“Do you hear that?” Riley asked. “It sounds like pounding.”
Moments later, the truck passed into a clear-cut section of the woods with a military-looking compound in the center dominated by a large Quonset-style warehouse. The hut was surrounded by what appeared to be at least fifty immense oil-drilling rigs and an assortment of heavy machinery. Pipelines ran from each of the drills to the Quonset hut, like some giant wagon wheel. Several soldiers dressed in the Rough Rider uniforms and carrying assault rifles patrolled the area, keeping watch over a variety of laborers in khaki jumpsuits working the drills.
Emerson and Riley jumped off the back of the truck at the perimeter of the clearing and dashed behind an unmanned drill.
Riley blinked and sniffed the air. The smell of sulfuric acid was so strong now that it stung her eyes.
“What the heck is this place?” she asked. “It looks like they’re drilling for oil, but I’ve never seen any rigs that big, and I’m from Texas.”
Emerson examined the drill. “I’d wager no one has ever seen a drill like this. It’s not even made from steel. If I had to guess based on the color and luster, I’d say it was constructed from something in the platinum family of metals.”
Riley ran her hand over the rig. “That would cost a small fortune. Why would anybody do that?”
“This could easily weigh fifty tons,” Emerson said. “Last I checked the spot price of platinum was twelve hundred dollars per ounce. That would make this one alone a two-billion-dollar piece of machinery.”
Riley raised her eyebrows. “But there must be fifty or so here in the compound.”
“That would be a total of one hundred billion dollars if my math is correct,” Emerson said. “Of course, there are cheaper metals, like rhodium, that resemble platinum and cost somewhat less. Still, there’s no way around it. Someone spent an obscene amount of money to set up this facility.”
Riley shook her head. “It just doesn’t make any sense. Why would they use platinum instead of steel?”
“Platinum has two properties that steel does not. It is extremely hard, and it has a melting temperature of about three thousand degrees.”
“Neither of which is important if you’re drilling for oil.”
“Exactly,” Emerson said. “They aren’t drilling for oil.”
“Then what?”
“We’re standing over the shallowest part of the underground lava lake. Magma has a temperature of around two thousand five hundred degrees. The only thing that makes sense is that they’re mining the magma, and they needed to build a machine that could withstand the heat without melting.”
Riley thought back to their conversation with Marion White at George Mason University.
“Why mine the magma?” Riley asked. “The professor said the magma contains osmium, but it’s only worth four hundred dollars per ounce. Other than that it’s just worthless silica and sulfuric acid gasses.”
Emerson nodded. “Yes. It wouldn’t make any sense, at least from an economic point of view, to build a one-hundred-billion-dollar facility to mine osmium. There’s something else going on.”
“Could they be possibly trying to drain the lava lake?” Riley asked. “Maybe they’re trying to relieve some of the pressure to prevent an explosion.”
“I doubt it. Where, then, are they dumping all the lava they’re removing? And, frankly, I would think it could just as easily have the opposite effect and destabilize the area, sort of like the effects from hydraulic fracking.”
The Humvee parked in front of the Quonset warehouse, and the soldiers patrolling the compound rushed over to the truck.
Riley watched the door to the hut open. A tall man in a white lab coat walked out and went to the truck.
“Isn’t that Eugene Spiro, the chief scientist for the National Park Service, who we met back at the Department of the Interior?” Riley asked.
“It is. Looks like the gang’s all here.”
The soldiers opened the rear door to the truck and carefully removed a large metal container that looked like an inner tube connected to a battery-operated power source. The chief scientist pointed toward the warehouse and followed them inside, along with Tin Man and the director. A couple minutes later they all exited and walked into a large construction trailer that obviously served as a makeshift office.
“Looks like a meeting for the American Society of Ruthless Psychopaths,” Riley said.
Emerson smiled. “I tend to agree. How do you feel about doing a little snooping?”
“I’m against it.”
“Are you totally against it?”
“Yes.”
“When you say ‘totally’ do you mean one hundred percent? As in, it’s not even open to discussion?”
“I guess I’m willing to talk about it,” Riley said.
Emerson crept through the compound toward the rear of the warehouse.
“Great,” he said, motioning to Riley to follow him. “Let’s talk about it while we do some snooping.”
They snuck around to the rear of the warehouse. There was a small window about six feet off the ground, and Emerson knelt down on his hands and knees in front of it. “Why don’t you take a look?”
Riley stood on Emerson’s back and peered through the little window. “What am I supposed to be looking for?” she asked.
“Just describe to me what you see.”
“It’s a high-tech lab of some sort. There’s a giant vat in the middle of the room connected to a lot of machinery I don’t recognize, except for a bigger version of the metal donut that was in the back of the transport.”
“Interesting. Is there anybody there?”
Riley climbed down off Emerson. “No. It looks like everyone’s left.”
“Interesting.”
“I know what you’re thinking, and you can just forget about that,” Riley said. “There’s absolutely no way I’m walking into the lion’s den. Tin Man could be back any minute.”
“Now, when you say ‘absolutely no way,’ does that mean absolutely one hundred percent or just 99.9 percent?”
“This is crazy,” Riley said. “It’s practically suicidal.”
Emerson studied the rear door. “If I can’t guess the six-digit combination to this door we’re not getting in regardless of whether it’s crazy or not.”
“Six digits. That’s a million different possibilities. It will take us all night, assuming we don’t get caught.”
Emerson punched a number into the keypad, and the red light on the door stayed lit. He thought a moment and tried again. There was an audible click, and the light turned green.
“I don’t believe it,” Riley said.
Emerson shrugged. “Sixty-seven percent of the time people choose a birthday or anniversary for the combination when it’s exactly six digits. In this case, it had to be a birthday that everyone in this compound could remember. One that’s important to all of them. The first one I chose was 102758, Teddy Roosevelt’s birthday. The second was 082516, the birthday of the National Park Service.”
“I think I would have preferred that you failed to guess the combination.”
Emerson opened the door and waited for Riley to enter. “I got lucky. I’m feeling extra discerning today.”
Riley and Emerson crept around the dimly lit warehouse, trying to get their bearings. Everything was pristinely clean, including the glass-tiled floor. A variety of white workstations, complete with everything you’d find in chemistry class, occupied one corner of the room. In another corner, robotic arms in a state of constant activity were connected to large pieces of freestanding machinery, each one enclosed behind three inches of what seemed to be bulletproof glass. The large metal donut sat in the center of it all.
Riley walked over to Emerson. He was staring at a big red button on the wall. “Emerson, you’re not thinking about pushing that button, are you?”
Emerson continued to stare at the button. “I was giving it some serious consideration.”
Riley grabbed him by the arm. “Remember when you once told me it was your life’s ambition to avoid terrible ideas?”
“Of course.”