“Isn’t the strategic value for the Turkish or Syrian people to decide, not the CIA?”
“Would you trust the Syrian government with that information right now?”
She frowned and stepped toward him. She cast her gaze back at the corner stone, and her shoulders fell in defeat. “Then we’ll tell no one.”
He nodded. He could give her that. For now. “Let’s head back to the Rover. The Raptor team is only about thirty klicks from here. Logan has a plan for smuggling you over the border into Iraq. They have a jet waiting in Erbil. With luck, you’ll be flying out before midnight.”
He stepped outside the shack and crouched low behind shrubs that abutted the structure and studied the road. Empty in both directions. The nerves along his neck prickled. Something wasn’t right. A moment later, he heard it, the soft whirr of an engine in the distance. With Cressida’s hand in a tight grip, he pulled her around to the back side of the shack, which blocked them from view of the road. He gestured for Cressida to take cover under the thick brambles that stretched from hillside to structure and followed her into the vegetative cover.
She cursed the spiky barbs of the dry plants. He gently placed a hand to her lips to silence her as the engine noise drew closer. Tucked low and dressed in desert brown, they blended in, but not well enough to be certain of their safety should someone search the perimeter of the shack.
The engine noise stopped as it drew even with the shack.
Crap.
Ian pulled his gun and nodded to Cressida to do the same.
The sound of three car doors opening and closing followed, then he heard Zack say, “Ganem, check out the shack.”
Footsteps approached the shed. Beside him, Cressida’s eyes were wide with alarm. She wanted to tell Ian something, but he gave a sharp shake of his head. A whisper now was far too risky.
While Ganem approached the shack, Zack spoke to the third man in broken Turkish. Ian couldn’t help but grin at the nasal quality to Zack’s voice thanks to his broken nose. He sent the third man to search across the road, then announced he’d climb the hill himself to scan the landscape. From the top of the hill, he might be able to get a glimpse of Ian and Cressida. Ian could only pray the brambles were thick enough to disguise them.
Todros entered the shed. The windows of the old structure lacked glass, making it easy to hear movement inside. The man was on the opposite side of the wall at Ian’s back, scraping the flat capstone with something.
He must have seen the cleared stone and was now checking it out himself.
Zack came into Ian’s view as he reached the hilltop. He’d have let out a sigh of relief when the man descended, apparently without spotting them, but he still had Todros to worry about inside the shack.
Finally, Todros left the shed and met up with Zack and the other man on the road. “No sign anyone’s been inside the shed in months, maybe years.”
At hearing the blatant lie, Cressida shifted, shaking a branch. She stilled, her body rigid with alarm, but none of the men in the road seemed to notice.
“Face it, they’re long gone,” Todros continued. “By my calculations, the tunnel is closer to Cizre.”
Zack cursed. “They aren’t headed to the tunnel. Ian’s gone soft. They planned to call her friend with Raptor ties. There’s a team in Cizre waiting to extract them.”
“The roads are heavily patrolled in and out of Cizre. They’ll never make it.”
“They’ll go overland.” Zack paused. “But the Raptor team won’t. Give me your cell. It’s time to shut out Raptor—we can have them detained at the next checkpoint.”
Dammit. The team could be picked up for any number of reasons, starting with the simple fact they were in the region working a contract to protect Kurdish government officials in northern Iraq from ISIS. The Turkish government was leery of all things that smacked of Kurdish autonomy and had their own trouble with ISIS. The Raptor team’s entry into Turkey could easily be viewed as suspicious.
Zack made his call, instructing whoever was on the other end of the line to push for the Raptor team’s detainment. But it was his last demand that made Ian’s blood run cold. He wanted an overland search, starting with the area surrounding the nearby village.
* * *
Cressida breathed a sigh of relief when the black Jeep reached the crest of the hill, then dropped down the other side. Ian watched the vehicle through small binoculars he’d had in his pack. “I caught a quick glimpse of the third man. I think he’s the guy with the knife who attacked you by the train.”
She shuddered. She’d happily live the rest of her life without coming face-to-face with him again. “Todd lied to Zack about the shack. He saw the scrape marks. He’s not stupid. He knows what fresh digging looks like.”
“It would be a mistake to rely on him as an ally,” Ian said, his voice flat.
She nodded. One lie didn’t make up for everything else Todd had done. But it eased the sting a little to know he wasn’t one hundred percent complicit with Zack.
“I need to call off the meet with Raptor. They need to return to Iraq. Now. Before they’re detained for days.”
Dread settled in her gut. They’d been so close.
She listened to Ian’s side of the conversation with Sean, disheartened and frustrated that their short-lived escape plan was now gone. They’d have to continue overland to the Iraq border to meet with Sean, which would require another crossing of the Tigris. But unfortunately, this close to the Syrian border, there would be patrols all along the river. They’d have to backtrack, go north and around. It would take days. Odds were they’d be caught.
Just as Ian was saying good-bye to Sean, she said, “Wait!”
Ian cocked his head with the phone still pressed to his ear.
“If we can get into Syria, would it be hard to cross the river to get into Iraq?”
He frowned and asked Sean what the river border was like in Iraq. To Cressida, he said, “YPG has control of the river in the north, and for now, ISIS is leaving them alone due to heavier fighting on the western end of the Turkish border. YPG is allied with the Kurds in Northern Iraq, and both groups have used the river to bring in Western reporters into Syria. With the aid of a sympathetic rebel, entering Iraq is doable from Northern Syria, even though it’s technically ISIS-controlled territory. It’s a route Sean considered if we could find a way to enter Syria, but it’s dangerous.”
“Tell him we’ll meet him on the river—tomorrow.”
Ian shook his head. “Cressida, we don’t have time to find and dig out one of the openings. It could be twenty feet of dirt and rock, and we’d be in the open. You heard Zack—they’re going to start an overland search. Here.”
She clenched her hand into a ball to keep from gripping his arm, as if she could physically pull him toward accepting her plan. “We can remove Lawrence’s capstone.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“Drag it with the winch on the front of the Rover?” she suggested.
Ian’s brow furrowed as he considered her idea. “Maybe. We could use the tire iron as a lever. But the cable might not be long enough to reach the house. I don’t know how close we could angle the Rover.” Then his eyes lit up. “But there is a high-lift jack in the back of the truck. We could lift it.” To Sean he said, “We’ll give this a try. If we’ve had no luck in two hours, we’ll give up and head north.” He hung up. “You know this is insane, right?”
“Everything about this week has been insane. Why should today be any different?”
He let out a strangled laugh. “Fair point.” He touched the wall of the stone shack. “Even if we manage to open the tunnel, we might not find an exit at the other end. We’ll be proverbial fish in a barrel if Zack returns.”
“We’ll be caught if we circle back and head to the Iraq border. How much do you want to bet checkpoint guards will shoot us both first, to hell with asking questions?”
Ian’s eyes darkened, and his jaw clenched. “That’s th
e only reason I’m willing to try this. I refuse to give anyone the opportunity to take a shot at you again.”
The emotion in his words triggered a slight flush.
Who did he think he was fooling with his “I don’t do emotion” line? Certainly not her.
They waded back through the brambles and headed to the Rover, which was still there, disabled without the distributor cap. They scavenged the vehicle for useable tools, taking the large high-lift jack, a tire iron, and the toolbox containing odds and ends including a wrench, hammer, screwdrivers, and collapsible shovel.
Cressida’s breath left her in a sharp, painful whoosh when she found a trowel buried under an old greasy rag.
“What’s wrong?” Ian asked.
She studied the carving on the old Marshalltown. Well worn. Sharp as a knife. As familiar as her own. “It’s Todd’s.” She tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans.
“I’m sorry, Cress.”
She shrugged. “It’s not like we didn’t know he’s working with Zack.” She pursed her lips. “I think…” She hesitated. Ian had a hair trigger when it came to Todd.
“Go ahead. Say it.”
“I don’t understand why he sent me the text, but I have a feeling Hejan gave me Todd’s number because he really believed Todd would help us if he can. And I think that’s why Todd lied to Zack.”
“I hope you’re right. We can use all the help we can get.”
They hauled their cache to the stone shed and set to work. Cressida used Todd’s trowel while Ian wielded the tire iron. Together they cleared the edges of the stone and dug out a groove in the soil on one side so the lip of the jack could be wedged into position beneath the capstone.
At last, they’d made a deep cut in the dirt floor. Sweat rolled down Cressida’s temples as they worked the jack into place. She felt each second, each minute, knowing they could well be wasting precious time when they should be distancing themselves from this place.
Todd knew she’d been here. He and Zack could return at any time.
Even scarier than facing Zack was the knowledge that if they were successful, they could find themselves twenty feet underground and facing a dead end.
She calmed that fear with the reminder T. E. Lawrence had marked the site as a tunnel—and a long one at that. Surely he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t explored it. If the passage had been filled with rock and debris, he’d have had no idea about the extent of the shaft. However, the question remained whether there would be an exit at the far end.
Low grunts from both Ian and Cressida were the only sound as they seated the base of the jack in the trough they’d cut into the dirt and wiggled the lip under the ten-inch-thick stone.
Jack in place, Cressida dropped to the floor, panting to recover from the effort of sliding a thick metal bar under what had to be a half-ton stone.
Ian rested his hands on his knees and caught his breath. Thanks to a fine sheen of sweat, his dirt-streaked T-shirt clung to thick muscles. Between that and six days of stubble—now really a beard—he looked rugged and sexy as hell, making her long for a do-over.
Breathing under control, he straightened and pumped the jack handle twice. Rock ground against rock, and the stone shifted, then, ever so slightly, lifted.
Elation shot through her. She couldn’t help it and launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck. “It works!” Then she pressed her open mouth to his.
Oh God. Kissing him felt so damn right. Her fingers threaded through his hair as his hands slid down and cupped her butt.
All too soon, he released her. “It’s a shame we don’t have time for that,” he said, breathing almost as heavily as he had when they positioned the jack.
She nodded. He was right. “Let’s get this tunnel open.”
He waved to the jack, giving her the honor of pumping the bar next. The jack was old but well oiled, and the mechanism move easily as she worked the handle. The rock slipped on the lip, forcing them to adjust the angle to support the rising stone.
When the rock was three inches above the ground, Ian shined a flashlight into the exposed gap, revealing the edge of a dark hole. Three more inches, and the light caught what appeared to be the first step of a stone staircase.
Ian took over pumping the jack, which strained under the weight of the stone, and finally, they had an opening wide enough for even his broad shoulders to pass through. She shined the flashlight into the depths and counted fifteen steps cut into the earth.
* * *
Ian gathered their supplies. They would take everything into the tunnel except the jack. They would leave the jack in place, holding up the stone, their only guaranteed exit—but also an invitation for Zack and Todros to follow, which wasn’t exactly a minor concern.
They had to drop the supplies down. The opening was too narrow to wear backpacks as they slipped under the precariously perched capstone, but at least the tunnel itself appeared to be tall and wide enough to walk without hunching over or the need to shuffle sideways.
He dropped the toolbox first. The metal container clattered down the lowest of the steps, the sound muted by the depth and angle of the tunnel. Next he tossed the backpacks.
Cressida took a step toward the opening, and his gut clenched. The seconds she’d be under the canted rock, before she was fully in the cavern, were the most dangerous. The slightest bump of the jack or shifting of earth beneath it, and the stone would crush her. He pressed a hard kiss to her lips. He had a thousand words he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. Not now. “Be careful,” he said, and let her go.
She nodded and slipped through, lithe and sprightly as she disappeared into the dark hole. He took a deep breath once she was cleared of the rock, and another when she called out, “I’m at the bottom.” The beam of her flashlight disappeared into the angled corridor. “It’s open. At least…as far as the light reaches is passable.”
“I’m coming down,” he said. He hit Send on the prewritten text message to Sean and waited for confirmation the text was sent before descending into the hole.
He slipped past the jack without a problem, but after clearing it, a whisper of sound alerted him to a subtle shift in air current. He glanced back and saw a narrow stream of dirt drip down from under the base of the tilted, wedged jack. The metal arm bowed slightly, the lip that held the stone straining under the weight.
The minor shift in the soil at the base had redistributed the weight. The jack was about to snap.
“Shit! Cressida! Move!” The words were barely out of his mouth when he leapt forward and down, jumping six steps and rolling when he hit the bottom, catching her and tucking her against him. Above them, metal popped and the boulder slammed down, resealing the hole.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cressida coughed from breathing in dirt that had been stirred when the rock slammed across the opening and shook the walls of the tunnel. She lay on her side in the darkness, her eyes watering as she struggled to control the spasms, afraid movement would cause another shift and the two-thousand-year-old tunnel would collapse. Had the bedrock fractured when the boulder fell?
Ian’s arms tightened around her. “You okay?” he asked.
Coughing under control, she did a mental check, flexing muscles to make sure everything was fine. “Yes. Just a little freaked.”
She felt his lips brush her forehead in the pitch-black darkness. She’d dropped her flashlight when he slammed into her and groped the floor, hoping it hadn’t broken.
He flicked on his light, and she spied hers against the wall. She pushed to her knees and reached for it, then let out a soft sigh of relief when the light flickered, then steadied.
Ian shut off his light. “I’ll save my batteries. We have no idea how long we’ll be down here.”
She directed her light upward. The top of the tunnel was about eight inches above her head, clearing Ian’s greater height with a scant inch to spare. With his broad shoulders, the narrow cut of the aqueduct—slightly less than
a meter at the floor, the opening gradually narrowing to half that size at the arched ceiling—would be a tighter squeeze for him than for her.
She shivered. The length of the tunnel was the only thing that prevented a full-on claustrophobia panic. She couldn’t imagine how Ian must feel, with his shoulders scraping the sides. “We’re trapped.”
He nodded, his mouth tight. “It was one of the risks.”
She shined the light on the entrance shaft stairs, then flicked it off. Not even a whisper of sunlight slipped past the edges of the stone. She thumbed on the light again, chilled by the utter darkness of being fifteen feet below ground. “I’m sorry, Ian. This is my fault.”
“No, it’s mine, Cress. All of this is my fault.” He gathered her against his chest.
She breathed in his scent. Sweat, dirt, and testosterone. A comfort to have someone solid to hold, another beating heart, in what could well be their tomb.
“We’ve got food and two days’ worth of water if we’re careful,” she said. “Air could be a problem, but the corridor looks long, and there could be exchange through some of the qanat shafts.”
He stroked her cheek. “Your strength amazes me.”
She tightened her arms around him. “I’m just borrowing it from you. If you weren’t here, I’d be a wreck.”
“Same for me.” He brushed strands of hair that had escaped the braid from her forehead. “We’ll find an exit shaft we can dig through. I will get you out of here.”
She held his gaze; the dim glow couldn’t hide the intensity in his eyes. “Promise?”
He smiled. “Absolutely, beautiful.”
It was a ridiculous promise, considering what they were likely facing. Even more ridiculous to take hope from it, but somehow, she did. “Well then, let’s go.”
He kissed her. “When we get back to the States, I want to whisk you away to a five-star hotel for a week. We’ll dine on room service, and I’ll devote all my energy to making you come, repeatedly.”
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