“Come on!” Joe shouted from the darkness. “Get away from the opening.”
There was a flicker of light from the direction of his voice, as a battery operated fluorescent lamp warmed up, and Kismet finally got a look at their refuge.
The space was cramped, the rough-cut dirt walls only about six feet apart. Upright beams stretched from concrete footings up a to wood-slat ceiling that sagged in the middle as if holding back a tremendous weight, and barely allowed six inches of clearance. The one dimension that didn’t seem to be closing in on them was its depth; beyond where Joe and Candace stood, holding matching electric lanterns, the underground space was indeed a tunnel, stretching away into the impenetrable darkness for at least fifty feet, and probably more.
Joe continued urging them deeper into the passage but Annie hesitated, clutching at her father’s arm as if unable to breathe. “I can't,” she whispered, turning involuntarily back toward the entrance.
Kismet shook his head and tried to turn her back into the tunnel. Even though she didn’t fight him, he could feel the resistance in her muscles as he grasped her arm. She was clearly in the grip of some irrational panic.
Claustrophobia. Hell of a time to learn about that.
When they were about ten feet down the passage, Joe turned called for Kismet to stop.
“They can still follow us. Here.” He pointed to a thick rope, which ran vertically from the floor alongside one of the support pillars. The rope was anchored to an eyebolt set in one of the footings, and ran up to the ceiling, where it functioned as part of the support system for the wooden slats. Kismet noticed a second line on the opposite side, and realized that these two ropes were holding back the collapse of the entryway.
“Cut the rope,” Joe urged.
Kismet felt a moment of hesitancy. The ropes were the only thing restraining uncountable tons of earth; if they cut them, the ceiling would cave in and their way out would be blocked permanently.
No, not the way out. The way for their enemies to come in, to follow them.
Kismet drew his kukri and hacked at the rope. The dry old fibers parted with an audible twang and the slats on that side dropped partway down, allowing a torrent of dirt and gravel to spill forth into the tunnel behind them. The ceiling beyond that point remained intact. He darted across to where Joe waited, and with another sweep of the blade, sliced the anchor rope in two.
The ceiling fell hard, as if in a single mass, and hit the ground with such violence that Kismet was nearly knocked down. The tremor shook the rest of the tunnel, forcing Kismet and Joe to scramble away lest more of the ceiling come crashing down.
An eerie silence flooded the tunnel as the collapse sealed them off from the noise of the attack and the fire. The only audible sound was of Annie gasping for breath.
“My God!” she whispered, on the verge of fainting. “We're buried alive.”
The loose cluster of white robed figures scattered like pigeons as Dr. John Leeds strode fearlessly through the smoke filled house. Leeds, looked like a raven in his black cassock, a stark contrast to the soot-stained white garments favored by their new accomplices, or for that matter, to the thick mitten of gauze wrapped around his maimed hand.
He picked his way through the charred timbers and found a group of men deploying a battery of small fire extinguishers to battle back the blaze that one of their number had recklessly started. The small extinguishers were designed to combat small fires, and even in concert, there simply wasn’t enough of them to completely snuff out the spreading fire. At the perimeter of the room, the fire continued to spread, licking at the walls.
Elisabeth, following cautiously behind him, knew that the only reason Leeds hadn’t flown into a rage was that doing so would have been an admission that he had erred in enlisting this bunch of good ol’ boys. In New York, such arrangements had been handled by Leeds’ aide, Ian MacKay, but the Scotsman with the silver tooth had not been heard from since the abortive attempt on Kismet’s life in Central Park, and they could only assume that he had not survived the encounter.
Given that Nick Kismet was involved, that outcome was not altogether surprising.
Leeds may have been a genius when it came to mysticism and the occult, and as adept at manipulating people in face-to-face encounters as any carnival fortune teller, but he had zero organizational skills. In Hollywood, he would have been a great executive producer but a complete failure as a director.
The men with the extinguishers stood in loose formation around the hearth of a brick fireplace in the front room. The top of the platform had been lifted out of the way revealing a dark opening with a heap of freshly turned dirt a few feet down.
“Some kinda escape tunnel,” growled one of the hooded men, nodding to the fireplace. “Completely caved in. They got away.”
“Then all is not lost,” growled Leeds. “In spite of your failure.”
“Two of my friends are dead,” hissed the man, incredulous. “And you’re happy ‘cause those niggers survived?”
“Your attack was poorly engineered. You relied far too much on your ability to frighten them into submission.”
The man tried to respond, but his words were lost in a fit of smoke induced coughing. A section of the rear wall collapsed inward, releasing a fiery cloud of sparks. Even Leeds was forced to take a step back.
“We have to get out of here,” insisted one of the men. “This whole place is coming down.”
Without waiting for a reply he started for the door. Elisabeth felt an overpowering urge to follow, but Leeds stood his ground a moment longer. “A tunnel has two ends. This is one; find the other.”
In the settling dust of the cave-in, Kismet finally took a moment to survey their refuge.
The tunnel had been dug through dense clay soil, a task that had surely taken several years, especially since it seemed unlikely that powered digging equipment could have been employed. The walls remained bare dirt, but the ceiling had been shored up by beams and posts, placed every ten feet of so. The ceiling was low enough that he actually had to duck to pass under the beams, but the tunnel was almost wide enough in some places for two people to walk abreast.
Annie was huddled into a ball, sitting with her back to the dirt wall. Her father knelt beside her, one arm around her shoulders, but his attempts to offer comfort did not seem to be meeting with success. Kismet took a knee as well.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I think we’re safe for the moment.”
“Safe?” gasped Annie. She seemed to be fighting to get the words out, as if in the grip of an asthma attack. “We're trapped. Buried alive.”
“We’re not trapped,” Kismet insisted. “This is a tunnel. King dug it, it must lead somewhere.”
“I can't breathe.”
“That's just in your head. There's plenty of air down here.” Despite his assurance, Kismet was suddenly very conscious of the close quarters and the fact that the air did seem to be getting a little stale. He shook his head to clear away the rising paranoia. “Look Annie. The tunnel does end, but we have to get moving if we're ever going to get out.”
That seemed to motivate her. Annie looked up, a single mote of hope floating in her pool of misery. He offered her a sip from his flask, and she gratefully downed it.