Blind Descent

Nevada Barr

Blind Descent

The sixth book in the A

For Andrea, Jim, and Andrew Goodbar.

Without their expertise and generosity not only could this book not have been written but I would never have been lured into the beauty of the underground.

With deep appreciation of the staff of Carlsbad Caverns National Park, particularly Dale Pate, Paula Bauer, Harry Burgess, and Frank Deckert. Among them, they educated, enlightened, amused, advised, and kept me safe on what turned out to be some of the most amazing journeys of my career. People like those at Carlsbad Caverns make me remember that the hackneyed phrase "our National Parks are our greatest heritage" is the simple truth.

1

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Though Carlsbad was less than an hour's drive from the Guadalupe Mountains, where A

It could be argued that the open areas of the caverns felt as much like a Disney creation as Space Mountain. There were no dangerous mazes, no precipitous heights, no tight squeezes. Still, it was a cave, and so A

This December she had been sent to CACA from her home park in Mesa Verde, Colorado. Trained teams consisting of park rangers from all over the region responded to catastrophes that ranged from hurricanes to presidential visits. This time it was the injury of a caver.

Had the caver been hurt in Carlsbad Cavern, extrication would have been simple: pop her in a wheelchair, roll her down to the snack bar and onto the elevator. She'd have been home before her mother knew she was missing.

But this caver had been injured in Lechuguilla. The cave was on NPS lands near CACA's headquarters. Lechuguilla was closed to the general public for the protection of both the cave and the visitors. Nearly ninety miles of the cave had been explored but it would be many years before it was fully mapped. Lech was a monster man-eating cave, dangerous to get into and harder to get out of.

Two days into Lechuguilla, a member of the survey team had been hurt in an accident. Not surprisingly there'd been a contingent of experienced cavers at Carlsbad at the time, a small but dedicated group given to squeezing themselves into dark holes and living to write home about it.

Before A

With the overhead team came the inevitable Porta-Johns, food trucks, and power struggles.

On duty less than three hours, A

For the past half hour reporters had been getting short shrift. A

Scrawled in the margin of the book were the words "fact: wedge victims die."

Transfixed by the same dread a woman in a stranded VW might feel watching a logging truck bearing down on her, A

Housed in an old stone building built in the 1920s, the office was small, crowded by two desks, the walls lined with metal shelving and stuffed with books. Sprawled over the cluttered desktop, Oscar looked as homey and leggy as a spider in his web. Long limbs poked out the fabric of his trousers at knee and hip. His arms, seeming to bend in several places along their bony length, were stacked like sticks on his thighs. Come Halloween it would take only a little white paint to pass him off as a respectable skeleton. A mummy of the sere and unwrapped variety would be even easier. The man looked made of leather, hide ta

"Got some bizarre news," he said, banging his heel softly against the metal of the desk.

For whom the bell tolls, A

"Now that the relatives have been notified we can release the name of the injured woman. Frieda Dierkz. And she's asking for one A

Shit, A

"Frieda?" she echoed stupidly.

Iverson shot her a startled look. "Don't you know her? From the intensity of the summons, I got the idea you two were best buds."

"Buds." A

"She's the dispatcher at Mesa Verde," A