MANNING
Don’t worry about me. I’ll get there somehow. Amos, can you hear me? Get to Gehenna! I’ll get there!
Ben-David and I, and Giora, our driver, peer at the screen depicting the overturned interior of the Humvee illuminated only by flashlight. We glance to one another. No one speaks.
The screen continues to flicker and depixelate.
RACHEL
(to Manning)
We’ve stopped sweating.
Rachel’s fingertips probe her forehead.
RACHEL
Our bodies’ cooling mechanisms have shut down. We’re in heat shock. Our internal organs are failing.
The Humvee has settled at a ninety-degree angle. Buried, top and bottom. Manning and Rachel are immured. They can no longer hear the gale outside.
Manning’s side of the cabin continues filling with sand. He sets himself into the seat and braces against the seatback. Manning kicks with his bootheels violently against the windshield. The forward window glass in a Humvee is in two sections with a steel column between. Manning kicks first at his side, then at Rachel’s. The glass is two inches thick, laminated polycarbonate, bulletproof against even a .50-caliber round.
RACHEL
Stop.
Manning looses another volley of kicks.
RACHEL
Leave it.
Manning lets his weight fall against the passenger door, which has become the floor of the compartment in which he and Rachel find themselves entombed. He forces a breath of superheated air. Cascades of sand and grit sheet in through the chassis seals and the ruptures in the overhead. The sand rises like floodwater through the floorboards.
Manning’s eyes meet Rachel’s.
MANNING
Tell me one thing.
RACHEL
What?
MANNING
And for once don’t lie to me.
Rachel waits.
MANNING
You were with Instancer in Moscow. You drove the car after he murdered Golokoff. Tell me the truth. A witness saw you. A witness who has no reason to lie.
Rachel glances to the temp gauge on the dash: 147°. It takes her long moments to raise the strength to answer.
RACHEL
Yeah, I was with him. But only then. Only that one time. Every other place, every other minute, I was hunting him. That’s the truth, whether you believe it or not.
Manning makes no response.
RACHEL
You don’t know what it’s like.
MANNING
What what’s like?
RACHEL
Him. His power. To be with him. To feel him . . .
Rachel sets the flashlight down on the console below her. Its beam flickers, illuminating her face with an unearthly, orange glow.
RACHEL
Did I know who he was? I didn’t want to know. He was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
Rachel’s breath comes shallow and spasmodic.
RACHEL
His idea to identify the Thirty-Six was beyond brilliant. I don’t care what happened. He changed everything for me.
Rachel speaks not to Manning or even to herself, but as if to some universal, incorporeal listener.
RACHEL
So what if he was the devil? If there’s a devil, there’s a God, and if there’s a God, there’s meaning. Hell itself can’t be worse than life without meaning.
Rachel’s eyes turn back toward Manning.
RACHEL
Did I mention he was the greatest fuck I ever had, or any woman ever had?
Rachel’s breath comes shallower and more broken. Her lids close. Her chin lolls forward onto her chest.
Manning himself begins to go under.
Then:
A sound like knuckles rapping on metal.
Manning hears it. He tries to open his eyes.
The sound intensifies.
No longer rapping on steel.
Glass now.
The windshield.
Manning forces his lids apart. He turns toward the glass.
Outside, a hand scrapes away sand and grit.
Daylight.
A man’s face appears.
Boots mount the overturned hood of the Humvee. Manning stares as lugged soles clamber to the driver’s door topside.
With a heave of inhuman strength the man hauls the door open. Sand pours in onto Rachel and down onto Manning.
INSTANCER
Hello, Jim.
Instancer reaches down into the cabin with one hand, seizes Rachel by her shirt collar. He hauls her out.
Manning peers up.
Instancer’s hand stretches down a second time.
Manning clasps Instancer, wrist to wrist.
Instancer hauls Manning clear.
Instancer lowers Manning past the heeled-over roof into the sand on the far side. Manning collapses beside the overturned Humvee.
Instancer has already deposited Rachel in this spot.
She struggles to one knee, sucking in great gulps of air. Temperature has dropped dramatically outside the coffin confines of the buried Humvee.
Backed up to the Humvee, tailgate-to-grille, squats Instancer’s Chevy Chinook. Taillights, cargo-bed lamps, and the rear-facing red and yellow spot-beams of the light bar blaze into the gale-beaten murk.
INSTANCER
(to Manning)
Help me do this.
Instancer drops the pickup’s tailgate. From the cargo bed he hauls two heavy-duty chain-and-hook cables. He spools one clear and passes the other to Manning. Instancer yokes his cable to one of the two D-rings on the prow of the Humvee. Manning does the same with the other. Instancer checks both to be sure they’re secure. He starts toward the driver’s door of the Chinook.
INSTANCER
(to Manning and Rachel)
Keep clear of the vehicle. This thing’s gonna come out like a cannonball when it pops.
Manning and Rachel obey. From a rack on the pickup’s grille, Instancer removes a five-gallon flax sack with DESERT WATER BAG stenciled on the front. He tosses it to Rachel. The bag lands with a full-sounding splat on the sand before her. Rachel seizes it and upends the bag over her face, pouring the liquid, hot as it is, straight down her throat.
In Ben-David’s cab, I’m taking in this spectacle in snatches of garbled sound and depixelated video.
Suddenly our truck—Ben-David’s and Giora’s—brakes hard and plunges frame-down onto a berm of sand. The vehicle stops as if it had hit a wall. I’m flung violently into the dashboard.
ME
What was that?!
I thrash back to upright. Ben-David and Giora are peering forward over the hood.
The view is straight down.
Our truck has nose-dived over the crest of a dune and belly-flopped to a stop on the summit.
Two hundred feet below, we see headlights and taillights, fog lamps, and the red and yellow spot-beams of a pickup truck’s light bar. Through breaks in the murk we glimpse two male figures and one female.
BEN-DAVID
It’s Rachel! That’s Instancer!
I’m out the door and onto the sand. The second male below is Manning.
ME
Go down! Drive down!
GIORA
I can’t. We’ll flip like they did.
I’m shouting down the dune to Manning.
With the storm he can’t see or hear me.
I start down on foot. Ben-David grabs me. Giora holds me back too.
BEN-DAVID
That’s quicksand. You’ll sink into it like water.
I’m struggling against them.
BEN-DAVID
Wait!
Ben-David points to the base of the dune. I follow his finger. I’m straining to see through gaps in the murk.
As Ben-David, Giora, and I watch, Instancer mounts to the driver’s seat of the Chinook. Even through the storm we can hear the growl of the 7.6-liter Duramax diesel. The pickup bucks forward. Its massiv
e desert tires churn. The buried Humvee won’t budge. The diesel screams again. We can see the Humvee twitch, then buck a foot or two forward. Sand spills from its topline. Instancer rocks the pickup, tugging, tugging. The tow chains sing. We can hear them, like human voices, through the gale. Suddenly, with a ferocious heave and pop, the Humvee springs forward and up, shedding sand in great sheaves. The vehicle careens wildly, almost flips, then squirts free, totters for a moment on its rightmost rims, then lurches again and crashes down hard onto its four tires. The Humvee has righted itself. Instancer has righted it.
BEN-DAVID
Giora, back off this dune! Get the truck moving!
I’m peering through binoculars now. I see Instancer, moving swiftly and efficiently, decouple the tow chains and sling them, clanging, back into the cargo bed of his truck. He lifts the tailgate and shuts it.
Instancer and Manning stand across from each other.
They’re speaking.
I’m watching and timing the exchange in my head. Five seconds. Ten. Part of me wants to scramble back to the comm tablet in Ben-David’s cab on the chance of catching a phrase or even a word. But I don’t dare tear my eyes from the scene below.
Instancer and Manning finish speaking. Instancer returns to his vehicle. Manning boards the Humvee. The pickup grinds forward, out of the two hubcap-deep tracks it had torn up in the earth. I hear the diesel growl as Instancer shifts up. The truck churns away.
ME
What direction is he going?
BEN-DAVID
Gehenna.
The Humvee’s engine starts. Two plumes bark from the stacks. The frame shudders slightly as Manning shifts into gear. The vehicle pulls clear of the dune and accelerates, turning in the same direction as Instancer’s Chinook.
BEN-DAVID
Dewey, get back here!
I clamber aboard Ben-David’s six-by. Giora has gotten us free of the summit. We take off after Manning and Instancer, keeping clear of the collapsed dune. Ben-David is on the comm channel to the other convoy vehicles, sending our location, warning them of the quicksand hazard, and ordering them to follow as fast as they can and to arm the tunnel weapons.
Later, replaying the audio from Manning’s Humvee, I catch the final verbal exchange between him and Instancer at the base of the dune.
INSTANCER
You weren’t surprised to see me.
MANNING
Did you expect me to be?
31
GEHENNA
I’M IN THE MIDDLE of the bench seat of Ben-David’s six-by, between Giora at the wheel and Ben-David against the passenger door, when the Chevy Chinook emerges from the murk at high speed.
Instancer slams into us, prow-first, directly below Ben-David’s door. The army truck skids sideways. The fuel tank on its right flank crushes against the frame. The Chevy brakes in a four-wheel power slide. Instancer’s boot propels his driver’s door open. So fast that none of us has time to react, Instancer leaps from his truck and flings himself onto the right side of ours.
Instancer hauls the passenger door open. His right hand clasps the frame; his left seizes Ben-David by the waist of his trousers.
Ahead in our headlights: Gehenna.
The dig and its floodlamps loom through the gale-driven grunge.
Ben-David twists violently in the seat, turning both boots, now kicking wildly, toward Instancer. I’m hanging on to Ben-David, right arm around him from behind, left hand clamped like a claw onto the steering column under the dash. Giora stomps the brakes and heaves the wheel hard left, trying to use centrifugal force to fling Instancer out.
No use.
With one hand on Ben-David’s belt buckle, Instancer hauls him feet-first out into the storm. I watch the Israeli’s body plummet, bang, bang, off the edge of the seat. His skull cracks violently into the running board. Instancer drags him clear. He pulls Ben-David by one ankle across the ground.
My earbud squalls:
MANNING
I’m here.
Through the open truck door I see Manning’s Humvee burst out of the gloom, hurtling straight toward Instancer and Ben-David. Manning sees them. He flattens the brakes.
An up-armored Humvee weighs twelve thousand pounds. The vehicle skids wildly, throwing up great breakers of sand and stone. It stops. Manning springs from the cab. I toss him the Zombie Killer. He cocks it and pumps two shells point-blank into Instancer’s back.
I see Ben-David crab-scurry clear.
Manning slings the shotgun away.
He flings himself onto Instancer.
The two grapple and merge into a single form. For a moment it seems as if Manning has gained command.
Instancer hurls Manning powerfully off his back.
Something makes me turn toward the Humvee. Rachel emerges from its right-hand door.
She sees her brother.
Ben-David has gotten to his feet. His eyes find Rachel’s. I have never seen a look like the one that passes between them in this moment.
Has Rachel come to stand by him or to kill him? Clearly Ben-David can’t tell.
His glance seeks Dana and the other paratroopers.
Without a command the soldiers race for their weapons.
Instancer stands, untouched, unhurt.
He turns first to Rachel, then to Manning, then to Ben-David.
INSTANCER
Thirty-six.
The lugs of Ben-David’s boots churn the grit and grime. He bolts for the entry to Gehenna.
We’re at the summit of the excavation site. A temporary structure, blown half to shreds by the gale, protects the entrance and the passageways to the levels below. Ben-David lurches into this, tottering from heat and fatigue. He vanishes from sight down an incline.
Lightning continues to boom across the valley of Megiddo. A keening sound, from the wind and the thrumming of the underground, makes the marrow vibrate inside my bones.
Instancer, absent all haste, turns toward the summit entry. He starts after Ben-David.
Manning is on his feet. He tugs the 226 from his shoulder holster. The Zombie Killer lies in the dirt beside Ben-David’s truck, where Manning had flung it when he leapt to grapple with Instancer.
MANNING
(to me)
Bring the gun.
Manning’s face is the color of ash. His arms hang, limp from exhaustion and dehydration. He lingers a moment only, to gather himself and to be sure I have heard him and will do what he said.
MANNING
And bring her.
Manning’s last glance is to Rachel. Then he turns and stalks toward the summit entry.
I pick up the shotgun. I grab Rachel.
Manning disappears into the excavation.
Instancer has plunged below, pursuing Ben-David.
I glance back to the army trucks. The soldiers are hastily arming the three tunnel-busters. Dana issues orders.
I feel Rachel resisting me. My right hand holds the shotgun. My left clutches her by the elbow.
ME
Try anything and I’ll kill you.
I drag her forward.
Into the archaeological mound.
Diesel generators thrum. High-power construction-type lamps light the interior. The place is like a construction site, only going down instead of up.
LEVEL ONE
I know Rachel knows the layout. I order her to tell me which way to go.
RACHEL
There’s only one way, Dewey. Down.
I spot an elevator, open-sided, like in a mine. No way I’m stepping into that coffin. Graded inclines—floored with corrugated tin, shored with timbers—descend beside the shaft. Safety signs plaster every wall. Every slope is roped or fitted with handrails.
I hear Ben-David’s boots, echoing from below on the corrugated flooring.
Instancer is calling to him. I recognize his voice but can’t make out what he’s saying. I hear Manning’s voice.
I tow Rachel after me.
Level Two.
> Level Three.
Where are Dana and the soldiers? They must have their tunnel weapons by now. I’m trying to visualize how they’ll use them.
The dig itself is one giant mound. Tel is the archaeological term. It goes down a hundred and seventy feet. The tel is constituted of the layered remains of human habitations dating back five thousand years. Each historic settlement was founded on the ruins of the city, town, or village that went before, as each race of conquerors displaced the one that preceded it and was, in turn, supplanted by the wave to follow.
We have entered the pyramid at the top. Our route is straight down. But the mound can also be accessed at its base. Indeed, three excavation adits, wide and high enough to accommodate borers and other earthmoving equipment, enter the tel horizontally from three different sides, at the base of the pyramid. These tunnels converge at Level Seven around the central descending shaft.
Dana and her weapons crew have entered one tunnel.
Another team advances along a second tunnel.
A third penetrates the final lateral.
LEVEL FOUR
I stumble down the tin-floored incline, propelling Rachel before me.
Heat ascends from beneath my soles.
I smell sulfur.
Shouting echoes from below.
CAUTION signs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English plaster the walls. Alarm lamps flash in amber and red. I spot a locker area cut out against one wall. Flame boots sit in neat rows. Heat suits hang beneath visored helmets.
LEVEL FIVE
GEOTHERMAL ACTIVITY
FLAME SUITS MANDATORY BELOW THIS LEVEL
Rachel pulls away from me toward the lockers.
RACHEL
(snatches flame boots)
Grab something.
ME
Keep moving.
RACHEL
Are you stupid?
Level Six.
I force Rachel down before me. Heat has become unfathomable. My bare hands are so hot I feel my fingernails curling. Why didn’t I stop and grab a flame suit . . . or at least gloves? My neck and ears are blistering. I press down another corrugated incline.
36 Righteous Men Page 21