They followed the railroad track that had carried them into the mines from the elevator, stopping at cross tracks for Pitt to recheck the map. Those precious seconds wasted seemed like years.
"Got any idea where we are?" asked Giordino quietly.
"I wished I sprinkled bread crumbs when we came in," Pitt murmured, holding up the map to a light bulb coated with dust. Suddenly, the approaching metal scraping against metal sounds of an ore train reverberated some distance behind in the tunnel.
"Freight coming," said Giordino.
Pitt pointed to a natural fissure in the rock just 10 meters away on the far side of the tracks. "In there till it passes."
They darted into the fissure and stopped suddenly. A terrible sickly stench came through the crack in the rock, a putrid stench of nauseating vileness. Carefully, with great apprehension they moved through the fissure until it opened into a larger chamber. Pitt felt as if he was entering a dank catacomb. The chamber was pitch black, but the groping hand he ran along the wall touched an electrical switch. He pressed the switch upward and a vast cavern was illuminated in a ghostly light.
It was a catacomb, a subterranean cemetery for the dead. They had stumbled into the burial cave where O'Bannion and Melika stored the bodies of the laborers who were beaten and starved and overworked until death came as a welcome parole. The dead showed little sign of decomposition in the dry atmosphere. No ceremony here. The stiffened bodies were stacked crudely like timbers, nearly thirty to a pile. It was a ghastly, unnatural, and sorrowful sight.
"My God," Giordino gasped. "There must be over a thousand stiffs in here."
"Most convenient," Pitt said as a white flame of anger burnt within him. "O'Bannion and Melika don't have to bother with digging graves."
A chilling vision passed before Pitt's eyes, a vision of Eva, Dr. Hopper, and the rest heaped like all the other corpses, their sightless eyes staring at the rock ceiling. He closed his eyes, but the scene remained.
Only when the ore train clattered by the entrance to the crypt did he shake off the terrible image in his mind. When he spoke his voice came in a rasping whisper he scarcely recognized as his.
"Let's get to the surface."
The sound of the ore train faded into the distance as they paused and peered from the fissure leading to the catacomb, checking to see that there were no guards patrolling close by. The tunnel was clear and they ran into a side shaft that Fairweather's map indicated as a shortcut to the engineer's elevator. Then came an incredible piece of luck. This shaft was dripping damp and floored with duckboard.
Pitt tore up one of the duckboards and stared almost joyously at the puddle of water underneath. "Happy hour," he said. "Drink your gut full so we can save the canisters Hopper gave us."
"I don't have to be told," said Giordino, dropping to his knees and downing the cool water from cupped hands.
They had just taken their fill and were dropping the duckboard back in place when they heard the sound of voices at the rear end of the passage followed almost at once by the clank of chains.
"A work crew coming up behind us," Giordino murmured softly.
They hurried on, refreshed and with building optimism. Another minute and they reached the iron door leading to the elevator. They paused as Giordino shoved the small stick of dynamite in the keyhole and connected the cap. Then he moved back as Pitt picked up a rock and hurled it at the cap. He missed.
"Just pretend you're trying to drop a pretty girl into a water tank at a carnival," suggested Giordino wryly.
"Let's just hope the bang doesn't arouse the guards or alert the elevator operator," said Pitt, picking up another rock.
"They'll think it's only an echo from the blasting crew."
This time Pitt's throw was true and the cap burst, detonating the dynamite. The resulting detonation came as a sharp thud as the lock was blown apart. They rushed forward and pulled the iron door open, quickly entering the short passage to the elevator.
"What if there is a code for calling down the elevator?" asked Giordino.
"A little late to think of that now," Pitt grunted. "We'll just have to use our own code."
He stepped up to the elevator, thought for a moment, and then pressed the button beside the door once, twice, then three times, paused and pressed twice more.
Through the doors they could hear the switches click and the electric motor hummed to life as the elevator began its descent from a level above.
"You must have struck a chord," said Giordino, smiling.
"I trusted to luck that any combination might work just so long as it wasn't one long buzz."
In a half minute the hum stopped and the doors opened. The operator guard looked out and didn't see anyone. Curious, he stepped over the threshold and was knocked out by a quick thrust of Pitt's gun butt against the nape of his neck. Giordino quickly dragged the operator inside as Pitt closed the doors.
"All aboard for a nonstop run to the executive offices," said Pitt, pressing the upper button of the panel.
"No tours of the crusher or cyanide recovery floors?"
"Only if you insist."
"I'll pass," Giordino grunted as the elevator began rising.
They stood side-by-side in the small enclosure, watching the lights blink on the indicator above the switch panel, wondering if they'd be greeted by an army of Tuareg guards ready to shoot them full of holes. The hum ceased and the elevator eased to a stop so smoothly it was hardly sensed.
Pitt readied his gun and nodded to Giordino. "Get set."
The door opened and nobody pumped bullets into them. There was an engineer and a guard walking together in the corridor, it was true, but they were absorbed in conversation and walking away, their backs to the elevator.
"It's almost as if they want us to leave," Giordino mumbled.
"Don't tempt the gods," Pitt said curtly. "We're not out of here yet."
There was nowhere to hide the elevator operator, so Pitt pushed the button to the lowest level and sent him on his way. They tagged behind the guard and engineer, keeping out of sight, until O'Bannion's men turned and entered an office behind one of the antique carved doors.
The fluted wall corridor was as deserted as when the guards marched them through less than twenty-four hours previously. Guns poised and aimed ahead, they each ran along one wall of the corridor until it met the tunnel leading to the Gallery where the trucks were parked. A Tuareg, seated on a camp stool, guarded the entrance. Not expecting trouble from the engineering offices and living quarters behind him, he was sitting and smoking a pipe while reading the Koran.
They stopped to take a breath and looked back the way they had come. No one had appeared behind them. They fumed their attention to the final hurdle. It was open ground for a good 50 meters with no visible sign of surveillance cameras.
"I can run faster than you," Pitt whispered as he handed his gun to Giordino. "If he comes on to me before I reach him, take him out with a quick shot."
"Just don't get in my line of fire," Giordino warned him.
Pitt removed his shoes, then took a sprinter's start 'position, firmly gripped his feet on the rock floor, tensed, and then sprang forward, accelerating to a fast pace. He was, Pitt knew with sickening certainty, terribly exposed. Though his stocking feet were muffled, the acoustics in the rock-hewn tunnel were too acute. He had covered almost 40 meters before the guard, curious at the sound of thumping feet behind him, turned and stared dumbly at the slave laborer hurtling toward him. But Pitt's saving grace was the guard's slow reaction time. The machine gun's barrel was just beginning to rise as Pitt leaped and smashed into the guard.