He came to crouch beside her and she showed him the smear. “It’s blood, right?”
Sam put a fingertip to it as she had, examined the mark in the light of her headlamp. “Yeah. Gotta be.” He looked around the passage, presumably for any other signs of injury. Then he leaned back, turned slightly. “See how it kind of smears across like that?”
“Like someone was bleeding and they fell against the wall?”
“Or were dragged along it.”
Slater sucked in a breath. “Jesus, Sam.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions, okay? We haven’t seen other drops of blood or stains. I can’t see any now.” He gestured to the floor right below the mark on the wall.
“Don’t you think that’s odd?” Slater asked.
“Yeah. Maybe it is. What’s this?”
He reached down, fingers probing into a small crevice where the tunnel wall curved into the floor. He pulled out a metallic blue fidget spinner. “What the hell is this doing here?”
A thrill of shock made Slater’s heart rate speed up. “Remember the guard on the door yesterday?”
Aston’s brow creased as he thought back, then his eyebrows rose and he nodded. “Yeah, of course. This was his.”
“So where is he?”
Sol Griffin appeared beside them, silent as if he’d materialized from the air. “You two okay?”
Without a word, Aston held up the spinner. Slater noticed that he didn’t mention or even indicate the blood stain.
Sol took the spinner, turned it over on his palm. “That’s Aaron’s, he was on duty last night. Must have dropped it. Thanks.” Griffin dropped the spinner into a jacket pocket and strolled away, heading back along the passageway.
Slater frowned, looked at Aston. “Did we just get the brush-off?”
Aston nodded, his eyes troubled.
As they stood to move on, Dig closed up his books and came along, Reid and Tate following.
“Everything okay?” Reid asked, his deep voice echoing off the stone.
“Yeah. All good, mate,” Aston said quickly, flicking a glance at Slater.
She read his intent immediately, Let’s keep this to ourselves for now. She nodded subtly and they all started marching on the long walk through to the next cave. Slater realized that she and Sam had fallen naturally into stride with each other, hanging out together with unspoken ease. She wasn’t sure how good she felt about that, but given the blood on the wall, she could put aside any other hurt and be glad of an ally right now.
Eventually they arrived back in the next cavern and the team slowly investigated, paying more attention than Sol had allowed them time for before. Moving clockwise around the roughly circular space, checking each small tunnel leading away, they discovered the first three only went a few dozen yards before tapering off into dead ends or tiny crevices too small for even a child to get through. The fifth and sixth tunnels were the same. But the fourth one around seemed to go further, and deeper. The floor of it slowly angled into a descent.
“There’s a brighter glow this way,” Jahara Syed called back from some twenty yards down the passage. “I think we should follow it.”
With unspoken agreement, they all filed into the tunnel. Slater checked for Jeff, but he was already on it, filming them pass then falling in behind, only Reid and Tate behind him. She and Aston stayed just ahead of the camera. The tunnel went on, and down, for some time, the only light their headlamps playing hectically as they all looked in different directions. But Syed was right, there seemed to be a greener glow emanating from somewhere ahead. After perhaps a hundred yards of dark tunnel, they emerged into a new chamber.
Slater’s breath caught in her throat. “Oh my God!”
10
Two Hägglunds tracked transports drove in convoy at speed across the Antarctic ice and snow. In the lead vehicle, crammed with operatives, Jasper Olsen ran a hand over his close-cropped iron gray hair and sighed. He felt as though he were getting too old for these kinds of missions. Surely, at nearly fifty-five, he should be at a comfortable warm desk rather than having his insides shaken loose in the middle of nowhere. But who was he kidding? He’d be bored and restless in less than a week if he was tied to an office. He shifted the assault rifle on his knees and stared out at the endless white expanse. Seemingly endless, but interrupted by the huge range of pyramid-shaped mountains not all that far away.
Olsen’s breath steamed. Even in the heated Hägglunds it was much too damned cold for comfort. Halvdan Landvik paid well, but maybe not well enough for such conditions. Olsen smiled to himself. He was getting old. Ten years ago he wouldn’t have even entertained these thoughts.
“This is far enough,” he shouted to the driver ahead of him.
The man nodded and slowed the vehicle, coming gradually to a halt. The relief at the cessation of jouncing and noise made the whole squad sigh with relief. Eight men in this vehicle, another six in the one behind, plus extra gear. It wouldn’t take long to set up their camp.
“Everybody out,” Olsen said. “Let’s get our shelters up and some food on the go.”
“How far from the base are we?” someone asked.
“Far enough to not be seen yet.” And that was, after all, the plan.
“Why don’t we just go right in there, seize the base? It has great facilities and we don’t have to camp out here and freeze our asses off.”
General murmurs of assent rippled through the group, reluctant to leave even the dubious comforts of the Hägglunds.
“We’re to take shelter and wait until we hear from our operative on the inside,” Olsen said. He looked around at the frowns of his men. They were feeling the sting of the cold and the nagging voice of impatience just as much as he. “I know you’d like to enjoy the comforts of the base. So would I! But we need to let the team do their jobs first. Once we’ve heard back from our person on the inside that they’ve found what they’re looking for, then we make our move.”
“With respect, sir, why don’t we simply make the captives do what we want?”
Olsen laughed. “Because the easy way is rarely the smart way, son. We’ll get better results if the team continues about their work thinking they’re getting paid. We need their excitement and enthusiasm to work in our favor, no? Besides, if we take the base now, there’s no telling what might happen. Essential team members might be killed accidentally, or they’ll resent being taken captive and try to sabotage efforts. It’s better if we let them find what we want unharried.”
“What is it, exactly, that we want?”
Olsen realized his own concerns with the isolated terrain, the entirely alien landscape and unknown factors of the mission, were concerning the men as well. He couldn’t blame them for their questions, but didn’t have any answers.
“That’s one of the things our person on the inside will tell us when the time comes,” he said. “Now get to it. I want a camp established here in less than thirty minutes. Go!”
11
The next cavern they entered blew every memory of the previous ones from Aston’s mind. The entire subterranean system was like a Russian Matryoshka doll of wonders, but instead of each being smaller than the last, each was more incredible. A similar size to the previous cavern, this one also had patches of the vein-like fungus on the walls and small clumps of the glossy green ferns in crevices and cracks. But the glow came from entirely bigger and more prominent growths that twisted up the walls and across the high ceiling. Aston could best compare them to meandering vines, like a thick-stemmed ivy but without the leaves, the branches themselves emitting the luminescence. Some no thicker than butcher’s string, right up to some broader than his thumb, they snaked and wove around each other, intertwining, filling the cavern with a soft light. It felt like being underwater.