by David Wood
He did not finish the comment, but Tam was able to fill in the blanks. If she failed to produce real results, or if the magnitude of the threat did not equal the political capital the director had invested in her, they would both be on the chopping block.
CHAPTER 24
Cuarenta Casas, Mexico
No one moved, but Stone could sense both Sievers and Kasey calculating the odds and bracing themselves for action. There were three gunmen, with pistols drawn and held at the ready, against the four of them, but Stone and Avery were unarmed. Moreover, Sievers and Kasey would have to draw their weapons in order to fire, and in the fraction of a second required for them to do that, the Dominion gunmen would have time to react. Time to fire.
They could miss, though at such close range, it seemed unlikely. If it came to a shootout, the odds were against the four of them coming out unscathed. Someone would get hurt. Someone would probably get killed.
The Dominion operatives were a completely unknown variable. People with guns were unpredictable, especially those without formal training, and there was no way to know what background these men possessed. One of them was the man he had faced down at the Library of Congress, but the circumstances had been very different. Stone knew that if he did not take control of this situation, things would spin out of control very quickly.
He took a step forward, arms raised. “Just take it. No reason for anyone to get hurt.”
The abrupt capitulation surprised the leader of the group. Stone could tell that it also caught his own companions off guard. He turned, nodding to them. Would they understand what he was trying to do? Sievers might, but he was also former military, used to violence as a first resort. He let his gaze flicker in the direction of the tunnels behind them, but with the light pointed at the gunmen, he could not tell if the gesture had been understood, much less seen by the others.
He reached out to Avery, palm open. “Let them have it. It’s not worth dying for.”
Avery stared back at him in bewilderment.
“It’s just a piece of paper,” he said. “It won’t change anything.”
Disagreement was writ large in her eyes. “Do you realize what it is?” She spoke in a low voice, her words clearly meant for Stone’s ears alone.
“Why don’t you tell us?” suggested the leader of the gunmen.
Stone frowned. If the situation dragged out, the chances of something catastrophic occurring would increase exponentially.
“We can’t let them have this,” Avery whispered.
“No?” The Dominion gunman feigned disappointment. “Well, I’ll just take a wild guess then. It’s an agreement to annex northern Mexico for the United States. Am I close?”
Stone could see confirmation in Avery’s unblinking eyes.
Sievers laughed. “Is that what you’re all spun up over? Shoot. I might have been daydreaming about girls in my high school civics class, but even I know that it takes more than a piece of paper to make that happen. Especially when that paper and everyone who signed it has been dead for a hundred years.”
The folksy bravado was a front, disguising Sievers’ readiness, but his words were not wrong. Without ratification from Congress, the document was irrelevant. The very fact that it had been lost to history was proof enough that its authors and signatories had not pursued the agreement following Bierce’s disappearance.
So why did the Dominion want it so badly?
“Avery,” Stone said, keeping his voice calm. “It’s just a piece of paper. It’s not worth getting killed for.”
“You really think they’ll just let us walk out of here?” she retorted.
Stone frowned. She was right, of course, but he did not want their captors realizing that they knew it. He turned to their leader. “You will, right? We give you the treaty, and everyone can go their merry way?”
The man gave an acquiescent, and completely insincere, shrug. “Sure.”
Stone turned back in Avery’s direction, but his eyes went first to Sievers then to Kasey. He mouthed the words, Wait for it, and closed his eyes for a moment, hoping they would get the message. When he opened them, he saw Sievers nod, almost imperceptibly.
Avery continued to clutch the portfolio.
“Avery. It’s just paper. Trust me.”
She held on a moment longer, then relented and held it out to him. Stone took the case and moving with exaggerated caution, walked toward the trio of gunmen. He started to extend the portfolio, but then drew back at the last second. “Just to satisfy my curiosity,” he said. “Did you figure it out for yourself, or follow us here?”
An irritated frown creased the other man’s face. “Once we realized where you were going, it made sense.”
It was an obvious lie, but Stone let it pass. “And the Spear? It showed you the way?”
This time, the response was honest. “Not exactly. But the general was kind enough to leave us a little tip, so to speak, to prove that we were on the right track.”
“Oh? We must have missed that. What was it?”
“A coin. A gold double-eagle. Part of the money that President Wilson paid to buy Mexico for the U.S.” He grinned and looked past Stone, in Avery’s direction. “You see, it’s more than just a piece of paper. It’s a bill of sale. We paid for it. The treaty just proves it.”
Stone inclined his head. “Well, that’s definitely going to change the history books.” He started to proffer the case again. “I have your word? You’ll let us go?”
“Cross my heart,” the man said, a little too quickly.
Stone smiled and held out the portfolio, but then pulled back again even as the other man started to reach for it. “So how does this help you exactly? If northern Mexico has actually been part of the United States for the last century, that would mean that everyone living here right now would actually be an American citizen. Forgive me for being blunt, but it seems to me like the last thing the Dominion would want is a lot of brown people claiming U.S. citizenship.”
The man grunted in reply. “That’s not your problem.” He held his hand out, shaking it emphatically. “Give it to me.”
“Sure.” Stone thrust the portfolio out and opened his hand, letting it fall.
The other man made a reflexive grab for it, just as Stone knew he would, but missed. Stone was already moving. “Now, Sievers!”
The chamber was plunged into ominous blackness as Sievers, right on cue, switched off his light, but the effect was short-lived as the chamber erupted with the noise and fury of gunshots. The muzzle flashes were almost blindingly bright, yet were too brief to provide illumination. The reports were deafening, causing Stone’s ears to ring with the first shot fired, and the air stank of sulfur, but he did not feel anything that might have been a bullet tearing into his flesh.
At the instant he dropped the case with the treaty, Stone had launched himself away from the Dominion men and their guns, and toward the vertical support beam in the center of the chamber. His course was chosen deliberately, he knew with absolute certainty where each footstep would land and the exact moment that he would collide with the post. The only thing he could not predict was what would happen afterward.
His shoulder jolted with the impact, but then the post buckled under his weight, and he went sprawling into the darkness, half-entangled with the splintered remains of the rough-hewn timber. He felt, or perhaps merely sensed, a downpour of earth as the unsupported ceiling began to collapse down on top of him.
CHAPTER 25
At the exact moment when Eric Trent thought success was in his grasp, everything went to hell. As the treaty case started to fall, he did exactly what his rational brain told him he should not do: he reacted. Then the lights went out, and the word exploded into violence.
The reports from out of the darkness startled him and he instinctively tried to shrink himself into a protective curl, even as his knees hit the floor, and one outstretched hand found the smooth leather portfolio.
The glancing contact grounded him, j
ust a little. This was what he had come for. No matter what else happened, he had to get away with the treaty. He grasped hold of it and pulled it in close to his chest, shielding it from the destructive chaos that was erupting out of the inky blackness that surrounded him.
Which way to the exit? He had a flashlight in one pocket. Did he dare use it? He and the others had crept silently into the mineshaft and followed the dim glow at the far end of the tunnel like a beacon, their own lights turned off to keep from betraying their approach. If he turned it on now, he would give his position away, and judging by the muzzle flashes, his men weren’t the only ones with guns.
Something struck him on the back of the head. Not a bullet, he decided. If it had been that, he would have lost consciousness or even died instantly. No, it was a stone, dislodged from the ceiling and part of an increasingly heavy cascade of earth raining down upon him. The mine was caving in.
He turned, hopefully orienting in the direction of the exit, and crawled forward awkwardly using just one hand. His pistol was gone, but he did not spare a thought for it. The leather case was what mattered, and he would not risk damaging it by dragging it across the mine floor.
The cascading dirt hammered against his back, driving him flat, but he kept squirming forward until his outthrust hand encountered something that didn’t move. He probed the wall, left and right and felt the rough texture of a support post, and just beyond it, nothingness. His first estimate of the tunnel’s location had been off by only a degree or two. He kept crawling, and then after he put some distance between himself and the chamber where the gun battle was still raging, he risked getting to his feet.
A faint spot of light was visible directly ahead, and he hastened toward it, tripping and rebounding off the walls of the narrow passage as he went. He forgot about the earthen slope leading up to the tiny opening through which they had entered, and stumbled forward onto it, but with the end in sight, nothing could slow him down. He scrambled up the slope and thrust his head and shoulders into the hole, squirming toward daylight. When he reached the end, it was as if he had been shot out of a cannon. He slid headfirst down the far slope, the rocks tearing at his clothing and shredding the exposed skin of his face and arms before he finally came to rest.
For a moment, all he could do was savor the fresh air and the openness of the sky. Then he remembered what it was that had taken him into the dark bowels of the earth. He rolled over, inspecting the treaty portfolio. To his dismay, the dark leather was now a dirty gray-brown, scraped and scuffed like a worn-out pair of shoes.
“No,” he gasped. “Please God, let it be all right.” With trembling fingers, he opened the case.
The treaty was undamaged. It had survived his desperate escape without as much as a frayed corner. Trent closed the case gently and held it close to his chest again.
A cloud of dust billowed from the hole in the hillside. Trent stood and cocked his ear toward the mineshaft, but heard only the creaking sound of the earth settling after a disturbance. He waited a minute, wondering if anyone else would emerge, but no one did.
The enormity of this finally hit him. The men that had accompanied him were trapped, buried in the cave-in, probably already dead.
No, no probably about it. They were dead, and no amount of wishful thinking was going to change that. It was up to him to make sure that their sacrifice was not in vain.
He took a deep breath, gathering his wits and his courage, and then started up the hill. It had been a costly victory, but a victory nonetheless. The key to the Dominion’s great plan lay in his hands. There was no time to waste.
Destiny would soon be a reality.
CHAPTER 26
The darkness transformed the already oppressive confines of the mine chamber into a tomb. Despite Stone’s warning, Kasey felt paralyzed by the sudden weight of so much impenetrable lightlessness.
Then the chamber exploded with gunfire.
The heat of incoming rounds creased the air above her and she threw herself flat on the floor. Her training overcame the inertia of conscious thought; her pistol found its way into her hand and before she knew what she was doing, she was firing at muzzle flashes just a few yards away.
She could not tell if she was hitting anything, but as her mind caught up with what her body was automatically doing, she realized that her answering fire might well be giving her position away to the Dominion gunmen. She let go of the trigger and rolled sideways, into the embrace of darkness where she bumped against something and felt it move.
Avery?
Shouting down the irrational fears that would, she knew, become a self-fulfilling prophecy if she did not master them, she reached out with her free hand and found what she thought was a leg. She groped her way up, finding a hand—definitely Avery—and then dragged the other woman away from the incessant gunfire, toward what she hoped was the back wall of the chamber, where she knew a tunnel led even deeper into the mine.
That was when the ceiling began raining down.
The gunfire abruptly ceased, and through the ringing in her ears, Kasey could hear the noise of rocks hitting the ground behind her.
“Stay with me!”
She had no idea if Avery heard her, but she maintained a firm grip on the disembodied hand and kept moving forward, found the wall, then the tunnel mouth. As she moved into it, she struck something…no, another someone.
“Who?” The shout was barely audible, but she thought it sounded like Sievers.
“Me! I’ve got Avery.”
The shape moved aside. “Go!”
Kasey plunged into the darkness, dragging Avery behind her. The rock scraped through the fabric of her jeans, shredding the skin of her knees, but the pain was just one dull sensation in a symphony of stimuli. Time and space lost all meaning. She might have been crawling for days, or perhaps just a few seconds.
And then, with no warning whatsoever, light returned to the world. Kasey’s spirits lifted, but only a little. The ebb of darkness revealed the unchanged hopelessness of their situation.
Avery was breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, with tears cutting tracks through the mask of dirt that now clung to her face. Kasey realized that she was not in much better shape and bit her lip until the tremors racking her torso finally subsided. Further back, she saw Sievers, his back to them, crouched in what she immediately recognized as a shooting stance. His flashlight lay on the ground beside him, pointing toward the mouth of the tunnel, but the beam was being reflected back from a shimmering impenetrable curtain of dust. After a few seconds of scrutiny, Sievers holstered his pistol, picked up the light, and began moving up the passage.
He was also covered in dirt, but Kasey did not fail to notice the darker hue staining one arm. “You all right?” she croaked.
“I’ve been better.” His voice sounded distant, funereal. “It’s just a graze.”
Kasey bit back a pessimistic reply. “Stone?”
Sievers’ face creased in alarm, and then he looked back the way they had come. “Stone! Give a shout!”
There was no reply.
“Damn it!” Sievers raged. He shouted twice more, then turned back. “Screw it. First things first. We have to get out of here.” He shone the light up the tunnel. “Should we see where that leads?”
Kasey’s first impulse was to shriek in dismay. Going deeper into the mine sounded like a very bad idea. But she resisted the urge and answered with an equivocal shrug. “Knock yourself out.”
Sievers frowned but said nothing as he stepped cautiously over the two women and ventured along the passage. With the flashlight pointed away and his body mostly filling the tunnel, the oppressive darkness soon returned, and Kasey reconsidered her position.
“Come on,” she told Avery. “We should probably stay together.”
Avery nodded dumbly, then looked up. “What about Stone? We can’t just leave without… without knowing.”
“The best thing we can do for him is find a way out.”
Avery blin
ked as if unable to comprehend this logic. Kasey reached out and drew her to her feet, then headed down the tunnel after the diminishing glow of Sievers’ flashlight.
They caught up with him just a few seconds later, stopped cold at a dead end. “We’re not getting out this way,” he declared.
Kasey’s heart began pounding in her chest. “Told you,” she said, trying to sound cocky instead of vindictive or just plain terrified. Trying and failing.
“Let’s head back. There was another tunnel.”
“And if that one’s a dead end, too?”
“Then we start digging.”
Kasey felt Avery’s hand tighten in her own and knew the other woman was probably as panicked as she. Kasey knew she needed to do something to distract them both from the harsh reality of their situation. “Avery, did I hear you right? That treaty made Mexico part of the U.S.?”
“What? Um…Yeah. I mean, not all of Mexico. Mostly just the northern states.”
Sievers seemed to grasp what Kasey was trying to do. “There’s no way that would ever fly, right?” he said as he nudged past them. “You can’t just write a piece of paper and buy another country.”
“Well, probably not anymore, but that’s how America got as big as it is. That and conquest. The treaty mentioned unresolved land claims from the Mexican-American War.”
Kasey tried to recall her American history lessons from college. “That’s how we got California.”
“And most of the American southwest. But during the war, American troops actually pushed as far as Mexico City, and a lot of your congressmen wanted to claim all that territory. Manifest Destiny. They were outnumbered by other lawmakers who thought it was a dangerous overreach of power, and in the end, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo drew the border pretty much where it is today, except for a bit of Arizona and New Mexico that came with the Gadsden Purchase ten years later.”