Page 67 of Trapped with the Covert Ops Soldier

“Virgil strikes me as a man with a plan,” Smitty said. “A man with fall-back plans on fall-back plans.”

“Obsessive, yes, I agree with that.”

“He’s not going to leave us in that hole alive for long. He’s going to come back and finish the job.”

“Why didn’t he just kill us in the first place?”

“Maybe he was afraid the noise would alert people? Maybe he wanted to be sure all the loose ends were tied up nice and tight? Maybe he’s got a sadistic streak and wanted us to suffer before he shot us? Whatever the reason, he’s going to come back and either shoot us in the shed or take us somewhere else to kill us.”

She let out a deep breath. “Okay, that makes sense, sort of.”

“But he wants to find a way into this mine, and to the gold, more than anything else. When he sees that tunnel, he’s not going to be able to resist it. Especially if we’re not where he left us. He’s going to think we’re taking his gold, and that panic is going to make him sloppy.”

“How long do you think we’ve got before he comes back?”

“Hard to know. It depends on what’s going on out there. Let’s assume that he’s coming sooner rather than later.” He crouched next to the stone covered body, his hands moving some of the rocks around. “I wonder if these guys had any longer detonator wicks?”

Abby stared at the body she’d found. “I wonder if they had families waiting for them?”

Smitty paused for a moment before he went back to his search. “It’s been how long? More than a hundred years? Any family they had will have written them off as dead.”

She pulled at the body’s tattered clothing, looking for a wallet or something else that might tell her who this had been, but there was nothing.

Smitty was having better luck, he’d found several more sticks of dynamite as well as a thick coil of detonator wick, a couple of knives, and a small pistol. “We’re in business.” He looked at the gun and shook his head. “It’s rusted.”

“Now what?”

“Now, I get to put all the training the Army gave me in demolitions to good use.”

She watched as he pulled the wicks out of the dynamite, cut new wicks in varying lengths from a couple of feet to ten and twenty feet, and inserted them into the dynamite.

After a few minutes, Abby got to her feet to study the vein of gold. How deep into the rock did it go? She moved farther down the wall, holding her lamp up, looking for the reflection of the light, and came to an abrupt stop. There was more gold, alright. An entire ten-foot-wide section of it.

“Smitty,” she said, her voice sounding lost even to herself.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, getting to his feet and moving to stand next to her. He was looking at her face, so she pointed at the rock.

He turned and his jaw dropped open and stayed that way for several seconds. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Abby agreed.

“No wonder these guys took the risks they did, this much gold would have made them insanely rich.” He reached out with one hand and stroked the metal as if it were a dog or a cat.

The nausea returned in a rolling rush. “It got them totally dead.”

His gaze was amused when he turned to her. “As opposed to partially dead?”

“We can’t take any of this gold,” she said, making it an order.

He blinked. “Why not?”

“Because it got over two thousand people killed. This isn’t a coal or gold mine, it’s a cemetery.” She pointed at the gold. “And this doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to them. They died for it.”

Smitty put his hands up. “Whoa, whoa, no need to be upset, I agree with you. Mostly. I’d take some if it were safe, but it would take some blasting or digging to get it out, and that would be a very bad idea.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Look up.” He pointed at the wall far above their heads and the gold that had, until now, completely captured her attention.

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