The Deep Zone

by James M. Tabor

  Her snapshot was not detailed enough to show every feature of the cave where they were, and so halfway to Cahner, her right foot twisted in a small hole in the floor and she went down, falling hard on her chest. Cahner was on her in an instant, straddling her back, grabbing her forehead with both hands and pulling up, trying to break her neck, but she was slick with water and sweat and his hands slipped off. She flipped onto her back, clawed at his groin, squeezed with strong rock climber’s hands.

  He screamed in pain, twisted out of her grasp. She heard him stumbling to his feet and jumped up herself, remaining in a crouch, hands up defensively.

  “Goddamn you!” Cahner rushed toward her in the dark. She jumped to one side, felt him brush past, shoved him that way, turned to face the direction in which he had gone, fully expecting him to spin around and come for her again.

  Instead, there was a gasp and then sudden silence. Terrified, she crouched down in the dark, felt around her for a rock, found one, clutched it. She knelt there like a Neanderthal, defenseless except for her rock and muscles and brain, her face twisted into a snarl, waiting for the attack of whatever horror might come at her out of the dark.

  Nothing came. She knelt and waited, listening, trying to feel the dark for motion, but there was nothing.

  After a while she said, “Cahner?”

  No answer.

  “Al?”

  Still no answer.

  She tossed the rock ten feet to her left, waited for him to throw one of his own at the sound. Nothing happened.

  “Cahner.”

  He did not answer.

  She decided to search for the helmets and their lights. Dividing the chamber into quadrants in her mind, she moved back and forth on her hands and knees as if she were mowing a lawn. By sheer luck she found her helmet in less than a minute. The impact on the cave’s floor could have broken its lights. Holding her breath, Hallie turned one on. Blue-white light flared from the LED bulbs.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you, Chi Con Gui-Jao.” She put the helmet on and stood up cautiously, scanning for danger.

  And then she screamed.

  Cahner was lying facedown, legs splayed and arms thrown out like those of a skydiver, held several inches above the cave floor by the base of the waist-high stalagmite onto which he had fallen. The impact of his body had broken off the stalagmite’s slender tip, but the thicker shaft at its base had pierced his body and he lay now, impaled, the bloody stone spear protruding from his back.

  Unbelievably, he was still alive. She saw that the shaft must have missed his heart by inches. One of his feet was twitching. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth, gathering in a dark red pool on the cave floor inches beneath his face. He turned his head slowly toward her, and she saw in his face the agony of hell, so horrible she had to look away. He tried to speak but made only a guttural, animal groan. His blood gave off a ferrous, rusty smell, the iron in it reacting with oxygen molecules.

  Her stomach clenched at the sight of him like that. She felt not hate but horror. She watched, transfixed, as Cahner managed to bring both hands together under his chest, wild-eyed and shrieking with agony as he did so. He grasped the bottom of the stalagmite where it joined the cave floor. She saw his knuckles go white as he squeezed with all his strength. Then his whole body tensed, legs jerking out straight, as he tried to push up and off the spike. He managed to lift himself a few inches, screaming, bloody froth foaming from his mouth and nose. He stopped, unable to do more. She heard him moan something that might have been “air” or “Eric,” but it was a guttural, animal sound and she could not understand. Then a gout of blood erupted from his mouth and his hands fell free. He dropped back down, quivered, and was dead.

  She took a few steps closer. Hallie had seen the results of violent death before: climbers who had fallen, divers who had drowned, cavers who had been crushed by rockfall. She had not actually watched people die from their tragedies. She felt inexpressible relief that Cahner would no longer be trying to kill her. And, in another realm of her heart, some grief. Despite everything that had happened, everything he had told her about his treachery, during their years of working together she had come to like Cahner. Those feelings had been genuine then, and she recognized them within her now.

  She looked around for a place to sit, and the only place was Cahner’s pack, so she walked unsteadily to it and dropped down. Sure that he had killed her, Cahner had not bothered to dispose of Hallie’s pack back at the river camp. After she’d climbed out of the pit, an hour’s careful searching had brought her back to the sleeping spot and her pack, right where she’d left it. Before attempting to subdue Cahner, she had taken it off and cached it near this clearing, and she would retrieve it shortly. For now, she just wanted to rest. Her hands and knees were bloody, and the eye where Cahner had caught her with a punch was swelling. She was sore from shoulders to butt from the hard landing on the microbial mat in the pit, and the hand she had sliced throbbed painfully. Worst of all, she was alone. Then she thought of Bowman, and her skin tingled and her chest tightened.

  You will not cry. There is still too much to be done.

  But she did cry then, long and hard. For the soldiers, and Haight, and Arguello, and Bowman. And then, finally, for herself and everything she had lost along the way to this place.

  Hallie awoke and realized that she had curled up in the sand and gone to sleep, but had no memory of doing so. She had not turned her light off first, and its glow was now noticeably dimmer. Hurrying, she found her pack and brought it back to the camp. She was carrying only the bare minimum now: a rebreather unit for the dive through Satan’s Anus, the Gecko Gear, a poly bottle of water, the few remaining PowerBars, her sleeping bag, her helmet with its lights, and her last backup light. Even if the headlight batteries failed, the one hand light with fresh batteries might be enough to get her out of the cave, though she did not relish the thought of diving through Satan’s Anus without light.

  She dumped the contents of Cahner’s pack on the floor and found the Envirotainer. He was dead and could never threaten her again, but his corpse, impaled on the stalagmite, was only fifteen feet away. She could not see it unless she looked in that direction, but that barely lessened the horror of its presence and she wanted to get away from that place as fast as she possibly could. From Cahner’s gear she took only the flask of rum. She picked up the butane lighter from the cave floor and thought about bringing his rebreather and Gecko Gear as backups, but her strength was failing and even those fifteen extra pounds would be too much.

  Hallie organized the objects in her pack, shrugged into the harness, and started back up. She had to walk by Cahner’s corpse on the way out, but she did not look at him. She was ten steps past when she remembered the map. It had not been in his pack, which, when she thought about it, was not surprising, given how often he would have had to check it.

  She had traveled the route three times already and she felt fairly sure that it was inscribed in her memory. But she knew that “fairly sure” was not good enough here. With weakening batteries and failing strength, she had no room for errors on this climb out. So, though the thought revolted her, there was no choice. She walked to Cahner’s body, took a deep breath, and searched the left hip pocket of his suit, then the right. It was too soon for rigor to have set in, and through the fabric his flesh felt like cold dough. Both pockets were empty. She would have to go through his front pockets then, and if neither of them held the map, she would be forced to reach into the blood-drenched chest pockets.

  Bending over the corpse, she could not keep from recalling the last frames of so many horror movies in which the supposedly dead monster suddenly exploded to life and leapt upon a lulled victim. But she pulled herself back to reality and worked her hand to the bottom of Cahner’s left front pocket. There was no way to avoid making contact with his dead thigh as she searched. The map was not there. She moved to his right side, bent over, and said a silent prayer. Please let it be here.


  It was. Carefully, so as not to tear the map, she eased it out of his pocket. When it came free, she put it into one of her own chest pockets and walked quickly away.

  The wonderful thing about mountain climbing was that the second half of every expedition was all downhill. The terrible thing about caving was that it worked the other way around. After two hours she had slowed to a crawl. But she kept going in a daze, one hand in front of the other, one foot after the other, wading chest-deep ponds, clambering up rock faces, squirming through squeeze tunnels, going on hands and knees and pushing her pack in front where the cave ceiling dropped to within two feet of the floor. She came out of one long, low-ceilinged passage like that, staggered to her feet, and then sat back down as her legs gave way. She rolled onto her side and passed out.

  She awoke after she knew not how long. Shucking the pack, she sat up and looked around.

  I don’t remember this place.

  She took out the map and studied it in the light’s weak glow. She examined the cave around her, at least as far as her light beams would reach, but nothing resembled what the map showed. She made short forays in four directions, looking for features that she could match to the map or to mental images. She found none. After half an hour of searching, she went back and sat beside her pack.

  She had lost the route. She had the map, but without the route, it was useless.

  How long had she been plodding along, lost without even knowing it? How long since she had checked her location against the map? She could not remember. Hallie was so tired that she felt no panic, not even much fear. Just a dull astonishment and disappointment that she could have done something so stupid. And deadly. Fatal for her, of course, but not her alone. So many others. That was not going to be an easy thing to die with.

  But dying would have to wait. She was too tired to die. First, she would have to sleep some more.

  FORTY

  KATHAN WAS STANDING AT THE WEST EDGE OF THE CENOTE, his camoflouage suit all but invisible in the brush. They still had not seen narcos, federales, or savage Indians, but several times they had heard the sounds of firefights, long, ripping bursts of weapons on full auto, the heavier whoomf whoomf of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Once the fighting noise had come very close, no more than a half mile, but eventually it had faded and they’d relaxed as much as they ever did on missions like this.

  Stiff and sore from sitting so long in the hide, and needing to urinate, he had made his way to the cenote. Finished, he was watching his reflection in the water. He saw a man dressed in camo, rugged face, body like a tree trunk, eyes invisible behind the dark glasses, shaved head rough now with stubble, cigarette dangling from full lips. The Marlboro was about down to the filter, so he shook a fresh one from the pack and lit it with the stub of the old one. He tossed the butt into the water, where it hissed and went out, floating on the surface. He was smoking more now, and Stikes had been saying it could tip off people a long way away. But Kathan had not smoked at all until that day and it had about driven him crazy. He rubbed his cheeks, feeling the scruff of beard that had grown in while he and Stikes had been holed up here, waiting for whatever came out of the cave.

  The waiting was starting to get to him, and that made him think of more unpleasant things to do to whoever the cave disgorged. They had eventually agreed that the best disposal would be to shoot, gut, and sink everybody except the blonde, for whom Kathan had elaborate plans. But now Kathan was not so sure he wanted to do any of them the great favor of a quick and easy death. One of his assets—given his line of work—was an ability to enjoy making other people hurt badly. In Kathan, it went beyond simply extracting information, which all special ops people had to do from time to time. It sprang from a fondness for the activity, which he anticipated the way other men might anticipate a round of golf or a good steak dinner.

  So maybe we’ll do a little knife work first, he thought, looking down at his reflection, the tip of his cigarette a red glowing dot in the water. He had never been big on gross dissection, stuff like cutting off body parts or removing eyes—in living people, anyway. It was messy and put subjects into shock. That way, they became useless, because they could feel less pain and could not communicate well. He much preferred refined techniques that he had developed himself. He knew, for instance, that the ulnar nerve on the inside of the elbow could be stimulated with something no more menacing than a hatpin. But the return on investment was immense. Penetrated, the ulnar nerve created indescribable agony without doing serious damage to the body. Another good one was the optic nerve; one ran from behind each eyeball to the brain. Those you could reach with a piece of stiff wire, going up through the nose and behind the eye socket.

  He would not do those things to the woman, of course, at least not before he had taken his time exploring her in other ways, with other instruments. After that, well, it would depend on what kind of mood he was in.

  He smoked the second cigarette down, tossed it into the cenote, heard the hiss as it died. Then he looked up. His mouth dropped open. He whirled and disappeared into the forest.

  Stikes had been napping on top of his sleeping bag when Kathan came rushing back.

  “Move your ass. We’re on.”

  Stikes stood, rubbing his eyes. “What’d you see?”

  “Lights.”

  “Lights?”

  “Yeah. Light beams bouncing around inside the entrance to the cave. Somebody’s coming up.”

  “About time,” Stikes said. “Full rig?”

  “Full rig. We don’t know who’s coming out of there. Might be the big guy. Can’t take chances with that one.”

  “The one who was Delta?”

  “They said he was beyond Delta. Plus, this place is still crawling with federales and narcos. If we get compromised out in the open like that, we’ll need everything we have. Come on, gear up.”

  They both donned full mission gear: utility belts with Beretta 9mm semiautomatic pistols and four extra twenty-round clips, tactical knives, backup switchblades, one frag grenade and one white phosphorus grenade each, Kevlar helmets with integral commo systems. They put on full-torso body armor, secured it with Velcro straps, and hung over it their chest harnesses with eight thirty-round magazines for their M4 carbines.

  Grabbing their rifles, they slipped back through the forest to the tree-line hide. They settled down on their bellies and slid into the hide, an oval depression covered with a selection of branches and foliage that made it all but indistinguishable from the surrounding forest floor. From their positions, with binoculars they could watch the cave entrance as though they were lying just twenty yards instead of two hundred from it.

  They watched. And waited. And watched. “What the hell are they doing?” Stikes asked. “I’m sweating like a pig, man.”

  “Here we go.” Kathan’s eyes were pressed to his binoculars. “It’s her.”

  Stikes brought up his own binoculars. “How many others?”

  “Hang on.”

  They waited. They watched Hallie come out of the cave, cover her eyes from the blinding sunlight, stumble around like a drunk. They saw her drop her pack and scan the meadow and tree line. She looked right at them, and her eyes kept on going.

  “Can’t tell much with that suit on.” Kathan, frustrated.

  “Looks like she’s eating a candy bar or something,” Stikes said. “She’s drinking out of a red flask. They carry that kind of stuff in caves? Should we snatch her now?”

  “No. We’re two hundred mikes away. She sees us, bang, she’s back in the cave. Or into the forest. Either way makes a lot more work for us, exposed. Bad way to roll around here, you know?” Kathan was quiet, considering.

  “So… what then? Suppose she calls in an evac team or something.”

  “I been thinking about that, too. She couldn’t do that from inside the cave. Only out here. And she’ll have to use a radio. Can’t let that happen. She picks up anything that looks like a radio, we’ll have to take her out. Can you line her u
p and stay on her?”

  “Roger that.” Stikes brought his M4 forward and settled it onto the rocks he had earlier arranged into a shooting rest.

  “You got her?” Kathan asked.

  “I have her,” Stikes said, not moving his eye from the telescopic sight.

  “Head shot, if you have to take it.”

  “I said I have her. Two hundred mikes is nothing.”

  “I’ll spot for you, stay on her with the binocs. Keep those crosshairs centered.”

  “I can put one in her ear from here.”

  They waited, sweating in the heat, besieged by biting insects from the air and crawling ones from the forest floor. As hides went, it was turning out to be unusually hellish.

  Minutes passed. Stikes watched through the scope, crosshairs centered on Hallie’s head, the pad of his index finger putting two pounds of pressure on the M4’s trigger, which would fire with four pounds. Sweat burned his eyes. “I don’t see any others. You?”

  “No.”

  “You think she did all of them? Left them in the cave?” Stikes sounded skeptical, but he knew stranger things had happened.

  “No. I think the cave did them.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Stikes saw Kathan lick his lips, massage his crotch. “I hope to hell we don’t have to shoot her.” He turned to Stikes. “Send the signal.”

  “Not good. We don’t have it yet. The stuff from the cave.”

  Kathan spat. “What do you think, she’s gonna kill us and take that stuff back herself? I don’t think so. Send the signal.”

  “Kathan…”

  “The sooner we let them know we have the stuff, the sooner they get our money flowing to the right places. I want it waiting for me when I get back.”

  Stikes still didn’t think it was the right thing to do, but Kathan was the mission leader. From a uniform pocket Stikes took a sat transmitter. It was black, the size of a pack of cigarettes, and had a telescoping antenna, which Stikes pulled out to full extension.