Sam saw the man running. He’d taken the opportunity to move fast, while none of them were shooting outward. The door kept rolling.
The attacker dived.
He was too late. The door rolled across his chest and the weight of the stone sliced him in two from his upper chest downward. The man’s eyes stared up at Sam in horror for an instant, before rolling into the back of his head.
Sadik quickly wedged a heavy stone next to the wheeled door, to make it impossible for someone on the outside to roll the stone back into its cradle again. Sam slowly walked over to the door, and tried to move the wheel. It didn’t budge an inch. He breathed out deeply.
Sadik said, “Now we’re trapped, what are you going to do about it?”
Sam smiled. “You can wait here if you want, but I think I’ve seen enough of Derinkuyu for the time being.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sam leaned over the edge of the well and glanced at the stilled water looking back up at him. Behind him Tom still gripped the twin shotguns, as though he expected someone to break through the thousand pound stone door at any moment.
Sadik looked into the well and then back up at Sam. “I bet you wish you hadn’t dropped your diving equipment already?”
Sam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’re still getting out.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Sadik’s face was covered in sweat, as he studied the well as though he was only truly seeing it for the first time.
“There’s a ventilation shaft about fifty feet north of here,” Sam said. “It’s not a particularly difficult swim.”
“Do you know where it leads?”
“No,” Sam admitted.
“You might be walking straight into them,” Sadik pointed out.
Sam checked his compass, making a mental note of the direction where the ventilation shaft ran. “If we can’t get through, we’ll come back here and start again.”
“If you can’t get through there’s always the front door,” Tom said. He spoke with indifference as though he was just as happy to open the door and fight his way out, as he was to swim through to another exit. “There can’t be more than twenty of them left?”
Sam glanced at Sadik and smiled. “See, we have lots of options.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sam dropped like a pin into the well. He floated to the surface and looked up. The plan was that when they were all ready, he would dive down and start swimming toward the ventilation shaft to the north. Sadik would follow twenty or so seconds later to make sure he didn’t land on Sam. Twenty seconds after that, Tom would follow last. So long as his navigation was correct, he would reach the ventilation shaft in under a minute. Sadik would then follow his light, and Tom would follow Sadik’s light.
He looked up at Sadik and Tom. “You ready, Sadik?”
“Ready as I’m going to be,” Sadik replied.
“Okay.” Sam hyperventilated for about thirty seconds, before turning and diving head first down to the ancient water cistern below.
Without a facemask the water was an obtuse blur of refracting light. Sam squinted and tried to focus on the small arrow of his compass. He concentrated heavily, but his mind couldn’t discern the shapes as an N for north, or S for south. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The image wasn’t any better. It was a fifty, fifty gamble — with death awaiting all of them if he got it wrong.
Sam had checked the compass before descending into the water, so that he started out facing north, but it was impossible to know his current direction after spinning round to dive. Years of free-diving and SCUBA had given him an uncanny knack for navigation. His additional senses in his gut told him that he was facing north. It was good enough for him. He knew that he would become more disoriented each time he dived, and that his first instinct was usually the right one, even if he couldn’t explain how he had reached such a conclusion.
He kicked hard, focusing on maintaining a straight line. He swallowed gently to equalize his ears, and relieve the slightly painful pressure. Sam started to feel heaviness in his chest as he fought the autonomic muscles of his diaphragm from contracting and forcing him to take in a deep breath. Time was running out quickly.
If he’d made the wrong choice, he knew there was no way he could reach the original well. More frightening still, was the knowledge he had no way of telling Sadik and Tom if he’d made a mistake. Unable to go backward, he continued to swim harder. He could hear his heart pounding in the back of his head. He normally had no trouble holding his breath for sixty seconds, but the situation, the cold, and the vigorous swimming were taxing his capacity. He knew that if he could make it, Tom easily could, also. They could only hope Sadik was fit enough and a good enough swimmer to keep up.
Thirty seconds later, he saw a darkened opening ahead. His only recognition of the image was that his flashlight no longer stopped at the ceiling, instead it was swallowed by a roundish vacuum. Sam kicked harder until his hands gripped the opening and pulled himself inside the ventilation shaft. He looked up and kicked harder until he reached the surface.
Gasping for air, Sam quickly turned his flashlight downward to highlight the opening for the others. There was just enough room for two people to squeeze into the ventilation shaft. He waited another forty seconds for his breathing to settle, and was about to dip down to make sure Sadik had followed his light, but instead Sadik broke the surface and gasped for air.
“You okay?” Sam asked.
Sadik nodded, unable to speak because he was breathing so hard.
Sam dipped his head into the water for a moment and saw Tom’s light approaching. He started to climb the ladder to make room for Tom. Sam climbed about ten feet up and then waited for Tom to surface.
“You okay?” Sam asked.
“Never better,” Tom said.
“Good. When you guys catch your breath, come on up.”
He climbed to the top of the ventilation shaft and waited for Sadik and Tom to follow. By the time the other two men reached the top, Sam was waiting at the crossroads about thirty feet down the tunnel. Sadik was breathing hard after the swim and the climb, but he studied the room as though he was trying to place a mental image of his location.
“Do you know where we are?” Sam asked.
Sadik took a deep breath and settled. “Yeah, we’re standing in the old Ottoman tunnels.”
“The Ottoman tunnels?” Sam asked.
Sadik looked around at the two large store rooms to the east and west. “During the Ottoman invasion in the fifteenth century, these tunnels were built by the Cappadocian Greeks as a secret means of entering and exiting their underground refuge.”
Sam shined his flashlight down the northern tunnel, where the light eventually trailed off to nothing. “How long is this tunnel?”
“Roughly three miles.”
“And where does it come out?”
“Somewhere beneath the Fairy Chimneys.” Sadik shook his head. “I’m not sure where exactly. It was closed years ago. It might not even be passable anymore.”
Sam turned to the southern direction. “What about that way?”
“It comes out close to where we entered Derinkuyu.”
To the south, the sound of voices speaking rapidly echoed toward them.
Sam turned to Sadik. In a whisper, he said, “Can they get into here?”
“No. Not unless they have a key,” Sadik said.
A moment later, almost in response to the question, the tunnel echoed with the sound of a small explosion.
Tom withdrew his Glock, looking as though he regretted not making the effort to carry the shotguns. He looked at Sam. “It appears they found a key.”
Sam said, “Run!”