Service said, “Everybody feels that way after they ride with Alvin.”
“Why the heck am I here?” the woman asked. “Your officer showed up at my house, said you needed me urgently, and here I am.”
“Thanks. It is urgent.”
“It better be. We’ve got eight people coming to dinner tonight. Am I gonna make it back to cook, or should I call my old man and tell him to go to plan B?”
“Better make the call,” Service said. “Is there a plan B?”
“Plan B means he’s on his own to figure it out.”
He had no way to estimate how long, but he was sensing a very long day and probably a night ahead of them. Friday and Millitor were with him, along with conservation officers Simon del Olmo, Elza Grinda, Junco Kragie, and Sergeant Willie Celt.
Another vehicle pulled up, and Judge Taava Kallioninen got out with a coffee mug in hand.
“Your Honor,” Service said.
“I was a Troop before law school,” Kallioninen said. “Sulla Kakabeeke and I are longtime friends. She told me what went down at the sheriff’s get-together when I showed up to make my official, pro forma appearance. I figure you’re on the cusp of something big, and given Van Dalen’s past record with lawyers, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have me on the scene and at your side. Objections?”
“None, Your Honor.”
Service introduced the judge to everyone and explained what he hoped to accomplish. Turning to Jeske, he asked, “You bring the information?”
“Yeah, we’re definitely on state land here, and there’re no mineral leases—not now and not in the past—at least, none I can determine.”
“You inspect mines for the state, right?” he asked.
“New operations, for the Department of Environmental Quality, but not for engineering or employee safety.”
“But you’ve been down in hardrock mines.”
“More times than I care to remember,” Jen Jeske said. “I’m sensing here you want me to go underground and evaluate your blockage, to see if it’s possible to get past it.”
“You’re psychic.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” she said. “How deep am I going?”
“Ten feet max.”
Kragie nodded agreement.
“That’s good,” Jeske said, “because the really deep stuff seriously creeps me out, especially if there’s been a collapse.”
Jeske went to the Marquette officer’s unmarked truck, fetched her equipment bag, put on a helmet with a light mounted to it, grabbed a loop of line, a small pack, and a long-handled hammer with a pick on one end.
“You come prepared,” Service said.
“My gear goes everywhere I go—just in case. Where’s the opening?”
Kragie and del Olmo had hidden the entrance with plywood, covering it with dirt and debris, but the board was off now, the hole revealed.
“You already been down there?” Jeske asked Service as she looped line through her harness belt and worked her way down to the opening.
Service nodded.
She straddled the hole and shone her flashlight into it, then knelt and pulled a respirator out of her pack. “How long were you below?” she asked Service.
“Not long,” he said.
“There’s another respirator in my big equipment bag. Help yourself. Are the walls reinforced?”
“Yes, but it’s mostly solid rock.”
“Correction: solid except for the collapse.”
He shrugged.
She handed one end of her line to Kragie, gave a thumbs-up, and disappeared into darkness.
Below they could hear her hammer tapping rock.
When Kragie helped her back up, her face was covered with sweat and dust. She accepted a bottle of cold water from Friday. “Good news, bad news,” she said after a long pull on the liquid. “It’s definitely open past the slide, but I can’t tell how far. There could be another blockage to the east.”
“Good or bad?” Service asked.
“Depends on who goes with me. It’s a tight squeeze down there.”
“I’m going,” Service said.
“You’ll never fit.”
“That’s what they always told Harry Houdini.”
“This isn’t a stage trick.”
“You’ve got that big hammer.”
“Plastic explosives maybe would help, but I couldn’t even handle a cap gun as a kid. Jen Jeske don’t do bang-bang.”
The judge stepped forward. “Please explain to a layperson what’s going on.”
“Public land,” Service said. “There are no leased mineral rights here, which means this is an illegal operation, and I’m going to bet that it leads east under Art Lake property, and that in fact they have been mining this for a long time. I’m also betting I don’t have enough probable cause for search warrants, so if we go in underground and it pops out at Art Lake, we will have entered legally and legitimately.”
The judge smiled. “You might have a future in the law,” she said.
“I’m already in the only part of the law that interests me,” he said.
Friday nudged him. “I’m a lot smaller than you. Let me go.”
“No argument on size or pluck,” he said, “but at this time, this tunnel is a DNR-DEQ issue, not one for the state police.”
Service guessed that any of the COs would volunteer to go in his place, but he was determined to see this through. His case, his job. “If I can’t get through, one of you will have to try. Draw straws or something,” he said, putting on the respirator and the night goggles head harness he’d dug out of the Tahoe.
“We don’t have a helmet big enough to fit over that rig,” Jeske said.
“I need eyes, not a brain bucket.” Even superior vision would be worthless in total darkness underground.
Service looked at Jeske and she looked back and said, “Do everything really slow, okay?”
There were no good-byes or good lucks.
He nodded as Jeske lowered herself back into the opening, and when she was gone, he gave a thumbs-down to lower him to Kragie and del Olmo, who anchored his rope as he dropped into the old mine.
Crammed against each other at the bottom, Jeske said, “I’ve got a low-lumen red penlight. Will it screw up your night-vision gear?”
“Just try not to point it right at me.”
“It’s really, really tight from here,” she said. “I shit you not.”
He looked at the blocked area. “Tight for you?”
“Not bad, but for you . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.
“I’ll hold my breath,” he said.
“Spoken like your average half-witted caver.”
“Humor can be a good thing,” he told her.
“Hold that thought—see if it helps.”
“You go through and I’ll watch. When you get to the other side, talk me through.”
“I repeat, take it really slow.”
After a while he saw a glint of light. “How far?” he asked.
“Eight feet,” she said. “There’s a forty-degree angled shelf on your left, and maybe a foot from the lip of that to the right rock wall. Fourteen inches, max. That enough?”
“Before we find out, how about moving down the tunnel where you are and see how far it’s clear?”
When she returned fifteen minutes later, she said, “I walked seven minutes. No problem. There’s some debris on the floor, but nothing insurmountable. The footing sucks, is all.”
Service took off his shirt and pants and gunbelt and put everything in a pile, pushing it ahead of him with his boot.
“Can I do this standing up?” he asked.
“I can’t imagine how.”
“I can
’t crawl on my side.”
“Then try it standing up,” she said.
Though it was cool underground, sweat poured off him. No way to crawl. Too big, too inflexible, not limber enough. Too damn old. He eased into the opening. The ledge tilted upward from the top of his thighs. “Okay,” he said, trying not to grunt.
“Okay what?”Jeske shot back.
Too tight to talk. Tilt upper body to parallel the sloping shelf. First take off your Night Vision Device. Loop the NVD over your right arm. Make a fist, put it in the middle of your forehead to serve as a bumper. Move one inch at a time. Hit my elbow. “Fuck.” Shut up. Discipline. Can feel blood on elbow. Shit.
“You doing okay?” Jeske called softly to him.
“Peachy.”
Ten minutes later he finally cleared the last inch of blockage and immediately squatted, Jeske’s red light illuminating him as he put the NVD back in place.
“Nice ’wears,” Jeske said, shining her light on his underpants.
“This tunnel better take us out,” he said. “I’ll never get back through that.”
“The way ahead is clear as far as I followed it. But the footing’s tough, very uneven and slippery.”
Service put on his pants, shirt, and utility belt. “Let me lead,” he said.
“I’m used to moving underground.”
“Are you used to ducking bullets?”
“You win,” she said, patting his arm. “Unassailable logic.”
Service wished they had radio contact with the surface, but on Jeske’s advice, he’d left the 800 with Friday.
Clothes on, equipment in place, Service said, “Your GPS work down here?”
“Nope.”
“Paces then. I figure if we go more than two hundred meters, we’ll be past the Art Lake perimeter fence.”
“I’ll do the counting,” Jeske said.
“It doesn’t have to be exact,” he said.
“It won’t be.”
Later he heard her voice close behind him. “Three fifty, and we’ve been descending since about pace one hundred,” she said, veering northeast, “best as I can tell.”
“You can sense that?” He had no sense of direction underground and was in no moody to experiment. Or if he did, he didn’t trust it.
“No, I always carry a button compass. It’s not worth beans if there’s any iron, but it always spins like a Sufi master when that happens, and so far, no spinning, so I think we can trust it.”
What the hell was a Sufi master? “Okay, keep moving.”
Along the way they passed a number of tunnels branching left and right. Mostly Service paid no attention, but at one of them he ducked right and moved until he hit a dead end. Jeske stayed right behind him. Damn NVD. No depth perception. He turned off the device and said, “Use your light.”
“On what?’
“The rock face.”
She shone her light past him and said, “Holy cow!”
“More specificity, please,” he said.
“Look at the groove in the wall. Four inches wide, two feet deep. That’s amazing. Never seen anything quite like that. Rare as hell,” she continued, “but not unheard of. Could very well have been almost pure ore. You know about Silver Islet, off Thunder Cape in Lake Superior?”
“No.”
“Copper discoveries made on the mainland. Prospectors went a mile or so into the big lake to put down observation markers, and one of them noticed galena. A few whacks with the pick and there’s pure silver. The vein was twenty feet wide, and the men stripped it with crowbars. But the vein dropped straight down the middle of the island into the lake, and engineers found a way to tunnel down to recover the ore. In ten years they took out a million and a half ounces. There’s still silver down there, but nobody wants the risk or expense of getting it out. This vein is like that one. Beyond belief.”
“But people know about that island.”
“Yes, but there are other deposits here and there that nobody ever hears of. They’re maintained as private resource banks.”
“If gold was sold, someone would know,” Service said.
“Presumably, but a lot of precious gems and metals get moved off the official tax books.”
Damn. No wonder Leukonovich and the IRS are on this thing.
Two and a half hours after bypassing the blockage, the tunnel began to angle upward until it suddenly ended. Service looked up, saw metal-bar ladder rungs built into the rock.
“I’ll go up,” Jeske said, and moved past him.
“There’s a platform here, and six more feet of tunnel, ending at a big iron door.”
“I’m coming up,” he said.
It was cramped above, so he took off his NVD and used his SureFire to examine the door.
“Old hinges,” he said, running his hand over the nearest one. “Old, but solid as all get-out.”
“Do we just knock on the door?” Jeske said.
“No. You go back to the others. Explain to the judge what we found and how far we’ve come. Tell her it would be sweet if our colleagues came through the Art Lake gate and found their way to the other side of this door so I can get the hell out of here.”
“That might take a while.”
“I’ve got plenty of time.”
“I could stay,” she said. “I’m used to being down here.”
“If someone opens the door, they are not going to be happy campers to find one of us. Go talk to the judge, Hoot. Tell her what we found and what we need, and don’t let her say no.”
“What if she won’t listen to me?”
“Tell Friday, and tell the judge she’ll have to personally dig my ass out of here. And leave your fancy hammer if you can get by without it.”
She handed it to him. “Why?”
“Maybe I’ll dig for gold,” he said.
69
Baragastan
MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2006
The SureFire had new batteries, and he had a backup supply of four more in his pack. He got up close to the bottom hinge on the door and used his knife to test it. There was a small gap, mostly rusted in. The hinge seemed to be riveted or welded. Weird. The four hinges had six-inch-long pins. Jeske’s hammer might work, but the handle wasn’t long enough to get good leverage, which left force as the only alternative.
He descended the ladder to search for a rock with some heft, and when he found one, he climbed back up. He had just positioned the pick end on one of the hinges when there was a metallic thump on the other side of the door and it began to screech open. Acting on instinct, he dropped down the ladder into the tunnel below, moved to the first side tunnel, and stepped into it, his heart pounding. Too damn soon for the cavalry.
He heard whispers but couldn’t make out voices or words. Tone, however, was clear: Somebody was spooked. Then he heard muffled thumps. Footsteps? Somebody coming down the ladder, dropping the last few feet? Why come down here? Someone small enough to get out past the blockage, the way Jeske had gone? Or someone who didn’t know there was a blockage? Jesus.
He eased out of his hiding place and advanced back to the ladder. There were two lumps at the base of the ladder. Bodies! He moved closer and looked. Mears and Czuk, with no obvious wounds or marks. And no pulses—bodies not warm. Dead a while. Geez.
He knew he should wait for Jeske and help, but maybe he had an opportunity here. He unholstered his SIG Sauer and climbed the ladder. When he got to the door, it was open. What the . . . ? The chances that the two women had died instantaneously and simultaneously of natural causes were nil. There was only one assumption: Someone had killed them and dumped the bodies.
Why leave the door open? In a hurry, not expecting visitors. Or not caring one way or the other—that’s possible too. Keep your ass moving. Now he really
wished he had his radio.
The door opened into a storeroom, the walls solid rock with worn stone steps leading up. At the top, another door, this one closed, but not locked. Somebody left in a big-ass hurry.
Had Jeske gotten to the judge yet, and, more important, convinced her to send in the cavalry? No probable cause issues now. The bodies he’d found changed all calculations and procedural go-slows. He was in the heart of Art Lake. The mine was illegal and connected to them, bodies dumped in the mine as he stood there. Slam-dunk.
Slow down, he reminded himself. He tried the door. From one knee he unlatched it and pushed lightly. Nothing. Then he shoved it open violently and went through with his weapon up and ready, his heart pounding. Still nothing. He exhaled slowly and looked around. Metal boxes and tools, boxes empty. More stairs to his right, this time made of wood—cedar, aged silver.
And another damn door. It’s like a human rabbit warren down here.
Beyond the next door, a sort of living room with bookcases and more rock walls, only these had some wall paneling in places. Old stuff, needing replacement. Weird. How many levels had he climbed up, and how many more to go? Jeske’s story of Silver Islet flooded his mind: how engineers had taken a ninety-by-ninety-foot slate island and dug straight down hundreds, maybe even thousands of feet. Every time they’d stopped on the way in, she’d talked more about Silver Islet, and he understood. She was afraid, trying to think about something else. He didn’t blame her. He was plenty scared too. You’re still underground: Keep moving up.
There were windows on the next level, looking down on the pond with the cabins around it. A storybook scene . . . except for all the dead bodies. Why does someone kill, then dump bodies close to the open bottom door? Closed, it might take forever to find them. Door open, it would take only one person with a flashlight looking down the old ladder. Left open intentionally? He pondered this as he moved. Somebody wants the bodies found and attention diverted, so they can boogie? In a flash he had a pretty good idea where it would happen.
He pushed through doors and rooms, looking frantically for a door to the outside, and popped onto a stone porch. He was in the main building. He leapt to the grass and side-hopped downhill, trying not to fall on his ass. When he hit flatter ground, he ran hard for the pond’s spillway on the east perimeter, and when he got there, he bent over to catch his breath, listening for sounds that would say help was on the way. Nothing. Still alone.
Shadow of the Wolf Tree Page 36