Kill Switch (9780062135285)

by Rollins, James; Blackwood, Grant

  Bukolov chuckled. “I have grown quite fond of that dog.”

  7:55 P.M.

  Preparing to explore, Tucker and Christopher donned headlamps. The cavern’s only other illumination came from an LED lantern next to Bukolov. The doctor still sat among the supplies, guarding Anya. He had a pistol in one hand and De Klerk’s diary in another, doing his best to get his bearings, to discern some clue about the whereabouts of the specimens of LUCA.

  “There are many references in his damned diary,” Bukolov had said a few moments ago. “To bunkrooms, officers’ messes, medical wards, including a place grimly noted as the Die Bloedige Katedraal, or ‘The Bloody Cathedral.’ It seemed the Boer even brought their horses in here and wagons.”

  Tucker looked up at the falling chute of water.

  Not through there they didn’t.

  “But I keep coming to one entry over and over again. It’s simply noted as Die Horro, or ‘The Horror.’ It seemed important to De Klerk. But it would be easier to trace his steps through this subterranean world if I had some map of the place.”

  And that’s what Tucker and Christopher intended to do, with Kane’s help. Tucker figured this recon mission was a better use of the shepherd’s skills than merely guarding Anya. She was already trussed up and under the baleful eye of Bukolov. Besides, where could she go?

  So Christopher and Tucker headed over to the two passageways that looked like the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun.

  Tucker took the one on the right with Kane. Christopher vanished into the other. After only sixty steps, Tucker’s tunnel dumped into another cavern, this one massive, with a vaulted ceiling festooned with stalactites. The floor was likewise covered in a maze of towering stalagmites. Some of the two met to form columns like in a—

  “Cathedral,” Tucker mumbled.

  Was this the place Bukolov had mentioned?

  Die Bloedige Katedraal.

  As he stepped farther out, he saw the walls to either side had been carved into tiers. They definitely looked man-made, likely the handiwork of the Boers.

  A scuffle of boots sounded behind him. Christopher stumbled into view thirty feet away, his light shining blindingly into Tucker’s face. His tunnel had also deposited him into the Cathedral.

  “Whoa, whoa!” Christopher said, sweeping his headlamp across the cavern. “How big do you think this place is?”

  “Side to side, fifty yards. Maybe twice again as deep.” Tucker pointed to the tiered ledges on his side. “I want to check those out. Those aren’t natural. See the chisel marks and ax strikes in the sandstone?”

  Tucker crossed over and hopped up onto the first ledge, then the second, finally the third, like climbing tall steps. Kane followed him up. They were now ten feet off the ground. He found more Boer handiwork on top. The highest ledge had been excavated along its length to form a crude foxhole, enough room for a soldier to duck down out of sight from the floor below.

  Shining his lamp into the foxhole, he saw the bottom littered with spent shell casings. Kane jumped down to explore, sniffing at the casings, shuffling through them.

  Christopher had mirrored his climb on the far side of the cavern and discovered the same. They both walked along the top tier on their respective sides, heading down along the cavern, paralleling each other.

  “I’m starting to see how the Boers did it,” Tucker called out. “From these foxholes, they could strafe anyone passing through the cavern below. A perfect killing floor.”

  “Horrible to imagine,” Christopher said.

  Tucker now understood the bloody part of the room’s nickname.

  “Let’s keep going.”

  They clambered back to the floor, met in the middle, and headed farther down the belly of the monstrous cavern.

  Tucker noted the telltale pockmarks gouging a nearby stalagmite, evidence of gunfire. This killing floor had seen some use.

  But if so, where were the bodies from that slaughter? Had the British buried them after clearing this place out—even the Boers’ remains? Was there a mass grave somewhere in these hills?

  As they continued through the Cathedral, the walls began narrowing and the roof descending, until the space was only thirty feet across. Near the end of the cave, they hit a waist-high wall of burlap sandbags that stretched from wall to wall. They high-stepped over it, while Kane hurdled it. In another ten feet, with the walls ever narrowing, they ran into another line of sandbags, then after that another. Beyond the last one, the Cathedral’s walls and ceiling narrowed to a four-foot-wide funnel that became a tunnel.

  “Defense in depth,” Tucker whispered.

  “Pardon me?”

  He pointed to the dark tunnel. “Your enemy comes through there. The defenders hide behind the closest row of sandbags. If the enemy breaches that wall, the defenders fall back to the next barrier.”

  “And the next after that . . .”

  “All the way across. If the enemy makes it through that gauntlet, they still have to face the killing floor behind us. No wonder the Boer lasted so long here, where only a few could withstand many.”

  Tucker stepped over the last sandbag and wondered if his team would soon face similar bad odds.

  “Stay here with Kane,” Tucker said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Dropping to his hands and his knees, he crawled along the shaft ahead, which almost immediately began cutting sharply left and right. As he crawled, Tucker imagined a Boer sniper lying prone at each corner, picking off an advancing British soldier before retreating to the next corner, then repeating the process again.

  After eight or ten bends Tucker reached a straight passageway. At the end of it, slivers of pale light glowed. Dowsing his headlamp, he crawled the last of the way and reached a pile of rock that blocked the path forward. He fingered the silvery light that pierced through the rubble and pulled a fist-sized rock from its edge. A few more fell with it, forming a watermelon-sized hole.

  Cool night air flowed back to him.

  He poked his head out and searched around outside, gaining his bearings.

  He realized he had reached the other canyon—the other tusk of the boar—the one Christopher and Anya had explored earlier.

  Interesting.

  If nothing else, he’d found another exit.

  After pulling his head back inside, he carefully returned the fallen rocks back into place, sealing the hole, making sure it remained camouflaged from the outside.

  He didn’t want any uninvited houseguests coming in the back door.

  8:13 P.M.

  Tucker returned to the sandbag barrier, where he found Christopher waiting, but he noted a missing member of their team. “Where’s Kane?”

  Christopher did a dance of searching around. “He was here a moment ago. That one, he is like a ghost.”

  True . . . and with a dog’s curiosity.

  He had forgotten to tell Kane to stay.

  Tucker pursed his lips and let out a soft double whistle.

  Kane responded with a double bark.

  They followed the sound back into the Cathedral, only to discover Kane standing at the top ledge along the left wall. He stared square at Tucker—then jumped down into the foxhole and vanished out of sight. The shepherd’s message was plain.

  Come see what I found!

  What now?

  Tucker led Christopher up to the ledge. He shone his lamp’s beam into the foxhole to find Kane seated before a barrel-shaped wooden door in the cavern wall.

  “Seems there is more to this maze,” Christopher said.

  Tucker jumped down. He tested the four-foot-wide plank door. The wood was once stout, the iron joinery solid. No longer. He leaned against the other side of the foxhole and kicked out with his legs. The ancient door shattered under his heels. A passageway extended from it.

  “Let’s see where it leads.”

  He took Kane with him this time, but he had noted Christopher beginning to limp badly on the ankle he’d twisted before, so he left him to rest.


  The crawl this time was mercifully short. The passageway ended at a crudely circular room, crowded with stacked boxes, but at least he could stand.

  He noted four tunnels led out from here.

  Tucker sighed.

  The Boers apparently were ants in another life.

  Tucker called back to Christopher. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, come after me.”

  He took a brief moment to examine the crates. Burned into their sides was the coat of arms for the Boer Orange Free State. Same as De Klerk’s unit. He pulled the lid off the top crate and looked inside. He found rifle shells, canned goods, tins of kerosene, candles, hammers, nails. He examined three more crates and found similar contents.

  Though he had found nothing significant, a question nagged at him: Why hadn’t the British seized this bounty when they cleared this place out?

  Without an answer, he began his search of the four tunnels, starting from the left and working his way right.

  The first passage led to a mess hall: a long, narrow gallery containing trestle tables constructed from what appeared to be the remains of wagons, all of them topped with abandoned plates and pewter cups.

  The second tunnel ended at a bunkroom: a gallery-style cavern, with moldy lines of bedrolls flanking the walls and dark lanterns hanging above.

  Again, there was no indication that the British had been here. Nothing was ransacked; nothing looked disturbed. Tucker felt as though he were touring an abandoned theater.

  Down the third passageway, he found the unit’s hospital: a ward lined by thirty or so makeshift cots and stacked with crates of medical supplies.

  He was about to leave, when something struck him as off.

  “No blankets, no mattresses, no pillows,” he murmured.

  The cots had been stripped.

  And why so many of them?

  According to Bukolov, the Boers had arrived here with only a hundred men. This medical ward held cots for nearly a third of that number. Had that many soldiers been wounded?

  With more mysteries raised than solved, Tucker moved to the fourth and final passageway. This one ended at a huge cavern, but it was barren: no crates, no equipment. Nothing. But something struck him as odd about its far wall.

  Following his beam of light, Tucker crossed there and discovered a large wall of rubble. He noted blackened scorch marks to either side. Roosa must have blasted this entrance, collapsing and sealing it behind him. At least this discovery answered a question that had been nagging him: How had Roosa gotten the horses into this cave system? Of course, that raised in turn yet another question: What became of the horses?

  Kane barked twice behind him.

  The shepherd drew him to a tunnel opening off to the right. This one was blocked by a careful stack of boulders. Each stone wedged tightly together. Even the gaps had been stuffed with clumps of burlap.

  “What the hell?” he murmured.

  Using his hands and his knife, he pried at the wall of boulders until one slipped free. It crashed to the floor, almost hitting his toes. He began to lower his face to the opening, to shine his light through the gap, but yanked his head back, slapped in the face by a fierce stench.

  He took a few involuntary steps backward, covering his nose and mouth with a hand. He recognized the stink immediately, flashing back to too many battlefields, to too much death.

  Flesh and fire.

  He took a full minute to steel himself, then he returned to the sealed door. He now detected a whiff of kerosene through the stench, the incendiary source for whatever horrors lay beyond this blockade.

  He remembered the entry read by Bukolov from De Klerk’s diary.

  Die Horro . . .

  Holding his breath, he shoved his head through the gap and swiveled the beam of his lamp. He pointed it down first, expecting to see floor. Instead, darkness swallowed his light. He was staring into the mouth of a shaft, a black pit.

  Tucker pulled back out and sat down beside Kane.

  He knew what he had to do, but he railed against it.

  He had no doubt what lay at the bottom of the pit.

  But he had no answer as to why and who?

  Those answers lay below—along with perhaps the secret behind De Klerk’s diary. He closed his eyes, struggling to rally. He’d come too far with too much blood shed. He could not balk now.

  But I want to . . . dear God, do I want to.

  8:41 P.M.

  “Tucker, what did you find?” Christopher asked, looking worried, perhaps noting his sickened demeanor as he returned.

  “I’m not sure. But I need you to go back to the supplies, grab a coil of climbing rope, and come back here.”

  Christopher returned two minutes later.

  “Follow me,” Tucker said and led Christopher and Kane back to the large cavern and over to the doorway that closed off the pit.

  “That stink . . .” Christopher said after peering through the hole. He had helped Tucker widen it by pulling out a few more rocks. “You’re not going down there, are you?”

  “I’m happy for you to take my place.”

  For once, Christopher didn’t argue.

  Working together, they anchored the rope around a nearby stalagmite and tossed the free end through the hole.

  After ordering Kane to stay put, Tucker boosted himself through the opening and twisted around. With his gloved hands on the rope, he leaned back and braced his feet against the wall of the shaft. He took a calming breath. He tried to quiet the voice in his head that was shouting at him to go no farther.

  In the end, he simply chose to ignore it.

  Hand over hand, Tucker walked himself down into the pit. His headlamp danced off the rock. After ten feet he stopped, steadied himself, and looked below. The bottom of the pit was still beyond the reach of his headlamp’s beam. He kept going. He stopped again at the twenty-foot mark and spotted the end of his rope coiled on a bottom of sorts, a rock ramp that tilted at a sharp angle.

  Tucker lowered himself until his boots came to rest atop that ramp. He noted most of the shaft around him was scorched with an oily black soot. He kept one hand on the line—not trusting the rock’s slippery surface or its steep grade. Crouching carefully, he peered over the lip of the ramp and discovered another drop-off.

  Don’t think, he commanded himself.

  Swallowing hard, he leaned over the drop-off and shone his light down.

  His beam revealed an outstretched arm, reaching up toward him, blackened to bone, fingers curled by old flames.

  He shuddered, his heart pounding in his throat.

  He panned the light down the forearm and biceps, where it disappeared into—

  It took Tucker a few seconds for his mind to accept what he was seeing: a morass of skeletal remains and charred flesh. At the edges, he picked out scorched clothing and blankets, chunks of half-charred wood, and blackened tins of kerosene. Despite trying to avoid it, he discerned bits of individual remains.

  —a torso jutting from the mire as though the man had been trying to claw his way out of quicksand.

  —the disembodied hoof of a horse, its steel shoe glinting dully.

  —a pair of gentleman’s spectacles caught on a higher spur of rock, looking unscathed by the conflagration below, reflecting back his lamp’s light.

  “Good God,” he murmured.

  Sick to his stomach, his head full of the acrid stench of immolated flesh, he tore his eyes away and pulled himself back until he stood on trembling legs on the scorched ramp. Questions swirled.

  What had happened here?

  How deep was the pit?

  How many were down there?

  Tucker stared up, ready to escape this choked gateway to hell.

  Two feet above his head, he found himself staring at the haft of a dagger. It was jutting from the rock face, so soot covered he hadn’t noticed it when he first came down. He reached up, grabbed the haft, and gave it a wiggle. Dried soot flaked off and swirled in the beam of his headlamp. There was s
omething beneath the soot, pinned by the blade into the rock.

  Using his fingertips, he brushed away the soot to reveal a thick square of oilcloth. Carefully, he pried the packet off the wall and slipped it into his thigh pocket.

  “Tucker!” Christopher’s shout startled him. “What did you find?”

  He glared up toward his friend’s headlamp. “I’m coming up! Get that damned light out of my eyes.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  He quickly and gladly hauled himself up the rock face and out of the shaft. Without saying a word, he strode several yards away from the charnel pit and finally sat down. Christopher joined him and offered a canteen.

  He took a long gulp of water.

  Kane slinked over, his tail low, the very tip wagging questioningly.

  “I’m okay . . . I’m okay . . .”

  The reassurance was as much for him as Kane.

  “What was down there?” Christopher asked.

  Tucker explained—though words failed to convey the true horror.

  Christopher murmured, “Good Lord, why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Tucker withdrew the wrapped packet of oilcloth. “But this may hold some clue.”

  He turned the prize over in his hands. He found a seam in the cloth. Using the tip of his knife, he slit along it and unfolded the cloth. It was several layers thick. At the heart of the package rested a thick sheaf of papers, folded in half and perfectly preserved, showing no signs of soot or decay.

  Written on the outside in what he immediately recognized as De Klerk’s handwriting were two lines: one Afrikaans, the other in English, likely the same message.

  He shared a glance with Christopher and unfolded the papers. What he found there was written in both languages. Tucker read aloud from the English section.

  “ ‘However unlikely this eventuality, if this message is ever found, I feel compelled by my conscience to recount what has led to the awful events that took place here. Whether our actions will ever be recognized or understood by our loved ones is for God to decide, but I leave this life confident that He, in His infinite wisdom, will forgive us . . .’ ”