| |
TEGA HAD SPILLED FLAMMABLE chemicals all over the floor of the barn. Tega had smiled at me as his guys closed the doors. I heard the rustling of a chain and then the click of the padlock.
A few minutes later, the walls on the north and south sides started smoking. Flames ate through the wood. It wouldn’t be long before they connected with the chemicals. I’d be burned alive.
I heard more noises outside, voices, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I looked around the room. I searched the corners and the tables, and I checked for weapons on the corpses. Nothing. Then I found the keys in Grady’s pocket. If I got out, I could take his Tahoe.
The flames started to spark onto the floor. The blaze began to eat up the walls. Wood splintered, and the fire scratched at the outer walls like a pride of lions trying to get in. I had to get out.
I kept calm and focused. There was no reason to waste time wondering how I had let Sheldon get the best of me. There’d be plenty of time for second-guessing later, once I escaped.
I looked around the barn again. I looked up at the roof. There was a closed hatch on the upper south side, but it might as well not have been there. It was twenty feet above me, well out of reach. Then I turned away from the corpses, in the direction they had been looking before they died. And that was when I noticed a difference. The sheriff and the deputies hung facing the direction of the doors as if Tega’s men were the last things they saw before they died. But the rednecks were looking in a different direction. They stared downward to the left-hand side of the barn. Their gazes were fixed on a huge wooden table.
I rushed over, tossed the table over on its side, and jerked up the rug from underneath it. I had hoped I would find something, and I had. There was a loose wooden plank under the rug. I pulled it up, and I saw my salvation. On the floor was a thick concrete trapdoor cover. I grabbed the short, worn rope attached to the top and pulled. The concrete was heavy, but I managed to get the door up. I peered in and found a small bunker with a crawlspace. It was too dark to tell how far back it went, but I figured I could follow the walls by touch. It was dark and damp, which was good—the damper the better. I might be safe in there. I hopped in and pulled the cord behind me. The concrete block slid back into place.
I listened as the fire ripped through the walls of the barn. It didn’t take long for the flames to reach the batch of spilled chemicals. I pulled down on the cord with all of my strength and weight. I wanted to keep the concrete cover closed tight.
I heard an explosion. Heat and smoke sprayed through the tiny cracks around the concrete. I hung by the cord a couple of inches off the floor. My knees were tucked under my body. The fire had stayed out of the bunker, but the heat was intensifying. It was like being in an oven set to low—it was hot but not hot enough to cook me. Not yet.
I hoped that the explosion would take most of the flames outward, and it did. I’d wait a few minutes and then surface. Tega would most likely be gone by then. But just then, the cord snapped beneath my weight, and I fell. It was only a few inches. Not a big deal. I rolled over and got up on my knees. My head nearly bumped on the ceiling. Dust from the concrete ceiling sprayed down into the chamber as a second explosion blasted from above. It sounded louder than before. I hoped that was the last of it.
A tiny row of lights along the bottom back wall of my underground crawlspace flickered to life. Maybe they were automatic. Or maybe the tremor from the blast had shaken them on. They barely lit the crawlspace. But in the dim light, I saw two things. First, the bunker wasn’t a bunker at all. It was small, and there was no food stored in it. Plus, there was no bathroom. No kitchen facilities. No visible power source. There was barely room for one person to stretch out and sleep. The second thing I saw made me smile ear to ear. It wasn’t a bunker—it was a weapons cache.