"Report, Sergeant."
"Sir. We ran into trouble. The woman, Connor, was at the house when we arrived but there was a man with her. He was armed and we got into a firefight. Li and Chung are dead. I chased the woman and her companion into an abandoned mine. The entrance collapsed and they were buried inside. They must be dead. I searched the house and the book was not there. I did get the name of the man who was there and confirmed the identity of the woman."
Choy handed Selena's license and the slip from the car to Wu. He had decided to omit the reason the mine collapsed and his thought the book was buried with the Americans. Better to let Wu think it was still out there somewhere.
"What did you do with Li and Chung?"
"Sir, there's more. I put them in the trunk of the car. On the way here I was stopped by a policeman. It was some sort of safety check. He was going to let me go when he saw blood leaking from the trunk. He reached for his gun and I shot him. That was about a half hour ago."
"You shot an American police officer." Wu's voice was flat.
"Yes, sir. I had no choice."
"Where is the car?"
"In the garage below."
"Give me your pistol."
Choy handed over the gun.
"Choy, you have disappointed me. I expected more discretion from you. You are certain the book was not in the house? Did the woman have it with her when she fled?"
"The book was not in the house, sir. If the woman had it with her, I did not see it."
It was true, he hadn't actually seen a book in the woman's hand.
"You are leaving tonight for home, Sergeant. I will arrange passage on one of our freighters. Go to your room and wait there. You will be escorted to your ship. As soon as you arrive in Beijing, report to me."
He gave Choy a hard look.
"Dismissed."
"Sir!" Choy snapped to attention, turned and left the room. The door closed behind him.
Wu picked up his phone and began making arrangements to clean up the mess Choy had created. He was angry. The book was not found. If it was in that mine, how would he retrieve it? Wu would wait to inform the General. Yang was not a man who tolerated failure. He'd sleep on it and decide what to do tomorrow.
Chapter Sixteen
Carter saw a dark object thrown into the tunnel and heard it clink against the rock floor and knew what it was. He jumped into the cart right on top of Selena, knocking her to the rusty floor, pressing her body under him.
The explosion blotted out thought. Shrapnel ricocheted off the sides of the cart. The entrance to the mine collapsed with a thunderous roar, shutting off the light.
Rumblings and falls deep within the mine faded away.
Total blackness.
Carter lay rigid, waiting for the ringing in his ears to stop.
She coughed. "You mind getting off me?"
He was pressing her down under him, the .45 still in his hand. He holstered it, climbed out of the cart in the dark.
"I can't see a damn thing." Selena coughed again.
"I can fix that."
Nick reached into his jacket pocket for the mini flash he always carried. He clicked it on.
Something crawled across the back of his hand.
A large, black spider.
He slapped it away, almost losing the flash. Something crunched under his foot.
He helped Selena out of the cart and tried not to think about spiders. She was covered with dirt and had scrapes on her face. Her silk designer blouse was ripped and stained with red dirt and rust, exposing most of her breast.
The entrance to the mine was blocked by tons of rock reaching to the ceiling. Thin streams of dirt trickled from the roof of the tunnel.
"We're not getting out that way," he said.
"The whole side of the hill must have come down."
He took out his phone. No signal.
"Is there another entrance?" He flicked the thin beam of the flash around the tunnel. Something moved at the edge of the light.
"I think so, but I don't know where it is. I saw a map of the mine once. There are three levels, with branches off the main tunnel and shafts hundreds of feet deep. Some parts are flooded, but I don't know where. A lot of tunnels were closed off when the mine began shutting down."
"We don't have much choice. You up for exploring?"
"You lead," she said.
The flash wasn't much. They followed the narrow beam along the rusted tracks, deeper into the mine, picking their way around rocks that had fallen from the roof. Nick lost sense of whether the tunnel was going straight or curving about. The air was stifling and hot and smelled of ancient water and older rock. The adrenaline rush was gone. He was tired and sore.
Thick wooden posts supported cracked beams holding up the roof of the tunnel. They looked weak and unstable. Webs hung from the corners where the beams and posts came together. Everywhere, spiders retreated from the light. There were pools of water on the floor and wet, dark stains on the walls, drips of water from the ceiling. The air was hot and still. Nick felt the tunnel walls closing in. He told himself it would be all right. All right. One thing at a time. He was sweating.
The tunnel split, one branch going right, the other straight ahead.
"Which way should we go?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. I never thought I'd need to know," said Selena.
"You think right, or straight ahead?"
"If the tunnel hasn't turned, the river must be somewhere to the right. I think the miners followed a vein toward the river. If they did, maybe it came out somewhere on the bank."
"Let's go right. If it did come out, it shouldn't be far."
They entered the right hand shaft. The tunnel supports were rotting and puddles of water lay everywhere. Something scurried away ahead.
"What was that?"
"I don't know. I didn't see anything."
"What's that squeaking sound?"
The passage curved and they came around the corner. Fifty feet ahead the tunnel ended in a fall of rock and a churning nest of swarming and squeaking rats. Hundreds of red eyes gleamed in the narrow light.
Carter froze. Selena gripped his arm, hard. The rats squirmed and wriggled, darting towards them and back again into the mass.
Neither said a word as they backed away. He felt Selena shudder. Back in the main shaft they passed a boarded passage on the left, then another on the right. They began to see more closed off entrances. A rat ran by his foot.
They came to the remains of a stable cut into the side of the tunnel, stalls still standing. A rope halter hung on a rusty nail.
"Why would they have a stable down here?"
It was the first thing Nick had said since the rats.
"For the mules. Mules hauled the carts."
Fifty feet past the stable the tunnel branched off in three directions. The tracks ended here in a decaying wooden triangle. The rusty head of a miner's pick lay in the dirt. Nick picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket.
"I don't like this," Selena said.
"Me neither." He shone the flashlight at the shaft on the right, then the others. There wasn't much difference between them. They all looked like highways to hell. He wet a finger and felt for a breath of air.
Nothing. Just a wet finger.
The flashlight beam was turning yellow. If they ran out of light they might never leave. He didn't like the idea of being in the dark with rats and spiders, but the batteries were fading.
"I'm going to turn off the light."
The blackness closed in. Nick remembered a cave in Afghanistan where he was almost buried alive, remembered his drunken father locking him in a dark closet, remembered a cellar in Colombia filled with the sewer odors of pain and death. He pushed the thoughts away, wished he had a drink or a cigarette or both.