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Chapter 56 – The Desert RatsThe Super Huey landed outside Desert Rock, and Graham’s car came racing out to meet them. Alex went silvery and flew out of the chopper, but Jo and Riley had to duck down and run out while the rotors beat them with a huge downdraft. Even with the chopper carefully turning its engines off, the rotors were still whirling pretty hard.
Jack and Hanna and Graham and Grover hopped out of the car and came to meet them halfway. Jack said, “Well done, team! Steaks are on me. After we take care of that tunnel.”
Riley asked with a smile, “Sir? Can you afford a steak as big as what Terawatt’s going to need?”
Jack smirked and said, “I’ll probably have to resort to cattle rustling.”
Grover laughed and tried to explain it to Hanna.
They walked over to Graham’s car. Graham set up his sat phone, and Jack called Acid Burn. He put it on speakerphone.
“Jack! Jack! Are you okay? Is everybody okay? If you got Tera hurt I’m gonna be really mad at you, and if you got you hurt, I’m gonna be mad at you, too, and I’ll tell Charlie to make that curly pasta you don’t like every day for a week! And how big did the spider get?”
“Burn! Burn! You’re on speakerphone,” Jack hollered.
“Oh, my God, why didn’t you tell me? Now I’m all red-faced and embarrassed.”
Alex said, “Hi, Burn. We’re all fine. Not a scratch. And the spider? Could have walked over your house without noticing.”
Willow immediately went into science mode. “No, because that would have meant its underbelly was at least twenty feet off the ground, which would mean it would have to be … Oh, my God, do you mean you fought a spider that was a hundred feet long? That’s impossible!”
Riley said, “More like a hundred fifty feet across. And you can thank modern biochemistry.”
Jack said, “Yep, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
Willow gulped, “Oh, crap, they’ve got camera footage from the jets being downloaded to their squadron command right now. That’s a BIG spider!”
Jack said, “Nah, we did it all with special effects.”
“Not funny, Jack,” Willow insisted. “Oh, jeez, if the insurance claims from your area are right, this thing ate like five hundred head of cattle and dozens of horses across the area, and killed maybe a dozen people in separate incidents over several weeks.”
Jack said, “And now we need to go find out if it laid hundreds of giant spider eggs in a tunnel northwest of town that the chopper spotted.”
Willow started typing madly. “Okay, I’m scanning photos of tarantulas and matching them against that … thing. All right … Brachypelma vagans, also known as the Mexican red-rumped tarantula or the Mexican black velvet. Eww! Uh-oh, I’m guessing from these pictures you got a female of the species, they’re bigger and thicker than the male. It’s a burrower, it lines its tunnel with silk, the spinnerets are in its feet …”
Hanna said, “The feet? I thought the spinnerets were always at the back of the thorax.”
Willow said, “Nope, the feet, it’s way more common than they used to think, and your encyclopedia is probably out of date on this. So they lay three to four hundred eggs and keep them in an egg sack that they have to turn regularly so the eggs on the bottom don’t get squished … The babies ‘hatch’ after six to seven weeks but keep eating the goo in the egg for a while after that … If this thing is so much bigger than normal, the babies might need a huge amount of time in post-hatch mode before they bust out of the egg sack. Or the gigantism might not even be inheritable, especially if it came from that serum. Or it might not be fertile anymore, or the eggs might not be viable.”
“Or not,” said Jack. “We can’t really depend on what some spider-ologist thinks, when they’d start out by telling us a spider can’t get as big as a hill.”
“Arachnologists,” Willow said. “They’re called arachnologists, and their field of study is arachnids, including spiders, scorpions, and pseudoscorpions. Mites and ticks are technically arachnids, too, but they’re usually not included, and their research area is called acarology.”
“And you know all this … how?” Jack asked skeptically.
“Oh! When I was in sixth grade, we were assigned to come up with a list of sciences. Most of the kids came up with a dozen, maybe less. I came up with a list of seven hundred.” She happily exclaimed, “The teacher said I did way more than I needed to!”
“And why am I not surprised by this?” Jack asked the sky.
Willow said in a funny voice, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred!”
Jack laughed and said, “Okay. You and Billy are our arachnologists on this op, because after Deemer I don’t trust these guys as far as I can throw their hairy, creepy little friends.”
Willow said, “Well, don’t go walking into the tunnel. It should be lined with silk, and spiders are big on sensing vibration through their feet. You could end up being Purina spider chow. Can you just shoot lots of bombs in it and blow everything up?”
Jack said, “We really have to find out if it’s even the right tunnel to blow up. And that means going in.”
Alex gulped a little and said, “I’m the only one who can go in without touching the silk on the tunnel floor.”
Jack firmly said, “No way. I’ve got a waldo on the way. It ought to be here in under an hour, along with more firepower. Now that we got mommy taken care of, I asked for two Vipers to handle the babies and their home, and another Super Huey with gear. So we check on the egg sac with a robot crawler that’s got a television mount and lights. Then if it’s there, we target it with some laser-guided missiles and make sure every single hairy little thing is dead. Then we collapse the tunnel, just to be sure, because I can’t nuke ’em from orbit.”
“Sounds like a plan. And if they come swarming out?” Willow asked.
Jack grimaced. “We’re all in flight above the valley floor, and we find out how baby spiders like large-caliber rounds and grenade launchers and rockets and tank-killer missiles.”
“So far, so icky,” Willow said.
Jack said, “And that’s just if everything goes swell.”
Willow said, “You’d better not get eaten by baby giant spiders. I’m depending on you being healthy enough to take me to that steak place you were talking about.”
“I’m always healthy enough for steak,” Jack said reassuringly.
“Yeah, that’s not what Charlie and Janet told me.”
Jack signed off and said, “Okay, boys and girls, saddle up. I want to be done with those creepy-crawlies and back at Luke AFB in time for dinner tonight. And in particular, I want to make sure we get every last one of them. No way we’re just blowing up the cave mouth and then finding out two months later there’s another exit, or a mine shaft, or something else that’s letting tons of giant spiders eat the entire state.”
They gathered up Grover and Professor Lee, who were still talking with Dr. Deemer and taking notes. Alex figured Dr. Deemer was in big trouble if he was depending on state-of-the-art medical care from Matt Hastings. She didn’t like Dr. Deemer after seeing his dead experiments, but she hoped Dr. Hastings would get him to a really good hospital soon.
They piled into the chopper and headed toward the canyon.
Professor Lee asked, “Are we going to be able to get any DNA samples?”
Jack fumed, “Not on my watch. Do you really want to walk into a giant spider den, walking along on spider silk so they know you’re coming, and try to get a DNA sample from one of maybe four hundred starving baby spiders, each of them the size of a lion?”
Professor Lee cringed and said, “I thought you said you were going to use a waldo.”
Jack said, “Yeah, and I need it undamaged so I can use its laser pointer to aim some laser-guided missiles, otherwise we’d be firing some TV-guided missiles I don’t think they’ll let me play with.” He turned to face everyone in the rear of the chopper. “No one gets out of the chopper. If the waldo fails, we don’t go strolling around on the valley floor like tourists. Understood?”
Everyone got it. After all, they’d all seen the dead six-foot spider, and they all knew about the basketball-gym-sized one.
Alex was kind of surprised when the two Vipers showed up. They were like missile-laden gunship helicopters that just looked a whole lot deadlier than the Super Huey. The Vipers looked like they had so much stuff on them that they couldn’t possibly fly. Jack had the Super Huey lead them to the ridge facing the opening of the cave, and he explained over the radio that the giant spider that just got fried might have laid hundreds of eggs down in there. The other Super Huey lowered a thing shaped like a sno-cat, but the size of a big suitcase, down to the valley floor and then drove it back and forth until it was all checked out and ready to go.
Jack said into his comms, “Launch Probe.”
The waldo rolled forward into the cave. And it stopped about two feet inside the cave opening. After about a minute, they heard over the comms, “Waldo appears to be stuck, sir. We can’t move it forward or backward, and the treads aren’t running anymore.”
Jack fumed for a few seconds before he said, “Roger that.”
He looked at Alex and asked, “Do you want to take a look? This is purely voluntary. I don’t want you down there, and I have no idea how risky this is.”
Riley said, “Sir, I could go. It’s in the SRI purview.”
Jo said, “Sir, I’ll volunteer.”
Hanna said, “Colonel, I could go down there. I am not afraid.”
Jack said, “No, no, and hell no. Janet would skin me alive. Hanna, just because you’re not afraid doesn’t mean you should try it. Now. If this little tractor-tread waldo is already stuck, it’s probably the silk. Which means it’s sending ‘come eat me’ messages down into the tunnel this very second. And if I was a spider and worried about protecting my pretty little babies, I’d put a collar of sticky silk around the mouth of my home to stop hungry spider-eating intruders. So this may be way too dangerous for any of us who, you know, walk on stuff. But I just don’t know. Tera can fly down without putting an entire chopper at risk. She can take a peek without putting herself within ten feet of the valley floor. And if there is sticky stuff, she can get past it without gluing herself to the tunnel as a spider-snack. And that’s all I want. A quick assessment on that piece of crap I was assured would work like a charm in there.”
Alex gulped and said, “I’ll do it.”
Hanna said, “It is all right to be scared. It is part of what makes us effective soldiers. My father said we are more dangerous when we are afraid.”
Jo gently said, “Look, everyone gets scared. Well, everyone except Hanna. Being scared is normal. It’s what you do when you’re scared that matters.”
Alex gritted her teeth and said, “I’ll do it. Just let me check my earjack, and open the door.” She tried it out. “Testing, testing.”
“We’re reading you five by five,” Jack said over the earjack.
She took a deep breath and flew out of the chopper.
She went silvery, just because it seemed safer. And she flew right down to the mouth of the cave. The waldo looked like it was really stuck. Thick, sticky strands of webbing were caught in the treads and were holding it firmly in place. She landed outside the cave so she could use all her telekinesis, and she tried to pry it loose.
She tugged and tugged, but it was stuck solid. She flew twenty feet up so she felt less scared, and she tapped on her earpiece. “Terawatt to base. It’s glued down. We’re not getting it loose. We’re not getting it back, either.”
“Tera, it’s up to you. Check out the cave, or scrub the mission. Your call. We can get some blowers down here tomorrow and put enough dust on that silk that a new waldo won’t get stuck.”
The thought of going into that dark cave sent shivers down her spine. She was already scared, and she hadn’t gotten near that spider silk yet. But if she didn’t do it, and those baby spiders were hatching …
She had to do it. Not just because Jack and Riley and Jo and Hanna were watching her, but because people could die if she didn’t. The thought of hundreds of these things swarming through the city of Phoenix made her feel sick. She couldn’t let something like that happen. She had to do this. Now. Before she completely chickened out. She took a deep breath and said, “I need a decent light, and at least one of those laser pointers for the targeting.”
“Can do. Report to Super Huey Two.”
She just said, “Okay.”
Jack paused. “Look Tera, if you see anything … anything at all you don’t like, just get the hell out of there. I’m not kidding around about this. Remember, you can go where they can’t, and you can move faster than they can. And check the ceilings everywhere you move.”
“Roger that.” She felt like screaming at the mere idea of a desk-sized tarantula dropping on her, but she didn’t say so. She just flew up to the side of Super Huey Two.
Apparently, the co-pilot was listening on the comms, because he was opening the door before she got to the helicopter. He handed her a canvas bag that looked like spare parts for the waldo. He spoke into his headset: “Square thing is a halogen panel light. Self-contained. Puts out a lot more light than you’d expect. Thin flashlight-looking thing is the laser guidance system. Set it down so it paints the target, and get clear. Okay?”
She nodded and slung the bag over her shoulder. Then she headed back down to the cave mouth.
The cave was big. Well, duh, it had to be huge. It had to be big enough for a spider the size of a house to squeeze in and out of. The piles of dirt and rock outside the cave mouth were enough to fill in a dozen swimming pools, but they weren’t big enough to fill this entire cave, so there had to be a pretty big cave here to start with.
The ceiling was about fifty or sixty feet above her head. She flicked on the big square panel, which was about ten inches on a side, and two inches thick, and maybe ten or fifteen pounds. She figured it was mostly batteries and the rest of it was all halogen lights crammed together. She shone it all over the ceiling and walls before she floated up thirty feet to the center of the tunnel and floated forward.
The tunnel was like a million square feet of spider silk, covering every inch of the thing. But no spiders. At least, not yet. “Terawatt to base. I’m in. It’s definitely the spider’s tunnel. First section looks clear. Moving on in.”
She drifted forward, carefully checking every surface as she went. There was no wind. Everything was still. She was really, really, REALLY hoping everything would be still, and there wouldn’t be anything awful further in. Every once in a while, she checked behind her, just to make sure she could see the opening out of the tunnel. Okay, if the light went out, she could make her own light. But it would still be scary.
Scarier. Because she was really scared already. She was so scared she was sweating inside her uniform.
She wasn’t sure if she envied or pitied Hanna over the whole ‘not afraid of stuff’ thing. She figured it was part of Hanna’s genetic engineering, but never being afraid of stuff also meant never knowing when you should run like the dickens. And if there were any lion-sized, starving spiders in here, Hanna walking in on the spider silk would be mega-bad.
The tunnel was still all lined with spider silk, but somehow it looked more ‘dug out’ in this part. Maybe this was where the spider had to do the digging. She wondered if digging spiders used the silk to make the tunnel walls stay in place. Willow probably knew.
She kept checking the ceiling and the walls and the floor. Maybe that was easier when she was drifting about thirty feet up and she could keep tabs on everything. “Terawatt to base. Still nothing alive. Tunnel is still fifty, sixty feet high, pretty wide, pretty straight, silk lined.”
“Base to Terawatt. Roger that. You’re still loud and clear.”
She floated back another hundred feet or so. The huge cave mouth behind her was now looking pretty darn small. She shone the light all over, but the tunnel looked like it was ending. Still no egg sac full of nightmares. That was good.
She reached the end of the tunnel and found there was an eighty-foot-wide hole going straight down about … She shone the light down. Maybe a hundred feet or more. It was a long way down. This would have been a real problem for everyone else.
“Terawatt to base. There’s a big shaft going straight down. It’s all silk-lined. It’s maybe a hundred, a hundred fifty feet down. Will the missiles be able to make two sharp right turns?”
“Base to Terawatt. That’s a negative on the missiles. If you go down there, maintain constant radio contact in case we start to lose signal. Understand?”
“Roger that,” she said. But this was bad. Mega-bad. If she went down there and she had no more radio contact, she would have no help if anything went wrong. They wouldn’t know if she was in trouble or not. She was scared to fly down there, but if she didn’t go, who could? “Terawatt descending now,” she added.
“Base to Tera. How’s the tunnel look?”
She said, “Looks ‘dug out’ even if it’s lined. It’s awfully rounded for a mineshaft. And it’s big. Really, really big.”
“Base to Terawatt. You’re breaking up.”
Oh, crud. She swallowed hard and said, “Terawatt to base. I’m going lower.”
“Base … watt … break …”
She shot up forty feet and said, “I’m going down the shaft now. If I don’t come back into clear radio range in under a minute, assume I need help. Over.” And before she could chicken out, she went straight down.
She darted into the open area under the shaft, and she cringed. It was another sixty-foot-high tunnel, but when she shone the big light toward the back of this tunnel, she could see there was an egg sac. A big egg sac. An egg sac the size of a school lunchroom. An egg sac big enough to hold maybe five hundred eggs, each the size of a weather balloon.
And it was moving.
It was all she could do not to scream.
The movements were small, but they were there. Stuff was in there, and it was alive, and it was hatching. Or hatched and doing that ‘eat the rest of the egg’ thing Willow had said.
She shot straight up the mineshaft, like … like there was a giant spider after her. She zoomed down the tunnel back to the outside as fast as she could go. “Terawatt to base. We have a big, big, big problem. We have hundreds of eggs, and they’re hatching now or just hatched. I don’t know how long we have before we have five hundred hungry spiders the size of horses pouring up the mineshaft and wanting out.”
“Tera, get the hell out of there!”
“Terawatt to base, I’m already out.” She jetted out of the cave mouth and flew straight up to the helicopters.
She hovered in front of the Super Huey and asked, “Are you sure we can’t shoot any missiles that will make two sharp right turns before they reach their target?”
“Base to Tera, that’s a huge no,” Jack said. “Still.”
That was pretty much what she was afraid he would say. “Tera to base. Then we need to haul explosives or napalm or something down there right now and blow up all the baby spiders and collapse the cave on them and then make sure no goofballs decide to go dig down there and borrow some super-spider DNA.”
“Base to Tera. Agreed. But even if we had the trained airmen to safely pull all the warheads off all the Hellfires these Vipers are packing, we wouldn’t have the delivery systems or a usable fire control system.”
“Terawatt to base. We need something, and soon. I have no idea how long before that egg sac goes and we have not-so-cute baby spiders swarming all over the place.”
“Base to Terawatt. Come on in. We need to place an order for takeout.”
She flew into the Super Huey. She was trying not to look worried, but she was really pretty freaked by that egg sac.
Jack looked over at her and spoke into his headset. “Tera, you did great. A real superheroine job. Doing something that doesn’t scare you isn’t being brave. Being scared and still doing it? That’s brave.”
Well, she sure didn’t feel brave. She felt scared. That giant egg sac, moving around with stuff alive inside it, was just mega-yucky. She was still surprised she hadn’t peed herself when she saw it move.
Jack then placed a call to Luke Air Force Base and the Marines in Yuma where he got the helicopters. Alex couldn’t hear what he was saying, because he switched the comm system so he could talk to someone important, but that meant the rest of the people in the copter couldn’t hear.
When he was done, he turned back to the group. “Change of plans. We’re going to go do something supremely stupid. I’ve got some guys flying in two Mark 77 mods and some plastic explosives.”
Alex noticed that Riley and Graham and even Jo winced. Hanna didn’t flinch, but not much made her nervous.
Jack looked right at her and said, “For those of you who aren’t up to date on modern aircraft armaments, the Mark 77 mod 1 is a tank of five hundred pounds of better-than-napalm mixed with Willy Pete. That’s white phosphorus. The Mark 77 mod 1 weighs about five hundred fifty pounds including the casing and the oxidizing agent and the firing mechanism.”
Alex said, “I can’t lift more than 207 pounds.”
Jack nodded unhappily. “Yeah. That’s where we get to the ‘extremely stupid’ part. We’re gonna go in with half a dozen claymores and set ’em up facing that egg sac, and put ’em all on one clacker. If any spiders come out of that egg sac, we detonate the claymores regardless. These things aren’t big enough yet to stand up to a claymore at kill range. I hope. But anyone still in the lower chamber would get crushed by the reflected shockwave in an enclosed space like that. So we have a camera on the egg sac while we bring in the Mark 77s. Each one’ll have a wheeled cart. We’ll have to push the carts in. At the vertical shaft we’ll prep the remote triggers, and then we’ll lower both down to the inner chamber. We get out of there and fire the claymores, then the 77s, then we let the Vipers blow the whole tunnel from up in the air, if it hasn’t collapsed yet. We’ve got to make sure we kill those spiders and not just bury them until they can find a way out, because they’re burrowers.”
Alex gulped, but said, “If you show me how to set the claymores up and arm them, I can do that while the napalm gets wheeled in.”
Jack said, “And for political reasons, never call it napalm. It’s always a Mark 77. We’re going to have to lower the pods down on pulleys, and that’s gonna be a problem, too.”
Jo said, “I’ve worked out with the major. He’s a lot stronger than I thought. Between him and Hanna and me, I think we can lower one down the shaft by hand.”
Riley asked, “If the spiders sense vibrations through the silk, can we sever the silk somewhere in the vertical shaft all the way around, so there’s no connect through to the lower chamber?”
Jack said, “Best idea I’ve heard lately. Any ideas how? This is extra-thick spider silk, and lots of it. Expect it’s going to be really tough.”
Alex asked, “What about the sticky part at the front?”
Jack said, “You get to scoop up dirt off the valley floor and throw it all over the entry area, to handle that.”
Alex said, “Okay.” But she didn’t really think that would be enough.
Riley said, “Sir, I don’t want to be difficult, but there are a hell of a lot of things that can go wrong with this plan.”
Jack grimaced. “Yeah. Starting with all of us ending up as spider chow. Except for Billy and Grover, who aren’t going with us.”
“It’s not ‘Billy’, it’s ‘Bill Lee’!” Professor Lee complained again.
Graham asked, “And what if our position gets overrun?”
Jack said, “That’s why you get to stand close to the mouth of the cave with the base comm system. If any of us give you the codeword ‘Myrhorod’, you call for an immediate strike from the Vipers, regardless.”
Graham flinched, but said, “Yes, sir.”
Jack said, “If we’re being overrun by those spiders and there’s no hope we can keep them from getting out of the cave, then we’re already goners. That’s when one of you drops the codeword. But not a second before. If we can save our people and get the hell out of there first, that’s what we do. But the safety of the people of Arizona takes precedence over our safety. Understood?” He looked over at Alex. “Tera? You may be the only one of us who can survive a spider swarm. If we’re going down, do what you can to save as many of us as you can, starting with Hanna no matter what she says, but do not let those things get out of the cave. Understood?”
Alex wasn’t sure she could do it, but she was going to try. She was going to try as hard as she could. She nodded unhappily. “Yes, sir.”
He said, “We go in armed heavy. SAWs and assault rifles, with grenades. Grenades are a monumentally bad idea in an enclosed area like a cave, but they may be the way to go if we’re just trying to keep the swarm down there in the chamber. And maybe — just maybe — we can pick off anything trying to climb up the vertical if we’re at the top of the shaft and we have enough firepower. Hanna gets her choice of firearms. Tera does not.”
Alex figured that was fair. Jack had no idea she even knew which end of a P-90 to point at someone, or if she could pull the trigger to stop a threat. Frankly, Alex wasn’t sure she knew the answer to that second one, especially if she had to shoot a person. Now Hanna probably knew how to shoot and field-strip every weapon Jack could find on a military base. And she’d already shot and killed half a dozen people. Jack knew Hanna could shoot, and could shoot to kill, and wouldn’t lose her head in a firefight.
They waited for almost an hour before another chopper came flying in. Jack had their Super Huey drop down to within feet of the ground, and the op team jumped out. Alex flew out and started on the first part of the operation: she used her telekinesis to throw piles of dust and dirt and sand to make a wide path going maybe forty or fifty feet into the cave. As long as the sand stuck to the silk-covered floor, she knew she needed to make the path wider and longer. Especially longer. When the sand stopped sticking to the floor, she knew the path went in far enough.
By the time she was done, Graham and Jack and Jo and Riley and Hanna had web belts on and weapons slung over their shoulders. The chopper was using a winch to lower the second Mark 77 onto a wheeled cradle. The first one was already in place a few feet away. And Jack had what looked like half a dozen bandoliers for Alex. Plus there were a dozen of those halogen light panels, and each one was on an extendable tripod that looked a lot like a tall music stand without the piece at the top.
Jack walked her away from the group, while Riley and Jo pushed one Mark 77 into the cave, and Graham and Hanna took the second. Alex figured that meant Riley knew Jo was at least as strong as Graham, and Hanna was the strongest member of the team. Wow.
Jack pulled out a curved, green, plastic box with little metal legs you could fold out. Alex said, “It’s a claymore mine. I know. I saw Sam use a couple in a hell dimension.”
Jack nodded. “Good.” He handed her a black cube with a little antenna and a bunch of clip-like connectors on the front. He said, “This is the control box. I’ll have the clacker up top. This one’s a remote. You set up the claymores like this …” He sketched out in the dirt where she should put the claymores to blast the egg sac the most. “Each of these bandoliers has one of these …” He pulled out a spool of wire that ended with two fancy blasting caps. “You shove the caps in these angled guys in the top of the mine and run the wire back to the control box. Every cable has a gold and a silver wire. See the front of the box? Gold goes in the gold clip and silver goes in the silver clip right next to it. As soon as you put the blasting caps in, that mine is live. Treat it like the danger it is. As soon as you hook the claymore to the box, my clacker can set it off. As can stray electrical bursts or even the one perfectly wrong radio frequency that matches up with the length of the wire. Make sure the mines are far enough back to get a good spread, but not close to the shaft, so we don’t have to worry about dropping the Mark 77s on a live claymore by accident. As soon as all the claymores are set, let me know. Put one of the lights on the egg sac, and after the claymores are set, set up this mini-camera so we can watch from up above the shaft. If the spiders come out too early, we’ll have to clear the chamber and fire the mines. If we’re lucky, we’ll have time to move the Mark 77s into position, arm them, too, and get the hell out of Dodge. Then we fire the claymores, fire the Mark 77s a fraction of a second later, and there’s nothing left in there except for chunks of burned spider. If the cave hasn’t collapsed on us, we’ll even come back a few hours later and check, just to make sure. But watch out for those Mark 77s. They’re just big barrels of kerosene and oxidizer and white phosphorus and sticky goo and anything else you wouldn’t want near you.”
Alex started to get up, and Jack took her wrist. She’d never seen him look so grim before. “One other thing. If everything goes to hell, you’re the only one of us who stands a chance of setting off the Mark 77s from inside the cave and living through it. Grab a grenade. Hold down the handle. Pull the pin. Do not let go of the handle until you’re ready for a boom. Drop it down the shaft on top of the Mark 77s, and fly like hell for the cave mouth. Once you’re out, go straight sideways, not up and not further out. You’d have five seconds from when you release the grenade. You can fly at about ninety miles an hour if you try. That’s a hundred thirty-two feet a second. The distance from the cave mouth to that shaft isn’t a lot more than four or five hundred feet, so you ought to be able to clear the cave mouth easy before the grenade sets everything off. Got me?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”
He grimaced. “I’m hauling children into a fire zone. I’m having to trust the guesses of a bunch of scientists who’ve been dead wrong throughout this entire clusterf–… fiasco. I’m already on Plan E, and if your best plan craps out, things get worse and worse as you work your way through backup options. And I’m having to depend on Finn’s estimate that they can sink pitons into the ground and be able to lower those Mark 77s without being pulled over the edge. One of those pods weighs about as much as Finn and Lupo and Hanna and you all put together.”
She said, “If I can get the claymores set first, I can take a lot of the weight off when they lower the things.”
He nodded. “Yep. But that assumes we have tons of time. I’m not going there yet.”
He handed her the bandoliers, and she flew over to the light panels. Graham already had one set about a hundred feet inside the mouth of the cave. She grabbed four more with her telekinesis, and she flipped one on to light her way.
She flew down the middle of the cave, checking the ceiling and walls just as much as she checked the floor. When she reached the big vertical shaft, she used her telekinesis to put up two of the other light panels and stand the tripods up to light more of the area. Then she checked the walls of the shaft really carefully and flew down into the chamber.
The egg sac was moving even more now. It gave her the willies just thinking about it. She set up the two lights, one to shine on the egg sac, and the other to shine on the ground under the shaft. The second light was going to be needed for working with the Mark 77s. Then she flew around the chamber, placing the six claymore mines. They all had a little sight on top so she could line them up like Jack wanted. She placed the control box over near the second light, and she started the really dangerous part.
She dumped the bandoliers and used her telekinesis to hold the six blasting-cap-and-wire rolls. She flew to the closest claymore, carefully placed the blasting caps in the angled holes in the top, and then flew back to the box, unrolling the spool of wire all the way, so she could put in the wires just right. She did the second and the third claymores without trouble. By the time she had the fourth and fifth ones done and wired to the black box, she could hear her teammates working at the top of the shaft. She wanted to be done, so she hooked the last roll to the box first, since she was already there, and she used her telekinesis to hold the blasting caps away from her as she flew all the way over to the furthest claymore from the shaft. She floated a good ten feet back as she slipped the blasting caps in, and she was done.
That was when she heard the slight noise, and she looked up in time to see the egg sac tear open. A spider the size of a Volkswagen Beetle was clambering out.
A second one was right behind it.
And a third, a fourth, a …
Dozens of massive spiders came pouring out of the rip in the egg sac.
She screamed, “JACK! SWARM! FIRE IT!”
He yelled into her earjack, “No way in hell! You get out of there first!”
But she already knew. If she waited until she was far enough away from the blast zone to not have to worry about the reflected shockwave, the spiders would have already overrun the claymore mines and knocked them all over.
Stray electrical bursts. Jack had warned her about stray electrical bursts. She hurled a lightning bolt at the black box, and every single claymore mine detonated simultaneously.