by Sharon Sala
“Come with me,” he ordered.
The five remaining guards followed him inside and, at his direction, began stacking a new pallet. He moved quickly through the room, making sure there was nothing left behind with his name on it, and then he looked into the darkness behind him and thought of the ranger. In all the excitement he’d completely forgotten about the man, who had to be on the verge of death by now, if he hadn’t already fallen off that cliff. He hurried to the end of the room and looked out into the passage.
A ripple of shock went through him. The body wasn’t there. He quickly found the ropes that had bound Walker’s hands and feet. They’d been cut. He had no idea how the man had managed that, but he was pissed. All this time and the bastard had been faking. He turned, grabbed a flashlight off a table and waved at the guards.
* * *
Mariah moved the rifle out of the way and was about to try maneuvering him into the backpack when she heard a burst of commotion, voices shouting and the sound of people running in the tunnel—running toward them.
She heard someone shout, “Shoot him on sight!” and swung around with the rifle in her hand. She couldn’t let the fight come to her with Quinn helpless and in the open. Her only option was to stop them en route. She flipped the safety off, checked her pockets for the ammo and started running toward the voices.
When she saw the first lights, she leveled the rifle and started firing as she ran.
Shouts turned to screams. Beams of lights went up, some went sideways, some fell to the floor. Someone got off a shot that whizzed past her head, but she kept firing methodically, aiming at the sound and the lights until no one else came and the lights were lying motionless.
* * *
Mercenaries were men of habit used to following orders. They hired on to the man with the most money, no matter how dirty the job, and when the boss gave the order, they blindly obeyed.
They had followed Lonnie into the tunnel with their little lights and big guns, and when he ordered them to shoot on sight, they took aim on the run, waiting for a target to appear.
They didn’t expect the prey to come to them, or that it would come armed and without warning. One moment they were on the attack and the next they were blindsided. With no defense against an invisible enemy and nothing to hide behind, the ones that weren’t hit turned tail and ran. Seconds later the mountain opened up and began to swallow them whole.
* * *
Out of nowhere the ground beneath Mariah’s feet began to shake, and then she heard a groan and a rumble, as if the mountain was rejecting the foreign objects in its belly. The first support beam came loose less than twenty feet in front of her. That was when she turned and ran, sprinting into the darkness. If she was going to die, she wanted to be in Quinn Walker’s arms when it happened.
* * *
Lonnie saw the first beam as it came down, and it was like watching it in slow motion. It fell from the ceiling and split J. R. George’s head like an overripe melon. The earth was breaking with it, spilling down in dust and chunks, tons of the ancient mountain caving in, readjusting to the thunder of gunfire that had disturbed centuries of rest.
It was the only time in Lonnie’s life that being at the back of the pack was fortuitous, because it meant he was the first one out of the collapsing passage. He leaped toward the lights while the mountain came down behind him, bolting past the tables and the pallets of unsold blow, beyond the metal door and out into the cavern leading to the opening of the mine. A cloud of dust caught up and then passed him, leaving him running blind in the mountain’s bad breath.
He didn’t know he’d made it out of the cave-in until he felt fresh air on his face. The pilot of the newly arrived second chopper looked at him in shock. Lonnie appeared more ghost than man as he emerged covered in dust.
“What happened?” the pilot yelled.
“Cave-in,” Lonnie said, and then choked, gagged and vomited up the dirt he’d swallowed. “Start it up,” he said, and then hacked some more. “We need to leave. Now.”
The pilot crawled into the cockpit just as a convoy of vehicles appeared at the gates.
Lonnie saw them coming and tried to run toward the chopper, but he stumbled and fell, then rolled over onto his back. The stars on Rebel Ridge had always seemed closer than they did in the city, but in reality, like success, they were always just out of his reach. Suddenly the stars disappeared, blacked out by the silhouette of a person standing over him.
“What did you do?”
He grunted as the cold steel of a rifle barrel jammed into his cheek.
“Portia? What the fuck?”
“What did you do to Mama?”
His gut rolled. “It was an accident. I thought it was Buell.”
A high-pitched whine suddenly split the air. He thought the approaching cops had turned on a siren. It took him a second to realize it was her, and she was crying.
“You are the devil incarnate. You are an abomination and a scourge unto this earth. You take and take with no thought about who you hurt, only what you can take next.”
“I said it was an accident,” he repeated, and realized his voice was shaking.
“Well, this is not,” she said, and pulled the trigger. It put a neat hole in his face, and blew brains and shards of bone out the back into the ground beneath.
DEA agents spilled out of vehicles with guns aimed at the pilot in the chopper. The guards inside the chopper dropped their weapons and came out with their hands up. They knew when to cut their losses.
* * *
Half an hour later the Doolens watched from the sidelines with sinking hearts. The DEA was having a field day. They’d confiscated a butt-load of drugs, and after interrogating the pilot, had arranged for agents to be waiting in Chicago to meet another chopper that was already in-flight.
Everything in the mine itself was a mess. A bunch of strangers were in custody. Gertie Farrell had been shot dead by her own son, and Portia had taken out her own brother in plain sight of a convoy of lawmen, apparently in revenge.
Buell Smith was already in custody in Mount Sterling, and after what Portia had just done, her three kids would most likely wind up in the Kentucky welfare system while their mama and daddy went to jail.
The mine had caved in, and from first reports there was no easy way to dig out. Whoever had been in there was gone. Jake didn’t want to be the one to tell Dolly that her youngest son was most likely dead, so he gathered up his boys and the dogs and went home.
Twenty-Four
Mariah came to flat on her face and spitting dirt, surprised to be alive, and even more surprised that she’d been in a firefight without succumbing to an episode of PTSD. The darkness inside the mountain was so absolute that she couldn’t tell if there was a way out somewhere nearby or if surviving what had just happened only made her situation worse.
And what about Quinn? She’d left him alone in that tunnel. There was no way of knowing if he, too, was trapped by the cave-in, but one thing was certain: he would never get out on his own. She wouldn’t let herself believe she’d lived through this only to be unable to get both of them out. She felt for the rifle, but it was gone. She clenched her fists in frustration.
“I know this may come as a shock, but I’m praying again today, Lord. Help me find Quinn, and help me get us out of here alive. I’ve lived this life you gave me without too many complaints. I’m asking this much back for me.”
Then she dropped her head, rolled over onto her hands and knees, and cautiously stood, feeling the air above her as she went. Her immediate area was open and—so far—clear. She started walking in what she thought was the direction she’d been facing when she’d been running, her arms outstretched like a blind woman moving without a cane. She prayed she hadn’t gotten turned around when she fell, because she needed to get to Quinn. And long minutes later, when she rounded a bend and discerned a faint glow in the distance, she let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. It was the glow from the flashlight
she’d left with Quinn.
* * *
Quinn came to again, this time immediately aware that he could open one eye and was no longer bound. His vision was blurry, but he could see well enough to know he was still in the tunnel. There was a flashlight by his head, pointing at nothing, and after a few moments he made out a backpack next to his leg.
His head was spinning. Vomit was coming up his throat. The pain in his body was so intense that he physically wanted to die. He no longer knew what was real and what had been a dream. Was he still in Afghanistan? Maybe everything with Mariah had been a hallucination and this was reality. There was his pack. Where was his rifle? Had he ever gone home?
Someone was calling his name. He knew who it was. Mariah. She’d pulled him out of a fire. She would find him again.
Then all of a sudden she was at his side, running her fingers across his face, checking his pulse and saying his name in her sweet Southern drawl.
“Quinn! Can you hear me?”
“Hear…”
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “Sweetheart, we’ve got troubles, but I promise I’m going to get you home. It’s going to hurt like hell and I have no way of stopping the pain. So when it gets too bad, just let go.”
“’Kay.”
She rocked back on her heels as she looked at the pack. It really would be a great makeshift stretcher. All she needed to do was get it on his back.
“This is going to hurt like a big dog, and I’m sorry,” she said, grabbed him under the arms and, little by little, by pulling up and backward, angling his arms into the straps until he was wearing it like a coat.
He’d passed out again from the pain, which was just as well. After checking his pulse, she duct-taped the flashlight to her arm and was ready to go. The body sled she’d made out of the backpack had been a stroke of genius, and she was the first to admit it.
She’d used the last bottle of water, pouring some down his throat, then drinking the last bit herself. She was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and despite the cool temperature in the tunnel, every thread of her clothing was stuck to her body with sweat. Satisfied that he was good to go, she bent over, grabbed on to the pack straps and began to pull him along, moving backward through the tunnel.
Long agonizing minutes passed as she pulled and then rested, pulled and then rested, trying to give the blisters forming on her hands a little break. They were coming up on what she called the belly-crawl passage and she was worried that she wouldn’t be able to get Quinn through it.
He was bigger than she was, plus she’d elevated his body a couple of inches with the backpack frame, and now she was going to have to find a way to get both him and herself through. She couldn’t see how that was going to happen. It had been all she could do to get through on her own the first time. She wasn’t strong enough to push him, and if she pulled him, she would have to go through backward, which seemed impossible. That was when she remembered the rope she’d discarded on the way in.
After a few sweeps with the flashlight, she saw the long coil of climbing rope and staggered toward it on shaking legs. She dropped to her knees, her head swaying between her shoulders as she blessed her luck in finding the rope so easily and prayed for strength for what lay ahead.
Quinn moaned behind her and she hurried back with the rope, then touched his forehead. Fever. He was getting worse.
“I’m sorry. I’m going as fast as I can. And I love you.”
She began by tying the rope through one shoulder strap and then the other, to equalize the weight. But once she finished, she realized there was a good chance she would simply pull it out from under him.
She thought about the problem for a few moments, then got the duct tape out of the pack and began duct-taping him and the pack together into one mummylike wrap. Then she fastened the rope around her waist, rolled over onto her belly and began snaking her way through the shaft.
The rope played out easily as she crawled, and she was congratulating herself on the success of her makeshift harness when she was yanked to a sudden stop. The constriction around her waist was worse than she’d expected. She was stuck and about to panic.
“Dear Lord.”
She couldn’t roll over, because the ceiling was too low, and untying herself would solve nothing. He was on one side of the narrows. She was nearly on the other. The only way to do this was to shift the distribution of her load. With the side of her face against rock, she reached down blindly and began pulling at the rope around her waist until it was up around her breasts, and then she paused, her heartbeat roaring in her ears, her body bathed in sweat.
The mountain was squeezing her. She could feel it tightening, trying to push her through the narrows like a baby through the birth canal. She didn’t belong here, and it wanted her gone.
Teetering on the verge of a full-blown episode of PTSD, she managed to slip one arm out of the loop, which automatically shifted the pull from her waist to one shoulder, with the rope now angled between her breasts. Pulling anything like this was going to hurt like hell, but it was her only option.
Digging her fingers into the rocks, she flexed her muscles and pulled herself forward. Between the immobilizing frame of the backpack and the slick surface of the duct-tape wrap, she got Quinn into the shaft with a little clearance to spare. When the weight of the load dug into her shoulder, she groaned but kept going, and the farther she moved, the deeper the rope ate into her neck, until it was bleeding and she was screaming. Tears rolled as she cursed and she begged, but she kept on crawling until she had breached the narrows. With one long, heartfelt sob, she slipped out into the relative freedom of the far side and began clawing at the rope to get it off her neck. However, there was still the little matter of getting Quinn out, too.
So tired she was trembling, she rolled over on her butt, braced her feet against either side of the shaft and began pulling the rope hand over fist until Quinn all but slid out into her lap.
Half laughing, half crying, she leaned forward and hugged him.
“You will never believe what we just did,” she sobbed, and then straightened the flashlight that was still taped to her arm and got up.
There was still not enough headroom to stand, but she would take a crouch over a belly-crawl anytime.
Quinn moaned, mumbling something she didn’t understand, but it didn’t—couldn’t—matter. Not until they were free. She grabbed the rope, slipped her arms through the loop and started forward, pulling him and the makeshift sled behind her.
When she began to hear “voices” again, she knew they were nearing the inner falls. The water was talking to her now, whispering secrets, warning her of the treachery of its speed. It was strong and fast, and it could sweep even a strong man off his feet and down to glory before he knew it was happening. There was no way she could pull Quinn through it. This was where he had to wake up and help. If he didn’t go upright through this, he wasn’t going at all.
* * *
Every time Quinn came to, he was in motion. He didn’t know where he was at, only that it was dark. Once, in a moment of panic, he thought he’d gone blind until a flash of light above his head caught his eye and he relaxed. He kept thinking he could hear Mariah’s voice, although he didn’t believe that was possible.
He had no anchor to this life other than the heart beating in his chest and refusing to quit.
He kept trying to stay under, but dream-Mariah was always there, pushing him, prodding him, shouting louder and louder, trying to shake him awake.
He tried to open his eyes, but only one lid would work. It was a startling experience when body parts gave out like that. He wondered what would be next to go.
* * *
Mariah was crying. Quinn wouldn’t wake up, and they were at the water’s edge. The flashlight beam was going dim, and somewhere during her repacking in the tunnels she’d lost the batteries and the second flashlight. Whatever she did, she had to do it now. All she needed was to get him across the water and then the re
st of the way she would be walking upright. Even if the flashlight failed at that point, there was only one way to go. She couldn’t get lost. She would find the way out.
“Wake up!” she screamed. “Don’t you quit on me! Don’t you do this! You have to hear me, Quinn Walker. That’s an order! Open your damn eyes!”
Quinn groaned, his lips parting as he tried to inhale. Instead the pain in his chest was so sharp that he choked.
“Good. Sorry that hurt, but I need you awake,” Mariah said. “You’re not going to like this, but we’re going upright through this water. It’s fast, chest-deep and cold as hell. But you hang on to me and I’ll get us across. I won’t leave you behind. Do you understand?”
Quinn saw Mariah’s face and marveled. She seemed so real. “Love you.”
“I love you, too. I hope you remember that,” she said, and then spun him around until he was aimed feetfirst at the water.
When she stepped off backward into the icy rush she momentarily lost her breath. Frantic now to get them through as fast as she could, she aimed the flashlight behind her, gauging the distance they had to ford, and then she braced her feet against the rush and pulled him straight toward her, off the ledge and into the water.
His legs went in first and when he screamed and then moaned, she knew it was from the pain of his injuries rather than the cold.
“Steady, steady, I’ve got you,” she said, as she slowly pulled him and the backpack into a fully upright position.
The water was laughing now, yanking at her feet, teasing her toward slippery rocks, taunting her with its power. The bulk of his weight was against her chest as she slid her arms beneath the pack. Locking her hands around his waist, she took her first step backward.
The beam of the flashlight was centered on the passage through which they’d come, but the pinpoint ray of light quickly melted in the chasm.
Quinn lurched, and when he did his head lolled forward, bumping her nose hard enough that it started to bleed. Eyes watering from the pain, and pissed at God and life in general, Mariah lowered her head beneath his chin and braced herself again while voicing one more complaint.
