They had drifted apart as Mercer’s career skyrocketed, only to reconnect in recent years. The two men, master instructor and star student, had tried to see each other now at least once a year. It had been eighteen months since their last visit — and Mercer was further burdened by guilt because monthly phone calls had degenerated to occasional texts — so he walked with an eager step down the lightless tunnel.
Mercer had accepted this offer to teach mine rescue in the Leister Deep because he knew Abe would be here helping on the research project. According to their last communication, Abe would be arriving today, while the principal investigator and her postdocs and undergrads had been here setting up the experiment over the course of the past week.
Mercer came to a lighted nexus point where several tunnels came together. The secondary lift was a utilitarian cage behind a steel accordion door and was only in working condition because the bulk of the abandoned mine’s upper levels had been turned into a climate-controlled storage facility totaling some eight million square feet. Down where Mercer had taught his course, and deeper still where the scientists worked, the air was too humid for storage, but since part of the facility was occupied, all of its safety and operations gear had to work properly no matter where it was located.
He stepped onto the open mesh floor of the lift cage and closed the door behind him. Below his feet was a profound blackness that seemed to want to suck him into its embrace. He depressed the control handle, and the elevator slid out from the glow of the subterranean crossroads and plunged downward. Had he wanted, Mercer could have brushed the rock of the shaft as the car dropped deeper into the earth. The stone was roughhewn, and it always amazed him that whoever had excavated this shaft had been the first creature ever to have laid eyes on this particular rock.
That concept gave him pause while he was in the field searching for the next mother lode, splitting open stones with a rock hammer and knowing that what he was looking at had never once seen the light of day. More than most, Mercer understood that humanity was a blip on the geologic timeline.
He descended another five hundred feet. From the dim light filtering up from below, Mercer could see that he was nearing the mine’s deepest complex of tunnels. He eased off the controls to slow the elevator and flicked it off when the car matched the depth of another accordion door. Beyond was a well-lit chamber much like the one above. Unlike a commercial elevator with automatic safety clamps, this one bobbed for several seconds, a sensation first-timers found very disconcerting. Mercer paused so the tension in the fifteen-hundred-foot cable could equalize before sliding open the door and stepping out into the tunnel.
He had been given two gifts by genetic luck. One was a near-photographic memory, and the other was a spatial sense that allowed him to understand the three-dimensional mazes that were hard-rock mines, and the ability to move about them without fear of getting lost.
Unlike the level where he’d been teaching, there was a lot of equipment stacked about even though this was the secondary lift. The big main elevator was a quarter mile away and could easily transport the massive ore buckets that had once been pulled from this depth as well as the heavy equipment that had been lowered down to mine it. Human nature being what it was, it appeared the scientists preferred using this man-scaled lift to get to work versus the barn-size primary hoist that had transported much of their gear.
Mercer saw they had even brought down electric golf carts and a couple of Segway people movers with fat off-road tires to handle the rough floor. They were plugged into a charging station that ran off the mine’s mains.
There’s a first time for everything, he thought, as he looked around furtively. Mercer unplugged and then stepped onto one of the two-wheelers, thumbing the “start” button and almost killing himself because he was leaning back slightly and the Segway tried to lurch out from under him. He centered his weight better, and the gyroscopes stabilized the platform. He took a firmer grip on the handlebars, leaned forward, and was amazed at how smoothly the awkward machine moved. In seconds he was weaving it from side to side down the tunnel like a veteran rider.
This section of the mine had been carved using the “room and pillar” technique. Mercer thought it an odd choice, since usually coal was taken from the earth in that way. The rooms were vast, tens of thousands of square feet, and they were supported at regular intervals by pillars of unmined ore that formed columns to hold up the roof. Mercer zipped silently through several such yawning caverns, until he approached the side chamber where he knew the scientists had set up their experiment. Outside the chamber were a half dozen golf carts and Segways as well as mechanical transporters fashioned for use in low-ceilinged spaces. These were real mining machines, designed so the operator sat in a cage off to the side of the vehicle rather than a cab atop it. They were old and dented, with fading paint, relics of a time when the mine was in operation. Lord knew how the team of eggheads had gotten them running, but the flatbeds had been used to haul the bulk of their scientific apparatus from the main lift.
Mercer left his Segway next to the others and stepped over to look at one of the transporters. It had a forward cab with a diesel engine behind it, and an articulated bed that had to have been fifty feet long. There were multiple sets of small solid rubber wheels, which filled Mercer’s mind with an image of a rudimentary mechanical centipede.
The thought was interrupted by a sudden sound — one Mercer had first heard on the day his parents had been mowed down by African rebels. He had heard it many times since. It was the staccato ratchet of automatic weapons fire.
2
Instinct and experience told Mercer he was hearing machine pistols like an Uzi, but more likely the popular Heckler & Koch MP5s. The H&K was the preferred weapon of elite fighting forces like Delta or the SEALs. The weapons’ sound had been suppressed with very good silencers, not some jury-rigged contraptions, but precision milled tubes with the correct sequence of baffles and discharge holes.
The incongruity of hearing suppressed gunfire deep in an underground mine didn’t slow Mercer’s reflexes. He had launched himself over the transporter’s bed even before the machine pistols went silent. He snuggled up to the wheeled train as best he could, snapping off his miner’s lamp and peering into the darkness between the close-set tires. His body was awash in adrenaline and his heart rate was spiking, and yet he was able to keep his breathing calm and deliberate.
Thirty feet ahead was the entrance to the antechamber where Abe and the others would be working. Mercer could just discern a lessening of the mine’s absolute blackness. To call it light was being too generous, but there was a faint corona far beyond the opening and a few stray photons leaked out. Screams echoed from the entrance¸ followed by another burst from the machine pistols. Mercer saw the shadow of flickering light, the telltale muzzle flash of autofire.
This time when the weapons fell silent, there were no more screams. He had no idea what was happening and wished it was some elaborate joke, but he knew it wasn’t. Mercer remained motionless and silent, straining to see anything.
About one minute after the second burst and Mercer was beginning to move closer, when he saw a sudden shift in the darkness. The patch of less-black space — the entrance to the experiment chamber — blinked four times. It was the silhouettes of four men walking out of that room. They displayed no light whatsoever, but the speed with which they emerged and the precise interval between them told Mercer they were acting as though they could see.