by Kristen Lamb
“Kiss my ass. Feel free to go back and guard the tunnel with Angel any time.”
He steamed for a few long moments, then said, “Sorry. Just this sucks. You know that.”
“It’s the Kobiyashi Maru. ”
“Huh?”
“I do not have time to teach you Star Trek. Sometimes all options suck. We pick the one that sucks the least and change the rules in our favor.”
“Fine. What now?”
“We have to open the doors first.”
“You have a printout? I can’t bring it up on my phone—”
“Memorized.”
“You memorized it?”
“How else was I going to do this without night-vision? You don’t really think I’m stupid enough to come waving a flashlight down here, do you?”
He didn’t reply and I wanted to hit him.
I drew a steadying breath. “We need to open those doors first. Then, we go after Heather.”
Sawyer took a step but then a pile of rubble tumbled down over him. I rushed to his side and hauled him from a pile of crumbled bricks and rotted two-by-fours. He had a cut across his cheek, was covered in dust, but otherwise intact. The helmet protected his skull from being crushed, but the camera had taken a pretty solid hit. “Ortiz, you getting anything?” Sawyer asked.
“Negative. Some. Feed’s in and out. Get what you can. Over,” he said.
“We’re Oscar Mike. Out,” Sawyer said. “Figures.” He fidgeted with the camera trying to get it to work. Finally, he took point and we wove through the darkness, checking in periodically with Angel. No action on his end so far. Gradually, the tunnels became newer, proving my theory.
“Do you know where we’re going?” he asked, his voice agitated.
“Pretty much.”
“Pretty much?”
“I’m underground. Gimme a break.” I was bad enough navigating New Bisby above ground and now, in green-blurry darkness? Was a bigger nightmare than I’d expected. We crept along and heard voices in the distance, speaking in Spanish. I pointed to a small room off the tunnel, piled high with pallets of white powder. We seemed to pass rows and rows of these small alcoves ready to be packed with drugs. There were also rooms that were clearly cells, with fresh iron bars and crammed with cots. I assumed this is where they would funnel illegals, sex slaves, terrorists and the like. They were setting up for a major takeover. At least if I didn’t bring down my sister, Los Espectros would take a major beating. Sawyer’s helmet-cam hopefully was sending something topside to Angel.
We inched along a wall and there was an unbearable stench that only grew worse. “What is that?” I whispered. Saliva foamed in my mouth and I willed myself not to puke.
“Death,” he mouthed. We pressed on at an agonizingly slow pace. The crushing weight of the bulletproof vest made my neck and back muscles throb and ache. There was a light off in the distance and I spotted several shadowy forms smoking, toting machine guns. Sawyer and I ducked in a room. Before I knew it, I Sawyer grabbed me to keep me from seeing something, but it was too late.
I’d run right into a giant metal vat filled with dismembered body parts floating in dark liquid. Blood. “Holy hell,” I mouthed and tried not to vomit right there. The reek of putrefying flesh mixed with heat surrounded me and made me gag. Breathing through my mouth, I peeked up over the edge of the tub with the IR light. It was impossible to tell how many bodies were in there. They were all in pieces. I located a nearby broom handle and poked around. A couple heads bobbed to the surface, Xs carved into the foreheads. Young males. But then a woman’s head floated up, most of her face and eyes gone. Then, a torso, genitalia hacked away. I wondered if all this brutality was post-mortem. I stirred through the slosh of body parts, but if Daphne and Phil were in there, they were no longer recognizable.
Phil and Daphne were bad people. They deserved a jail cell for life, not this. This wasn’t justice.
This was madness.
I’d seen so much death I was numb. Sawyer squeezed my arm. We needed to keep moving. We maneuvered through the darkness, far away from the men guarding the shipments. I made Sawyer wait and wormed up through a narrow corridor to what appeared to be a manhole with an interior lock. I carefully eased away the bar blocking entry so anyone topside could come in. I didn’t dare open the door. Didn’t know if someone was standing guard outside. My heartbeat pounded in my head, drowning out all other sound.
“Two more,” I mouthed. We descended back down the tunnel inch by excruciating inch. Sweat poured down my face, drenching my shirt. Disoriented, I struggled to get my bearings, but there were no landmarks. I called up the map in my head, but there were new tunnels, new turns that had been added. In the waxy green light, it was almost impossible to distinguish the old tunnels from the new. I spied a small group of men coming down a corridor and they brought food. Their lantern light was far brighter through the NVGs, forcing me to avert my eyes. Now I understood what Angel was talking about.
I was banking the guards had come from the surface. But that might mean the door was being watched. We slipped around the group of guards eating fried chicken and this time Sawyer took the lead. As expected, there was a young gang member leaned against the wall texting, which meant we had to be close to the surface. There was no way he was getting signal unless we were right below the real world. Before I could figure out a plan, Sawyer lunged and wrapped the guy in a sleeper hold until he passed out. He duct-taped his mouth and arms and legs then dragged him off to one of the alcoves and stuffed him behind a stack of wooden crates. I edged up and unlatched the entry. This time, though, I had to open the door. Sawyer stopped me and shook his head.
“I have to get my bearings. I’m lost.”
“We’ve done enough,” he said, his mouth so close to my ear his words were little more than a breath.
“But my sister—”
“Isn’t worth your life. We have enough to keep you safe. Besides, something’s going wrong with my night-vision. Cave-in damaged the circuits. Keeps blinking in and out. Shit.” He tapped the side of his goggles. “We have to go,” he mouthed and jerked his thumb.
I started to argue, but he’d already turned back the way we came, AR-15 at the ready. Even though I was close to passing out from exhaustion and heat, I swiped the hoodie the guard left near his lookout point and slipped it over my vest and the hood over my head. I followed after Sawyer, weaving around the group of gang members on dinner break. Sawyer led the way, but then I saw what I sensed would be there, the new passage that didn’t resemble the others. I continued with Sawyer back to the abandoned section of tunnels.
He gestured for me to go first, but I shook my head.
His face was grim. “Go.”
“You should go first.”
“What?”
“In case some of this tunnel collapses, you’re stronger than me.”
“Romi.”
“I’m not going first. Small spaces freak me out. I’d feel safer following you.”
“Fine. But keep hold of my ankles, got it?”
“Sure,” I said but as soon as he was deep enough in the crawlspace, I doubled back, this time skipping the room of body parts.
Once I saw the cluster of gang members chatting and eating around the brain-splitting halo of a portable lamp, I knew which way to go to find the new section, certain it would lead me to Heather. Moments later, I saw it—a long straight passageway and nowhere to hide. I peered up in the corners and spotted gaping holes with wires. Overhead lighting hadn’t yet been installed. I kept going even though I shook so badly I thought my knees might fail me. After a moment, I heard Sawyer in my earpiece mad as a wasp and demanding to know where I was, but I could’ve sworn I heard voices above me. I couldn’t talk without risking giving myself away. I switched off my radio and hoped Sawyer didn’t try and return for me through the caves. I knew he’d have to get new goggles, which would give me time. I had no idea how far I’d walked, and as I was about to give up, the passage ended. Inste
ad of an old well with a rusting ladder of rebar, there was winding spiral staircase of hand-hewed limestone. I inched my way up, hoping I’d correctly guessed where this would come out. If the guards were eating chicken, then I had a fairly decent idea what direction I’d gone since Pop-Ayes was the only fried chicken place in town.
At the top of the staircase a narrow hall dead-ended into a wall of sandstone blocks. I heard a blood-curdling scream. I pressed my ear to the wall, the muffled voice of a woman begging to be let go. A moment later the woman screamed again.
Silence.
This couldn’t be a dead end. I worked my fingers around the blocks until I felt a handle and the wall opened. I ducked inside and the decorative wall lamps overloaded my night-vision. As I removed the helmet and goggles, the passage closed. By the time my eyes adjusted, I had no idea where the secret door was. It had been disguised as a wine rack, indistinguishable from the others. I poked around trying to find a switch, a handle a button, but nothing. Fishing out my cell phone, I tried 911, but no signal.
Trapped.
I stashed my helmet and NVGs, and stuffed the .45 in the hoodie’s oversized pocket. I crept into an enormous wine cellar. The temperature was far lower in here, a break from the smothering heat. In the soft light, I discovered a woman in an eerily familiar jogging suit chained to a metal chair in front of a computer. A tiny limp body lay at her feet.
Poor Gizmo.
Her left hand was missing, the remaining stump bandaged and tied with a tourniquet. A gore-coated hacksaw glimmered from a foldout table. Phil’s decapitated head rested on a stack of newspapers, sightless eyes illuminated by the computer screen. The hand lay on the floor not far from me on another pile of blood-soaked newspapers, a machete nearby. The dead hand still wore an engagement ring, the same one I saw my sister wearing earlier today. Dizzy, I braced myself on one of the racks. Was I wrong about everything? My first instinct was to free her, but I didn’t. The woman sobbed and hen pecked with her remaining hand at the computer keyboard.
The computer. Maybe I could get a message to 911 from there. Hope buoyed inside me, and I went to her. She heard me and turned and I staggered backward. Her face and neck were soaked in blood, the swelling making her face unrecognizable.
Her tongue had been cut out.
She blinked a few times, her eyes pleading, but then she swayed and dropped onto the keyboard and the screen defaulted to password protected. I heard a faint gurgling of breath, but she wouldn’t last much longer.
I backed away to the dismembered hand and removed the ring then slid back into the shadowy corridors of wine racks. I edged out a bottle, trying to be as silent as possible, all while trying to forget all I’d just seen. The face with no tongue.
Then I smelled it. My old perfume. On my hands.
“The door has a sensor. I know you’re in here,” I heard a voice call out. “Show yourself or I cut off your sister’s other hand.”
I unclipped my radio and set it to VOX hoping Sawyer and Angel could hear the feed from my end then stashed it in a wine rack. I zipped the baggy hoodie over my bulletproof vest, and stepped out with my gun drawn and set the wine bottle on a shelf next to me. A lithe brunette in black-framed glasses stood next to Claire Barrington.
So much for being in Dallas preparing a funeral.
“Kalista, I presume,” I said to the brunette, never lowering my gun. I edged around a low wine rack where they had no clear shot at me if they tried.
“Daphne,” she corrected. She wore tailored jeans and riding boots that matched her fine leather jacket.
“You might want to not shoot your little gun. A bit loud,” Claire said. “We have a lot of nasty boys waiting in the house, and they love chopping off body parts, don’t they?” She taunted the mortally injured woman now slumped over the keyboard. Claire made a pouty face. “Oh, Heather’s always been such a good party girl but now she poops out. Tsk, tsk.”
I pointed to the prisoner, now eerily silent. My voice was desperate. “She needs medical attention. I only came for my sister.”
“Which is why you are so boringly predictable,” Claire said.
Daphne smiled. Or maybe it was Heather. I honestly couldn’t tell. I had to find some way of tripping her up.
Claire tipped her head to the woman at the computer. “I don’t think she’s going to make it. And the door to the surface is passcode protected from the inside. If you touch us, we seal you in here and feed you to the Wraiths, which means the tunnels are your only way out, if you can find them.”
“Sure,” I said. “You’d like that.”
Claire’s hard eyes glinted in the soft light. “But you always were one to give things a sporting try.” She laughed. “The girls and I used to have so much fun watching you at the country club trying to fit in, but no custom suit could hide you were nothing more than a white trash poseur.”
“You said you were my friends,” I said, knowing she couldn’t pass an opportunity to gloat. I needed time to think.
“Of course, we did. That’s what made it fun. You were stupid enough to believe we’d ever hang out with the help.” She swept her hand down a magnificent bannister of hand-carved wood as she descended the stairs. “Mark and I had a grand time watching you squirm.”
“You knew?”
“I know everything,” Claire said.
A critical missing piece slid into place. “You killed him,” I said. “You killed Mark. The killer wasn’t Los Espectros. It was you.” An image from that dreadful dinner with Sawyer flashed in my head. “With a sommelier knife.”
She slipped a wine tool out of the pocket of her fine silk slacks. “Any owner of a vineyard would never be without one of these. Small blade but sharp enough to do real damage in the right hands.”
“Especially when he didn’t see it coming,” I added.
“Mark thought I didn’t know about his fling with the town skank.” She gestured to the chained woman. “Daphne was kind enough to enlighten me regarding their affair, how this garbage seduced my husband and wanted to partner with him to create her own billion-dollar enterprise using my vineyard and my good name.”
Daphne came down another step. “Claire and I had a lot in common, you see. Phil broke my heart, cheated, lied, stole my technology, and ruined my life. He replaced me with you, then tried to do it again with your sister,” she said, her voice double-edged, contempt masked as gentility, a tone unique to fine Southern families. “But that whore wasn’t happy stealing my husband, she had to go after Claire’s, too.”
Claire gestured to the dying woman at the computer. “Didn’t know she shouldn’t touch other people’s men or their money. She’s put all of Daphne’s money back where it belongs and, let’s say it’s hard to take things that aren’t yours with no hands . ”
“Or lie with no tongue,” Daphne added.
“Let me check her. I don’t think she’s breathing,” I said, my voice cracking. I never lowered the gun. “Please.”
“I don’t think so,” Daphne said. “Certain you can hit us before Los Espectros has you? Where would you like them to start cutting first? Ears? Nose?”
Claire smiled triumphantly. “Sure we’re worth it?”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t give a damn how you make your money. I only came for my sister,” I repeated.
Daphne shrugged. “Game over. She’s out of blood, and you’re out of time.”
I knew they were right. I could shoot at them, maybe even kill them but then Los Espectros would find me and make me suffer for who knew how long?
If I shot the .45 I’d have Los Espectros from above and below and I didn’t have enough ammo for a gun battle. Three magazines, twenty-one rounds. Outlook not good. Wasn’t sure if I could find or even figure out how to open that secret door.
Just a little more time.
“Let me guess,” I said to Claire. “She helped you make the deal with Los Espectros .” I pointed to Daphne, and uncertainty weighed on me. What if this really w
as Daphne? My stomach heaved. I had to be right. Had to.
Claire shrugged nonchalantly. “We don’t get to be billionaires by ignoring opportunity. Los Espectros is going to do its thing and the world will turn and people will do drugs as they always have. Daphne here has renegotiated our…business terms with the Wraiths.”
“I bet she did.” I found my opening. I knew Heather’s pain points. “Don’t want a former clerk from the Piggle Wiggle handling a major cartel. Beyond her skill set.”
“No Crayons involved,” Claire said.
“What’s wrong with earning a share of the inevitable?” I shrugged.
“Mark was at least smart enough to see that much,” she said.
“That’s how you sleep at night. Always wondered that.”
Claire’s face twisted. “Don’t be naïve.”
“You are such a self-important ass.” I laughed. “Oh, the rich. You guys are like a bad soap opera.”
She snarled. “I don’t think you’re in a position to talk like this. You and your little whore sister should have kept your place.”
“See what I mean? One would think someone of your social standing would’ve broadened her vocabulary beyond that of a Waffle House waitress. And you think I’m boring.”
Her face screwed up in rage. “You are in no pla—”
“Where’d you go to school? Wasn’t it Yale or some fancy place like that?” I kept the gun pointed at them and it now felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. My wrists ached, but I had to buy more time.
