The most startling evolution, however-and a most uncomfortable one-was the moisture in the air. From dampness to mist, we had reached a subterranean level of perpetual drizzle. Water trickled down the walls and dripped from the low, vaulted ceiling in a steady, light rain, increasing the effects of the cold, getting into our eyes, and-worst of all-cumulatively creating enough noise to mask whatever slight sounds the man ahead of us might make.
Sammie, not surprisingly, paid no attention to these effects, nor did she give any indication of having noticed the change in weather. By now filthy, drenched, and with her shoulder-length hair plastered flat to her head, she moved quickly to the sharp turn at the far end of the chamber and crouched with her back to the wall. She took a quick look around and retreated, fast enough to draw fire but stay out of harm’s way; repeated the gesture a little more slowly, growing in confidence that there was no immediate threat; and then finally stuck her head out boldly and turned on her flashlight.
“Damn.”
Since the tunnel we were in was aimed in the direction of the spillway discharge tube, I’d been hoping that the bypass chamber and its newly cut link to the tube-would be readily available. But switching positions with Sam, I discovered the source of her disappointment. Around the corner was another tunnel, four feet in diameter, angled down well over forty-five degrees, and equipped with a metal ladder lining its bottom like the rails on the downside of a roller coaster. Making matters worse, the artificial rain was so intense here that visibility-even with Sam’s powerful light — didn’t exceed twenty feet. And the ladder seemed to stretch well beyond that.
“We’ll be fish in a barrel,” Sammie said. “One shot in our general direction and we’ll be hit, either straight on or by ricochet.”
I unclipped the radio from her belt and tried to raise the Dover policeman we’d left on the top of the silo.
“Go ahead,” he answered.
“What’s the word from the spillway outlet? Anyone there yet?”
“Negative. There was some sort of communications breakdown.”
Sammie had killed her flashlight, but I could feel her exasperated eyes on me. “Have they started out?” I asked.
“Oh, sure. A few minutes ago.”
I couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question. I handed the radio back without comment, the remnants of my exhausted mind now totally and vengefully set. My voice, as I heard it, was a calm and reasoned contrast to how I was feeling. “He could’ve killed you when you were hanging from your toes. The fact that he didn’t shows he’s headed out of here, fast. And now I guess we’re the only ones likely to stop him.”
I could feel Sammie’s practical hesitation. “It’s a shooting gallery, Joe,” she reminded me softly.
“Could be,” I answered brusquely, pulling the extinguished flashlight from her hand and heading down the ladder awkwardly, facing out so I could quickly answer any gunfire that might come up at me. After a moment’s pause, I heard Sammie coming after me.
It was dark beyond imagination. I remembered as a kid, closing my eyes, pretending I was blind, staggering into furniture until I hurt myself. Back then, despite my best attempts, there’d still been a hint of light that had filtered through my eyelids. But not now. The darkness here was surgically absolute. With my eyes wide open, stinging with the water that fell into them from the rocky ceiling just above, I could see no more than if I’d been dead.
The descent was longer than twenty feet-longer than fifty, before I gave up trying to guess. My shoulders aching from the unnatural position I’d chosen, my body soaked and freezing from the drizzle, and my head now pounding with the tension of not knowing what might be three feet in front of me, I was about to come to my senses and let Bob Vogel’s fate be dictated by somebody else when my foot slipped off the last rung of the ladder and I collapsed onto a wet, uneven, stone-strewn floor, dropping the second flashlight. Sammie, coming on strong right behind me, kicked the back of my head by accident.
“Jesus-you okay?” she whispered urgently, searching for and retrieving the light.
For the second time, like a pair of Keystone Kops, we disentangled ourselves and tried to take our bearings, murmuring like bomb-carrying conspirators even though I’d made enough noise to reach through three walls.
Judging from the little we knew, this was the famous bypass chamber-a room carved out of the rock like some prehistoric beast’s fossilized burrow, and equipped, as far as our outstretched fingers could tell us, with several very-large-diameter pipes, all with massive in-line gate valves.
So where’s the famous door?” Sammie hissed after several minutes of groping around in the dark.
“I think I’ve got it.” What I’d found was a rectangular piece of plywood, standing on its narrow end and leaning against one of the rough walls. “Turn on the light.”
The effect of the light was again spectacular. Even with my eyes almost completely shut in anticipation, the power of the beam was like an electrical shock, leaving both of us momentarily rooted in place like stunned rabbits. Nevertheless, it revealed what I’d feared it would-a totally empty room through which I was now convinced our man had passed on his way to a clean getaway.
I’d also been right about the doorway. The plywood sheet half covered the jagged entrance to another small, short tunnel, the making of which had produced some of the rubble we’d been picking our way through carefully until now. The short tunnel was also empty.
“Turn the light off again,” I asked.
We both stood still, regaining our night vision, realizing that finally it might actually do us some good. As I’d sensed with the light on, there was a glimmer emanating from beyond the small tunnel ahead of us-that and the steady, gentle rush of flowing water.
It reminded me of the small inlet port at the mouth of the Glory Hole, where I’d been hanging from the rope by one hand. The water peacefully splashing through it and vanishing into the void had been equally at odds with the circumstances, which instinctively told me now they were one and the same. “The discharge tunnel’s up ahead.”
I squeezed by the plywood and was about to follow the dim light to its source, when we both heard our names being called out from far up the slanting shaft behind us.
I handed the flashlight to Sammie through the gap. “Find out what they want.”
She retreated to the foot of the ladder and shouted back, “Who is that?”
The sound of the rushing water muffled the response, but Sammie, turning on her light as a beacon and shouting back about the ladder’s length and condition, indicated friendly troops were on the way and confirmed my pessimism about our chances of catching Vogel. I turned away and continued on to the discharge tunnel.
The connecting passageway was low enough to require stooping to get through it, so its contrast to the twenty-by-twenty discharge tube at the other end brought me up short. I hadn’t expected a tunnel as high and as wide as a two-story building, several hundred feet underground.
The water ran down its middle, the dim light from the outlet some eight hundred feet downstream reflecting dully off the ripples. There was a slight mist in the air, which gave the small distant silhouettes of several approaching men a ghostly, almost dreamlike quality.
I was just beginning to ponder the chances that Vogel might still be hiding somewhere in the gloom between us when I heard Sammie step up behind me.
I turned to face her, a little surprised. “I didn’t hear you coming.”
“That’s the point, asshole.”
I smelled his breath in my face just as his right fist came up hard against my side. It wasn’t a punch, really-in fact, its lack of strength surprised me at first. I wondered why he’d bothered sneaking up behind me if all he was going to do was give me a weak shove.
I opened my mouth to call out to Sammie, and made to step into him, to throw my weight against him and throw him off balance while I brought my gun into play.