Tom said, “They’ll be inside any minute now…”
Sam made a big show of sighing. “Yes… and we’ll be gone.”
He clicked on the video feed directly above their room and expanded the image by opening his fingers across the screen. The room was a hollowed tunnel, carved using rudimentary tools to chisel away at the soft sandstone.
“Would you look at that?” Sam said. “An escape tunnel!”
He swiped the screen to the left, moving to the next screen, followed by another. On the fourth screen, he spotted the back of a man, climbing onto a rope hanging over the sandstone cliff of the Tepui Mountains. Sam couldn’t see his face, but the man had thick black hair with minor graying to the side.
“That’s our man!” Sam said.
Tom grabbed him by the shoulder. “That’s great, but how do we get there?”
Sam smiled. “I thought you already knew?”
“No.”
“Follow me.”
Sam walked behind to the back of the giant stalagmite in the middle of the room. He shined his flashlight across the back of the pillar. Small, dark indents had been carved into the back of its limestone structure.
He locked the safety on his Heckler and Koch MP5 and swung its strap over his shoulder. Climbing hand over hand, he scurried up the limestone ladder. At the very top of the stalagmite, three pillars of quartz crystal met together like a giant prism. From the base of the pillar, it was impossible to see that the ceiling went anywhere, but upon reaching it, Sam spotted a secret entrance had been carved out of the sandstone that formed behind them.
Sam slipped through and climbed into the new tunnel. Unlike the rest of the tunnels they’d found beneath the Tepui Mountains, this one went in a perfectly straight line.
Tom squeezed his broad shoulders through the opening. “They’re flooding into the room now. It won’t take them long to discover the hidden ladder, if they don’t know about it already.”
Sam switched his MP5 submachine gun to F for fully automatic and turned to face the opening.
Tom met his gaze. “You don’t really think we’ve got enough ammo to stop all of them, do you?”
“Not for a second. Even if we had enough rounds and the time to reload, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for the extinction of an entire tribe. I’ve got a better idea though.”
The sound of Pirahã filling into the room below echoed through the secret passage. As expected, their numbers soared. It would be impossible to hope that they simply wouldn’t spot the hidden ladder, or that they could be fought off once they climbed up it.
A large fragment of quartz protruded out of the sandstone wall next to the opening to the secret room below. It was roughly one foot wide by six long. If it could be convinced to break free of the wall, the stone would fall into the opening, blocking anyone’s progress through it.
Sam removed his backpack and withdrew a single, copper-lined linear-cutting charge of C4. It was used by American Special Forces for cutting through thick sheet steel and solid doors during explosive breaches. He wrapped it around the base of the hanging crystal and attached a twenty-foot line of detcord.
Tom stepped back and nodded. “Clear.”
Sam flicked the switch, and the C4 exploded.
Chapter Eight
The small blast exploded in a flash, sending a torrent of rubble and air down the confined space of the tunnel. The blast-wave ripped into Sam, taking his breath away in an instant. Beneath closed eyelids, he watched as the blast lit up the tunnel, and his ears rang with the continuous echo of the explosion.
In an instant it was over.
Smoke wafted out of the rubble, where fractured shards of crystal littered the secret opening. Sam turned his gaze toward Tom to see if he was okay. Confirming Tom was uninjured, he focused his attention on the pile of rubble. His flashlight shined through the fine dust of the tunnel in ghostly silence.
His eyes fixed on the rubble. The top of the pile shuddered. Nothing more than a fine tremor. It could have been the remains of the debris settling into the small opening. Or it could be something much more significant.
Sam held his breath. The movement stopped. Maybe he’d imagined it? It felt like an abominably long time. He breathed out. The plan had worked and the small cave in served its purpose to block any progress from their pursuers.
Then, two hands broke through the rubble.
A moment later, the bloodied hands pulled at the shards of fractured quartz. Bit by bit the impossible became a certainty. They were going to dig their way out through the pile of rubble.
Sam swore.
Tom said, “Go!”
Sam started running down the escape tunnel. It was tall enough that he could move without fear of hitting his head on the roof, while so narrow his wide shoulders nearly scraped the walls. The tunnel continued for approximately a thousand feet, in a slight upward direction.
The strange humming sound coming from their pursuers gradually increased, until he no longer needed to glance over his shoulder to know they were catching up very quickly.
Sam reached the end, where a giant sandstone boulder rested perpendicular to the tunnel, blocking their exit. It was approximately eighty feet high and thirty or more wide. Between the stone and the escape passageway a narrow crevasse ran in both directions. Sunlight filtered in from both sides. It was a tight fit, but it looked like they could squeeze through it.
The sound of a hundred or more Pirahã guards making their strange and identical war cry was enough to remove any doubt in his mind.
“Which way?” Sam asked.
Tom glanced left and right. “Has to be left.”
“Why?”
Tom shined his flashlight to the right. “The sandstone tapers inward here. I’d never fit through.”
Sam nodded. “Okay, left it is.”
Tom threw his last remaining smoke grenade down the passage behind them. “You go first. You’re smaller, and should be faster. I’m right behind you!”
Sam didn’t argue.
He slipped into the lateral crevasse. It was an awkward climb. Although he could see the light of the exit about thirty feet away, the entire gap dipped fifty or more feet below. The result was that he needed to climb and slide his way through it — with the constant risk of falling deep into the narrower section where he might never climb out.
Shifting his weight from his back to his hands, and from his hands to his feet, Sam used opposing pressures — the way rock-climbers do to ascend the rock formations known as chimneys — to shuffle his way across the crevasse. About ten feet from the opening the opposing sandstone walls tapered, and he found the first section where he struggled to squeeze through. He adjusted his position and tried again. Same problem. He turned his head and tried exhaling to reduce the width of his chest. This time he got farther, but was still unable to completely get past the same spot.
He exhaled the last of the air in his lungs, and gravity returned him to where he’d started. Sam shined his flashlight across the opposing walls, searching for any shadows that might indicate a slightly wider section.
Behind him, gunshots fired.
“We’ve got company, Sam!” Tom shouted. “Forget caution, just get through there!”
Sam said, “I’m on it!”
His glance stopped nearly eight feet above where he was trying to cross the crevasse. There, a small piece of black hair and not yet dried blood marked the way out. Sam shimmied upward and across.
The area was still narrow, but definitely wider than down below.
He glanced at Tom below. “Are you following?”
Tom placed his MP5 strap over his shoulder and started to climb. “Keep going, I can see the route.”
Squished between the two immovable rock walls, with his hands out above his head and his feet pressed against opposite ends, Sam felt his world close in on him. Here, panic could kill as quickly as a bullet. Every part of him wanted to breathe deeply and escape. Instead, salvation only came from exhaling deeply.