Callsign: King II- Underworld (11 page)

“I want to see. Can you give me the night vision device?”

De Bord sighed wearily. “I guess there’s nothing else to do right now, but be careful. If they see us, we’re gonna be up shit creek.”

Pierce wasn’t so sure about that, but took the monocular from the soldier and held it to his eye as he crawled forward to the edge of the chamber where the creatures were engaging in their own peculiar funerary rites.

There were at least two dozen of the creatures moving about in the cavern, and about half that many lined up against a nearby wall unmoving, presumably dead. Pierce noted the care that had been taken in arranging their bodies; they were all oriented in the same direction, limbs straightened against the onset of rigor mortis, and arms crossed on their chest. Their totem necklaces had been removed but Pierce caught a glint of something metallic in the mouth of each fallen creature—an
obol
, he realized.

The human remains had not received such elaborate treatment. The bodies of the fallen soldiers, too many for Pierce to count, had been piled up in the center of the chamber where the creatures were meticulously searching each one in turn. Pierce saw watches and rings torn from hands, and coins shaken from wallets. The loot was laid out carefully in a pile, and when a body yielded nothing more, it was dragged to another mound on the wall opposite from where the fallen creatures lay. Amid the uniforms of dead soldiers, Pierce saw other human remains—some in an advanced state of decay, some withered away to mummified husks but still clad in tattered jeans and hiking boots.

They’ve been doing this for a while
, he realized. He had read up on the history of the Superstition Mountains during the long plane ride; every year, going back at least a century, a few hikers, many of them dreamers searching for the Lost Dutchman gold mine or some other bit of treasure from folklore, vanished in the desert wilderness. Here, it seemed, was the answer to that mystery.

It didn’t, however, explain the
tetradrachm
.

The creatures spent only a few more minutes searching the dead. When they had finished their grisly task, the collected items were gathered into what looked like a leather sack, carried by one of the creatures who already possessed a prodigious totem necklace. He barked stridently to the rest of the group, and then as if answering to a collective consciousness, they all fell in behind him and moved single file into another tunnel on the far side of the cavern.

Pierce knew that his only priority should have been finding a way out, but scientific discovery had always been his single motivating purpose. Teaching, lecturing and writing. Those were the things he had to do as a professional, but working in the field, uncovering mysteries so ancient that no one even knew they had been forgotten, was what drove him. He had wanted to be an archaeologist from the moment he had first watched Indiana Jones trekking through the jungles of Peru in the movie
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. Given a choice between escaping danger or making a spectacular discovery, Pierce had only one guiding principle:
What would Indy do
?

As the last of the creatures vanished into the passage, George Pierce moved forward into the burial chamber.

20.

After driving cautiously along an unpaved Forest Service road for about five miles, headlights off to avoid drawing attention to their presence, King spied a distant blaze of light in the objective of his PVS-7. He stopped the Humvee in the middle of the road and got out for a better look.

The source of the illumination was, even at a distance, easily recognizable as another military compound. The camp was at least twice as large as the forward operating base where they had been taken after being captured, and was situated only a few hundred yards from the long asphalt ribbon that had to be US Highway 60. The size and close proximity to the highway suggested that this was probably the central command for the military exclusion zone. It was only when he peered through a pair of binoculars he’d found in the Humvee that King realized that this camp had also been attacked.

This base had faired better than the FOB from which he and Nina had escaped. Teams of soldiers were busy working to repair the damage, most of which had occurred along the northern edge. Closer to the center of the camp, a row of Humvees was lining up in readiness to venture outside the wire. King knew the patrol was probably going to find out why the other base hadn’t reported in. It was time to get off the road.

Before he could return to the Humvee, he spied another vehicle approaching the camp from the east along a track that cut across the desert. With its blazing headlights, it was impossible to see the vehicle using night-vision, but King’s suspicion that it was not a military truck was confirmed when it pulled up to the base. In the glare of the portable generator-powered sodium vapor lamps, and aided by the binoculars, King saw a white SUV with an indistinct logo painted on the door.

The occupant, a balding man in civilian clothes, got out and was met by a several soldiers who emerged from a central tent. Curious, in spite of the need to find concealment, King watched the brief but animated exchange between the civilian and the officer in charge. It ended when the civilian angrily got back in his vehicle and left in a cloud of dust.

King hastened back to the Humvee where Nina waited impatiently. “Well? Do you have your answers?”

King turned a switch and the Humvee’s diesel engine rumbled to life. “No, but now I know who does.”

21.

“What is that?”

Nina glanced over at King, but in the darkened interior of the Humvee she could only distinguish a vague silhouette. His hand was outstretched, pointing. “What is what?”

“Oh, sorry. There’s a bunch of buildings. Some kind of mine operation?”

She nodded. “Must be the copper mine. It closed a couple months ago. Some big multinational bought them out and shut it down. Put a lot of people out of work. It was a profitable operation, but I guess the new owner thought they could make more by closing it down to drive up copper prices.”

“I wonder if there isn’t another explanation,” King said, thoughtfully.

Nina wasn’t sure what the economic hardships of a small mine had to do with the attacks by the Mogollon Monsters. It was evident that her new investigative partner saw a connection, but he had hardly said a word to her since leaving the road surreptitiously following the vehicle he had seen leaving the military camp. Nina hadn’t actually seen the SUV; they had been driving without lights, and she had only caught a few glimpses of the other vehicle’s tail lights in the distance.

“The mine looks completely shut down,” King observed. “But it looks like our friend is going to a structure north of the processing facility. If I’m not mistaken, the lightning we saw came down near here.”

Nina did her best to follow his reasoning. “You think maybe whatever they’re doing has something to do with the attacks?”

He didn’t answer her directly. “Do you know anything about the company that bought out the mine? A name?”

“No. I’m sure they mentioned it in the news reports, but it’s been a several weeks.”

“I’ll see if I can’t find out.” A subtle glow illuminated King, the display of a cell phone that he pressed to his ear. “Call Aleman.”

She listened impatiently to half of a conversation in which King asked Aleman—whoever that was—to look up information on the copper mine.

“Bluelight Technologies,” she heard him say. “Any connection to Manifold? Right…Well, you keep digging on your end. I’m going to go in for a closer look… Roger that, King, out.”

The glow vanished, returning Nina to near-total darkness as the Humvee continued along the uneven dirt road.

“You’re military, too, aren’t you?” Nina asked after a few minutes.

“What makes you say that?”

“The way you handled that gun during the attack.Your familiarity with this Hummer. And then there’s the whole ‘Roger that, King out,’ thing just a second ago.”

 “I was in the army for a while.” There was a hint of embarrassed humor in his tone.  “Some things you never forget.”

Nina sensed he wouldn’t reveal anything more on that subject, so she tried a different tack. “What’s Manifold?”

She saw the shift in his silhouette as he turned to look at her for a moment, then turned his eyes forward again. “Manifold is…or was, rather…a biotech company run by a guy named Richard Ridley.”

“Biotech? So you’re going with your theory that the creatures are mutants?”

“Right now, I don’t have a theory. I’m just putting the coincidences together. Manifold is very bad news, and my job is to find them, root them out, and shut them down.”

Nina knew better than to ask who had given him that job, but there were clues aplenty in the subtext. What was even more evident was his understated dedication to that mission. It was the kind of single-mindedness that drove a lot of the believers in paranormal phenomena—drove them, and sometimes blinded them to the obvious answers. And everything else that most normal people considered important.

Still, he didn’t seem crazy.

“And Bluelight Technologies,” she continued. “That’s who owns the mine now?”

Before he could answer, a familiar humming noise signaled an incoming call on King’s phone. Nina saw the glow of the display then to her surprise, heard King say: “Ale, you’re on speaker. With me is Nina…Raglan, was it? She’s a special consultant on local affairs.”

There was a brief lag, and then a weary voice said: “I understand. Ms. Raglan, I’m Lewis Aleman.”

“Umm…hi.”

“So, Ale, what can you tell me about Bluelight Technologies?”

“Quite a lot, actually…and yet, at the same time, not much. It’s a new firm, only a few months old. Founded by one Aaron Copeland. Copeland is a physicist, Masters from MIT. Worked at CERN for a while, then about a year ago, he dropped off the radar. When he popped up again, it was at the helm of Bluelight.”

“Physicist,” King repeated. “Narrow that down for me.”

“He’s published several articles on using phase states of matter as an alternate energy source. I can’t really tell you what any of this stuff means, but it sounds like science-fiction. The real kind though, heavy on the science, and without laser gun battles and green-skinned babes. Bluelight’s mission statement—and I’m quoting here— is ‘pioneering alternative energy sources for the 21
^st
century.’”

“There’s no way a start-up would have the resources to shut down the mine operation,” Nina observed.

There was a brief pause and Nina wondered if she had said the wrong thing. “That’s a very astute observation,” King said, without a trace of insincerity. “Bluelight has some significant financial muscle behind them. Ale, can you follow the money?”

“Easier said, King. They’re not publically traded. I can tell you this though; right now, Bluelight has just one client.”

“The government?” Nina said.

“Ah, a point to the lady. Specifically, Bluelight has a contract with DARPA.”

Nina knew all about DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the military’s R&D arm. The agency had become something of a bogeyman for paranormal enthusiasts, particularly in the UFO community, who imagined DARPA scientists working feverishly in secret laboratories at Area 51, to reverse engineer alien technology from crashed spacecraft.

“‘Who’ isn’t as important as ‘what,’” King said. “Forget the money trail for now, Ale. See if you can figure out what Copeland is trying to do out here. Go through his published work again; there’s got to be a thread we can pull on to unravel all this. Something tells me Bluelight isn’t just trying to build a better solar panel.”

“Meanwhile, what will you be doing?”

In the glow of the phone, Nina could see the determined grin on King’s face. “I think I’m going to go have a look around.”

22.

Pierce gazed down at the still form and marveled at just how human it looked. There were differences of course, most notably, the heavy brow ridge, similar in many respects to depictions of Neanderthal man, to say nothing of the enormous size and the hard looking bumps covering almost every square inch of the creature’s body. All but the area between the forehead and the end of the strong aquiline nose, were covered in the bumps.

If not for the bumpy skin
, Pierce thought,
you might not give him a second look walking through the mall.

Oops…make that her
.

The archaeologist carefully, almost reverently, extracted the coin from the creature’s mouth and held it up for inspection. It was a silver Mexican peso coin, dated 1977. He was almost disappointed that the beasts, intelligent though they were, had chosen such a common and geographically proximal coin to use as an
obol
. He put the peso back, exactly as it had been and moved to the next body in line.

He winced as everything in the objective lens grew painfully bright, and lowered the monocular, blinking away the bright spots. De Bord had entered the chamber, using his flashlight to show the way.

“Damn it,” the soldier complained, keeping his voice low in spite of his irritation. “You call this takin’ a look? Those things won’t take kindly to you violatin’ their dead.”

“I don’t know if they’d care.” Pierce slipped the coin from the second corpse’s mouth and checked it.

It was most definitely not a peso.

“Well, I’d just as soon focus on gettin’ outta here. If they ain’t comin’ back, then we should keep movin’ forward. There’s bound to be another opening back to the surface.”

Pierce barely heard him. He showed De Bord the coin. Even without being able to translate the strange pictographic writing, the square hole punched in the center of the bronze circle was enough of a clue to identify the coin’s country of origin.

“Holy…is that Chinese?”