No-one seemed to be moving or talking down below. The dirt on the ledge showed the boot prints of hundreds of feet moving up and down them, and the recent prints of Scar-Face’s boots heading up. Logan just added a new trail on top of the others as he followed the ledge to the top, and crouched beside the ropes, peering around them into the entrance tunnel.
A slow wind blew past him, as air circulated between the shaft and the mine entrance. A yellow light glowed near the entrance, as Scar-Face and two other men stood in the circle of light from a lantern.
The girl stood between them, holding her lantern high up, near her face.
Dammit. She must have got out of that rope and followed him. Whoever she was, she was certainly determined to cause trouble for him.
“Thank you for your time, mademoiselle,” Scar-Face said. “But I think you can see that we’re all fine, and no-one is here who shouldn’t be.”
“Then he’s still outside, trying to find a way in.”
“In that case, my men will find him. Thank you for your help, and you can now go home.”
“I came to Saint Jean to look for my aunt. She lives there. But the village is empty. What happened to everyone?”
“They all left one day. I’ve no idea where they are now.”
“The Legionnaire told me that they’re all dead. That the Montagnards killed them.”
The men with rifles tightened their grip on their weapons at her words. They glanced toward Scar-Face, as he put his hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“Like I said, I have no idea what happened to them. You should probably go back there and wait for her.”
“You did it, didn’t you? Why?”
Scar-Face stared at her for a few seconds, as though deciding what to do. Then he pressed his hand against her shoulder, pushing her into the mine. She swung around and slapped his arm, trying to push it away from her. Scar-Face grabbed her arms, and the men around her swung their guns toward her.
Logan backed away from the tunnel as Scar-Face dragged the girl toward the shaft. She shrieked and squealed as she tried to dig her feet into the floor of the tunnel, but it provided little resistance to Scar-Face’s strength as he pulled her along.
Logan found a spot in the shadows beside the ropes, where the wall of the shaft curved into a shallow alcove that would hide him from view, and crouched there.
Scar-Face pushed the girl out onto the ledge. Then stopped.
The girl twisted in his grip, and stamped her feet. One of her boots stomped down on Scar-Face’s. He just ignored the blow, and pushed her closer to the edge.
The girl twisted her head toward him. “Let me go.”
“You had your chance to walk away,” Scar-Face said. “Now you can say hello to your friends down there.”
Then he pushed against the girl’s back. She twisted around as her feet slipped on the edge of the ledge, then flew out into the air. Her legs kicked beneath her as she fell, and her arms swung around her head, as though trying to grab thin air.
Then they caught something.
The girl shrieked and grabbed the rope that hung down the centre of the shaft. She swung wildly as she clung to it, trying to get a good grip, and her hands slid slowly down. One of the men raised his rifle, and swung the muzzle toward her.
Crap. Logan couldn’t just let them kill her.
Volkov and Poulin would be pissed.
He leaned out, and fired three times. Blood spurted from the rifleman’s legs as the pistol rounds smacked into them, below his body armour. His rifle clattered to the rock as he fell to his knees, then tumbled over the ledge.
The other men swung their rifles toward Logan, and he ducked back as rifle rounds blew rock splinters from the walls around him. He grabbed the smoke grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and pushed his hand out just far enough to fire a few unaimed shots along the ledge to keep the insurgents’ heads down. He waited a few seconds as the grenade heated up and smoke erupted from the case, then tossed it along the ledge.
The men yelled, but Logan couldn’t hear their words over the ringing in his ears from the gunshots. The shooting stopped. The girl screamed below the ledge as the smoke spread. By now, she probably couldn’t see anything except a thick cloud of smoke up above, and a rope dangling below her into a black, bottomless pit. Logan kept his head down as the insurgents fired into the smoke again, blowing splinters of rock from the walls all around the shaft. The rope twitched as a rifle round hit it, and tore one of the rope strands away.
The girl shrieked, lost her grip for a second, and fell another metre before she grabbed the rope again. She clung to it with one hand. Logan holstered the pistol, and stayed low as he raced across the ledge, then leaped out into the shaft.
He grabbed the rope, wrapped his legs around it, then slid down, moving hand-over-hand. The insurgents yelled behind him, and fired into the rock walls above his head until Scar-Face yelled for them to stop.
The girl was hanging on to the rope below him. She swung her free arm around, and tried to grab the rope with it, but that just made her body swing more.
She squealed as Logan swung out around her, then he grabbed her waist as she let go of the rope. She struggled in his grip as he slid down, deeper into the darkness, and away from the insurgents shouting and shooting up above. More rounds struck the spiral ledge around the pit. One tore into the rope above them, ripping through more strands, and it creaked as the remaining strands strained under their weight.
He slid down faster. Something glittered a few metres below them. And rock splinters filled the air as the insurgents fired past them, tearing up the shaft walls.
Logan relaxed his grip on the rope, and slid until the next burst of gunfire came their way.
Then he let go.
CHAPTER 25
After falling for what felt like minutes, but must have been only a few seconds, they splashed down into the water at the bottom of the shaft. The sudden shock of slamming into the freezing water shook Logan’s body, then his head went under, and he swung his arms madly all around him, trying to pull himself back to the surface.
His feet swung below his body, searching for the bottom of the pit, but found nothing to support him in the depths. The world faded as he descended two or three metres beneath the surface, but his arms began to pull him back up. He kicked with as much power as he could, and his right hand slammed against something hard. He clasped it with his fingers and pulled. His face broke the surface of the water beside the spiral ramp, and he clung to it as he turned to look for the girl.
She was splashing and spluttering in the water a metre away. He held onto the ramp as tightly as he could, and reached out his hand toward her. Her face went under again, and he lunged forward until his tendons strained and his hand began to slip on the wet rock. His fingers found hers, and clasped around her palm. He heaved her toward him, and pushed her up onto the ramp. She lay on it, gasping for breath, and coughing up water.
“I told you you’d be safer back in the barn,” he said.
“I didn’t think they’d try to kill me,” she gasped.
Logan pulled himself onto the ramp beside her. His sodden fatigues squelched as he slid his knees and elbows onto the rock.
“Now do you believe me that your Montagnard friends killed everyone in Saint Jean?”
“They’re not my friends.”
Water sprayed into the air behind them as the insurgents fired more rounds down the shaft at random. Logan grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled her toward a dark opening in the wall. A tunnel entrance, half-submerged further down the spiral ramp, where the water was about waist high.