to survey most of it.”
“Go on.”
“So. We set the two packages, man one goes looking for Martinez, man two waits to hear. After that it’s just a question of the timing. Once man one locates Martinez, he radios back to man two, who contacts the surface. Blue Squad blows the hole. Martinez is pissed. Man one beats it back to the shaft, drawing him toward the elevator. Man two sets the timer. Up they go, the second package blows, Martinez is history.” He clapped his hands. “Simple.”
Apgar considered this. “Not a lot of margin for error there. I know Donadio’s fast, but fifteen seconds won’t be much to get clear of the blast. I don’t know if we can winch anybody up that quickly.”
“We won’t have to. The shaft itself will offer enough protection. Fifty feet should do it.”
“Just to be clear, you’re talking about using man one as a decoy.”
“Correct, sir.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before.”
“Not me. Sister Lacey.”
“Your mystic nun.”
“Lacey was a lot more than that, Colonel.”
Apgar placed the tips of his fingers together, glanced at the map, then raised his eyes to Peter’s face. “Man one is Donadio, obviously. Any idea who this other suicidal character might be?”
“Yes, sir. I’d like to volunteer.”
“And why am I not surprised?” Apgar turned to the others. “Anybody else want to chime in here? Hooper? Lewis?”
Both men were agreed.
“Donadio?”
She glanced at Peter
A brief pause, followed by a sigh of surrender. “All right, Lieutenants, this is your show. Henneman, you think two squads should do it?”
“I believe so, Colonel.”
“Brief Lieutenant Dodd and put a detail together to outfit the portables. And let’s see about that RDF. I’d like to move on this within forty-eight hours.” Apgar looked at Peter again. “Last chance to change your mind, Lieutenant.”
“No, sir.”
“I didn’t think so.” He lifted his eyes to the room. “All right, everybody. Let’s show Command what we’re made of and kill this bastard.”
Two nights later, they made camp at the base of the mountain. A pair of portables, twenty-four men sleeping on racks; they awoke at dawn to prepare their ascent. The ground around the portables was littered with tracks in the dust, the nighttime visitors, drawn by the scent of two dozen dozing men, a grand feast denied by walls of steel. The mountain was too steep for vehicles, the path winding. Anything they brought they would have to hump on their backs. Without the portables to protect them on the mountaintop, there would be no second chance. In the bright light of morning, the terms of their mission were starkly defined. Find Martinez and kill him, or die in the dark.
Henneman was the senior officer—an irregularity. Rarely did he go outside the walls of the garrison. But he had made his way, over the years, to this position of relative safety by doing just the opposite. Tulsa, New Orleans, Kearney, Roswell—Henneman had ascended through the ranks on a ladder of battle and blood. No one doubted his capabilities, and his presence meant something. Peter would lead one squad, Dodd the other. Alicia was Alicia: the scout sniper, the odd man, the one who didn’t quite fit and seemed, by and large, to answer to no one. Everyone knew what she could do, yet her status was a source of unease among the men. No one ever said anything that Peter was aware of—if they spoke of their concerns, it wasn’t to him—yet their discomfort was evident in the way they kept their distance, the cautious glances they gave her, as if they could not quite bring themselves to meet her eye. She was a bridge between the human and the viral, situated somewhere between: where did she fall?
They set out just after dawn. Now it was a race against the hours. They would need to set the charges and have everybody in position before sunset. The cool desert night had yielded to a scorching sun, its thrumming rays hitting their backs, then their shoulders, then the tops of their heads. There was no time to rest; rations were passed down the lines as they climbed, Alicia leading the way, occasionally doubling back to confer with Henneman. By the time they reached the mouth of the cave, it was late afternoon.
“Jesus, you weren’t kidding,” Henneman said.
They were standing at the cave’s mouth. The western sun lit the interior, though its rays traveled only so deeply; beyond lay a maw of blackness. The amphitheater with its curved stone benches, the spaces between them littered with dry leaves and other debris, was inexplicable; if an audience sat here, what did they watch? Metal banisters framed a curving trail that switchbacked down into the cave. They had three usable hours of daylight left.
They reviewed the plan a final time. Dodd’s squad would set the charges at the base of the cave. According to Alicia’s map, the switchbacks ended two hundred feet belowground, where a narrow tunnel descended another three hundred feet to the first of several large chambers. The charges would be laid inside this tunnel, wired to a radio detonator with a clear line of sight to the cave’s mouth. The explosion would shoot a compression wave through the tunnel, its destructive force magnified exponentially by its trip through the narrow space—in theory, sending whatever was down there running toward the elevator shaft. Once the charges were in place and Dodd’s men had returned to the surface, Peter and Alicia would commence their descent. The elevator car was resting at the bottom, seven hundred feet below the surface, held in place by its counterweights, which were lodged at the top. A winch would lower Peter and Alicia by rope to the base of the shaft and pull them back up when they made their escape.
Dodd and his team set out. Fifteen minutes later, he radioed from the bottom. They’d made it to the mouth of the tunnel.
“Creepy as hell down here,” Dodd said. “You’ve got to see this for yourself.”
They would, soon enough. Dodd’s squad had three hundred feet of cable to connect the detonator to the package. A five-minute silence ensued; then Dodd’s voice returned. The bomb and the cable were laid; his team had begun their ascent. Peter and Alicia were waiting at the top of the elevator shaft, which was located a quarter mile away, in a structure that once had housed the park’s offices. The winch was in place. The time was 1700 hours; they were cutting it close.
Dodd’s voice on the radio: “Blue Squad, good to go.”
Alicia and Peter clipped into their harnesses; Henneman wished them good luck. They balanced at the edge of the shaft and pushed off, dropping into the blackness like coins into a well. Portable fluorescents clipped to their vests bathed the walls in a yellowish glow. Peter’s mind was clear, his senses acute. There was a kind of fear that deepened awareness, bringing focus to the mind; his was that kind. The temperature dropped swiftly, prickling the hair on his arms. A hundred feet, two hundred, three, their downward passage swift, their weight suspended by the harnesses, as if they were descending in two cupped hands. The elevator’s cables—a thick trunk of twined steel and two smaller lines wrapped in plastic—flowed past. A dark shape emerged below: the top of the elevator. The cables were bolted to a plate on the roof. They landed with a soft thunk.
“Red Squad down.”
Alicia pried loose the hatch, and they dropped inside. The doors of the car stood open. A feeling of immeasurable space beyond, as if they were standing at the entrance to a cathedral. The air was damp and cold with a strong earthen smell, vaguely ureic. They scanned the space with the lights of their rifles, their beams volleying into the immense blackness. All around were strange, organic-looking forms, as if the walls were made of crumpled flesh.
“Flyers, get a load of this place,” Alicia said.
Alicia had removed her glasses; she was in her element now, a zone of permanent night. By the glow of the fluorescents, she knelt and removed two objects from her rucksack. The first was the explosives pack—eight sticks of HEP wired to a mechanical timer. She gingerly placed this on the floor of the cave. The second was the radio
