Burial Ground

VII

3:11 p.m.

"John Kaleleiki," Leo said.

"How can you be sure?" Colton asked. He relieved Leo of the penlight and crouched to scrutinize what was left of the man.

"The Hawaiian-print shirts were his trademark. In the five years I knew him, I never saw him wear anything else." Leo's voice fell to a whisper. "He was one of the country's most respected geological engineers and a master of the martial art form Lua. And they tore him apart like tissue paper. There isn't even any blood on his machete."

Colton had noticed the same thing. Based on the patterns of spatter on the ceiling and walls, whatever killed him had attacked simultaneously from the front and the rear. The man had never stood a chance.

He raised the light from the bones and directed it deeper into the darkness.

"We need to tell the others," Leo whispered. "And we should seriously consider a plan for evacuation."

"Not until we have something concrete." Colton eased past Leo, careful not to step on Kaleleiki's carcass. The tacky blood made a crackling sound as it peeled away from the ground on the tread of his boots.

"Concrete? Tell me John wasn't killed in the exact same manner as Rippeth." He swatted the flies from his face and followed Colton. "How much more concrete can it get? There's something here in the jungle with us, something capable of slaughtering every single one of us."

"But they haven't attacked yet, have they? Let's evaluate what we know so far. This man was obviously alone when he was attacked. Rippeth had been alone as well. The rest of us haven't seen anything, have we? Safety appears to be in numbers. As long as we stay together, I don't believe they currently pose much of a threat."

"And what about Dr. Russell's theory regarding what might be out there?"

"He was no proof."

"I think what's left of John Kaleleiki would probably qualify."

Colton rounded on Leo and spoke slowly through bared teeth, making no attempt to hide his rising anger.

"You placed me in charge of this expedition because I am the very best at what I do. Do you really think panicking the others is the right decision? Next thing you know, they'll all be fleeing through the jungle, screaming the whole way. And if my assessment is correct, that's a guaranteed death sentence. What we need to do first is to gain a functional understanding of our adversary---how it thinks, how it functions, what triggers it to attack---and from there we need to plot a course of action. Only then, when everything is in place, can we make the others aware of the threat, once we're confident that we'll be able to guarantee their safety."

"And in the meantime?"

"The less anyone suspects, the better. For now, we need to determine exactly what happened here, and how to prevent it from happening again. And unless I'm mistaken, somewhere down the shaft ahead of us is the deposit of gold we came here to find."

"I don't give a rat's ass about the gold anymore," Leo whispered.

"Then it's a good thing you're paying me to be in charge," Colton said. "Because I do."

At the sound of approaching footsteps, Colton turned and shined the beam past what was left of John Kaleleiki. Sorenson raised a hand to keep the light out of his eyes. Behind the massive blonde man, Morton and Webber stepped into the weak glow. Black flies swarmed around them, but they appeared oblivious as their attention fell to the ground at their feet. The color drained from the normally red-faced Scandinavian's cheeks. He raised his piercing blue eyes to meet Colton's stare.

"Keep the others out of this tunnel," Colton said. "And see what you can do about this mess."

Sorenson looked down at the carnage, then back up at Colton. His features again became unreadable.

"I trust you have no objection to renegotiating our salaries," Sorenson said.

Colton turned to Leo and raised an eyebrow.

"Whatever," Leo said. "Anything you want."

"And as far as the contents of the crate...?" Sorenson asked.

"Equip yourselves however you see fit," Colton said, "but I don't want the others to sense that anything is amiss until we can rationalize what we're dealing with here. Understand?"

Sorenson gave a curt nod, then turned to the other men. After a brief whispered conversation, Morton and Webber headed back toward the mouth of the shaft and vanished into the darkness, leaving Sorenson to handle the untidy details.

Colton whirled and struck off deeper into the mountain. A faint aura of light bloomed behind him and he heard a chiseling sound as Sorenson set to work. The noise faded as he and Leo advanced. They now had to be close to three hundred yards into the rock crevice, and still bones filled the recesses in the ossuary walls. How many bodies had been interred here?

The ground became more coarse and uneven, and began to slope downward, imperceptibly at first, but then steeper and steeper until they descended a series of rock ledges into a large cavern. The flashlight was just strong enough to illuminate the tips of the stalactites above them. The remainder of their conical forms was shrouded in a palpable darkness that rustled restlessly. An occasional leather-winged inhabitant slashed through the shadows before disappearing once more. The walls weren't smooth, and instead showcased deep gouges and rough chisel marks, from which quartz glimmered in reflection like tiny eyes. Crumbled granite lined the base of the walls.

The air was murky with dust, through which the occasional fly circled, only to be snared by one of the dark bodies that dove from the cavern roof and vanished again as though it had never been. Based on the smell, the bats were definitely earning their keep. There was only a dull buzzing from the center of the chamber, where the thin beam highlighted first a boot, then the stump of the leg to which it had once been attached. The nubs and knots of severed tendons curled away from the bloodstained bones. All of the muscle and flesh had been stripped away, leaving a bare pelvis wearing the remnants of a black leather belt. Flies crawled on the slightly concave bones, dipping their feet in the sticky crust of bodily dissolution. There were tatters of fabric everywhere, all saturated to a deep black with blood. The ribcage was shattered, the spine acutely broken. Neither of the arms were anywhere near the shoulder joints, and what was left of the skull was a good five feet away near the far wall, where it rested against an open case of fancy picks and geologist's utensils. The entire top half of the cranium had been broken away, revealing an empty bowl where the brain and pituitary gland should have been. Dried brown skin still clung to the face beneath the eyes and across the cheekbones, but the lips and tongue were gone, leaving a frame of broken teeth frozen several inches apart in a final eternal scream.

A pistol rested on the floor near the head. Colton crossed to it and lifted it from the floor. He sniffed the barrel. Cordite. He ejected the clip of the Beretta Px4 Storm semi-automatic, and fed the remaining rounds into his palm. Seven. He ejected another from the chamber.

The man had managed to fire only two shots.

"Any idea who this might have been?" he asked.

Leo shook his head in reply.

They surveyed the jumble of belongings that surrounded the cavern. There were backpacks and boxes. A small table had been thrown together using a length of flat stone, upon which were the shattered fragments of beakers and test tubes, small bottles of chemicals that looked like eye drops, and a toppled can of Sterno. The blue sludge had oozed out into a phlegm-like puddle. Several wrappers from dehydrated rations littered the floor. A miner's helmet rested beside them, the plastic cracked like the Liberty Bell, the lens of the light a mess of frayed wires. A brownish crust lined the inside of the dome.

After a minute's search, Colton found another helmet. He switched on the light and set it on his head.

The powerful beam illuminated the better part of the chamber and startled the bats to nervous flight overhead, where they raced and collided for a long moment before resuming their inverted perches. The cavern was roughly the size of a large garage, but more ovular in shape. A sharp mat of guano covered the floor and the few stalagmites that pointed back up at the ceiling.

Both men averted their eyes from the remains.

What at first appeared to be a wall of shadows resolved into a narrow corridor as Colton neared, but it wasn't a natural formation like the crevice through which they'd entered. It was maybe twice the width of his shoulders, and he had to duck to enter. He walked at a crouch. The surfaces of the walls were uneven from being chiseled by primitive instruments. There were no wooden supports to brace the earthen ceiling as one would find in a modern mine, making it feel as though the entire weight of the mountain pressed down upon his head. The shaft stretched another thirty yards before it appeared to terminate against a solid block of granite.

Quartz glinted from the walls, which were stratified with long black streaks.

Colton smiled.

They'd found their gold.

He appreciated the width of the black veins of gold ore, which surrounded him as he walked. Lord only knew how far they extended into the mountain. His first impression was that the extraction wouldn't be nearly as difficult as he had originally estimated. The gold showed through in several spots where the vein had been tapped.

A small cave had been formed at the end of the tunnel. It was approximately the size of a half-bath, but at least it was tall enough for him to stand fully erect. Slightly to his right, a thin, angular crevice led away into the dark heart of the earth, barely large enough for a man to wriggle through. He knelt and peered inside. The sides were smooth, the level floor thick with congealed guano. It was a natural formation. Had the rest of the tunnel been widened from this narrow channel? The beam of his headlamp terminated against a bend twenty feet away.

"Hello," he called, listening as his voice echoed away into oblivion.

Based on the intonation and duration of the echo, this small tunnel led much deeper into the mountain. If this area was riddled with passages and hollows, the mining might prove challenging after all.

He started to rise again, but something caught his eye.

A subtle green shimmer.

He flattened to his stomach and reached as far as he could into the hole until his fingertips grazed something soft. After a moment of fumbling with it, he pinched it between his fingers, withdrew his arm, and held the object beneath the lamp on his forehead.

It was a feather.