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Jack Whittaker, spelunker for hire, finds a cave in the Quahada Hills outside of Carlsbad, New Mexico. A cave so beautiful it rivals its neighbor Carlsbad Caverns. Possessed by the thrill of caving, Jack has spent years dreaming and searching for a cave like this, even at the cost of his marriage.
Jack's ex-wife, Cassie Roberts, is a paleontologist for the Carlsbad Museum. Cassie hates caves and is extremely claustrophobic. But after seeing a photo of a large, fresh animal footprint Jack took in the cave--thinking it might be from Arctodus simus, the largest, most ferocious bear to roam in North America, thought extinct for twelve thousand years--she needs to find out more. That means going into the cave with or without Jack. Not far away, deep under the desert, east of Carlsbad, a high-tech government Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) begins receiving its precious cargo of radioactive nuclear waste. Within this man-made cavern are huge underground hallways and rooms carved out from salt deposits two thousand feet deep. Here the waste will sit untouched for the next ten thousand years. Suddenly government employees working deep underground at WIPP mysteriously begin to disappear.
Not far from the plant, Tracer Dunn, a local farmer, begins to notice his cattle are disappearing. After doing a little searching in the hills on his land, Tracer discovers spelunkers going into a cave. Sure enough, all hell starts breaking loose: a cave-in at WIPP, Jack wants the cave, Cassie wants the bears, and Dunn doesn't like cavers, bears, or government type people on his land or in his cave. And so, deep underground, in a world all too familiar to us, it's a battle of man against nature, good against bad.
Jake Page
20000-8263-2226-3
286 pages; hardbound
