The walkie-talkie on the desk in front of Bennett crackled twice, then spoke in Jackie Tian’s voice. “Coming out.”
Bennett’s hand strayed to the button that would detonate the seawall explosives, but then all at once he was in Belize again, visualizing another man in another tunnel, the sudden onrush of water. He closed his eyes, and his hand moved back from that button to pick up the walkie-talkie. “Let me know when it’s safe to set off the charge.”
“Naturally.”
Sharom was alone. His headlamp was the only light, shining on the abandoned bulldozer, the submarine on its trailer, the new ragged hole in the wall to the vault. He could hear the radio talk, knew when they meant to blow the seawall, and stepped into the vault to be out of the direct line of it.
Fortunately, he’d thought to put in ear plugs. The sound of the blast, in this long tubular enclosed space, was like a physical punch, booming down the tunnel, an invisible landslide. Sharom closed eyes and mouth, covered nostrils, and waited. When the vibrations eased, he looked out, leaning through the hole in the wall, aiming his headlamp down the tunnel.
Here it came. The water had side-channels to fill, long tunnels to inundate, so it came on strongly but not in an overpowering rush.
As water rose around him, Sharom removed the ropes holding the sub to the trailer. Now the water was above the sub’s propellers, so Sharom started its engine and felt the sudden surge in the water as the propellers spun. Slowly he moved the submarine forward, swimming along behind it.
The water filled the tunnel, and the side tunnels, and six other water tunnels. Power failed in several of the buildings. The submarine arrowed out into the harbor, a slender black metal fish. Sharom released control, and turned back.
11
It was when the man hit Luther on the back of the head with a fist-size stone, when he felt the pain and a runnel of blood trickling down his neck, that he finally snapped out of the stupor he’d been in ever since Bennett had dropped on top of him in the water tunnel. He turned to look at the man who’d hit him, a short compact pugnacious Chinese, who gestured angrily at the pile of rubble in front of them, making it clear Luther was working too slowly. The man tossed the bloodied stone into the tram and glared at Luther, hands on hips. Luther lifted the shovel, turned, and hit him in the face with it.
That time he used the flat of the shovel, but in the melee that followed he used the edge; it made a very adequate lance, producing quite satisfactory gashes in arms and foreheads.
They were working in one of the temporary side tunnels, and Luther retreated as he fought, out of the tunnel, then saw the construction elevator off to his left, one man there, waiting for it, the elevator descending. Luther ran for the elevator, clutching the shovel, and swung it at the man as the elevator stopped at the bottom.
Yank open the accordion gate, jump in, find the buttons, push Up, jam the gate shut with the shovel handle. Workmen tried to get at him through the gate, but had to drop away as the elevator jolted upward. The last he saw was the supervisor who’d hit him, shouting urgently into a walkie-talkie.
He didn’t ride all the way to the surface, but got off at a sub-basement, then sent the elevator on up toward the top of the shaft without him. This was a storage area, with only one worklight, that one near the elevator shaft cage. Stacks of lumber, rolls of wire and plastic, barrels of nails, were all jumbled any which way. Luther moved into the darkness away from the elevator, certain he could find hiding places in here until he could figure out his escape.
It took him a little while to realize there was no pursuit. He was hiding here, in the middle of a collection of barrels, and no one was chasing him.
Why not? Rising from his hiding place, he roamed the darkness in here, moving slowly, not wanting to fall through some invisible hole in the floor, and eventually came across a ladder leading upward. In the next quarter hour, he managed to zigzag his way to the surface, where the lights were, and the structures, and men moving around.
And now he saw why they felt they needn’t waste time and manpower searching for one runaway. The construction site was completely enclosed by high fences, some wooden, some chain link, razor wire running in a coil along the top. If he tried to climb that to escape, forget the razor wire, he’d be spotted before he was halfway to the top and shot dead.
Giving up the thought of escape, at least for the moment, he moved back into the shadows, hunkered down, and waited to see what would develop.
This was not long before the actual shooting began, and when it did it startled him, because he’d been thinking about shooting, and at first he couldn’t tell who was shooting, or why, or at whom. Then he saw the bulldozer race up the road slope from the bottom of the excavation, saw it placed to block the gate, and realized what must be going on.
What could he do? He was seated now on a stack of pipes meant for scaffolding, just inside the blue plastic sheathing of the building under construction. Ahead of him was the muddy floor of the excavation, spotted with construction vehicles, but now empty of workmen or anybody else. Fifteen or twenty feet from where he sat the steep slope of the dirt access road angled up to where the bulldozer blocked the entrance. To both sides, the excavation fell away steeply just inside the fence.
The police would only be able to come in through that gate, and the bulldozer would probably have to be blown out of the way with dynamite. How much time did the authorities have, to come to that conclusion and then to act on it?
Not enough, Luther thought, not enough time at all.
He had never driven a bulldozer, but he had driven similar machines in the Alps, when he worked for the ski lodge. He remembered that they didn’t operate at all like an automobile, didn’t even have a steering wheel, but separate levers to manage the right and left treads.
Wait. Think this through, don’t be hasty. What was it about acceleration? There are floor pedals; which is the accelerator?
Neither. That’s another lever, on the left or the right. Which? One on one side controls speed, the other on the other side controls the blade. What do the pedals do? Brake.
Well, that’s all I can remember, he thought. When I get there, it will come to me right away or somebody will shoot me while I’m thinking about it. So I hope it comes to me right away.
The nearest vehicle to where he now sat was a small flatbed truck with two stacks of Sheetrock on it, covered by clear plastic tarps. Would the key be in the ignition? Almost certainly yes; several people would drive each of these vehicles, none of which would be leaving the site. So all he had to do was get up on his feet and walk over there.
Still he hesitated, people had been shooting, though the shooting had stopped now. But they had been shooting, and if they saw someone in motion they might start to shoot again.
Should he run, or walk? If he ran they would know he was their enemy and they might start shooting at him at once. If he walked, they might at first think he was one of them. On the other hand, he was taller than any of them, and much more blond, so if he walked they would have more time to study him and realize he could not be one of their crew.
There isn’t time to waste here, you know. And yet he continued to sit on the stack of pipes, leaning forward slightly, looking out from his concealment at that flatbed truck. Am I a coward? he asked himself. He didn’t think he was a coward. He’d braved the mountains, he’d braved the ocean, he’d braved his father’s scorn. And yet, there was something about people shooting at you, something different about that.