Donny Randall muttered something unintelligible.
“What was that?” Ira snapped.
“I said yeah.”
“You will say, yes, sir.”
Donny’s defiance lasted a fraction of a second. It was a murderous spark that blazed behind his eyes, a savage glimpse into his capacity for rage. It vanished as abruptly as a cage door slamming. His expression shifted to an empty smile. “Yes, sir.” He stepped closer to Mercer to shake hands. “Welcome aboard. Good to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Mercer choked.
Fifteen hours later, Ira had returned to the main Area 51 complex for his flight back to Washington. Mercer had his crew working nights, leaving the day shift to Donny Randall.
The night sky was suffused with a blur of stars so startlingly close they appeared to hang just overhead. The air was still, timeless. Moonlight electrified the drab landscape, highlighting features with its silvery glow while outlining others in deepest shadow.
Don Randall gave no indication he saw the ephemeral beauty, let alone gave it any consideration. He strode across the desert with the single-minded determination of a migrating animal, driven by instinct rather than intellect.
He’d created elaborate excuses for the hour-long walks he took every couple of nights, although none of the men had shown the slightest interest in his activities. He took their silence as respect for his privacy, never considering they were glad for anything that got him out of the communal recreation hall.
His boots dug deep into the loose scree as he panted his way up a hillock two miles from camp. At the top of the hill he checked the loose piles of boulders he’d stacked around his cache. None of the tells he’d left appeared disturbed, nor were there any footprints that didn’t match his size-thirteen feet. He grunted his satisfaction and tore into the pile, heaving fifty-pound rocks as though they weighed no more than bricks.
Ten minutes after beginning his work, his fingers closed around the plastic handle of an armored suitcase and with one jerk he freed the case. He was careful to dust off the lid before opening it.
While the electronics within the case were state-of-the-art microminiaturization, the banks of batteries gave the crate its size and considerable weight. Also nestled inside the case was a compass. He set the box on the ground and rotated it until the retractable antenna pointed ten degrees east of due south, as he’d been taught. When he switched on the electronics he was greeted by a series of green indicator lights and the machine emitted a high-pitched tone. It had found the satellite hanging twenty-two thousand miles from Earth.
The complexities of the heavily encrypted satellite phone were beyond him. All he knew was what direction to point it and how to turn it on. He’d tried using it once to dial a phone sex service, but the machine wouldn’t access the number. It could only reach the people who’d paid him to make reports about the mine.
He snatched the handset from its cradle, hit a button that activated the phone and waited for a single ring for an electronically muffled voice to answer.
“Go.”
Donny licked his dry lips. The voice had always given him an uncomfortable feeling, like there was nothing human behind it, like he was taking orders from a machine. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“The replacement for Gordon and Kadanski is here.”
“We expected there would be one. You know what to do.”
“It ain’t that easy. The new guy — it’s Philip Mercer.”
For the first time in all his conversations, the person/ machine paused. “Very well. Do nothing for now. We will deal with him when the time comes.”
“Okay,” Donny replied, but the connection had already been cut.
THE DS-TWO MINE, NEVADA
The floor of the box canyon was in shadow long before sunset, making it easier for Mercer to pretend it was almost dawn rather than a few minutes until dusk. Just one of the tricks he used when working a graveyard shift. The other mental games he played weren’t doing much to alleviate the tension cramping his shoulders, the nagging pain in his lower back or the gritty, red rims around his eyes. He hadn’t spent as much time at the mine as the others, yet he’d pushed himself so hard he felt the deep exhaustion infecting them all. The work pace had been brutal and he hadn’t yet recovered from Canada.
In the command trailer he stooped over the seismograph, his attention focused on the steady line of ink trailing across the revolving drum of paper. The stylus remained motionless but wouldn’t for long. Although it meant reporting to work an hour before his shift, he’d gotten in the habit of watching the results of Donny Randall’s blasts.
Red Harding stepped into the trailer where they kept the seismograph and several other pieces of scientific equipment. He placed a cup of coffee at Mercer’s elbow. Mercer acknowledged with a nod. Observing the seismograph had become a “morning” ritual for both men.
“Still haven’t figured it out, huh?” Red sipped from the Pepsi that gave him his jolt of caffeine.
Outside, the men of Donny’s team made their way past the trailer on their way toward their rooms for showers, dinner in the mess, and bed. The schedule left most too tired to bother with the satellite television, pool table or other amenities in the rec hall.
“Not yet,” Mercer said absently. The big clock on the wall showed that a minute remained before Donny would fire the charges his men had just planted.
Harding scratched his sunburned bald spot. “He has a different technique is all.”
Mercer had noticed the anomaly over the course of the ten days he’d been on-site. Both work shifts removed similar amounts of rock with each blast, although Donny used slightly more explosives. What tickled the back of Mercer’s mind was that the seismograph readings indicated Donny’s shots were slightly smaller than Mercer’s. Somehow Randall managed to reduce the amount of seismic shock from the charges he laid, creating less stress in the surrounding strata, something miners strove for. Mercer had watched him working but had found nothing to indicate how he was doing it.
It was ego driving him to find the answer, he knew. He didn’t want to admit the possibility that Randall the Handle was the better blaster.
“And if you average out our teams,” Red added, “we have cleared six feet more tunnel than he has. He ain’t better than us. He’s just overpacking his holes after he places his ’splosives. That accounts for the damping effect.”
“You’re probably right,” Mercer replied, not wholly satisfied with the answer but unable to find another.
The earth and the stylus jumped at the same instant. The bump at the soles of their feet was much less dramatic than what happened on the seismograph. The steel needle traced a jagged line on the paper like an EKG recording a heart attack. A moment later the shock waves dissipated and the machine flat-lined as if the patient had died. On an adjoining computer Mercer brought up comparison patterns from previous blasts. Like before, Donny’s shot showed a two percent decrease in shock waves from what Mercer’s team managed. The six additional feet that his men had excavated wasn’t enough to make up that difference.
Mercer’s mouth turned down at the corners.
The trailer door crashed open. Randall loomed at the entrance, his face and clothes covered in dirt. Pomade and dust turned his hair into a shiny helmet that clung to his skull. The dye he used to keep his hair unnaturally black bled down his forehead in gray streaks of sweat. “How’d I do?” His voice crashed unnecessarily loud.
“Three point two,” Red mumbled, as if betraying his supervisor with the answer.
“Hah,” Donny sneered. “I hot-loaded that shot with ten extra cartridges of Tovex. Had you made that shot, the graph would’ve spiked at four-oh, minimum.” He walked away without waiting for a reply.