Deadfall

by Robert Liparulo

  But theories carried little weight with the people who controlled armies and big checks.What mattered to them were results. Laws and treaties championed by politicians who knew little about the way the world really worked created a catch-22 for companies like Declan’s father’s. They could not build the weapons the military needed because the government required proof of viability. Only prototypes produced proof. Few companies were willing to risk the hundreds of millions of dollars new weapon systems required without the contracts and funding the government would not provide. His father had become obscenely wealthy by taking the path less traveled and investing in hunches.

  Declan loved that about the old man.

  The part of the SLC program for which his father’s designers turned to Declan was the control unit, named Slacker for Satellite Laser Cannon Remote (SLCR).Testing the Slacker now, Declan was almost impressed. Response time was quick, but the targeting controls needed some work. Despite borrowing the code for the crosshair graphics and firing command from one of his company’s popular apocalyptic games, in the context of SLC it didn’t work to Declan’s satisfaction.That was one of maybe three dozen notes he had scribbled into his BlackBerry.

  Still, watching the cannon bore into the hillside, drilling its way into the mine tunnels, he had to admit it was pretty cool. Slacker allowed intensity adjustments. If your target was a man, you wouldn’t want to create a huge gaping hole below him, especially if he were standing on a bridge or a building you might still need.Then again, if somebody holed up in a bunker—which, essentially, was the case here—you could crank the intensity level and be relatively sure that a few well-placed events would burrow him out.

  Declan had not only punched a hole through the top of the tunnels; he also had begun to stitch a crater through the hill, exposing the labyrinth within. Slacker’s screen flashed red, and the device beeped.

  “Oh, oh, oh . . . I’m losing her.”

  “Has it been eighteen minutes already?” Cortland said from behind him, where she kneaded the muscles of his shoulders and neck.

  Declan grunted. One of the big problems he’d found was the limited time he had to use the SLC in each ninety-five-minute period.To keep her in the air without a great expenditure of energy, the satellite had been placed into orbit 280 miles above the earth. Orbiting Earth seven degrees off the polar axis brought her overhead roughly every hour and a half for eighteen minutes at a time. He was one minute away from losing his toy for that long.

  He looked around. Kyrill and Bad were watching from the same berm, not far away.Their legs draped over the edge. Pru and his camera were halfway around the crater, trying to catch the destruction from various angles. Julian had said he didn’t want to participate and stayed at the truck. Declan lifted a walkie-talkie and keyed it. “Julie? Julie!”

  Julian’s voice crackled back: “What?”

  “Put Elmer on.”

  Julian: “What?”

  “The old man, put him on.”

  Cortland said, “What do you want with him?”

  “I don’t have much time . . .”

  Elmer: “Yeah?”

  “Where would you go if you were in that mine and you couldn’t walk out the front door?”

  Elmer: “What do you mean, where would I go?”

  Declan sighed in exasperation. He triggered a laser strike, watched the flash of green and the billowing volcanic explosion. Then for fun he did it again, right away. He keyed the mike. “You’re in the mine and somebody’s just blown up the front door—what do you do?”

  Elmer: “Well, unless I got bonked on the head or I was stupid or—”

  “Elmer!”

  Elmer: “I’d go out the back door!”

  “There’s a back door? Where?” Declan looked up, could not see anything beyond the crater, beyond the smoke. He was sure if there was a way out, it would be one of the hills sloping away from the mined crater. He wouldn’t be able to see it even without the smoke. “Elmer!”

  Elmer: “Emergency escape route! Follow straight back from the front door, on the rump side of the hill.”

  Moving his thumbs quickly, Declan maneuvered the satellite to focus on the far side of the crater, on the hill that sloped down beyond it. He was about to lose access to the weapon, and the optical system, the camera, would go with it. He moved his thumb, scanning, scanning, looking for anything that appeared man-made or like a cave. He really didn’t know what he was looking for. Then he saw it: a perfect circle, like a manhole cover. He aligned the crosshairs on it, lifted his thumb to push the button, and the crosshairs disappeared; he was too far. He jumped up and began running around the berm, continually checking the crosshairs. As he bent around the crater, the image flickered and went to static.

  51

  A darkness blacker than night engulfed them.

  Hutch saw Dillon fall and heard a sharp thunk! Dillon’s head or the lantern striking the floor.

  The boy moaned.

  “Dillon!” He dropped to all fours and crawled toward the last place he had seen him. He heard movement, reached out, and found Dillon on his knees.

  “I broke the light,” Dillon said, anguished.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I broke the light!” He started to cry.

  “Dillon, no. It’s okay.” Hutch rose to his knees, shuffled closer, and put an arm around Dillon.

  Quietly, between sobs, Dillon repeated, “I broke the light.”

  “What are you, a moth? We don’t need it, okay?” But Hutch knew they did need it. Without it the map was useless, and he didn’t think they could find the emergency exit without both a map and a light.

  Dillon leaned out of his embrace, then rose back into it. Hutch reached out with his other hand and confirmed that Dillon had picked up the lantern. He heard its switch click, click, click. Dillon shook it, releasing the tinkle of broken glass. He moaned again.

  Hutch tightened his grasp. “Dillon, it’s all right. And listen.”

  After a few moments Dillon said, “I don’t hear anything.”

  “The explosions have stopped.”

  “They’ll just start up again.” His voice could have put the entire troupe of Cirque du Soleil on Prozac.

  “I don’t think so. Not for a while, anyway.”

  “What are we supposed to do? How can we get around in the dark?”

  Hutch thought about it. “Well . . . fortunately we’re stuck in a network of tunnels. It’s easy to feel our way along the walls.”

  Dillon gasped.

  “What? Dillon?”

  “Feel . . . Our school toured the Cluff Lake Mine. It had bumps in the floor, near the edge.” He paused, remembering.

  “What about the bumps?” But Hutch was starting to understand.

  “They were put there to help people get out in an emergency.The bumps led straight to the exit.”

  Hutch remembered seeing a raised line in the floor of the tunnel, two in fact. His mind had passed over them, chocking them up as seams or flaws. It made sense for an operation like this to provide a way for its personnel to escape in the event of an emergency. Batterypowered lights could not always be counted on, especially in the event of a partial collapse. The two raised ridges he had seen in the floor were side by side. He hadn’t noticed before, but he was sure one was straight. It represented the route that would lead to the main entrance, which they knew was now buried in rubble. The other line was tilde-shaped, leading to the emergency exit.

  “Dilllon, you’re a genius.You’ve just saved our lives.” He explained what he had learned from the legend on the emergency route map and what he believed it meant. He snapped open a pouch on his utility belt and found a coil of spare bowstring. He always kept two because nothing ruined a day like tracking an animal for eight hours just to have your bowstring snap. He uncoiled the string and, slipping one end into the manufactured loop at the other, he formed a lasso. He slipped the lasso over his foot and tugged it tight at his ankle.

  “I’m gonna
tie this string to your wrist,” he told Dillon. “I’ll crawl ahead of you and follow the ridges to the exit. If something should happen, like the explosions start up again, yell for me if the string breaks or comes loose. I don’t want to lose you.”

  He couldn’t see it in the dark, but he knew Dillon nodded.

  52

  “Bad, Kyrill! Come here, quick.”

  Declan could have stomped on them for moving so slowly. Seeing his agitation, they began jogging toward him on the top of the mining crater’s berm.

  “Sometime—” Declan started.

  Julian’s voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Elmer’s gone! A car’s coming!”

  Declan sighed. It was always something. He pointed toward the plateau and yelled at Bad and Kyrill. “Elmer’s taking off. Julie says some car’s coming.”

  The two gunmen veered off the berm, making double time to the plateau. Declan followed. He glanced back to see Cort plop down. She was wearing out. Behind her, Pru continued filming.

  As Bad and Kyrill approached Julian, the boy gestured toward the valley and the big meadow beyond the plateau. “There’s a car heading this way. Elmer said it was somebody Red Bear, a conservation officer or something. He just started running.”

  Both Bad and Kyrill unslung their weapons in midstride.

  Julian waved frantically at them. “No, no! Just go get him. Don’t shoot him!”

  Ignoring him, they jogged to the edge of the plateau.

  Declan stopped twenty yards away, at a spot where he could take in all the action: Elmer barreling down the hill from the plateau, a Jeep CJ7 moving fast across the valley toward the old man, his boys taking aim.

  Julian grabbed at Bad. “No!”

  Bad knocked him down. He sprang up, grabbed at Bad again. Bad elbowed him in the chest, the side of the head.

  Julian crumpled.

  Bad aimed, fired.Three rounds so fast it sounded like one. Another three, finding his bearing. Dirt and grass kicked up to Elmer’s left.

  Elmer slowed, tried to stop, finally did. He raised his hands over his head. “What?” he yelled. “I didn’t do nothing!”

  Bad fired again. The slugs tore the ground at Elmer’s feet.

  The old man turned and ran. His legs moved faster than Declan had ever seen legs move.

  Might be a cool video game effect, he thought. He hollered, “Check it out, Kyrill! His legs!”

  Kyrill nodded. He was busy unfolding the bipod in front of the trigger mechanism of his rifle.That finished, he flipped down the unipod on the telescoping stock. He lowered the weapon to the ground and lay down behind it.

  Still a good half mile distant, the CJ7 continued bouncing over the rough terrain.

  Bad let loose with two more three-round bursts.The last one found Elmer’s back, sending his body tumbling.

  Bad raised the barrel toward the 4x4. He fired, then again.

  “Too far for me,” he said.

  Kyrill’s rifle cracked. A hole the size of a donut appeared in the windshield directly in front of the driver. The vehicle swerved and slowed. It traveled four hundred feet before coming to a complete stop.

  “Dude!” Bad said.

  Kyrill stood, smiling.

  Bad said, “Props to you, bro!”

  They touched fists.

  Julian had recovered. He lay on the ground, pressing a palm to his cheek. He surveyed the destruction below. He stood and walked to Declan.

  Before Julian could speak, Declan said, “I don’t want to hear it, Julie.You thought we’d go chasing poor Elmer and forget about the guys in the mine, didn’t you?”

  Julian stared at him, eyes moist.

  “Don’t try to outsmart me, kid brother.You’re not up to it.”

  Declan swiveled around and strode back toward the mine. In a singsong voice, he called, “Bad . . . Kyrill . . . I neeeeeed you!”

  53

  The concrete floor was dusty.Occasionally drifts of dirt obscured the bumps Hutch followed. He crawled on his hands and knees, his right-hand fingers tracing the path to the secondary emergency exit. An arrowhead capped one end of each line, indicating the proper direction. The air smelled of concrete, dirt, and smoke.

  At first, every time he brought his right leg forward he felt the resistance of Dillon’s hand, tethered by the bowstring. About the time he was ready to stop, to find a way to stay together without constantly tugging at the child’s arm, Dillon resolved the problem himself. He stayed closer to Hutch and moved his arm in sync with Hutch’s leg. Hutch reached another spot where the bumps in the floor angled ninety degrees—this time to the left. He stopped. The ninety-degree turn indicated that they were at the intersection of another tunnel. He had learned to trust that the bumps would not lead him into a wall, though he found it strange and disorienting not only that he was completely blind to his environment, but also that nothing else—a light breeze, perhaps—signaled new passageways.

  “Doin’ okay?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Another turn.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Hutch checked his watch and turned into the new tunnel, following the bumps. They had been crawling like that for twenty-five minutes. Twenty-five minutes as well since the explosions stopped. If his calculations were correct, they had about another hour before Declan would have use of that particular weapon again. He wanted to be well away from the area by that time. He wished he knew how much farther, how much longer to the exit.

  For the last fifteen minutes or so he had felt that bowstring tautness in his chest again. Pulling it tight was the anticipation of hearing Declan’s gang getting into the tunnel system through the opening made by the explosions. Considering their cockiness and their largerthan- life weapons, he did not think they would be quiet about rooting him out.Yet he had heard nothing, no pounding of footsteps, no automatic gunfire. He didn’t know whether the silence should relieve him or worry him. Every now and then a breeze would blow past, not from a cross tunnel but along the current one. Sometimes it came from behind, sometimes from ahead, billowing dust into his mouth and eyes. Always, it was a chilly wind. Hutch thought it came from the rent Declan had torn into the mine.

  A minute or so along this new tunnel, Dillon cleared his throat. “Hutch?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s going to happen with your children?”

  Hutch tried to discern Dillon’s meaning. When he couldn’t, he asked, “Happen?”

  “I mean with you and them.You and Logan.”

  “I don’t know, Dillon.”The boy had slept on this, thought about it.

  “But you want to spend more time with him, and he wants to spend more time with you, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When did you stop living with him?”

  “Nine months ago.”

  “Do you see him more now than you did right after you moved out?”

  “No.” The next word was painful. “Less.”

  Silence. Dillon thinking. He finally asked, “Then in nine more months you’ll probably see him even less, right?”

  Hutch stopped. He rose and leaned back so he was kneeling, his rump resting on his heels. Dillon bumped into him.

  “Why would you say that?” Hutch asked.

  “If something is going one direction, it will continue going in that direction unless something . . .”

  Hutch could almost hear the wheels turning in the boy’s head.

  Dillon continued: “Unless something acts on it.”

  “Did your parents teach you that?”

  “Yeah. They said if I want something to happen, I have to make it happen. Otherwise, it will keep going the way it’s always gone. Like when I made a slingshot, the rubber bands kept breaking. My dad said, ‘What are you going to do to stop them from breaking?’ I said, ‘Not pull back so hard.’ He said, ‘Doesn’t that mean you won’t be able to shoot as far or as fast?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t you think about it some more?’” He paused.


  Hutch said, “And did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you come up with?”

  “I went to Mr. Nelson at Kelsie’s and asked for thicker rubber bands. He didn’t sell them, but he had some in his office. They’re used to hold bundles of books together.”

  “What did your dad say?”

  “He took me for a banana split.”

  Quietly, wanting to hear it from Dillon, Hutch said, “What did you learn from that?”

  “If you want to make something better, you have to do something to make it better.”

  Funny, Hutch thought, how wisdom was often so simple, something you always knew but had to be reminded of at the right time.

  Dillon had pondered Hutch’s problem.That said something about Dillon. Hutch thought he owed him a response and honesty. He said, “Dillon, I really don’t know what to do.”

  “But you love your son, right?”

  “Very much.”

  He expected Dillon to continue, but the boy was finished with what he had to say.

  The silence left Hutch as shaken as Declan’s attack. He found Dillon’s head and mussed his hair.

  “Let’s go,” Hutch said.

  Ten minutes and another turn later, the bumps in the floor ceased. He patted the floor beyond their point of termination but could not find where they picked up again. He felt the walls on both sides of the tunnel. No door, no cross passageway. Could the tactile guide be incomplete? Didn’t make sense. Could the bumps have been sheered off by the passage of some heavy equipment? He had not felt any change in the texture of the floor indicating where the bumps had been.

  Hutch stood and again felt the walls. Nothing. He raised his hands and repeated the procedure; his left hand struck metal. Feeling, he realized that it was a ladder. It rattled under his inspection. He found a latch and, holding a rung, flipped it. The rung and ladder it was attached to suddenly grew heavier in his hand. He lowered his arm, letting gravity bring the ladder down. It stopped three feet from the floor. He sat and removed the bowstring from Dillon’s wrist and then from his own ankle.