We sat in silence for a moment, contemplating the horrors of what Gorky could do. “I don’t see how we can stop him,” Laia said at last.
“Neither do I. All we can do is wait here and hope he leaves. Then we can go and tell the police about it. With any luck, they’ll catch him before he does any damage.”
“Where exactly is here?” Laia asked. I shone the torch around.
We were in a low-roofed, narrow tunnel. If I stretched my arms out, I could almost touch both walls at once, and there wasn’t enough height to stand upright. The roof and walls were fairly smooth, but here and there, chunks of rock had fallen to the floor. Behind us, the tunnel sloped gradually up and curved away to the hole we had entered. Ahead, the tunnel was more level and headed off into the hill.
Laia answered her own question. “It’s a mine.”
“How old do you think it is?”
“Who knows? Maybe a few hundred years, or even Roman or Carthaginian.”
“Do you think there’s another way out?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” Laia said. “In any case, it’s probably not a good idea to go wandering around.”
I was about to agree when I heard a noise. “What was that?”
“I think Gorky’s trying to enlarge the hole,” Laia said.
“I’ll have a look,” I said, switching the flashlight off. Slowly, I crawled back to where the tunnel curved. I peered up the slope. Someone was working on the rocks around the edge of the hole. The noise we had heard was from rocks falling into the tunnel. I could see the shadow of a figure moving back and forth in front of the hole, which already looked bigger.
I was about to turn around when I heard the faint sound of shouting outside, followed by more pistol shots. I crawled back to Laia as fast as I could. “Something’s going on outside,” I said. “There’s a lot of shouting and gunshots.”
“No one seemed too keen on coming in here,” Laia said thoughtfully. “Maybe Gorky’s trying to encourage them.”
“Maybe. In any case, I think we should move farther in. If it stays a single tunnel, we can’t get lost.”
Moving through the tunnel was easier with the flashlight, but we didn’t get far. One more corner, and we came to a serious cave-in. A large section of the roof had collapsed, completely blocking the tunnel. We had passed no side tunnels, so all we could do was sit and wait.
“They don’t have a flashlight,” I said, not sure whether I was trying to reassure Laia or myself. “They won’t come this far in.”
“Of course not,” Laia agreed, but she didn’t sound convinced. “It wouldn’t make sense.”
It didn’t make sense, but then, we had agreed that Gorky was crazy. Not much of anything he did made sense. We turned the flashlight off to save the battery and sat in the darkness. It was impossible to tell how long we had sat before I heard another noise. At first I thought it was rats, but it soon became obvious that it was something larger. “Someone’s coming,” I hissed.
“I can hear them,” Laia replied. We could see a dull glow coming from around the corner, gradually getting brighter. “He’s got a flashlight,” Laia said. Now we were in an even worse spot than being tied up in the ruined room. We were deep in a blocked tunnel with nowhere to go and no way to defend ourselves, being stalked by an insane guy with a gun.
“Do you think it’s Gorky?” I asked.
“He couldn’t make it all the way down here. It’s probably Lucio or one of the others.”
Great, I thought. There goes our chance of wrestling the gun away from him.
“Pick up some stones,” I said. “As soon as he comes around the corner, start throwing. Aim for his head.”
I felt around on the ground and picked up three pieces of rock, each about the size of an egg. Laia moved over to give us each room to throw. I got as ready as I could. The light was quite bright now. Where had Gorky found a powerful flashlight?
The light came around the corner and swung toward us. “Now!” I shouted. I aimed for just above the light, where I guessed the man’s head must be. We both threw as hard as we could. I heard one stone clatter off the tunnel wall, but that wasn’t what stopped me from throwing a second stone. It was the voice coming out of the darkness behind the light. “Ow! Hey! Cut it out, you kids!” a familiar voice shouted. “I’m here to help you.”
“Chad?” Laia and I said at the same instant.
“Of course it’s Chad,” the voice said. “Who did you think would come crawling all this way in to find you?” The flashlight swung up and illuminated the smiling face. There was a thin trickle of blood running down his forehead. If there had been enough room to run forward and hug Chad, I would have. Right then, I would have put everything I had into one of his investment schemes. “Have you finished throwing things?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s good to see you. You’re bleeding. Sorry I hit you.”
“It’s nothing. You’ve got a good arm, kid. With room for a decent windup, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. Are you kids okay?”
“We are,” Laia said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m the cavalry come to rescue you,” Chad said, a laugh in his voice. “But let’s get back outside. My claustrophobia doesn’t like narrow tunnels under mountains.”
I switched on our flashlight, and we worked our way back. The hole had been considerably enlarged, so much so that we didn’t need our flashlights for the last few meters. “Where’s the bomb?” Laia asked.
“All things will be explained in time,” Chad said cheerily.
A ragged round of applause greeted us as we emerged onto the hillside. I blinked in the bright daylight and looked around. The first things I noticed were Gorky’s thugs, sitting in a miserable group, guarded by a Spanish policeman. Nearby, also guarded by a policeman, Lucio sat on a rock, having a wound in his shoulder treated by a paramedic. Beside him was a body on a stretcher, covered in a white sheet. Uniformed police and men in civilian clothes were spread around, and several ATVs were parked behind them. A helicopter thumped in circles overhead.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Before Chad could answer, a figure pushed through the crowd and ran to embrace Laia. “Are you okay?” Felip asked.
“I’m fine,” Laia said.
Felip looked over at me. “Me too,” I said. A paramedic came over and began examining our cuts and bruises. She swabbed the cuts clean and put ointment and bandages on the worst ones. I was so stunned that I was happy simply to sit and be attended to while my brain tried to work its way around what had happened.
“Who’s under the sheet?” Laia asked. It was something I had been wondering too.
“It’s the old guy with one arm,” Felip said.
“Did they shoot him?”
“No,” Felip answered, “although he did fire a couple of rounds at the police when they arrived. The police fired back, and that’s how the big guy got shot.” He nodded toward the sullen Lucio. “The old guy just folded. He was dead before anyone got to him. I think it was his heart.”
So that explained the shooting I had heard from inside the tunnel. It was the police arriving. I laughed.
“What?” Laia asked.
“We were hiding from the police when we went farther along the tunnel.”
Laia smiled. “I was hiding from Chad,” she said.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“And where is he?” Laia added.
As if on cue, Chad appeared from one of the ATVs. He had wiped the blood off his forehead and was carrying the bomb in front of him. Both Laia and I jumped to our feet. “What are you doing?” I shouted.
Chad smiled—and dropped the bomb. As it hit the ground, he swung his right foot and volleyed it straight at me. Instinctively, I put my hands out and caught it—and found myself holding a battered leather soccer ball.
“This isn’t the bomb,” I said. “What happened to the bomb?”
“There was no bomb,” Chad said with a smile. “Just an old soccer ball that someone lost once.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. I looked around for confirmation. Laia was frowning at Chad. Felip gently shook his head.
I looked back at Chad. “There is no bomb,” he repeated, his smile gone and his voice hard. “You kids have had an exciting and scary day, running into the middle of this drug deal. You were lucky you could get into the tunnel before the shooting started. I have a couple of details to tidy up, and the press will be here soon. Felip will take you back to the hotel for a shower and a rest. We’ll meet for dinner later—say, nine o’clock,” he added, looking at Felip. “I’ll explain what’s going on then. Okay?” The way he said “okay” didn’t allow for anything other than acceptance.
I looked at Laia. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Excellent.” Chad stepped forward and shook my hand. It was an awkward gesture, but I felt a crumpled piece of paper in his palm. He winked at me. I took the paper and slipped it into my pocket as Chad led us over to Felip’s car. Several of the police patted us on the shoulder as we passed. I ignored them, my mind struggling desperately to understand. It couldn’t all have been some horrible misunderstanding—could it? And what was in the note from Chad?