Robert’s mind raced with possibilities. A cavern a mile and a half below the ice. It could be something on the surface of the ground. But what? The cavern or pocket, whatever it was, was 300 feet deep. Its ceiling was almost a football field above its floor. The laws of gravity just didn’t work that way. What had the strength to hold up one and a half miles of ice?
The technician turned to Robert and asked, “Start drilling again?”
Robert, still deep in thought, waved a hand over the controls and mumbled, “No. Uh, no, don’t do anything. I need to call this in.”
Back at his pod, he activated the radio, “Bounty, this is Snow King. I have a status update.”
A few seconds passed before the radio crackled and the reply came, “Go ahead, Snow King.”
“We hit a pocket at depth seven-three-zero-nine, repeat seven-three-zero-nine feet. Pocket ends at seven-six-two-four, repeat, seven-six-two-four feet. Request instruction. Over.”
“Stand by, Snow King.”
Robert began preparing another pot of coffee. His team would probably need some.
“Snow King, what is the status of the drill, over?”
“Bounty, drill is still in the hole at max depth, over.”
“Understood, Snow King. Instructions are as follows: extract drill, lock down site, and proceed to location seven. Stand by for GPS coordinates.”
As before, he wrote down the coordinates and endured the redundant warning about local contact. He folded the paper with the GPS coordinates and placed it in his pocket, then stood, grabbed the two cups of fresh coffee and headed out of the pod.
They reversed the drill out and prepared the site with ease. The three men worked efficiently, almost mechanically, and silently. From the air, they might have looked like three Eskimo versions of tin soldiers racing around on a track, performing some sort of ballet in the snow as they danced around each other, lifting and stacking crates, opening large white umbrellas to cover small items, and anchoring white metal poles for the massive canopy that covered the drill site. When they finished, the two techs mounted their snowmobiles and waited for Robert to lead them.
He rested his arm on the plastic chest that contained the cameras and looked up at the site. Two million dollars was a lot of money.
The two men glanced back at him. They had started their snowmobiles, but one tech turned his off.
Robert brushed some snow off the chest and opened one latch. The sound of the radio startled him. “Snow King, Bounty. SITREP.”
Robert clicked the button on the radio and hesitated for a second. “Bounty, this is Snow King.” He glanced at the men. “We’re evacuating the site now.”
He snapped the latch shut and stood for a moment. The whole thing felt wrong. The radio silence, all the secrecy. But what did he know? He was paid to drill. Maybe they weren’t doing anything wrong, maybe they just didn’t want the press broadcasting their business to the world. Nothing wrong with that. Getting fired for being curious would be a hell of thing, and he wasn’t quite that stupid. He imagined himself telling his son, “I’m sorry, college will have to wait. I just can’t afford it right now; yes, I could have, but I couldn’t stand the mystery.”
Then again… if there was something going on, and he was part of it… “Son, you can’t go to college because your dad is an international criminal, and ps: he was too dumb to even know it.” Robert wasn’t that stupid either.
The other man stopped the engine on his snowmobile. They both stared at him.
Robert walked over to the excess cover supplies. He picked up a closed 8’ white umbrella and tied it to his snowmobile. He cranked the machine and drove toward the next location. The two men followed close behind.
Thirty minutes into their trek, Robert spotted a large rock overhang rising out of the snow. It wasn’t deep enough to be a cave, but the indentation cut 20 or 30 feet into the mountain and cast a long shadow. He adjusted their vector to pass close by the overhang, and at the last second, he veered off into the darkness of the shadow. Despite riding close behind him, the two men matched his course quickly and parked their snowmobiles beside his. Robert was still seated. Neither man dismounted.
“I forgot something at the site. I’ll be back. Shouldn’t take long. Wait here and don’t, uh, don’t leave the ravine.” Neither man said anything. Robert could feel his nervousness growing. He was a terrible liar. He continued, hoping to legitimize his orders, “They’ve asked us to minimize our visibility from the air.” He opened the white umbrella and planted it beside him, anchoring it against the snowmobile, as if he were a medieval knight locking a lance next to him and readying his horse for a charge.
He backed his snowmobile out and resumed the way they had come, back to the site.
CHAPTER 93
Kate yawned and turned the page. The room was cold, and she and David were wrapped in a thick blanket now.
“Finish it on the walk out,” David said through sleepy eyes. “You’ll need to stop a lot.”
“Ok, I just want to get to a good stopping place,” she said.
“You stayed up reading as a kid, didn’t you?”
“About every night. You?”
“Video games.”
“Figures.”
“Sometimes legos.” David yawned again. “How many pages left?”
Kate flipped through the journal. “Not many actually. Just a few more. I can stay awake if you can.”
“Like I said, I’ve slept enough. And I don’t have a hike tomorrow.”
I awake to the soft hiss of air flowing into the tube. At first, the air feels heavy, like water in my lungs, but after a few deep gulps of the damp cold air, my breathing normalizes, and I take stock of my situation. The room is still dark, but there’s a faint shaft of light drifting into the lab from the corridor.
I rise from the tube and walk toward the corridor, surveying the room as I go. None of the other tubes are occupied, save for the ape-man, who apparently slept through the flood without incident. I wonder how many he’s slept through.
There’s still about a foot of water in the corridor. Enough to notice but not enough to slow me down. I slosh toward the jagged opening. The rocks that locked me inside are almost completely gone, washed away no doubt. A soft amber glow from above drapes the remaining rocks, which I push aside as I step out into the room.
The source of the strange light hangs thirty feet above me, at the top of the stairs. It looks like a bell, or a large pawn, with windows in the top. I eye it, trying to figure out what it is. It seems to stare back at me, the lights pulsing slowly, like a lion’s heart beating after it’s devoured a victim on the Serengeti.