected her life to end. And even they had been stunted and worn smooth by wind and time.
She was only alive thanks to the arrival of the same men who were now quietly setting up gear by the cave mouth. They were total strangers to her then and she knew little more about them now. She knew they were tough and smart and, from all she had seen, fearless.
Caroline didn’t like relying on others. But she realized that she would have been killed and eaten or even worse without their violent intervention. And she and Morris needed them even more now to protect them from the present-day threat of Sir Neal and the global reach of Gallant Ltd. She hoped she was right about the gold still being here. These men weren’t helping out of any interest in the advancement of quantum theory.
The Rangers had been promised ten million dollars to split but had only received an advance on that. While that advance made them all tax-free millionaires, they certainly felt as though Morris Tauber had shortchanged them. This primordial gold stash would make up the balance and then some.
“You okay to show us where to dig?” Dwayne held out NODs gear to her. Night vision lenses fixed to a head harness.
“Sure,” she said.
“I understand if going back to that cave is difficult for you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said and snatched the goggles from his hand.
A month before, Morris and the pair
