by John Saul
Heather did as Keith instructed. Pausing only long enough to pick up the dead man’s rifle, Keith quickly followed.
Perry Randall watched the two figures through his night vision goggles. The images were clear—a man and a woman—but not clear enough for him to identify. Yet despite the haziness in the greenish light, there was something familiar about both of them.
That sense of familiarity kept Randall from killing them. Eve would never let it drop if he shot two of her precious herders. It would have been easy—the silencer on his M-14A1 was already in place, and all he needed to do was track the glowing red dot of the laser sight along the floor of the tunnel, then up the back of one of them.
The man first—the woman undoubtedly had slower reflexes and wouldn’t even understand what had happened until it was too late.
All he had to do was place the laser’s brilliant light on the back of the man’s head, where it would glow like a ruby lit from within, then squeeze the trigger and replace the laser’s dot with a gush of blood.
He could pick off the woman even before the man had fallen to the ground.
Still, it would be better to follow them a little longer.
As they moved deeper into the tunnel, Randall stole silently after them, moving like a wraith through the darkness, his tread giving off no sound. He paused when he came to the corpse hanging out of the alcove. He’d been almost certain who it was when he’d first seen it through the night vision goggles, but now he raised the head and gazed into the face. Even with the damage the bullet had done, he recognized Otto Vandenberg immediately.
The man and woman had taken his gun, along with his backpack, which would contain his logbook.
Putting on his goggles again, he peered into the darkness ahead. The two figures were still moving, walking quickly away from him. If they found a cross passage and got away . . .
If they got to the surface with Vandenberg’s logbook . . .
Removing his night vision goggles, Perry Randall unslung his rifle, released the safety, and pressed the stock against his shoulder. Turning on the laser sight, he readied himself for the first shot. . . .
Heather tried to tell herself that the mass on the floor ahead of her couldn’t be yet another corpse, but she knew it had to be. It wasn’t just his utter stillness that told her the man was dead, or the unnatural sprawl of his limbs, or even the dark stain of blood on his chest.
It was the rat that was already nibbling at his face.
A choked sound of horror and revulsion escaped her throat, and she thought she would finally lose control of the nausea that still churned in her belly. A wave of dizziness made her lean against the wall to keep from falling.
As Keith Converse squatted down to examine the body on the floor, Heather—overwhelmed by the images of death she’d already seen that day—wanted to sink onto the floor herself, close her eyes, and try to put all of it out of her mind. But as her knees began to buckle under her, she saw it.
A red dot, creeping along the floor toward her.
An illusion.
It had to be an illusion.
She focused on the dot, willing it away.
But it crept closer, and it stirred a memory.
A memory of her father, teaching her how to use the guns he kept in the cabinet in the library.
“The laser sight is the best. At night, you can’t miss. Just put the red dot on the ground in front of you, then start moving the gun until the dot is on the target.
“Then squeeze the trigger.”
The dot moved closer, and Heather’s hands tightened on the gun she was holding.
The gun that was just like one of her father’s. . . .
Then her nausea—and terror—gave way to cold, pure rage.
Her fingers working quickly, she found the safety and released it.
She switched the rifle into automatic mode.
Raising the gun so the barrel was two feet above Keith Converse’s head, she peered down the sight. In the distance, silhouetted against the dim light of one of the utility lamps in the ceiling, she could barely make out a figure.
Heather squeezed the trigger, then quickly moved the rifle barrel back and forth.
Just as her father had taught her. . . .
The red dot on the floor disappeared as the silence in the tunnel was shattered by the angry chatter of the automatic rifle. Keeping her finger tightly squeezed on the trigger, Heather emptied the contents of the magazine into the darkness, spraying the entire width of the tunnel with bullets. Even after the last cartridge was spent, she could still hear bullets screaming as they ricocheted away into the distance.
As silence once again fell, Keith stood up.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
“He was going to kill us,” Heather said, her voice dull. Her hands suddenly went limp, and the gun clattered to the floor. “He was going to kill us just the way he taught me.”
Keith gazed at her steadily. “Who?” he asked, wanting the answer to come from her.
Heather’s control finally gave way. “My father!” she cried out, the words resounding in the tunnel. “Don’t you see? It was my father!” As the echo of her anguished words died away, she walked slowly into the darkness toward where he lay. Her father was sprawled on his back, a bloodstain spreading across his shirt. His eyes were open, and as she shined a flashlight into his face, he seemed to look up at her with an expression of surprise. Kneeling, she gazed into his empty eyes, then laid a hand on his cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” But even as she said it, she knew she’d had no choice.
It was her father who had set the rules, not her, and a moment later she would have been the one who died by his hand.
“What have you done?” she said softly. “Oh, Daddy.”
Leaving her father there in the dark, she started back toward Keith.
The rattle of the semiautomatic rifle finally died away, but neither Jeff nor Jinx moved, remaining pressed against the side of the passage they’d turned into.
Another sound came to them—the clatter of something heavy falling onto the concrete floor.
Jeff’s mind raced, trying to decide what to do. Whoever was out there hadn’t been firing at them—they would have heard bullets ricocheting off the walls and pipes if the gunman had been shooting in their direction.
So whoever it was had shot the other way.
But why?
At what?
But what did it matter? Within a second or two the hunter would realize his mistake, reload, and then—
Unless I shoot first.
So there it was.
The rifle they’d taken from Monsignor McGuire was slung over his shoulder, and now Jeff took it in his hands. Reloaded with a full magazine, it felt strange—heavy, cold, and dangerous.
There was nothing about the gun that hinted at any kind of genuine sport. Jeff had seen hunting rifles before—dozens of them, in fact. He’d even admired some of them, for their remarkable craftsmanship. Some of the best had seemed almost warm to the touch, so perfectly was the wood of their stocks polished. Many had been inlaid with gold or silver or mother-of-pearl, giving the guns the look of a work of art.
Those were the guns used for target shooting or hunting game.
The gun in his hand, though, was purely utilitarian, constructed of cold metal and hard rubber, every part designed to function perfectly.
It was almost as if the rifle’s designer had known it could have only one possible use, and had refused to try to disguise that use with any kind of beauty at all.
Jeff tightened his grip on the rifle, then released the safety.
Was that all he had to do? Was there nothing more left than to step out into the tunnel, point the thing in the direction from which the gunfire had come, and pull the trigger?
He looked around, searching in the darkness one last time for another way out, but knew there was none.
It was time to face whoever awaited him in the tunnel.
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br /> “Stay here,” he whispered. “It’s me they want. They don’t care about you.”
“But—”
Jinx’s words were abruptly cut off by an anguished cry:
“My father! Don’t you see? It was my father!”
Jeff stiffened, the echo of the words resounding off the walls, thundering down the tunnels, only to be back a split second later.
“My father . . . my father . . . father . . .”
“Heather,” he whispered. He pictured himself standing in the middle of the tunnel, emptying the gun into the darkness with the intent of killing whoever might be there.
And he would have killed someone.
He would have killed Heather.
Dropping the rifle, Jeff Converse stepped out into the tunnel.
Keith heard the sound of someone moving in the darkness just beyond the range of his vision. He reached for the rifle he’d retrieved from the pool of blood beneath Viper’s corpse and raised it to his shoulder after releasing the safety and putting the firing mechanism on automatic.
He peered into the scope and saw the silhouette of a man against the utility light that glowed in the distance. His finger began to tighten on the trigger, but as the figure took another step, he hesitated.
“Jeff?” he whispered, the name barely audible.
But it was enough for Heather. She was already racing down the tunnel toward Jeff, calling his name. Keith’s impulse was to drop the rifle and run after her, to be with her when she threw her arms around his son. But he changed his mind.
Better to let them have their moment.
Putting the rifle aside, he reached into the backpack he’d taken from Vandenberg and took out the radio. Turning it on and putting the tiny headphone in his ear, he heard a voice.
Eve Harris’s voice.
“This is Control. Report, Viper.”
Keith raised the radio to his lips and spoke slowly and distinctly. “This isn’t Viper,” he said. “This is Keith Converse, Ms. Harris. Viper is dead. So are Mamba and Adder and Rattler. Maybe you can still save Cobra, whoever he is.”
Dropping the radio back into the backpack, Keith moved down the tunnel to join his son.
CHAPTER 39
Eve Harris glared furiously at the radio in her hand. It wasn’t possible—Converse was trying to trick her! They couldn’t all be dead—there was no way he could have beaten five perfectly armed men.
No—not five.
Only four.
Cobra—Arch Cranston—was still alive out there somewhere. So the two of them would finish the job the other four had botched.
Her eyes shifted from the radio to Malcolm Baldridge, who stood near the door to his private workroom. He was so still, she could almost mistake him for one of the trophies to which he’d so expertly applied his skills. “Get me a pack and a rifle!” she snapped.
Baldridge made no move until she took a step toward him, radiating fury, her eyes flashing dangerously.
“You can’t—” Baldridge began, but she cut him off.
“Do what I tell you,” she commanded, her voice low, but carrying enough danger to send Baldridge scurrying into the next room. While he was gone, she stripped off her street clothes and changed into a black jumpsuit that was only slightly too large for her. By the time she was dressed, Baldridge was back, carrying a backpack in one hand, a Steyr SSG-PI in the other.
“It has an infrared sight and—” Baldridge began, but Eve Harris didn’t let him finish.
“I know what it has,” she hissed, snatching the rifle from his hands and quickly checking it over. “And I know how to use it.” She quickly rifled through the bag, replacing the radio with her own, setting its frequency to match Arch Cranston’s. Finally, she put on a pair of night vision goggles, opened the door to the tunnel, and stepped through. As Baldridge closed and locked the door behind her, she switched the goggles on, the blackness of the tunnel giving way to a greenish glow. She moved her head slowly around, studying the tunnel in both directions.
Except for a large rat creeping along the wall to the left, the tunnel was empty. She reached into her backpack, groped until her fingers closed on the radio, then turned it on, pressed the transmit button, and whispered into the microphone.
“Cobra, this is Control. Come in.”
When there was no response, she repeated her words, then swore under her breath as she dropped the radio into one of the pockets of her black jacket.
In her mind, she reviewed the maps of the tunnels the men had made over the years. The range of the radios was short, which meant that Converse was probably still closer to her than Arch Cranston, assuming Cranston was still alive. But could she assume that?
What if Converse was lying? What if Cranston was dead as well?
But Converse could just as easily have been lying about who was dead. Perhaps it was only Vandenberg! She picked up the radio again and quickly tried to reach the other members of the team.
Silence.
She swore again, then made up her mind. The last time he’d reported, Viper had been in Sector 3, on Level 2. Eve Harris visualized the map, and could picture Vandenberg’s favorite ambush as clearly as if she were looking at a page in the back of his notebook. The radio back in her pocket and holding the Steyr, she set out.
“What’s going on?” Heather asked as one after another the radios in the backpack came alive.
“She’s trying to figure out if I was telling her the truth,” Keith replied. He pulled McGuire’s radio out just in time to hear Eve Harris’s voice demanding a response. The voice was clearer than it had been only a few moments ago, when he’d spoken to her himself over Vandenberg’s radio.
“I think she’s in the tunnels,” he said.
“Where?”
“Behind us,” Jeff replied, his eyes still fastened on the map in the back of Perry Randall’s notebook. “Look,” he said, as Heather peered over his shoulder at the page that was illuminated by a flashlight. He placed a finger on a mark on the thickest line on a page headed LEVEL 1, SECTION 1. “I think that’s where they come in.” He flipped a couple of pages, and placed his finger on another spot. “And this is where we are.”
“But how do we get out?” Heather asked.
“What about one of the subway stations?” Keith asked.
Jeff shook his head. “They’ve got guards at all of them.”
“And we’ve got guns,” Keith replied, his voice hard.
Jeff looked up at his father. “And if we start shooting in a subway station . . .” His voice trailed off, but there was no need to complete the thought. The rest of them knew as well as he did what would happen if they started firing automatic rifles in a subway station. In a couple of seconds a dozen people could be dead, and twice as many wounded. Jeff’s finger moved to another spot on the map. “Here,” he said. “I think we can get out here, if we can just make it that far.”
The three people huddled around him stared at the spot he was indicating, and it was finally Jinx who said what everyone else was thinking. “There’s nothing there—it doesn’t show any shafts or passages or anything.”
“Exactly,” Jeff said. “That’s just what we need—a place where there’s nothing at all.”
Closing the notebook, he picked up one of the guns and bags and headed west, picturing what he’d seen only a week before he’d been arrested.
Maybe, if they were lucky, it was still there. . . .
It’s all right, Eve Harris told herself. I’m just imagining it.
But she wasn’t imagining it—she wasn’t imagining it at all. The green light in the night vision goggles was definitely getting dimmer.
Not a problem, at least not yet—there would be a flashlight in the backpack! Slipping it off her shoulders, she zipped it open and plunged her hands into its depth.
No flashlight!
But there had to be!
Now she opened the bag wide, searching it thoroughly, peering into its depths with the goggles.
&
nbsp; No flashlight, not in the main compartment or any of the auxiliary pockets, either. Damn Baldridge! Why hadn’t he checked the pack?
Then she’d just have to do without light for a while. Slinging the pack and rifle back on her shoulders, she switched the goggles off and pulled them away from her head. She waited for her eyes to get used to the dark, but it was far blacker than she’d thought it would be, and as the darkness closed around her and her irises opened as wide as they would go, she felt the first tendrils of fear reach out toward her.
It’s all right, she repeated to herself. I know exactly where I am, and if I have to, I can get back without the goggles. But even as she silently reassured herself, she knew it wasn’t quite true. She knew the turns well enough—there had been only three of them, and she hadn’t changed levels at all. But as the smothering darkness wrapped more tightly around her, those first tendrils of fear began to coalesce into terror, and she quickly replaced the goggles over her eyes and switched them on.
For a moment the green fog seemed brilliant, and her fear backed away. But a few seconds later, as her eyes reacted to the sudden light, the green faded again, and her fear came rushing back.
Cranston, she thought. Call Cranston.
Groping in her pocket, she found the radio, pressed the transmitter, and whispered into the mike: “This is Control. Come in, Cobra! This is Control!” Three times more she tried calling; three times more she got no response.
Dropping the radio back in her pocket, she turned around and started quickly back the way she’d come. She hurried her step as the green light began to fade.
After what seemed an eon, she came to the last turn she’d made. She remembered clearly that she’d turned right, so now she turned left and gazed into the distance.
The tunnel seemed to stretch on forever, disappearing into the green haze.
But that was wrong—it hadn’t been that long; she was sure of it. Had she turned the wrong way?