The Pit (The Bugging Out Series Book 4)

by Noah Mann

  She was wise without the pretense. Smart without the superiority. Simply spoken and self-assured. There was a lot to like about Lieutenant Angela Schiavo. And even more to respect.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Then we went inside together. The next time we stepped outside we’d be on our way to the pit to wrest the children from Kuratov’s grip.

  Thirty Nine

  Schiavo’s team moved north from the X barrier that blocked the dirt road. I moved east and circled past the slope that led to the pit’s main entrance. The group assigned to cover that potential escape point numbered ten, including Martin and Perkins.

  And Elaine.

  There was no time for greetings or well wishes or final words to each other. There was only a look. Apology and love and frustration and fear volleying between us through only that visual connection.

  I had no idea if I’d finally crossed some line with her that could not be ignored. This might be the end, even if we both came out of it alive. And that was all right as long as she still had a life ahead.

  She looked away first. Back to the wide entrance door. I continued on, trying not to glance back. But I did. I wanted to catch as many glimpses of her as I could before everything began. And I did. Again and again. Taking in the sight of her until I crossed a small ridge and she was gone from sight.

  * * *

  By Grishin’s watch it was six thirty on the dot when a sharp clank resonated through the hatch from below.

  I stood just to the side of the square hatch covering the dump shaft, my AR ready, set on single shot, the suppressor aimed at where the opening would appear. A second later it tipped upward and a Russian soldier with rosy cheeks poked his head through. He never even knew I was there.

  A single muffled shot from my AR slammed his head to the right and his body dropped from view, slender hydraulic lifters holding the hatch open. I stepped close and aimed down into the shaft. Some weak light below cast over the body of the man I’d just shot, heaped on the concrete floor, a pair of MRE pouches at his side. I counted to five, waiting for anyone else to appear. No one did. Grishin hadn’t lied. Only one comrade of his came to meet him each night. That was what he’d said, and that, it appeared, was what had come to pass.

  Six minutes...

  That was how much time I had to get into position before Schiavo and her unit breached the farthest skylight. I wasted no more time, slinging my AR and climbing down into the dump shaft, stepping as softly as I could upon the rungs. In less than a minute I covered the fifty foot descent and planted my boots on the floor next to the dead Russian.

  A single light glowed at what seemed half power in the space I’d entered. The solar arrays and fuel cells powering the facility were not operating at full capacity, a fact that didn’t surprise me considering the rush job that had been done during construction on everything else, the support systems included. Even in this room I could see cracks on the ceiling and the walls. Too many, I thought. I still wasn’t close to the weakened corridor that Martin had described. That, I’d hoped, had been localized. I was beginning to fear the conditions that caused it was not.

  I dragged the body clear of the ladder and moved to the door. A corridor led from it, and, from memory, I knew which way I had to go, and where the turns were. I had just under five minutes to cover the distance that should only take three, but I set out with haste, wanting as much extra time as possible to deal with the threats that would certainly be waiting where the children were.

  But as I made my first turn, the time table, and how I’d hoped my part of the mission would unfold, were both made impossible by what I found myself facing.

  Roots, dry and knotted, hung from the structure’s ceiling, their dead bark scraping my face as I pushed through. Everything I was seeing, especially in this section of the pit, screamed haste, and corner cutting. Cranston and his people had put the pedal to the metal, pushing construction crews past the point where they could execute the plans properly.

  I’d seen the same result many times in my old life as a contractor and builder. The subterranean behemoth around me was crumbling, bit by bit, and had begun to even before the blight reached this northern landscape. Roots continued to grow until killed by the death reaching down from above. They cracked the substandard concrete, invading any space they could reach. Suspended now like some tangle of jungle vines they slowed my progress as I had to push through the lacework of dead vegetation.

  What section was I in? I tried to remember from the plans Cranston had provided. Everything had been numbered. Rooms were labeled Chamber 639 or Chamber 138. Why they’d chosen that terminology to describe a room, a simple space, I didn’t know, though, to me, it evoked images of confinement more than contentment.

  As I’d told the others, this was a prison, in essence. To keep locked away those whose only act of merit was surviving.

  I made my way through the thickest vines, a wall that had not been cracked or undermined appearing. There was a number on it. The remnants of some marking mostly spared from the intrusion of dead roots and the water that had once nourished them.

  648...

  Chamber 648. I tried to place myself by recalling the blueprints. Two corridors and a series of chambers lay somewhere beyond the clogged passageway I was in. One wall was bulged where I passed, evidence of a near complete structural failure just waiting to happen.

  That was the worst possible thing I could find where I stood.

  This was the way I would have to bring the children out. And beyond having to navigate them through the dead growth impeding the path toward our exit, everything around me, ceiling, walls, and floor, were liable to have already collapsed when I detonated the charge to prevent Kuratov’s men from reaching this section of the pit. A sympathetic failure set off by shockwaves from the detonation was almost certain, I could see.

  Everything that had been complicated to begin with had just turned near impossible.

  I put that realization out of my thoughts and focused. Nothing would matter if I could not first get to the children, and then secure them, so I pressed on. The slowing lace of gnarled roots thinned the further I traveled. But something stopped me as I neared what I believed was the final corner I would have to turn before reaching the children.

  Crying.

  A child crying. And someone speaking to them in stilted, inflected English.

  “Eat,” the man said. “Is good. Eat and stop cry.”

  The child cried more. Other small voices tried to comfort their upset friend. Our estimation—our guess—had been right. Whether that had happened through some collective analysis on our part, or divine intervention, I didn’t care. The children were here.

  I glanced at Grishin’s watch on my wrist. Ten seconds remained. I eased toward the corner, my AR’s suppressed muzzle pointed at the ceiling.

  “Eat!”

  The Russian shouted the instruction. More children cried. I slid my finger onto the trigger.

  Five seconds...

  “Eat now!”

  Three...

  I breathed.

  Two...

  I stepped away from the wall and brought my AR to bear, lowering the muzzle and swinging it around the corner in a fluid motion.

  One...

  My eyes lined up on the sights atop my weapon, peripheral vision registering the presence of children and blankets and buckets to one side of my target. But dead ahead, through the sight atop my AR, a small illuminated triangle rested just below the shoulder of a Russian soldier, a solid wall beyond him.

  Zero...

  I adjusted my aim upward just a tick and squeezed the trigger, a sharp crack and low rumble rolling through the structure around me. The Russian never even moved. My shot, from a distance of thirty feet, punched in his right ear and exited out the left, spraying the wall with a grotesque mix that I knew would horrify the children.

  They screamed and I advanced, my weapon sweeping left and right, searching for any more threats. I gave a
quick wave to the weeping and terrified children, hoping to calm them.

  For one the gesture worked.

  “Fletch!” Krista shouted.

  I cleared a space adjoining the chamber which held the children. It was a room, not large, but it was jammed with cases and cases of MREs. Another opening led to a bathroom, its toilet hopelessly clogged, the stench it spread into the area as a whole just registering.

  “Fletch, it’s you!”

  Krista bolted up and ran at me as gunfire erupted in the distance. A measure between two points that was warped by corridors and turns and sounds reflecting off walls made of cheap concrete. But they were distinct enough. American and Russian weapons. Dull thuds of grenades.

  Schiavo’s unit was engaged in battle.

  “Fletch, you’re here!”

  Krista threw her arms around me. I took a moment from the task at hand and hugged her with one arm.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” I assured her. “We’re going to get out of here. All of us.”

  The fire in the distance grew more frantic. And louder. The battle was shifting this way, a sign that was both positive and frightening. Kuratov’s men were retreating. But they were retreating in this direction.

  “Krista, get back with the other children, okay?”

  She backed away, the joy that had overwhelmed her fading away.

  “What is it, Fletch?”

  I had to think. And fast. There was no way I could get this many frightened children to the dump shaft before Kuratov’s men reached us. Many were in shock. The escape part of the plan, of my plan, simply wasn’t going to work.

  And now the folly of what I’d insisted upon became clear. I was one man. There could be a dozen or more charging in my direction at this very moment. While the decision to enter alone made sense if everything had gone as planned, the odds of that happening should have been clear enough to make me reconsider my insistence on that point. And now I was going to pay for it.

  As were the children.

  Unless...

  Unless I could prevent the Russians from reaching this part of the pit. My thoughts flashed back to the weakened structure. I’d planned on setting a charge in the corridor fifty feet beyond the Chamber 662. I could still do that, I knew. It would collapse that passage, but also the escape route. We would be cut off. Entombed.

  But we would be alive.

  Those outside would know that. They would move heaven and earth to dig the children out.

  And that was that. My decision came that fast. It was the only way.

  “Krista, everyone, listen to me,” I said.

  More than half of the children, mostly the youngest, cried and whimpered uncontrollably. But several of the older ones, Krista included, focused on me, forcing their fear and tears down for the moment.

  “I want you to get all the little ones back into that corner,” I said, as gunfire drew closer and closer. “You have to get—”

  In an instant, seeing only the expression on Krista’s face change, I knew that I’d made a terrible calculation. Yes, I’d killed the Russian guarding the children. It turned out, though, another had now come.

  “Move away from the children,” the voice said behind me, in deeply accented English. “We wouldn’t want them to get hurt.”

  Tears welled in Krista’s eyes. The man must have run ahead of Kuratov’s retreating force to get his comrade, or to bring the children forward as hostages. Whatever his reason for being here was, it didn’t matter. He had the drop on me.

  “I do not want to hurt the children,” the man said, a hint of that warrior’s code I’d feared was lost still present in this soldier.

  My AR was slung. My hands were away from my body. Any move toward my rifle, or the Springfield on my hip, would be my last.

  I stepped to the side, keeping my hands in the open, rotating slowly until I was facing the Russian. Behind him, the battle was growing louder. Shouts could be heard. Commands in Russian. Cries of pain.

  “Goodbye,” the Russian said, his AK leveled at my chest.

  My last thought right then was not one of disappointment. Or regret. It was of Elaine. I pictured her, and held that image, waiting for the weapon aimed at me to spit its fire and death.

  “Uurghhh.”

  The sound gurgled from the Russian and his eyes bulged, body trembling suddenly, the AK slipping from his grip and falling to the floor. He jerked once, then twice, and dropped vertically, like a marionette whose strings had been snipped. When his body hit the floor and tipped toward me I saw the handle of a combat knife protruding from the base of his skull.

  And I saw Elaine standing a few inches behind where the Russian had been ready to kill me just seconds before.

  “Christ...”

  It was all I could manage to say. She stepped toward me and reached to my face. Her hand was smeared with blood, but I didn’t care one bit when she put it to my cheek and left it there for a brief second.

  “We’ll never get them out through that mess,” Elaine said.

  She’d obviously decided, at some point, to ignore my plea. Following me into the pit she’d made her way through the same tangled roots and weakened corridors. Obstacles of impossibility.

  “Can we hold them off?” she asked. “Just the two of us?”

  I shook my head and handed her my AR.

  “You stay with the children,” I said, taking the small block of plastic explosives and the short fuse from a pouch on my vest. “I’m going to take that corridor down.”

  Ricochets sounded in the near distance. The very near distance.

  “Cover that passageway,” I told Elaine.

  “You’ll never reach the corridor,” she said. “They’ve already reached it. Can’t you hear that?”

  I leaned in fast and kissed her, then pulled back.

  “I don’t have time to explain,” I said. “Just keep the kids in the back corner and fire down that corridor. Keep them pinned away from here. I need one minute. Then take cover.”

  “But—”

  I never heard what she said, if she completed the statement at all. I ran around the corner and down the passageway I’d come through, fixing the fuse into the powerful charge as I moved. In thirty seconds I’d reached the section where the walls and ceiling were threatening to crumble. Just a stiff breath would send them tumbling.

  I had more than that.

  I set the charge at the base of the bulging wall and popped the igniter on the fuse. The stiff yellow cord sizzled. Sparks spread from its end as the fire that would detonate the blasting cap crept swiftly down toward the explosive block.

  Then, I ran, bulling my way through the roots, moving away from where Elaine and the children were. I could never reach that space in twenty seconds. All I could do was get as far away from the weakened area as possible and find a solid corner.

  And pray.

  I never found that corner. Coming through an open doorway into a chamber less than fifty feet from the charge I was slammed through the air and into a wall as the blast wave from the explosion hit me. My body fell to the floor and I pulled my arms and legs into a tight ball, hoping to absorb the collapse that was happening all around me, weak light going out as the structure fell in on itself.

  And on me.

  Forty

  I could barely move. Two slabs had splintered from the ceiling and come down, striking the floor and toppling into me as clouds of pulverized concrete swirled, choking and blinding me momentarily. Nothing felt broken. No bones seemed to be crushed. It was simply that most of my lower half was pinned in the corner of the space I’d hoped would protect me from the blast.

  From my vest I managed to retrieve a small flashlight. Its beam clicked on to reveal just what I faced.

  Jagged sections of what had been the structure of the chamber lay just a few feet over my head, smaller chunks angled across my lower half. I shifted the beam to examine the area around me, what there was of it. A void about the size of a compact’s car’s inter
ior surrounded me. No light penetrated through any cracks. No sound. And, I feared, no air.

  I was buried alive.

  The explosion had done what I’d hoped in this spot. I could only hope that a sympathetic collapse had spread to the weakened corridor where Kuratov’s men were. There was the possibility that Schiavo’s unit might be close enough to suffer the effects as well, but the choice I’d made was to try and save the children. The chamber that held them appeared solid from the brief time I’d spent in it. No obvious cracks. No intrusion by dead vegetation. No water seepage. With any luck the children, and Elaine, would be alive and well, awaiting rescue.

  My fate, I knew, was likely different from theirs.

  No one knew where I was. I’d dashed off through twisting hallways to a room I’d never intended to set foot in. And that room, which had collapsed around me, along with much of the structure nearby, was now my tomb.

  The situation was bleak.

  But it was not hopeless.

  There’s always hope...

  Yes, there was. I could not dig my way out. The size and weight of what had fallen around me was beyond my ability to move. But I could do something. Until the last breath left me.

  I reached to the floor next to me and grabbed a length of rebar that had snapped during the collapse. Shed of its concrete cloak, I lifted the steel rod and slammed it onto the surface of a slab. The strike resonated sharply, echoing metallically in the confines of the space. Whether it would be heard beyond that, I had no idea.

  But I had hope.

  Again I drew the rod back and hit the slab. And again. And again.

  * * *

  My flashlight was dying. A glance at Grishin’s watch, which had survived the collapse with little more than a scratch on its glass, showed me that I’d been down here for eight hours. For seven of those I’d slammed the piece of rebar over and over against the concrete slab. But my strength was gone. I was spent.

  The air was growing hot, and moist. It tasted almost sick with each breath I took. Dust caked my lips. The inside of my mouth was painfully dry. But other than the reality that I was slowly suffocating, my body had come through the event remarkably well. Even my legs, immobilized beneath a pair of concrete slabs, were not damaged. I could move them slightly. They hadn’t been crushed.