26

Annja spent the next several hours digging her way through piles of dirt and rock. She found nothing for her efforts except chunks of coal, pyrite and granite. Gradually, the pile of dirt she dug out of the hole grew larger than most of the cavern.

Twice, she had tried to use her inner sense to see if she could detect the presence of more relics. Each time, the conclusion had been the same—nothing.

As far as she was concerned, this was becoming more and more of a ghost chase than an actual scientific exploration. She hadn’t seen any more of the rest of the scientists, either, which struck her as equally odd. When she mentioned this fact to Zach and Dave, neither of them seemed particularly interested.

Finally, after another lunch of MREs, and another hour of digging, Annja decided to call it a day. “I need to go and get cleaned up before I see Thomson,” she said.

Dave smirked. “Make sure you wear your Sunday best.”

“Oh, and some perfume,” Zach said. “I’m sure that will help your cause. Guy’s a sucker for a hot chick.”

Annja smirked. “I’m not trying to seduce him.”

Dave held up his hand. “You want the report, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, all negotiations are a seduction. I recently read a book about it, and the author made a great case for using seductive strategies for getting your way in negotiations. Great read.”

“Thanks for the tip. I’ll be sure to remember that later when I’m putting on my thermal lace underwear,” Annja said, laughing.

Zach shook his head. “Hey, I’m trying to work here. Don’t go carbonizing my hormones with images of that stuff, okay?”

“Sorry.” Annja waved goodbye. “See you guys at dinner.”

She walked back up the slope toward the entrance of the dig site. As she walked, she listened to the sounds of Dave and Zach resuming their digging. She glanced back and smiled. At least she was out of there.

Parts of this dig made her feel as if she was involved in slave labor. Colonel Thomson had basically told her that they were trapped there for the winter and that digging for more relics was on the agenda every day.

That seemed vaguely fanatical to Annja. She was convinced there weren’t any more to be found. And she was intensely curious as to whether the ones already found were of any special importance, anyway.

At the tunnel fork, she started heading back toward the surface, but then stopped. What was down the other fork? She realized she’d never seen anyone venture down there.

Annja paused and took a step toward the other branch. Could she hear something farther down? Were the other members of the research team digging down there at another site? Were there other relics down there? And if so, why were Dave, Zach and Annja wasting their time back at the other cavern?

Or was it something else entirely? Perhaps, as Colonel Thomson had said, there was more going on here than Annja was allowed to know about. The problem was, she wanted to know about it.

All of it.

Annja took another step down the tunnel and then kept walking. They hadn’t strung lights along the roof of the tunnel as they had on the other side. Was there a reason why they kept this place in the dark?

Annja felt her way along, making sure she lifted her feet and didn’t trip. The more quietly she moved, the better chance she had of actually seeing what might be going on down here.

She walked another thirty yards before she started hearing ambient noises. But unlike the sound of shovels, there was nothing loud about the noise down here. Everything came in small pops and pings.

Annja could see better now as some light spilled out of what must have been another large cavern.

She crept around the corner and then her eyes blinked in the sudden light. In front of her, she could see the other members of the research team. Each of them worked in a section of the cavern. Annja could see a wall of rock in front of them. In key places, small cylindrical holes had been bored deep into the rock.

Boring? Were they looking for oil?

Annja frowned. The little she knew about the oil industry, they usually drilled down, not horizontally into rock.

What was going on here?

She watched as another member of the team finished clearing out the holes, using a long pole to determine the depth of the hole. He seemed satisfied, got up and walked across the cavern to a metallic footlocker.

Annja frowned. The scientist reached into the footlocker and removed something. Annja watched him walk back to the hole he’d just finished and slide something down inside it. When the scientist ran wires back out of the hole, she knew what was happening.

Blasting.

They were getting ready to demolish a whole section of the mountain. But if they did that, then wouldn’t the section where Zach and Dave were working cave in?

Annja looked at the rest of the research team members. Each one of them seemed to have been assigned a different section of this particular cavern. And each one had his own hole to bore out, and then plug with explosives. Once that was done, they ran the wires back out of the hole.

Annja assumed they would all run to a master detonator switch. Once they were properly wired, they could run the wire back out of the dig site and explode the charges. Horlick Mountain might just fall apart at that point.

But why? Did they have information that they needed to blow up this part of the mountain to reach something more valuable? Were there other relics? Maybe there was an entire spaceship hidden in the mountain.

Annja smirked. Yeah, right, you’re letting your imagination run wild.

Whatever was happening, this was far too dangerous not to let Zach and Dave know about it. They might be killed if those charges went off unexpectedly.

Why hadn’t they been told? Why had Colonel Thomson been content to let them continue digging if he knew another team was getting ready to blow up the mountain?

Annja took a calming breath. Hang on a second, she thought, maybe the charges aren’t all that big. Maybe they’re doing a controlled explosion to open up part of that cavern. After all, she’d seen it was a rock face they were boring into. Maybe they were stymied by the rock and needed to get through it.

Still, Dave and Zach had to be warned. Any type of blasting could be extremely dangerous. Especially in an environment like this.

She moved back down the tunnel toward the fork. If she told Dave and Zach and it turned out they knew about it, then all was well and good. But if they had known about it, why hadn’t they mentioned it to her?

She frowned. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to give her something else to think about. They thought Annja had been acting a little weird about the whole report thing.

She still had to get back to her shelter and read it over. At least she didn’t have to rely on Thomson for access to it when Knightmare had come through in spades for her.

She returned to the fork. The cavern behind her seemed far away and as she walked, she realized it might be possible to do a controlled blast without damage to the other cavern.

But her instincts told her that the situation was very dangerous.

Suddenly she had the sensation of tripping and falling through the dark space of the tunnel. She seemed to almost float in space as she went almost horizontal.

And then she fell.

Hard.

She put her hands out in front of her, hoping to brace herself as she made impact with the ground, but part of her hand caught on an outcropping while the other scraped the ground. She landed awkwardly and her head snapped forward, smacking her forehead against the rocky ground.

Annja moaned. The blow to her head had been square on and she felt darkness rushing at her as she lost consciousness.

THERE WERE SOUNDS from far off in the distance. But they were muted by the indescribable throbbing pain echoing through her skull. Annja raised a hand to her head and moaned.

“Ugh.”

“Well, well, look who decided to come back to the land of the living.”

Annja opened her eyes and instantly regretted it. The light was bright and it hurt her head. “Lights,” she groaned.

“Huh? Oh, sorry about that.”

She felt the lights dim and then opened her eyes again. She was in her shelter and there was a bandage around her head. “What happened to me?”

Zach’s face swam into view. “You took a header in the tunnel. Smacked yourself right unconscious by the way the doctors tell it. They said it would have been like taking a straight shot from a heavyweight boxer at close range.”

Annja felt as if her stomach were rolling on a stormy ocean and she tried to swallow to settle it.

“Nauseous?” Zach asked.

“Yeah. Bad.”

He nodded. “They said that would be the end result. It should pass pretty soon. They want you to rest, but I told them that there was no way you’d do that.” He frowned. “You want to tell me what happened?”

Annja looked at him. “Do you know about the other cavern?”

“Where the other part of the team is? Sure.”

“You know what they’re doing down there?”

Zach smiled. “I’ve been kind of busy in our little rat hole. I’ve heard a few things, but nothing much. Why?”

“I saw them, Zach. They were boring holes and putting explosives into them. I think they want to blow up the mountain.”

Zach smiled. “I heard they ran into a serious problem with the granite. One of them requested permission to blow an entrance. Apparently, they’ve got some type of scanning equipment that tells them there’s a cavern on the other side of that wall. They want to get through.”

“But isn’t it dangerous?” Annja asked.

“Well, sure, they’re explosives, after all. But it’s being controlled. The colonel has some of his guys helping out.”

Annja took a deep breath. Everything hurt. She was sure she’d hurt other parts of her body, as well as her head. “When are they blasting?”

“Tomorrow morning, first thing. Before anyone goes down.”

“Oh.”

Zach smiled. “Let me guess—you thought it was some grand conspiracy that would end up killing Dave and me?”

Annja smiled weakly. “Guilty.”

Zach sighed. “When did you get so conspiracy crazy? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this. It’s kind of weird.”

Annja frowned. “Let’s just say that I’ve run into a lot of people lately who haven’t been what they say they are.”

“Everyone has secrets,” Zach said. “That doesn’t make them assassins or spooks or some shadowy government outfit bent on world domination.”

Annja nodded. “You’re right. I’ve been off base.”

Zach smirked. “Tomorrow should be a good day. Once that blasting is done, we might get a glimpse at something new and exciting. I’m looking forward to it.”

Annja nodded. “Okay.”

“Look, I’m going to get some grub. You want me to bring you back something? I hear it’s lasagna night.”

Annja held up her hand. “Not sure I could stomach it right now. But thanks.”

“Okay. Dave and I will be back later.” He stood and walked to the door. “Get some rest, okay? I’ll let the colonel know you’re okay.”

“Why?”

“He seemed concerned about you earlier when he heard about your fall. Guess he respects you a little bit more after your back-and-forth earlier. I get the feeling he might just show you that report, after all.”

“Even without the perfume?” Annja smiled.

“Yeah, even without. Talk to you in a little while.” Zach disappeared outside.

Annja watched him go. Her head throbbed. After all of this, she thought, and I nearly end up killing myself before I could figure this out. She sighed and closed her eyes.

There’d be time to deal with Thomson in the morning.