8:41 P.M.
The gunner squatted beside a pile of coiled electrical cables and watched the action in the corner of the ring just above him. Two youthful lightweights were fighting in the second bout of the night. The American had backed the Sierran up against the ropes and was peppering him with jabs that to the gunner looked more stylish than effective. The Sierran counterpunched with a right uppercut that snapped back the American’s head and splashed heavy globules of sweat over the gunner’s face and clothes. The gunner moved back and knelt down in an aisle.
From this position the gunner had a clear view of the brilliantly lit arena, except for the blocks of seats directly opposite the elevated ring. To his right, high up in a tier of bleachers just below the cantilevered balcony, a section of perhaps a hundred seats had been roped off; the gunner knew that would be where Manuel Salva would sit with his entourage when he arrived.
The gunner could see Alexandra Finway sitting in an aisle seat adjacent to the reserved section. She was, the gunner thought, big, beautiful, and very easy to pick out. She seemed to be following the action in the ring closely, cheering for both the Sierran and American fighters. Occasionally she exchanged good-natured smiles and nods with the Sierrans sitting around her.
Alexandra Finway had the appearance of someone who was thoroughly enjoying herself, but the gunner knew better; he could tell that the woman was distracted by something. The gunner knew how to look at people in order to see past their surface behavior, and he knew that Alexandra Finway was acting. She was very nervous; she was holding her body too stiffly, and her smiles and applause were forced.
All of which the gunner noticed, and then dismissed. The gunner’s only concern was in knowing exactly where she was at all times.
Rick Peters posed a far more difficult problem, the gunner thought. The short man was slippery, elusive.
Peters had been constantly in motion since the start of the bouts, generally staying high up near the balcony, casually wandering around with a large portable radio propped on his shoulder and held close to his ear. At the moment the gunner had lost sight of the blond-haired man but he was fairly certain that Peters was somewhere on the balcony just behind him and above his head. He would not worry about it, the gunner thought, until Salva came in. Then he would act quickly to pinpoint Peters’ position.
The gunner, ostensibly checking equipment, had been around the perimeter of the arena three times, and planned to make yet another circuit in fifteen minutes. Up to that point he was satisfied that John Finway was not in the arena. In which case, the gunner thought, Finway was not his concern. His instructions were to kill any of the three people who were in the castle, but only after Manuel Salva had been assassinated. He reminded himself that he was not being paid to hunt, but only to kill under specific circumstances.
The gunner stood and stretched as he looked up at the night sky over the open arena. The Goodyear blimp moved slowly across the full moon, its bright running lights making it appear like some strange, sightless beast tracking currents in the depths of an ocean of night. The gunner moved his hands as though to rub his back and lightly touched the hard shape of the revolver to make sure it was properly seated in his belt next to his spine, covered by the loose, oversized nylon windbreaker he wore.
The gunner stretched again, yawned. He would, he thought, be paid the same fee even if Salva, for some reason, stayed away, or came and was not killed. However, the gunner found himself hoping that the dictator would come to the arena, as everyone supposed he would. He wanted to see Salva in person, and if Salva were assassinated the gunner would be an eyewitness to an important historical event.
He was sure his grandchildren would be impressed.
He stood in the rapidly receding water breathing deeply and trying to calm himself. His heart was beating so fast that he feared, in his exhausted state, that he would have a heart attack. He did not intend to die that way, nor from exposure or madness; there was still one option left, and he had decided to exercise it. He would go back into the maelstrom of the underground stream and hope that it flushed him out of the rock before he drowned.
The decision had been simple, he thought, pulling his lips back in a thin, humorless smile that was close to a grimace; the problem lay in finding the courage to actually implement the decision. He had already wasted precious minutes, paralyzed with fear and doubt, as the water had continued to rush out of the chamber.
Once again, as he had done twice before, John clung to the wall and inched to his right, probing beneath the surface of the frothy, hissing water with his right foot for the edge of the rock shelf on which he was standing. He found it, flexed his knees slightly, and felt the force of the current pushing on the instep, ankle, calf.
Memory, the vivid recall of what it felt like to be trapped underwater with lungs and brain bursting in a narrow tube of rock, had brutally gutted his two previous attempts. Now he concentrated on what would happen if he did not go in.
What would happen was—nothing. He would remain trapped forever inside the black chamber. The stream was the only way out.
He knew he would probably survive the next flooding of the chamber, and that he might work up the courage to go then. But that event was many hours away; if it were not already too late to save Alexandra, he knew it would certainly be too late then, even if he did get out alive.
He thought about freezing and thirst and how he would feel about himself at the moment of death if he did not go back into the stream.
Three times and out, John thought. He would not back off again. He hyperventilated, sucked in a last deep breath, and plunged into the water.