Black Sun Descending (26 page)

“The man is scared. He's going to lose his job. Maybe his brother-in-law will lose his gig too. Even get charged with something. Accessory or some such thing.”

“Do you think he knew what he was really hauling?”

“No. I don't.”

“So he had nothing to do with Jane Vaughn's death?” asked Hayduke.

“I don't think so. I think he was just doing what Balin Aldershot told him to do. Why were they hauling waste rock from Moab to the Patriot One Mine?”

“I have no idea,” confessed Hayduke. “So now what? You want to take this to your girlfriend?”

Silas shot him a look.

“Well,” protested Hayduke, “she's smoking hot. You guys should hook up.”

“I'm trying to find my wife.”

Hayduke just shrugged.

“I think we need to go on a road trip to the Patriot One Mine. Let's see what Balin Aldershot and Slim Jim are really up to. We find out, then I call the feds and tell them what we've got.”

Hayduke threw back the rest of his coffee and was up out of his seat like he'd been jolted with electricity. “I love doing this shit!” he said, eliciting an angry look from a mother with two toddlers in a nearby booth.

SILAS AND HAYDUKE
each drove their own vehicles out of Page and toward the Marble Gorge. They crossed the bridge downstream from Glen Canyon Dam and instead of stopping Hayduke simply rolled down the passenger window on his Jeep, leaned over, and gave the Glen Canyon Dam the finger.

It was afternoon when they reached Jacob Lake, where they stopped for coffee and pie. Silas felt the pull of the North Rim, and momentarily considered abandoning their plans to resume his search for Penelope among the aspen forests and deep clefts of the Grand Canyon's remote corner. Hayduke slapped him on the back, blueberry pie crust caught in his beard, and pointed to the door.

They reached Fredonia thirty minutes later. Hayduke led the way in his Jeep through the small mill town and Silas had to admit, once they were following a jeep track south again toward the Grand Canyon, that the young man knew his way around the Southwest. The road they followed paralleled the dell cut by Kanab Creek. Eventually it would turn into one of the major side canyons of the Grand Canyon, but in Fredonia it was just a shallow swale.

The driving became increasingly difficult, the gravel road narrowing but still passable. Several side roads turned off to the west, leading over sage brush flats and along terraces of red rock. Hayduke stopped his Jeep and jumped out, the pilfered map in hand. Silas stopped and walked up alongside him. The young man pointed to the place on the map where he believed they were. Silas had his
GPS
unit in hand and confirmed their location. “Then the Patriot One is just over that rise,” said Hayduke, pointing to the south. “Do you want to stash our rigs? What if Slim Jim is there working away right now?”

Silas looked around. There were few places to conceal a pair of vehicles. “I don't suppose you have one of those camouflage nets that Seldom Seen Smith had in
The Monkey Wrench Gang
?”

“Shit, no, but I'm going to get one.”

“Alright, let's just park them off the road up that side trail.” Silas pointed east. “Those junipers will give us a little cover from the road.”

They drove up the side road, Silas being careful not to scrape the undercarriage of his Outback on the high center rocks. In a few minutes they were parked behind the stunted trees and surveying the country. “I think I see where the mine is at,” said Hayduke, using his binoculars. He handed them to Silas. “Down in that little grotto there.” Silas scanned but didn't see anything. “Let's pack some bags,” Hayduke said, setting to work.

They each carried a small pack. Silas put food and three litres of lukewarm water in his, along with a few relevant topo maps, his
GPS
, his cell phone, a short length of rope and a few pieces of sling, a pair of carabiners, his snake bite and first aid kits, and a headlamp. He added his fleece coat; even though it was seventy degrees in the mid-afternoon, he knew it could grow cold if they returned after dark.

Hayduke packed the stolen maps, water, beef jerky, a length of rope, a set of tools, a six-pack of beer, and his .357. Silas gave him a look when he saw the young man stowing the heavy pistol in the bag, but Hayduke ignored him.

Hayduke was in the lead, walking along a low rise that paralleled the road. “I didn't see any tracks on the road as we were driving in,” said Hayduke. Silas realized he hadn't even been looking. “I doubt anybody is here, but it's good to be careful.”

When they came up over a hill in the sage desert, Silas was underwhelmed. “That's it?” The Patriot One Mine consisted of three wooden buildings arranged around a cleft in a small grotto that appeared to drain toward Kanab Creek. Two of the buildings seemed to be a site office and a maintenance building. There were half a dozen abandoned pickup trucks parked around the buildings in various states of disrepair. A huge pile of slag—waste rock—was amassed near the entrance to the third building. Silas assumed this was the mine shaft itself. The building was crude in construction, two stories tall, with board double doors. It was bunched up against a low cliff.

“I don't see anybody,” said Silas. “Let's go have a look.”

Hayduke led the way, stopping from time to time to scan the property. They reached the mine site and Silas walked toward what he guessed was the office. It was the size of a single trailer, constructed from plywood and tarpaper. The door was fastened with a heavy Yale lock. Silas looked at Hayduke, who was taking off his pack. He first pulled out the .357 but Silas shook his head. Hayduke tucked the pistol into his waistband. He then took out the set of tools and selected a pair of bolt cutters. “This okay?” Hayduke asked. Silas nodded. Hayduke quickly cut the lock and it dropped into the red dust at their feet.

Hayduke put the tools away and Silas pushed the door open. The room was dark and smelled like mothballs and dust. Silas felt for a light switch and found one. A set of florescent tubes flickered to life. They were caked with red dust and flies.

“This place doesn't get much use,” said Hayduke.

“Let's have a look around and get out of here. I've got a bad feeling.” Silas went to a desk and opened a set of drawers, finding nothing more than a few old sheets of yellowed paper and dry pens. Hayduke found a file cabinet that squealed in protest when he opened it. “There's nothing here, man. It's a dry hole.”

They searched the rest of the building but were losing hope. “Shit,” said Silas, pounding a hand on a desk.

“Easy there, Professor,” chided Hayduke. “What did you expect? A sign on the way advertising what they were up to?”

“Let's check the other building.”

They peered out of the door of the office before crossing the yard, around several old trucks, to the maintenance building. Hayduke cut another lock and they stepped inside. Large windows illuminated the building, making it unnecessary to find a light switch. Most of the room was empty. The only equipment in it was a front-end loader and a scooptram. Silas pondered the low-built, large-wheeled piece of equipment. Hayduke explained. “It's for hauling rock out of a mine stope. That's a horizontal shaft in a mine.”

They continued to search the site. There was a drafting table near the back of the building. A lamp sat on it. Silas reached for it.

“Hold on.” Hayduke moved forward.

“What?”

“Look around. Everything in here is dusty,” Hayduke explained. Indeed the red dust covered every surface. “But the table isn't. Neither is the light.”

Silas nodded. He carefully flicked on the light. The table was in fact wiped clear of dust. “What did they have sitting on this table?”

Hayduke searched the area. He bent down and looked under the table. There was a map tube similar to the one he had liberated from the office in Page. He pulled it open and let the contents drop out. The young man spread the map out over the table. “What the fuck is this?”

Silas looked at the diagram on the map. “It's a survey of the mine site and surrounding area. Looks like about a dozen acres. It's a land survey, not a geological plan. And look,” he pointed to the corner, “it was done by the Trust for Arizona Wildlands for the
BLM
.”

“Those sons of bitches.”

“Yeah,” said Silas. “They aren't going to try to operate this mine. They're trying to get bought out. What's a property like this worth?”

“I don't know. A dozen acres? If they could prove it was operating and that they were going to take a significant loss as a result of the moratorium, then it could be worth millions.”

“Here we were thinking they were trying to get this thing grandfathered into the moratorium when what they are really trying to do is swindle the government and these folks at the trust out of their money. I need to see something,” said Silas. He turned out the light, leaving Hayduke to put away the maps. Silas raced out the door into the dazzling sunlight and toward the mine building. It was a ramshackle affair, more leaning against the hillside than upright. He tried the door and found it held fast by a deadbolt lock. Silas kicked the door with his boot and the hinges broke loose. When he wrenched the door open the scent of stone breezed over him. He fumbled in his pack for his headlamp and put it on.

The light created a wide circle at his feet. Heavy tire tracks could be seen in the red dirt on the floor. They looked about the same width as the scooptram that he had seen in the last building. Silas traced them with the beam of his light. They disappeared into the darkness of the mine stope. Rather than descending straight down, the mine shaft went off at a shallow angle into the hillside. Silas followed the tracks. He walked for a minute and then found what he was looking for: a heaping pile of slag had been dumped in the middle of the stope. Silas didn't need a Geiger counter to know that what he was seeing was radioactive waste; every cell in his body tensed at the thought of it.

He turned around to see if Hayduke had followed him but the young man was nowhere to be seen. “Josh?” he called. There was no answer.

Silas started back up toward the entrance to the mine and got a few feet when he heard a shout and was stopped in his tracks by the crack of a pistol and the roar of Hayduke's .357 Magnum. Silas began to run toward the opening of the mine, the sound of gunfire now reverberating through the mine shaft. The light of day was eclipsed as the door was swung shut and the stope plunged into darkness.

SILAS PRESSED HIMSELF AGAINST THE
wooden doors to the building that covered the entrance to the mine. He was breathing hard and he could feel his heart pounding in every inch of his body. He felt like his toes were pulsing. He tried to listen to what was happening outside the doors, but for the moment everything was perfectly quiet. He stood that way for a minute—it seemed like an hour—before he heard voices. His eyes bulged in the dark, his ear jammed up against the door.

“Just shoot the son of a bitch,” he heard a woman's voice say.

A man muttered something and there was the sound of something being dragged. “We shoot him and the fucking cops will know. They'll find him and then we're fucked. I got something better.” The voices were right outside the door now.

Silas stepped back as the thin bar of light that seeped into the mine was blocked by someone adjacent to the door. He looked behind himself, his headlamp cutting a narrow band into the inky darkness of the mine stope. He walked a few more feet, turned off the light, and tried to conceal himself in the darkness.

The door swung open. Jim Zahn stood haloed by sunlight. He had a pistol in his hands. “I see you there,” he spat. “Just stay there and I won't have to shoot you too.”

Next Balin Aldershot appeared with Hayduke tied up. His wrists were bound behind him and he was struggling. “Calm down or Jim will shoot you again,” he said. He pushed Hayduke into the darkness. The young man no longer had his pack on and as far as Silas could tell he had lost his pistol. He stumbled and fell into the red dust of the mine. Balin leveled his pistol toward Silas. “Stay put now.”

Balin stepped back and pushed the door closed. Hayduke tried to stand but couldn't. Silas rushed to him. They heard a truck engine cough and then roar to life. The doors to the mine buckled as the vehicle was driven against them. “They're going to bust the doors,” Silas said, hooking an arm under Hayduke's bulk.

“Worse,” grumbled Hayduke, struggling to his feet. “We got to get down the hole.”

“You're shot?”

“In my leg. It ain't nothing.”

“Can you walk?”

“A little. But we got to move!” Hayduke stumbled to his feet and twisted toward the depths of the mine.

“What's going on?” said Silas and he helped the man half run, half limp down into the gloom. He fumbled with his headlamp and turned it on. The beam was barely sufficient to cut through the dust and darkness.