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Behind the liathered

11:38 AM

Southern Ural Mountains

The farther Monk descended into the mine, the more he became convinced the place was deserted He heard no echo of voices or thrum of distant machinery And while this eased hisWith the silence, it was as if the place were holding its breath

Monk headed down a steeply slanted access tunnel, his wounded leg burning and painful Without a arette butts and bottles at the front gate to the mine It wasn’t a hard track to discern The sandy bed of the floor showed clear boot prints Thedown soh the place seemed deserted now, Monk had found plenty of evidence of past activity: fresh tailings du on walls, even an abandoned ice chest half filled ater and floating cans of beer

Konstantin trailed with his sister, while Pyotr ree upon the dark passages Monk felt the fever of his terror as Pyotr clutched to him It wasn’t the cramped spaces that scared him, but the darkness Monk had occasionally clicked the laht

At those ht to him

Marta also closed upon the boy, protective, but even the chimpanzee trembled in those moments of pitch darkness, as if she shared Pyotr’s terror

Monk reached the bottoeith a railway track and an idle conveyor belt As he searched for boot prints, he noted a slight graying to the darkness at the end of the tunnel He crouched, pulled Pyotr to his side in the crook of his stuht

Darkness dropped over theloas evident

Konstantin ht," Monk whispered and passed the boy the darkened flashlight If he rong about the place being deserted, he didn’t want to announce their approach with a blaze of light

Monk swung up the rifle he had confiscated from the dead Russian sniper "Quietly now," he warned

Monk edged down the tunnel He walked on the ends of the railroad ties, avoiding the crunch of the gravel bed The children followed in his footsteps Marta balanced along one of the rails As they continued, Monk strained for any voices, any sign of habitation All he heard was an echoing drip of water It was a noise that had grown louder the deeper they descended Monk was all too conscious of the neighboring presence of Lake Karachay

He also becarease, and diesel smoke But as they reached the bend, Monk’s keen nose detected another scent under the industrial s the turn, Monk discovered the passage ended in a central cavern, blasted out of the rock It was only a hundredth the size of Chelyabinsk 88, but it still rose three stories high and stretched half the size of a football field

Most of the floor was covered in parked equipment and piles of construction material: coiled conduit, stacks of wooden bea, piles of rock Off to one side rose a tall drill rig, mounted on the back of a truck The place looked as if it had been hurriedly evacuated There was no order to it, like sos haphazardly

At least they’d left the lights on

Several sodiulowed at the opposite side of the roo back, to be ready to bolt and hide a low, rifle ready at his shoulder He zigzagged across the space, holding his breath, cautious of his footing Reaching the far side, he discovered a tall set of steel blast doors, sealed and reflecting the laht stood a sh its open door, Monk spotted a few dark monitors, a keyboard, and rows of switches

Nobody was here

Monk noted the trey He took a deep settling breath The fetid reek was er Off to the left, Monk noted black oil pooled beyond a stack of equipment He crept out and peeked around the corner

Not oil Blood

He found the source of the sled in a heap, outfitted in ore spattered the walls behind the house

Behind hi out into the open Monk returned, shook his head, and pointed to the cohter He motioned to Pyotr and Kiska to remain where they were

Konstantin joined Monk as he strode toward the blast doors "I’ve been here before," the boy said "We’re allowed to ride the train sometimes These are the substation controls"