Natural Evil (Elder Races #4.5)(22)

Somehow she hadn’t let go of his hand. His long warm hands curled around hers, and she drove one-handed. “And you?” His tone was still short, and he didn’t like what she was saying, but at least he was listening.

“Worst case scenario,” she said, “we can hope it’s not true, but we have to act as if it is. What if there are people across that passageway in the Other land? The company will have a store of commercial mining explosives on site. What would you do if you thought you were in danger of getting caught, and you wanted to cover your tracks?”

His grip tightened until she was in danger of losing feeling in her fingers. She could hear his breathing. “What is your solution?” he asked at last.

She squeezed his hand, because she could hear how difficult it had been for him to ask that question. “We have to trust each other,” she said quietly. “You get me over the fence before you leave, and you let me do something I am really good at. I’ll recon the area, and if everything’s all right, I’ll find a good place to watch and wait. And if somebody tries to do something they shouldn’t, I’ll stop them.”

The measure of an intelligent man, she thought, is when he allows reason to influence his actions, whether he wants it to or not.

They found a place to leave her car where it couldn’t be seen from the road, tucked behind a few yucca trees. Then he changed into his Wyr form. He had a satellite phone as well, but it had been stored at the camp for two cold desert nights, so she brought hers along to be safe. The moon provided some illumination, but the ground was still treacherously uneven, so they jogged at a careful pace for the mile and a half back to his campsite.

He had set camp discreetly among a tumble of large, broken rock, and both site and Jeep were still undisturbed. She started out feeling cold, stiff and tired. Halfway into the run, her muscles loosened and the warm rush of her blood sharpened her thinking.

Once he had agreed to a course of action, Luis didn’t waste any time. She walked to keep her muscles warm as he dove into his tent. A few minutes later, he stepped out dressed in jeans, T-shirt, hiking boots and a battered, black leather jacket. He was stuffing something into a pack as he emerged. “Here’s a blanket, an MRE and some bottled water,” he said. “Should help you stay warm and alert. And I’ve got a rifle in the Jeep I want you to take.”

“You came prepared.” Tribunal Peacekeepers were famous for it. They dealt with all kinds of weird shit. She took the pack and handed him the phone, which he tucked into his jacket pocket.

“Standard issue for a field assignment is a rifle, handgun, and a basic camp with three days of meals, especially when there’s the possibility of rough terrain,” he said. He glanced around. “We’re not going to waste time breaking camp. Let’s go.”

He drove the Jeep the rest of the way. Neither spoke through the increasingly rough ride. A twelve-foot security fence bordered the mine property, but scaling it with the assistance of an oversized Wyr turned out to be no problem. Luis parked the Jeep close to the fence, stood on the hood, threw another blanket over the coiled barbed wire at the top, and hoisted her over as easily as if she weighed forty pounds, not a hundred and forty. She made the drop to the other side, her knees bent for the impact. When she straightened, he tossed the rifle and pack over.

She settled the pack on her back and shouldered the rifle. It was an M16, and she was well familiar with the weapon. Then they stood on opposite sides of the fence, facing each other. Luis nodded to her left. “The gate and office are not quite a mile back. Follow the fence and you can’t miss it. There’s a guard booth manned by security personnel, but you shouldn’t have any trouble avoiding them. It’s another quarter mile to the mine entrance. There are a couple of buildings and a parking lot.” He regarded her, his face grim, and hooked the fingers of one hand through the fence. “I’m never going to forgive myself if something happens to you.”

“Don’t fuss,” she said. She touched his fingers gently. “The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll get back. In the meantime, if we’re lucky, nothing will happen here.”

He drew in a deep breath and let it out again. It seemed laden with the weight of unsaid words. His hand fell away from the fence. He nodded to her and left.

The wild, silent desert reminded her of Afghanistan. She felt the ghosts of her former companions-in-arms as she hiked the distance back to the mine office and entrance. Losing them hurt, and it was always going to hurt. There would never be any further resolution to what had happened to them, but on that walk, for the first time, she felt a sense of comfort from carrying those ghosts with her, and that was farther than she had ever expected to get.

The area was quiet, the mine offices dark. Luis was right; she didn’t have any trouble avoiding security guards. With any luck, they would never know she had been on the property.

A quarter of a mile in, the entrance to the mine was set into a tall, rocky bluff and was surrounded by buildings, a parking lot, and large, darkly shadowed machinery. Recon was quick and easy. She couldn’t sense the crossover passage, but that didn’t surprise her.

She took a tour of the buildings, and all was quiet, so she decided to go to high ground and find a place to watch and wait. After a careful fifteen-minute climb, she found a ledge wide enough to lie down on, and she rewarded herself by eating the MRE and downing a bottle of water.