by Linda Conrad
He rammed his shoulder against the aging door and the lock gave. But when he stepped into the gloom ahead, a sudden shower of wood splinters shattered down around her head and shoulders.
Shakir grabbed her arm, pulled her inside and closed the door behind them. “That was a sniper’s bullet. Someone evidently spotted us.”
Someone was shooting at them? Ohmygod.
“Are you hurt?”
She brushed at the wood bits and pieces on her clothes. “I don’t think so. What are we going to do?” Her voice was a stage whisper full of fright. She couldn’t help it.
“We’ll leave the sniper to Tarik.” Shakir sounded calm and unruffled. “And you and I are going on to rescue your son.”
Shakir stood still for a second and got his bearings in the pitch darkness. Finally he gave up and reached for the NVGs. The old elevator stack smelled of decay and the effects of the elements.
They were standing on a metal landing and beside them was a rung ladder stretching down into the nothingness below. He might’ve been disappointed at not finding any visible signs of construction, nor any evidence of the children, except for the hum of mechanical equipment pulsating through his feet. Somewhere close by, below them in the earth, machines were running. Machines operated by humans. Either construction workers or soldiers. There must be a way in from here.
“Do you feel that?” he asked Nikki.
“Sort of. What is it?” But then he saw her peering down into the elevator shaft. “There’s something down there. Tiny rays of light and something else I can’t tell… We have to go down.”
He agreed. This time, he intended to protect her with the full resources of his body. Starting below, he tested out the sturdiness of the ladder. It seemed solid enough. After taking the first ten steps down, he moved to the side and let her step onto the ladder, too.
His heart stilled as he hoped to hell the ladder would support them both. When it did and she was completely on the ladder, his heart started up again while he grabbed hold of the rungs above her head, covering her body with his own. If anyone shot at them now, he would be the one to take the hit.
It was difficult crabbing their way down the ladder in such a cautious fashion. And the closer to the bottom they came, the louder the hum of machines and the more the vibrations seemed to shake the entire shaft.
At odd moments, he felt as if the whole elevator building would come crashing down around their heads in a shower of split boards and sawdust. It took about twenty minutes of difficult descent but at last they came to another landing and another door that Shakir felt sure must be below ground level.
He shoved Nikki to safety on one side of the door, withdrew his semi-automatic and tried the knob. It wasn’t locked. That made him bloody well nervous.
But they had no choice except to move on. They could not go backward. At this point that sniper may have already called in an alarm and a whole regiment could be waiting on the other side of the door for them to reappear.
Shakir put his back against the wall and used a back handed grip on the knob to open the door. The hinges squeaked a bit, but the door opened with little trouble. Sounds of machinery filled the musty air. He peeked inside and found a poorly lit room filled with equipment.
“What is this place?” Nikki asked in a raised voice to be heard over the din.
He could only guess. “I suspect they’re using the elevator shaft for ventilation. And this is the air handling equipment. But this room’s in another underground building. New construction with a concrete floor. There must be another entrance.”
Taking her by the hand, he wound their way past the many air handlers and whirring fan motors. Some of the equipment looked large enough to power an entire city.
Under an eerily lit red sign written in the Russian language, he found the exit door. After another moment of extreme caution, he opened the door and they stepped out. They found themselves in a massive but empty hallway with low lighting and a long stretch of tile floor. It also looked like new construction.
But it felt too open. Too unprotected. He didn’t like moving into a space that was so exposed. But then again, the choice was going forward or nothing.
He flipped off the NVGs and took a few steps. “Hug the wall and stay behind me,” he told her.
They traveled a few yards but found no doorways or offshoot hallways. Continuing straight ahead, he finally spotted what looked like the doors to an interior elevator at the end of the hall.
Not good. At any moment those doors could slide open and they would be as good as dead.
Moving even more carefully now, they inched on, one step at a time.
Just before they reached the elevator doors, they came to an alcove and another short hallway off to a right angle of where they stood. Two or three closed doors were visible, leading off the smaller hall.
“What is that thing?” Nikki pulled her hand from his grip and started down the smaller, dimmer corridor.
“Nik, wait!” But her attention was riveted to something unknown on the floor, and she acted as if she didn’t even hear him call.
This was a terrible time for her to go off on her own and lose focus. Shakir turned the corner, too, and hurried after her.
He took bigger steps and came up behind her fast. But as he stretched out his hand to take her by the shoulder, she bent over out of his reach as she picked the object up off the floor.
“Oh, dear God.” Crumbling to her knees, she gasped and doubled over.
“What is it?” Shakir gently pulled her back to her feet and tried to see what she was holding.
She finally looked up at him, unshed tears welling in her eyes, and opened her hand. He couldn’t see what the object was at first, but took it from her to study.
When at last he recognized the focus of her pain, his knees wobbled under him, too. For there in his palm lay a little boy's tiny toy soldier.
Chapter 12
“Is it his? William’s?”
Nikki could barely breathe. “Yes. No. I don’t know. It could be.”
Even if it wasn’t her son’s toy, the mere sight of the tiny soldier had made her realize how real everything was. This was no war game they were playing. Real children were in danger. Her son. Other mothers’ sons.
Why hadn’t they brought along an entire army to back them up against such evil?
The sound of elevator doors sliding open captured her attention. She looked to Shakir to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. He put his finger to his lips and backed them up to a doorway.
Before she could begin to worry, he wrapped an arm around her waist and ducked into whatever room lay behind the door. After letting her loose, he waited with his ear to the door and his gun in his hand. She stood still behind him, but glanced around to check the room where they’d taken refuge.
Not so much a room as it was a tiny lobby, they’d stepped into the maintenance hall where anyone could access both an elevator and a stairwell. She didn’t like standing in front of another elevator doorway. But until Shakir gave the signal, she was afraid to move.
“They’ve walked past the alcove,” he said in the low voice she was becoming accustomed to hearing. “Going to the air handler room, is my guess. I hope they’re not searching for us.”
When he turned and saw the maintenance elevator, he punched the call button before she could caution him against it. “We need to know how many floors we’re dealing with.”
The doors slid open in a moment and Shakir ducked his head inside to study the call button panel. “Ten floors.” He jerked himself back out of the way of the closing doors without touching anything in the process. “We know we didn’t climb down any ten floors in that wooden elevator shaft.”
He flicked a glance at the stairwell, with stairs going both up and down. “Stand here and be quiet for one second.” With that remark, he sprinted up the stairs.
She waited, but her legs were shaking so badly it was hard to stay quiet. Her teeth chattered with cold fea
r.
She didn’t have to wait long. In a few minutes Shakir was back on her level.
“It’s only one flight up. There must be eight floors below us. That’s pretty deep into the mountain.”
“Where are the children? Which floor?”
She could see him almost rolling his eyes at her inane question, but he held back. “No way to know until we try them all. I’m fairly sure they aren’t on this level. You?”
“I agree. This floor seems to be mostly equipment. What did you see upstairs?”
“Another lobby. But that floor looks like the entrance to the whole works. From what I could tell, they’ve disguised the access to this building behind one of the old vent houses.”
“So we go down.” She turned and headed for the stairwell.
“Hold it.” Shakir took her arm. “Let me go first, do the checking. I suspect my instincts have been more finely honed than yours.”
She actually felt like smiling. “You don’t know much about a mother’s instincts, do you?”
“No. I don’t. But I wish…” The sadness in his unfinished answer threw her off for a moment. “Never mind. I still need to go first.”
Standing aside, she let him creep down the stairs in front of her without asking him to finish his thought. She held on to his belt buckle and tried not to trip as they descended as silently as possible.
When they peeked through the door on the next level down, Nikki was surprised to see a maze of hallways and doors. The floor wasn’t built in the same configuration as the one above. Not at all.
“This looks like a possibility,” Shakir told her. “But I want to see what’s below us before we wander around these halls too much.”
Nikki bounced on her toes, eager to search. But as Shakir started down the stairs again, she kept up with him.
The next floor down was totally different again. This time the one giant space seemed to be under construction. Sawhorses, wallboards, pieces of tile strewn around, the rooms on this floor obviously were not finished. But she couldn’t see any workmen. The place was deserted.
“Wait here.” Once again Shakir raced down the stairs without her.
“There’s nothing below us but more construction,” he said when he was back by her side. “Levels one through six are inaccessible via this stairwell. I’d bet that’s where they’re building the centrifuge.”
“That deep underground?”
Shakir inhaled deeply and blew out a breath. “All the better to keep it a secret from the world.”
“These really are very bad people, aren’t they?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew.
“I need to contact Tarik, but I’m not sure I can reach him from this far underground.” Shakir stood a moment and seemed to be debating a new plan. “Let’s go back up to the floor under construction. I think I spied something there that could help us.”
Shakir paused as they stepped through the doorway to the unfinished floor. At least he was sure they had the right floor narrowed down. The children had to be one flight up in one of the many rooms on that level. But which room? He and Nikki couldn’t very well go up and down the halls brazenly checking every room.
It was a good bet that Captain Baghel already knew about the two foreigners on the facility grounds. But from this depth in the earth, Shakir could not talk to Tarik on their military style comm unit so he could find out for sure. He couldn’t reach his brother by satellite phone, either. Not from here.
“What are we doing?” Nikki’s voice held a combination of bravado and reckless agitation.
He knew she was growing more and more impatient to find her son. Shakir didn’t blame her. But he couldn’t allow her to become careless.
“We’re taking the long way going up one level.”
Her face became a puzzle of confusion and agitation. But she clamped her mouth shut as she followed him to the outer wall of the one big space. They clung to the unpainted wall while they crept farther into the room, but stayed well away from the center. If anyone happened upon them, they could take cover more easily this way.
When they closed in on the farthest corner, Shakir was pleased to see that he’d guessed right. A workman had walked away from the job, leaving the ceiling panels off and the air ducts wide open.
“Here we go.” He looked up at the opening, judging how much space was available.
“You’re nuts.” She was staring up at the opening, too. “We can’t go up there. You can’t go. The ceiling won’t hold you.”
“Only one way to find out.” It wasn’t much of a jump for him to grab hold of the duct’s framing and swing himself up. Another good swing of his legs and he was crouching inside the five-by-five aluminum sheet metal air duct.
“Seems to be holding fine. I guess the Taj aren’t half bad at fabricating metalworks. Everybody has to be good at something.”
She didn’t laugh. Not even a smile.
“Yeah, not too funny. Considering the circumstances.” He rolled over until he was lying flat out on his stomach with his arms reaching down through the opening. “Catch hold of my arms. I’ll lift you up.”
Looking more than a little skeptical, she didn’t hesitate for long before she did as he asked. He was impressed by her. She was a real soldier, following his command no matter what she must be thinking. He was beginning to admire everything about her. In addition to being gorgeous and sexy, tough and loving, she was also a survivor.
He already knew that he loved her. But this new awareness of her was something out of his experience. It was something for him to study and mull over—later.
Shakir grabbed her arms and pulled her up into the duct with no trouble. “This is only halfway. We need to be up yet another level. Think you can do it again?”
She didn’t say anything, but her eyes were wide as she nodded.
Their next maneuver was a little trickier. They had to shimmy through the ductwork to reach the next floor without being seen.
This time he urged her to climb up his body and stand on his shoulders in order to go through the metal tunnel. Nikki looked unsure, but stepped lightly on his knees and then on his shoulders, and she did it without complaints. In minutes they were both sitting inside the ductwork for the next floor, above the maze of hallways and offices.
Of course the ductworks were a giant maze of met al, too. But there was enough light to see, coming in through the air vents. He reached into the pocket of his pack and took out a red marker.
Handing it to her, he said, “We’ll have to crawl, but mark an arrow midway up the metal every time you turn a corner. We’ll try to make only right turns. That way we shouldn’t have any trouble finding our way back.”
“I don’t want to come back. Not without my child. And I don’t think we can fit all the boys into the ducts.”
“Let’s just find them first. Then I’ll worry about getting them out. In the meantime, I want you to wait here while I go contact Tarik. I should be able to communicate with him from the next floor up.”
“I can’t stand to wait. Not when I’m this close. Please let me go.”
He pressed his lips together, torn between wanting to keep her safe and letting her go ahead without him. “All right. But go slowly and make no noise. Stop at every vent and check each room. Make sure you leave the marks so I can find you.”
She touched a hand to his cheek. “Thank you, Shakir. Thank you for believing in me and bringing me this far. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
His cheek burned where her hand lay. His throat closed. He reached up and placed his palm against her hand.
Finally he saw the look in her eyes. “I see what you’re thinking. Do not, under any circumstances, try this rescue alone, Nik. If you find the boys before I return, wait for me. My life would be worthless if I lost you. And where would your son be if you died? He has no one else.”
This cramped place was all wrong for a confession. And the timing was ridiculous. But it had to be no
w.
“William has someone else,” Nikki told him softly. “He has a father.”
Shakir sat back on his heels and stared at her. “I thought…”
“You are William’s father.” There, that wasn’t so hard. Except for the sudden hard look in Shakir’s eyes.
“I know this is a surprise, but I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you.” She raced ahead, the words tumbling from her mouth. “I’m sorry you didn’t know before, but I…”
Shakir put out his hand to stop her. “I understand. No need to say more.” The way he was looking at her made her feel small. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Nik, I swear it. But if it makes you feel better, I would have no qualms about becoming your boy’s guardian if necessary. You don’t have to worry. I’d take care of him as if he were my own son.”
He thought she was lying? “Shakir, listen, please.”
Turning away, Shakir spoke quietly over his shoulder. “Don’t get into any trouble until I return. If you find William, just hold on. I won’t be long. Stay safe.”
And then he was gone, moving away into the dusky light of the air duct.
A full parade of emotions marched over her, one sentiment at a time. Frustration. Anger. Disappointment. And finally, complete incredulity.
She wanted to yell. Wanted to scream at his retreating figure and forget the damned circumstances. But she kept her mouth shut for her son’s sake.
Shakir didn’t believe her. She’d waited so long, all those years, afraid to tell him. And for days she’d been dreaming of which words she could use and what his reaction would be. Now that she’d told him the truth, she was faced with this ridiculous development. What could she do to convince him?
Sitting there, muttering under her breath, she wondered which of them was crazy. Wouldn’t a normal man either dread the idea of fatherhood or totally accept it? When a man was told the truth as she had told Shakir, wouldn’t he at least entertain the idea? Or perhaps deny it outright? Or at least want to know more?
