by JE Gurley
“It has infrared and telephoto capabilities, so you can use it to pinpoint things for us in the dark. Duchamps claims it has a range of about five kilometers down in the mine. I have my doubts about that, but we shouldn’t go that far.” He looked at his two friends, obviously numb at the disappearance of Vince. “I’ll find him, I promise.”
Trace gave him a thumbs-up signal. Bill attempted a smile, but it fell flat.
He looked out the window and saw Duchamps leading a large group of people to the Shack. “Okay, I think the rest are ready to go. See you later.”
Outside the trailer, he was surprised to see seven heavily armed security guards. All wore revolvers on their hips and three of them carried automatic rifles. He recognized it as the 5.56 caliber Denel R4, the mainstay of the South African Defense Force. Only the SADF had the authority to carry such weapons, but he imagined Verkhoen had enough political pull to bypass the regulations. It seemed like overkill on Duchamps’ part, but Alan didn’t argue the point.
Accompanying Duchamps was a woman about twenty-nine-years old.
“Hoffman, this is Evelyn Means, one of our field biologists. She is coming with us.”
It was difficult to tell under the concealing hardhat, but Alan thought she had long, auburn hair, now pushed up beneath the helmet. She was about Duchamps’ height, so she had to look up at Alan’s 6’2” frame.
“Hello, Mr. Hoffman. I am so pleased to be joining you.”
British, he thought. He recognized her clipped accent as from southwest England. One of the women he had dallied with for a short time had come from Somerset. Alan looked into her hazel eyes, which sparkled like a schoolgirl’s on prom night. He imagined she would look every bit the prom queen in the right dress. Her green jumpsuit was baggy on her, but he saw the faint outline of a shapely hip and two firm breasts. While pleased by her presence, her function on the team puzzled him.
“Call me Alan, Miss Means,” he said politely.
“Doctor Means, please.” He flinched at her rebuke, but just as he was about to arrive at the opinion that she was another stuffy professional, she smiled, held out her hand, and said, “You may call me Eve. I like that better.”
Her hand was delicate – slim, soft, and neatly manicured – the exact opposite of his rough, calloused mitts. The strength of her grip took him by surprise.
He turned to Duchamps. “To what do we owe the pleasure of Doctor Means’ company?”
Duchamps held out the knife they had found, Masowe’s knife. “The blood on the knife did not belong to your engineer.”
A surge of relief coursed through him; then, the implications of Duchamps’s words hit home. “What are you getting at? Are you saying Vince killed your guard?” His voice rose at Duchamps’ accusation. He knew Vince better than that.
Eve broke into their conversation. “Alan, the blood on the knife wasn’t human.”
It took a few seconds for the implications to sink in. He stared at her to ascertain if she was joking, but her mien was one of deadly seriousness. He shook his head several times in confusion. “Not human? What do you mean?”
“The blood on the knife seems to be from a member of the arthropod family, but unlike any I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t match it at all. I found similar blood on the electrician’s drill bit. I sent samples to various laboratories for analysis. Captain Duchamps asked me to come along as an observer. I must say I am intrigued.”
From the sour look on Duchamps’s face, Alan imagined the order came from higher up the command chain, perhaps from Verkhoen himself. It was obvious he considered the woman an encumbrance to his mission.
Alan shook his head. “You’re telling me that Masowe or Vince cut a bug with the knife and some electrician drilled into one. What’s that have to do with Vince’s disappearance?” He waved his hands in the air and shouted, “People are missing, and you want to go on a bug hunt. Lady, we don’t have time.”
“I don’t know if it has anything to do with the disappearances,” Eve replied in a soft voice, disarming his hostility. “The fact that one man has died and three have vanished may have nothing to do with this mystery, but it certainly calls for an investigation.”
What she said finally broke through his wall of righteous rage. “Did you say one dead and three missing?”
Caught up in her excitement, she ignored his question. “Look, Mr. Hoffman, if there are arthropods down that deep, what else might there be? Cave spiders and scorpions inhabit the deepest cavern systems we have explored, often completely blind or even lacking eyes, adapted to their world of total darkness. If this lava tube or cavern system, whatever it is, has no opening to the surface, we could be looking at an entire ecoculture reaching as far back as the late Paleozoic Era.”
Alan turned to Duchamps. “What does she mean by one dead and three missing?”
“An electrician assistant is dead,” he said. “We found his body mangled by a ventilator fan at the bottom of an airshaft. He could have fallen, but …”
“But what?”
“The electrician is missing. We found her bloodstained tool bag near the airshaft opening. The blood is hers.”
“You think her disappearance and that of Vince and your guard is related.”
Duchamps shrugged. “It is possible they were killed by the same person, but it does not explain the strange tracks.”
Duchamps seemed to dismiss the missing electrician as a possible suspect. If he had a reason, he wasn’t revealing it. Alan turned to Eve. “Would any of these insects be large enough to take down two men, one armed with a pistol?” Before she could reply, he raised his hands in mock defeat. “Okay, Doctor Means, Eve, I see your point, but remember, this is a search and rescue mission, not a bug hunt.”
“I say what the mission is, Mr. Hoffman,” Duchamps chimed in. “However, at this point I agree with you. One of my men is missing, too, remember.”
Alan nodded. “Then we both have a reason to be anxious. Let’s go.”
* * * *
They made the long trip down into the mine in silence, each lost in his or her private musings. Alan knew he should apologize to Eve for the bad start he had made, but didn’t quite know how to begin. He had never been very good with women, as his ex-wife would quickly attest. First, he had seen her only as a good-looking woman instead of the professional she was. Second, he had questioned her motives for coming along. Worst of all, he had questioned her expertise in her field while having nothing with which to refute her. She probably thought him another crude, rude American.
He was relieved when she made the first move. “Mr. Hoffman, Alan, I am sorry I did not make a good first impression. While it’s true I came because of the intriguing blood on the knife, I do feel sorry for your friend’s disappearance. I am here to help search for him. In my field, I’ve been in many caves and mines, and I am knowledgeable about what we might possibly find. I have made an extensive study of the local Microchiroptera that inhabit the upper levels of the mine, especially the sheath-tailed, tombs, and leaf-nose species. In addition, I’ve identified fifteen species of Orthoptera, two of which are indigenous to this mine. ”
“Bats and crickets,” Alan said, recognizing the sub-order for bats and the order for crickets. “I don’t think either one is responsible for the disappearance of three people. Nor do I believe insects are the culprit, but I’m afraid my quick temper got the best of me. Vince is my friend, and I’m concerned about him. I spoke hastily, and I regret my harsh words. Why don’t we start over?”
Eve smiled. “I agree.”
“We’re here,” Duchamps announced, as the #3 elevator jolted to a sudden stop.
Duchamps’ men walked two abreast. Like soldiers, Alan thought. He lagged behind with Eve, hoping for an opportunity to speak with her, but the tunnels near the elevators were noisy with ventilator fans, electric locos moving ore and men, rattling water pipes, and bleeder pipes controlling airflow from the tunnels. At first, the shafts were wide and well-lit, like undergrou
nd thoroughfares, with offices, locker rooms, and mechanical rooms. The further they ventured into the network of shafts and tunnels, the passageways became dark, narrow, and twisting warrens. Side tunnels branched out at irregular intervals, each filled with the sound of drilling.
Eve seemed quite at home in the maze of winding tunnels and managed better than he did. His height made banging his head almost a certainty. He was thankful for the hard hat. To his inexperienced eye, it seemed they were taking a different route than earlier. Some sections seemed unfamiliar and weren’t wide enough for the Cerberus.
“This isn’t the way we came before,” he said.
“This is a shortcut,” she answered.
“You’ve been down here before?” he asked.
She looked startled by his question. She nodded and walked away, pretending to examine the wall.
What had he said? Duchamps, overhearing the exchange, dropped back to walk beside him.
“Doctor Means lost her husband down here four years ago in a tunnel collapse. He was a mining engineer. The company tried to rescue them, but it became impossible because of the loose rock. The company sealed the shaft. None of the bodies were recovered. She was down here the entire time the rescue effort was underway, even sleeping here. She refused to leave. She explored the tunnels for another way in. It hit her very hard, I think.”
“Then I’ve put my foot in my mouth,” Alan said.
“Perhaps, but she must learn to get on with her life. She is much too beautiful to grieve forever, is she not?”
“It’s difficult to tell in that baggy jumpsuit, but yes, she is a very attractive woman.”
Duchamps winked and walked on ahead of the group. When they reached the open pit, Alan saw that a work crew had installed a metal ladder with a safety cage. It made the descent a little safer but just as daunting.
“Kibble or ladder?” Duchamps asked.
“Kibble,” Alan replied looking down into the hole. “It’s quicker.”
As soon as the kibble deposited them on the floor of the pit, Eve began to carefully examining the walls of the tunnel the Cerberus had dug, even taking out a geologist’s hammer to chip at it.
“Your machine did this?” she asked in awe.
“The Cerberus AT10,” he said with pride. “It will revolutionize mining. I’m sorry we didn’t have it four years ago.”
She blushed. “I see Henri told you about Frederick. Yes, your machine would have made a difference.” She peered at him and added, “It will make you a lot of money, I suppose.”
“It will save a lot of lives, I hope,” he countered, slightly offended by her characterization of him as just another callous, money-grubbing American. “That’s why I designed it.”
She glanced away as if suddenly realizing what she had implied. “Then it will be worth it.”
The two other guards met them at the Cerberus. There was a lot of grumbling and a loud exchange as Duchamps talked to them. Alan made himself useful setting up the remote feed from his helmet camera to the Cerberus. He turned his head, stopping to watch Eve bend over to retrieve something from her pack.
“Receiving great,” Trace said. “Looks like we’re missing out on something up here.”
Alan realized he was staring at Eve’s ass and panned the camera around the tube. “Switch to Infrared.”
“Switching to IR. My God!”
The excitement in Trace’s voice startled him. “What is it?”
“The entire pipe is glowing with some kind of low-level light. It’s in the walls. It’s beautiful.” Trace sounded awed by the spectacle.
“Cave bioluminescence,” Eve explained.
Had she overheard the entire conversation?
“What?” he replied, trying to hide his ignorance.
“Bacteria, some lichens, even some insects produce a cold light by utilizing a chemical called luceferin. They use it to attract mates or prey.”
“Some come on. Doesn’t work as well as a dinner with wine, though?” Alan replied and was pleased to see her smile at his lame attempt at humor.
Duchamps walked over. “Can your machine be positioned to point its cameras upslope?”
“Certainly. Why?” Alan asked.
“We will go downslope to examine the disturbed area Claude found, but I don’t want anything to come up behind us.”
Eve stopped examining the Cerberus and asked, “What are you afraid of?”
“The two men I left here say they’ve been hearing strange noises, whistles and clicks, things like that. One even claims he heard a voice.”
“Someone is still alive,” Alan exclaimed. He felt a renewed hope it was Vince.
“Perhaps, but my tracker says he smells many different odors, an evil smell, he calls it. I’m leaving the two men here, but I’m afraid they’ll bolt at the first sign of trouble. The camera would keep our backs safe.”
The security chief’s voice had remained flat, but Alan detected a hint of fear in it. If Duchamps was concerned, he wanted to know of what. “That sounds a little paranoid, Duchamps. What kind of trouble are you expecting?”
Alan studied Duchamps carefully. The security chief added nothing more, but his apparent unease convinced Alan to comply with Duchamps’ request.
“I’ll have Trace move the Cerberus. You copy, Trace?” he said into his mic.
“Copy, Alan. Moving it now.”
The Cerberus used a jet turbine to provide power while in operation but could travel a short distance on battery power alone. Alan smiled, as both Eve and Duchamps jumped, startled by the silence of Cerberus as it lumbered to the end of the tunnel. Trace swiveled the lights and the camera, pointing them both upslope.
“In position,” Trace called out.
“Happy?” Alan asked Duchamps.
“Very. Let’s get going.” He looked around his small group and frowned. “Where is Doctor Means?”
Alan had been watching the Cerberus and had lost sight of her. “Eve!” he called out.
Faintly, they heard, “Over here.”
They found her about twenty meters away by a large pile of rocks, vigorously shaking a test tube. Alan’s gaze fell to her breasts bouncing beneath her jumper as she moved. He turned away before she caught him staring.
Duchamps chided her. “Doctor Means, you must stay with the group at all times. Do not go wandering off.”
“Sorry,” she replied, still engrossed in her test tube.
Her keen interest in her test tube aroused Duchamps’ curiosity. “What are you doing?”
“I found blood here and here.” She pointed to two small splotches of blood on a rock. Duchamps walked over to examine them.
“This one is human blood. See how it forms strings of proteins in the solution.” She picked up a second test tube. “This one is the same blood as on the knife, at least the same species.”
“The knife was found beside the Cerberus,” Alan countered.
“All I know is that I have found human blood, either your friend’s or the guard’s, and I have found more of the same type of blood this is on the knife.”
Duchamps called for Claude, the tracker, and asked him examine the area carefully. After a few minutes, Claude pointed to a chip in the rock. “Gunfire,” he said.
What could be down here dangerous enough that two men with a large knife and a pistol couldn’t defend against? Where were the bodies? The bloodstains didn’t bode well for Vince’s safety. Alan was getting a bad feeling about the whole situation.
8
July 5, 2016, 8:00 a.m. Ngomo Mine, 138 Level –
Pieter Bekker detested his boss, Henri Duchamps. To him, the arrogant chief of security was a half-breed Afrikaner, more French than Boer, while his family had been among the first voortrekkers to enter the Transvaal in the 1830s. He resented the offhand manner in which Duchamps had ordered him to remain near the American mining machine with John Khosa, his companion, and for rebuking him in front of the blond American surfer boy. Most of all, he didn’
t like the smell of the strange cavern the machine had discovered.
“What do you think happened to Masowe?” he asked Khosa, who stood staring upslope into the darkness of the lava tube.
“I do not know, but I fear he is dead.”
“You think the American killed him?” Personally, he doubted anyone could kill Masowe. The big Zulu was one of the toughest bastards he had ever met.
Khosa shook his head. “No. Something else killed them both, as well as the electrician. Can you not feel it?”
“Feel what?” He looked in the direction Khosa stared. “I don’t feel anything but the bloody heat and the imprint of Duchamps’ boot on my ass.”
Khosa arched an eyebrow. “You make your loathing of him known. That is why he does not like you.” He smiled. “That is why he put you with me. Your loathing of me is well known.”
“Nothing personal, Khosa. I just don’t swallow that lost tribe of Israel bullshit. You Lemba may eat Kosher and have the tips of your penises snipped, but that doesn’t make you Jews.”
Khosa glared at Bekker. “I am Mwenye. Lemba is the Afrikaans name for my people.”
“Whatever,” Bekker said. He got tired of hearing how white men had taken away the blacks’ history, changing names and territorial boundaries. As far as he was concerned, Africa would still be a bunch of ignorant savages fighting each other over land they couldn’t farm if not for the whites. To some, that made him a gomgat, a redneck, but he saw it as the truth.
“My people brought the Ark of Covenant, the ngoma lungunda, with us on our holy journey from Jerusalem to Africa. We worship, Nwali, your Christian God.”
“I don’t worship no God,” Bekker snapped at Khosa. The volume of the echo of his voice startled him. Quieter, he added, “If there is a God, he’s not down here.”
“You are Boer. Your people worshipped God, even though they went to war with the British to keep slaves.”