Vermilion Drift Read Online Free PDF

you’re looking at storing nuclear waste in Vermilion One, the issue of security is going to be huge. She seemed genuinely surprised and upset.”
    “Okay, let’s work on the premise that no one who was down here legitimately is responsible,” Cork said. “That would mean someone was here who wasn’t supposed to be.”
    “No way someone who wasn’t authorized could get down here,” Haddad replied.
    “If you accept my premise, that’s not true.”
    “Which means what?” Haddad asked.
    Dross eyed Cork and smiled with perfect understanding. “There’s got to be another way in.”

FOUR
    U p top, Haddad separated and went to his office, while Cork and Dross returned to the conference room. Cavanaugh and Kufus were deep in a conversation that stopped the moment Cork and the sheriff walked in. From the looks on their faces and the abruptness with which the conversation ended, Cork had the distinct impression that it wasn’t business they were discussing.
    Haddad came in a few moments later and dropped a book in the middle of the table. The tome—nearly a foot wide, eighteen inches long, eight inches thick, and bound in heavy material that looked a lot like leather—hit with the thump of a fallen body.
    He said, “These are the schematics for every level of the mine, all twenty-seven. Every shaft, every drift, every foot of the fifty-four miles of excavation. I’ve gone over them so many times they visit me in my nightmares. I’m telling you, aside from Number Six, which is the only shaft still open, there is no other way in. Why would there be?”
    “I don’t know,” Cork said. “Enlighten me.”
    “I just did. Another entrance would mean another sink, and, believe me, cutting a shaft into rock is no Sunday drive in the country. It requires equipment, explosives, time, money. We’d know if someone did that. For one thing, they’d make a hell of a racket.”
    Cork opened the book. The pages were made of a thin, waxy material. The drawings on them reminded Cork of town plats, precise lines and corridors with lots of numbers indicating sizes and distances. All this was laid against a background that showed the county section lines for the ground above. In the lower right-hand corner was a legend that contained the scale and explained the markings on the map:stopes, raises, drifts, shafts, drill holes. Under the legend was a notation: “Prepared by Engineers Office, Granger, MN.” Beneath that was a date.
    “These are recent,” he said.
    “I requested them as soon as I knew about the DOE inspection,” Cavanaugh said. He nodded toward Kufus. “I wanted Genie and her people to have the most accurate information possible.”
    “How were they prepared?”
    Haddad said, “I took the last full set of schematics—they’re in pretty bad shape—and had them redone.”
    “When was the last set created?”
    “Just before the mine closed in the sixties.”
    “Any chance something was missed in the update?”
    Haddad shook his head. “I checked the old schematics against the new set myself. They’re identical.”
    Cork thought a moment. “Do you have anything before the sixties?”
    “Yes. Archived at the Ladyslipper Mine. When Vermilion One closed, everything was moved there for storage.”
    “Were they the basis for the schematics done when the mine closed?”
    “No. A complete and independent survey was carried out at that time. They wanted an accurate blueprint of the mine as it existed then.”
    “Have you looked at the earlier schematics?”
    “What would be the point?”
    “To be thorough,” Cork said. “It seems to me that there are three obvious possibilities for how someone managed to put graffiti on Level Three. One, it was someone who was down there officially and did something unofficial. But you tell me you’re certain that didn’t happen. Two, it was someone who accessed the mine unofficially through one of the known entrances, but you also say that’s impossible. And three,