He staggered to his feet and saw that the entire cave opening had been sealed by slabs of rock that would take half a dozen men days to move.
Terror gripped him when he realized the tremor that woke him was Sentinel self-destructing. The time on his watch confirmed it. Even if he could dig his way out in that direction, he’d be bathed with a lethal dose of radiation the moment he stepped into the chamber.
He stumbled back from the pile of rocks. The match burned down to his finger and he dropped it in pain. In his panic he stupidly lit the final one, then realizing his mistake, set fire to the matchbook itself for a few more seconds of precious light.
He was in his worst nightmare. The maze of passageways could go on for miles. Even with a light, it could take him days to find the entrance Juan Cabrillo had used to get in.
He turned and staggered in the opposite direction, desperate to find a path or markings. Before he went twenty feet, he tripped on a stalagmite and fell face-first to the floor. The matchbook went skittering across the cave and was snuffed out.
The darkness was so total that it was only seconds before Bazin could feel tendrils of insanity creeping into his mind. He would spend the last few days of his life trapped in his own tomb with no hope of rescue or escape.
Left with nothing but his own voice to keep him company, Bazin did the only thing he could think of.
He screamed.
EPILOGUE
One week later
Mexico
Juan swam leisurely through the submerged cavern that he and Max had entered through a cenote, a sinkhole that had filled with water. The state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatán Peninsula was so pitted with these sinkholes that there was an online database cataloging them. However, the cenote they’d dived into wasn’t listed anywhere. As far as Juan knew, he and Max were the first to explore it.
According to Juan’s inertial guidance computer that he carried with him, they didn’t have far to go. He looked back and saw Max swimming along with wide eyes taking in the cave’s blind albino fish, obviously out of his comfort zone. Or maybe it was the wetsuit stretched to the limit over his bulging stomach. Either way, it took some talking to convince him to join Juan on the dive.
Max would have rather stayed behind on the Oregon to complete the repairs to the weapons systems. The damage to the hull, the Gatling gun’s radar, and the Metal Storm gun, were not as bad as they initially seemed, so Juan convinced Max that the rest of the crew could spare him while they finished up the job before taking their long-awaited shore leave.
Nonetheless, Max had to find something to complain about, so on the chopper ride to the cenote site he worried again about Maria Sandoval talking about the Oregon’s secrets. Juan, however, wasn’t concerned. She was a ship captain who’d already been promised her command would be reinstated by the shipping company when the Ciudad Bolívar got out of dry dock, she owed Juan for saving her life, and she’d told him herself that she didn’t think anyone would believe her story anyway.
Max certainly couldn’t complain about their payment for the mission. In addition to their portion of the insurance company payout on the salvage recovery of Maria’s ship, they made a tidy profit on the mission to track down Kensit. Once the entire operation report went to Langston Overholt and it was clear that the crew of the Oregon had prevented the destruction of Air Force Two, nobody balked at paying their fee, which took care of all their repairs and then some.
The fact that Kensit, Bazin, and Ruiz had been tied together had been a shock to the U.S. military and intelligence communities. But what had surprised Juan was when they discovered who the other man on the yacht with Kensit was. A single frame of the recorded drone video had been enough to ID Brian Washburn, former governor of Florida and logical choice to have been appointed vice president in the event Air Force Two had been shot down. A subsequent forensic search of his office computer files turned up a deleted video of him killing a blackmailer, likely courtesy of Sentinel’s all-seeing eye.
Of course, no one would be re-creating Sentinel’s power anytime soon, particularly inside a cave that was now saturated with deadly radioactivity. There had been some concern that radiation would leak into Lake Péligre, but so far they’d detected no contamination.
Even if the cave had been intact, rebuilding Sentinel would be impossible without Lutzen and Kensit’s research and designs. But Juan was under no illusions that the U.S. government would give up. He was sure that simply knowing the technology was feasible had spurred top secret research already.
The computer readout said they’d reached the proper coordinates. Juan shined his flashlight up and saw the silvery shimmer indicating there was air. He gave the thumbs-up to Max and surfaced.
He hoisted himself up onto the lip of the cave floor and heaved Max out after him.
Max peeled off his mask and spit out his regulator.
“You know,” he said, his voice seemingly muffled by the blackness around them, “I could be on the ship knee-deep in repairs.”
Juan laughed. “I thought you’d like to see this since you missed Haiti.”
“You thought I’d want to see a dank, dark cave? Do I look like a Morlock to you?”
“Half Morlock. But the cave won’t be dark for long.”
Juan removed four high-powered LED lamps from his waterproof pack and arrayed them on the floor. When he lit them up, Max leaped to his feet.
The cavern they were standing in was three times the size of Sentinel’s cave in Haiti, so big that it extended beyond the lights’ reach. Brilliant green crystals sparkled in every crevice, some shaped like rosettes, others the circumference of cedars that had sprouted from the floor and grown through the roof high above.
“Holy Emerald City, Batman,” Max said, rubbing his hands together in glee. “We’ve hit the jackpot here.”
“They’re not emeralds. They’re selenium crystals colored by copper impurities. Not valuable as a mineral on its own, but for someone who has the means to create Sentinel—priceless.”
“How did you know this would be here?” Max said as he turned in a gawking circle.
“The video we recorded of Kensit’s office on the yacht. He had a map on the wall that said Phase Two. Underneath it had the exact latitude and longitude, plus a third number that I finally realized was depth. I was pretty certain he had found another cave. And if it was like the one in Haiti, it was a good bet that we could find a way in.”
“For all we know, this might be the only other cave like this on earth.”
“You may be right. The only similar cave that had been discovered is one in northern Mexico called the Cave of the Crystals, but those crystals are bone white so they don’t have the same properties as these Oz crystals.”
Max suddenly stopped gaping at the wondrous view and looked at Juan.
“You were afraid Kensit might sell his technology and let them build another Sentinel in this cave. That’s why you destroyed the yacht.”
Juan kneeled and picked up one of the crystals to examine its facets, careful not to cut himself. “I destroyed the yacht because Kensit had to pay for attacking my people. But it did worry me that if he survived, he would buy his freedom with the secrets of Sentinel and the location of this cave.”
“I can’t blame you. I know I wouldn’t trust anyone with that technology. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, wielding Sentinel would put almost anyone on the fast track to being a tyrant.”
“As we’ve seen already. And if one man like Kensit could be corrupted by that much power, imagine what a whole government could do with it.”
“Who knows about this place?”
“Just us. I figured what Langston Overholt doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, it’s on Mexican soil, so the U.S. government wouldn’t exactly have a strong claim.”
“But what if the Mexican government got in on the action?”
/>
“Then it would get complicated. They could keep it themselves or sell it to whoever they wanted. A conglomerate with big pockets. A drug cartel.”
“That brings up a good question. Who does own it?”
“Me.”
Max regarded him with surprise. “You?”
“I discovered the name of the shell company that Kensit controlled to buy it. Since the company’s owner is now deceased and left no decedents, I put in a lowball offer for this seemingly worthless piece of land, including the mineral rights. It’s a matter of paperwork now.”
“But how did Kensit find this place?”
“Who knows,” Juan replied. “Geological survey. Or maybe he used Sentinel somehow. We’ll never know what it was capable of with Kensit dead and the plans destroyed. Who knows if anyone will ever be able to re-create his work. For our sakes, let’s hope not.”
“Kensit was a psycho, but he was also a genius, wasn’t he?”
“I’ll grant that he was smarter than any single one of us, probably by a wide margin. But his mistake was thinking he was more brilliant than all of us put together.” Juan took two Coronas out of his pack and handed one to Max. They clinked the cans together before sitting back to take in the sights.
“And I tell you what, my friend,” Juan said with a contented grin. “I’ll take a team of smart people over a lone genius any day.”
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