The rungs were slick and moist, and the damp hole stank of decaying flesh from the tank water. Evan sent Anjelina and Reymundo first and slid down after them. When he struck dirt, his boots sank to the ankles.
He shouldered past them into the lead, sprinting, mud flying up and splattering their clothes. A length of Christmas lights shorted out at his side, a dying fizzle illuminating a fleet of confused rats as they fled or tried to burrow into the walls. Aquarium stench mingled with silt and rat feces, gumming his soles.
As Evan and the couple ran through the tunnel, muffled shouts reached them through the earth above. He’d embedded fusion sensors in the muddy walls and pin cameras at intervals along the ground, a mesh Wi-Fi signal that transmitted to his RoamZone.
At a quarter mile, they passed the first ladder, their breath amplified in surround sound off the walls. Another eternity passed before the second hatch flew by overhead. The quality of noise shifted behind them, distorted voices rumbling. Some of the guards had entered the tunnel.
Anjelina tripped, went down with a yelp, found her footing, and kept on. Reymundo lagged back with her as Evan sprinted ahead. They had to reach the terminus before Montesco’s men or they’d be trapped.
For a moment Evan was worried he’d somehow overrun the third escape hatch but finally spotted a rise of rungs glinting in the semidarkness. He leapt onto them and scurried up the claustrophobic chute, popping his head out like a groundhog. His position beneath the van’s undercarriage gave him a good vantage onto the driveway and portico.
A dozen guards stirring around on the quartz rock like penned livestock. Montesco appeared at the door, screaming orders. “Muevan sus culos! Hay que chingarlos de los dos lados!”
Evan’s gaze moved to the chicken coop. Aurora stood in the cell, hands wrapped around the bars, the skeleton key pegged on the pillar just out of reach. To the side near the slot in the door, the extendable undercarriage mirror waited. Even from this distance, Evan saw her eyes move to it.
“They’re coming for us!” Anjelina screamed up from the base of the rungs. “What’s going on?”
“They’re trying to beat us to the end of the tunnel,” Evan called down.
“It’s too far!” Reymundo cried. “We can’t outrun the SUVs.”
In the thin slice Evan’s view afforded him, he watched the men pile into the three waiting SUVs, four to a vehicle.
Montesco sprinted for the rear SUV when the first two started up.
And detonated with a thunderous blast. Flashes of violent orange from the fuel tanks, black billowing smoke rocketing skyward.
The blast knocked Montesco back onto his ass on the portico.
He held an arm against the heat, screaming at the remaining men. “Stop! Stop!”
When Evan had been ostensibly checking the SUVs for bugs earlier, he’d wired encrypted transmitters to the fuse boxes at the side of the steering columns. Each chirper linked to a microchip receiver/kicker on the quarter-size patch of C4 he’d adhered to the inside of the gas tank’s flap.
Eight more pieces off the chessboard brought the manpower count to twenty.
The four survivors spilled out of the intact SUV, regrouping with Montesco at the porch.
“Trae los camiones de combate!” Montesco screamed. “Ahora!”
Combat trucks.
The words hit Evan’s bloodstream like adrenaline.
He didn’t know about the trucks. If Montesco’s crew commanded a second fleet and drove to the extraction point before Evan and the couple reached it, they’d be dead in the ground.
Dirt trickled past Evan, the escape hatch starting to crumble from the explosion’s aftermath. The rung beneath his left hand gave way, one side rattling free of its concrete base.
He swung one-handed, toes digging until they locked on the lower rungs.
Then he half slid, half fell the rest of the way, nearly striking Reymundo as he tumbled the last ten feet. Landing on shins and knees, left hand bent backward beneath the wrist, mouth full of dirt.
Silt trickled from the curved ceiling. A sheet of wall dribbled down in front of them, a partial cave-in.
Evan spit, rose. “We need to hurry.”
They scrambled over the loose dirt, the sounds of approaching men growing closer. Behind them a burst of fire strobed the throat of the tunnel, the starburst muzzle flare a quarter mile back.
The earth creaked and groaned, a supporting two-by-four fraying and then giving way with a wet snap.
More shouted voices, the men screaming at one another not to shoot.
Evan led the way, swiping sweat and grime from his eyes. He had his phone out, the feed up, counting bodies as they flashed by the surveillance cameras behind them.
Five men in the tunnel.
Wait—more forms strobed past the first pin camera. At a dead sprint, Evan counted the additional shadows—one, two, three—before his shoulder nicked the wall and almost sent him tumbling. He shoved the phone into a cargo pocket and picked up the pace.
The men seemed to be gaining, but Evan focused only on the run ahead. If he could reach the final escape hatch before Montesco’s vehicle convoy, they still had a shot.
It seemed an eternity, the tunnel telescoping before them, ever receding as if in a nightmare.
But at last he spotted what was left of Darling Boy, rags and gleaming bones. Evan hurdled the body and reached the last set of rungs. The heavy duffel bag waited at the base where he’d left it.
When he glanced back over Reymundo and Anjelina’s shoulders, he could see shadows thrown around the bend just behind them.
He reached for the duffel with both hands, grimaced against the pain in his left hand. He’d sprained the wrist badly in the fall.
“I can’t carry the duffel up,” he told Reymundo. “I need you to take it.”
Reymundo shouldered it, staggering under its weight. “I have to climb with this?”
“Yes.”
Anjelina pulled close, and Evan grabbed her with his good hand, yanking her tight to him. “Don’t. Step. There.”
She looked down at the convex green-gray plastic case peeking out from where Evan had embedded it earlier at the base of the muddy dead end. Three words embossed in all caps: FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.
She eased out a breath, minded where she stood.
Evan scaled the rungs, using his good hand and the elbow of his left arm. Anjelina climbed at his heels, Reymundo bringing up the rear, grunting with every movement.
Halfway up, boring through stone walls, Evan peered down.
Flashlight beams played across the hole below, jerking back and forth as the guards neared.
He quickened his pace, crabbing his way up with one hand and an elbow. Mouth gone dry, bitter taste in his throat, pain screaming in his wrist. Up, up, up the rabbit hole.
He reached the base of the hatch, the ARES 1911 wedged beneath the circular handle where he’d left it. His shooting hand was compromised, so he freed the gun with his right hand. Even in the wrong hand, it felt like home.
Below Reymundo was barely holding on, the weight of the duffel pulling on him. The shouted voices from the tunnel grew closer yet, the flashlight glow intensifying. They were down to seconds.
Evan leaned past Anjelina and whispered hoarsely to Reymundo, “When I knock, shout up. Pretend you’re one of the guards.”
Wedging his left elbow into the top rung, Evan curled his fist around the pistol grip and pounded the bottom of the fake storm drain three times.
His voice strained beyond recognition from exertion, Reymundo shouted up, “Somos nosotros! Apúrate! Abre la chingada escotilla!”
The hatch cracked, the cover peeling up.
A clear view of Raudel peering down, backlit by a beautiful blue sky.
Evan shot him through the chin.
He tumbled back, Evan taking the weight of the hatch lid with his shoulders. He heaved upward, flinging the cover open. Flipping onto his knees, he hoisted Anjelina up, ripping her free of the rungs. She kicked in the open air, one shoe spiraling down. He flung her to safety. She rolled a few times on the rocky bluff, stopping herself at the edge of the sheer drop leading to the dirt road below.
Reymundo and the overburdened duffel clogged most of the chute, but in the gaps around him Evan saw faces appear way down at the bottom. Guards staring up, trying to determine who and what they were seeing.
Reymundo was three rungs down, just out of reach. The duffel strained on his shoulder. Evan lowered flat to his stomach, reaching for it. Reymundo’s fingers slipped on the rungs. He grimaced and tightened his grip.
The bag was straining on Reymundo’s shoulder, the strap starting to pull through the buckle. Reymundo’s face was red, his neck shot through with veins. Below, the men were shouting, arguing among themselves. One of the guards started up.
Evan slid forward on his stomach, the bag still out of reach.
“I got you.” That deep feminine voice from behind him, suddenly cool and collected. He felt Anjelina grab his belt with both hands, letting him dip his torso farther into the hole. He caught the strap just as it was on the verge of unthreading from the buckle and hurled the weighty bag up onto level ground.
Reymundo scrabbled up the last rungs, heaving himself out onto the baking dirt as a volley of bullets erupted in his wake.
Sprawled flat on his back, Evan swung around on the pivot of his hip and kicked the hatch shut.
Thumbed up his RoamZone and the grainy surveillance feed from the pin cameras.
Seven guards clustered at the base of the chute. One on the rungs.
Evan switched apps to bring up the red virtual button that would detonate the mine below. The Vietnam-era claymore that Tommy had acquired for him would spray hundreds of steel ball bearings in a sixty-degree arc, fanning out to a hundred meters and aerating the minimally reinforced walls.
Evan pressed his thumbprint to the screen.
A deep rumble, and the earth heaved beneath them as if suppressing a cough. The hatch lid blew straight up, flying high and then bouncing off the stone a good thirty feet away.
At their side a trough opened up in the earth, tumbling inward, rock and dirt churning in a straight line as if run through with an invisible plow. The destruction snaked back in the direction of the estate, not a full cave-in but an implosion of silt and rock disrupting the limestone formations adjacent to the road below.
Eleven men left.
And Montesco.
Reymundo coughed out a single note of relief. Anjelina tipped her forehead into her hands. A moment of silence.
And then the roar of engines in the distance.
Zooming into view around the sweeping turn leading to the estate, five pickup trucks beelined toward them along the strip of intact dirt road. Three klicks away, maybe a bit more.
Reymundo let out a low groan.
Anjelina’s voice came weak and warbling. “Oh, no.”
Toyota HiLux four-by-fours. Fat posts welded to the beds. Pintle mounts with general-purpose machine guns, likely Fabrique Nationale M240 Bravos.
Montesco stood in the back of the last one, wind riffling his crazy hair.
He’d brought the war machines.