To their left and leading from the exit archway, what appeared to be a covered, zigzag staircase led down about a hundred feet. From deep inside this staircase, Drake and his team now heard a heavy rolling sound followed by screams that made fists of dread clutch at their hearts.
Ben took a breath. “Man, do I not like the sound of that.”
“Yeah. Sounds like the opening to one of your songs.” Drake tried to keep the spirits from falling too far, but it was still hard to drag his jaw up from the ground.
The staircase gave out into a narrow ledge. Beyond this ledge, the cavern opened into enormity. He could see a narrow, snaking path clinging to the right hand wall, running a short way into the cavern above infinite depths, and a similar one that then continued over to the left, but no bridge or any other means to connect them across a massive gap.
At the farthest end of the cavern rose an enormous black, jagged rock face. When Drake squinted, he thought he might just be able to make out a shape about half way up that rock face, something big, but distance and darkness thwarted him.
For now.
“One last push,” he said, hoping it was true. “Follow me.”
Once a soldier always a soldier. That’s what Alyson had said to him. Right before she left him. Right before she…
He brushed the memories away. He couldn’t contend with them now. But she had been right. Scarily right. If she had lived, things might be different, but pumping through him now was the blood of a soldier, a warrior; the true mettle had never left him.
Into the narrow passage they walked: two civilians, six Delta soldiers, and Matt Drake. At first, the tunnel differed little from the previous ones, but then, in the light of the amber flares they kept firing ahead, Drake saw the passageway suddenly divide and expand to a two-car width and noticed that a channel had been delved into the rock floor.
A guidance channel?
“Look out for ankle-breakers.” Drake noticed a wicked little hole ahead positioned just where a man might place his foot. “Shouldn’t be too hard to avoid at this pace.”
“No!” Ben cried, without humor. “You’re a friggin’ soldier. You should know better than to say things like that.”
As if in affirmation, there came a mighty boom and the ground shook beneath them. It sounded like something big and heavy had dropped into the passage that divided the one they had walked down. They could turn back and be blocked or—
“Run!” Drake shouted. “Just bloody run!”
A deep thunder began to fill the passage as though something heavy was heading toward them. They took flight, Drake firing flares as he ran and hoping to hell that neither Ben nor Karin stepped in one of the nasty trap-holes.
At this speed…
The roar grew louder.
They kept running, not daring to look back, keeping to the right of the wide channel and hoping Drake didn’t run out of flares. After a minute they heard a second ominous grumble coming from up ahead.
“Jesus!”
Drake didn’t slow down. If he did, they were dead. He raced past a wide opening in the wall to their right. The noise was coming from up there. He risked a quick glance.
NO!
Blakey had been right, the crazy little geek. Rolling stones were rumbling toward them, and not the Dinorock type. These were large spherical balls of rock, let loose by ancient mechanisms and guided by obvious and hidden channels. The one to their right ploughed at Drake.
He put on a huge burst of speed. “Run!” He spun, screaming. “Oh, god.”
Ben joined him. Two Delta soldiers, Karin and Komodo rushed by the opening with an inch to spare. Two more soldiers squeezed by, falling over their own feet and crashing into Komodo and Karin, ending up in a groaning tangle.
But the last Delta man was not so lucky. Without a sound, he disappeared as the huge ball came out of the cross-passage, impacted him with the force of a Mack truck and smashed resoundingly into the side of the tunnel. There was another boom as the ball that had been following them smashed into the one that had dissected their escape.
Komodo’s face said it all. “If we’re quick,” he growled, “we might be able to beat the rest of the traps before they reset.”
They took off again. They passed three more intersections where the grumbling machinations of immense machinery cracked and boomed. The Delta leader had been right. Drake listened hard, but heard no sound of Kovalenko or his men up ahead.
Then, they came up against the blockage he had been dreading. One of the immense stones stood ahead, impeding the way forward. They bunched together, wondering if perhaps the thing was about to start resetting.
“Maybe it’s broken,” Ben said. “The trap, I mean.”
“Or maybe…” Karin fell to her knees and crawled forward a few feet. “Maybe it’s meant to be here.”
Drake fell beside her. There, beneath the huge stone was a small crawlspace. There was just enough room for a man to squeeze underneath.
“Not good.” Komodo squatted down as well. “I’ve lost one man already to this bullshit trap. Find another way, Drake.”
“If I’m right,” Drake said, looking back over his shoulder, “once those traps reset, they’ll trigger again. They must work on the same kind of pressure pad system as the others. We’ll be trapped here.” He met Komodo’s eyes with a hard stare. “We don’t have a choice.”
Without waiting for a reply, he shimmied his way under the ball. The rest of the team crowded in after him, not wanting to be last in line, but the Delta men held their discipline and placed themselves where their team leader indicated. Drake felt the familiar urge rise inside his chest, that urge to say, Don’t worry, trust me. I’ll get you through this, but he knew he would never say that again.
Not after Kennedy’s senseless death.
After a moment of wriggling, he found himself sliding headfirst down a sharp incline and immediately heard the rest following. The bottom wasn’t far, but gave him enough room to stand upright beneath the massive stone ball. Everyone else crowded in behind him. Thinking hard, he didn’t dare move a muscle. If this thing dropped, he wanted everyone on level ground.
But then the familiar groaning sound of grating machinery shook the silence and the ball shifted. Drake took off like a bat out of hell, shouting at everyone to follow. He slowed and helped Ben along, sensing that even the young student had fitness limits and lacked the endurance training of a soldier. He knew Komodo would be helping Karin, though with her being a martial arts expert, her fitness might well be on a par with the men.
As a group they sprinted along the hewn out passage beneath the deadly rolling ball, trying to take advantage of its sluggish start because, up ahead, they might be faced with a tough incline to get them back up in front of it.
Drake spotted an ankle-breaker and yelled out a warning. He leapt over the fiendishly placed hole, almost dragging Ben bodily with him. Then he hit the incline.
It was sharp. He dug in, head down, legs pounding, right arm locked around Ben’s waist, heaving with every step. In the end, he beat the ball by some distance, but then he had to give everyone behind him a chance.
He didn’t let up, just shifted forward to give the others some room and fired more flares ahead.
They bounced off a solid rock wall!
The immense stone rumbled toward them. The entire team had beaten it, but now faced a dead-end. Literally.
Drake’s eyes made out a deeper blackness between the bright flares “There’s a hole. A hole in the ground.”