With a sudden start of recognition, he realized he had been there before, years ago, with some friends who wanted to explore ghost towns in the mountains. That was before there was a fence and a new cabin.
Tom pressed himself against the rough logs of the house, creeping along until he came to a window. He peered in. The view was of a timbered living room with a stone fireplace, Navajo rugs on the floor, an elk head mounted on the wall. Only a single light was on and Tom had the distinct impression the house was empty. He listened. The place was silent and the second-floor windows were dark.
Sally wasn't in the house. He crept up to the front and gazed across the ghost town, faintly illuminated by the porch light. Keeping low, moving smoothly and pausing every now and then to listen, he crept up next to the car and put his hand on the hood – the engine was still warm. Crouching by the passenger door, he pulled out the flashlight he had found in the Dodge's glove compartment and turned it on. Holding it low, he examined the marks on the ground. In the loose sand he could see a confused muddle of cowboy boot prints. He cast about. There, just beyond the car, he saw what looked like two parallel drag marks made by boot heels. He followed the marks with the beam of the flashlight and saw they headed up the dirt street toward a ravine at the far end of town.
His heart flopped wildly in his chest. Was it Sally being dragged? Was she unconscious? The ravine, if he remembered correctly, led to some abandoned gold mines. He paused, trying to recall the lay of the land. His hand went unconsciously to the butt of the pistol tucked into his belt.
One round.
He followed the drag marks down the dirt track to the far end of the old camp, where they vanished into the woods at the mouth of the ravine. His flashlight disclosed freshly trampled weeds along an overgrown trail. He listened, but could hear nothing beyond the sigh of wind through the pines. He followed the trail, and after a quarter mile came out into an open area, where the valley widened. The trail ran up the hillside and he sprinted up it. It ran below the ridgeline through a stand of ponderosas and ended at an old wooden shaft house.
Sally was imprisoned in the mines. And that's where they were right now.
The door of the shaft house was chained and padlocked. He paused, resisting the impulse to bash it down, and listened. All was silent. He examined the padlock and found it had been left unlocked, dangling in its chain; he switched off his light, eased the door open, and slipped inside.
Cupping his hands around the flashlight, he turned it on just long enough to examine his surroundings. The mine opening lay ahead, a maw cut into the rocky hillside, breathing out a wash of damp, moldy air. The opening was securely barred and covered with a heavy iron grate, locked with a fat, case-hardened steel padlock.
Tom listened, holding his breath. Not a sound came from the mine tunnel. He tested the lock, but this one was fast. He crouched and, taking out the Maglite, examined the dirt floor. The prints were exceptionally clear in the powdery dust and they belonged to a man with a size eleven or twelve boot. To one side he could see where Sally's heels had dragged, and a flattened area where a body had been laid down – her body – which he must have done while he unlocked the grate. She had been unconscious. He quashed a more awful speculation.
Tom tried to sort out his options. He had to get in – or attract the man to the door and shoot him as he approached.
Hearing a faint sound come from the mine, Tom froze. A shout? He hardly dared breathe. After a moment he heard another sound, a faint cry, distorted by its long travel down the throat of stone. It was a man's voice.
He grasped the padlock and shook it, trying to spring it open, but it wouldn't budge. The grate was forged from heavy steel and cemented into the stone. He had no hope of breaking it.
As he was casting about, he heard another angry shout, this one much louder and clearer, in which he could just make out the word bitch.
She was in there. She was alive. And then he heard the muffled boom of a gunshot.
Chapter 15
BOB BILER TURNED on the radio in the '57 Chevy and spun through the dial, hoping to pick up his favorite golden oldies station out of Albuquerque, but once again all he got was hiss and sputter. He snapped it off and took a consolation hit from the pint of Jim Beam lying on the passenger seat. He smacked and rolled his lips with pleasure, and tossed the bottle back on the seat with a thump, wiped his hand over his stubbled chin, and grinned at his great good fortune.
Biler had given up trying to figure out the bizarre incident up at the Sunrise. Somebody had stolen his Dodge and left him a beaut of a classic Chevy, keys dangling in the ignition, worth at least ten times his old shit box. Maybe he should've called the police, but it was only fair that if someone stole his truck, he should get theirs. And besides, he'd already parked a pint of Jim Beam in his gut and he was in no condition to be calling the cops. It was his truck that had been stolen, and you didn't have to report a stolen vehicle if it was your own, did you?
A sudden rumble of his right tires on the shoulder caused Biler to jerk the wheel to the left, almost swerve off the left shoulder, recover with a faint squealing of rubber, and finally get the truck steady on the road again. The dotted yellow line ran straight and true into the blackness and he put the truck right on top of it, the better to follow it. No problem, he'd be able to see the headlights of an oncoming car from a million miles off, plenty of time to move over. He fortified his concentration with another hit of Jim Beam, his lips making a satisfying pop as he removed the bottle from his mouth.
It was already past ten and Biler would be hitting Espanola at ten-thirty. Jesus, he was tired, it had been a long drive down from Dolores, just to visit his daughter and her worthless unemployed husband. If only he could pick up that golden oldies station out of Albuquerque – some Elvis would really lift his spirits. He turned on the radio, dialed it across the spectrum, stopped at one station that seemed to hint at music behind a wash of static and left it there. Maybe as he got closer it would come in stronger.
He saw headlights in the distance and eased over to his side of the road. A police car passed him and he watched it recede, checking it again as the red tail-lights began to fade into the enormous darkness. Then he saw, with alarm, a sudden brightening of the lights – the cop had braked – followed by a momentary glimmer, and then the brighter white lights of the headlights as he pulled a U-turn.
Holy shit. Biler swept the bottle of Jim Beam off the seat and gave it a sharp kick with the heel of his shoe, scooting it up and under the seat. The truck drifted out of lane again and he quickly snapped his attention back to the road, the truck swaying with the correction. Shit, he had better slow down and drive like a little old lady. His eyes darted from the road to the speedometer to the rearview mirror. He was keeping at a steady fifty-five and he was pretty sure when the cop passed he wasn't doing more than sixty, still five under the speed limit. Biler, like most longtime drinkers-and-drivers, never broke the speed limit. After a few heart-pounding minutes he began to relax. The cop hadn't put on his bubble-gum machine and wasn't accelerating to catch up with him. He was just tooling along at the same speed, maybe a quarter mile back, nice and easy – just some State trooper on patrol. Biler grasped the steering wheel in the ten-two position, eyes straight ahead, keeping it steady at fifty-five.
Hell, nobody could drive any better than that.
Chapter 16
FOR A MOMENT Sally lay in a shallow pool of water, stunned by the fall. It hadn't been a long drop after all and she was more frightened than hurt. But she was far from out of danger. Even as she was recovering her thoughts the flashlight beam was probing down from above. A moment later it fixed her and she jumped sideways as the shots came, the bullets striking the water around her with a zipping sound. She thrashed through the water toward where the flashlight beam had revealed a tunnel running off into darkness. In a moment she had turned the corner, beyond the range of his gun.
She leaned against the wall, taking great gulps of breath. He
r whole body ached but nothing seemed to be broken. She felt in her breast pocket for the box of matches. Miraculously, while the outside of the box had gotten damp, the inside was still dry. The matches were the long, wooden, "strike anywhere" variety. She struck a match against the rock wall, one scratch, two. It flared on the third try and it cast a faint illumination down the tunnel ahead, a long corridor cribbed with rotting oak beams. A shallow stream flowed along its bottom, running from puddle to puddle. The tunnel's condition looked disastrous; beams had fallen down, while small cave-ins from the walls and ceilings partially obstructed the passage. What hadn't already fallen looked like it was about to go, the rock ceiling gaping with large cracks, the oak beams bowing under the weight of shifted rocks.
She jogged down the tunnel, shielding the match, until it burned down to her fingers and she was forced to drop it. She kept going as long as she dared in the darkness, retaining the memory of what lay ahead. When she feared going farther she stopped and listened. Was he following? It seemed unlikely he would risk going down the ladder she had descended – no sane person would do it and she had broken too many rungs in her descent. He would have to find a rope, and that would at least give her a moment's reprieve. But no more than a moment: she remembered seeing a rope in her cell, coiled up at the foot of the bed.
Sally struggled to focus her mind and think rationally. She remembered reading somewhere that all caves breathed and that the best way to find your way out was to follow the "breath" of the cave – that is, the flow of air. She lit the match. The flame bent back, toward where she had come from. She went in the opposite direction, deeper into the mine, wading through the water, moving as quickly as she could without putting out the match. The tunnel curved right and opened into a large gallery, with pillars of raw rock remaining in place to hold up the ceiling. A second match showed two tunnels leading off. The flow of water went into the left one. She paused, there being just enough flame to see where the air was flowing from, and decided to take the right tunnel, the only one sloping upward.
The match burned down and she dropped it. She took a moment to count by feel the number of matches in the box. Fifteen.
She tried moving forward by feel, but soon realized her progress was too slow. She had to put as much distance between herself and him as possible. Now was the time to use the matches, not later.
She lit another, continued up the tunnel, turned a corner-and found the tunnel was blocked by a cave-in. She stared upward at the dark hole in the ceiling from which an enormous mass of rock had fallen into a disorderly pile below. Several rocks the size of cars still hung from the ceiling in crazy angles, braced and propped up by fallen beams, looking like they would shift at the merest nudge.
Sally retraced her steps and took the left-hand tunnel, the one that sloped downward with the stream. Her panic was rising; at any moment the kidnapper would be down there after her. She followed the running water, hoping it might lead her to an exit, wading through a series of pools. The tunnel sloped downward and leveled out. The water got deeper and she realized it was pooling; soon it was almost up to her waist. Around the next turn she saw the cause: a cave-in that had completely blocked the tunnel and backed up the water. The water managed to escape through the spaces between the jagged rocks, but there was no opening large enough for her to pass.
She swore to herself. Was there a tunnel she had missed? She knew in her heart there wasn't. In five minutes she had explored all of the mine that was still accessible. In short, she was trapped.
She struck another match, her fingers shaking, looking around desperately for a way out, a tunnel or opening she might have overlooked. She burned her fingers, cursed under her breath, and lit another match. Surely there had to be a way out.
She retraced her steps yet again, recklessly lighting match after match, until she came back to the first cave-in. It was a compact mass, offering no obvious holes. Lighting more matches, she searched through the piled boulders anyway, looking for a space she could wedge herself in. But there was nothing.
She counted her matches. Seven left. She lit another, looked up – and saw the hole in the roof. It was insane to think of going up in there. The light from the match was too feeble to penetrate its recesses, but still, it looked like there might be a crawl space up there where she might at least hide – if she were willing to risk the precarious, sloping pile of loose boulders.
It was a crazy risk. As she stood there, trembling and indecisive, the flame dying at the end of the match, a small pebble came rattling out of the hole, bounced like a pinball down through the tangle of beams and rocks, and came to rest at her feet.
So that was it, then. She had two choices: she could either go back and face the kidnapper, or she could risk climbing up into a hole created by the cave-in.
The match went. She had six more. She picked two out of the box and lit them together, hoping to generate enough light to see deeper into the hole. They flared and she peered intently, but it still wasn't enough to see beyond the tangle of rocks and beams.
The matches went out.
No more time. She lit another match, stuck it between her teeth, grasped a rock in the pile, and began to climb. At the same time she heard a sound-a distant voice, echoing raucously through the tunnels of stone.
"Ready or not, bitch, here I come!"
Chapter 17
CORVUS CROUCHED INSIDE the rib cage of the triceratops, blood pounding in his ears. The man was standing no more than ten feet away. He swallowed, tried to get some moisture in his mouth. He heard the brush of a hand on a bone surface, the faint scuff of a shoe on the cement floor, the ever so small crunch of fossil grit under the man's sole as he approached. How the bloody hell was the man moving around so well in the dark?
"I can see you," came the soft voice, as if reading his mind, "but you can't see me."
Corvus's heart felt like a bass drum: the voice was right next to him. His throat was so dry he couldn't have spoken if he wanted to.
"You look silly, crouching there."
Another footfall. He could actually smell the man's expensive aftershave.
"All I want is the locality data. Anything will do: GPS coordinates, name of a formation or canyon, that sort of thing. I want to know where the dinosaur is."
Corvus swallowed, shifted. It didn't make sense hiding any longer; the man knew where he was. He was probably wearing some kind of night-vision device.
"I don't have that information," Corvus croaked. "I don't know where the bloody dinosaur is." He sat up, clutching his briefcase.
"If that's the game you want to play, then I'm afraid I'll have to kill you." The man's voice was so quiet, so gentle, that it left Corvus without the slightest doubt that the man meant what he said. He gripped the briefcase, his hands in a cold sweat.
"I don't have it. I really don't." Corvus heard himself pleading.
"Then how did you acquire the specimen?"
"Through a third party."
"Ah. And the name and place of residence of this third party?"
There was a silence. Corvus felt his terror mingling with something else: anger. Furious anger. His whole career, his life, hung on getting that dinosaur. He wasn't going to give up his discovery to some bastard holding him hostage at gunpoint – he'd rather die. The bloody bastard had night-vision goggles or something of the sort, and if he could get to one of the light banks it would eliminate the man's advantage. He could use the hard attaché case as a club–
"The name and place of residence of this third party, please?" the man repeated, his voice as soft as ever.
"I'm coming out."
"A wise decision."
Corvus crawled toward the back of the skeleton and out the back. He slipped under the plastic and stood up. It was still pitch-dark and he had only a vague sense where the man was.
"The name of this third party?"
Corvus lunged at the voice in the darkness, swinging his case by the handle in an arc toward the voice, striking him
somewhere; the man grunted and was thrown back in surprise. Corvus turned, groping blindly through the forest of skeletons toward where he remembered the back light switches were. He stumbled against a skeleton and fell, just as he heard a sharp pneumatic hiss followed by the sound of surgical steel striking fossil bone. The bastard was shooting at him.
He lunged sideways, collided with a skeleton, which creaked in protest, sending a few bones clattering to the ground. Another hiss of air, another metallic ricochet among the bones to his right. He groped forward, scrabbling desperately among bone forest, and then suddenly he was free of the crowd of skeletons and back in the shelves; he ran wildly down the aisle, careening once off the side, falling, and getting up. If only he could reach the lights and neutralize the man's advantage. He sprinted forward, heedless of what might lie in the way, and virtually collided with the bank of electrical switches. With another shout he clawed at the panel, the lights clicking on by the dozen, a humming and flick-flick as the aging fluorescent lights blinked on, one by one.
He spun around, at the same time grasping a petrified bone off one of the shelves, wielding it like a club, ready to fight.
The man stood there placidly, not ten feet away, legs apart, not even looking like he'd moved. He was dressed in a blue tracksuit, night-vision goggles raised up on his forehead. A shabby leather briefcase stood on the ground next to his leg. His hands were in firing position and the shiny tube of a strange-looking weapon was aimed straight at Corvus. He stared in astonishment at the ordinariness of the man, the passionless bureaucratic face. He heard the snap-hiss! of compressed air, saw the flash of silver, felt the sting in his solar plexus, and looked down in astonishment; there he saw a stainless-steel syringe sticking out of his abdomen. He opened his mouth and reached down to pull it out but already a darkness unlike any other was rushing upon him like a tidal wave, burying him in its roaring undertow.
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