Knights of Black Swan, Books 7-9 (Knights of Black Swan Box Set Book 3)

by Victoria Danann

  Torn knew he didn’t have a choice. His hands were sweaty from the fear and they’d be slipping even if he still had the strength to hold himself up. Which he didn’t.

  “Do no’ let me go!” And with that his hands slipped off the rebar.

  As Glen predicted, he dropped and swung like a pendulum across the face wall. Fortunately he stayed close enough to the wall so that the impact didn’t break bones. He was able to use his legs to create a braking effect and stop the swing back, just like rappelling – as Glen had said.. When his body came to a rest, his team mates started to pull him up.

  Yanov and the other government employees who had been working as guards had grabbed the cable to help pull Torn up. The cord bit into their hands and stung, but after seven long minutes of pain and strain, they brought Torn up and over the top of the flimsy little guardrail.

  He collapsed on the sand and gravel parking lot, as did Glen and Gun.

  Yanov said something to Glen in Bulgarian, which he didn’t understand, then remembered he needed to speak English. “Give me your keys. He needs water.”

  Without sitting up, Glen dug into his pants pocket and retrieved the keys to the equipment vehicle. Yanov had seen him take bottled waters out of the trunk so he went straight there hoping to find more. And, yes, there was a carton of twenty-four minus those that Glen had passed out at lunch. He grabbed an armful and hurried back to the knights as fast as he could.

  Glen crawled over and raised Torn’s upper body enough so he could drink water without choking. He slowly gave Torn water until he’d consumed two entire bottles.

  Torn looked around, “Where’s…?” Then he remembered. “Oh gods no.”

  Glen and Gun looked at each other, then at Yanov. “We’re going to need your best engineers to figure out how to dig them out before they run out of air.”

  Yanov’s sad eyes didn’t change expression and he stood unmoving. “Forgive me for saying so, but it seems very unlikely that…”

  “I don’t know how you do things here,” Gun said, “but we don’t leave people behind until we’re absolutely sure they can’t be saved. Right now we’re not sure of anything except that our people are trapped and we can’t see or hear them.”

  “I understand and am very sorry to be the one to inform you, but I do not believe the Bulgarian government will incur the expense. Even if they would…”

  “Even if they would? What?”

  “The scaffolding would have to be rebuilt to support heavy digging equipment. Even with funding and permission to proceed, I don’t think it could be accomplished in time, while sufficient air remains.”

  Glen scowled at Yanov. “I’ve seen reports of mine collapses on the news. Don’t they have a way of boring through rubble to communicate with people who might be trapped? And to run an oxygen hose?”

  Yanov cocked his head to the side like he was interested. “Truthfully I cannot answer those questions. That is far outside my area of expertise and I’m not familiar with new developments in the field.”

  Glen turned to Gun. “You gonna call it in?” Gun stared at Glen. “You’re the honcho.”

  Gun shook his head while continuing to stare at Glen. “That’s ludicrous. I’m ‘honcho’ in name only. When Torn’s not in charge,” he glanced at Torn, who was still lying on his back staring at the sky like he’d seen a miracle, “that would be you.”

  “Me?”

  “Not to mention the fact that, of the three of us, which one actually knows the Director personally?”

  Glen returned Gun’s stare that was half determination and half plea then turned aside pulling out his phone as he walked away.

  Gun walked over and squatted next to Torn. Without looking over at Gun Torn asked, “The kid makin’ the call?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I feel funny no’ knowin’ if Raif is alive or hurt or… Well, just no’ knowin’. I was just thinkin’ about the first time I met him. We were about the same age Glen is now. We’d both been in trouble and were bein’ sent to the Yucatan on chupacabra duty as a punishment.

  “I remember my Sovereign sayin’ with a smile that there’s only one thin’ worse than goin’ after vampire and that’s chupa huntin’. Nasty creatures to be sure. Wily and way too many teeth for a species that lives on land.

  “Raif and I, we got on the same plane in Phoenix and,” he stopped and chuckled like he was reliving a good time, “you remember when they used to have the big reclinin’ chairs on tracks so that the seatin’ could be reconfigured?”

  Gun nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Well, we hit turbulence in flight. The truly frightenin’ sort that reminds you that human bein’s are no’ meant to be sling shottin’ around the globe in a hunk of metal. A hunk of metal whose integrity depends on whether or no’ some welder had a fight with his wife.

  “So I was grippin’ the arm rests with white knuckles and tellin’ Paddy I’d be a good boy if I lived to tell the tale. All the while, bins and compartments ‘round the plane were flyin’ open and slammin’ shut.

  “Then I hear this war cry whoop. I look over and see that Raif has released the brake that kept his chair in place. So every time the plane shifted, his chair would run up and back on the tracks. He’d slide one way and come to a slammin’ stop like bumper cars. Then slide back the other. He was laughin’ so hard.

  “Naturally I did no’ want to be left out. So I looked around for the release on my own chair. In seconds the two of us were ridin’ the storm out. Literally.” Torn chuckled again. “I forgot all about bein’ afraid. He made big fun out of scary flyin’.

  “You know it was right after that that somebody decided the chairs should no’ be on tracks.

  “He was so full o’ life back then. Three years later, we’d both hit the wall of foolishness past which there is no tolerance. We were both assigned to Z Team in Marrakesh, but I did no’ know he’d also be there until I looked up and saw him comin’. I was so pissin’ glad to see him. I could no’ keep the grin off my face.

  “At the time, the other two on Z Team were old fuckups in their mid-thirties who’d been assigned to that cesspool so long they did no’ even bother to bathe. After Raif had a day or so to get his bearin’s, he realized what kind of consequence we’d got ourselves into. So you know what he said?

  “Well, here we are, brother and, no doubt, we deserve it. So let us go find out who imports tequila and get tattoos.”

  They heard steps crunching on gravel and looked up to see Glen approaching. “The Director says they’ll take it from here. He says everything that can be done will be done, for us to sit tight at the hotel after we get Torn cleared by medics. They’ll keep us informed. Play by play.”

  “The Director said ‘play by play’?”

  “No. That was a paraphrase. Sue me.”

  “I do no’ need to be poked and prodded by medics. I need Margaritas.”

  “Yeah? Then how come you’re still lying down in a parking lot looking like your body just smacked into the side of a mountain?”

  “You’re a funny kid. He’s a funny kid, is he no’, Gun?”

  “Hysterical, Torn. Let’s get you to the car and then decide about the clinic.”

  “I’m no’ goin’ anywhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m no’ leavin’ here until Raif comes out of that hole.”

  Gun and Glen looked at each other. Gun cleared his throat. “I get the sentiment, brother. I love him, too. But setting up camp here in this parking lot? It’s not going to bring him back sooner.”

  “No’ the point and you know it.”

  “What is the point, then?”

  Torn didn’t answer. After a long pause, Glen said, “Do you feel like it would be kind of a betrayal to leave?”

  Torn didn’t answer, but Glen could see his jaw clenched.

  Glen nodded, mostly to himself. “Here’s the deal. Our orders,” he motioned between Gun and himself, “are to take you to a hospital and make s
ure there’s no concussion or breakage. After that, we’ve been told to go to the hotel and wait. That’s exactly what we’re going to do even if we have to drug you to get you to the car.”

  Torn shot a death glare at Glen, who had started to look and sound a lot like authority.

  Glen continued. “However, after we’ve gotten a med green light, and, after you’ve gone back to the hotel for a nap and a meal, I’ll bring you back here until it gets dark.”

  Torn seemed to be thinking about that. “Paddy. He’s goin’ to be cold in there. That hole feels like a meat locker.”

  “Well,” Gun said. “He’s not alone. Maybe they’ll call a survival truce and keep each other warm.”

  CHAPTER 18

  “My little tangents!” She shouted as if the incredulity of it couldn’t be grasped by the human brain.

  “You know, this is exactly why they don’t allow women in mines.”

  Mercy gaped. “You’re saying you think the collapse is my fault? Because I’m a woman?!? You’re supposed to be an educated person, regardless of appearance to the contrary. I know that you of all people do not believe that superstitious nonsense.”

  He turned to her with an expression that was so smug it was smarmy. “I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about the fact that no one wants to die with fucking yammering and shrieking hurting their ears.” His face was inches away from hers by the time he finished his tirade. “Bitches and their runny mouths!”

  “You really are an imbecile, you know that?”

  “Maybe, but this imbecile is your only hope of getting out of here alive, Your Royal Cuntness.”

  “You did not just say that.”

  “I did.” He got right in her face and grinned as he said it, but she didn’t miss the way his eyes lowered to her mouth and lingered there a little too long.

  She backed away a couple of feet and regarded him warily. After a lengthy pause, she responded with a quiet calm he hadn’t expected. “That really was an ugly thing to say.”

  He turned his back to her and took a deep breath. When he felt like he had his emotions under control, he turned back.

  “I was trying to tell you that we need to take care of a couple of things. First, are you hurt?”

  She stopped and took inventory. There was a stinging on her leg. She angled the headlamp toward it. When she put the light on it, she could see that it was a scrape that needed some cleaning and some antibiotic salve, but not stitches.

  Raif bent to take a close look. “Is that the worst of it?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Really fine or macho fine?”

  He looked up at her. “I have no idea what ‘macho fine’ is?”

  “It’s that thing men do when they don’t want to make an effort to communicate or when they feel all depends on preserving a delusion of being super-human.”

  “Delusion, huh. Got it all figured out, don’t you?”

  “Is that what you’re doing? Are you hurt somewhere?”

  He turned a smile her way that she could read as wicked even through the dust. “Are you wanting an excuse to check me over? Inch by inch?”

  “Okay. Not hurt. I believe you. What’s second on your agenda?”

  “Second is preserving what little resources we have. One of us needs to switch off the helmet light. That will make the light we’ve got last twice as long.”

  “Good idea. I’ll do it.”

  “Okay.”

  “What do you mean ‘okay’?”

  “I mean okay. How many ways are there to take that?”

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘I wouldn’t hear of it. I’ll switch mine off first.’ That would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  “Yeah, well, I have no aspirations to be a gentleman. Unless you mean it in the sense of being a frequent patron of strip clubs.”

  “What a surprise!” She said with as much sarcasm as she could infuse into three words. “Exactly what I would expect from somebody who couldn’t get a real date if his life depended on it. Naturally you would have to resort to looking at women who are being paid to let you look.”

  He gaped. “It shouldn’t surprise me that your first reaction to this predicament is to act like a raving bitch.”

  “You, on the other hand, haven’t missed a beat. You’re still the same dick I know and loathe.”

  “You’re calling me a dick?” He barked out a laugh riddled with ridicule. “What’s it like to be the only woman in history so caustic that she could bring down a mountain WITH A SINGLE WORD!!”

  By the time he finished that sentence he was yelling. He braced for her next volley of insult and barb, but instead saw that her face had gone slack and her bottom lip trembled.

  “Holy shit. I didn’t mean…” Raif had no idea how to go about damming up an impending burst of female emotional turmoil. The idea of making a woman feel better was far outside his skill set and even farther outside his comfort zone. “You know that was just trash talk, right? You can’t really start an earthquake like that.”

  She sniffed and looked away. “I know that. You don’t get a doctorate in archeology without learning a little geology along the way.” She tried for haughty, but was quivering on the inside because she wasn’t entirely sure that she didn’t cause the quake. Sometimes an unfortunate pairing of timbre with the right note on the scale can create a vibration that destabilizes…

  “You know they’re going to do everything humanly possible to get us out of here.”

  “Would you mind looking to your right?”

  “Why?”

  “So I can see what’s there. The only light we have between us moves with your head. I think I might as well sit down because there’s no place to go.”

  He looked to the right. The ground next to the wall was uneven and the floor of the cavern featured a variety of embedded sharp rocks. He looked to the left and found a small spot where the floor looked like smooth sand.

  “Right there,” he said, pointing to the spot with his headlamp. “We can rest for a little bit.”

  “Rest for a little bit before what?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing concrete, but it’s not give up the ghost time until we’ve surveyed our options. When I was a kid I was fascinated by the Knights Templar. I remember something about some of these old mountain monasteries having escape tunnels underneath. They were always getting raided by thieves…”

  “And the Pope, himself.”

  “Yeah. Maybe not the Pope himself, but at least his minions. Anyway if this happened to be one of those…”

  “Then we might come to a way out if we go farther in.”

  Raif shrugged and nodded, bracing in expectation of verbal abuse. He knew she was going to tell him it was a truly stupid idea.

  “You’re a lot smarter than you look, you know that?”

  That was just about the last thing he expected to hear from Dr. Renaux.

  “I thought I was an imbecile.”

  She giggled and he had to admit he liked the sound of it a lot better when it was directed toward him and not Torn.

  “Maybe you’re an imbecile who has his moments.”

  They sat down a foot apart on the small patch of smooth ground and put their backs against the cold cavern wall. Unlike an overstuffed sofa, it wasn’t going to warm up from body heat after a while.

  “I don’t want you to get your hopes up or anything. Odds are greatly in favor of us dying in here, hating each other. I don’t know which will get us first: lack of air, lack of water, or lack of food.”

  “Don’t sugarcoat it.” He shrugged as if to say it was what it was and no apology should be necessary. “Well, just look at it this way. I’m a cheap date.”

  Raif laughed in an open and unguarded way that seemed antithetical to everything she’d learned about him up to that point. “Hey,” he said. “It’s our second date and we’re escalating. Maybe next time we can cause the entire universe to implode.”

&nb
sp; She giggled again. “What you said about us hating each other…” She let that sentence trail off and die.

  “Yeah?”

  “We can’t do anything about the air or water or food, but we don’t have to die hating each other.” Raif didn’t respond. “So tell me something. What was it about me that made you hate me instantly? On sight? I mean at the, um, speed date lunch.”

  He let out a big sigh and didn’t answer right away. “I didn’t hate you. Far from it. That… behavior. It was more like a preemptive strike.”

  “Preemptive strike? I don’t get it.”

  “You asking to hear my sob story?”

  “Uh. Sure. I’m not otherwise occupied.”

  “Well, like I said I don’t think there’s a rat’s ass chance of us getting out of here still breathing, but just in case, can we agree that what happens in the cave collapse stays in the cave collapse?”

  She turned her head toward him and smiled. She couldn’t read his expression because the helmet light was shining in her eyes, but he appreciated that smile, even if it was covered with teeny bits of ground up rock.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Okay. Here goes. I was in an awkward place when I first started noticing girls. They made fun of me and I learned not to trust them.”

  When it sounded like he might not say more, she prompted. “What do you mean by awkward place?”

  He’d never talked to anybody about his damage. Not even Torn. But sitting there in the abject blackness next to Dr. Renaux, whose faint scent could still be detected under the dust coating, it all just came bubbling up like a geyser.

  “My mother left my dad with a promising career as an aerospace engineer and two little boys who looked just like her. I don’t know why she left. If Dad knew, he never said.

  “You hear about people who go into depression and then bounce back. Well, he just did the first part. No bounce back. He knocked around odd jobs for a few years making just enough to get by. When I was thirteen, he got a job working daytime security at a private school for rich kids, the kind who are already wearing Ivy League sweatshirts because they know where they’re going to college and that they’re going to get in.