When a lull in the random shooting came, Jet fired off half the rifle’s thirty-round magazine on full automatic. That would give their assailants something to think about. Now they’d be walking into full-bore machine-gun fire. Jet was betting there wouldn’t be many eager volunteers for that duty. She snatched up the second rifle and sprinted back down the tunnel, trusting Alejandro to pick off any pursuers. She wasn’t surprised when there weren’t any.
Round one had gone to the good guys, but she knew it was just a matter of time until their luck ran out. They needed an escape route, or eventually they’d run out of ammo – or worse, someone would show up with a grenade or a stick of dynamite, and the game would be over.
Chapter 21
Bastian ignored the blood streaming down his arm from where a stray ricochet had grazed his bicep. What should have been a straightforward search-and-destroy foray had unexpectedly turned into full-scale war, and he’d lost half his most experienced shooters in the blink of an eye. He peered into the mine as though he might see a way out of the situation in its inky depths, which was how Leonid found him moments later.
“This won’t work,” Leonid said. “I told you she was smart. You’re sitting ducks walking into the mine, and by now it sounds like she’s got some of your Kalashnikovs.”
“You keep saying it’s her. How do you know? Alejandro’s a tough customer.”
“I have no interest in this Alejandro. What I know is that she’s your worst nightmare. A seasoned executioner. She doesn’t scare, she doesn’t panic, and I’d be willing to bet she’s clocked more hours of this kind of combat than all of you combined.” Leonid tried to keep the derision out of his voice, but it was difficult.
“You want to try?” Bastian snapped. “I don’t appreciate your insults.”
“What, walk into sure death? No, thanks. I told you I thought it was a bad idea to do this as a frontal assault, but you ignored me. Now you understand why it was.”
Bastian had to concede the Russian’s point. “So what do you suggest?”
“Can you get the soldiers up here? See if they have any flash bangs or flame throwers. But remember that I need a body or you won’t get paid, so they can’t just blast the mine to dust.”
“Right now I could give a shit about getting paid. I need to take the Sotos down,” Bastian snapped.
“Well, you’re doing a crap job of it. Get on the radio, call in the troops, or you’ll be standing here at nightfall with a freight car full of bodies, all of them yours,” Leonid said disgustedly and then left the gangster to his ruminations while Leonid explained the situation to his men. He had enough experience with these sorts of setups to know a loser when he saw one, and the mine was the worst kind of trap for anyone going in. He wanted no part of it, and the only way he saw them prevailing was to throw soldiers and high explosives into the mix – preferably stun grenades that would blind and deafen the defenders. The Verdugos didn’t have that sort of ordnance, so it would be up to the military. A simple equation to an ex-special forces commando like himself, but obviously not for a street fighter like Bastian.
Bastian spoke into the radio and explained the situation to Colonel Campos, who was personally overseeing the exercise and was down at the base of the mountain, where he’d erected a roadblock and checkpoint. Campos clearly wasn’t happy that he was being called upon to escalate his role in the proceedings and told Bastian to stand by while he contacted Franco to discuss it.
Five minutes later the radio crackled to life. Campos snapped a terse warning that he was sending up a contingent of soldiers to deal with the standoff, and that Bastian should get his men out of there – this would now be a military exercise, and as such it would be too big to sanitize after the fact. Campos didn’t want to explain to his superiors why he was now an errand boy playing cleanup for some of Chile’s most notorious gangsters, taking sides in a territorial battle. They’d cook up some kind of explanation for the casualties in the mine, but he couldn’t afford his men to see carloads of armed hoodlums standing around watching his troops risk their lives so they didn’t have to.
~ ~ ~
Jet joined Alejandro deeper in the mine, where he was using his new rifle’s flashlight to illuminate the tunnel. He supported her as she climbed up a decrepit wooden ladder and used his pocket knife to cut the wires of the overhead lighting, ensuring that the gunmen wouldn’t be able to start up the generator and eliminate the darkness – darkness that was their closest ally at this point, equalizing the attackers’ superior numbers and rendering their firepower moot.
“What do you think they’re planning?” Alejandro whispered.
“I already told you. They’re going to try to burn us out or bury us alive – their only options. Which means we need to get as far away from the entrance as possible and start searching for an alternate way out. Or it’s just a matter of time.”
Alejandro spat dust and nodded. “I agree.”
Jet followed the rails farther into the mountain, and then her flashlight reflected off Matt and Hannah’s eyes. She ran to them and hugged Hannah, who was sobbing softly, obviously terrified by the darkness and the shooting. Jet looked up at Matt, whose face was streaked with dirt.
“We caught a break– but they’ll be coming back, and this time, probably with the right gear. Alejandro says these mines will have ventilation shafts and possibly other entrances, although I wouldn’t bet that if there is another access point it won’t have a few gunmen watching it.”
“Then what do we do?”
“First, move as far into the mine as possible so you and Hannah are safe, and Alejandro and I will scout for ventilation passages. I don’t see any other way.” She handed Matt the rifle and spare magazines. “Think you can manage that one-handed?”
“They say motivation’s everything.”
Jet smoothed Hannah’s hair. “Shhh, my love. You’ve got a light now, so there’s no need to be frightened. We’re going to find someplace nice and safe for you and Matt to hide while I find a way out of here. You’ve been very brave, but I need you to be even braver now, okay?”
Hannah looked unconvinced. She nodded, but the tears didn’t stop, and Jet felt a pang of anguish at the anxiety her daughter was suffering. Jet kissed her and pulled her close again, her shudders like knife stabs to Jet’s heart, and then Hannah spoke, very softly.
“I want stay. With you.”
Jet glanced at Alejandro to ensure he was out of earshot, and whispered to Hannah, “I know, honey, I know. And you will. But you need to go with Matt, just for a little while, so I can find an exit, okay? Then I’ll be back, and we’ll get out of here, and you’ll never have to come back, ever again. I promise.” Her words sounded hollow to her, but she pushed aside the creeping despair that was washing over her and stood, her shoulders square. “Come on. We may already be out of time.”
Matt led the way with his rifle flashlight. Jet carried Hannah, her pistol wedged in her belt, and Alejandro brought up the rear, his flashlight off, to better see any light advancing toward them from the tunnel mouth. They passed an ore cart that had run off the rails, and then an entire section of track disappeared before restarting further along the horizontal shaft. She estimated they’d come at least two hundred meters when the tracks stopped. Six more ore carts rested on the last section of rail, blanketed in dust, obviously unused for eons.
They paused and heard the unmistakable sound of boots from far behind them. She leaned into Matt and murmured to him.
“Run. They’re making their push.”
Matt complied, and she followed his beam bouncing on the walls. Alejandro did his best to keep up, and after a few minutes they couldn’t hear the footsteps any longer. Jet spotted several side passages with piles of old picks and pry bars strewn along the floor, and then pointed. Matt disappeared inside the closest, but returned a few moments later.
“It’s another vein that must have petered out. Goes back a little, and then dead-ends into rock.”
&nb
sp; They heard more scrapes and shuffles from the direction of the mine opening. Jet looked around and made a tough decision. “Is there anything to hide behind, or in?”
“There’s some barrels and a moldy tarp. Why?”
“I don’t want you or Hannah in the line of fire.”
“I seriously doubt that anyone’s not going to look down these passages.”
“It’s your only chance, and it’s better than catching a bullet out in the open.”
“You’re stretching. Think about it for a second.”
More noise from the tunnel convinced her. Their pursuers would be on top of them any second. “Fine. Move. Get as far from here as you can with Hannah. We’ll hold them off.”
“That’s not much of a plan.”
“They’ll catch us eventually. We might as well be able to pick the place for the next skirmish. With the passages at least we’ve got some cover. Don’t argue. Get going.”
Jet handed Hannah to Matt, and he shifted her over, the rifle unwieldy but manageable. “See you in a few.”
“Count on it.”
He turned and sped away, his light fading and then disappearing around another bend in the tunnel. Jet turned her attention to Alejandro beside her in the darkness.
“You ever fired an AK?”
“Sure. It’s practically second nature.”
“Good. We’ll fire, fall back, fire, fall back. Make them fight for every meter of progress and pay for it in blood, and don’t let them get close enough to blind you with their lights. If you get hit, call out.”
“All right.”
They both heard boot soles on shale and stiffened. Jet darted to the passage across from the one Alejandro was taking cover in. Nothing happened, the dank cool air quiet and calm, and then more rustling greeted them from down the tunnel. A soft glow illuminated the brown walls from around the bend as the gunmen neared, and then Alejandro squeezed off bursts at the first shooter that appeared in his sights.
His volley knocked the man off his feet, his flashlight shattered, and then a barrage of automatic weapons fire lit the passage. Chunks of stone flew from the walls as rounds blew fragments everywhere, and Jet wedged herself further in the small opening she’d chosen. She was just preparing to fire back when she saw the telltale shape of a grenade land four meters away, and then she instinctively stuck her fingers in her ears and closed her eyes as she pulled back into the safety of the side passage.
The concussion from the blast was palpable, like a blow to the chest, and then she was falling as the ground collapsed beneath her. The last thing she saw was Alejandro across from her, an expression of shock on his face as the floor disappeared and he vanished in a cloud of dust, as though the earth had swallowed him whole.
Chapter 22
When Jet regained consciousness, she was lying on her back in cold water amidst the rubble from the mine floor cave-in. She opened her eyes and flexed her fingers and then her feet, reassured that she was still intact, if shaken, her gun still gripped in her hand. She looked over toward Alejandro, who was sprawled on a mound of mud, groaning. She forced herself up and crawled toward him, but was caught by surprise when she slid downward and landed in deeper water, which was washing away much of the dirt beneath them.
Alejandro shook his head as she reached him, and she saw the barrel of his rifle, with the flashlight still attached, poking from the mound. Jet wrenched it free and froze at the sound of voices from above – the attackers were cautiously making their way toward the hole in the tunnel floor left by the collapse.
“Can you move?” Jet hissed in his ear.
He tried to sit up. On the second try he managed to with a muffled groan.
She pointed at the opening above them. “If you can, follow me. They’ll be here in a few seconds.”
She moved off to her left, feeling along the wall, and quickly found herself submerged up to her chest in cold water – water that was moving, implying a source, and more importantly, an outlet somewhere. A splash sounded behind her. She stopped as Alejandro joined her, AK held over his head.
They let the current push them along, moving them faster than they would have dared in a dry passage, and Jet realized that they must be in another part of the mine – a lower section that had flooded and been abandoned. She heard excited chatter from the cave-in area behind her, which inspired her to keep moving in the stygian blackness, trusting the current to guide her forward.
A light flickered to life behind them, and she could see from the reflected glow of flashlights shining into the passage that they were around a gradual turn in the submerged tunnel. She stopped moving, not daring to breathe, and listened for sounds of pursuit – assuming anyone was foolhardy enough to go into a mine shaft that had just collapsed, courting a burial for eternity beneath tons of rock. More voices echoed off the walls as Alejandro drew next to her, and they both gazed back at where the floor had collapsed, waiting for some sign of what to expect.
The voices grew louder as the number of men around the edge of the cave-in area increased, but thankfully, nobody was following them.
Yet.
She jerked her head at Alejandro and held a finger to her lips and then pointed into the blackness ahead. He nodded, understanding, and they set off, their passage silent as the water moved them along. The invisible floor below them was smooth, polished by centuries of the underground stream washing away at it.
The light from their pursuers faded, and they were once again blind, using their hands to guide them along the wall as they progressed deeper into the earth. Jet checked her watch and, when ten minutes had gone by, paused again.
“It’s safe to use the light. They probably think we were buried in the rubble. An easy mistake to make,” she murmured.
“Let’s hope so. Where do you think we are?”
“Another section of the mine, or a much older mine beneath the one we were in. I’d guess older, perhaps even dating back to the Spanish – I haven’t felt any rails, and the width is only half of the one above.”
“That makes sense. But how do we get out of here? I have no idea whether an older mine like this would have any vent shafts. Probably not…”
“The current’s strong, so that means it’s letting out somewhere. I say we follow it and find out where.”
“What if it’s into an underground river? They have those, you know.”
“That wouldn’t be so good. Let’s hope for something outside.”
“Do you…do you think they’ll give up?”
“No way of knowing. Maybe, maybe not. But if we keep moving, I can’t see them catching up to us.”
“So we could wind up drowned somewhere under the mountain instead of shot,” Alejandro said bitterly.
Jet shrugged. “We don’t have a lot of options.”
Alejandro removed the flashlight from the rifle and switched it on. The small lamp seemed blinding after the prolonged darkness. He traced the beam along the tunnel and nodded. “I think you’re right. This looks old. The walls are uneven, nothing like the other mine. It was probably dug in the nineteenth century and then abandoned when the ore began to run lean. Maybe earlier. Hard to say.”
“You know more about silver mining than I would have expected for a…a businessman.”
“I’m not uneducated. For a long while I fantasized about owning a ranch out here, raising horses, maybe growing grapes. I devoured everything I could on a wide variety of related subjects and spent most of my university years in these mountains. Nearly every weekend.”
“We have to keep going. We know there’s nothing back there for us except death.”
Alejandro took the lead, and they glided along seemingly forever. They passed a fork where the main tunnel split off and decided to go with the passage that had the strongest current. After another long slog, she checked the time again and saw that twenty-five minutes had elapsed. The frigid water was beginning to take its toll on them both, and she wondered how long they could keep going before i
t stopped them. Even though it wasn’t freezing, it was cold enough to leach their body temperature, and Jet knew well that the first signs of hypothermia would be sluggish thinking and loss of motor skills.
They rounded another twist in the tunnel and found themselves facing a dead end – one minute they had been in a narrowing passageway, the next, confronted by a wall. Jet exchanged a glance with Alejandro and took a deep breath, then went under as he directed the flashlight beam into the water by the base of the wall. When she came up for air, gasping, she shook her head.
“The water’s rushing through a small opening. Maybe large enough for us to get through, maybe not. But there’s no telling where it goes, or if there’s any air – it could be wormholes that shoot through the rocks, carrying water and nothing else. If that’s the case, going in would mean drowning.”
“I’m not sure I feel that lucky.”
“What about the other passage?”
“I guess we don’t have any alternative, do we?”
“Let’s work our way back. It’s worth a shot. This looks like certain death.”
It seemed to take twice as long to backtrack, and when they reached the other passageway, they hesitated in front of it. “If this goes nowhere, then what?” Alejandro asked.
“Then we need to come up with a better plan,” Jet said, trying not to think about Matt and Hannah and what might be happening to them. It was possible the gunmen would call it quits after the cave-in, not wanting to tempt fate by pushing still deeper into the mine, but Jet couldn’t bet on it, in which case their survival would depend on Matt’s ability to evade them. Matt was good, but not superhuman, and Jet’s mind conjured up a host of nightmare scenarios, each worse than the last.
Alejandro moved into the new passage, his teeth chattering, and Jet knew they were in trouble – she wasn’t sure how much longer they could hold out. But the thought of her daughter hiding in the mine above kept her going, and she refused to give in to the mental drift from the drop in her body temperature.
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