lead the feds, real or fake, to them? Don't do anything? DON'T—
Don't mess with Texas
Thinking made what he was about to do seem more absurd by the moment, and it was like throwing burning sticks into the cave of the Headache. For all that he had already lost, for all that he believed in, Storch stopped thinking.
He drove up a service road that paralleled the gravel track to the mining hut. A quick glance told him the hut was a losing proposition: two sentries in desert camo milled around out front. Storch counted eight ATVs and two pickups out front. All the real action was downstairs, anyway. He drove another half-mile up the service road before he found what he was looking for. A ventilation shaft, ten feet in diameter, bored into the sandstone beside the road. Chain link fencing stretched across the mouth of the vertical shaft, a rusted sign warning that the shaft was CONDEMNED BY ORDER OF THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. He looked around again. The road was rutted with knobby ATV tracks; they patrolled up here regularly.
He'd seen men in combat who sought their own deaths in action, and seen in them a cowardice that other idiots mistook for fearlessness. Had he already snapped?
He climbed back into his truck, drove it back out and two miles up the highway, pulling over at the beginning of a nature trail. He climbed out, filled a knapsack with his MP5, four extra clips, a modified Beretta, a hooded flashlight, a compass and a canteen, and began jogging. The awesome heat fired his blood like clay, burning all flexibility out of him. Any outcome short of victory or death would shatter him.
Twelve minutes later, he belly-crawled across the road and up the rampart of tailings around the shaft. With a tool off his belt, he snipped out a semicircle of fence and lowered himself into the hole. He shined a light down below. Sand and rocks and soda cans, fifty feet below his feet. He dropped a fist-sized rock, waited. It hit the bottom with a raspy thud, but the ground around it rippled, an oily motion, like waves in taut fabric.
Storch took out a compressor gun and fitted a piton into the barrel. The walls of the shaft were conglomerate, a peanut brittle of well-worn igneous rocks suspended in adobe and sand. Granite boulders littered the tailings below the shaft, in plain sight from the road. He drove the piton into one of these, hoping that the meth-crazed mob soldier who pulled patrol duty would be too busy trying to run over jackrabbits to notice the cable dangling from the rock into the shaft.
He lowered himself into the shaft, rappelling off the walls, sending showers of pebbles and larger rocks ahead of him. His feet scraped the bottom, dimpling matte black canvas. He shifted his weight to hang head down on the rope and drew his knife, listening. He heard water spraying from sprinklers. Beneath the dust of the shaft, he smelled a palpable musk of mold, sweat, shit and sinsemilla. He slashed the canvas and paid out another foot of rope through his clenched fist. An evil purple glow bled through the hole.
Storch descended into a Martian jungle. Hydroponic troughs lined the floor; ten-foot marijuana plants filled the tunnel as far as the eye could see in either direction. Each was laden with clumps of livid ultraviolet buds the size of coconuts. Their pungent funk curdled his brainwaves, so strong it became a noise, a fuzzed-out sub-bass under lilting sitars. He inserted his nose plugs, slipped on a surgical mask.
The stifling air was pregnant with mist, a sea of quicksilver mirrors in which Storch could almost see pointillist reflections of himself, stalking himself amidst black and violet phantoms. He rubbed gobs of resinous sleep from his eyes. Mist-irrigation hoses snaked along the canvas-lined tunnel walls, and fluorescent grow-lamps and space heaters made the mine a subterranean sauna. Storch dropped to the ground on a narrow path that divided the crops in half, listening. Beneath the white hiss of the
Don't mess with Texas
Thinking made what he was about to do seem more absurd by the moment, and it was like throwing burning sticks into the cave of the Headache. For all that he had already lost, for all that he believed in, Storch stopped thinking.
He drove up a service road that paralleled the gravel track to the mining hut. A quick glance told him the hut was a losing proposition: two sentries in desert camo milled around out front. Storch counted eight ATVs and two pickups out front. All the real action was downstairs, anyway. He drove another half-mile up the service road before he found what he was looking for. A ventilation shaft, ten feet in diameter, bored into the sandstone beside the road. Chain link fencing stretched across the mouth of the vertical shaft, a rusted sign warning that the shaft was CONDEMNED BY ORDER OF THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. He looked around again. The road was rutted with knobby ATV tracks; they patrolled up here regularly.
He'd seen men in combat who sought their own deaths in action, and seen in them a cowardice that other idiots mistook for fearlessness. Had he already snapped?
He climbed back into his truck, drove it back out and two miles up the highway, pulling over at the beginning of a nature trail. He climbed out, filled a knapsack with his MP5, four extra clips, a modified Beretta, a hooded flashlight, a compass and a canteen, and began jogging. The awesome heat fired his blood like clay, burning all flexibility out of him. Any outcome short of victory or death would shatter him.
Twelve minutes later, he belly-crawled across the road and up the rampart of tailings around the shaft. With a tool off his belt, he snipped out a semicircle of fence and lowered himself into the hole. He shined a light down below. Sand and rocks and soda cans, fifty feet below his feet. He dropped a fist-sized rock, waited. It hit the bottom with a raspy thud, but the ground around it rippled, an oily motion, like waves in taut fabric.
Storch took out a compressor gun and fitted a piton into the barrel. The walls of the shaft were conglomerate, a peanut brittle of well-worn igneous rocks suspended in adobe and sand. Granite boulders littered the tailings below the shaft, in plain sight from the road. He drove the piton into one of these, hoping that the meth-crazed mob soldier who pulled patrol duty would be too busy trying to run over jackrabbits to notice the cable dangling from the rock into the shaft.
He lowered himself into the shaft, rappelling off the walls, sending showers of pebbles and larger rocks ahead of him. His feet scraped the bottom, dimpling matte black canvas. He shifted his weight to hang head down on the rope and drew his knife, listening. He heard water spraying from sprinklers. Beneath the dust of the shaft, he smelled a palpable musk of mold, sweat, shit and sinsemilla. He slashed the canvas and paid out another foot of rope through his clenched fist. An evil purple glow bled through the hole.
Storch descended into a Martian jungle. Hydroponic troughs lined the floor; ten-foot marijuana plants filled the tunnel as far as the eye could see in either direction. Each was laden with clumps of livid ultraviolet buds the size of coconuts. Their pungent funk curdled his brainwaves, so strong it became a noise, a fuzzed-out sub-bass under lilting sitars. He inserted his nose plugs, slipped on a surgical mask.
The stifling air was pregnant with mist, a sea of quicksilver mirrors in which Storch could almost see pointillist reflections of himself, stalking himself amidst black and violet phantoms. He rubbed gobs of resinous sleep from his eyes. Mist-irrigation hoses snaked along the canvas-lined tunnel walls, and fluorescent grow-lamps and space heaters made the mine a subterranean sauna. Storch dropped to the ground on a narrow path that divided the crops in half, listening. Beneath the white hiss of the
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