Hard to Kill

by Christina Dodd

  The air inside the cave was stale, cool and dry.

  General Slater, Major Aimes, Miss Becker and Kellen each held a large flashlight, and it didn’t take them long to search the corners of the dark cave. There on the north side of the cave, amid rock dust and cobwebs, stood the immense Rubens painting, coated with dirt, framed in gilt and absolutely glorious.

  Kellen thought Miss Becker might faint on the spot.

  Slater rolled his eyes in Kellen’s direction. “Did you think to mention its size, Captain?”

  Kellen smiled. “It’s eight and a half feet by six and a half feet, give or take, but the truck is large, the cave entrance is getting bigger every minute and we have enough men to carry it. Miss Becker, it looks all right, doesn’t it? It’s weathered well?”

  Miss Becker still looked like she would expire at any moment, but in a heavy German accent, she breathlessly said, “It’s breathtaking! I’ll get the men in here to move it to the truck and take it directly to the airport. The Victoria and Albert Museum will want to authenticate it immediately.”

  Kellen looked bemused by General Slater’s look of horror. “What do you mean?” he said indignantly.

  Miss Becker looked taken aback. Clearly, she wasn’t used to explaining art terms to nonartists. “Paintings are often forged. Before the museum will release the reward to the Roy family, they will need to ensure this is, indeed, a Rubens.” Anxiously, she added, “It’s no reflection on your integrity, General Slater.”

  Kellen almost snorted. His integrity, indeed.

  The general relaxed. “I see. Get on with it, then.”

  Major Aimes and Miss Becker went to the mouth of the cave and collected the men needed to carry the enormous, weighty framed canvas. Slater and Kellen watched as the painting disappeared through the opening of the cave.

  Kellen clicked on her flashlight. “I’ll look to see if there are more works of art.” She wandered toward the back of the cave.

  The general watched her for a long moment, as if assessing her intentions, and then he began to use his flashlight as if he were searching, too.

  She didn’t know if he was actually looking or scoping out his theater for murder.

  Miss Becker directed the workers to turn the painting on its side, cover it in canvas and a ridiculous amount of Bubble Wrap and strap it to the back of the lead truck.

  When the Rubens was secure, Miss Becker reentered the cave. “Find anything?” she called.

  Kellen shook her head. “Not a thing.”

  Miss Becker was unfazed. “Finding a Rubens is enough for me. Thank you for this opportunity. I’m going to head back with the workers. I’ll need their help getting the painting onto the plane. You’ll go, too?”

  “Aimes will drive us back in a moment,” Slater said, stepping forward to shake Miss Becker’s hand. “Keep our painting safe.”

  Miss Becker smiled and bobbed back out of the cave, called goodbye to Aimes and climbed into the truck. The workers piled into the other trucks, ready to leave the dark forest.

  As the sound of the trucks receding echoed in the cave, Major Aimes returned. “I thought there would be more treasure in the cave. My research said that often the Nazis hid multiple works of art in one location.”

  Slater walked toward the back of the cave. “Sorry, Major, but this drop-off looks like the edge of the cave.”

  “I did research and found many missing works of art, including a Botticelli, a van Gogh and two beautiful Monet paintings,” Aimes insisted.

  Kellen walked to the edge of the precipice and looked down. Without her flashlight on, there was no end to the dark abyss below. “If Roy’s maps are to be believed, the Rubens is all there is in this cave. There’s nothing beyond to be recovered. Here it drops off into an unimaginable abyss. No one has ever found the bottom of this cave.” Kellen watched the general out of the corner of her eyes, waiting to see if this was the moment he would strike.

  Behind them, she heard the click of a safety being removed.

  In that instant, she knew she’d been suckered.

  General Slater got a chagrined look on his face.

  Aimes had caught them both.

  They both turned to face Major Aimes.

  Aimes pointed his sidearm at them and smiled in a way that made Kellen’s insides grow cold. “It really is too bad that General Slater and Captain Adams were both killed during the recovery of the Rubens painting. Cave-ins can be so unpredictable. But since Kellen and I were in a deeply romantic relationship, and I was integral to retrieving a stolen masterpiece, I’m sure the museum won’t balk at giving me her share of the reward.”

  Kellen’s anger welled up inside of her. “As though anyone would believe you and I were together.”

  Aimes laughed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, my dear, but I’m the consummate actor. They’ll believe it.”

  Time to do her share of acting.

  Turning to General Slater, she yelled, “You might die, but I’m not going down with you.” She rushed at him, slamming him in the solar plexus with her good shoulder.

  He stumbled backward, arms flailing, and fell into the abyss.

  Major Aimes took his shot.

  The bullet grazed her shoulder—what did everyone have against her shoulder?—and the impact knocked her over the edge of the precipice, into the dark.

  8

  Kellen hit the shelf five feet below the edge of the precipice and landed with an “Oomph!” on the prone form of General Slater.

  He cushioned her fall—and grunted.

  She put her hand over his mouth, rolled off and shoved him toward the rock overhang at the inner edge of the shelf.

  He was a soldier; he knew there was a time to fight and a time to hide. When the other guy held the gun, he hid.

  They huddled together and listened as Major Aimes moved to the edge of the abyss. His flashlight roamed the black rock where they had landed, paused at the smear of blood at the edge where the next ledge broke off and swept beyond, into the darkness.

  Kellen watched as the light roamed about, looking for anyplace where they could possibly be safe.

  Aimes chuckled softly. “Yes,” he said softly, and his footsteps echoed as he walked toward the excavated entrance.

  General Slater was ready to vault back into the cave.

  Kellen held him back.

  The footsteps faded, and a muffled boom echoed back and forth across the rock walls.

  Suddenly, the darkness was total.

  With a small explosive, Aimes had sealed the entrance to the cave once more.

  General Slater sighed loudly and said into the darkness, “You know, I was never particularly a fan of small, dark places. I never thought I’d die in one, though. Why did you stop me?”

  Kellen felt like laughing, but she figured that was the mild hysteria sinking in. “You’re not going to die here, sir.”

  “No?”

  “No.” All this time, it had been Major Aimes. Kellen was surprised how relieved she felt, even in this dark cave, that it hadn’t been Slater who had sold her out. “Aimes...it was Aimes. And he was always so nondescript.”

  Slater guffawed. “Don’t beat around the bush, Captain. Annoying is the word you’re looking for. The man was annoying, though he seemed to be a fine soldier before he got that little taste of power.”

  Kellen retrieved a flashlight from her backpack, turned it on and placed it on the ground.

  General Slater looked eerie in the blue-white light, a little battered, with a bruise forming on his forehead, a cut on his hand and scrapes on his knuckles.

  “You’re injured.” Slater noted the blood trickling down Kellen’s arm.

  “At the last moment, I turned away from his shot. It’s only a scratch.” Hurt like a son of a bitch, though. “I fell on the other shoulder, so that’s go
od. But if you could wrap the injury for me...”

  Slater helped her pull her shirt off her arm, and then, with a small knife retrieved from his belt, he cut a long strip from his undershirt. “You seem to know, so tell me—what exactly just happened?”

  She wished she could make herself sound less gullible. But... No way, so she might as well explain in plain words. “I thought the moment you got the painting, you were going to do away with me, so I held back information I’d learned from some of the code. I knew that the precipice was a fake.” She paused to give her pronouncement a proper weight. “I also know that the Rubens is a forgery.”

  Slater stopped wrapping Kellen’s arm and was stunned silent. Then he chuckled deeply. “That poor art historian. I’ve never seen anyone more excited.” He sobered and finished tying off his bandage. “Although I guess we’re not going to get out to see the punch line of that particular joke. Are we?”

  With his help, she donned her shirt again. “Sir, I have one or two more tricks up my sleeve.” She moved her arm. “As it were.”

  “The way out?”

  “That. And hopefully—the real treasure.”

  “I’d be happy to get out of here alive.” General Slater cleared his throat. “But supposing I was interested—what kind of treasure?”

  She laughed at his dry tone. “Chester Roy wasn’t specific about what it was, but it’s at the far end of the cave. And it is the far end. According to the map—”

  “The map you never shared with me?”

  “That’s the one. According to that, it’ll take us at least another day of walking and crawling to reach our destination.” She took a drag of water from her canteen and offered it to him.

  He accepted it and drank. “How much water do we have?”

  “Not enough. I thought I’d be making this trek alone.”

  He stood and shook the dust off his pants. “Then we’d better get going.” He offered Kellen his hand.

  She recognized a peace offering when she saw one. She took it.

  He easily pulled her to her feet. The man was in good shape, she knew that for sure after landing on him. He was powerful and capable. He was not the villain she had believed him to be, and they were about to spend a lot of time together in the long dark.

  Hmm. Time to get moving. “This way.” She secured her flashlight to the bill of her cap, and together they edged along the rock shelf to a dark corner of the cave, which lead to an opening large enough to crawl through.

  “Ladies first,” Slater said sarcastically.

  “In case there’s a drop-off?”

  “That. Or spiders.” His voice held a verbal shudder.

  She grinned. “Be nice to the person with the flashlight, General.” On hands and knees, she entered the cramped tunnel.

  He followed. “Wise words, though it’s your fault I don’t have one—I dropped it when you pushed me over the edge of a cliff.” A pause. “You saved my life, Captain.”

  She answered promptly and lightly. “It’s a life worth saving, sir.”

  “It’s a debt I’ll somehow repay.” He sounded far too sincere for comfort.

  The darkness was fraught with more than the possibility of cave-ins and spiderwebs.

  She crawled faster.

  He easily kept up. “What did you mean when you said you thought I’d do away with you once you found the painting?”

  “Oh. That. Yes.” Let him explain this. “You had said half the reward would go to Benjamin Roy. When I mentioned that to Major Aimes, he looked surprised. Baffled. He wasn’t exactly given to shows of emotion, so I did some research.”

  “And?” General Slater sounded grim.

  “Really, sir, you don’t know? Benjamin Roy was killed outside Kabul. By friendly fire.”

  Kellen heard the general stop behind her. “That son of a bitch killed him, didn’t he?”

  Kellen shook her head in the dark. “Or had him killed. But I have no proof. Since you became more and more standoffish and occasionally frightening, I believed you must have arranged the death. After all, with the proper arrangements, you were the one who stood to benefit.”

  Slater sounded sad, like the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. “No, Captain, when last I saw him, Benjamin Roy was healthy and returning for a stint in the States.”

  “I’m so sorry, sir.”

  “Me, too. He was a good kid.” Slater sighed shakily.

  Crawling on their knees and elbows for another twenty minutes brought them into a larger opening in the tunnel. Kellen slipped down the slope into a larger cavern, the general close behind. They stood and looked around.

  Bats hung in the thousands from the ceiling.

  “I guess we know why it’s so slick,” General Slater murmured.

  Kellen looked at her grimy hands. He didn’t like spiders. She didn’t like bats, and she most definitely didn’t like bat poo. “There’s supposed to be an underground stream farther on.”

  “Let’s keep moving.”

  They found their stream and performed a necessary washup. Then they seated themselves on the nearest dry rocks and shared a protein bar out of her backpack.

  He broke the silence. “I bet you’re wondering about my side of the story. Since you thought I was being ‘standoffish and occasionally frightening.’”

  “I’m interested,” she acknowledged.

  “General’s aide is a position of some importance. It requires discretion, intelligence, the ability to filter information and assign importance to the constant demand’s on my time.” He sounded very much like an officer instructing a recruit.

  “Yes, sir. I know, sir.”

  “Of course you do.” He sat and stared across the cavern. “I was looking for an aide, and Aimes came to me highly recommended. He was described as an exemplary soldier. I trusted him, as I have all my aides.”

  “Of course.”

  General Slater cleared his throat. “Excuses for an embarrassing, nearly deadly mistake. After you’d been in the house a few weeks, Aimes came to me with information. He claimed you had come to him with a proposal to do away with me.”

  “Kill you?”

  “He told me you wanted the entire reward for yourself and that you were willing to sleep with him to keep him quiet.”

  Kellen found herself on her feet. “Sleep with him? With that officious little prick?”

  General Slater gestured for her to calm down. “I know. I know. It seems silly now. But the idea that you were willing to kill me for money, and you’d have sex with Aimes but would barely look at me...well, it really stuck in my craw. An old man can only take so many wounds to his delicate sexual ego. It really pales in comparison to getting killed.”

  Kellen chuckled and subsided. She did like General Slater. That was something to remember.

  “I figured you were going to try to kill me in the cave.” Bitterly, he said, “I asked Aimes to watch my back.”

  “Aimes had us monitoring each other, rather than paying attention to him.”

  “When it comes to manipulation, the man’s a genius. Though still such an incredible prig.” General Slater stood. “Captain, we understand each other better now. Let’s move on.”

  Over the next few hours, they came upon more spiders, an aquifer—with water, which they didn’t dare drink—and more bats, but they occupied their time with conversation.

  “Tough break for your friend Hackett, losing his leg like that,” General Slater said. “But he sounds like he’s holding up as well as can be expected.”

  “He’s a good kid,” Kellen said, her eyes misting over. “I want to do more for him. All the kids in my unit were great. Well, some weren’t kids, I suppose—but they were a damn fine team. I’ll miss them.”

  “I heard you had many visitors in the hospital,” Slater said gently.

 
Kellen said slowly, “It’s nice. They care about each other and about me. It’s not something I’m used to. Look!” She crawled out of their latest cramped tunnel. “I think we’re here!”

  The cave opened up, revealing an enormous underground cavern, faintly lit, dry and empty...except for two large pieces of gorgeous artwork.

  “The missing Monets,” she said.

  “Holy shit.” General Slater looked dazed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  Kellen and General Slater emerged from the cave through a small hole in the rock wall, into the bright morning light of the forest, feeling hungry, thirsty, dirty and triumphant.

  General Slater pulled out his cell phone, consulted his map app and then pointed down the hill. “We’re about two miles west of a village. Come on, I’m ready for a good, hearty German breakfast.”

  “Wait, sir.” Kellen stopped him and handed him the diary. “Sir, I can teach you the diary’s code and how to read the maps, and I’d appreciate it if you’d handle transporting these paintings to the museum. I’d like to avoid publicity as much as possible.”

  Slater nodded. “I’ll revel in that publicity. It’s the least I can do for our mutual friend Aimes.”

  “I wish I could see his face when he realizes you’re alive.” She reveled in the thought.

  General Slater grinned evilly. “I intend to enjoy that.” He sobered. “And, Captain Adams, I’m glad to help you avoid publicity, if you’re sure that’s the way you want it.”

  “I do. You’ll look dashing in a fedora for the photo op.”

  “A fedora? God, no. How about an Army cap?”

  “With all your insignia?”

  “Allow me some modesty. I’ll wear my stars.”

  Tongue in cheek, she said, “That is modest,”

  For all his declared intention to hunt out a meal, he lingered and looked at her far too perceptively. “Where will you go now?”

  “I’ll check on my team members who are still in the hospital. Then I guess I’ll head to Washington State—see if I can enjoy some open spaces for a while.”