Chapter 16

Sunday

It’s creepy having to shake out your boots before you put them on in the morning, lest you discover the hard way that a scorpion or venomous spider had taken refuge in one of them during the night. While I could “see” that nothing was in my boots, I followed the ritual anyway. I even mentally checked the boots of everyone else. I’d have warned them if I found anything, but left it to each of them to check their own boots.

So far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the weather. I always envisioned Central American rain forests as miserably hot and humid places, but the temperatures here have been surprisingly comfortable, probably because it’s winter and we’re in the mountainous part and not at the lower elevations. It has been humid, but thanks to living in Louisiana, I’m used to humid weather. Here we’re about 15° north latitude, or roughly sixteen hundred klicks north of the equator. Home is closer to thirty-two hundred klicks north of the equator. I had looked that information up the summer when I was six, convinced that the oppressive hot and humid summer weather in Louisiana had to be equatorial.

After breakfast, we headed back to the barracks, dressed out in full battle gear, and pulled weapons and ammo. After double-checking the ammo level in the sleds, we made sure our gear didn’t rattle or make other sounds when we moved. Then we listened as Lt. Commander Ferguson went over the plan for today.

Nobody had opened the entrance to the cave since we left. The plan was for me to approach slowly, checking for new booby traps or sensors, and see if the sleds were still inside the cave. If so, we’d pull them outside and take them back with us at the end of the day, along with the battery chargers. We’d also grab the spare batteries and solar panels, and as much wiring as we could salvage. I suggested giving a couple sleds to the local village and keeping the remainder on hand to reward cooperative villages in the future. He liked the idea, especially since half of the sleds would have been mine.

Once inside the cave, I would lead one fire team into the tunnel. Other fire teams would follow us at two-minute intervals. If we found a branch or an intersection, we would indicate which branch we took. The next fire team or teams would establish a roadblock at the intersection and guard the tunnel(s) we didn’t take.

“There’s no sense in us taking any risks venturing into the tunnels, however minimal, when Jim is able to explore them the way he does,” Lt. Commander Ferguson explained.

Sally commed me just before we left, letting me know that they were already aboard the ship, loading bags of grain. All eight of my wives, as well as Annette, Dana, and Juana were there. They intended to load twenty bags into cargo nets slung under the supply tenders of each of the eleven grav sleds they were riding. That would let them deliver five-and-a-half tonnes of grain. She planned to drop off most of it at the base, and then take ten bags of each type of grain to the village when they went to meet Idania.

I sent her the coordinates of both the base and the village, warning her to be careful at the village. She assured me that one of them would always be overhead, using a sled to scan the area surrounding the village. In addition, they each had weapons and had worn their armor. I told her that I was going to shut off my com unit but would forward any messages to Lt. Commander Ferguson. I had already warned him about forwarding my coms to him in case the women had any questions, as well as warning him what they intended to do.

Within minutes, we were over the entrance to the cave. Again, I thoroughly scanned the area and found nothing amiss. The sleds were still inside and I could detect the locators we had put in the sleds and made sure that nothing had been tampered with. “Everything is the same as we left it last night,” I commed Ferguson.

“Proceed as planned,” he replied, sending the order to each of the fire team leaders as well.

Releasing the latch to open the cave door, I removed our signaling device that indicated if the door was opened. I turned it off and stashed it inside my grav sled where I had stored at least twenty other sensors of various types. Aside from our fire team, nearly everyone else started taking the rebel’s grav sleds outside. One fire team stayed cloaked aloft about half a klick above the entrance, watching for any outside trouble headed towards our position.

With everyone else assigned jobs, we started into the tunnel. The top of the tunnel was nearly three meters high, but the cross braces were nearly thirty cm thick. I noted tool marks showing that every beam in the tunnel had been hand hewn, not cut with saws. Several of the vertical supports had scuff marks about half a meter off the ground, probably from grav sleds rubbing against them as they went by. Given that we had fifty cm of clearance on each side, the riders were either new to using grav sleds, were careless, had been distracted, or were in a hurry.

Five klicks into the tunnel was a small opening on the right side of the wall. It was designed to allow troops to enter a narrow passageway that paralleled the tunnel. Only a ten-cm thick mud-covered brick wall separated the passage from the tunnel, although the passage was constructed higher than the tunnel. Its design allowed someone inside the passage to look down at a 45-degree angle on anyone inside the tunnel and, presumably, to fire down on them. The firing ports were high enough not to be easily noticed.

Even though I could “see” details ahead of us for half a kilometer, I maintained a thirty kph pace. When we neared the first intersection, I warned Cooper about it. The intersecting tunnel went east and west. The tunnel we were in continued south. I hadn’t noted or felt danger from any enemy troops ahead of us in the tunnels but didn’t get enough details to be comfortable with that conclusion. Using my “Jim sense” didn’t help much because I was still feeling numerous sources of danger from many directions and couldn’t rule out that the dangers I felt could be coming from inside the tunnels.

Twenty-five klicks from the entrance, we reached that intersection. I’d already searched it and didn’t detect any troops present. Each corner of the intersection had a small room about eight meters square. Unlike the tunnel, smooth concrete or plaster covered the floor, ceiling, and walls of these rooms.

One room was an armory, complete with racks filled with forty automatic rifles, mostly Iranian, although some were Russian or Chinese. There were even some captured American military models. They were all chambered to use the same 10 mm ammunition and there were at least a hundred full cases of ammo here. There were also explosives and timers as well as RPGs and mortars. There was even a rack filled with older styles of combat armor and combat helmets, including captured American equipment.

A second room was completely empty except for a small pile of used chemical lamp sticks near the door. The third room had a crude kitchen, including a supply of coal and firewood, as well as crates of canned food. A manmade stone and mortar sink had frigid water running into it. The overflow ran along the edge of the room and disappeared through a natural hole in the floor. I followed it with my expanded awareness and noted that it flowed down through the rock about a meter lower than where the water entered the room.

The ceiling was sloped up slightly towards the center where an opening allowed smoke to escape. I stood on a crate and felt a strong updraft at the opening, even though we didn’t have a fire going. The fourth room was a prison cell, complete with a lockable reinforced wooden door. Shackles were attached to the walls every meter or so.

Using com relays the team attached to the wooden supports every half-klick, Cooper commed Ferguson to have the rebel’s grav sleds brought here to remove the weapons. After the call, he told me that my wives had dropped the grain off at the base. Ferguson already had them come get four of the captured grav sleds to take to the village. They also took a solar panel and two chargers, as well as an extra set of batteries for each sled. That meant we were now down to fifty or so of the rebel grav sleds. Evidently, they rode two to a sled.

“Which way?” I asked Cooper. We studied the map and I showed him where I estimated the three exits were. He chose to head west. According to the map, the west tunnel should only be twelve klicks long. When we got to the exit, I carefully scanned the door, as well as the surrounding area outside before we opened it. Unlike the original opening, there was no natural cave here. Instead, the “cave” was hewn out of dirt and rock. Like the last entrance, this cave had a short rock wall at the back near the tunnel to use as cover should an enemy enter the cave. It also had a long, narrow ledge with fifty battery chargers, complete with spare batteries in an identical setup as the last cave.

Blue Squad joined us, and we made quick work of disconnecting the chargers and loading them onto one of the supply tenders. We stopped for a quick lunch and then cautiously exited the cave, taking the solar panels and the wiring. I cloaked and was able to follow six different trails from the cave to the road into the village. Each trail reached the road in a slightly different place. A kilometer west of the last connection to the east-west road, the road crossed a bridge over the river near a town.

We set out a locater beacon near the entrance that could be toggled on remotely and rigged the door with another beacon to alert us if someone used it. Then we headed back to the intersection.

“Find anything interesting that way?” Ferguson asked us as he oversaw the loading of rebel sleds with the munitions and weapons at the intersection. Cooper explained what we found.

The southern exit was similar. It, too, exited near a town.

The east exit was the interesting one. The other three exits were near or only slightly higher than the elevation of a nearby town or village. The east exit came out nearly a hundred meters above a river rushing through a deep, narrow chasm. Forty meters above the river, some of the steep walls of the chasm had been blasted away enough to build a two-lane public road.

There was a branch off the ten-klick long east tunnel. About three klicks from the east entrance, it branched off to the southwest. That branch led to an exit near the road into a large town. The tunnel system here looked like an upside down cross with a side branch like the angled leg of an R or a K.

“I can’t believe how much work must have been required to make these tunnels,” I commented. “They must have started tunneling well before the rebellion.”

“Possibly,” Ferguson agreed, having joined us. “And I see now why we kept losing track of them. We dealt with tunnels in the MEW, and we’re dealing with tunnels in China, but nothing to this extent. Go ahead and rig the doors with a beacon that can be toggled on remotely and rig the doors with a second beacon to alert us if someone uses it. Then, we’ll head back to the base. On the way back, can you check out the other side of the river across from the east entrance? Don’t try to go inside if you find any more tunnels, just scout the mountain to see what you can determine from the air. Meet your wives at the village we were at yesterday when you’re done, and then bring everyone back to the base and I’ll arrange separate quarters for you tonight. Cooper, assign a fire squad to stay with Jim while he reconnoiters.”

I reminded everyone to take the battery chargers and batteries near each entrance. This time, we went through the tunnels faster, going almost fifty kph. Two fire teams stayed with me while the others returned to help finish the job of loading the weapons. I was surprised later to learn that they even took the coal and firewood, as well as all the canned food and delivered them to Idania’s village.

Once we opened the east door, we could hear the roar of the water far below us. “Don’t look down,” Cooper teased, pointing in the direction of the chasm. I did look down, and the view was breathtaking. Cooper and his fire team went with me and the other fire team stayed to remove the charging equipment at this exit and to place beacons.

The tunnel that we had just exited came out onto a level area about sixty meters above the road and was at least twenty meters from the edge of the chasm. The area between the exit and the edge was covered with trees, effectively hiding it from anyone, or anything, looking down. Four green vines stretched across the thirty-meter-wide chasm. At least they looked like vines from a distance. The two outside ones were green 1-cm spilon rope. The center “vines” were two-cm spilon ropes. The rebels had used one as a zip line to cross the chasm to this side, and we found two zippers. The second 2-cm rope was higher on this end than the other and would be used to zip to the other side. The two thinner ropes that spanned the chasm were attached to two thicker ropes that made a rope bridge with carbon fiber planks to walk on.

The bridge looked like it required at least two men to pull it across the chasm and then securely tie it in place. I saw rope marks around several trees on the west side. Currently, the rope bridge was piled neatly on the ground on the east side. Evidently, the rebels we captured had planned to pull the bridge back across the chasm to cross back to the east side, probably last night when there was less chance of anyone seeing them.

That meant they’d come from the east, so their base was to the east.

Once I was across the chasm, I quickly found an entrance about ten meters from where the rope bridge was piled. I wondered what happened to the person who pulled the bridge back across and stacked it up. Did they return to the rebel base to report that the team hadn’t returned last night? Did they use a zip line to re-cross the chasm and continue with the rest of the group? I’d searched the first part of this tunnel and found nobody. Like the other entrances, there were no booby traps and it wasn’t wired to sound an alarm if someone opened the door. The rebels must feel that the entrances were hidden well enough to escape detection and did not need any additional security.

I spent an hour slowly flying above the mountain, following tunnels in this cluster of mountains. My navigation computer showed that, at one time, the area had been known as the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, one of several large reserves meant to help save as much of the Nicaraguan rainforest as possible. The tunnel extended nearly fifty km before it exited on the east side of the mountains.

The eastern exit of this tunnel was above another river. The continuation on the far side of the river ran into the former Cerro Cola Blanca Natural Reserve, a much smaller reserve.

There, I found a third tunnel complex. That meant there were at least three tunnel complexes: the western complex, the center complex, and the eastern complex. So far. I’d detected almost two hundred km of tunnels through the mountains.

Everything I saw in the center and eastern tunnels was viewed from just above the mountains, peering through the mountains. None of the tunnels were even half a kilometer below the highest points on the mountains.

From the center tunnel complex to the eastern complex, the main east-west tunnel crossed another river using the same type of moveable rope bridge. When I flew across the small river between the two tunnels, I had to go back to check it again. Then I flew up and down the river for several klicks verifying what I had discovered. Along the bottom of the river, in places where the river narrowed, were underwater turbines used to generate electricity. Several of the narrow areas had been purposely narrowed by cementing heavy boulders in place.

Narrowing the river caused the current to flow faster in those locations. The faster current generated more electricity. Once detected, it was easy to follow the copper wires, even though they were buried beneath several inches of soil. The wires led into two different tunnels in the eastern complex. In each case, there was a small room within fifty meters of the tunnel entrance. Inside the rooms were transformers and circuit breakers, as well as other electrical equipment I didn’t recognize. The wires exiting the room were enclosed in conduits which were inside a larger composite pipe that ran along the walls of the tunnels behind the support beams. I followed the wires east for fifteen klicks, noting occasional transformers, when I found the rumored underground city.

The city was at or near a junction of several tunnels: the main east-west tunnel, a 37-klick tunnel to the northeast, and three tunnels that went southwest, south, and southeast. The three tunnels to the south each exited near large towns or small cities. The eastern terminus of the tunnel was three klicks from a city in the coastal plain. That entrance had a much larger door, obviously meant to accommodate the seven horse-drawn sulkies currently waiting inside the entrance.

The northeast tunnel was the most interesting. It exited near three towns in Nicaragua’s mining triangle. Decades ago, the area had produced gold, silver, and copper. Gradually, the mines played out and new discoveries had assayed out too low to make further mining productive.

I realized that, while watching for tunnels in the mountain, I was seeing the auras of gold and silver in the rock of the mountainous area beneath me. I also saw a reddish aura that I guessed was copper, since the electrical wiring had the same hue. The northwest tunnel passed three meters from the edge of a sizeable deposit of gold and silver.

Five klicks from the north end of the tunnel was a smaller underground village, although the village appeared to be more of a mining town. A branch tunnel veered off from the village and wandered, seemingly aimlessly, through the rock. I had to surmise that the irregular nature of the tunnel was due to following the vein of ore it looked like they were mining--a different vein than I had noted earlier. A lucrative gold mining operation explained how the rebels were able to pay for the submarines with gold.

The northeast tunnel exited inside an old, open pit mine. Unlike the other tunnels, the tunnel from the smaller underground town to the exit had narrow gauge railroad tracks running down the center of it. The tracks began inside the mine and skirted the town, continuing through the main tunnel to the northern exit. At the exit, a monstrous dump truck awaited. I watched as a grav sled carefully pulled three filled ore carts. The ore carts stopped on a short section of elevated railway inside the open pit mine and dumped their cargo to the side, right into the back of the waiting dump truck. The operator changed batteries for the grav sled at a charger just inside the entrance and used it to push the empty carts back through the tunnel to the mine.

The rebels were making it look like they were operating a legitimate gold mine since the facilities to crush and refine the ore were on the premises of the abandoned open pit mine. I also noted that a small coal-powered generating plant been built onto the smelter made to look like it was part of the original smelter. Electric wires ran from it into the mining town and into the mine.

Just before I quit, I noticed a caravan of seven grav sleds headed for the westernmost exit. What drew my attention to the caravan were the auras of gold and silver around the cargo carried by the seven sleds. Five sleds each carried twenty, ten-kilogram bars of gold. The other two sleds carried the same amount of silver. Each of the sled’s operators carried an automatic rifle and a pistol and wore body armor.

I figured it would only take them five minutes to reach the exit. I had no idea how long it would take them to transfer everything to the seven waiting horse drawn sulkies just inside the entrance. I remember Lt. Commander Ferguson commenting that their spy satellites would pick up any grav sleds operating in the area. Evidently, the rebels didn’t operate the grav sleds outside the tunnel system, they used the sulkies.