by Jack Heath
Get a grip, Ash, she told herself. She fumbled for her phone, and snapped it open.
The glow of the screen was useless against the black ground – she had to crouch to see it, and even then it only illuminated the small circle in which she stood.
She selected camera mode, and pushed the button.
The flash lit up the cavern for a fragment of a second, like a mountainscape in a lightning storm. Ash regained her bearings – the jackhammer lay on its side at her two o’clock, the pile of spare hard hats and headlamps were at her eleven thirty. She jogged through the darkness towards them. When she guessed she was about three metres away, she took another picture.
The flash told her she’d underestimated; the pile of equipment was almost five metres away. She walked over and sorted through them until she found something that felt like a headlamp.
She clicked the switch. The bulb worked. She tightened the straps around her head, tilted the lamp so the light fell upon the ground roughly five metres in front of her, and ran back towards the jackhammer.
She had a collapsible trowel in her pocket, but now that she’d seen the kind of equipment the miners were using, she thought she could do better. She didn’t know how to use the jackhammer, but there was a pile of shovels, mattocks and other digging tools nearby. Ash selected a pickaxe, swivelled it in her hands, and then swung it into the ground between her feet.
The rock crumbled easily – it was clearly a different substance from the stone the miners had been drilling through a few metres to Ash’s right. Which made sense, she realized, since the box had only been buried here a couple hof years. Not enough time for the mud to solidify into tough stone.
She swung again. The light jittered on the floor. She couldn’t hear the rocks shattering over the screaming of the alarm, but she could feel the impact through the padded grip of the pickaxe.
Six metres down, Benjamin had said. But that was when she was up in the entrance tunnel, which was at least four metres above the cave floor. She should only need to dig down two metres. But the hole had to be fairly wide, or else there was a risk that she would completely miss the—
Clack. Ash paused. That last strike had felt different. Either she’d hit a tougher kind of rock, or she’d found what she was looking for.
She swept the broken stones aside with the blade of the pickaxe, and shone the headlamp into the hole she’d made.
Wood. She’d struck something made of hard wood.
She reached down and grabbed the box. It was scarcely bigger than an engagement-ring box, with dirty brass hinges and a scalloped handle. There was a scar on the top where the pickaxe had scraped it.
Reverently, she placed the box beside the hole. Lifted the lid.
Urgh, she thought. Success. She could have taken the object out so she could rebury the box, but she didn’t want to touch it with her bare hands.
Shuddering, she closed the box again. “I have the prize,” she told Benjamin. She tried to keep her voice from shaking. “Time to go.”
Benjamin was talking, but Ash couldn’t make out what he was saying. Probably asking her out, yet again, knowing she’d refuse. That was his usual way of congratulating her.
Ash started jogging back up towards the north tunnel. Now came the tough part: sneaking back out. The miners had all evacuated, so they would be watching from a distance as she emerged from the tunnel. Even if she put her overalls back on and wiped the grime off her face, they’d be curious, wondering why she’d taken so much longer than they had. She’d have to find a way to get past them without being spotted.
Or a place to hide, she thought, while I wait for them to come back in and resume work. But who knows how long that’ll take? I have to be home by the time school finishes, or Dad will freak.
She kept moving. She couldn’t strategize without seeing how far back the miners had evacuated. Maybe they’d be so far away that she could just walk out the mouth of the tunnel and head straight to the rendezvous.
A vague glow stained the tunnel wall up ahead – she was getting closer to daylight. She reached up and switched the headlamp off. There was no way of telling how long it would be before a hazard team got suited up and came down to search for the gas leak. If they rounded the corner further up the tunnel, Ash didn’t want them glimpsing her torch.
She didn’t think it was likely to happen soon, though. It seemed quiet and still up ahead.
Now that she was further away from the cavern, the alarm was growing fainter. “Benjamin,” she said. “I’m coming out with the box.”
There was no response.
“Benjamin?”
Nothing – except rustling of static.
Ash’s heart kicked against her ribs. Had something happened to Benjamin? Had the local cops found him? If that had happened, she told herself, then there’d be no static, just silence. Right? It must be an equipment malfunction. Nothing to worry about.
The light was brighter now. She was almost at the guard station. Hopefully the guard would have evacuated too. He was suspicious of her before, he’d be even more suspicious now...
Ash rounded the last bend, and saw that the guard hadn’t evacuated. He was slumped halfway through the window of his booth, broken glass stuck into his belly, a chunk of his throat torn out. There was a bullet hole in the wall behind him.
Ash’s eyes widened. What the hell?
Then she looked down. And stumbled backwards, stifling a scream.
The miners were strewn all over the floor of the tunnel. Most had exit wounds in their backs. The rest had imploded heads. Ash could smell the blood, rank and coppery.
Someone had opened fire from outside the mouth of the tunnel. At first Ash imagined a psychopath with a machine gun, sweeping it from side to side with his finger on the trigger – and then she realized that the shooter’s accuracy was too good for that. Almost every shot seemed to have hit someone in the head or the heart.
A sniper? No, too slow – a sniper wouldn’t have been able to hit them all before they realized they were under attack and started running.
Then what the hell had happened here?
“Psst!”
Ash jumped. Jennings, the woman who’d been drilling, was crouched against the wall in the darkness. Her hand was covering a thigh wound – blood bubbled up between her fingers. Her face was white.
“Run!” she hissed at Ash.
And then her head snapped sideways, a half-second before the sound of the gunshot reached Ash’s ears.
She clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream. Her mind was whirling. A sniper couldn’t do this, she realized. But a dozen snipers could.
And even as Ash had this thought, she heard them. Boots thumping, ammo belts jingling. Sprinting towards the tunnel from outside.
Her paralysis broke and she ran, heart in her mouth, back down into the darkness towards the cavern.
As someone who existed outside the law – no, that was a cheap rationalization, she existed against the law – Ash was always living in the shadows of injury, prison and death. These things sometimes happened to normal people, but they were a lot more likely to happen to her. She was a criminal. A thief. She used to steal from good people to keep her family above the poverty line, now she stole from other thieves to atone – but it was still stealing.
Whenever she returned priceless artefacts to their owners, and saw their smiles and tears and gratitude, she had no regrets. But every time she was on a job and danger slinked out of the gloom, teeth bared, claws protracted, she wondered if the price was too high.
Part of her mind was reflecting on this now, as she sprinted down a pitch-black tunnel with a troop of snipers behind her and the stench of blood still in her nostrils. But most of her brainpower was consumed by other, more pressing questions: Have they seen me? Do they know I’m here? Who are they?
And most of all: How am I going to get out?
“Benjamin,” she panted. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing but static.
And suddenly she realized why – any group who could afford twelve snipers and a rifle for each would probably have radio-jamming equipment. She wouldn’t be able to contact Benjamin until she was far away from the mine.
The cavern was just up ahead. She couldn’t see it – the lights were still off, and the snipers behind might see her if she switched on her headlamp. But she could hear the echoes of her footsteps changing, getting quieter, going further before they bounced back. Sometimes at home Ash practised echolocation, moving around her house in the dark, clicking her fingers every few seconds, listening to the echoes to determine how far away the walls were. This was how bats saw the insides of their caves, how dolphins observed nearby predators, and how submarines detected incoming torpedoes.
When she felt the metal walkway under her feet, she turned left and clattered down the steps. She wanted to cut directly across the cavern floor to the south tunnel, instead of having to go the long way around along the scaffolding.
She could hear the snipers in the tunnel, but they didn’t sound like they were running any more. Just walking quickly, and muttering to one another. They must not have seen me, Ash thought. Yet.
Sprinting across the blackness of the cavern floor was nerve-racking. Ash couldn’t help wondering if she’d misjudged her path, if she was about to trip over the pile of helmets or pitch head first into the pit where the box had been buried. But she didn’t dare slow down. Any moment now the snipers might hear her, put on their night-vision goggles, and then a bullet would be erupting through her forehead.
BANG! Ash squealed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. That wasn’t a gunshot. What could—
With a gargantuan crash, a stone block the size of a minivan slammed into the ground in front of her, spraying chips of rock that cut her face and palms. It had fallen from the ceiling of the cavern.
Cave-in! Ash whirled around and started to run back towards the north tunnel. She’d rather be shot than buried alive or crushed to pulp.
Then she heard the fizzing of climbing ropes, and looked up.
The cavern wasn’t collapsing. Someone had blown a hole through the ceiling, and now they were abseiling down. She could see the beam of a headlamp swaying high above.
She couldn’t go back to the north tunnel – she’d be shot. She couldn’t keep running to the south tunnel – the fallen stone was in the way, and even if she went around it she’d never get there before the snipers or the abseilers arrived on the cavern floor. So she dashed into the space under the walkway, where she dropped to the ground and tried to look like a pile of rocks.
The first abseiler hit the ground as the snipers reached the walkway. He was shouting something. Ash couldn’t hear the words, but she was a pretty good lip-reader: “Someone shut that goddamn alarm off!”
Seconds later, the klaxon choked mid-wail. The silence was so immediate that it took Ash’s ears a moment to adjust.
“Thanks,” the abseiler said. He was big – not tall, but broad-shouldered and thick-necked. There was something weird about his face, something alien. But it seemed less strange when Ash realized what it was: he had no eyebrows. They’d been shaved or burned off.
A second man landed beside him. Then a woman. They each unhooked the carabiners from their climbing harnesses, leaving them hanging a metre from the ground.
“What set it off?” the woman asked.
“Don’t know, Sarge,” the browless man said, drawing a pistol. “But I don’t think it was us.”
Three abseilers, Ash thought, plus five, no, six snipers. Nine against one. No fair.
“Hurry,” the sergeant said. “The ghost’s coming.”
Ash tried to breathe as silently as possible. Had that woman said ghost?
The snipers clattered down the steps as the climbers approached the hole. The browless man’s handgun had a torch under the barrel. He pointed it in front of his feet as he walked. Now that he was closer, Ash could read the letters on the side of the gun: HK USP 45 CT.
Ash had never fired a gun, but she’d seen plenty of them. Too many. So she knew HK was the manufacturer, Heckler & Koch. USP stood for universal self-loading pistol, although she wasn’t sure what the “universal” bit meant. The number 45 would be the diameter of the bullets, 0.45 inches, and CT stood for either counter-terrorist or compact tactical, she couldn’t remember which.
These guys didn’t act like a counter-terrorist unit. Ash didn’t doubt that the government would be willing to slaughter fifty innocent people to get them out of the way – she had personal experience in that area. But why not just arrest the miners, steal from the dig site, then release them again with an apology? Terrorism Risk Assessment did that kind of thing all the time, and no one asked any questions.
So, not government. Heckler & Koch was a German company, but Ash couldn’t detect accents in the abseilers’ voices. No surprise – guns got transported all over the world, sometimes legally, sometimes not. Just because a pistol was manufactured in the Neckar Valley didn’t mean the shooter had ever even been to Europe.
This group of murderers could be from anywhere, working for anyone. And the letters on the side of the browless man’s gun meant only that it could punch holes in Ash 0.45 inches wide.
“We’re too late,” the sergeant said. She was staring at the hole where Ash had dug up the box.
“I see that,” the browless man replied. The other man said nothing.
“Could the miners have known?”
“No. But maybe they found it by accident.”
The sergeant turned to the snipers. “Get back up to the entrance,” she called. “Search the bodies. Get back down here when you’re done.”
They left wordlessly. No salutes, no “Sir, yes sir”. They don’t act military, Ash thought, despite the woman’s rank. Ex-military, maybe? Private Military Corporation? The object in the box was worth millions of dollars – she could imagine someone hiring a corrupt PMC to retrieve it.
“Maybe the ghost got here before us?”
“Maybe,” said the sergeant. “But I don’t think so.” She stared suspiciously into the darkness of the cavern. She seemed to look right at Ash.
There was no way out. Ash willed her body to stop trembling. If they saw her, she was dead.
“There’s another tunnel,” the browless man said. “Over there. We’ll have to search it.”
The sergeant said, “Harvey, you stay here, check this area. If you find anybody, kill them.”
The silent man nodded. The browless man and the sergeant jogged towards the tunnel at the south end of the cavern and disappeared.
Ash had been worried that the deaths of the miners were her fault – she had driven them up to the surface, where they were exposed. But it looked like the soldiers or ex-soldiers or whatever they were would have killed them anyway. The only death she was responsible for was her own.
There wasn’t much comfort in the realization.
Harvey turned away from Ash, and walked slowly towards the far side of the cavern.
Okay, she thought. Can’t take the north tunnel – snipers between me and the exit. Can’t take the south tunnel, because it’s a dead end. And I can’t stay here. Harvey will find me, or the others will when when they come back.
She had no weapons. She’d thought she would be dealing with harmless miners, not gun-toting sociopaths. She couldn’t even rely on Benjamin – his boat was half a kilometre away, and there was no way to contact him without disabling the radio-jamming equipment. Which must be on the surface, probably near where they’d drilled the hole, because they hadn’t brought it with—
The hole. Ash stared up at the bright circle cut into the cavern’s ceiling. Then her eyes traced down the climbing ropes to the carabiners hanging in a pool of light near the floor.
Could she climb one of them? All the way to the top, barehanded, quick, silent, without Harvey noticing and shooting her down?
There was only one way to find out. As a plan, it sure beat pretending to be a rock unt
il the snipers came back.
Ash rose to her feet, hoping the camouflage dirt was still stuck to her face. As long as Harvey didn’t point his torch directly at her, she would look like nothing more than softly shifting darkness.
She started to creep towards the carabiners, step by silent step.
She could see Harvey pacing parallel to the far wall, quickly and methodically. Methodical was good for her – predictable, easy to evade. Quick was bad; Ash wanted to be as far up that rope as possible by the time he worked his way in towards the centre. She changed her trajectory slightly to keep the block of stone that had fallen from the ceiling between him and her.
As she walked, she slowly unzipped her suit, wincing at the clinking of each tooth in the zip. She tucked the box inside its folds and zipped it back up so the wood was pressed against her belly. It wasn’t too comfortable, but she’d need both hands free to climb the rope.
She was almost there now. The carabiner dangled a couple of metres in front of her. Ash had no harness, but it wouldn’t have been very useful. Abseiling only works in one direction: down. Just the same, Ash clipped the carabiner onto her belt. At least if she fell, she would stop just above the ground – before Harvey saw her and shot her to bits.
Which is the worse way to die? she wondered. A broken neck or a bullet in the brain?
Now wasn’t the time to think about it. She gripped the rope above her head, wrapped it around her hand twice, and pulled. The rope burned her knuckles, but held. She wound it around her other hand a little higher, and lifted herself up.
Only now did she realize how tough this was going to be.
Ash thought of herself as very fit. She cycled to school every day, and played no-rules soccer at lunchtimes. On Saturdays she’d jog to the pool, lifting rubber-coated three-kilogram hand weights as she ran, uncomfortably aware of how middle-aged they made her look. When she got to the pool, she’d swim a kilometre before jogging home. Exercise helped her think.
But now she was in a situation where her strong legs were useless. Worse than useless, because they weighed her down – muscle is eighteen per cent heavier than fat. Ash weighed almost sixty kilograms, which was much more than her hand weights. A lot to lift with just her arms.