They had to be using thermal imaging, or they were wearing light emitters in the ultraviolet band with goggles that could distinguish it. With such equipment, the tunnel would look illuminated while the men themselves remained in absolute darkness. The military used the system sparingly, because an enemy with the right goggles could easily see the UV light from the emitters.
Their shoes made barely a whisper as they jogged through the massive room and disappeared into the forest of support pillars. Mercer slithered from where he’d hidden, moving cautiously in the dark. He didn’t dare turn on his headlamp. He inched closer to where the gunmen had emerged, making certain each of his footsteps was firmly on solid ground before transferring his weight. When he reached the entrance he could better see the glow of distant light that had found its way around several walls. He went down a short corridor that twisted left, then right, and then left again. Around each bend he was rewarded with more light until he finally emerged into a circular chamber with three sets of yellow construction lights atop spindly tripods. One of them had been knocked over and only shone a weak beam that still managed to capture some of the horror. That lamp reflected off a smear of blood on the stone floor as bright as lipstick.
The other lights painted a sickening tableau. There had been six people down here. Four men and two women. One of the women was nearest the felled light, and it was blood from a wound in her neck that was caught in its beam. By the slashes and swirls it looked as though the woman had convulsed as her heart pumped her life out of her shredded carotid. The second woman had taken several bullets to the chest, her body tossed back onto a table loaded with computers and scientific gear so that her feet dangled above the floor.
The men had fared just as poorly. Two looked like they had been hit in the back, most likely during the opening pulse of lead when the gunmen had entered the chamber. Another appeared to have been running laterally across the room and took several shots into his thigh, hip, and torso before augering into a stack of gas cylinders like those used by welders.
The fourth man was Abe Jacobs. It looked to Mercer like he had tried to use his body to shield the woman who had bled out. His chest was a bloody mess, and his full beard — a source of pride that hung down past his neck — was stained like red steel wool. In the middle of the room was a heap of thick glass that had been shattered. Hoses ran from the pile to a central mixing control that looked like an oilfield manifold, which itself was fed from several of the gas cylinders. These were the remains of a cloud chamber they were using in their experiments. Nearby was a copper box with a hinged lid whose function he couldn’t guess.
Mercer took all of this in with a quick sweep. He rushed to Abe’s side, dropping to his knees and grabbing for the old man’s hand, but it was futile. Abe had probably been dead even before his body had hit the hard stone floor.
Mercer expected tears but none came. Instead he felt a hot anger building in the pit of his stomach. He stood and quickly checked the others. Had there been a chance to save any of them he would have remained to dress wounds and comfort the victims, but there was nothing he could do for any of these people. At least, not by sitting in this chamber.
With hands made sticky by blood, Mercer ran out of the room and back into the main chamber. His miner’s lamp couldn’t penetrate more than a couple of feet, so the darkness beyond the beam was an unknown world of inky shadow where one of the gunmen could be lurking in wait for any sign of pursuit. Mercer glanced above his head and saw that the science team had strung lights from the main shaft to their science chamber. These people weren’t miners accustomed to the black. They would want as much light down here as possible.
The assault team had smashed the bulbs as they approached, which told Mercer they were likely retracing their steps using thermal imagers tracking the still-hot filaments. Mercer wore thick coveralls that trapped a massive amount of heat, and his body was only about fifteen degrees cooler than the mine’s musty air. The commandos wouldn’t be able to see him until he was practically on top of them.
He leapt aboard the Segway and leaned as far forward as he dared, the gawky wheeled platform taking off, if not like a shot, then a lot faster than Mercer could run for the mile he needed to cover to reach the main lift. The wind across his face told him he was moving at a good clip.
Now it was calculations of relative speeds and distances. How quickly would the gunmen want to make their escape without making noise? Full tilt, would be Mercer’s guess. Meaning they would be running flat out, hampered only by the need to wear the thermal imaging goggles. Call it a seven-minute mile. They had a two-minute head start even before Mercer went to check on Abe and the others. Another minute lost.
The math was irrefutable. He couldn’t catch up to them. His only hope was they were somehow delayed in getting into the three-story-tall main lift cage.
Mercer finally saw lights up ahead. At this level, the area around the lift station had been carved into a massive cavern, with roads leading off into the rock strata as well as ramps and chutes to feed the multiple levels of the personnel lift or the tall ore skip. The support structure around the elevator looked like a quarry’s loading platform, with three stories’ worth of steel and tangles of piping and ore processors. There were simply too many lightbulbs for the commandos to smash, so they left the chamber alone.
Mercer slowed to a stop just before he burst into the cavern and jumped from the Segway. He hadn’t thought through what he would do if he succeeded in catching the murderers. He was completely unarmed. The best he could hope to accomplish was to warn the top-side lift crew to trap the shooters in the elevator until the police could be called.
He edged out of the blackened tunnel and took up a position behind a small tracked excavator that had been abandoned decades ago. The machine had been stripped for spare parts so it resembled an insect’s husk after being devoured by ants.
He spotted the gunmen right away. They were climbing the scissor stairs on the side of the loading platform, heading for the top tier of the three-story elevator car. There were four of them dressed in black tactical gear. Each had high-tech goggles pushed up on his forehead, and they carried silenced machine pistols. These weren’t MP5s as he’d surmised but something newer and even more sinister, weapons designed to do one thing and one thing only — kill humans. One of the men also had a large pack over his shoulders, and judging by his posture it appeared its contents were heavy.
The elevator car was already in position. The men need only to step into it, close the grate, and send the signal to the operator up on the surface. Once they were up the shaft a few hundred feet, Mercer planned to break cover and reach the intercom mounted just outside the lift doors.
His plan changed a moment later when the lead gunman mounted the loading platform and nonchalantly shot out the intercom. Even as the muted echoes of the silenced shots faded, Mercer could see the panel sparking and sputtering.
He didn’t think. He acted.
Mercer rushed from his hiding place and ran as fast as he could, while above him the men were stepping into the elevator cage. He ignored the ground-level loading platform and instead threw himself down a set of stairs that gave access to the bottom level.
A gunman slammed the gate closed on the top compartment, and a second later a bell toned. Mercer reached the last step. The gate was closed in front of him, and he could just see the bottom of the thirty-foot-tall elevator begin to rise.