"You b—" He started to spit out the insult, but it was cut short.
Adriana spun to her feet and whipped her left foot around, plowing the bone into the side of his head and driving him to the ground.
She worked fast, securing the keys from his belt first and then snagging the weapon from his holster. Sirens wailed from a few blocks away. Reinforcements would be here any second.
She was lucky no one was around, the area having been marked off for the president's visit. On a normal day, the sidewalks and streets would have been flooded with people on their daily commute.
Adriana aimed the weapon into the alley, gripping it with both hands since they were still in cuffs.
The other two hadn't heard the scuffle. She hurried over to the squad car and unlocked it. Next, she removed the cuffs and started to slide into the seat when she realized something. The cop she'd just struck was still unconscious, and the other two were tending to the bodies in the alley.
A crazy thought ran through her head as she stared at the cop on the ground. It was risky, but she needed answers.
Chapter 13
Clouds of dust hovered for several minutes in the dimly lit cave. Sean and Tommy did their best to cover their mouths to keep as much of the debris out of their lungs as possible.
"What was that?" Tommy said in a loud voice.
The ground and walls around them had stopped shaking almost immediately after the blast. Broken pieces of ceiling were strewn across the floor.
Sean shook his head. "If I didn't know better, I'd say C4."
Tommy coughed. He pressed the bottom of his shirt closer to his nose and mouth to seal out the dust.
"C4? Isn't that a little hard to come by?"
"Not if you have the right military connections," Sean said.
"I guess these guys have them."
Sean nodded. "Seems that way."
He trudged up the slope to the rock wall in the middle of the path. He climbed up the big stones to the top and then crawled back to the other end.
Tommy followed his friend back to the wall and waited at the bottom.
"See anything up there?" His voice echoed throughout passage.
Sean peered into the darkness. He had his phone in his hand but kept the light off. He wanted to see if any light was coming into the cave from the entrance. It only took him a second before he had a horrifying realization.
The cave was sealed off.
"The entrance," he said, "it's blocked."
"Blocked?" The early stages of panic quivered in Tommy's voice. "How bad is it?"
"Won't know until we go up there and check it out, but from here I'd say pretty bad. No light is coming through, so that can't be a good thing."
"Are you serious? I'm coming up to take a look."
Tommy clambered up the rocks and joined his friend on the other side of the narrow passage. He stared into the darkness after shutting off his light, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the pitch black.
"See anything?" Sean asked with only a sliver of hope in his tone.
"No," Tommy said. "We better have a closer look."
The two made their way down the other side of the wall and across the large room. Dust particles still clouded the air in big pockets while in other spots the debris had already settled.
"More ceiling collapsed here," Sean said, pointing at a giant slab that was cracked in half on the floor. "That wasn't here when we came in."
When they arrived where the entrance used to be, they found nothing but a pile of dirt and rock.
"You don't happen to have a shovel and a bulldozer in your gear bag, do you?" Tommy asked, trying to shake off his fear with a little humor.
Sean clicked his tongue and shook his head. "That's probably what it would take to get out of here. Not the shovel. Definitely the bulldozer."
"Thoughts?"
"Nothing helpful, off hand."
Tommy pressed one of the buttons on his phone and checked the screen. "No signal. I was afraid of that."
"Yeah, I figured."
Sean neared the pile of rubble and picked out a rock, then another, tossing them aside as he worked.
"You realize that could take forever, right? Not to mention it could cause another cave-in."
"I'm not trying to clear it. Just testing how deep it is."
"And?"
Sean stopped after nearly a minute of moving the chunks of rock. "We aren't getting out this way. At the base of this mess it could be twenty feet thick."
Questions flooded the minds of both men.
Tommy voiced them.
"Who would do this? I mean, who even knows we're here?"
"I want to know the answer to that as much as you do," Sean said. "But right now, we need to figure out a way out of here."
"Right." Tommy spun around, shining his light around the room. He inspected the walls but soon realized there was nothing to find. "Let's head back the other way. Maybe we missed something that could help us get out of here?"
"Like what?" Sean asked, dubious. "We searched that whole other room. Pretty sure we got everything that was there to find." He held up the metal box for his friend to see.
"Worth a try. It's not like we're going anywhere fast standing here."
Tommy spun around and made his way back to the wall. Sean watched with eyebrows raised. Usually, Tommy was the glass-half-empty type. This new, more optimistic Tommy was a refreshing and slightly annoying improvement.
"Hold up, Schultzie. I'm coming."
When the two made it to the upper passage again, they inched their way forward with Tommy in the lead.
"What's in your head?" Sean asked. "You're moving kind of slow through here."
Tommy was running his hand along the wall when he stopped and looked up.
"What's that?" he asked.
"What's what?"
Tommy pointed his light up above their heads at the corner where the narrow corridor dropped off to the floor below.
"That," he said with a nod.
Sean tilted his head up and saw what had caught his friend's attention. A crack nearly three feet wide and two feet high was opened in the rock.
"I thought I felt a draft when we came through here a minute ago." He aimed his beam to the floor at a big piece of stone, broken in several pieces.
"I guess that was covering the hole," Sean said.
"Where do you think it goes?"
"No idea, but anywhere is better than being stuck here."
"Agreed," Tommy said. "Hold my light for a second. I'm going to check it out."
He handed his phone to Sean and put his hands up to the crack's ledge. His fingers gripped the lip tightly, and he pulled himself up, using his feet to make the job of his hands and arms a little easier.
Sean watched in amazement. His friend couldn't do a pull-up six months ago. Now he was looking like an expert rock climber.
"I have to say, Schultzie, I'm impressed."
"With what?" Tommy asked as he crawled into the cavity, leaving his legs dangling out.
"You're just so much fitter. Old Tommy could have never done that."
"Yeah, that's great. You mind handing me my light? I can't see a thing in here."
Sean chuckled at his friend's ability to ignore the compliment and held the light up high. Tommy stuck his left hand back without looking. Once he felt his fingers touch the device, he grasped it and pulled it inside.
"See anything now?" Sean asked.
"It's another passage. Looks like it goes on for a while. I can't see that far, but it looks like it leads downhill. I'm going to go a little farther. And check it out."
"Okay, I'll be right behind you."
Tommy wiggled his way forward. The gap on either side only afforded him a couple of inches. The ceiling over his head was similarly close, and more than once he almost bumped it.
His light danced back and forth in the tunnel ahead, mingling with Sean's light from behind.