He was going to die, John thought. His stomach muscles had already begun to twitch spasmodically, contracting and expanding as part of his body’s outraged, drumbeat demand that he open his mouth and breathe.
Ah well, what the hell …
The realization that he could face death with a certain measure of equanimity was strangely comforting to him; it relaxed him and strengthened his resolve to go on a little farther.
What this situation needs is some light at the end of the tunnel.
Oxygen deprivation was making him feel silly, John thought.
Maybe I’ll die laughing. What the hell’s so funny?
He decided that he would start counting to a hundred, and try to at least make it to the end of the count. After that, he would simply breathe in a lungful of water and be done with it.
One.
He kicked hard, at the same time pulling his arms down sharply to his sides and straightening his body in order to lessen the drag of the water. He followed each kick with a slight undulating motion of his lower body generated by his hips and knees.
…
Thirteen.
Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb …
…
Twenty-two.
His head, chest, and stomach felt ready to explode, and John decided he would settle for counting to fifty. He estimated that he had already been under water for at least two minutes.
Fifty and screw it, folks. Enough is enough.
Sing, sing a song …
…
Thirty.
He began to hear bells, great, clanging gongs that seemed to reverberate through every bone in his body.
The inside of his brain was lighting up. Electric blue neon.
Who says you can’t kill yourself by holding your breath? Three minutes? Four? I wonder what the Guinness record is? Who’ll know? Ah well, what the hell.
…
Forty-two.
He could go no farther. Involuntary reflex action caused him to make his final surge upward. His head broke the surface of the water. His pent-up breath burst from his lungs and he sucked in … air.
Gasping hoarsely, John thrashed in the water. He threw his arms out, and the fingers of his left hand cracked painfully against what felt like a ledge. He lunged for the rock, fighting against the raging current that clutched at his body. With the last of his strength, John pulled himself out of the water onto the ledge a moment before he passed out.
11:43 A.M.
Raul
Raul lay in bed with the sheet pulled up to his chin, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling of his small hotel room. He lived in Angeles Blanca and could have gone home for a few hours if he’d wanted to. But he had not wanted to; he had too many things on his mind.
He had to get some sleep, Raul thought. He had shaved, taken a warm bath, then closed the blinds in the room and stretched out between the worn but clean sheets. He had been up all night, he was exhausted, and he had fully expected to fall asleep immediately. He wanted to sleep. Why, then, couldn’t he?
Finway had told him that Rick Peters planned to kill Manuel.
Raul deeply, bitterly, resented the fact that the lawyer had said such a thing; it had been an absolutely crazy statement, the wild accusation of an insanely jealous man who would do or say absolutely anything to discredit his wife’s lover and, out of spite, disrupt the tour. Raul was sure that there was nothing at all to the accusation, but the angry, desperate words were causing him all kinds of problems; they were robbing him of much-needed sleep.
It had to be nonsense, Raul thought, but he could not forget that Finway had spoken the words, and he did not know what to do about it. He would like to erase, had desperately tried to erase, the words from his memory, but they would not go.
If he told the DMI men, Raul thought, they would probably laugh at him. They would laugh and accuse him of trying to cover up or excuse his own incompetence in letting John Finway get away. Then they would remind him that he had been ordered to be courteous to Peters, not to make outrageous accusations.
Or, Manuel would be advised to stay away from the boxing matches. The authorities would investigate Peters and conclude that Finway’s accusations against him were groundless. Then Manuel would want to know who was responsible for causing him to miss such an imporant event. Manuel would be told that a Sierratour guide had made the accusations in a clumsy attempt to cover his own incompetence.
At the very least, Raul thought, he would lose his job. He could go to prison. He might even be executed. He’d heard that Manuel still ordered summary executions when he was especially displeased with someone.
Or, Finway could be telling the truth. An investigation would reveal that Rick Peters was an assassin. Then, Raul thought, he would be asked why he had waited so long to tell the authorities what John Finway had said.
He would lose his job. He could go to prison. He could be executed.
But if Finway had been telling the truth and he said nothing, the man who was the savior of the Sierran people would be assassinated.
Tormented by the agony of his dilemma, Raul moaned aloud. Finally he rolled over, drew his knees up under his stomach, and jammed the pillow down on his head. He tried counting sheep, but that didn’t help either.
John
He awoke with a start, at first disoriented and afraid that he had been blinded but then exhilarated as he remembered the nightmare swim through the underwater cave. He had survived.
His next feeling was a sense of crushing despair; he could not know how much time had passed. Alexandra might already be dead.
A great chill wracked his naked body and he shuddered violently. He rolled up into a ball and wrapped his arms around himself, but that only increased his discomfort; the wet stone felt so cold that it burned his flesh like a gelid branding iron cooled in the bowels of some ice planet. He was freezing, John thought. He couldn’t remain still. In a few minutes, whatever reserves of adrenalin that had been pumped into his system in response to his initial relief would be absorbed and he would quickly succumb to exhaustion. Somehow he had to keep moving, or die.
He got up on his knees and groped around him in the darkness until he felt the surface of the water. The underground stream was still now, in stasis between the incoming and outgoing tides, or whatever combination of forces powered the great, watery engine.
He couldn’t have passed out for more than a few hours at most, John thought. It had to be the same day. There was still time to save Alexandra. If only he could find a way out.
He slowly crawled forward on the ledge, trailing his right hand beside him in the placid water. He had gone only a few feet when his head collided painfully against a wall of rock. He rubbed the swelling knot on his head, then explored the rock face with his hands; it extended over and came down to the surface of the water like a final curtain of stone falling on whatever hope he’d had that he would be able to crawl along the stream to freedom. If he wanted to continue in that direction he would again have to swim under water.
He would not go back in the water, John thought. He couldn’t go back in the water. He simply didn’t have the courage for that. He had died in that stream, as surely, if in a different way, as he had died as a result of the electric shock. He had lost a large chunk of his soul somewhere in the watery darkness, and he knew there was no way he could ever again will himself to suffer that kind of mental and physical agony. Perhaps, he thought, there were other, above-water caves radiating off the rock shelf on which he was kneeling. There had to be.
He backed away from the edge of the stream, then slowly straightened up, raising his hands over his head to protect himself. He found that he was able to stand inside the space. Slowly, carefully, he groped his way in the darkness, exploring the rippling, coigned surfaces around him.
He discovered five tunnels radiating from the chamber. But only two seemed large enough for him to crawl in, and only one of these led in what he assumed from the previous flow of th
e stream was a seaward direction.
John could not be sure that it wasn’t some phantom of hope generated in his imagination, but he thought he could detect a faint draft blowing in his face from the mouth of the seaward tunnel. He got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl.
He had gone about ten yards when he stopped, bowed his head, and uttered a deep sigh. He was afraid: afraid of the water, but also afraid of the rock prison he was entering.
While he could not conceive of ever again being able to force himself into the underwater cave, he knew he had to face the fact that the stream seemed to be the only sure way out—even if all it spewed out in the end were his bloated corpse.
It occurred to him that he could as easily wait for death sprawled in the darkness at the edge of the stream as lost in an endless maze of tunnels, crawling and, he assumed, finally howling like a dog on his hands and knees.
Go, you cowardly son-of-a-bitch! You’re not dead yet! Stop feeling sorry for yourself!
He searched with his hands and scraped together a pile of pebbles. He scooped up a handful of the stones and began dropping the largest between his knees as he wearily crawled on.
He was aware of a new enemy strongly vying for his attention: thirst.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA; CIA HEADQUARTERS
Friday, January 25; 12:18 P.M.
Harley Shue
“Harley, we’re having some problems with resolution on the U-2 signal.”
Shue swung around in his swivel chair to face Geoffrey Whistle, who had just entered the Central Communications Control room. “Yes, sir, we’re aware of the problem. There’s some technical difficulty here on the ground.”
The CIA Director strode across the room to stand next to his Director of Operations. Both men studied the bank of television monitors flickering before them.
Shue shook his head angrily as the picture transmitted from the U-2 continued to roll and break up. He was not unappreciative of the complex technology involved in keeping what was essentially a glider circling in the stratosphere over San Sierra for close to twelve hours while at the same time sending back television pictures from cameras with lenses that could resolve the clear image of a man standing on the ground.
But it was not the time to marvel over technology, Shue thought; it was time for the technology to be working, and it wasn’t.
Geoffrey M. Whistle impatiently drummed his fingers on top of the set that was monitoring the ABC signal from San Sierra; it showed a standard color test pattern. “When’s ABC supposed to start transmitting pictures?”
“Five o’clock.”
“Saint George can’t be dependent on ABC, Harley. This operation is keyed to the assassination of Salva, and timing is everything. We have to launch our troops before the Sierrans or Russians have time to react, and after the assault we must have constant information on enemy troop movements throughout the island. We could lose ABC at any time. The President won’t let Saint George go in half blind. The cameras on that plane have to be working, or the President will abort the mission.”
As if on cue, the black-and-white images on two of the television screens suddenly cleared, showing a perfectly focused picture of Tamara Castle and the dozens of men in and around it.
“That’s it, Geoffrey,” Shue said, allowing himself a thin smile of satisfaction. “The signal’s being relayed directly through our facilities at Guantanamo.”
Whistle frowned. “Isn’t that risky?”
“I don’t think so, sir. Even if the Russians are monitoring that band—and we have reason to believe they aren’t—it will take them more than a day to break that particular telemetric code. By then, of course, it won’t make any difference.”
“One way or another, it should all be over by this time tomorrow,” Whistle said in a distant tone. “At least the initial fighting phase will be over.”
“Precisely, sir.”
The green phone set up on a metal stand beside the monitors rang. Whistle picked up the receiver, listened for a few seconds, then hung up.
“Home Plate’s brushed off and ready for play, Harley,” the CIA Director said quietly. “You’re off. There’s a plane waiting to take you to Miami. Do you need anything?”
Shue rose too quickly and had to grip the back of the swivel chair to steady himself. Adrenalin was pumping into his system, causing his heartbeat to race precipitously. Relax, he told himself. “No, Geoffrey,” he said evenly. “Everything I need has been loaded.”
“Home Plate is a brilliant idea, Harley. But you don’t have to be the one to go out on the point like that.”
“Oh, I want to.” Harley Shue pulled himself up very straight. When he resumed speaking, there was the slightest trace of a tremor in his voice. “I believe we’re present at the dawn of a new age of American prestige and power, sir. Let’s hope we’ve learned enough since nineteen forty-five to be able to hang on to it this time.”
“Godspeed, Harley.”
ANGELES BLANCA
Friday, January 25; 4:45 P.M.
John
Now this is what I call a real pain in the ass.
He tried to speak, but he could only manage a ragged croak. He had literally shouted his voice away, John thought, and now his throat was raw and sore.
He had reached the end of the tunnel some time before. Bellowing with near-hysterical joy and excitement, he had scrambled on bloody hands and knees toward a faint glow of light. He had ended in a hemispherical chamber perhaps four feet high in the center and five feet in diameter. Warm sunlight that was both blessing and cruel taunt seeped in through cracks in the rock. John could tell that he was very close to the sea; there was a green salt smell on the thick air wafting in through the cracks. However, the crevices were barely wide enough to admit his arm; the last barrier of rock separating him from the sea and freedom was at least six feet thick.
The tunnel was a dead end.
He screamed as loud as he could, at first in the hope that he would be heard and later out of rage and frustration. He screamed until he was no longer able to force sound from his swollen throat. The only response had been the soft, sibilant soughing of the sea on the far side of the rock.
It was a siren song of death; John could tell by the sound of the lapping waves that the sea outside his prison was rising.
He had been able to slake his thirst from a spring of fresh water that leaked from the rocks inside the chamber, but that was scant comfort to him. He suspected, from the increasingly insistent gurgling of the sea beyond the wall, that the chamber would be filled with water within an hour or two.
Once again he exploded in a paroxysm of fury, pounding and clawing at the rock face. Exhausted, he finally collapsed to the stone floor. Blood ran in tiny, crimson rivulets down his wrists and pooled between his fingers. Then he wept.
Finally he did what he had known all along he must do. He only hoped it wasn’t already too late to escape the water that was certain to be coursing through the small tunnel in a very short time.
John turned his back on the fading, false promise of sunlight and resignedly sank down on his hands and knees once again. Using his hands to grope in the center of the tunnel for the large pebbles that would guide him back to the large chamber by the underground stream, he crawled back into the terrible, eternal night of the caves.
6:20 P.M.
Alexandra
The early evening light was copper-colored, suffusing the far corner of the room with a warm glow. To Alexandra the light seemed otherworldly and funereal, an omen signaling the end of much more than just another day. She knew she should get up and dress, but she felt drained of strength and will, filled with foreboding. She pulled her bathrobe more tightly around her but remained on the bed, continuing to stare at the ceiling.
Peters suddenly appeared in her field of vision. He was wearing a pale yellow shirt under a blue sleeveless sweater, tan corduroy slacks, cowboy boots. In the dim, golden light, his pale eyes seemed unnaturally bright, without pupils.
“I thought you were still sleeping,” Peters said quietly. “You want me to turn on the light?”
“Not yet, Rick. Please.”
There was a short pause, then, “You should be getting dressed and putting your hair up. The bus leaves in an hour.”
Peters had spoken in the same soft tone, but Alexandra had the odd, unsettling impression that there was something new in her companion’s voice, a quality she could not define but that brought to mind some amorphous beast—tension, perhaps—straining on a leash, barely under control. The closeness and desire she had felt at Sierras Negras, and again last night, was completely gone.
She was startled to see the glow of Peters’ eyes go out, then come on again. Then she realized that he had only blinked.
“I’ll be ready.”
“What’s wrong, Alexandra?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sick?” Again, the curious tension in his voice that he seemed to be trying to veil.
Alexandra looked directly at Peters. The man’s eyes were staring down at her, revealing nothing. “I don’t know, Rick.”
“This isn’t like you, baby. The Alexandra I used to know would have been dressed and ready to go three hours ago. By now you’d be doing calisthenics to stay loose.”
“I’m not the Alexandra you used to know, Rick.”
“You certainly were at Sierras Negras. And you almost were last night.”
“It was an illusion, Rick, a trick my mind has been playing on itself. For a while I thought I was that person, but I’m not.”
Peters smiled thinly. “I see. You’re just a happy housewife and mother?”
“No,” Alexandra replied faintly, ignoring his sarcasm. “I’m not that either. I’m not a dragon, but I’m not an ex-dragon either. I don’t know what I am any longer.”
Turn Loose the Dragons Page 31