The first suffusion of dawn outlined the Greenwater Range in ghostly purple. Bouncing headlight beams still cut through the air around the site, but fewer in number now.

"Looks like they're moving out," Gilmonn said.

"Time for the camp to evacuate," Rogers said. "I'll need the lieutenant and one other, that's it."

"I'm staying until you're in the tunnel and the arrow's up there with you," Gilmonn said.

"We call it a 'monkey' now, sir, not an arrow," the lieutenant corrected him.

"Whatever the hell," Gilmonn said.

"Monkey on my back," Rogers said.

The lieutenant pulled an inch-thick Teflon sheet from the weapon's accessory kit and wrapped it tightly around the cylinder, belting it with three straps and a clasp. The top and bottom of the sheet projected over the ends of the cylinder, blunting any sharp edges that might hang up inside the tunnel. He then attached two ropes to sunken eyebolts in the upper end, on each side of the cover plate. "All set, sir?"

Rogers nodded. "Let's go."

The lieutenant removed the cover plate and set the timer. "You have forty minutes, sir, from the time I flip this switch. We'll stay down here for fifteen minutes. You'll have your Jeep to drive clear after we leave."

"Understood," Rogers said.

He climbed into the hole, paying out the ropes from loops in his belt, and scrambled to the first bend, then braced himself there. "Bring it up," he said. The lieutenant flipped the switch, closed the plate, and hefted the weapon up into the hole. Rogers pulled it up the length of the first segment of the tube, hand over hand on the rope.

He then called down to the lieutenant and Gilmonn. "Around the first bend," he said. "I'm climbing the vertical shaft."

"Thirty-five minutes, Colonel," the lieutenant replied.

Rogers glanced up the shaft and held his rasping breath momentarily, trying to hear something. Surely the bogey wouldn't just let him haul the weapon in, without some resistance?

He coiled the ropes and secured them to his belt, then suspended the monkey on a rope secured to a stake he hammered into the lava. He climbed the chimney as he had before, bracing back against one side and feet against the other, inching his way. That took an additional five minutes. Twelve minutes had passed and he was tiring, but not yet winded.

Crouching in the low, almost horizontal tunnel, he jerked free the slipknot attaching the monkey to the stake, and began to haul it up the chimney as fast as he could. The cylinder weighed at least seventy pounds and the effort made his arm muscles knot.

With the cylinder almost over the edge, he heard Gilmonn's voice echoing from below.

"How are you doing, Colonel?"

"Almost there," he answered. His arms were twin agonies. The radiation jacket chafed and was becoming a major irritation.

"We're going now."

"You have twenty-five minutes," the lieutenant added. "Gotcha."