Gideon’s Sword

by Douglas Preston; Lincoln Child

  “Viv…!”

  I leap toward her just as the cage is slammed to the right. Off balance and knocked to the left, I crash into the wall shoulder first. A jolting pain runs down my arm. Viv’s still gasping, and the sudden jolt sends her falling forward. Sliding on my knees, I dive at her, catching her just as she’s about to hit face first.

  I turn her around and cradle her body in my arms. Her helmet falls to the ground as her eyes dance wildly back and forth. She’s in full panic. “I got you, Viv… I got you…” I tell her, whispering the words over and over. Her head’s in my lap, and she’s trying to catch her breath, but the deeper we plummet, the more we feel the heat. I lick a puddle of sweat from the dimple of my top lip. It’s easily over ninety degrees down here.

  “Wh-What’s happening?” Viv asks. As she looks up at me, her tears run back toward her temples and are swallowed by her hair.

  “The heat’s normal… It’s just the pressure from the rocks above us… plus we’re getting closer to the earth’s core…”

  “What about oxygen?” she stutters.

  I turn to the detector, which is lying beside her. As my light shines across the digital screen, it goes from 19.6%… to 19.4%

  “Holding steady,” I tell her.

  “You lying to me? Please don’t lie…”

  This is no time to send her spiraling. “We’re gonna be fine, Viv… Just keep taking deep breaths.”

  Following my own instructions, I suck in a chestful of steamy, hot air. It burns my lungs like a deep breath in a sauna. The sweat is pouring from my face, dripping off the tip of my nose.

  Kneeling behind Viv, who’s still on the ground, I take off her orange vest and jacket and push her forward so her head’s between her knees. The back of her neck is drenched, and a long, wet sweat stain runs down her spine, soaking through her shirt. “Deep breaths… deep breaths…” I tell her.

  She whispers something back, but as the cage hurtles downward, the rumbling of the walls is too loud for me to hear. One… two… three entrances to the tunnels whiz by within thirty seconds. We have to be close to seven thousand feet.

  “Almost there…” I add, putting both hands on her shoulders and holding her tight. She needs to know I won’t let go.

  As another tunnel whizzes by, my ears pop once more, and I swear my head’s about to explode. But just as I clench my teeth and shut my eyes, my stomach lurches back into place. There’s an audible screech and a sudden tug in forward momentum that reminds me of an airplane coming to a sharp stop. We’re finally slowing down. And as the cage settles into a slow rumble, Viv’s breathing does the same. From frenetic… to rushed… to the steady in-and-out of calm… The slower we go, the more she levels off.

  “There you go… just like that…” I say, again holding the back of her neck. Her huffing and puffing is smooth and steady as the cage jerks to its final stop. For a full minute, we dangle there, not moving. Viv is slumped in the bottom of the cage; the cage is slumped at the bottom of the shaft.

  Her breathing settles like a pond after a thrown rock ripples through it. “Hhhh… hhhh… hh…”

  I pull away, climbing to my feet. It takes Viv a moment, but she eventually turns around and offers an appreciative grin. She’s trying to be strong, but from the manic way she’s looking around, I can see she’s still freaked.

  “Stop cage?” the hoist operator asks through the intercom.

  Ignoring the question, I turn to Viv. “How you doing?”

  “Yeah,” she replies, sitting up straight, trying to convince me she’s fine.

  “It wasn’t a yes-or-no question,” I say. “Now, you wanna try again? How you doing?”

  “O-Okay,” she admits, biting her bottom lip.

  That’s all I need to hear. I head for the intercom. “Hoist, you there?”

  “What’s the word?” the operator begins. “Everybody happy?”

  “Actually, can you bring me back to the—”

  “Don’t!” Viv calls out.

  I let go of the intercom and stare her down.

  “We’re here,” Viv pleads. “All you gotta do is lift the stupid door…”

  “… after we get you back to the top.”

  “Please, Harris—not after we got this far. Besides, you really think it’s safer up there than down here? Up top, I’m alone. You said it yourself: We shouldn’t separate. Those were your words, weren’t they? Stay together?”

  I don’t bother to answer.

  “Now, c’mon,” she continues. “We came all this way—to South Dakota… down eight thousand feet—you’re gonna turn back now?”

  I stand there in silence. She knows what’s riding on this.

  “You okay down there?” the operator asks through the intercom.

  My eyes stay locked on Viv.

  “I’m fine,” she promises. “Now tell her you’re alright before she starts to worry.”

  “Sorry, Hoist,” I say into the intercom. “Just wanted to readjust some gear. All’s well. Stop cage.”

  “Stop cage,” the operator repeats.

  I raise the safety gate and give the outer door a shove. Like before, a hot wind seeps through the opening—but this time, the heat’s almost unbearable. My eyes burn as I squeeze them shut.

  “W-What’s going on?” Viv asks behind me. From the sound of her voice, she’s still on the floor, crawling outside.

  I push through the waterfall that drips from above the door and step out onto the dirt floor. Just like that, the vacuum of wind is gone, dissipating up the open shaft.

  Blinking the dust from my eyes, I turn back to Viv, who still hasn’t stood up. She’s sitting on a plank of wood outside the cage and staring up at the ceiling.

  Following her glance, I crane my neck up toward the highest part of the cave. The roof rises about thirty feet in the air and has an industrial light hanging from the center. “What’re you looking—?”

  Oh.

  “Is that doing what I think it’s doing?” Viv asks, still studying the ceiling.

  Straight above us, a long black crevice cuts through the ceiling like a deep scar that’s about to split open. Indeed, the only things holding it together—and thereby keeping the ceiling from splitting open—are nine-foot-long strips of rusted steel that’re bolted to the roof like metal stitches across the crevice. From this distance, they look like the girders from an old Erector Set—lined with circular holes that the bolts are riveted into.

  “I’m sure it’s just a precaution,” I say. “At this level… with all the pressure from above… they just don’t want a cave-in. For all we know, it’s just a simple crack.”

  She nods at the explanation but doesn’t move from her plank-of-wood seat.

  In front of me, the ceiling lowers and the walls narrow like a wormhole. It can’t be more than nine feet high, and just wide enough for a tiny car. Along the muddy floor, I follow the ancient metal train tracks. They’re more compact than standard tracks, but they’re in good enough shape to tell me how the miners are moving all that computer equipment through the mine.

  When I was twelve, Nick Chiarmonte’s dad took our entire sixth-grade class to Clarion, Pennsylvania, to tour a working coal mine. We got to go a hundred feet below the surface, which back then felt like we were burrowing toward the very center of the earth. When we got to the bottom, Nick’s dad said a mine was a living organism no different from the human body—a main central artery with dozens of intersecting branches that move the blood to and from the heart. It’s no different here. The train tracks run straight ahead, then branch out like spokes on a wheel—a dozen tunnels in a dozen different directions.

  I eye each one, searching to see if any of them are different. The mud on most of the tracks is caked and dried. But in the far left tunnel, it’s soaking wet, complete with a Sherlock Holmes boot print from the group that came down right before us. It’s not much of a lead, but right now it’s all we’ve got.

  “You ready?” I call back to Viv. She doesn’
t budge.

  “C’mon…” I call again.

  She’s motionless.

  “Viv, you coming or not?”

  Shaking her head, she refuses to look up. “I’m sorry, Harris. I can’t…”

  “Whattya mean, you can’t?”

  “I can’t,” she insists, curling her knees toward her chin. “I just… I can’t…”

  “You said you were okay.”

  “No, I said I didn’t want to be upstairs all by myself.” It’s the first time she faces me. Beads of sweat dot her face—even more than before. It’s not just from the heat.

  Viv looks up at the crack in the roof, then over at an emergency medical stretcher that’s leaning against the wall. Bolted above that is a metal utility box with a sign that says: In case of serious injury, open box and remove blanket. Right now, as the temperature rises past a hundred, a blanket’s the last thing we need—but Viv can’t take her eyes off it.

  “You should go,” she blurts.

  “No… if we split up—”

  “Please, Harris. Just go…”

  “Viv, I’m not the only one who thinks you can do it—your mom—”

  “Please don’t bring her up… not now…”

  “But if you—”

  “Go,” she insists, fighting back tears. “Find what they’re doing.”

  With everything we’ve been through in the past forty-eight hours, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Viv Parker completely paralyzed. I’m not sure if it’s the claustrophobia, her hyperventilating on the elevator, or just the simple, stark grasp of her own limitations, but as Viv buries her face in her knees, I’m reminded that the worst beatings we take are the ones we give ourselves.

  “Viv, if it makes you feel better, no one else would’ve made it this far. Nobody.”

  Her head stays buried in her knees.

  It wasn’t until my senior year of college—when my dad died—that I realized I wasn’t invulnerable. Viv’s learning it at seventeen. Of all the things I’ve taken from her, this is the one I’ll always hate myself for.

  I turn to leave, sloshing through the wet mud.

  “Take this,” she calls out. In her hand, she holds up the oxygen detector.

  “Actually, you should keep it here—just in case th—” She wings it through the air, directly at me. As I catch it, there’s a loud screeching noise behind her. The cage rumbles back to life, rising up the elevator shaft and disappearing through the ceiling. Last plane out.

  “If you want to leave,” I tell her, “just pick up the receiver and dial the—”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she insists. Even now she won’t completely give up. “Just find what they’re doing,” she says for the second time.

  I nod her way, and my helmet light draws an imaginary line up and down her face. As I spin back toward the tunnels, it’s the last good look I get.

  41

  SO CAN I GET YOU a room?” the woman behind the motel’s front desk asked.

  “Actually, I’m just looking for my friends,” Janos replied. “Have you seen—”

  “Doesn’t anyone just want to rent a room anymore?”

  Janos cocked his head slightly to the side. “Have you seen my friends—a white guy and a young black girl?”

  The woman cocked her head right back. “Those’re your friends?”

  “Yes. They’re my friends.”

  The woman was suddenly quiet.

  “They’re my friends from work—we were supposed to fly in together last night, but I got delayed and—” Janos cut himself off. “Listen, I got up at four A.M. for my flight this morning. Now are they upstairs or not? We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  “Sorry,” the woman said. “They already checked out.”

  Janos nodded. He figured as much, but he had to be sure. “So they’re already up there?” he added, pointing at the tall triangular building at the top of the hill.

  “Actually, I thought they said they were headed to Mount Rushmore first.”

  Janos couldn’t help but grin. Nice try, Harris.

  “They left over an hour ago,” the woman added. “But if you hurry, I’m sure you can catch them.”

  Nodding to himself, Janos stayed locked on the headframe as he headed for the door. “Yeah… I’m sure I can.”

  42

  TEN MINUTES LATER, I’m ankle-deep in runny mud that, as my light hits it, shines with a metallic rust color. I assume it’s just oil runoff from the engine that runs along the tracks, but to be safe, I stick to the sides of the cave, where the mud flow is lightest. All around me, the walls of the rocky cave are a patchwork of colors—brown, gray, rust, mossy green, and even some veins of white zigzag through them. Straight ahead, my light bounces off the jagged curves of the tunnel, slicing through the darkness like a spotlight through a black forest. It’s all I’ve got. One candle in a sea of silent darkness.

  The only thing making it worse is what I can actually see. Up above, along the ceiling of the tunnel, the rustiest pipes I’ve ever seen in my entire life are slick with water. It’s the same on the walls and the rest of the ceiling. At this depth, the air is so hot and humid, the cave itself sweats. And so do I. Every minute or so, a new wave of heat plows through the tunnel, dissipates, and starts again. In… and out. In… and out. It’s like the mine is breathing. At this depth, the air pressure forces its way to the nearest blowhole, and as another huge belch of heat vomits up through the shaft, I can’t help but feel that if this is the mouth of the mine, I’m standing right on its tongue.

  As I move in deeper, another burning yawn hits, even hotter than before. I feel it against my legs… my arms… at this point, even my teeth are sweating. I roll up my sleeves, but it doesn’t do any good. I was wrong before—this isn’t a sauna. With this heat… it’s an oven.

  Feeling my breathing quicken, and hoping it’s just from the temperature, I glance down at the oxygen detector: 18.8%. On the back, it says I need sixteen percent to live. The footprints ahead of me tell me at least two others have made the trek. For now, that’s good enough for me.

  Wiping the newest layer of sweat from my face, I spend ten minutes following the curve of the railroad tracks back through the tunnel—but unlike the brown and gray dreariness of the other parts, the walls back here are filled with red and white graffiti spray-painted directly on the rock: Ramp This Way… Lift Straight Ahead… 7850 Ramp… Danger Blasting. Each sign has an arrow pointing in a specific direction—but it’s not until I follow the arrows that I finally realize why. Up ahead, my light doesn’t disappear up the never-ending tunnel. Instead, it hits a wall. The straightaway’s over. Now there’s a fork in the road with five different choices. Shining the light on each one, I reread the signs and examine each new tunnel. Like before, four of them are caked in dried mud, while one’s wet and fresh. Danger Blasting. Damn.

  Retracing my steps, I open my wallet, pull out my bright pink California Tortilla Burrito Club card, and wedge it under a rock by the entrance of the tunnel I just left—the mining equivalent of leaving bread crumbs. If I can’t find my way out, it doesn’t matter how far in I get.

  Following the sign that says Danger Blasting, I make a sharp right into the tunnel, which I quickly realize is slightly wider than the rest. From there, I stick with the train tracks, following the soupy mud through a fork that goes left, and another that goes right. Spray-painted signs again point to Lift and 7850 Ramp, but the arrows are now pointing in different directions. To be safe, I put down more bread crumbs at each turn. My Triple-A card at the first left, the scrap of paper that holds my list of movies to rent at the next right. The distances aren’t far, but even after two minutes, the jagged walls… the muddy train tracks—everything in every direction looks alike. Without the wallet bread crumbs, I’d be lost in this labyrinth—and even with them, I’m still half expecting to turn the corner and be back by Viv. But as I make a left and wedge my gym membership card under a rock, my eye catches something I’ve never seen before.r />
  Dead ahead… less than thirty feet… the tunnel widens slightly on the right, making space for a narrow turnoff that holds a bright red mining car that looks like an ice-cream pushcart with a sail attached to the roof. Up close, the sail is nothing more than a plastic shower curtain, and on top, the cart is sealed by a circular door that looks like a hatch on a ship, complete with one of those rotating steering wheel twist locks. There’s clearly something inside—and whatever it is, if it’s important enough to put a lock on it, it’s important enough for me to open.

  Shoving the sail out of the way, I grip the steering wheel with both hands and give it a hard twist. Red paint cracks off in my hands, but the hatch lets out a metal thunk. With a strong tug, I crack the hatch and pull it open. The smell hits me first. Stronger than the acidic stench of vomit… sharper than bad cheese… Ugggh… Crap. Literally.

  Inside the hatch is a mound of juicy brown lumps. The whole cart’s filled with shit. Tons of it. Stumbling backward, I hold my nose and fight to keep myself from throwing up. Too late. My stomach heaves, my throat erupts, and a firehose of last night’s grilled cheese sprays across the earth. Bent over and grabbing my gut, I spray the ground two more times. All the blood rushes to my face as I spit out the last few chunks. My body lurches with one final dry heave… then another. By the time I open my eyes, my light’s shining off the long, extended strand of drool that dangles from my lower lip. I glance back up at the wagon, and it finally makes sense. The shower curtain’s for privacy; the hatch is the seat. Even this far underground, these guys still need a bathroom.

  Banging into the back wall, I fight for balance, my face still scrunched up from the whiff. I didn’t have time to close the hatch, and there’s no way I’m getting close enough to do it now. With a sharp shove, I push myself away from the wall and stagger back up the tunnel. On my left, there’s a shallow hole dug into the wall. My light shines directly into it, casting deep shadows along the jagged fangs of the hole. The light’s almost yellow in color. But as I pass the hole and continue even further into the cave, I’m surprised to see that the yellow tint is still there.