“Take a guess,” Tucker said.
“You’re sending him down there?” Anya crossed her arms. “That seems cruel.”
“Cruel? I think Kane was a dachshund in a former life, a breed built to flush badgers out of burrows. If there’s a hole, Kane wants to crawl in and explore.”
Tucker pulled the shepherd’s tactical vest out of his backpack. Anticipating what was to come, Kane shook and trembled with excitement. Tucker quickly suited up his partner, synching the feed into the new sat phone Harper had supplied. He ran through a quick diagnostics check and found everything working as designed.
“Ready, Kane?”
The shepherd walked to the shaft and placed his front paws on the lip. Tucker played the beam of his flashlight across the sides and down to floor of the tunnel. He pointed.
“GO.”
Without hesitation, Kane leaped into the darkness, followed by a soft thump as he landed at the bottom.
“SOUND OFF.”
Kane barked once in reply, indicating he was okay.
Tucker punched buttons on his phone, and Kane’s video feed came online. Shading the screen with his hand to reduce the sun’s glare, he was able to make out the horizontal tunnel that angled away from the shaft. The camera had a night-vision feature, but Tucker tapped a button, and a small LED lamp flared atop the camera stalk, lighting Kane’s way.
The sharper illumination revealed coarse walls, shored up by heavy timber. Out of the sun and wind, the wood looked solid enough, but looks could be deceptive. Back in Afghanistan, he’d witnessed several tunnel collapses while hunting for Taliban soldiers in their warren of caves.
Fearing the same now, he licked his lips, worried for Kane, but they both had a duty here.
Speaking into his radio mike, he said, “FORWARD. SEEK.”
Hearing the command, Kane stalks forward. He leaves the glaring brightness of the day and heads into darkness, led by a pool of light cast over his shoulders. His senses fill with dirt and mold, old wood and stone—but through it all, he fixes on a trail of dampness in the air.
It stands out against the dryness.
He needs no lights to follow it.
But he goes slowly, stepping carefully.
His ears pick out the scrunch of sand underfoot, the scrabble of chitinous legs on rock, the creak of timber.
He pushes through faint webs of dust.
He reaches another tunnel, one that crosses his path.
Which way?
A command whispers in his ear. His partner sees what he sees.
SEEK.
He steps to each direction, stretching his nose, breathing deeply, pulling the trail deep inside him, through his flared nostrils, past his tongue, to where instinct judges all.
He paces into one tunnel, then another, testing each.
Down one path, to the left, the air is heavier with moisture.
His ears hear the faintest tink of water falling to stone.
He heads toward it, his heart hammering inside him, on the hunt, knowing his target is near. The tunnel drops deeper, then levels. Several cautious paces farther and the passage opens into a cavern, tall enough to jump and leap with joy within.
He wants to do that.
But instead he hears, HOLD.
And he does.
He stares across the sloping floor of the cave, to a pool of glassy blackness. The sweep of his light bathes across the surface, igniting it to a clear azure blue.
Water.
“Eureka,” Christopher murmured.
Tucker turned to the others and passed Anya his phone. “I’m going down there. When I reach Kane, I’ll check in, using his camera.”
He turned, fished through his pack, and pulled out his handheld GPS unit. He stuffed it into a cargo pocket of his pants.
“I don’t understand,” Anya said. “Why do you have to go down there? It doesn’t look safe for someone as big as you.”
Tucker scooted to the hole and swung his legs over the edge. “We need accurate coordinates.”
“But why?” Concern shone on her face. “We know the well is below this plateau. Isn’t that close enough?”
“No. We need a compass bearing from that exact spot. Any miscalculation of the well’s location will be compounded exponentially two hundred miles away.” He pointed toward the horizon. “Make a hundred-yard mistake here, we could be off by a mile from De Klerk’s coordinates. And out in the broken and inhospitable terrain of the Groot Karas Mountains, we could spend months up there and never find it.”
Anya looked stunned. “I didn’t think about that.”
Tucker smiled. “All part of the service, ma’am.” He prepared to lower himself down, then stopped. “Wait, I just realized I can’t get any GPS lock underground. I’m going to have to go old school. Christopher, lend me your walking stick.”
Their guide understood. “To act as a yardstick. Very clever.”
“Give me thirty minutes. Unless there’s a cave-in.”
“If that happens,” Christopher said, clapping him on the shoulder, “I’ll alert the proper authorities to recover your body.”
“And Kane’s, too. I want him buried with me.”
“Of course.”
Anya frowned at them. “That’s not funny.”
They both turned to her. Neither of them was trying to be humorous.
That realization made her go pale.
Twisting around, Tucker lowered himself over the edge and dropped below. As his boots hit the ground, he crouched, turned on his flashlight, then ducked into the side tunnel. As he crawled on his hands and knees, he slid the walking stick end to end and counted as he went, mapping his route on a pocket notebook.
Occasionally, his back scraped the ceiling, causing miniavalanches of sand. In the confined quiet of the tunnel, the cascade echoed like hail peppering a sidewalk. He reached the intersection of tunnels and followed Kane’s path to the left. Working diligently, it still took him an additional five minutes to map his way down to the cavern.
Kane heard him coming, trotted over, and licked his face.
“Good boy, good job!”
Tucker shined his flashlight around the room. Clearly the Boer troops must have spent a lot of time down here. The surrounding sandstone walls had been carved into benches and rudimentary tables, along with dozens of pigeonhole shelves. Ghosts of men materialized in his mind’s eye: laughing, lounging, eating, all during one of the bloodiest and most obscure wars in history.
After jotting down the final measurements, Tucker lifted the page of his notebook toward Kane’s camera and passed on a thumbs-up to the others above. He wanted a visual record of his calculations, of the coordinates of Grietje’s Well, in case anything happened to him.