Dangerous Minds (Knight and Moon #2)(41)
Wayan Bagus looked down at himself. “I humbly accept whatever gifts the universe bestows on me. I found this in my laundry basket.”
“Looks like a towel,” Vernon said. “Little Buddy, when we get back to civilization we gotta take you shopping and get you some Calvins.”
The transport driver snatched his ID back, rolled up his window, drove through the gate, and both vehicles disappeared into the night. No one in the truck noticed the two hitchhikers who had snuck up behind and grabbed on to the rear handholds.
EIGHTEEN
RILEY AND EMERSON HELD ON TIGHT AS THE truck rolled and bumped along the rough terrain, navigating around thickets of woods interspersed with bubbling hot springs and mud pots. The smell of sulfur filled the air, getting stronger with every passing minute.
“Do you hear that?” Riley asked. “It sounds like pounding.”
Moments later, the truck passed into a clear-cut section of the woods with a military-looking compound in the center dominated by a large Quonset-style warehouse. The hut was surrounded by what appeared to be at least fifty immense oil-drilling rigs and an assortment of heavy machinery. Pipelines ran from each of the drills to the Quonset hut, like some giant wagon wheel. Several soldiers dressed in the Rough Rider uniforms and carrying assault rifles patrolled the area, keeping watch over a variety of laborers in khaki jumpsuits working the drills.
Emerson and Riley jumped off the back of the truck at the perimeter of the clearing and dashed behind an unmanned drill.
Riley blinked and sniffed the air. The smell of sulfuric acid was so strong now that it stung her eyes.
“What the heck is this place?” she asked. “It looks like they’re drilling for oil, but I’ve never seen any rigs that big, and I’m from Texas.”
Emerson examined the drill. “I’d wager no one has ever seen a drill like this. It’s not even made from steel. If I had to guess based on the color and luster, I’d say it was constructed from something in the platinum family of metals.”
Riley ran her hand over the rig. “That would cost a small fortune. Why would anybody do that?”
“This could easily weigh fifty tons,” Emerson said. “Last I checked the spot price of platinum was twelve hundred dollars per ounce. That would make this one alone a two-billion-dollar piece of machinery.”
Riley raised her eyebrows. “But there must be fifty or so here in the compound.”
“That would be a total of one hundred billion dollars if my math is correct,” Emerson said. “Of course, there are cheaper metals, like rhodium, that resemble platinum and cost somewhat less. Still, there’s no way around it. Someone spent an obscene amount of money to set up this facility.”
Riley shook her head. “It just doesn’t make any sense. Why would they use platinum instead of steel?”
“Platinum has two properties that steel does not. It is extremely hard, and it has a melting temperature of about three thousand degrees.”
“Neither of which is important if you’re drilling for oil.”
“Exactly,” Emerson said. “They aren’t drilling for oil.”
“Then what?”
“We’re standing over the shallowest part of the underground lava lake. Magma has a temperature of around two thousand five hundred degrees. The only thing that makes sense is that they’re mining the magma, and they needed to build a machine that could withstand the heat without melting.”
Riley thought back to their conversation with Marion White at George Mason University.
“Why mine the magma?” Riley asked. “The professor said the magma contains osmium, but it’s only worth four hundred dollars per ounce. Other than that it’s just worthless silica and sulfuric acid gasses.”
Emerson nodded. “Yes. It wouldn’t make any sense, at least from an economic point of view, to build a one-hundred-billion-dollar facility to mine osmium. There’s something else going on.”
“Could they be possibly trying to drain the lava lake?” Riley asked. “Maybe they’re trying to relieve some of the pressure to prevent an explosion.”
“I doubt it. Where, then, are they dumping all the lava they’re removing? And, frankly, I would think it could just as easily have the opposite effect and destabilize the area, sort of like the effects from hydraulic fracking.”
The Humvee parked in front of the Quonset warehouse, and the soldiers patrolling the compound rushed over to the truck.
Riley watched the door to the hut open. A tall man in a white lab coat walked out and went to the truck.
“Isn’t that Eugene Spiro, the chief scientist for the National Park Service, who we met back at the Department of the Interior?” Riley asked.
“It is. Looks like the gang’s all here.”
The soldiers opened the rear door to the truck and carefully removed a large metal container that looked like an inner tube connected to a battery-operated power source. The chief scientist pointed toward the warehouse and followed them inside, along with Tin Man and the director. A couple minutes later they all exited and walked into a large construction trailer that obviously served as a makeshift office.
“Looks like a meeting for the American Society of Ruthless Psychopaths,” Riley said.
Emerson smiled. “I tend to agree. How do you feel about doing a little snooping?”