Bross's crooked mouth hung open in disgust. "Why is anyone even listening to this moron? He's got his head up his ass."
"No," said Cheryl quietly. "He's got guts. Unlike some of us here."
"Jake," Barlow said, "we're totally isolated here. There's no way to reach anyone anyway."
I shook my head. "There's a couple of possibilities. But I really don't have time to explain. I have to get this guy out of here. So all I ask of the rest of you is to cover for me. When they ask what happened to Buck, all you know is that he said something about being freaked out by the shootings, how he didn't want to go to jail for the rest of his life. You don't know anything more. And if they notice I'm gone, too, I said I had to take a piss, and I couldn't wait. That's all you say, okay? Nothing else."
I looked around the room. "But it only takes one of you to say something different, and we're all going to pay the price." I looked directly at Bross. "So even if you think I have my head up my ass, don't screw it up for everyone else. Including yourself, Kevin."
Bodine was nodding. So was just about everyone else, except Bross, who scowled furiously.
"No one's going to screw it up," Hank Bodine said. "Not if I have anything to do with it."
"Thank you."
"No, Jake," he said. "Thank you."
"All right. Is no one going to help me move this body?"
Silence.
"Me," came a voice from the far back corner. It was one of the Mexican waiters. The one I'd talked to at dinner.
Pablo, I remembered his name was.
"I help you," he said.
56
Pablo was small and skinny, with short dark hair and widely spaced brown eyes; for an instant I thought of Pee Wee.
But they looked nothing alike. This kid was slight of build, but scrappy, not fragile. And something else I'd glimpsed at dinner, as he apologized for spilling the wine: Behind the innocent eyes loitered a hell-raiser. A kindred spirit.
It was surprising how much easier it was to cut someone else loose than it had been to free myself. A couple of quick slashing motions using the heel of the blade, and the fibers began to give way, the strands splaying.
"There's no closet in this room, right?" I sliced through the ropes and tugged them off, jammed the two pieces of rope into my back pockets with the others.
"No closet."
"Out there?" I jerked my head toward the door as he clambered to his feet, ran behind me.
"For the table linens," he said. "But basement is closer."
No movement in the windows, no silhouetted figures. No screen doors slamming, no footsteps in the hall; not yet.
The entrance to the fitness center, in the basement, was next to the screened porch. Too close to Russell and his brother.
"How do we get down there?"
"I show you."
He knelt at one end of Buck's unconscious body, grabbing under the arms, his chest pressing against the back of Buck's neck.
The eyes came open just a bit, exposing little white crescents, and for a second I thought he might be regaining consciousness.
Turning around, I squatted between Buck's legs, grabbed his knees, leading the way out of the room.
Two hundred and fifty pounds or more of unconscious man was even heavier than I'd expected. Dried mud crumbled from the traction soles of his combat boots.
The great room was dark and still smelled of dinner.
How many hours ago was that? Five, maybe six? No more: yet the other side of a chasm.
We threaded carefully among the jumbles of haphazardly stacked furniture.
"Where kitchen is," he said, directing me with his eyes. We struggled to balance the body between us, keep it from sagging.
"If they come in," I said, "we drop him and run, understand?"
He nodded, strain contorting his face.
"There," he whispered.
I steered Buck's knees toward the kitchen door. The small round inset pane of glass was black, opaque. That meant, I assumed, that no one was in the kitchen.
The floorboards creaked.
I pushed against the door, swinging it open into the dark corridor. The cellar door, on the left, was sturdy oak.
"There," Pablo said again. "Switch is on the wall."
I let go of Buck's right knee to grab the big black iron knob. His right leg dangled, then his boot thumped loudly against the floor.
Somewhere a screen door banged.
I gave Pablo a look, but he already understood. We were moving as quickly as we dared with our ungainly burden.
The cellar door groaned open, rusty hinges protesting. I found the light switch on the wall, flicked it up, and a bare bulb came on, illuminating a narrow, steep stairway. The ceiling was low and sharply canted.
"Careful," Pablo whispered. "The steps-no backs."
I saw what he meant at once: The wooden steps were open, had no risers. A trip hazard, particularly since we couldn't easily look down.
The steps squeaked as we descended into dank cold air, the faint odor of mildew.
The cellar was dark, seemed to go on forever. Presumably, it followed the footprint of the lodge. The concrete floor, fairly recent, had probably been poured over the original packed earth.
A new cinder-block wall ran along one side, partitioning off the fitness center, a recent addition, from the rest of the basement. Against the wall was a line of old black steamer trunks, wooden crates, neat stacks of cardboard boxes. A facing row of metal shelving displayed miscellaneous junk: old lamps, cardboard boxes of lightbulbs, an antique Waring blender. An open pantry on the other wall was stacked with burlap sacks of rice and canned beans and giant tins of cooking oil.
"We need to tie him up to something that won't move," I said. "Where's the boiler?"
"Maybe something else," Pablo said. He jerked his chin to the left.
We carried Buck's body along a narrow aisle between tall steel shelves of laundry detergent and bleach and floor wax. Now, I figured, we were directly under the great room and the front porch. Oddly, the concrete walls sloped inward to what looked, at first glance, like the floor-to-ceiling bars of a prison cell. The light from the stairwell was too distant; I couldn't make out what it was.
Pablo gently set down Buck's head; I dropped the legs. Then he located a light switch mounted on a steel column and flipped it, lighting a line of bulbs on the ceiling.
Behind the steel bars, I could see, was a room whose walls and low, barrel-vaulted ceiling were built from weathered red brick. The floor was gravel. Plain wooden racks held hundreds of dusty wine bottles.
The wine cellar.
"Yes," I said, grasping a bar and tugging. "Good."
I pulled the two lengths of rope from my pockets, held them up. "We're going to need some more rope."
"Rope? I don't think down here…"
"Anything. Wire. Chain."
"Ah, maybe…" He turned slowly and headed back the way we'd come.
The wine cellar's grate was made of stout iron bars, the finest jailhouse construction. The Chвteau Lafitte wasn't going anywhere, and neither was Buck.
A guttural moan.
I spun around, saw Buck starting to sit up.
57
His large hands pushed against the cement slab floor. I sidestepped around behind his back, then lurched forward, hooking my right elbow under his chin. The bristles of his hairy neck felt like steel wool against the crook of my arm. When I had his throat in a vise grip, I grabbed my right hand with my left, clasped them together, and squeezed.
Adrenaline coursed through my bloodstream.
He struggled mightily to free himself from the jailer's hold, flung his hands upward, twisting and torquing his legs around.
My arm muscles trembled from the exertion. In ten seconds or so he'd gone limp. The carotid arteries on either side of the neck supply blood to the brain. Compressed, they don't.
Dad had taught me the blood choke. He'd actually demonstrated it on me once until I passed out.<
br />
Pablo rushed toward me, ready to help, then watched me set Buck's head on the floor. He held up a tangled mess of brown lamp cord.
"Perfect." I handed him the steak knife and asked him to cut off pieces a couple of feet long.
In Buck's tactical vest I found a black nylon sheath, out of which I pulled a knife. This was no steak knife, either. It was just like the one I'd seen Verne take out earlier-a Microtech Halo, a single-action front-opener. I could tell right away from the logo, a white claw in a circle set against the matte black, anodized aluminum handle. At Glenview one just like it had sent a kid to the hole for six months.
I pressed the titanium firing button, and a lethal-looking blade shot forward. It kicked in my hand. A four-inch blade, partially serrated. I didn't need to touch the spearpoint to know it could take off a fingertip.
I handed it carefully to Pablo.
"ЎDios mнo!" he breathed. He had one gold tooth: lousy Mexican dental care.
"Be careful."
While he sliced lamp cord, I took out the Ruger, thumbed the cylinder release, saw it was loaded. Several of his vest pockets were stuffed with. 44 Magnum cartridges; I grabbed a handful. There was a flashlight in one of his vest pockets, and I took that, too: an expensive-looking tactical flashlight, the kind you see SWAT teams use to temporarily blind suspects at night.
When Pablo was finished, he handed the knife back to me awkwardly, blade out. He didn't know how to use it. He watched as I pulled back on the charging lever to retract the blade.
I looped some lamp cord around Buck's wrists, and we used it to pull him upright. Then we shoved him against the iron grate and secured him, spread-eagled, in a standing position. Pablo wrapped cord around his ankles while I searched the dusty floor and finally found an oil-stained rag in a corner, stiff and covered with dirt, and stuffed it into Buck's mouth, in case he came to again soon.
"I need to go back upstairs," I said. "To the manager's office."
"But is not safe to go up there."
"I don't have much choice. Is there any other way upstairs besides the way we came in?"
"No."
"Not a bulkhead?"
Pablo didn't know what the word meant, and I didn't know the Spanish. "A delivery entrance?"
He looked blank.
"La entrada de servicio," I said. "Ya sabes, el бrea dondese carga y descarga, por donde se meten las cosas al hotel. "
"Ah." He nodded, thought for a moment. "Yes, but not to upstairs."
"So there is another way out?"
"To the water only."
I didn't understand.
He went over to the iron bars, pointed out the gate in the center that I'd noticed earlier. Mounted on the gate's frame just to the left of Buck's lolling head was an old push-button mechanical combination lock. He punched in three numbers, turned a knob. Then he slowly pulled the gate open. It looked heavy, though it was surely a lot heavier with Buck lashed to it.
"In here," he said.
I followed him into the wine cellar. He pointed to an arched section of the brick wall that had no wine rack in front of it. "The old delivery entrance."
The arched entrance had obviously been bricked in a long time ago. "That doesn't really help us," I said.
"No, no, look. Is where Mr. Paul hides the very expensive wines and things."
He reached behind a wine rack and pulled out a long metal rod, then poked it into a crack in the mortar between two bricks.
A clunking sound, and the entire arched wall jutted forward.
Not a wall: a brick-and-mortar door.
"What the hell-?"
Behind the brick-paved door was a small room. A few wooden wine racks, randomly placed, held maybe a few dozen dusty bottles. A small stack of plastic file boxes, probably Paul's private records.
And a second iron gate. This chamber was actually, I saw, the mouth of a long tunnel.
"This goes right down to the dock, doesn't it?" I said. "Under the dock, in fact."
Pablo nodded. "When they built the lodge a long time ago, all the deliveries came by sea. They used to bring all the things in through this tunnel. But not for a long time. The old owners, before Mr. Paul, they closed it off."
And they'd taken advantage of the renovation to build a hidden wine cellar for the good stuff. Or a hidden storage nook. "Is this gate locked?"
"No more."
"Everyone who works here knows about this?"
"No, just…" He was suddenly uncomfortable. "Josй and I-sometimes we smoke, you know, the mota."
"Weed."
He nodded. "Mr. Paul, he fire us if he know. So Josй found this place under the dock."
"I'm going to try to get upstairs to the office. I want you to go down to the water," I said. "And look for a boat."
"Which?"
"Any one that has a key in the engine. Or a rowboat, if you have to. You know how to use a boat?"
"Yes, of course."
"When you get out there, move slowly and quietly, and don't start up the motor until the last possible minute. Take the boat to the nearest lodge and wake them up. Get help. The police, anyone. Tell them what's going on. Okay?"
"Okay." He seemed to hesitate.
"You're worried about the noise from the boat's engine, aren't you?"
"They have guns. They shoot."
"But you'll be far from the lodge."
A sudden static burst came from Buck's two-way radio: "Buck, come in."
The voice echoed in the low-ceilinged chamber. I couldn't identify it.
I returned to the outer gate, pulled the radio from Buck's belt: a Motorola Handie-Talkie.
"Buck, it's Verne," the voice said again. "Where the hell are you?"
"Maybe they look for you now," Pablo said. "Is not safe for you up there."
It all depended, of course, on what Ali and the other hostages told them. I switched off the HT. "You go," I said. "Get help. Don't you worry about me."
58
At the top of the stairs, I switched off the light, stood in absolute darkness.
Quiet.
Then again, the cellar door was two inches thick, and then there was the kitchen door: a lot of wood between me and anyone who might be searching for me. I turned the knob, pushed the cellar door open slowly. The hinges squeaked no matter how slowly I opened it.
A few steps into the dark hallway, I stopped again to listen.
Voices now.
From the great room. I sank to my knees, out of sight, and listened.
Two voices, hushed and urgent. One was Verne's, manic, rising and falling, speedy and loud. The other was Wayne's oddly high alto. The tattooed ex-con conferring with the crew-cut blond lunk.
Scraps of argument, some words and phrases more distinct than others.
"…heard him saying he was going to bolt." That was Verne.
"To who?" Wayne, now.
"-said he changed his mind. Got spooked after Russell killed those guys. Didn't want to go to jail for the rest of his life."
"He told you that?"
"…the chick said."
"What chick?"
"I don't know, whatever her name. Paris Hilton, how the hell do I know? The babe."
Something I couldn't hear, and then Verne saying, "I'll take his cut." A sniggering laugh.
Something else, then Wayne: "Where the hell's he gonna go?"
"Out there somewhere. Russell wants you to get your ass out there and look for him."
"The hell's he gonna go? Not the Zodiac-"
"They got other boats down there."
"…cut the spark-plug wires, so what's he gonna do, swim to Vancouver?"
Wayne said something else I couldn't quite make out, and then Verne said, "Christ's sake, then look in the woods."
"Can't go more than twenty yards in that forest without getting stuck. You saw that."
"You saw the guy in the jungle in Panama-he's an animal."
"And if I find him?"
"Waste him, Russell says
. Can't trust him anymore."
"I'm not going to waste Bucky for taking off. That's whacked, man."
"You don't do it, buddy, Russell's gonna grease you. You know he will. He's not taking any chances. Not when we're this close to the big score."
The jungle in Panama. Special Forces, then. Military, anyway. At least these guys and Buck, probably Russell, too.
So I'd learned a couple of other things as well. The cover story about Buck had worked. They weren't looking for an unconscious comrade but a defector. They weren't looking for me, either; they hadn't yet realized I was missing.
That meant they'd search outside, not inside. I could hide here until they were gone and get to the office without being spotted.
Other, crazier ideas came to me. Fire a few rounds at those two, right through the door. The.44 Magnum rounds would penetrate the hardwood, no problem. But without accuracy: I didn't know their position. Not without looking through the round window-which would expose my location.
Sure, I might get lucky. But the odds were that I'd hit neither. Maybe wound one of them. They'd grab their weapons, and it would be two against one. And as soon as Russell and his brother heard the shots, it would be four against one.
Trying to shoot these two was insanity. Yet until they moved, I couldn't get to the manager's office.
By then, Pablo was on his way to the water. Maybe, depending on how easy it was to move through the old tunnel, he was already outside, under the dock. Even at the kidnappers' Zodiac.
Then the voices stopped. Retreating footsteps, then a screen door opening and closing. One of them-was it Wayne?-had gone outside to search for Buck.
I slid across the floor, paused to listen again.
No one out there now.
I pushed the kitchen service door from the bottom, just a few inches.
Then a few inches more.
The Ruger tucked into my belt: I needed both hands free.
Then, rising slowly, I sidled through the doorway and eased it closed behind me.
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