Free Fire - C. J. Box [75]
“Bio-pirates?”
Demming moaned. “Yes, Joe. There have been reports of freelancers up here scooping up growth and plant species in the hot water runoff and trying to sell it to companies or other governments.No one’s actually been caught at it yet, but every once in a while there’s a report. As if we don’t have enough to worry about up here, you know.”
Joe felt a growing sense of discovery and excitement as Cutlerand Demming talked. This was new. There was nothing in the “Zone of Death” file about bio-mining, or McCann’s connectionto it.
Ahead, he could see the trees parting and feel—if not yet see—their destination. It was a huge opening in the timber, walled on four sides by dead and dying trees. The odor of sulfur and something sickly sweet hung low to the ground.
“This is Sunburst Hot Springs,” Cutler explained. “It’s called that because, from the air, the runoff vents come off of it like spikes in all directions. It looks like how a little kid draws the sun in art class, with spikes coming out of the circumference.”
Joe could feel the heat twenty feet away and hear and feel a low rumbling, gurgling water sound somewhere beneath his feet. Sunburst was gorgeous, he thought, in a dangerous and oddly enticing way. The steaming surface of the water was nearly fifty feet across, held in place by a thin white mineral rim that looked more like porcelain than earth. The water inside was every shade of blue from aquamarine near the surface to indigo as it deepened. It was hard to see clearly into the open mouth of the spring because of scalloped ripples of steam on the surface, which dissipated into the air. Inside the spring the sun illuminated outcroppings, bronzing them against the blue, and Joe could clearly see a sunken litter of thick, stout barbell-shapedbuffalo bones that had been caught on shelves along the interior walls. Again, he felt the pull of the water but not as strongly. The placid blue water seemed to beckon to him in the way that a warm bath or a Jacuzzi pulls a frozen skier at the end of the day. Beyond Sunburst Hot Springs was a smaller pool rimmed with dark blue and green, meaning much cooler water.
Cutler saw him looking at it, said, “That’s Sunburst Hot Pot. It’s much, much cooler than the hot springs, and it’s a really nice pool to lounge in”—he grinned slyly at Demming—“if one were so inclined.”
Joe checked out the hot pot. If God designed a natural Jacuzzi, he thought, this would be it. It was waist deep, clear, and someone had fitted flat wooden planks into the walls to sit on. Obviously, the pool had been used for illegal hot-potting. Joe visualized Hoening sitting on one of the planks with a Minnesotafemale he had just lured out from L.A., and smiled.
“Nice place for a date,” he said.
As he circled the hot pot he felt an odd sensation of someone blowing air up his pant leg. He stopped and turned, studied the ground. It took a moment before he saw the series of quarter-sizedholes in the ground, each emitting a light stream. He squatted and held his palm out to one of them, feeling it on his skin. No doubt, he thought, the superheated earth under the surfacehad to release something, like a natural pressure cooker. He’d heard about visitors (and, more likely, Zephyr employees) burying chickens in the ground in secret places to bake them. He thought he could probably do that here. The idea intrigued him.
The ground in the little tree-lined basin was nearly white, as if it had been baked. The consistency of the dirt was crumbly. Joe noted a long dark line in the earth that extended from deep in the trees and topped an almost imperceptible rise. The dark streak ran past the side of the hot springs and out the other side.
“What’s that?” Joe asked.
“Like I mentioned,” Cutler said, “the cool thing about the park is that all of the insides are pushed out in places. That’s a seam of underground coal. It’s not very big, and it’s hard to say how far down