“Just follow me.”
Shouts, suddenly loud, echoed down the tunnel behind them. Damn, Gideon thought. He’d hoped it would take them longer to get through the door.
“Stop or we shoot!” came the barked command.
They continued on. The accelerator was throbbing with high energy, and if the pipe got punctured by even a single round…“They’re bluffing,” Gideon said, “they won’t shoot.”
Thwang!The shot ricocheted off the ceiling above their heads, followed quickly by others: Thwang! Thwang!
“Sure, they won’t shoot,” Alida muttered, ducking as she ran.
Gideon could hear feet pounding on the catwalk behind them.
Thwang!Another round glanced off the wall, spraying them with chips.
Gideon stopped, spun around, fired back at them with the stage gun. Their pursuers hit the deck.
They ran on another twenty yards until Gideon found what he was looking for: an ancient metal door set into the cement wall. It was padlocked with an old brass lock.
“Shit!” muttered Alida.
Gideon turned and fired again with the fake gun, sending the guards sprawling to the ground a second time. Then he took out the real .45, pressed the barrel against the lock, and fired. The lock exploded. Gideon threw his weight against the metal door. It groaned but didn’t open.
Alida tensed. “On three.”
They slammed into the door simultaneously, forcing it open with a loud crack, just as more shots clanged off the door. They fell inside, slammed the metal door shut—and suddenly faced pitch blackness.
Alida flicked on her lighter, dimly illuminating a crude, branching tunnel. He grabbed her hand and took one of the tunnels at random, pulling her along at a run. The lighter went out with the movement.
He heard voices, a fresh groan of rusted steel. The metal door was being opened.
Still gripping Alida’s hand, Gideon jogged ahead in the darkness, blind. They must have gone a few hundred yards when his feet tangled up with something on the ground and they fell together. He lay there in the dark, breathing hard, fumbling around until he found her hand again. He could hear voices behind them, echoing down the tunnel, distorted. They were not far. Did they have flashlights?
A lancing beam of yellow answered his question—but the sweep of the beam overhead briefly illuminated another branching tunnel in the nearby wall. As soon as the light passed, Gideon pulled Alida to her feet, and they ducked into the alcove.
Alida briefly flicked on her lighter. It went about twenty feet to a dead end—but at the far end of the cul-de-sac, an old rusted ladder climbed the stone wall. Gideon groped his way forward until he found the ladder, and they began to ascend. The voices behind them were getting louder; excited, aggressive.
Up they climbed, in the darkness. Below, Gideon saw a light flash into the alcove, but they had already climbed high enough to be invisible. They kept going, moving as silently as possible, until they reached the top of the ladder. Another flick of Alida’s lighter revealed a horizontal tunnel, crowded with ancient, rusting equipment, apparently left over from the original Manhattan Project.
Gideon climbed out and helped Alida up, wondering how much of the stuff was still hot.
“Which way?” Alida whispered.
“No idea.” Gideon started down the dark tunnel, moving in what he hoped was an easterly direction, toward White Rock Canyon. There were scraping sounds and voices in the shaft behind them: someone else was now climbing the ladder.
He stumbled over something on the ground. “Let me have the lighter.”
She palmed it to him. He flicked it on and saw rail tracks laid onto the floor of the tunnel. An old handcar, or pump trolley, sat on a nearby siding.
A volley of shots sent them diving to the ground. Flashlight beams lanced up and around them.
“Get on the handcar,” Gideon whispered. “Quickly.”
In a second Alida had leapt onto the cart. Gideon gave it a shove, running it onto the main track and up to speed, then jumped on himself. The pump handle moved up and down with a creaking of metal, rusty and covered with dust but still in working order. Gideon worked the handle to keep it going as more rounds ricocheted through the cavern. The car went squealing along the metal track, gaining speed as it entered a downhill grade.
“Oh, shit,” said Alida.
Gideon stopped pumping—but it made no difference. Faster and faster went the pump, its twin handles flying up and down on their own. The shots and cries began to recede.
“This was a really bad idea,” said Alida, crouching and gripping the wooden sides of the handcar.
The car was now barreling downhill, in utter blackness, heading for only God knew where.
42
They careened along the track, unable to see anything. A stale cave-wind whistled past Gideon’s head as he crouched in terror, groping for a better handhold, bracing for the inevitable crash.
“A brake!” yelled Alida. “This thing’s got to have a brake!”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
He flicked on the lighter, and—in the brief spark before it went out—made out an old iron foot pedal on the side of the car, between the sets of wheels. Desperately, he jammed down on it with his foot. There was an earsplitting screech, an explosion of sparks burst around and behind them, and they were thrown forward as the cart decelerated, vibrating wildly, threatening to jump the tracks. He quickly eased up and applied the brake more evenly, slowly increasing the pressure. The cart wailed and groaned and finally came to a shuddering halt.
“Nice work, Casey Jones.”
Gingerly Gideon got off, then flicked the lighter. The tunnel stretched on ahead, making what looked like the beginning of a long curve. Not far ahead, however, a large pile of rocks lay across the tracks, apparently having fallen from the ceiling. The tunnel was blocked across its entire width.
“Jesus,” muttered Alida. “You stopped us just in time.”
Gideon could still make out, far away, the distorted, echoing voices of the NEST team. They had only gained a few minutes.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand.
He jogged forward to the rock pile and they began to climb it, Gideon flicking on the lighter every few seconds in order to orient themselves. He could hear the sound of distant running.
“I don’t need hand-holding,” said Alida, trying to shake free of his hand.
“I do.”
At last they reached the top of the pile and clambered down the other side. They made their way on down the tunnel as quickly as they could, climbing over two additional cave-ins, until at last they reached one that blocked the tunnel completely.
“Damn,” said Alida, staring up at the rock pile. “Did we pass any side tunnels back there?”
“None,” said Gideon, staring at the pile of loose rocks. He held the lighter up. The ceiling was rotten, but there was no opening or way through. It was a dead end.
“We’d better figure out something quick.”
“Like I said, we didn’t pass any side tunnels. But we didpass some blasting supplies.”
“No. Oh no.”
“You stay here.”
Gideon picked his way back. The voices were getting louder, and he thought he could see the faint flicker of light in the dusty air. Their pursuers were coming on fast.
He reached the supplies—stacks of blasting mats, boxes of wadding, old drill bits, cord. There was a cache of wooden boxes in a far corner, and he ripped the rotten lid off one: blasting caps. He tried to lift the box but it collapsed, the caps spilling all over. Everything was rotten.
Now flashlight beams were flicking about, piercing the rising columns of dust. “Hey! Over there!” came a shout, followed by a shot.
Gideon extinguished the lighter, dropping into a crouch. If a bullet hit these blasting caps…
Another shot, the light beams playing about, looking for him. They were too close; there was no time to jury-rig a bomb. Only one thing to do. Crouching, he ran back down the dark tunnel for a few hundred feet, then turned and knelt. Aiming the live handgun with one hand, he flicked the lighter with the other. It cast just enough illumination for him to take aim at the heap of blasting caps. Beyond, a crowd of flashlight beams danced in the murk.