“It sounds like it’s at the bottom of this hill,” Riley whispered.
Footsteps scuffed somewhere out in the fog, and a male voice carried up to Riley, Emerson, Alani, and Vernon.
“Every time the motion detectors go off they send us out here,” the man said. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to find in this fog.”
“It’s probably just the stupid feral goats,” a second voice said. “It’s always the goats.”
“Okay, you found the entrance,” Riley whispered. “You got your lucky break. Now let’s get out of here before they change their minds and come looking for us.”
“That would be ignoring our unique opportunity,” Emerson said. “An opportunity like this doesn’t come up every day.”
“Do you mean an opportunity to get killed? You get those opportunities all the time.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Emerson said to Riley. “When presented with an interesting opportunity, you have a responsibility to the universe to acknowledge it.”
Riley stared at Emerson. “I didn’t say anything remotely like that.”
“Perhaps I paraphrased.”
“Perhaps you live in fantasyland.”
Emerson looked at Vernon. “How’s your unagi today?”
Vernon grinned. “I’m just chock-full of it. Then again, who needs unagi when you’ve got a big-ass gun.” He pulled his lucky Glock from his jacket. “Even put bullets back in it when Little Buddy wasn’t looking.”
“You see,” Emerson said. “It’s a sign. We have luck, an interesting situation, u
nagi, and a big gun. It would actually be grossly negligent of us not to overpower the guards and infiltrate the top-secret hollowed-out volcano.”
Riley nodded. “I’m sure I’ll regret it, but I’m in.”
“Let’s do it,” Alani said. “Mauna Kea is sacred ground to Hawaiians, and I don’t like what’s going on here on my mountain.”
“I’m all about the lair,” Vernon said.
Emerson, Riley, Vernon, and Alani carefully walked in the direction of the voices. As they got closer, the faint outlines of the men took shape. Two sentries were standing just outside a gaping hole in the hillside. They were smoking, and they’d laid their rifles against a rock wall.
“Howdy,” Vernon said, pointing his gun at the guards.
Both men jumped.
“What the—” the first guard said.
“Oh crap,” the second one said.
“We’re from Human Resources,” Vernon said, positioning himself between the guards and their guns. “A couple of feral goats called and complained about the secondhand smoke. This is a nonsmoking mountain.”
Alani collected the rifles and walked into the dimly lit tunnel that appeared to be about fifty feet in diameter.
“This is definitely a lava tube,” she said.
The rolling metal door was large enough for a truck to pass through. It was half closed and covered with jagged pieces of cinder. When the door was completely closed it would be perfectly camouflaged in the lava desert.
“This explains the disappearing SUV,” Emerson said. “I wouldn’t have noticed the entrance if I’d walked right past it.”
“What are we going to do with these two?” Alani said, motioning toward the guards.
“I’m prepared for all events,” Emerson said. “I have zip ties in my pack. We’ll truss them up, and you and Vernon can stay behind to watch them. Riley and I will do a little snooping. We’ll be back in no more than an hour.”