He bent the stick with too much anticipation and accidentally dropped it. It immediately produced a tiny amount of light which allowed him to recover it without feeling around. He shook it, and his world turned bright green. Raven would see this for sure. He threw the stick farther down the crosscut, returned to the junction, and peered around the corner. The overturned ore car lay at least thirty yards distant, the entrance another fifteen yards beyond that. Nathan knew Raven could’ve already advanced to the car and tool alcove, but if he came any farther up the tunnel, he’d risk exposure. Just to be sure, Nathan activated another light stick and hurled it down the main tunnel. If Raven tried to sneak past the ore car, Nathan would see him now. Neutralizing the light source wouldn’t be easy either. He supposed Raven could try to shoot the stick, but he had little chance of hitting it without taking a precision shot with the sniper rifle, and he probably maintained a three-hundred-yard zero like Nathan had taught him. No, to neutralize the stick’s glow, Raven would have to block its light or toss it back toward the mine entrance. Either way, the change in illumination would alert Nathan to Raven’s position.
Next, Nathan activated the fourth stick and hurled it into the opposite passage of the crosscut. His goggles now had plenty of light to work with, which created a double-edged sword. When Raven approached the junction, the same would be true for his goggles as well.
Satisfied, Nathan turned and kept moving deeper into the right-hand crosscut. He pressed his bloody pant leg against the wall, went a few more steps, and squeezed his self-inflicted arm wound. Enduring the pain, he dripped blood on the tunnel’s floor in several places. He hurried over to the first stick he’d thrown and placed a couple of rocks in front of it so it didn’t offer as much light toward the junction. Turning, he quickly returned to the main-tunnel junction as quietly as he could and again saw no sign of Raven.
Now that his nerves had settled a bit, he took a moment to evaluate his surroundings. Looking back and forth at the two branches of the crosscut tunnel, he saw they didn’t intersect the main passage at a 90-degree angle. The right-hand side made a sharper angle, closer to 70 degrees. The left-hand side of the crosscut, however, angled slightly away from the mountainside, plunging deeper into the mountain. The left-hand side, with its obtuse angle, would be slightly more susceptible to ricochets from Raven’s gunfire.
Nathan decided to stay in the right-hand branch of the crosscut for the moment. The rock was different here — lighter in color and shinier. Nathan thought it was some kind of quartz but wasn’t sure. It looked as though the miners were concentrating on removing the light-colored plane of rock along the axis of this crosscut. Nathan believed he was looking at a vein of gold ore and the miners had blasted it free for as far as the light sticks on either side of the crosscut could illuminate. More jagged and crude than the entry tunnel, both branches of this crosscut passage obviously chased the vein. Reinforcing his conclusion, overhead light bulbs appeared more frequently in the crosscut. The miners probably used a portable generator to power them. He wondered how much gold in his backpack had come out of this mine. Nathan shook his head. This was a depressing environment. He couldn’t imagine toiling in it all day.
He spread more blood along the wall and wondered how much time he had. What had Raven said earlier? Twenty minutes? Nathan didn’t believe Raven would wait that long, but he might let Nathan stew for a spell. Without adequate lighting, most people would be extremely uncomfortable in a place like this, and Nathan included himself in that group. He didn’t merely dislike enclosed places, he detested them. He’d felt a brief pang of panic when he’d crawled into the overturned ore car, and thinking about it now didn’t help a bit.
He refocused his attention by looking across the main tunnel into the left-hand passage where he’d tossed the second light stick. On the far side of its sphere of light, he saw something dark. He checked the main tunnel before darting across, careful not to step on the three-foot-diameter turntable. He sensed Raven’s presence lurking at the mine’s entrance, but thankfully, no additional bullets arrived. Maybe Raven was conserving ammo for his final assault. Moving as quietly as possible, he eased past the light stick. Fifteen yards distant, another ore car materialized. Its size and shape differed slightly from the one he’d overturned, but it looked as though it would hold roughly the same volume. Just beyond the car on the right side, a secondary crosscut loomed. The black outline of its opening looked waiting like a frozen sentry. Looking for drop-offs or other types of ankle-breaking holes, Nathan stepped inside and activated the IR illuminator.
“Oh, man,” he whispered. At first he had a hard time processing what he saw. The ceiling of this narrow tunnel seemed to disappear abruptly. Taking a second look, he realized it actually extended upward at an angle to the limit of his IR. This intersecting crosscut must have been blasted to follow a vein of gold ore. And clearly the vein had led upward at an unexpectedly steep angle — hence the rising tunnel floor and the extremely high ceiling above.
How the heck had the miners done it? They must’ve used some sort of scaffolding or blasted it from the top down. It boggled the mind, but it also gave him a new idea.
He turned off the IR, hurried back to the T junction, and saw no sign of Raven. It was puzzling that Raven hadn’t come in here yet. In a situation like this, the defender usually had the upper hand, but Raven’s M-4 gave him a huge firepower advantage. Nathan’s suppressed 9-millimeter was a peashooter in comparison — a peashooter that needed its magazines reloaded.
He took a knee and removed his backpack. The ghillie suit was damp from being partially dragged through the puddles. Nathan had kept his body fairly dry, but the shaggy garment hung down when tied to the pack. Leaving his IR dark, he felt through his supplies, wishing he had a small mirror for looking around corners. He located the box of ammo and fed rounds into the partially expended mags. He swapped the Sig’s current mag for a full one and topped off the one he’d removed. Since the Sig had a live round in its chamber, he didn’t need to cycle the slide. To be on the safe side, he lowered the hammer using the decocking lever on the thumb side of the slide. The Sig was double action, so all he had to do was pull the trigger.
Raven’s voice broke the silence. “Hey, you still alive in there?”
From the distant echo, Nathan knew Raven remained outside the mine’s entrance and felt some relief. At least Raven was still around and not retrieving explosives.
He slipped across the junction over to the 70-degree crosscut on the right-hand side.
Because the light sticks he’d tossed into both sides of the crosscut were at least forty feet from the T junction, Raven wouldn’t see much more than a dim glow in here. Like Nathan, Raven had two NV devices: his goggles and the scope on his sniper rifle. Nathan supposed Raven could be lying in a prone position, scoping the tunnel for movement, but he dismissed the thought. The overturned ore car prevented a low line of sight. He seriously doubted Raven would risk aiming down the tunnel from a standing position for any length of time, if at all.
“Hey,” Raven called again. “Are you there?”
Nathan projected strain in his voice, as if the effort of speaking drained his strength. “What happened to my… twenty minutes?”
“Doesn’t sound like you have twenty minutes. Why keep fighting?”
“You’re an asshole,” Nathan said weakly. “Maybe I’ll hide the gold.”
“What?”
“I said, maybe I’ll just hide the gold.”
“Where’s the sport in that?”
“At least you won’t have it.”