Extinction, page 18
His voice came through a hiss of static. “I read, barely. We got a lot of cliff around us blocking the signal.”
In the background, the dogs were baying wildly now.
“Where are you now?”
“Way up in the mountains. At the tree line. The ravine’s opened up a little into a meadow. A real bitch of a climb to get here … Hey, we’ve got something here …”
She could hear him breathing hard, hear the dogs going crazy.
“There’s a rock shelter up there … Looks like a campsite hidden in it …”
“Fresh campsite?”
“What the hell?” Acosta’s voice carried a note of horror. “Jesus Christ.”
“What is it?”
The dogs continued baying madly.
A long hiss of static, his voice unintelligible.
“Acosta! You cut out. What is it?”
More static, and then his voice emerged, high-pitched. “Bones … Human bones. We got a campsite, firepit … two human skulls … burnt and broken up …”
More static.
“Acosta?”
“Bones … Chopped up … I think … they were, like, cooked …”
“What’s your GPS location?”
He gave it to her. Colcord scribbled it down in his notebook as she repeated it out loud. Then she said, “Acosta, get your ass out of there! You’re in a possible ambush situation. You copy?”
“Copy that. I just can’t believe this shit …”
“I’m calling in choppers for backup, out.”
She changed channel and reached Maximilian at the lodge. “Scramble two choppers with armed guys up to this location.” She read off the GPS coordinates.
Everyone on-site had stopped work and was now staring at her.
“What is it?” McFaul asked, rushing over. “What’s happened?”
“Looks like Acosta and his dogs found the bodies of our two missing hikers,” she said. “It seems … they’ve been cannibalized.”
35
Cash scrambled over the last few rocks and arrived at the small meadow edged with bonsai-like spruce trees, gnarled and twisted from years of high wind and deep snow. It was a beautiful spot, perched high on the mountainside, filled with fall wildflowers, offering an extensive view of the valley below. Above it extended a couloir that ran up to a high ridge above the tree line, topped with snow. A rivulet gurgled through the middle and tumbled over the edge, becoming a series of small waterfalls as it made its way down.
She looked around. On the right side of the meadow, below the steep couloir, stood a cluster of boulders the size of houses, jammed together. At their base was a small, dark triangular opening. That, she assumed, must be where the campsite was hidden, because a group of Erebus security guards, who had already been dropped into the site, were standing guard in front.
She walked over to it, and the guards separated to let her pass. She stepped into the darkness of the opening, formed by two boulders leaning together. In the large space beyond, she could see the remains of a stone circle, the ashes of a campfire, and a scattering of bones. It was a perfect sanctuary, she thought, this little hideaway tucked into a giant rockfall, hidden from below while offering a view of anyone coming up, sheltered from wind and severe weather, with a natural opening above to allow the campfire smoke to escape through the gaps in the boulders. No wonder it wasn’t found.
She paused at the edge of the area—CSI protocol prevented her from going in—to take in and memorize the crime scene. She could see, scattered in the dimness about like so much trash, various chopped-up bones and a partially burnt human skull. At the back of the cave-like space stood an altar, not unlike the one in the video, made of sticks and bark and moss—beautifully crafted—with four poles around it from which hung four ornaments like the ones that contained the Monopoly tokens. She wondered what might be in those little packages. There were also some scattered playing cards and Monopoly money, wrinkled and dirty.
She eased the pack off her shoulders as Colcord arrived. Thank God McFaul had decided to go back to the lodge. Hiking was not his gig anyway, judging from the double chins and pasty complexion.
“Another day, another crime scene,” said Colcord. “How many have we taped off so far?”
Cash thought a moment. “Four. Let’s set up a perimeter.”
She and Colcord began stringing the police tape in a wide circle around the rock shelter and its entrance.
As they worked, Romanski arrived with his team, followed by the doctor, Huizinga. They began to unpack their equipment and suit up.
Cash went over to Romanski. “Got a suit for me?”
He looked up. “You going in?”
“I’d like to do a walk-through, get a closer look.”
“Of course.”
He handed her a suit from his pack, and she climbed into it, the fabric smelling new. Mask, goggles, hood, and booties followed. She glanced back at Colcord, who gave her a thumbs-up, and then she stepped over the tape, following Romanski.
The ring of stones surrounded a long-dead fire, once quite large, with many broken and burnt bones mixed with charcoal. She took a closer look at the trash lying about—scattered Bicycle playing cards, wet Monopoly money, a Monopoly board tossed in a corner with some game cards, an old wooden checkers board split in half, with scattered pieces. And a soggy paperback book.
She bent down to read the title. It was a novel—The Cider House Rules by John Irving. It struck her as almost absurdly incongruous—not some anarchist manifesto or radical screed but a sentimental novel about orphans—and one of her favorite novels, no less. Who were these cultists?
Cash turned her attention to the ashes of the fire. She saw a glint and knelt.
“Bart?”
He came over and knelt next to her. She pointed. Lying among the ashes was a partially melted silver medal of Saint Christopher on a broken chain. The photographer came over and photographed it, and then Romanski picked it up with long tweezers and sealed it in a bag. He then used the tweezers to stir the wet ashes—it had recently rained—and another glint came up.
“Oh God.” It was a human tooth with a silver filling.
Romanski scooped that up too.
Cash stood up and looked around. The dirt area surrounding the firepit had been heavily trodden. The bones were flung everywhere, willy-nilly, and she had a vision of the feasters holding a meat-covered bone in one hand, gnawing and stripping off the flesh and flinging it away when done.
“Crazy fuckers,” muttered Romanski.
Cash next walked over to where one of the skulls was lying face down. The back of the cranium was singed and blackened. “Looks like they burned the head.”
“Right,” said Romanski. “I would guess that what we’re looking at here is a classic sign of cannibalism. It’s been documented at other cannibal sites across the world. The brain, which is one of the most nourishing organs in the body, is roasted by placing the head in the fire, face up, and letting the brains cook inside. And then the skull is broken open from the back and the brains consumed, using the cranium as an eating bowl.” He peered in, leaning close. “You can see marks where they scooped out the cooked insides.”
“Lovely,” said Cash.
Romanski used the tweezers to turn the skull over and shined his light in, illuminating the eye sockets. “This is the woman, I’d guess, based on the lack of brow ridges and the slightly more gracile morphology.”
Cash felt slightly sick to her stomach. She stood up and nodded at the poles holding the balls. “Let’s see what are in these,” she said.
She and Romanski went over. They were similar to the objects that had held the Monopoly tokens, balls of finely woven grass, pine needles, and twigs. As the wind shifted, she caught a foul smell from one of them. On closer inspection, she saw that a vile fluid was draining out of the bottom.
“Uh-oh,” said Romanski. “I don’t like the look of that.”
Cash felt a second wave of nausea. “I’ve seen enough.”
He clucked his tongue. “We’ll get all this back to the lab and start working on it right away.”
“Be sure to collect DNA from those gnawed-on bones.” She hesitated. “And what’s with the DNA results from before? They should have come in by now.”
“The first run was contaminated. There was a lot of human DNA at the earlier site, and it was all mixed up and it proved difficult to separate. They’re doing another run.” He nodded at the bones. “The saliva traces on these might be easier.”
Cash went back out into the sunlight and took off the suit, taking deep breaths and trying to shake off the feeling of nausea and horror. She was dreading finding out what was in those hanging ornaments.
“I have a nasty feeling,” she said to Colcord, “that this thing’s a setup.”
“How so?”
“We were led up here. They wanted us to find this place. They killed the mammoth near the lodge—and then they laid a scent trail way up here that they knew we’d follow.” She gestured. “Before, they covered up their scent, but this time, they didn’t. They led us up here.”
“But why?” said Colcord. “So we could find these cannibalized bones?”
“Exactly.”
“What’s the message?”
“I wish I knew. Strange that they haven’t made any demands or written a manifesto. Even the Unabomber tried to explain what he was doing.”
Colcord took out his phone. “While you were admiring the Christmas ornaments, I was taking a look at our location on the GPS. Here.” He handed her the phone, and she looked at the map and the little orange arrow showing their location.
“Eleven thousand feet,” she said. “We’re pretty high up.”
“Yeah, but I noticed something else,” Colcord said. “This ravine is marked on the map as Hookers Canyon. Up at the top end of this gulch, according to that old guy I visited on Grundage Creek, is an adit to the Jackman Mine.”
“What’s an adit?”
“An access tunnel into the mine, to reach the ore zone. This is a minor one that maybe wasn’t on the main maps that Erebus used. Maybe this adit never got closed.”
Cash looked up the couloir beyond the meadow. It rose steeply between spires of granite to a series of upper mountain slopes, covered with rocks and granite outcroppings, before ending in the snowy ridgeline. “Up there? I don’t see anything.”
“According to his description, it’s only about a quarter mile up from here.”
She squinted. “You think we should go up there?”
“Yes, and go inside. I’ve got the maps on my phone. Are you game?”
“You mean—now?”
“We’re here. We’ve got armed guards we can take with us.” He looked at his watch. “It’s noon. We’ve got time.”
She stared at Colcord. This was a side of him she hadn’t appreciated before, and she liked it. “Okay, hell yes. Let’s go.”
“Better not tell Maximilian,” said Colcord.
She nodded. “I agree.” She looked around and waved over two guards. “How are you guys doing?”
They nodded. “Good.”
“What are your names?”
“Holder,” said one. He was a young man, buff and solid, with a friendly kid-face.
“And you?”
“Johnson.”
“Holder and Johnson. Nice to meet you.”
They nodded.
“The sheriff and I want to climb up this couloir to where we think there might be an opening into a mine. We want to check it out—and we’d like you to come with us.”
They nodded. “No problem.”
“Locked and loaded?”
“Oh yeah. But no night vision—we’ll have to use flashlights.”
“That’ll work. Let’s go, then, Holder and Johnson.”
36
The couloir rose up abruptly from the far end of the meadow, a slide of interlocking boulders between two walls of rock. It was a classic hand-and-foot scramble. At least there were plenty of handholds and footholds, and the granite boulders were well locked in and unlikely to move.
As she picked her way up, grasping one boulder and pulling herself up to the next, making sure each time she had good footholds, she could hear Colcord behind her, breathing hard, and once again, she was glad for her yoga and workouts. Colcord was a good-looking man, but he could stand some trimming around the middle—but then again, so could she. The two guards, on the other hand, were quite a bit younger and having no problems at all.
As they worked their way up, the little stream cascaded down to their left, making a merry splashing sound, with clumps of tiny alpine wildflowers along its course. Once in a while, someone would dislodge a pebble, and Holder or Cash would call out, Rock! as it tumbled down. Toward the top, they hit sloping granite slabs that were a little scary. The wind picked up, and the view looking down became nerve-racking. After surmounting the final slab, they came over the edge into another alpine meadow, a few hundred feet across, beyond which rose the upward thrust of the mountain into fresh snowfields, ending in a jagged ridge of rock against bright blue sky.
“I think I see the mine opening,” said Colcord, coming up beside her, pointing.
She took out the binoculars she always carried. On the far side of the meadow, about a hundred feet up the side of the mountain, there was a small tailings pile. Above that, she could see what looked like a square opening framed in rotting timbers. It was almost hidden by an overhanging cleft of rock and a lone dwarf pine.
She handed the binoculars to Colcord, who used them to examine the opening for a long moment. “That’s the opening we’re looking for.”
“So they didn’t seal every mine opening like they claimed,” said Cash.
“No. Yearwood doubted it would have been possible. He said that most of the time, they were digging out gold ore like crazy and not stopping to make maps.”
“This one’s pretty well hidden,” said Cash.
They crossed the meadow, through which the stream gurgled in a runnel.
“I’m looking for signs of people having been up there before,” said Colcord, “but the area looks undisturbed.”
Holder led the way, hiking fast despite his burden of weapon, ammo, body armor, helmet, and pack. Cash felt reassured; both he and Johnson seemed competent and levelheaded. If these crazies were armed only with knives, they’d be no match for these two guys.
On the barren slopes, the wind picked up. They weren’t far below the recent snow line, and it was chilly, despite the sun.
In fifteen minutes, they had reached the mine entrance, almost completely hidden behind the twisted pine. The mine opening was a rectangular hole about seven by six, cut straight into the rock of the mountain and going back into the darkness.
“That’s a bristlecone pine, by the way,” said Colcord. “Rare in Colorado.”
“Looks like a hobbit tree,” said Cash. “If you all could stay back for a moment, I’d like to examine this area before we tramp all around—see if there are any traces of people coming or going.”
She stepped just inside the entrance and peered at the ground. It was solid rock, with a few little patches of sand, but there were no marks anywhere showing recent activity. She sniffed the air. It was damp and clammy, redolent of mildew and a touch of smoke.
“Are we going in?” asked Holder.
Cash turned to Colcord. “You said you had maps of this mine on your phone, right?”
“I photographed them at Yearwood’s place.”
“Can I see?”
Colcord loaded the pictures and handed her the phone. She swiped through them. The drawings were precise and labeled in a neat, block-lettered hand. She was surprised at how complicated it was. The tunnel went straight into the mountain for a ways, and then branched into four horizontal tunnels, like the fingers of a hand, which connected with what must have been a complicated ore body, since the tunnels suddenly forked into all kinds of twisty shapes and odd directions. It looked like a giant ant farm.
There was a lot to search, and some of it looked inaccessible. There were also quite a few dangerous vertical shafts to watch out for.
“Yearwood told me he made these maps as he explored the mines, so I think they’re pretty accurate. More accurate, he claims, than the maps at the historical society that were stolen.”
She nodded, handing the phone back. “How much juice you got on that phone?”
He grinned. “Good question. Fifty percent.”
She looked at her watch. One o’clock. Was this a good idea? She paused to consider. They were all four armed, with two guards carrying AR-15 assault rifles and spare ammo magazines. There was no evidence the killers had guns—just knives. The idea wasn’t to confront anyone—just reconnoiter and get out.
“What kind of flashlights you two got?” Cash asked.
Holder removed a flashlight from his pack. “TC1200.”
The best. She looked at Colcord. “You still want to do this?”
“If we went back and organized a search, it’d take at least a day, and Maximilian would find out about it. So yes, I think we go in now.”
“If we find any evidence of recent occupation,” she said, “we beat a retreat and order backup.”
“Right.”
“Hand signals only,” said Cash. “Holder, you go first, then me, then Colcord, then Johnson. Stay in line. Take it slow. And keep an eye on the ground ahead—if you see any trace of recent human occupation, stop and point it out.”
Holder went in and paused, shining the powerful beam around, and Cash followed. The cooler air of the tunnel wafted over her, bringing with it the scent of wet rock and humidity. The tunnel had been cut into the hard rock of the mountain, with wooden shoring beams placed at regular intervals. Cash pulled her own small Maglite out of her belt and clicked it on, directing the beam at the floor of the tunnel. There was no sign of recent entry, no prints in the occasional patches of sand. But there was also plenty of naked rock to walk on and leave no trace.
As they proceeded down the tunnel, the mine opening grew distant and the light it cast fainter, until a turn in the tunnel cut it out completely. Cash felt a slight twist in her gut—she was somewhat claustrophobic, and thinking of the weight of the mountain on top of her was not pleasant. She pushed the thought away.
