“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“That should do it.” Mercer returned to the command trailer and dialed Ira on a secure phone. “Ira, we’ve hit another snag.”
“What happened?”
“Pump is fouled and we can’t clear it. I want to dive down there with Sykes to take a look. Can you send him over with some scuba equipment?”
“Ah, hold a second.” Ira must have clamped his hand over the mouthpiece because Mercer couldn’t hear a thing. The pause stretched to a minute. “Ah, okay. Dr. Marie wants to know the water depth.”
“A hundred ten feet. Shallow enough for Sykes and me to reach.”
“Hold on again.” This time Ira was away for over three minutes. “Yeah, I’ll send him over, but I’m coming too. There are some things I need to brief you on. We’ll chopper in within an hour.”
Forty-eight minutes later, a Blackhawk landed a quarter mile from the mouth of the box canyon that hid the DS-Two mine at the edge of the shallow lake of water pumped from the tunnel. The lake was ringed with mud where its shores receded each day through evaporation, then expanded again at night as the pumps discharged their flow. Mercer dispatched a Humvee to pick up Ira, Sykes, and the dive equipment, then ordered everyone else from the cavern. Whatever Ira had to say in his briefing would likely be secret.
The Humvee backed into the cave and braked next to the elevator hoist. Sykes immediately began to heave the heavy dive bags from the back of the vehicle as though they were sacks of groceries. Mercer and the driver helped with the air tanks. Ira waited near the lift, peering down into the inky blackness of the shaft. The air held the tang of salty water, like a thin sea mist.
“I guessed at the size,” Booker Sykes said as he peeled open the first bag. Inside was a black wet suit.
Mercer held it up. It looked about right. “I’m touched you noticed.”
“Funny. So what’s it like down there?”
“We’ll take the elevator to the water’s surface. There’s a trapdoor on the bottom. From there it’s a straightforward dive down to the pump intakes. They’re forty feet below where we tunneled off the main shaft.”
“Anything in the tunnel we should worry about?” Sykes continued to pull equipment from the bags: lights, regulators, weight belts.
“I doubt it. The way the water was blowing through there, any equipment would have been shoved down into the sump.”
Sykes took a moment to visualize the dive and nodded to himself. “And what about you? Can you handle the dive?”
“I don’t have your experience, but I should be all right. This isn’t like diving into an unfamiliar cave. I know the shaft and we don’t need to go into the tunnel.”
“That’s for sure,” Ira interjected.
The two men looked up from their work.
“Under no circumstances are either of you to enter the tunnel.” Ira’s tone was harsh.
Mercer was about to ask why, caught the look in his friend’s eyes, and let the question die on his lips. He’d always known Ira to have a great sense of humor and an understanding of how to supervise people. He rarely gave such a direct order unless there was a compelling reason. Mercer understood enough about the world Ira inhabited to know he would never tell him what that reason was. Ira held Mercer’s glance for a moment, and Mercer let his focus drift away. It was as much of an acknowledgment as he would give.
“That’s an order, Mercer,” Ira said. “I don’t give them very often, but when I do people had better listen. This one’s for your protection, not mine. Do not leave the main shaft.”
“Okay,” Mercer finally said.
“Captain Sykes?” Ira directed his attention to the Delta Force operator.
“Sir.”
“Mercer is not to leave your side and neither of you are to enter the tunnel. Go down, clear the intake, and come straight back up. Is that clear?”
Even on his knees, Sykes managed to look like he’d come to attention. “Yes, Admiral.”
He’s scared, Mercer realized. Ira’s scared of whatever’s down there. What the hell were he and Dr. Marie up to? What was it Tisa had said? A single seismic spike, like a bubble, had formed within the rock and then vanished. Her exact words were “a contained nuclear explosion.” Maybe there had been a weapon test like her group believed. Something that got out of control?
From where he worked next to Booker, Mercer could see into the yawning mouth of the mine. It was uniformly square, darker and suddenly ominous. The damp air coming from it felt like an icy breath.
Fifteen minutes later, after Sykes ran through a number of safety procedures Mercer already knew, they were ready for the descent. Ira sent for a crane operator to work the hoist while Mercer and Sykes shuffled into the skip and settled themselves on the floor. Standing around for the minutes it would take to reach the water level was an uncomfortable option with fifty pounds of gear on their backs. Both men had various tools linked to their weight belts for when they reached the pump intake.
“Down and back,” Ira said as he slammed the steel gate.
“Down and back,” Mercer echoed.
The elevator fell from beneath them.
“Oh, one thing I forgot to tell you, Booker,” Mercer said loud enough to be heard over the cage’s rattle, “the water is highly saline.”
“People call me Doc, and how salty?” Sykes asked in the darkness. Neither bothered to turn on their dive lights or the lights on the mining helmets.
“I’d say like seawater.”
“We should be okay weightwise. Just don’t need to add so much air to your buoyancy compensator.”
The temperature plunged as they dropped, the heat sucked into the millions of gallons of water still flooding the mine. Again, Mercer was reminded of a chilly breath. The car began to slow and came to a gentle stop at seven hundred sixty feet. Mercer heaved open the trapdoor cut into the floor of the car and flashed his light into the depths. The still water reflected the beam like a black mirror. He reached for the telephone built into the side of the elevator and ordered them lowered another five feet. The water was now just inches below the steel mesh floor.
Doc Sykes reached down and brought a palmful of water to his mouth. He spat it immediately. “Shit! Tastes exactly like the ocean.”
“Told you so.” Mercer looked closer at the water. Tendrils of something floated on the surface. He snagged one with the tip of a pry bar and brought it into the elevator. It was green and stringy, like seaweed. He smelled it. It had the same decayed fishy odor too. But this was impossible. The subterranean reservoir had been cut off from the rest of the world for tens or hundreds of millions of years. There was no way seaweed could have evolved in this isolated lightless realm so far from any ocean. He showed it to Sykes. A troubled look passed between them.
“Let’s just do this, okay?”
Mercer flicked the mess off the pry bar and re-clipped the tool to his belt. “Right,” he said doubtfully.
Sykes went first. He slipped his regulator into his mouth, took a couple of breaths and eased himself through the trapdoor. He treaded water until Mercer was at his side. They took a minute to adjust their buoyancy and let the water saturating their wet suits warm against their bodies. Sykes gave Mercer the okay sign with thumb and forefinger and sank from view without a ripple.
Mercer was much less graceful but managed to claw his way under the water, feeling it close over his body and experiencing that momentary thrill of weightlessness. If not for their powerful lights, it would have been easy to imagine they were floating in space.
Sykes maintained an easy pace, keeping one hand on the foot-thick pipe that would lead to the clogged intake. His fins moved lazily, more for steering control than propulsion. Like any experienced diver he was letting his weight belt do the work for him. They passed the mouth of the tunnel. Sykes didn’t even flash his light toward it as they glided deeper into the depths.