Hunt had made his way back to the door at the cave's opening inside the barn to verify that the noise was what it had sounded like. Yes, that door to the outside was closed now. Locked, solid, immovable.
But then he'd returned to where he'd been, and through that second door had heard Andrea's strangled cry. Pounding at the unyielding door, he called out to answer her, but the sound seemed to be swallowed up by its own echo.
And after the one response, nothing.
He shone his flashlight again over the wood of the door. The faintness of the sound from the inside could only mean that the door was extremely thick. It was also framed with heavy beams, which in turn were set into seamless concrete, built into the cave walls.
Hunt sank to the floor and pounded over and over at the door, but the sound didn't carry at all. It was as if the door itself were made of solid rock. "Andrea!" he called again. "Andrea, can you hear me?"
Deafening silence.
"We're getting you out of here," he whispered.
The words themselves seemed to galvanize him. Getting to his feet, he held a hand up over his head, feeling for movement in the air. When he'd been standing out in the barn at the cave's entrance, he'd felt a distinct breeze coming from within the cavern. This could only mean that air was getting into the cave from the outside, from another way in.
Again he tried the door to the very inner chamber where Andrea was locked in, and again he couldn't budge it. Shining his light around the edges, he realized that the seal was at least nearly, or perhaps perfectly, hermetic. No air, or very little air-certainly not enough to cause a breeze-was coming through. This was not bad news. It meant that the moving air he'd felt at the mouth of the cave originated somewhere within his own chamber and not behind that door.
Hunt began walking back toward the front of the cave, shining his light on the walls and the roof, making sure he covered every inch of surface. With the door in the barn closed, there was no breeze blowing in the cave now, either. He tried to remember if he'd felt the source of the breeze as he'd made his way in while the front door had still been open, but he'd been concentrating on what might have been in front of him, on where he placed his feet, on who might have been waiting there in ambush.
The source of the breeze had never entered his consciousness.
Where the cave turned sharply left going back toward the entrance, he noticed a fissure high in the rock as it began to curve to form the roof. No more than eighteen inches at its widest point, and perhaps five feet from tapered end to tapered end, it disappeared into blackness. Standing directly under it, Hunt reached his hand up and strained to get some sense of fresh air coming in through it.
But he felt nothing.
From where Hunt stood below it, even standing across the cave by the opposite wall, he couldn't make out how far back the hole went. It might go all the way to the outside, it might gradually narrow to nothing, it might stop after three feet. There was no way to tell. And at first it wasn't clear why it would matter, anyway. Even if it did mark a possible opening to the outside, he estimated that the fissure itself was at least four feet above his extended reach.
It was impossible.
He kept on looking along the cave's walls, past the barrels, making it all the way to the front door again. That door, too, had been cleanly carved into the limestone. The narrow fissure, ten feet off the ground back where the cave hooked left, was the only possibility. There was no sign of any other outlet. He let himself down to the floor, his back against the door to the barn. Turning off his flashlight, he collected himself in the blackness and tried to concentrate.
And thought of the barrels.
Midway back again, and laying his flashlight on the ground, he dislodged one of the heavy empty barrels from its wooden rack and rolled it back to the spot underneath the fissure.
It wasn't going to be enough.
Hoisting himself up to stand on the barrel, he still could not reach the bottom edge of the crack in the limestone. He was short of it by a foot or more.
Getting down off the barrel, he retrieved his light, and shone it again into the opening, trying to get a better idea of how far it extended. He still couldn't see back into it more than a few feet. Changing his focus, he scanned the beam over the lower edge of the hole. Jagged, sharp-edged, and clearly defined, the ledge appeared to be a natural fault in the solid rock, but he knew that if he tried to jump and grab a handhold and it gave under his weight, or simply crumbled, he would be looking at, best case, a bad fall. Perhaps a broken bone or worse.
But there was no other choice.
He used his night goggles to prop the flashlight on the ground in such a way that its beam centered on the fissure's opening. Boosting himself back up onto the barrel, he studied the place where he'd have to grab, tried to visualize the next exertions-flush against the wall, pulling himself up enough to get his shoulders in, elbowing his way inside, swinging his feet up, hoping there was room to hold him. And that the fissure didn't end in another wall of rock, somewhere back in the heart of the promontory.
Thinking about it wasn't going to help.
He jumped.
Utter blackness.
Hunt should have brought his night goggles. Or his flashlight, although he had needed its beam to illuminate the fissure's mouth. He should have used his gun instead of the precious goggles to prop the light up; his useless gun now snug in its holster against his lower back.
He could do nothing but continue to crawl forward on his belly, inch by inch, feeling in front of him for the outcroppings in the narrow space that had twice already closed down enough over him to cut into his head; the liquid he felt now dripping down his forehead and into his blinded eyes tasted like blood. His hands, he knew, were shredded and bleeding, too.
Ahead of him the passage narrowed and narrowed some more. When he'd begun, there'd been enough clearance to pull himself along on his elbows, to kick with his knees as he'd learned in basic training. Now, though, after an interminable climb, he felt the walls closing in on both top and bottom-against his chest, nearly flush against his back, his gun catching with almost every movement. He couldn't even begin to turn over, wasn't sure if he could back up now if he wanted to. Pushing himself forward, arms outstretched, scrabbling with his feet, he found himself, finally, nearly wedged into the solid rock.
If it got any tighter, he couldn't go any farther in either direction. He'd already been crawling for many, many minutes, had covered at least a couple of hundred feet. If he got stuck, he would die here, buried in the mountain.
His arm now at full extension, he reached again in front of him, feeling for the stone above and below. His shoulders ground into the rock on both sides of this, his third and worst constriction.
But if he could force himself through it, it seemed to widen again on the other side. Top to bottom, side to side.
His bloody fingers grabbed at the stone. They tried to pull him forward, and the rock crumbled under his hands. Seeking some leverage from behind, he dug in his feet, forced a shoulder forward, gained all of an inch, no more. Finally, with an inhuman cry that he never heard, he pushed with everything he had and cleared the wedge.
Somewhere ahead of him, he caught the first faint scent of fresh air. He pulled himself forward toward it. Ahead the quality of the darkness seemed different. Focusing on that, he pulled again and felt the eroded earth give slightly around him. He saw a pinpoint of light and recognized it for what it was.