by Rachel Grant
She nodded and slipped through, lithe and sprightly as she disappeared into the dark hole. He took a deep breath once she was cleared of the rock, and another when she called out, “I’m at the bottom.” The beam of her flashlight disappeared into the angled corridor. “It’s open. At least…as far as the light reaches is passable.”
“I’m coming down,” he said. He hit Send on the prewritten text message to Sean and waited for confirmation the text was sent before descending into the hole.
He slipped past the jack without a problem, but after clearing it, a whisper of sound alerted him to a subtle shift in air current. He glanced back and saw a narrow stream of dirt drip down from under the base of the tilted, wedged jack. The metal arm bowed slightly, the lip that held the stone straining under the weight.
The minor shift in the soil at the base had redistributed the weight. The jack was about to snap.
“Shit! Cressida! Move!” The words were barely out of his mouth when he leapt forward and down, jumping six steps and rolling when he hit the bottom, catching her and tucking her against him. Above them, metal popped and the boulder slammed down, resealing the hole.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cressida coughed from breathing in dirt that had been stirred when the rock slammed across the opening and shook the walls of the tunnel. She lay on her side in the darkness, her eyes watering as she struggled to control the spasms, afraid movement would cause another shift and the two-thousand-year-old tunnel would collapse. Had the bedrock fractured when the boulder fell?
Ian’s arms tightened around her. “You okay?” he asked.
Coughing under control, she did a mental check, flexing muscles to make sure everything was fine. “Yes. Just a little freaked.”
She felt his lips brush her forehead in the pitch-black darkness. She’d dropped her flashlight when he slammed into her and groped the floor, hoping it hadn’t broken.
He flicked on his light, and she spied hers against the wall. She pushed to her knees and reached for it, then let out a soft sigh of relief when the light flickered, then steadied.
Ian shut off his light. “I’ll save my batteries. We have no idea how long we’ll be down here.”
She directed her light upward. The top of the tunnel was about eight inches above her head, clearing Ian’s greater height with a scant inch to spare. With his broad shoulders, the narrow cut of the aqueduct—slightly less than a meter at the floor, the opening gradually narrowing to half that size at the arched ceiling—would be a tighter squeeze for him than for her.
She shivered. The length of the tunnel was the only thing that prevented a full-on claustrophobia panic. She couldn’t imagine how Ian must feel, with his shoulders scraping the sides. “We’re trapped.”
He nodded, his mouth tight. “It was one of the risks.”
She shined the light on the entrance shaft stairs, then flicked it off. Not even a whisper of sunlight slipped past the edges of the stone. She thumbed on the light again, chilled by the utter darkness of being fifteen feet below ground. “I’m sorry, Ian. This is my fault.”
“No, it’s mine, Cress. All of this is my fault.” He gathered her against his chest.
She breathed in his scent. Sweat, dirt, and testosterone. A comfort to have someone solid to hold, another beating heart, in what could well be their tomb.
“We’ve got food and two days’ worth of water if we’re careful,” she said. “Air could be a problem, but the corridor looks long, and there could be exchange through some of the qanat shafts.”
He stroked her cheek. “Your strength amazes me.”
She tightened her arms around him. “I’m just borrowing it from you. If you weren’t here, I’d be a wreck.”
“Same for me.” He brushed strands of hair that had escaped the braid from her forehead. “We’ll find an exit shaft we can dig through. I will get you out of here.”
She held his gaze; the dim glow couldn’t hide the intensity in his eyes. “Promise?”
He smiled. “Absolutely, beautiful.”
It was a ridiculous promise, considering what they were likely facing. Even more ridiculous to take hope from it, but somehow, she did. “Well then, let’s go.”
He kissed her. “When we get back to the States, I want to whisk you away to a five-star hotel for a week. We’ll dine on room service, and I’ll devote all my energy to making you come, repeatedly.”
Heat unfurled from her core. She licked her lips, her throat dry once again. “Promise?” she repeated.
“It’s more than a promise, beautiful. It’s my solemn vow.”
“Fair warning, I love room service more than almost anything else in the world. It’s going to cost you.”
“I’ve got a dozen years’ worth of paychecks burning a hole in my pocket. I think I can handle it.”
“Can’t wait.” She wondered if he offered sex or something more, but trapped in a two-thousand-year-old tunnel, she needed hope to cling to and wasn’t about to ruin the fantasy by questioning the details.
“Then we should hustle on into Syria and dig our way out.”
She laughed. As if it could be that simple.
They donned their packs, and Ian picked up the toolbox and led the way down the dark tunnel. She gave him her flashlight, and he swept the walls and floor with it, ducking and shifting sideways as necessary when the tunnel narrowed too much for his size.
Two-thousand-year-old pick marks evidenced the manual labor that had gone into excavating the passage through solid bedrock. In areas where the tunnel burrowed through dirt instead of rock, the builders had reinforced the walls and ceiling with concrete arches that prevented the loose earth from collapsing the structure.
Ian reached back and took her hand. At first, Cressida thought his goal was to comfort her, but then, the way his fingers shifted and laced through hers, she realized he did it as much for himself, triggering a tightness in her chest. He needed her as much as she needed him.
Reluctantly, she slipped her hand from his to press the button on her dive watch to illuminate the compass. They were heading almost exactly due south and had been for the last six hundred steps. She marveled at the accuracy of the tunnel makers two thousand years ago.
She entwined her fingers with his again and said, “I’m counting steps. I know my pace—twelve steps is ten meters.” She stumbled on the uneven ground, and his fingers tightened on hers. He shined the flashlight downward to illuminate the floor. “No. Keep it up. You need to see the ceiling. Better I trip than you hit your head on a low rock.”
He raised the light again.
“My guess is the shack was two miles—three at most—from the Syrian border,” she said. “We’ll be lucky if the tunnel is passable for four miles to get us beyond the border.”
He ducked, and she saw the ceiling lowered to the point she had to stoop too. “We’re due for some luck about now,” he said.
“I don’t think luck works that way.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think luck works at all.” His tone was as dry as the cool tunnel air.
She snorted. “True.”
Ahead of him, the beam of light caressed the sloping walls, floor, and ceiling in a slow rotation. He stopped when the light disappeared into a dark hole to the right. “Another entrance shaft.”
Her heart pounded with relief at this, the first sign there were, indeed, other exits. They would find a way out. They had to.
She stopped to study the steps cut into rock. Six steps ended abruptly at a wooden barrier. Did T. E. Lawrence place the barrier here a hundred years ago? “This might be the one Lawrence dug out and marked on the map. If we can’t find an exit farther south, we may want to come back here.” She studied the smooth planks. “If we pull down the boards, we’ll probably find a shaft filled with rocks, dirt, and debris, but, from the height of the stairs, my guess is we’d only have a few feet to dig through. Plus, gravity would help—without the planks, the dirt will spill down the stairs.”
; They were going to survive this tunnel. The question was, would they survive what awaited them above?
Ian halted the beam of light on an object resting on the bottom step. At first glance, she’d assumed it was a broken board, but upon closer inspection, it was a small wooden box. Like an old cigar box. Definitely not two thousand years old, but not five or ten years old either. She dropped to her knees and touched the box. Slowly. Reverently.
She’d known when she located the stone with etched initials that T.E. had been here. Even the planks were a telltale sign. But this…this was incontrovertible proof someone had been in this tunnel at least once in the years since the aqueduct had gone out of use and faded from memory.
Ian dropped to his knees beside her. His hand found the small of her back. “Open it, honey. You’ve earned this moment.”
She lifted the lid. A small leather-bound book rested inside. She carefully took it from the box that had housed it for the last hundred years and studied the cover. The letters T-E-L were stamped into the soft hide. She opened the book and scanned the contents. Her heart pounded—this time not due to worry or fear, but excitement. “It’s his field journal.”
She could work on a thousand sites—digging every day for the rest of her life—but she doubted she’d ever again find anything as interesting as this historical document. Which was funny when she considered that it was just another archaeologist’s notes. But it was who the man was, even more than this amazing tunnel he’d found, that made this moment extra special.
In her mind, T. E. Lawrence would always be Peter O’Toole. Tall, handsome. Charismatic. But of course, the real Lawrence was shorter than her by an inch. And historians were divided on his charisma.
She glanced up the tunnel. “We need to leave this here. I can’t take it and risk it being lost.”
Ian nodded, a sad smile on his face. She guessed he understood what this meant to her. “Read it. Quickly. In case he describes the tunnel ahead—and an exit we should look for.”
She settled on the step with Ian by her side and started reading. He opened an energy bar and broke it in half. “Dinner?” he offered.
She smiled and took the paltry meal. “When we’re at The Hay-Adams, I’m going to order halibut from room service. With cream sauce. Served over risotto.”
He chuckled. “I’ll order the salad. I need to watch my figure.”
She let out a sharp laugh. His body was perfect—all hard muscle without an ounce of fat. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you enough of a workout that you’ll be able to eat whatever you want and keep your trim shape.”
He leaned down and nipped her neck. “Fine. Then I’ll order strawberry ice cream with chocolate sauce, paint your body with it, and lick every sweet inch.”
Oh. My. She closed her eyes to savor the image he’d planted. Bad timing. She needed to read the book so they could get the hell out of this tunnel and back to the US and into that luxury hotel room.
Ian read over her shoulder. His demeanor toward her had changed, but she wasn’t certain when it happened. When she’d cried in his arms? When she took down Zack?
All she knew was something had changed. In a good way. His barriers were…lower. He was a hybrid of Ian and John. The sexy, hardened, undercover operative, combined with the charming, gregarious security specialist.
Was this, finally, the real Ian?
“Cress?”
She shook her head and realized she’d been staring at the same page too long as her brain went off on a tangent they didn’t have time for. “Sorry.” She flipped the page. “Oh, bless you T.E.,” she said upon seeing the map the wonderful, brilliant, magnificent man had drawn of the tunnel.
His drawing estimated the tunnel was passable for at least six miles, before crumbling ancient concrete gave way and sealed off the passage. There was a shallow exit near the terminus. If conditions in the tunnel were the same now as they’d been a hundred years ago, they would be well into Syria. And, most importantly, there was a way out.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ian used the cell phone to snap a picture of the map, then took a few more pictures of Lawrence’s notes for Cressida. He hoped that somehow she’d be able to use this for a paper of some sort. Someday.
He tucked the phone away as she returned the book to its box and slipped it in a crevasse in the rock wall—a slightly more protected hiding place in case Zack and Todros followed them down the tunnel.
They each took a small sip of water, then resumed their slow progress down the dark, constricted space. Again, Ian took her hand in his, the need to touch her a strange development for a man who’d prided himself on not needing anyone. Ever.
Cressida kept track of their distance, continuing to count her steps. The six-mile trek took longer in the narrow tunnel than it would have on the surface. In several areas, they had to shimmy through tight gaps where concrete reinforcement had given way and the tunnel was partially collapsed. At each constriction, they brushed against loose dirt and rocks that trickled down, threatening to avalanche and close the passage behind them. Finally, several hours after they’d paused to read T. E. Lawrence’s field journal, they reached an impassable rockfall.
“By my calculations, we’re at the same collapse point that stopped Lawrence,” Cressida said. “That last entrance shaft we passed on the east side is the one Lawrence was able to dig through.”
“Let’s hope he didn’t cap this one with a five-hundred-pound stone.”
“If he did, we’re screwed. So I choose to believe he didn’t.”
They returned to the exit shaft Lawrence had noted, and sure enough, this one also had wooden planks supporting the dirt and debris that clogged the opening.
Cressida pulled the collapsible shovel from her backpack. She handed him the shovel, then grabbed the tire iron. “I’m going to use this to pry out the keystone holding the barrier in place.”
He took the tire iron from her. “That’s dangerous, making it my job.”
“Which one of us is the professional digger?” she asked, reaching for the iron.
“Which one of us is the professional risk taker who agreed to sacrifice his life for his country if need be?”
“Which one of us is more likely to make it to freedom on the other side? I don’t speak the language, Ian. I don’t know the rules of the game or even what the game is. If only one of us survives this, it has to be you.”
“No. Fucking. Way.” He yanked the evil eye pendant from his neck and dropped it over her head. “If only one of us is going to survive, it will be you. Period. No argument. And if we get separated in Syria, if I’m taken and questioned, even tortured, you will keep going. No matter what, you will head for the rendezvous point with the Raptor team. You will tell no one—no one—about the chip in this pendant until Zack is in custody. Do you understand?”
“Not even the CIA director?”
“Not even him. Zack Barrow is still an agent. We know he’s playing for the wrong team, but it’s doubtful the CIA will believe us. If corruption in the agency goes higher than Zack, and the wrong person gets their hands on the chip, it’s game over.”
She rose on her toes and kissed him. A soft brush of lips that he wanted to turn into something more. For all they knew, this would be their last chance to be together. But the mission always came first, and his mission was to get Cressida safely into Sean Logan’s hands.
Never mind the sharp stab of jealousy he’d felt at hearing the fondness in her voice when she spoke to Logan. Clearly, he had issues when it came to Cressida. They were his to deal with in silence for now and forever. Right now he needed to get her out of this death trap.
He used the tire iron to pry out the boards. The first one popped easily, the old wood splintering under the slightest pressure.
Dirt spilled down onto the stairs where he stood.
“Careful!” Cressida said from her perch on the bottom step.
“Move away from the opening.”
“Not until you do t
he same.”
“Dammit, Cress, one of us needs to pry out the wood, and one of us must survive. Stop arguing and move aside.”
She let out a low sound he was fairly certain was a growl, but she moved.
Ian popped out the second plank. More rocks and soil tumbled onto the steps, pelting him as gravity was given free rein for the first time in a hundred years. He leaned to the side and placed the tire iron behind the final plank. This one cracked in the middle under the pressure, creating a lip over which dirt and rocks fell like a waterfall.
Cascading soil created a cloud of dust, causing him to cough. Steps above, a pinprick of light grew. And grew. His heart pounded as the truth sank in.
They were close to the surface, without a boulder to block their exit. Syria waited just a few feet above them.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Unsure of what they would find at the surface, they agreed to wait until nightfall to dig out an opening wide enough to crawl through. With more than an hour to kill, it was the first break they’d had since Zack interrupted their kiss this morning, and as they settled down in the narrow corridor, facing each other and leaning against opposite walls, Ian fantasized for a moment of picking up where they’d left off, when he’d kissed her without holding back.
But things had changed since this morning. Twelve hours ago, he thought he’d ship her off with Raptor, then head to Cizre and start hunting Zack. Twelve hours ago, he’d figured his odds of surviving this mission and returning to the US were close to nil. Thirty minutes ago, he thought they might die trapped in this tunnel.
But now he’d glimpsed daylight, and he was on an irrevocable course for home, or at least his country—he wasn’t quite certain home and the US were one and the same—and faced the very real possibility he would survive. Which changed things as far as Cressida was concerned.