White Jade (The PROJECT)

by Lukeman, Alex

He took out his phone. No signal.

  "Is there another entrance?" He flicked the thin beam of the flash around the tunnel. Something moved at the edge of the light.

  "I think so, but I don't know where it is. I saw a map of the mine once. There are three levels, with branches off the main tunnel and shafts hundreds of feet deep. Some parts are flooded, but I don't know where. A lot of tunnels were closed off when the mine began shutting down."

  "We don't have much choice. You up for exploring?"

  "You lead," she said.

  The flash wasn't much. They followed the narrow beam along the rusted tracks, deeper into the mine, picking their way around rocks that had fallen from the roof. Nick lost sense of whether the tunnel was going straight or curving about. The air was stifling and hot and smelled of ancient water and older rock. The adrenaline rush was gone. He was tired and sore.

  Thick wooden posts supported cracked beams holding up the roof of the tunnel. They looked weak and unstable. Webs hung from the corners where the beams and posts came together. Everywhere, spiders retreated from the light. There were pools of water on the floor and wet, dark stains on the walls, drips of water from the ceiling. The air was hot and still. Nick felt the tunnel walls closing in. He told himself it would be all right. All right. One thing at a time. He was sweating.

  The tunnel split, one branch going right, the other straight ahead.

  "Which way should we go?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine. I never thought I'd need to know," said Selena.

  "You think right, or straight ahead?"

  "If the tunnel hasn't turned, the river must be somewhere to the right. I think the miners followed a vein toward the river. If they did, maybe it came out somewhere on the bank."

  "Let's go right. If it did come out, it shouldn't be far."

  They entered the right hand shaft. The tunnel supports were rotting and puddles of water lay everywhere. Something scurried away ahead.

  "What was that?"

  "I don't know. I didn't see anything."

  "What's that squeaking sound?"

  The passage curved and they came around the corner. Fifty feet ahead the tunnel ended in a fall of rock and a churning nest of swarming and squeaking rats. Hundreds of red eyes gleamed in the narrow light.

  Carter froze. Selena gripped his arm, hard. The rats squirmed and wriggled, darting towards them and back again into the mass.

  Neither said a word as they backed away. He felt Selena shudder. Back in the main shaft they passed a boarded passage on the left, then another on the right. They began to see more closed off entrances. A rat ran by his foot.

  They came to the remains of a stable cut into the side of the tunnel, stalls still standing. A rope halter hung on a rusty nail.

  "Why would they have a stable down here?"

  It was the first thing Nick had said since the rats.

  "For the mules. Mules hauled the carts."

  Fifty feet past the stable the tunnel branched off in three directions. The tracks ended here in a decaying wooden triangle. The rusty head of a miner's pick lay in the dirt. Nick picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket.

  "I don't like this," Selena said.

  "Me neither." He shone the flashlight at the shaft on the right, then the others. There wasn't much difference between them. They all looked like highways to hell. He wet a finger and felt for a breath of air.

  Nothing. Just a wet finger.

  The flashlight beam was turning yellow. If they ran out of light they might never leave. He didn't like the idea of being in the dark with rats and spiders, but the batteries were fading.

  "I'm going to turn off the light."

  The blackness closed in. Nick remembered a cave in Afghanistan where he was almost buried alive, remembered his drunken father locking him in a dark closet, remembered a cellar in Colombia filled with the sewer odors of pain and death. He pushed the thoughts away, wished he had a drink or a cigarette or both.

  Selena clenched his hand. In the black silence he heard sounds. Too many sounds. Water dripped somewhere. There was a soft, constant noise of dribbles of earth falling from the roof. The tunnels creaked and he heard wood groaning. Something scuttled close by.

  Talking was strange. The relentless dark sucked words away like velvet as soon as they were spoken.

  "I don't think we should go further in. Those tunnels go deeper, and they're lower. We'd have to crawl. The tracks end here and that's not good. If these passages went through, the miners would have run the tracks all the way to get the ore."

  "Nick, I'm scared. What if we can't get out?"

  "We can't think like that."

  "Yes, but what if we can't?"

  "We'll get out."

  "Maybe one of the side entrances we passed back there can take us out."

  "Yeah, but which one?"

  "If we open them up, something could give us a clue. Those boards they used, they don't look strong. We can break them down to get in."

  "That's good thinking." He smelled her fear, a faint, sour, coppery smell. Or maybe it was him.

  He turned on the light. It was weaker.

  Back up the tunnel they came to a side shaft and Selena held the light while Nick pulled boards away. He tossed a rock through the opening waiting for the sound. There was a pause, then a splash, a long way below.

  "You heard that?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm not up for a swim. Let's keep going."

  The next two were the same, vertical death traps dropping hundreds of feet into the flooded lower levels of the mine. They came to the next entrance. Carter played the light around it.

  "There's something written there," Selena said.

  Chinese characters were scribed into the rock over the entrance.

  "Can you read it?"

  "Yes. It says, 'Dreams'."

  "Dreams?"

  "That's what it says."

  "Why would someone write 'dreams' on a mine shaft wall?"

  "How would I know?"

  He kicked in the boards. They stepped through into a low tunnel and followed it bent over. The light dimmed. After what seemed a long time the passage opened into a large chamber. The air was better, the ceiling high enough to stand upright.

  The room was about twenty feet square. Against one wall, three low rectangles of wood bore old mattresses, straw spilling out where the rats had gnawed on the rotted fabric. Across the room a broken stool lay on its side by a rough wooden table. On the table was the stub of a candle in a holder. Selena walked over and picked it up, just as the light died.

  Nick felt the old fear, the childhood demons of nameless, hideous monsters lurking in places without light. He took a deep breath, calmed himself. They weren't dead yet.

  "Now all we need is a light," said Selena.

  "You have a match?"

  "I don't smoke."

  "Neither do I."

  "Smoking can kill you."

  They started laughing hysterically.

  When they had calmed down he said, "Stay where you are."

  He crossed the room with hands stretched out until he banged up against one of the beds. From the tattered mattress he gathered straw and fabric and fumbled his way back to Selena. On the floor he felt around until he found a rock

  He made a little pile of bedding, took his knife and struck it against the rock. After a few tries he got a spark. He chipped at the rock, showering sparks down on the straw. It caught into bright flame.

  She handed him the candle and he lit it. The room came back into view, the smoke from the fire rising upward.

  "Look." Selena pointed upward.

  The smoke disappeared into a hole in the ceiling.

  "That's where the air is coming from."

  "At least we won't suffocate. Be nice if it were bigger."

  Carter looked around. "What is this place?"

  "I think it was an opium den. No one except Chinese would have come in here. The miners couldn't have read the sign over the
entrance and wouldn't have cared anyway."

  "That makes sense. That's why the beds. And the sign makes sense, too. There might be a way out. I don't think there'd only be one exit to a place like this."

  He walked slowly around the room. On the back wall was the outline of another entrance, walled up with stone, the mortar crumbling and old. Nick took the pick head he'd found and began chipping away. Soon there was a pile of dust on the floor. A rock came free, then another. He stuck his hand through the opening and touched empty space.

  He kept chipping and pulling out rocks until the entrance was big enough to climb through. They looked at each other.

  "It's another tunnel," he said.

  "What if it's a dead end?"

  "We don't have a choice. Only one way to find out."

  This tunnel was narrow but it was in good shape. At one point it dipped through water that came to their knees. Nick wondered if he was about to step into a deep, deep hole, but the floor rose again and they were back on dry ground. The candle was almost gone when they came to another blocked entrance, this one walled up with brick.

  "That's a change."

  "The mortar looks old. Maybe I can kick it down." He handed her the candle.

  He gave it a good kick. Another.

  "Now I know how Bruce Lee must have felt," he said.

  "Let me try," Selena said. "Better get out of the way."

  Nick stood to the side. Selena closed her eyes, took a deep breath and became very still. She opened her eyes and backed away, then let out a wild yell and launched herself flying, feet first. The whole wall blew out into the room on the other side.

  Squinting against light, he stepped through into someone's basement. Selena was getting to her feet. He reached down to help her up.

  "How the hell did you do that?"

  "Nick." She gestured with her head.

  A burly man with a gray beard stood openmouthed across the room in pajamas, eyes wide, pointing a twelve gauge shotgun at them.

  Carter raised his hands. "How's it going?" he said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  "What are you doing here?" Shotgun Man was around sixty. He looked scared. The twelve gauge shook in his hands. A large dog of indeterminate breed stood next to him, bristling and growling.

  "Take it easy. I'll pay for the damage to your wall."

  "You mind telling me where the hell you came from?"

  "You mind putting that down, sir? I can explain. It's a long story. My name's Nick, this is Selena."

  "You look like something my dog rolled in. You say you'll pay?"

  "Absolutely. We'll make it new. Where are we, anyway?"

  Suspicious, but he lowered the gun a few inches. Nick breathed easier.

  "You're in Smartsville, California. How did you get here?"

  The truth wouldn't be a good idea, considering the events of the day. He began improvising.

  "Selena here owns the old Connor mine up the road. You know the place?"

  "Connorsville? The Number One Mine? Sure, everyone knows about it. That's your place?"

  Carter was about to say something, but she beat him to it.

  "Yes." She smiled at him. "I'm really sorry we made so much trouble for you. I was showing Nick around and we went inside the mine. I tripped and grabbed a post holding up the roof. The whole thing came down and the roof collapsed. We were almost buried alive."

  Carter picked up the story. "So we couldn't get out the way we got in. We wandered around in there for hours until we found the tunnel that brought us here. We broke down your wall because there wasn't anything else to do. Like I said, I'll pay for the damage."

  "Well, I'll be damned." The gun dropped another few inches. "I always heard the Chinese dug secret tunnels during the gold rush."

  "Why would they dig one here?"

  "This was a whorehouse in the old days. It's good a reason as any, I guess. You two were damn lucky to find it, after being dumb enough to go into that old mine."

  "I guess it wasn't very smart," Selena said, looking contrite. Carter caught her glancing at him from the corner of her eye. She was enjoying it, playing the dumb blonde.

  "I guess you'd like a glass of something," Shotgun Man said. He lowered the shotgun all the way. The dog stopped growling and began to look interested instead of threatening. "Come on upstairs. This will be a hell of a story to tell down at the It'll Do."

  Shotgun Man's name was Ed. He offered a shot of Crown Royal and a lift back to the house. Nick figured that whoever threw the grenade would be long gone and would have cleaned up the carnage. He wasn't worried about stumbling over a couple of dead bodies.

  They climbed into Ed's pickup. Ten minutes later they stood on the front porch of the house. There was no sign of the shooters. Nick's watch showed midnight.

  Ed drove off with a promise from Selena that he could come back with his metal detector and search the town site. They watched his taillights disappear. High overhead in the warm, June night, an airplane left a long, silver trail across the star-filled sky. A soft breeze carried the sound of crickets singing to each other.

  "Feels good to have all that space above you, doesn't it?"

  "I didn't think we were going to get out of there," she said.

  "The spiders got to me."

  "And the rats. Don't forget the rats."

  She turned to him and wrapped her arms around him. He held her for a long moment, felt the warmth of her body in the cool night air.

  "Let's go inside."

  Selena turned on the lights. The contents of her purse were scattered on the floor and the couch. The back door was open where they'd run for it.

  Selena gathered her things back together. Nick called Harker. It was three in the morning on the East Coast. The day's events were enough reason to wake her up.

  Harker picked up her phone. Her voice was thick with sleep.

  "It better be good, Nick." She coughed.

  "You might say that. We have the book."

  He filled her in on what had happened. There was a long pause.

  "I'll get a cleanup team out there to process the place. No sign of the shooters?"

  "It's dark out, so I can't look for bodies, but no, no sign. My guess is whoever threw the grenade took the others with him. He was in the house and got into Selena's purse, so he knows who she is and where she lives. But after that cave in, they have to think we're both dead."

  "This local man, you think he suspects any of this?"

  "No. He just thinks we're dumb, exploring old mines. I told him we'd reimburse him for damages, he's fine with it. I don't see any problems. Maybe another contribution to local bar lore."

  "Grenades and Uzis mean serious backing. Did you get a good look at any of them?"

  "I'm pretty sure they were Chinese. The big one is ugly as hell. I'd recognize him if I saw him again."

  "Maybe the Bureau can help."

  "If Ugly has anything to do with Wu, they might have a shot of him."

  "I'll see what they've got. There have to be more photos than the ones they gave us. What's your plan now?"

  "I haven't thought about it. Get some sleep, I guess."

  "How's Selena?"

  "She's fine."

  "Tell her she is now under Federal protection and direction regarding her activities."

  "Yes, Director."

  "And Nick…I'm glad you both made it out safe."

  She hung up.

  Carter turned to where Selena was sitting on the couch, exhausted, beat up, filthy with mine dirt. She looked a little rough around the edges. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to do more than that. It had been a long time since he'd wanted to hold any woman.

  "The Director said you're now under Federal protection. It means the government will be controlling your life for a while, what you can and can't do. It's the trade off."

  Selena nodded, a gesture of resignation.

  "Harker's sending a team to check this place out," he said. "What do you want to do?"
>
  "I want to get cleaned up and sleep. But I don't want to stay here."

  "I've got a place not far away. Why don't we go there? I can sleep on the couch."

  She considered a moment, gave him a thoughtful look.

  "Sounds better than a motel. You have a shower or a bathtub?"

  "I do."

  "Let's go."

  She got up, took the book and her purse, turned everything off and locked up. Carter opened the passenger door for her. The glove box was open and he hadn't left it that way. The insurance slip was gone. He closed the glove compartment without mentioning his thoughts to Selena. The address on the slip was a P.O. Box, so they didn't have a physical location yet. They were safe for the moment.

  In less than an hour they pulled up at the cabin.

  While Selena cleaned up he got the book and placed it in a gun safe at the back of the bedroom closet. He sat down and leaned back on the couch, waiting for her to finish, and closed his eyes. What a day, he thought. Why were these people so anxious to get the book? He fell asleep.

  He dreamed.

  He was running in a twilight land, with something close behind. He ran through a bleak landscape with high mountains and large black animals in a rocky field. The sky was sickly yellow and there was a bad smell in the air.

  He heard a helicopter. He was looking for Selena, but couldn't find her. He saw a cave in the side of a mountain and then he was inside. A dark figure dressed in a long robe stood in the shadows and watched him. The figure held something white in his right hand. There was a flash of light and rocks began falling. He was going to be buried alive.

  Then he was standing in a crowd of people with Megan. He was naked, exposed. He was looking for his clothes.

  "I don't know where my socks are."

  "It's all right, Nick. But you need your parachute."

  Then he was dressed and they were standing on a beach, looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge

  "I love you," he said.

  "I love you, too, but I have to go. Aren't the mountains beautiful?"

  Towering, snow-capped mountains were right up against the bay behind the bridge. Somehow it made sense in the dream.

  Then the sky turned dark and a cold wind began whipping up whitecaps on the bay. Megan was gone.