Tortoise Soup (35 page)

Noah looked at the hole skeptically. “Sure. It’s fine for you. For me, crawling under there is gonna be like trying to squeeze through an iron lung.”

I wanted to attract as little attention as possible if we were going to do this. I was worried that the sound of metal snips cutting away at the fence would echo throughout the valley. In addition, it was possible that an alarm could be triggered.

“Listen, if we slide under, no one at the mine will ever know that we’ve been here,” I reasoned. “I promise I’ll help you get through.”

Noah rolled his eyes, dropped his backpack, and hit the dirt. He maneuvered his body between the fence and the ground until he resembled a hot dog stuck in a bun.

“Okay, Porter. Brilliant idea. Now what?” he grumbled.

I sat down next to him, drawing my knees close into my chest, and braced my hands behind my back.

“Now I push,” I said as my feet shot out, propelling his butt under the wire.

“Hey! That hurts, Porter!” he hissed in surprise.

“Just once more for the shoulders,” I promised, setting myself in position again.

“Oh, shit! You’re scraping my tan right off me,” Noah complained. I pushed while he wriggled his shoulders, clearing the fence.

Noah brushed off his back and scrambled to his feet. “If you think I’m going out the same way, think again,” he groused as I slid his backpack under the wire. “I expect a night on silk sheets after this, just to soothe my ravaged skin.” He pulled me through to join him.

Though no guards were in sight, a heavy stillness bore down upon us, as though we’d just breached forbidden ground.

“Now what?” I whispered, afraid of disturbing the silence. “You’re not planning an assault on the main office, are you?”

Noah snorted. “What do you take me for? Rambo? My motto is, If you’ve got a brain, use it. And the first thing it tells me is to stay away from the coffee machine. That’s usually where everyone congregates late at night.”

Noah hesitated, and I wondered if he’d begun to change his mind.

“You sure you want to go through with this?” I asked.

“You chickening out on me, Porter?” Noah taunted.

I’d sooner face Harley and his friends on a bad day. “Lead the way.”

Noah turned and headed off across a large open space as I kept pace behind him. We made it to the base unobserved and then quickly scrambled up the far side of the mine, intersecting with a dirt road built into the mountain. The path led to an overhang, in which an electric meter box and a telephone were mounted. Closing off entry to the interior was a large steel door.

“Here’s your first tip-off, Red,” Noah noted. “You’ve gotta ask yourself what the hell an electric meter and a phone are doing outside a mine shaft.”

“How did you know this was here?” I asked, not quite ready to believe Noah had the instincts of a bloodhound.

Noah grinned, adjusting the pack on his back. “You think you’re the only detective in town? I started to get suspicious after our visit yesterday. So I set myself up on the ridge early this morning with a pair of high-powered binoculars and a couple of cans of beer, kicked back, and watched the show.”

“Sort of your proverbial fly on the ledge?” I chuckled.

“You got it, Red,” Noah agreed, pleased with the recognition.

I pulled out a pen and jotted the phone number listed on the meter onto the back of my hand. Noah looked at me, raising an eyebrow.

“Hey, you never know,” I said in my own defense, not quite sure why I had done it.

Noah twisted the knob on the door, pressing against the steel with his shoulder. It gave way with a low creak that reverberated loudly in my ears. We walked ten feet inside and found a locked steel grate blocking our way. A second door stood behind it, slightly ajar. I half expected an armed guard to appear and blow us away, but the only thing I could hear was my heart pounding like a battering ram.

We stood still, barely daring to breathe, for what seemed an eternity. If a guard was on duty, he’d apparently taken a break. I pulled out my Leatherman and jimmied the lock. The grate swung silently open.

Noah shook his head in disbelief. “Pathetic, isn’t it? Don’t you think they’d take the time to put a decent latch on the place?”

He closed the outer door behind us as I peeked into a room ablaze with light. It was as if we had been magically transported into a technological wonderland, far away from the barren desert outside. Millions of dollars’ worth of electronic equipment and gear filled the room, each instrument alive with an assortment of lights that glittered and gleamed and blinked on and off. I stood in the looming silence and gaped in astonishment. If I’d been Dorothy in the land of Oz, the Wizard’s voice would have nailed me by now. I’d stepped into a secret world far beyond any I’d ever known, and I knew it would do no good to click my heels. There was no going home now.

I became aware of a low hum that pervaded the area, seeping into my bones so that my body joined in the vibration. A massive mainframe computer stood protectively in the corner of the room like a glowering samurai warrior. Blinking angrily at us, its screen spat out a flurry of red numbers in dizzying succession, protesting our brazen intrusion. A multitude of umbilical cords sprang from the electronic brain’s back, connecting it to every gadget in the place, which contentedly fed off their host. Additional wires from each instrument ran into conduit attached to the wall, leading back into a tunnel like the beckoning tail of a dragon.

“Eureka! We’ve just hit the mother lode,” Noah murmured, following me inside.

Noah’s fingers wandered lovingly over every piece of equipment as though they were long-lost friends, cooing to them softly. When he saw the conduit his body suddenly jerked and he quickly turned and followed the cables into the tunnel, disappearing from my sight.

My own attention had been lured to a chalkboard that held an array of phone numbers, each followed by a person’s first name. I hurriedly began to scribble down as much of the information as I could, before Noah’s voice brought my writing to a halt.

“Porter, get back here! There’s something I want you to see.”

My breath came in short, rapid bursts as I headed off, afraid that his voice would carry through the tunnel, past the mine, and up to the front office, where the gang was probably even now gathered about the coffee machine. The tunnel wound further and further back until the outer room was no longer in sight, the only source of light a row of tiny bulbs that illuminated the way. My eyes were drawn to irregular clusters of white fungus that haphazardly dotted the walls and ceiling like a secret government mushroom farm.

I spotted Noah at the end of the tunnel, standing next to an enormous block of cement. Looking like a massive, squat peg, it rose two feet above the floor. Studded into the slab were the hundreds of cables and wires that had snaked their way back through the tunnel, connecting the mainframe directly with the giant block. It was the ultimate computer nerd’s dream, strewn with a wide assortment of gauges and screens. Endless streams of numbers flashed from some, while other screens danced as if possessed, kinetic green lines high-kicking and swaying like a chorus line of alien worms.

“What the hell is this?” I asked in astonishment, wondering if we’d just blundered upon a cousin to the monolith in the film
2001
.

“My best guess?” Noah rubbed the stubble on his chin against the back of his hand. “I’d have to say that this is where some of the rods are buried.”

I felt the hair bristle on the back of my neck. “Inside this slab?”

“No. Underneath it. They would have buried them and then poured this cement block on top,” Noah explained. “Either that, or they’ve got hot waste encased down there.”

“Hot waste?” I asked, astounded at the thought of what lay beneath our feet.

“Sure. Heavy water—the waste water from nuclear storage, Porter. That stuff will keep generating heat and radiation long after it’s been removed from a power plant. All these gauges and instruments are probably measuring temperature, compression, expansion—that sort of thing,” Noah elaborated.

I must have looked like I was about to be left back in science class.

Noah sighed and tried it again. “In other words, scientists are studying to see how any rainwater that might trickle through cracks in the tunnel would behave and if the rock chemistry then changes. The theory is that heating this block will keep the waste and rods dry for thousands of years to come. So that if water does seep through, this block here will act like a big old percolator, turning it into steam,” he clarified.

“Theoretically, what would happen if the waste managed to get wet?” I queried, paddling as fast as I could to try to keep up.

“Then you make tracks the hell out of Nevada on the first plane you can catch. If this stuff cools down, water will condense, seep through the rock and into the containers that hold those nuclear rods and fuel. When that happens, waste will begin to leach out and your groundwater becomes contaminated. That’s the time to start buying stock in Evian water. Consider it a hot tip, Porter.”

I stepped away from the huge block as Noah pulled a Geiger counter out of his backpack.

“Here we go,” he said, holding it out in front of him.

“What are you doing with that?”

“This little beauty is going to let us know if there’s any kind of radiation leak in here,” he grinned.

I watched as Noah’s smile abruptly disappeared, his face turning grim.

“What’s up?” I asked, not sure I really wanted to know.

Noah silently turned the Geiger counter in my direction so I could see the dial. The needle had swung clean off the scale.

Noah stuck the counter in his pack. “Time to haul ass, Red. We probably started to glow in the dark about two minutes ago.” He quickly headed out the tunnel.

I ran to keep up with him, surprising us both as I slammed into the back of his pack in the main room. Noah had stopped dead in his tracks.

“Shit, Porter! Will you watch where you’re going? At this rate, I won’t have to worry about radiation when I’ve got you to scare me to death!”

He pointed toward the chalkboard he’d been studying before our collision. “I know these people and I can damn well read their equations,” he said angrily. “What they’re doing is more than just a little testing. It looks like they’ve decided to permanently leave in the rods that they’ve buried here.”

I felt sure Noah had to be wrong. “But Alpha’s planning a housing development that will probably come right up alongside the mine.”

“Yeah. Real thoughtful of Garrett and the gang. Not only do you get a house, but enough radioactivity to light it for free. Let’s go check out what our friends at DOE have planted in the tunnel below this one.”

“There’s another?” I asked in alarm.

“Well, there’s a second steel door the next level directly down from here, and I have a feeling it’s not the entrance to the employee cafeteria,” Noah retorted.

Noah ran outdoors and then barreled down the side of the mountain like a runaway train, his weight propelling him past the lower level. Unable to stop, he finally fell on his butt, flinging his arms out as he grabbed onto handfuls of gravel. After watching his performance, I chose to sit on my rear end to begin with. I slowly slid my way down, digging my heels in and braking to a gentle halt.

“That’s impressive, Porter,” Noah sarcastically observed as I stood up and brushed off my pants.

“I’m bowled over by your fancy footwork, too,” I retorted.

Noah dumped his backpack on the ground and pulled out a flashlight as we examined yet another steel door. A thick chain was stretched across the metal, secured by a heavy padlock. I got down on one knee and immediately lost my balance, sliding into a deep depression that had formed beneath the doorway.

Noah flashed his light on the gully and shrugged. “Probably rattlesnakes living inside. Or maybe a coyote.”

I jumped up and backed away until I heard Noah begin to snicker. Cursing him under my breath, I straddled the hole, focusing on picking the lock. But the catch wouldn’t budge.

“Fuck that,” Noah snarled, stuffing the end of the flashlight into his mouth.

He pulled out his metal snips and cut the chain as easily as a knife slicing through butter. Then, stepping around his backpack, he pushed open the door. The flashlight prowled the subterranean walls like the eyes of a nocturnal cat, pouncing upon the power switch that came into view. Noah flicked it on, and a row of bare bulbs sprang to life, dimly illuminating the tunnel before us. We walked a short distance, the rough-hewn, craggy walls our only guide, until we came to a corridor that branched off to the right. Noah aimed his flashlight down the unlit passage and turned into it as I followed behind. I tried to peer around his massive frame, but my eyes remained glued to the bright Hawaiian flowers on his shirt, which undulated in psychedelic lunacy, their fluorescent gleam appearing to mutate in the dark.

We had only gone about twenty feet in when Noah came to an abrupt halt. The small tunnel had ended, cut off by an airshaft that revealed the night sky. Glancing up, I saw a peek-a-boo moon wink as it escaped from behind a cloud, a silent co-conspirator to our break-in. My eyes followed a ray of moonlight back down and came to rest on the ghostly skeletons of a pair of raptors. Spotting them at the same time, Noah knelt beside the remains of the birds, their bare bones shimmering as though illuminated from inside.

“They must have flown in here and then evidently became too sick to fly back out,” Noah softly said.

“Too sick from what?” I queried, the words forming like heavy lumps of clay in the back of my throat.

Either Noah didn’t hear or he was too engrossed to answer. Scouring the area, his searchlight focused in on yet another open burial site. The small frame of what had been a coyote lay quietly on its side, its perfectly intact skeleton settled in for the night, not expecting to be caught by uninvited guests. A shiver formed at the base of my spine, snaking up through my body until my teeth began to chatter.

Noah retraced his steps without a word as we connected once again with the main tunnel. By now, the shaft exuded the closeness of a tomb. My arms pressed protectively against my sides as my clothes clung to my body in a moist layer of fear. I had always sworn I’d be cremated, fearing the suffocating confinement of a coffin and the impenetrable darkness of night. Now I wondered if this was what it felt like to be buried alive.