Once they’d landed, Fisher and Briggs had rented an old 2003 Toyota Tacoma crew cab pickup. They headed up for the seventy-five-mile drive to the city along a road notorious for bandits who preyed upon miners returning with their pockets stuffed with cash.
Adjusting to the altitude had been a significant challenge, more so because they parked their rental about a mile outside the city and hiked in on foot, arriving in the early-morning hours, their weapons and goggles concealed under heavy parkas purchased at the airport.
Fighting for breath, they’d worked their way along the perimeter hills to avoid being spotted, then had descended to overlook the city, a shantytown of tin huts built at precarious angles and glittering like a hellish oasis.
Perhaps that was an understatement.
This was a slum more garbage-laden, more foul-smelling, and more . . . sad . . . than any Fisher had ever encountered—despite his world travels. According to the team’s intel, as many as fifty thousand people braved the stiflingly thin air and bitter cold to work in the deep tunnels and pick along the mountainsides. There was no sewage system, no running water, no paved roads, no sanitation of any kind. The gold found here was, as Grim had earlier mentioned, processed with mercury, one of the planet’s most toxic elements, and it had found its way into everything. The only reason why electrical wires spanned the huts like the circuit board of an old operator’s system was because the mining company had brought in that convenience to power their drilling machinery and recharge their shuttles that rumbled through the maze of mine shafts.
Up on the side of a mountain the locals ironically called “Sleeping Beauty,” bulldozers were already plowing deep gashes into the earth, with whole families wading out into the icy pools of contaminated mud, fishing for gold. Women in broad skirts were struggling up the cliffs of loose shale, heaving bags of ore, believing they could find some gold flecks hidden among the waste. Even more disturbing were the children stumbling behind them, shouldering bags of their own.
Farther up, inside the mines, men toiled in shafts sometimes flooded with lethal amounts of carbon monoxide and reinforced with timbers already threatening to collapse. Every year miners died from faulty fuses on dynamite cables, while others got trapped by the shifting glacier. They worked for thirty days without payment under the cachorreo system. On the thirty-first day they were allowed to take with them as much ore as they could carry on their shoulders. While the system seemed unfair, many of the multigenerational miners appreciated it and did quite well; however, like an Old West boomtown, there weren’t many places to spend their money, save for the local bars where they satisfied their alcohol addictions. The vicious cycle continued: work, eat, get drunk, sleep. Life here could not be much harsher, and Fisher could see why Kasperov wanted to help these people.
“I can’t even bear to look,” said Briggs.
Fisher shook his head. “I know.”
Less then thirty minutes later, they were in position to reconnoiter the mining office, and within another thirty minutes they had marked their target.
“Sam, I just got word back from Nadia,” Charlie said breathlessly. “That guy is definitely one of her father’s bodyguards. His name’s Anatoly.”
“Grim, you hear that?”
“I heard it.”
“Then you agree, he’s here,” said Fisher. “So, Charlie, I hope you followed up with a threat assessment.”
“Hell, yeah, I did. She said he usually travels with four or five bodyguards, plus we can assume he’s got his girlfriend with him. Don’t think she’ll be an issue unless she’s a martial artist, a gun expert, and a supermodel.”
“Just like me,” Fisher quipped.
Charlie went on: “I asked if she knew any way we could contact this Anatoly guy, and she said they took her cell phone, she doesn’t know the numbers, and that they probably wouldn’t answer their phones anyway.”
“That’s okay. We’ll talk to him ourselves. We’re moving in.”
Fisher gave a hand signal to Briggs. They crouched down and left their cover, shifting gingerly along the mountain, following a ridge whose edges were piled high with snow. His gut tightened at the sound of his footfalls, and he tried to ease his boots onto the next length of ice-encrusted snow.
His hackles rising, Fisher called for a halt and scanned the mountainside behind them. Nothing but blue-and-white ice and a jagged seam where the sunlight met the deep shadows. He hesitated a moment more.
“What?” Briggs asked.
“Thought I heard something up there. Ah, probably nothing.”
“I’ll do a sonar scan.”
Suddenly, down below, a trailer door swung open, and their target appeared. Anatoly was a barrel-chested man, well over six feet, and currently zipping up a parka that barely fit him. He’d obviously sold Kasperov on his sheer size and intimidation factor. Many of these apes knew how to bulk up, but their cardiovascular fitness was often lacking.
Unfortunately, Anatoly was about to prove Fisher wrong, even in this high altitude.
A small section of rock and gray ice went tumbling down into the parking lot.
“Wasn’t me,” stage-whispered Briggs.
“Came from above,” said Fisher.
They were being followed.
Anatoly glanced up, beyond Fisher and Briggs, then his gaze lowered and focused on them before they could duck.
He bolted. Shit!
They needed to stop him before his thumb reached his smartphone. One call would trip all the alarms and send Kasperov running.
Fisher was already analyzing the distance to the target and factoring in his equipment load.
Thirty meters.
Anatoly not only ran, but he knew exactly what to do, seeking cover first behind one of the parked cars, then drawing his pistol and firing four rounds into the ice just below.
Weapons drawn, Fisher and Briggs darted across the hill toward the next shoulder of rock jutting out about a meter and offering scant cover.
Anatoly was buying time to make that call.
Fisher held his breath. If they couldn’t stop the man, they could render the phone useless. He let fly one of his EMP grenades, the cylinder tumbling end over end like a dagger.
To be technical, the grenade was a flux compression generator bomb, and as it hit the ice, rolling within a meter of Anatoly’s boots, a fuse ignited the explosive material within. That explosion traveled up through the middle of the cylinder to create a moving short circuit. That short circuit compressed a magnetic field and unleashed an intense nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse. Fisher had set the target radius tight—just two meters.
After the buzz and pop, a hissing not unlike static from a broken television resounded for two seconds.
Anatoly’s phone was now dead.
But his legs worked just fine.
He broke from the cars and thundered around the back of the double-wide trailers, picking his way between mats of shiny ice. He headed up a road leading toward an irregular-shaped maw carved into the mountainside, with bright yellow warning placards posted to the right and left.
22
“WHY’S he going in there?” cried Briggs.
Fisher’s gaze swept to the left, to another pair of tunnel entrances about a hundred meters off, in the distance. “Must come out on the other side! Shortcut back to town.”
“Sam, what’s going on?” asked Grim.
“We’ve got a tail. And our guy’s on the move, heading into a tunnel. Might lose contact with you. Stand by.”
“Charlie, you got a map of these tunnels?” Briggs asked.
“No way. From what I read they’re constantly digging new ones while the others cave in. Be safe in there!”
The gunfire had brought the mining company bosses out of their trailers, and Fisher tossed a look back at
those men before he and Briggs passed into the cold darkness, their boots crunching loudly across the thick gravel bed.
They tugged down their trifocals and activated their night vision. Fisher’s loadout for this operation included an assortment of less-than-lethal weapons, most notably a tactical crossbow he’d been fielding, along with a quiver of sticky shocker darts. The darts were, in effect, cordless Tasers that delivered enough current to stun an opponent. He chose to bring them now because it’d be less than polite to kill Kasperov’s bodyguards—especially when they were trying to persuade the man to come home with them.
For his part Anatoly had no intention of being shocked and had lengthened his lead. He was already out of sight, having run straight down the first shaft for about ten meters, then he’d made a sharp left turn and was gone. He’d knocked over one miner who was coming outside and stolen the helmet of another because he needed the man’s light to navigate his way through the otherwise dark maze.
The tunnel was barely two meters high, about three wide, sans any reinforcements near the entrance. The miners’ battery-powered carts and shuttles had worn deep grooves in the floor, and Fisher dropped into one of those ruts, leading Briggs down the first shaft toward the connecting tunnel.
With the shadows peeled back by their night vision, and their breaths trailing thick over their shoulders, Fisher picked up the pace, with Briggs repeatedly checking their six o’clock for that tail.
A muted roll of explosions from somewhere on the other side of the mountain sent a wavering bass note up through their legs, followed by clouds of dust swirling down from the ceiling. The musky scent near the entrance had given way to something colder, dryer, like the air inside that old meat locker in Vilcha.
With a start, Fisher slowed as a golf-cart-like shuttle came humming around a corner, straight toward them. The miner at the wheel was already waving his fist and hollering in Spanish about no one being in the tunnels, but Fisher and Briggs hit the wall and raced past him. The shaft grew a bit more narrow, the support beams brushing their shoulders before the tunnel emptied into a much wider chamber at least ten meters across where blasting had left ragged scars across the rock.
They had the span of two seconds to take in the view before a wink of muzzle fire lit near the far exit, followed a millisecond later by the pistol’s report, the cracks echoing so loudly that Fisher’s ears stung as he hit the ground.
Grim’s voice crackled in his subdermal, the words garbled, no comm operation down here, as he suspected. Not much to tell her, though. We’re pinned down, about to die. As usual.
Fisher propped up on his elbows and steadied the crossbow, but by the time he’d lined up the shot, Anatoly had already vanished down the next shaft.
This time Briggs was on his feet first and Fisher pulled up the rear, dropping in behind the young man, fighting to keep up. They swept through the chamber and descended into the next passageway at a sudden and nerve-racking thirty-degree angle, their boots threatening to give way. This was not part of the main shaft but some kind of a detour burrow that had been constructed around a tunnel to their right that had caved in.
For a second Fisher thought he heard rocks tumbling behind them. He swung around, then glanced up to the top of the tunnel. Shadows shifted on the ceiling.
“Sam, come on!” shouted Briggs. “I see him!”
Fisher turned back and charged in behind Briggs as the floor finally grew more level. Once more, concussive booms shook through the tunnel, these much more fierce, and Fisher realized that the tunnels had been evacuated for blasting, which would explain why they’d encountered so few miners. Despite the heavy wooden girders spanning the ceiling above, Fisher felt the walls shaking and closing in. Briggs began to slow and called back. “Not liking this, Sam.”
“Me, neither, but there he is!”
Anatoly appeared in a section of tunnel running perfectly straight for more than ten meters, his helmet light flickering like lightning.
He stopped short and turned back, with Briggs diving onto his chest and Fisher lunging ahead as the gunfire ricocheted off the walls and ceiling.
“Hold your fire!” Fisher screamed at the man in Russian. “We’re with you!”
The bodyguard wasn’t falling for a gambit that simple. He answered with another round that echoed away.
Fisher managed to roll and come up with the crossbow, cutting loose with a bolt that arced straight down the tunnel and collided with the wall not a second after Anatoly rolled away. Briggs was there first, scooping up the bolt and tossing it back to Fisher even as they rounded the next corner.
Barely three breaths later, they came into an oval-shaped antechamber broadening toward a brightly lit cavern, the largest subterranean area they’d encountered thus far, the ceiling soaring some six meters, the place at least twice as wide. Electrical cables snaked along the walls to power the bright lights festooned across the ceiling, and below, along the far wall, lay piles of rock and gravel that rose above their heads, blown free in the days prior and waiting for the miners’ picks, axes, and shovels.
Another explosion rattled the overhead lights, and Fisher was reminded of a saying the miners had from the intel docs: “Al labor me voy, no sé si volveré,” which translated to “Off to work I go, I don’t know if I’ll make it back.” He certainly shared that sentiment.
Briggs led him through the chamber, keeping tight to the piles of rock—
But before they could reach the next exit with its steel-reinforced crossbeams and girders, the crack of Anatoly’s pistol resounded from ahead . . . followed immediately by some lower-pitched rifle fire from behind.
“What the hell?” cried Briggs, ducking behind two boulders that had split like arrowheads. Fisher peered out from behind the rock, magnified the view, and saw two mining company security guards dropping to cover on the opposite side of the chamber.
He shared that news with Briggs, then gave another hand signal, indicating they should head around the piles of rock and advance on the exit from the left flank.
Footfalls behind sent Fisher whirling around.
Both guards had broken from cover and were hightailing it straight for them.
Fisher had the crossbow up and his first bolt in the air before he could take another breath.
Even as that bolt struck the lead guard squarely in the chest, Fisher was already reloading the weapon.
As guard number one wailed in agony, dropped to his knees, then tried to reach up and pry free the shocker from his body, Fisher cut loose the second bolt, dodging from the incoming fire as the sticky shocker thumped on number two’s chest, a bit lower but still a good hit almost center mass.
Their cursing in Spanish and wailing sounded strangely medieval and cued Briggs to take off, with Fisher tight on his heels, repressing a grin over his counterattack. Even suppressed weapons made a significant and audible clicking, especially as you moved into the larger calibers, but the crossbow’s string was whisper quiet. Old guys rule and old-school wins again.
By the time they reached the exit, they could hear shouting, muddled at first, then growing louder behind them. They raced into the next shaft and aimed for a faint glow bobbing on the dusty air like a channel marker.
“This bastard can run,” said Briggs.
“They’ve been up here longer than us. They’re used to the altitude,” said Fisher, stealing his next breath.
Two more shots rang out, but they originated ahead and weren’t directed at Fisher and Briggs. Had Anatoly just engaged more security men? Fisher hoped so. That’d slow him down.
The tunnel began jogging lazily to the left, and then, off to their right, they spotted another mining shuttle.
They slowed, and Briggs cursed as they took in Anatoly’s handiwork:
One man was slumped over the wheel, the other lay beside his shovel with a gunshot
wound in his neck. He clutched the wound and reached out toward them, then began pointing at an open cardboard box beside their cart. The box was labeled DINAMITA EXPLOSIVO with triangular warning symbols. Several bundles remained, but the man was trying to indicate something else that dawned on Fisher.
He opened his mouth to curse.
But he never finished.
The explosion ahead thundered so loudly and the concussion came so powerfully that Fisher and Briggs were blown flat onto their backs, the ground quaking, sharp-edged debris blasting through the tunnel.
There might’ve been a roar of flames, he wasn’t sure, but a heat wave passed over him, followed by clouds of choking black smoke that had him tucking his face into his parka.
“Keep down,” he told Briggs, who was right beside him, writhing and offering up more strings of epithets.
Fisher’s ears rang as the hailstorm of rock rained down on them, his pulse quickening over thoughts that at any second the entire tunnel would collapse.
Still covering his mouth and nose, he forced his head up and hazarded a look through his trifocals. Bad idea. His worst fears were coming true.
The side wall about five meters away began to collapse, splintering apart as though a demon were kicking his way through from the other side. The ceiling buckled and finally succumbed to all the force, the tunnel filling up with massive pieces of shale haloed in gravel and swelling dust.
“Get up!” he cried to Briggs. “We’ll be cut off!”
Briggs rose beside Fisher, coughing, and they pushed through the billowing dust, their goggles penetrating the veils until they reached the pile of rubble.
While Fisher expected the worst, he mounted the first pile of rubble, picking his way carefully across it as the timbers above creaked and more dust swirled down, making him feel as though he were shifting through an hourglass.