Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  "What was it?" she asked. "An earthquake? Are there earthquakes in Pennsylvania?"

  As they breeched the top and ran onto the flat parking area, he said, "No earthquake. Felt more like a bomb or some other kind of explosive. I could hear it through the ground like thunder."

  "You think there'll be more?"

  Just then the earth quaked and rolled again. This time they dropped down together, arms over heads. She had heard a dull thunk arrive from somewhere far away. The sound of the blast, she decided. As the ground quieted, there were low groaning noises, as rock fought rock.

  "Let's go!" He had her on her feet again, and they were running before she could understand.

  And then she knew: "Someone's dynamiting the farm."

  "That's my take, too."

  "If it's Berianov . . . and he knows we're down here . . . he's dynamiting these caves to kill us."

  "I call that solid deductive thinking."

  Suddenly the cavern rocked. They lost their balances and toppled. They sneezed and coughed. The detonation seemed almost as if it were directly on top of them. Rock sheered off the ceiling and walls and crashed down. A gray-and-brown dust cloud blasted toward them from the ramp on the far side of the parking area, which led up into the building.

  "Look." He wiped dust from his eyes and pointed ahead. The rolling cloud was spreading out and thinning. "Check out that gray lump on the wall. Looks like Playdoh—that's plastic explosive. And there's another and another. Someone must've laid them out after we passed. Otherwise, I would've noticed. They could go off any second. There are too many for me to disarm in time."

  "We've got to get out of here." She looked wildly around, feeling trapped but not wanting to admit it.

  "But not the way we came in. From the size of that dust storm, there's got to be tons of rock blocking the entrance now."

  Another explosion shook the cavern. Flung against the wall, she was momentarily dazed. How could they escape this stone tomb? Suddenly as if from a distant part of her mind, a memory came. From her nightmare. From her heart? It swept over her, and she was back in it, living it—

  She pounded down a tunnel with rough rock walls. At last she saw a gray metal door. She yanked it open. Inside was a shaft just large enough for one person. She slammed the door and climbed the ladder, escaping. . . .

  "That door I found!" She ran. " Come on!"

  "It's probably just a utility closet."

  "No! I saw it in my nightmares. Mikhail Ogust must've known about these caverns. If I'm right, it's a shaft with a ladder. It's a way out!"

  Jeff rushed to catch up. "Maybe you're right. Berianov wouldn't build anything like this without a secret way to save his skin."

  Abruptly another massive convulsion shook the cavern. It tossed them down as if they were puppets. Beth landed on her back, the wind knocked out of her. There was a thunderous roar, and rocks and boulders smashed down. Beth and Jeff rolled together, their arms protecting each other's heads. All the lights between them and the entrance died, and rock dust turned the remaining flourescent light into gray dusk. The air stank of mold and rock.

  "Beth! Are you all right?" He pulled her close. His heart pounded with fear for both of them.

  She coughed. "Fine . . . I'm fine."

  "Then let's go. We might not survive the next one. And there's still plastic on the wall. There's going to be at least one more blast."

  They limped toward the hidden door, skirting mounds of debris. Rocks still fell, shattering into piles. The other side of the cavern, where they had entered, had disappeared behind a monstrous rock slide.

  "The door's locked." She swore.

  "Not a problem." With his pistol, he fired into the keyhole, turned the knob, and yanked it open to reveal the shaft she remembered from her post-op dreams. It was narrow, and a pipe ladder was screwed into the rock face. It rose straight up what looked like a hundred feet or more. It was such a straight, towering distance that it made her queasy. In the past, she had been afraid of heights. Far away, as if she were at the bottom of a well, she could see a round piece of the night sky, glittering with stars. Despite her fear, she had never seen a finer sight. Thank you, heart.

  "You first," he insisted.

  "But, Jeff—"

  "Go! I'll be right behind!"

  She scrambled up the ladder into the starlit tunnel, Jeff following. She could not have an attack of vertigo, because if she fell, she would take Jeff with her. So she looked neither up nor down but straight ahead at the rock wall. She made herself breathe evenly. She climbed slowly, building a steady rhythm, one foot after another, each hand after the other, trying not to think about where she was or what she was doing.

  Another blowout detonated, and the shaft shook and reeled.

  They gripped the ladder. Her flashlight dropped, missing Jeff by inches. She closed her eyes, fighting dizziness. Stones and dust exploded around them. For a few harrowing seconds it seemed as if the ladder were peeling away from the wall. Beneath them, the door burst open with a terrible screech of ripping metal. She opened her eyes long enough to see rocks and debris shoot in and force their way up the base of the shaft past the doorway, blocking it. They were trapped. The only exit was up.

  She shook her head, trying to regain her equilibrium. She would not lose control, she told herself. She must not. Not here.

  Abruptly the shaft thundered with new noise. It sounded as if part of the cavern had collapsed. Dust and detritus again shot up the shaft in a reverse rain of lung-scarring proportions. They coughed and struggled to breathe.

  And then there was a muffled, deadly silence. An occasional pebble pinged past them, stinging their faces and hands. The ladder wobbled against the wall. It was loose.

  "There's no going back," Jeff called from below. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

  Coughing, she lifted her foot. The ladder swayed. She broke out in a sweat and swore.

  "We've got to move at odds with each other," Jeff told her. "If we both lift the same foot at the same time, we'll get the ladder to swinging like a snake, and it'll go down and take us with it."

  He released his flashlight so he could use both hands. It hit the rocks below with a metallic shatter. To his count, they alternated feet and hands, placing each gently—her left, his right—and in unison they progressed up the ladder.

  "One more blast, and this ladder will collapse like Pickup Stix," she muttered.

  "Keep moving!"

  The ladder's looseness grew more evident the more they climbed. Sweat drenched her, and her stomach knotted. When she reached the top, she reached her hand out over the lip and touched grass. Hot tears of relief ran down her cheeks. She crawled out into a small area ringed with boulders then collapsed and threw back her head, staring at the starry sky. She breathed deeply and said emotional words of thanks.

  Then she wiped away her tears and reached a hand down. "Can I help you, Jeff?"

  He looked up, and for a few seconds he thought he was looking at an angel. Moonlight glowed around her. Dirt streaked her face and clotted her short hair, and her jacket and jeans were filthy, but to him she could not have looked more beautiful.

  "No, thanks," he said gruffly. "I can do it." He hauled himself up.

  She was sitting beside the shaft's entrance, which was concealed by a tight circle of high boulders. There was not room for both, so they climbed over and out.

  "You've been crying," he said from behind.

  "Only a little."

  They fell onto the grassy hillside, exhausted and almost giddy with relief. Jeff ached. His back and legs throbbed from the blows of rocks. Higher on the hill, a Holstein cow mooed, and the bucolic call echoed across the hills. He looked back and saw a herd. He inhaled, amazed they were still alive.

  Just down the slope stood Berianov's farm, plus two huge smoking craters. One of the big holes was where the mansion had been, and the other the fake garage.

  She said, "You figure it was that old man who set the plastic?"
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  "Maybe. I'd like to get my hands on him. I thought he was harmless. One way or another, you can bet he knows something."

  "The police will come, or whatever local authorities they have here. Those blasts must've scared everyone for miles."

  "Speak of the devil." He nodded and lifted the night-vision binoculars to his eyes.

  A vehicle was driving into the property from the road. The headlights were luminous cones in the rising ground fog. He focused on the vehicle.

  "What is it?" she demanded.

  "Dark green van. Not a cop car. Oh, man. You're not going to believe this. Actually, you will. It's our garrulous pal, the too-friendly caretaker. He's walking over to meet it."

  She remembered his vanishing eyes, so bright—and so very much not old. And the advertisement for this farm that she had found hidden in Berianov's office. "I'll bet that's Berianov! In disguise again. The caretaker. We both missed it!"

  "You're right. It could be him. He was always a master of . . . Wait!" He stared through the night binoculars. "There's someone else. See? Behind the van!"

  The man was dressed in his work clothes, completely in black—turtleneck, jacket, ski mask, gloves, trousers, socks, and shoes. Equipment, including a pistol, hung from a black web belt at his waist. He melted along the edge of the pines and then up the side of the road, low to the ground, a spectral shade against the white fence. Gray fog caught at his ankles.

  As he approached the van, which had now pulled to a stop, he took out his pistol and studied the old man who was moving away from the smoking remains of what must have been a large building. This was the farm that had been in the advertisement he had taken from Beth Convey at Alexei Berianov's house, but nowhere was the mansion visible. Which made him believe the ruins had once been that building.

  He was puzzled. The e-mail from his bosses in the Kremlin had told him their sources reported that a Colonel Caleb Bates had bought this property. But that was the extent of the information. That and it had been important enough to Beth Convey for her to want to confiscate the advertisement.

  He studied the wizened fellow in his jeans and cowboy hat as he climbed into the van. He did not recognize him. But then he saw Ivan Vok behind the wheel. A jubilant thrill hit his chest. Ivan Vok—the notorious KGB assassin . . . in the United States . . . at this mysterious Caleb Bates's farm. Excited, his pistol firmly in hand, he closed in on the big vehicle.

  As soon as Alexei Berianov slid open the door and jumped in, Ivan Vok hit the accelerator and circled the big vehicle around the drive that fronted the smoldering remains of the farm's main house. He nodded at Berianov, putting a cool smile of greeting on his Mongolian features that only hinted at his allegiance and his pride at what he, Vok, was creating with his long-time leader.

  He asked the general, "Kak vi pazhiváyitye?" How did things go?

  Berianov was equally unemotional. They were KGB. There was no better training ground to learn the value of understatement. Besides, he knew Ivan Vok's attachment ran deep. He pulled off his Stetson, settled into the front passenger seat, and offered the customary response in Russian: "Kharashóh. A vi?" Good. And with you?

  "A long night, Alexei," Vok continued in Russian. "Convey and Hammond escaped me. They switched vehicles before I could arrive."

  Berianov smiled. "They didn't escape me."

  "So?"

  As Vok turned the van down the driveway toward the highway, Berianov explained the explosions and the deaths of Hammond and the Convey woman. "They'll be no more bother."

  Vok laughed, both amused and relieved.

  Berianov said suddenly, "What's that?"

  A shadow darted off to the left in front of white fencing. It crouched, gun lifted. Vok saw it, too. Before they could react, a bullet exploded through the driver's door of the moving van and blasted out inches from Berianov's chest.

  Vok wrenched the wheel and hit the accelerator again. Without a word, Berianov reached up and grabbed the handle above the door for balance as the big vehicle roared across the driveway straight at the dark figure.

  The man stood and fired into the van, but it was accelerating so fast he could get off only the single shot, and it seemed to have no effect. He turned and sprinted.

  Vok let out a low growl of pleasure as he hurtled the van onward across the lawn, struck the man with its fender, and crashed through the fencing and into a pasture. The van lurched over the grass, and Vok spun the wheel again, aiming it back in a loop toward the drive.

  Berianov asked, "Who do you think he was?"

  Vok shrugged. "Doesn't matter, Alexei. If he's not dead, he's injured bad enough to knock him out." He turned the van back onto the driveway and drove it downhill again toward the front gate, which stood open and waiting between the pines.

  Over the engine's purr, a siren sounded in the distance. Berianov smiled. With the deaths of Convey and Hammond, his plans were back on track. The local authorities would arrive soon, but they would find little more than empty holes in the ground—and, now, an injured or dead man. It would puzzle them. They would look into the ownership of the farm and discover an ultraright-wing nationalist named Colonel Caleb Bates had taken it over, and they would wonder about that, too. Then they would find Caleb Bates had disappeared. Eventually, they would know about the Keepers of the Truth, and the puzzle would fit its pieces together for them in the way he wanted: A web of fabrications that seemed solid as truth.

  He heard Ivan Vok swear. "Bad news, Alexei. There, in back of us."

  Berianov turned to look. Two dusty figures had run down the hillside and reached the road behind them. Rage spiked through his entrails. It was Beth Convey and Jeff Hammond. Impossible. He stared, shocked, as they found the man Ivan had hit with the van. At the same time, from the corners of his eyes he could see a ruddy glow rise from the south. Police beacons. The sirens were growing louder. They would be here soon.

  "How did they escape?" He swore. "No time to deal with them now. They'd be too alert to an attack, in any case."

  "The police will be here before we can kill them," Vok agreed. "That's too dangerous for us."

  Berianov thought quickly. "They must have parked their car somewhere near. Do you have a tracking device with you?"

  "Yes, but no reader." Vok allowed himself a smile. "I will make a call. Get help." He slammed the gas pedal, and the van rocketed out onto the country highway. They had to find Convey and Hammond's car, plant the device, and contact one of their men with a reader to follow.

  As the scream of the sirens grew in intensity, Beth and Jeff crouched beside the unconscious, crumpled form in black. While Jeff felt for his carotid artery, Beth pulled off the knit stocking cap.

  "Do you know him?" Beth asked.

  He was about her age, she guessed—early thirties. He had a strong, triangular face with smooth skin and thin eyebrows. The chin itself was flat and square. There was something turbulent about his features even in unconsciousness, as if whatever forces drove him seldom rested. He was striking, she decided. Attractive in a predatory sort of way.

  "Never seen him before. But at least he's alive." Jeff ran his hands over the man's body looking for obvious broken bones. "He appears okay, but we won't know anything for sure until he can tell us. He must've glanced off the fender. We're taking him with us. I'm tired of leaving good information sources behind."

  She was watching the lights of the patrol cars speed toward Berianov's farm. "We've got to hurry. They're going to be here in a couple of minutes."

  Jeff picked up the man's feet, while Beth stripped off his gloves, stuck them into her windbreaker's pockets, and grabbed his hands. Hurrying sideways, they carried him over the crushed white fence and downhill toward the pines that rimmed the road on this side of the tall security fence.

  As the patrol cars rushed up the drive, their beacons flashing, Beth and Jeff lay the man down on pine needles and crouched to wait, hidden in the trees. The rotating lights winked across them, and she lowered her gaze. That was w
hen she saw it: She had put the man's hands on his chest, crossed. There was a scar on his right wrist.

  "Jeff! It's him." She pointed to the small white scar. "He's the man I told you about. The one who attacked me and tied me up in Berianov's house!"

  He repressed a powerful urge to beat the crap out of the injured guy. He made his voice noncommittal: "He should have some interesting things to tell us."

  The man twitched. He was waking up. Jeff searched his equipment belt and confiscated a pistol and two knives. They picked him up and carried him alongside the fence line again, hidden among the pines, until they reached the open gates. They set him down again and warily surveyed back up to the end of the long drive where officers were pouring out of their patrol cars. The beacons still revolved and glinted. Voices shouted orders. Soon the farm would be locked, everything sealed off with yellow crime tape. The arson experts were probably already on their way, prepared to pick through ashes, to sift, and to analyze.

  But right now, the wrought-iron gates remained wide open. Beth and Jeff scanned all around. Carrying the unconscious man, they slipped out between the gates and hurried up the hill on the grassy space between the quiet road and the fence. The pines would help protect them from being seen by anyone in the farm, and the highway was lightly traveled. With luck, they would reach the Ferrari before another car passed.

  Beth sweated and panted. The distance stretched. Her arms grew numb. The intruder was her height, but he had to weigh one-sixty at least. She kept reminding herself this was a good idea. Finally, on the far side of the hill's crown and out of sight of the farm, they let him drop to the grass. He landed a little harder than they had intended.

  Jeff took a ragged breath and straightened. His broad, tanned face glistened with sweat. Beth remembered the first time she saw him, as he was crossing the lobby at the Post, with his gold earring and long ponytail. She had liked his cockiness. Had found his self-confidence hypnotically attractive. And was drawn by his off-beat handsomeness.