by Donal Myrick
Miguel shook Max awake and said, “We’ve got visitors, and they want to talk.”
Max replied, “That figures, they got here sooner than I expected. Go wake up the others while I get dressed. Then I’ll go talk with them.”
While everyone was getting up and dressed, Sergei and his guys were prowling around seeing whatever there was to see. The only things that they saw were the things that were intended for them to see. Peggy had disassembled and packed her drones, so they were out of sight. Lots of miscellaneous caving and climbing gear was lying about. The tent with the remainder of Scott’s purchases was open, and its contents visible, and Miguel’s kitchen was smelling good. The communications tent was also still set up. Inside several laptops were visible, cameras were lying around, and the radio was turned on but silent at the moment. And most importantly, the prominently labeled decoy SSD was attached to one of the laptops. It did not go unnoticed.
It was also noted with some real and feigned displeasure that the rappel lines had been removed and apparently so had the safety lines down on the ledge. Sergei had been hoping to make an offer to use or acquire those lines for his troop’s use. He, of course, already knew that they had been removed, but he didn’t want to admit that he had monitored their exit or had witnessed their catastrophe. Actually, he was quite interested in hearing their version of just what had happened.
As the others began to appear from their tents, Max joined Sergei and exchanged pleasantries. Noting that Miguel had a large sumptuous meal nearly prepared, Max invited Sergei and his crew to dine with them following the philosophy of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Max and his crew were as anxious to learn about why the Russians were here as the Russians were to learn everything that they could about the American expedition. Unsurprisingly, the Russian accepted the invitation to dine.
Sergei was a smooth operator. He exuded openness and trust. Sergei complimented Miguel on his cooking skills and thanked Max for the opportunity to talk. Sergei related that scientists in his country had received a video, Max noted to himself that it was probably the same video that Ted had received, and that they noted that the cave had some very, very unusual geology associated with it. He said that they thought it was so unusual that they contacted the Venezuelan Government and arranged for their expedition to come study the cave’s geology. He made no mention of the fact that for many years Russia already had a presence in Venezuela and that they already had considerable assets located all across the country.
He asked Max if he would share just what their interest was in the cave. Max stated very truthfully that they were just a bunch of cavers whose sole interest was the exploration of very deep and difficult caves. That was what they did, and it was what they lived for. Sergei found that a bit hard to believe.
He said, “Are you telling me that you arranged this obviously very expensive trip just to rappel down a deep hole?”
Max replied, “Yes, we did.”
Sergei asked, “How are you, a bunch of individuals like you able to afford a venture like this? You all don’t look like a bunch of rich gadabouts.”
Max said with a chuckle, “No, definitely none of us are rich.”
Max had to explain how it was Ted, who first received the video. How it led to the formation of this group of cavers and how they had to solicit the support of Scott’s grandfather’s foundation to finance the expedition. Max explained that being the first to descend a major pit, like this one, promised to be, carried with it a huge amount of prestige in caving circles. And, they were determined to be the first.
Max asked, “What specifically drew your scientists' attention to this cave?”
Sergei said, “Surely, you found the cave walls unusual, didn’t you?”
“God, yes!” exclaimed everyone in unison.
Ted interjected that he didn’t understand how the walls could be so glassy slick. He said, “I know of no natural process that could have caused it. I considered volcanism, but there is no evidence to suggest that. It may be from some kind of a chemical surface wash. I simply don’t know. I sent some samples back to my university for further analysis, but I am skeptical of finding actual causation from an analysis of so few samples.”
Sergei said, “I agree totally with you on that.”
Ted thought to himself, “Why would he agree so quickly to my skepticism? What are we missing?”
Max pointed out that “From a climbing and caving perspective, we have never encountered anything like this before. If it weren’t for Spider’s exceptional climbing skills, we could never have made it back to the pit.”
Scott added, “Even with Spider’s exceptional skills, it was an extremely difficult assault. When we finally made it to the pit, there was so much water flowing, that it was impossible to go further. We tried to plumb the depth of the pit, but we couldn’t manage the force of the water on our rope, and the weight that we tied on the end of the rope proved to be too much. We probably should have used a smaller weight and been more careful. We ended up losing it and the camera we had tied on as well. We got into much too big of a rush.”
Max said, “That was an expensive rope we lost. We weren’t expecting such a brutal jolt when the full force of the water hit it. We want to come back during the dry season, and hopefully be better prepared. We have to get a depth measurement before we can do much more.”
Sergei took all of this in, and it was obvious that he was more than a little bit skeptical. Never-the-less, he didn’t pursue the issue any further. “One last question, why, if you all are planning on returning, did you remove all of your ropes from the cave?”
Spider explained, “We try to leave nothing behind. That is part of our caving credo. ‘We take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints’. At least that is what we try to do.”
At this, Sergei scoffed in disbelief. You could tell what he was thinking.
Sergei politely thanked Max once again for inviting him and his crew to dine with him and his caving associates. He apologized for appearing so abrupt at their first meeting and indicated that he looked forward to seeing them again. Max and Scott were thinking the same thing. . . this Sergei was a slick operator, and any interaction with him warranted extreme care. Max asked Sergei that since he had so much support from the Venezuelan military, if perhaps he could get some of the soldiers to help carry some of their equipment back to the airfield. They were planning to depart tomorrow, and a bit of help would be greatly appreciated. This request caught Sergei by surprise, but after a short pause, he recognized an opportunity when he saw it. He replied, “Of course, I will be glad to help. I will send some troops over this afternoon. That is the least I can do in return for such a delightful meal.”
After Sergei left, Peggy and Scott packed the laptop computers, com gear, and all the support gear into cases for transport. The decoy SSD, digital cameras, and several smaller memory devices with lots of drone videos were also prepared for transport. None of the selected video showed the use of Peggy’s drone searching for and placing the razor chocks in cracks, or video of the crew “Tarzaning’ along the route. There was lots of video scanning the wall looking for cracks, and video showing Ted rappelling hither and yon collecting samples of the cave wall. The important data, however, were carefully packaged so that it could be distributed among the group and carefully concealed on their person.
As promised, that afternoon, a dozen soldiers showed up, and in a single trip, moved everything to the airstrip. Max thought how nice it was to have the support of a lot of military muscle to do the heavy lifting. Max’s group found a nice place to camp overnight, not too far away from where the residual supplies and equipment were piled by the runway. Miguel once again did his thing. There was no use in taking any food or beer back, so virtually every consumable item was either eaten or drunk that evening. What beer there was remaining was shared with the soldiers that had helped with the heavy lifting that afternoon. After the beer was gone, the party ended, and every
one sacked out for the night. Sometime later on, probably in the early morning, one of Sergei’s tech gurus managed to sneak over and copy all of the data on the decoy SSD and other memory devices that Peggy and Scott had carefully stored in the transport cases.
CHAPTER 6
Back to the States
Early the next morning, Carlos arrived in the Cessna, and they began the exodus from the top of Auyán tepui.
The first stop was at Canaima Camp, where all of the remaining expedition gear was stashed for use on the next trip. Miguel promised to look after it and assure that no one pilfered any of it. Then it was on to Caracas. Once back in Caracas, the group rented a large van, loaded their personal gear, and made the obligatory trip to the American Embassy where they debriefed the ambassador on their last couple of weeks and their recent encounter with the Russian expedition. The ambassador was very interested in the Russians, much more interested in them than in the objectives of the American expedition. He wanted all of the details down to the very last thing they could remember. Everyone regurgitated everything they could remember, leaving out of course details of what they had found. After the debrief was concluded, they asked if they could have access to a high-speed, secure internet connection. Scott indicated that they would like to upload their data to his foundations’ servers as a precaution to possibly losing their data in transit or having it confiscated at the airport. The ambassador thought if there was a possibility that the Russians would want their data for whatever reason, then he would do everything he could to thwart their efforts to get it. So he agreed, and a high-speed, secure internet access was granted. Several hours later, all of the data was secured on Scott’s servers. A quick phone call to his secretary confirmed that the data had been received. Scott directed her to duplicate the data, and place all copies in his safe and then to remove the files from the server. No hacking of this data was going to occur on his watch if he could help it. It was then decided to destroy all of the data in their possession. That way, it could not be confiscated nor compromised as they were leaving the country. When they got back in-country, they figured that they could construct a reasonably accurate profile of the pit, plan the next assault, and then maybe shed some light on the origin of the cave with its mysterious walls.
Max thanked the Ambassador for his help and promised to keep him in the loop as things developed. The group gathered their things together, loaded into their van and departed to their motel for the evening. The next morning they boarded their flight back to the states without incident. For this, they were grateful and a bit surprised.
Several hours later, they landed in Houston. They deplaned and headed as a group towards Customs and Security. As they approached Customs, they were met by a couple of uniformed TSA agents and greeted by name. That caught everyone’s attention, and they thought correctly, “well, here it begins.” They were escorted through the Customs checkpoint and down a long corridor to a private and secure conference room. Once in the room, they were greeted by three individuals who introduced themselves as agents for the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. After they were all seated around the conference table, the lead FBI agent told them that normally they would interview them each individually, but considering the likelihood that they had all already coordinated their stories that they might as well listen to them all at once. He explained that the Ambassador had informed the FBI of their meeting with the Russians. He noted that such meetings are unusual and that the U.S. Government needed to know every detail of their meeting as well as any observation they may have made. He asked if anyone had a notion as to what the Russian’s interests were. He also pointed out that they, meaning the FBI, must be informed of any future contacts that any member of the group might have with the Russians. With that, the group spilled their guts, elaborating in great detail about the things which the agents already knew, but omitting any mention of the fact that they had successfully plumbed the pit and had a cursory view of its geometry. Ted also didn’t mention his real theory as to what he thought had caused the geologic anomaly.
The meeting with the government agents lasted for about an hour and a half and was terminated only because the group needed to catch their flights to Austin. Everyone planned to spend a day or two in Austin before heading back to their respective home bases.
The first thing that Ted did after arriving home was to pack up some of his samples and overnight express mail them to his friend and mentor Dr. Fred Schillinger. Dr. Schillinger was Ted’s major professor while he was in graduate school at a major university up in the Texas panhandle, and the two had remained good friends and colleagues ever since. Dr. Schillinger was quick to respond to Ted’s request for his opinion.
He called Ted up the next day. He said, “Ted, I know exactly what these samples are. Now, I’ve got a question for you. Why have you been mucking around on the Antioch Site, and how did you get permission to collect these samples?”
Without actually acknowledging what they both were thinking, Ted responded, “I was thinking the same thing, and it wasn’t the Antioch Site.”
“Oh, really? Can you tell me where or is that classified?”
“Sure, it’s not classified, but keep it under your hat anyway. Venezuela.”
“Venezuela! What the heck, you’ve got to tell me more.”
Ted said, “I’ll be glad to, but not over the phone. Could you possibly pop down here, like tomorrow, and I will fill you in. You won’t believe what we’ve been up to lately.”
Dr. Fred said, “I’ve got a few things I need to do first, but I can be down there for the weekend. I’ll leave here Friday afternoon.”
Ted said, “Great, you can crash at my place.”
Dr. Schillinger couldn’t wait for the weekend to come. However, he didn’t just idle his time away wondering what Ted had become involved with. He got busy with a little bit of research on his own. The first thing he did was to go online and research current events in Venezuela. It didn’t take him five minutes to figure out that it had something to do with the recent demise of Angel Falls. He knew Ted was an avid caver, so the samples must have come from the Churún River Cave. In his lab, he took a closer look at Ted’s samples. He was surprised that the samples did not exhibit any significant evidence of radioactivity. He thought, how could that be? The Table Mountains of Venezuela are all composed of very ancient rock, so maybe the event that caused the glassifying of the rock samples was also an ancient event. Since the event in question was postulated to be an underground nuclear explosion of some sort, he wondered, what in the world sort of nuclear explosion could possibly have happened millions if not billions of years ago inside of Auyán tepui. It absolutely made no sense what-so-ever. The more he thought about it, the more mysterious it became. When Friday arrived, immediately after his last class, Dr. Fred was on the road tearing away at the four hundred miles of Texas highway that lay ahead of him.
Around ten o’clock that evening, he rolled into Austin and pulled into Ted’s driveway. Ted and Max were anxiously awaiting and greeted him on his arrival. Ted had prepared a generous batch of cheese and jalapeño nachos and a large pitcher of margaritas, which they consumed as they sat around Ted’s kitchen table. Over the next several hours, Max and Ted filled Dr. Fred in on all the details of their recent adventure. Dr. Fred filled them in on his recent findings and pointed out that this could be the most important geological discovery in recent history, and possibly ever. There were many lingering questions, and much was yet to be explained. Max related that their initial plumbing of the pit had revealed what appeared to be a large spherical cavity several hundred feet down the pit, and that would be consistent with that region being the epicenter of a large explosion. The actual dimension of the cavity was yet to be determined as the mapping technique they employed was rather crude. It would require another expedition with appropriate equipment to accurately map the pit and confirm the nature of the cavity. Dr. Fred could see years and years of fieldwork ahead and research to fully e
xplain the event. Max emphasized that only his crew and now Dr. Fred knew that they had successfully plumbed the pit and had speculated on the origin of the glassy walls. Dr. Fred said that he would like very much to be included on the next expedition, even though he had relatively little caving experience. Max and Ted both agreed that he would be a welcome addition to the team.
Discussions went on through the night. If the event truly was a nuclear event, how, why, and when did it occur? If it was an ancient event, were there more occurrences elsewhere around the globe? If it was a recent event, how recent would be considered recent? If it happened within the past few thousand years, would there be any record of the event in the lore of the indigenous people? What if this was a really recent event, like some experiment being conducted by the Russians that went wrong. That would explain their presence and interest in what we had discovered.
Max said, “Now that you mention it, when Sergei showed up, he did seem a bit surprised with our presence there.”
Ted remarked, “It seemed obvious that he hadn’t been briefed on our mission, and he didn’t know what to do with us.”
“Yes, and I think he was relieved when we told him that we were just spelunkers, although, I think he had reservations with our stories.” Max continued, “I’ll bet he is having background checks made on all of us as we speak. I think we will need to be very careful.”