“THAT WAS AT LEAST A MAG 5,” WALT JACOBS SAID with a professional’s cool detachment. Sitting with him in the rear of the Humvee, neither Atkins nor Elizabeth Holleran objected. The latest in a series of strong aftershocks that had started just before they left the river, it had snapped them sideways in their seats.
“They’re getting worse, aren’t they?” said Lauren Mitchell, who sat next to the driver.
“We’re getting more of them in the magnitude 4 or greater range,” Jacobs said. “The ground’s working up to something.”
Two hours earlier, an Army helicopter had landed in the front yard of Lauren’s home near Kentucky Lake with a message from John Atkins, telling her about the bomb and asking her to help them find a backroads route to the mine. She didn’t like leaving her grandson behind alone but had climbed aboard the chopper when a soldier agreed to stay with the boy.
After the strong tremor, she was starting to have serious second thoughts about her decision.
Using a radio headset, Lauren was giving directions to a convoy of ten vehicles as she led them on a cross-country journey from the river to the Golden Orient. Booker and the bomb were in the Humvee directly behind them. The other seismologists, Weston and Wren, followed in another all-terrain vehicle. They were flanked by a protective screen of M-1 tanks, three on each side.
Lauren wasn’t happy with the continued earthquakes. They scared her. So did the thought of going back to the mine, which had haunted her dreams for years. The Golden Orient had always been dangerous, deadly. A fifty-year history of methane explosions, roof cave-ins, and fires. Her husband had died there in a flash fire a decade before the mine closed, a victim of clean air regulations that made it unprofitable to produce high-sulfur-content coal.
They’d made slow progress since leaving the Mississippi, barely twenty-five miles in four hours. The backroads were muddy, washed out in places, and cut between steep hills covered with pine and scrub oak. The convoy had to make frequent stops as Army patrols fanned out in the dark looking for snipers.
During one halt, Elizabeth got out of the Humvee with Atkins. She told him what had happened the day before in the library annex, how someone had stolen her laptop computer from the equipment room.
“Any idea who it was?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see his face.” She’d tried to take a discreet look at every man who worked at the earthquake center. She didn’t detect anything unusual in their behavior or attitude toward her.
“It could have been anyone,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” Atkins said softly. “For starters, maybe someone wanted to check your E-mail messages.”
“But why?”
“What if they wanted to see if you’ve messaged anyone about those cracks we saw at the dam.” Atkins said. “Find out how much you know about that and whether you’ve told anyone.” Cracking a computer password wasn’t all that difficult, especially for an expert. Atkins knew hackers who could do it in less than twenty minutes.
“Weston?”
“Or his friend Marshal,” Atkins said. “I could see either of them wanting to take a look at whatever data you’ve got on that computer. Go on a fishing expedition. For all we know maybe they wanted to download the zipped files you got from Doctor Prable. Take a close look at his data and see if they could find something they could use against you later. Work up a case to discredit you if you try to go public with what happened at the dam.”
Atkins took Elizabeth by the shoulders, holding her tightly as he looked into her light gray eyes, which held such intelligence.
He’d lost one woman he loved. Sara. They’d gone into that building in Mexico City and gotten separated. He couldn’t allow that to happen again.
“I want you to stay close to me when we go into that mine,” he said. “No matter what happens, stay close to me.”