Page 164 of Darling Wildfire
“I’ll be honest—I was worried it didn’t exist,” Lachlan said ruefully.
“Well, let’s get swimming,” Knight said. “Nyx, Lach—widen the passage. North and I can start diving.”
I stripped off my gear and put on a waterproof headlamp and goggles that had been a random afterthought—a ‘just in case’ I was now glad to have. I dove into the water with Knight following. It was deeper than it appeared, maybe about ten or eleven feet deep. I got to the bottom and swept the light over the sandy floor. My excitement flared and I looked up at Knight giving him a thumbs up—there were hundreds of boxes down here.
I ripped one open and gold bars flashed. Now we just had to get it all out and we didn’t have a lot of time. I surfaced and grabbed the rope we’d brought.
Knight’s head popped up next to me. “It’s beautiful—there’s a lot there.”
“Yeah, we have a lot of work to do.”
We worked quickly raising crates of gold bars from the bottom of the pool.
The boxes were stamped with all manner of World War II distinguishers. Knight and I took turns diving while Nyx and Lachlan pulled up the boxes and an hour later we had a fair haul clogging the ledge. We loaded the truck with as many crates as we could and drove out to an overgrown landing strip we’d designated as the extraction point.
“Two minutes,” Mads said over comms.
We heard the chopper overhead and a net dropped down. We loaded the crates and Mads flew away. We repeated this process a few more times before darkness fell. We called a halt for the night and made camp near the caves.
“Movement in the main compound,” West said. “They’re getting ready for the shift change.”
“Don’t these people report in or something?” Knight muttered.
Lachlan chuckled. “It’s a good thing they’re so lax. It’s giving us plenty of time.”
We’d retreated into the cave a ways so we could light a small stove we’d brought. I sat with my back against the wall, waiting for West’s report.
“They know something’s wrong,” West’s voice came over comms.
“Sleep in shifts,” I ordered. “We’re up and moving in—”
An explosion boomed through the forest. It was so powerful it brought a sprinkle of dirt and pebbles down on our heads. It was the trips Knight had set. I glared over at Knight who looked at me sheepishly and shrugged.
“Oops…”
“Fucking Pyro,” I muttered.
76
ATLAS
We rotated sleeping and an hour before dawn, we started again. It was exhausting work. Diving, lifting and hauling crates of heavy gold was tedious and depleting but we doggily pressed on. The security contractors hadn’t organized a search party until dawn and so far they weren’t anywhere close to us. West was keeping us apprised of their locations. We were enroute to the pickup location to drop another load off with Mads when West came over comms sounding concerned.
“There’s a plane inbound to the landing strip,” he said.
“Let me know what they do,” I said, picking up the pace.
“Okay, that’s a lot of men,” West said. “You guys need to get out of there.”
“How many?” I demanded in irritation.
“Thirty.”
“Safe to say we pissed them off,” Lachlan said around a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“There should be another road about ten yards on the right—take it,” West said.
Lachlan veered off when the overgrown track appeared and we wove through the trees. The ground was uneven and bumpy making our pace slow considerably.
