“If you want to go ahead without us, go,” she told him.
Casper didn’t wait around for a discussion. Instead, he began walking to their right.
“If we’re lucky, he’ll wander into a cave and never come out,” Storm said.
Oscar opened his backpack and removed four flashlights. “You’ll need these if you see an opening. But again, wait for everyone. It will be safer. Caving is dangerous.”
Showers and Storm began walking in the same direction as Casper. Dilya and Oscar went in the other direction.
For thirty minutes Storm and Showers moved slowly through the terrain, partly because it was rough climbing and she had only one arm. They didn’t see any obvious openings and it was beginning to get dark. They were just about to turn back when suddenly Casper’s head poked out from behind rocks about ten feet in front of them.
“I found an opening!” he yelled.
They hurried over to him. The crack would have been impossible to see if Casper hadn’t climbed between several large boulders. It was an opening about seven feet tall and two feet wide.
“I don’t have a flashlight, so I only got about fifteen feet inside, but the opening gets bigger as you go deeper,” he said. “Give me one of your flashlights and I’ll explore it while you go get the others.”
“We’re supposed to wait,” Showers said.
“What are you afraid of? You think I’m going to cart out sixty billion in gold in my pockets between the time you go get the others and come back here? I’m simply going to save us time in case this opening proves a dead end.”
Storm handed Casper his flashlight and he vanished through the crack. “I’ll go get the others so you can rest,” Storm volunteered. “You still have my Glock, right?”
Showers lifted her sling. His handgun was hidden behind it, tucked in the waistband of her jeans so she could draw it with her left hand.
Storm was able to backtrack quickly without Showers. He found Dilya and Oscar returning to the sheer wall.
“Casper’s gone into an opening,” he said, catching his breath.
The three of them began running and soon reached Showers, who was sitting outside the cave’s mouth. The sun was nearly completely down.
“Has he come back?” Storm asked.
“Nope. Gone like a rabbit.”
“Or a snake,” said Oscar, taking command. “I’ll go into the hole first, Dilya next, then Agent Showers, and finally you. He pointed at Storm. “There could be water, making it slippery, and be careful of drop-offs. You need to watch your heads so you don’t knock yourself out, but also keep the light on the ground so you don’t step off a ledge.”
“How about vampire bats?” Storm asked facetiously. “Just to keep things interesting.”
“If you’ve never been in complete darkness,” Oscar continued, “then you are in for a surprise. In a cave there is no light, no sunshine, not even starlight.”
“Like a coffin,” Dilya said.
Oscar reached into his bag and gave Storm a new flashlight since he had given his to Casper. The Russian then vanished into the opening with Dilya at his heels.
“Vampire bats, coffins, total darkness, steep ledges, and Casper the ghost lurking around,” Showers whispered to Storm as they entered the cave. “I might have had better odds being tortured.”
Their flashlights cut through the darkness, illuminating a narrow passageway. Storm guessed they had gone about fifteen feet inside the mountain when the crack started to expand and break in different directions. Oscar continued down the main one with everyone on his footsteps. Storm checked his watch as they made their way forward. He wanted to time how long they’d walked. When they’d traveled another twenty minutes, Oscar came to a stop and declared, “We’ve reached a chamber!”
They crowded up next to him and all shined their flashlights into the blackness. The chamber was at least thirty feet wide, hundreds of feet long, and forty feet high. It certainly was a big enough opening to hide sixty billion dollars of gold packed into cargo containers.
“Nearly all caves are made of calcite, the crystal of calcium carbonate,” Oscar explained. He shined his flashlight down and the light reflected back. About ten feet below them was a large pool of water. The roof of the cave was covered with stalactites; water drizzling along the walls had created cave draperies.
“The white that you are seeing is pure calcite,” Oscar said. “Other minerals, mostly iron, are responsible for the orange and red stains.”
“It’s beautiful,” Showers said.
“Yes,” added Dilya, “but there are no gold bars, no tanker containers.”
“If Casper had not taken the GPS, I would be able to tell if this cavern is behind the wall of granite,” Oscar complained.
“You mean this GPS?” Casper’s husky voice called from behind them. He held the GPS up in front of his flashlight for them to see. None of them had heard him approaching them. They shined their lights on him. His face was dirty, and in their flashlight beams, he looked even more menacing.
“You’re standing right where this GPS says there should be truckloads of gold,” Casper said. “And there ain’t no Commie gold bars anywhere around here. There’s nothing but water and rocks.”
“Could the gold be under the water?” Dilya asked, shining her light down at the pool beneath them. “Maybe when they destroyed the entrance, they created a dam.”
All of them pointed their lights at the water, but saw nothing except their own reflections staring back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Ivan Petrov must have been lying when he gave the coordinates for the gold to Lebedev,” Storm said.
“But I heard Lebedev say that he knew Petrov was telling him the truth about its location,” Showers said. “The two men had grown up together. They were like brothers.”
“Brothers don’t shoot each other in the foot and then between the eyes,” Storm replied. “Brothers don’t kill each other for gold-usually.”
“I’ve checked all of the other tunnels except for one, ladies,” Casper declared. “They’re all dead ends and there is no gold hidden in any of them.”
“How about the one you didn’t check?” Oscar asked.
“It goes in the opposite direction of us. It goes away from the coordinates. That means this cavern we’re looking at has got to be where the gold was put-unless Petrov lied.”
“You’re the geologist,” Storm said, turning his flashlight so that it illuminated Oscar’s face. “Don’t you have some sort of equipment that can tell us if the gold is here?”
“It’s got to be under the water,” Dilya said. “We have no idea how deep this cavern is. Let’s go back to the surface. We need rope. We might even need diving equipment. But one of us has to go down there in the water for a better look.”
“I agree,” said Oscar. “Let’s go back to the surface and call it a night.”
As they walked toward the cave exit, Casper took the lead, with Oscar following him to make certain he kept on course. But Dilya hung back to get one final glimpse of the pool of water.
“The gold is down there. I feel it,” she said as Showers and Storm stepped by her in the tunnel.
As Casper neared the cave’s opening, he could see faint moonlight coming from outside. He stepped from the cave with Oscar and Showers close behind him. All three of them were blinded by a brilliant light.
“Drop your weapons!” a male voice ordered them.
Still inside the cave passageway, Storm froze. The bright light was coming from a spotlight. Someone outside had ambushed them.
Storm instinctively reached for his Glock, and then remembered he had given his handgun to Showers. He took a step backward away from the cave’s entrance and felt the barrel a pistol pressing against his back.
Dilya said, “Time to leave the cave.”
