Blind Descent-pigeion 6 (41 page)

  No Laymon.

  No tape.

  Anna blessed her paranoia. She'd not only left line but, in honor of Sondra and Hansel and Gretel, she'd continued to shove an inconspicuous scrap of flagging into a crack at each junction. Expecting every moment to have a rock crash on her or a hand shoot from a crevice to clutch at ankle or throat, she climbed, crawled, and wriggled through.

  Sticking her head up into Tinker's required courage. Feeling slightly foolish, she reverted to the old cowboy trick of a hat on a stick. Lechuguilla having nothing in the way of vegetation, her arm took the place of the stick. She pushed her hard hat, lamp on, above floor level and rotated it as one would turn one's head. No shots were fired or stones thrown. She repeated the exercise with her head in the helmet. Near as the brownish orb could tell her, Laymon did not lie in wait, at least not in the immediate vicinity.

  Several yards away, over more or less flat terrain, was a big friendly rock. Anna switched off her lamp, levered her body out of the hole, and crawled across the floor. Three yards-less than twice the length of her body-was an eternity. Mere seconds passed before disorientation set in. She banged body parts with painful results. Light on, she was a sitting duck. Light off, she was as good as dead. Her vision of night, of darkness, was shaped by a world aboveground. There, even indoors, there was light. It had occurred to her to sneak through Tinker's in darkness, the way she might slip through a midnight field or an unlit gymnasium. That was not a viable option. No light. None. No faint outlines. No lighter places. No rational angles and planes to follow. No architects or interior decorators to second guess. You traveled with your own light source, or you died.

  She could wait Laymon out. If the falling pebble had tipped him off to the fact she was behind him, and he'd stopped short of the far wall, he could no more negotiate the remaining distance without giving himself away than she could. But if he'd made the exit, and, though Anna couldn't be sure, she guessed enough time had elapsed that it was possible, he could turn his back on Tinker's and walk away undetected, leaving her to wait till hell froze over. Anywhere along the way, at his leisure, he could stop again, rest, eat, drink some water, and wait. Anna would never know where until his bullet dropped her.

  Already she was missing her pack. Thirst was nagging. Each time she moved, the lacerations on her feet made themselves felt. Suffocating darkness seeped into the crevices in her brain. If this was a waiting game, Laymon won; Anna had to go on.

  The hat trick was the only one left in her depleted bag. She put it to use one more time. Having unbuckled her helmet, she turned on the lamp and held it away from her. Aimed at the light, Laymon's first shot should go wide. On some level she craved gunfire. It would let her know she wasn't alone.

  The shot didn't come. She crossed Tinker's, drawing on reserves of strength she didn't know she had, climbing over an endless parade of table-sized boulders. Sweat no longer poured from her. Thirst was constant, and she chose not to think about it. From the way her feet hurt, she suspected she left bloody footprints. She didn't dwell too long on that either.

  Reaching the far side, she rested, her lamp extinguished. There was no sound other than that of the life coursing through her body. Twice she turned on the lamp and waved her hard hat, fishing for Laymon. Nothing. Once she hollered his name but got only echoes in reply.

  The conviction grew that he had heard the pebble, had known she was behind him; that he never intended to waste time lying in wait. He didn't need to. He only needed to leave her behind. The cave would do the rest. Numbing fear washed over her. She forced herself up on trembling legs. Caution was gone. Pushing as hard as her worn muscles would allow, she entered the twisting nest of passages that led from Tinker's to the relatively simple and open spaces beyond.

  Her guess had been right. Laymon had already passed this way. The surveyor's tape she'd laid to mark the route was taken up. Not so the paranoid flags hidden at the junctions. As batteries dimmed and eyes fogged with weariness the flags became harder to find, but knowing they existed kept her from giving up. The last of these scraps was laid at the entrance to the area where she and Curt had stopped to seek the source of the crying.

  Laymon couldn't have known it, but this was the one room in Lechuguilla with which Anna was intimate. On her first try she located the shadow-camouflaged exit. From there on, the route was less confusing. Within ten minutes she heard the unbelievably beautiful sound of human voices. Curt and Sondra were still alive. George and his two incognizant captives were waiting to descend into the spiky gullet of the Cocktail Lounge. Without gear, Anna doubted she could make a descent of nearly a hundred feet. She knew for a fact she could not free-climb ninety feet up the far side. Along with bullets, burial, and bruised feet, that bit of information had been relegated to the dump reserved for things she wasn't thinking about.

  Shrouding herself again in perfect darkness, she took off her hard hat and carefully set it down. Nothing else was left that might clank or jingle. A spill of light from ahead indicated direction. On hands and knees, she followed. The passage opened sufficiently that she could have walked on her hind legs, bent over simian-fashion. Afraid an overused body would fail her and she'd stumble, she settled for the less evolved form of locomotion.

  Above the Lounge was a recess where ancient waters pooled, releasing acids that ate away rock till the water could trickle down to form the pit. This subterranean aerie was oval, perhaps seven feet high and twenty across at the widest point. Pillars of limestone divided the room. On Anna's right a deep trough had been carved, a natural drainage. A low, ridged formation spiked by embryonic stalagmites separated it from the main body of the room.

  Curt, Sondra, and George Laymon sat in the chamber's center, where flat space afforded them a modicum of comfort. Curt's lamp was off, Sondra's gleaming. The woman would probably sleep with a night-light for the rest of her natural life. Laymon's lamp had been extinguished, and Anna saw him only when Sondra turned in his direction. Packs were off: Laymon's close by his side, Curt's near Sondra. Hers was back ten or fifteen feet as if she'd shed it precipitately on entering the rest stop. George and Curt were arguing. The heat of the words but not their meaning reached Anna.

  Surreptitiously, she slunk into the trough. A painful inching process that seemed to wear on for hours and produce racket equivalent to that of gravel trucks speeding over railroad trestles brought her midway into the room. Raising herself up on her elbows, she hazarded a peek over the serrated bulwark of stone. Directly in front of her, less than ten feet away, was Laymon's broad back. Curt sat cross-legged to his left, his face visible in profile. Sondra was masked by her own light, merely a beacon teetering on a vaguely human form.

  Laymon was talking, low, logical, intense. It was by Curt that the heat had been generated.

  "She broke it all right, and maybe her collarbone as well. I left her with plenty of water and batteries. Anna will be better served by a quick rescue than by you getting yourself hurt and adding to the rescue effort."

  George Laymon was one hell of an actor. Many people the Screen Actor's Guild would never hear of were brilliant practitioners of the art. Without lights and cameras, it was called lying. Laymon's lie was superb. He captured all the elements: drama, pathos, credibility, and tied it up neatly with an appeal to the listeners' better selves.

  Anna had pushed on alone. An irresponsible act. Anna had injured herself and so, by her stupidity, would prove costly and dangerous to those who must bail her out.

  Somebody to blame. Most people love to believe the worst of others. The rest worry, deep down, that it might be true.

  Laymon had found her, made her comfortable, traveled out at a grueling pace to procure her safety. A hero. But only enough heroics to enhance credibility: he'd not added any spectacular flourishes to spark jealousy in other men or distrust in women.

  And the final implication that whosoever disagreed with him was no better than, and would suffer the same fate as, the foolish and willful Anna.

  "I don't like the idea of leaving her," Curt said. Anna was touched by his obstinacy. Given a performance the caliber of Laymon's, she'd have been the first in the audience on her feet yelling "Bravo!"

  "I don't like it much either," Laymon said with just the right touch of sadness. "But it won't be for long. Oscar and the others went on down the North Rift in case that was the direction you two had taken. We're meeting this side of Glacier Bay in a couple of hours. We'll get Mrs. McCarty out of here. Oscar can go out with her and set the carry-out team in motion. You and I will come back to where Anna's resting. She shouldn't be alone for more than five hours. Six at the outside. She's prepared for it. I told her to meditate on her sins. This whole escapade is out of line. If I have any say about it, she will be billed for her rescue. The taxpayer shouldn't have to carry the burden for criminal negligence."

  That last bit, reluctant sympathy tinged with righteous indignation, was stellar. Anna wondered if he intended to use his ill-gotten gains to finance a career in state politics. New Mexico wouldn't have a chance. In other circumstances, she would have voted for him herself and bragged to her friends of having met him once.

  "Who all is with Oscar?" Curt asked. A barely discernible insecurity tinged the words. Anna heard it and had no doubt that Laymon did. It was the first step in capitulation. Anna was relieved. A falling-out now would end with two bullets and two more dead bodies. Without any warning, Curt's musculature and youthful reflexes would not save him.

  "A can of worms," Laymon said regretfully. The big head nodded in a halo of light. "Anna told me her suspicions regarding Oscar. Frankly, I'm not sold. But we'll look into Oscar's activities. Send a team into Tinker's to find this mysterious secret. That's all I can do. And that's for later. Right now we need to concentrate on getting Mrs. McCarty home safe and getting a crew in to bring Anna out. God, what a day. I hope I don't have another like it anytime real soon."

  Throughout this performance Sondra was unresponsive. Occasionally her light moved from face to face as the players entered the game, but always a beat or two late. Over the years Anna had been exposed to a number of mental aberrations fomented by stress and exposure. Burial alive was beyond her experience. Sondra's body was tight, muscles squeezing on bone, yet her movements were languid, as if she were in viscous liquid. She spoke now, and her voice projected the same lackluster retardation. It took Anna a second to realize what was missing: vibrato. Her voice was absolutely flat, like that of the most skilled medieval chanters. "I have to go to the bathroom." The words were as dead as a computer-generated warning. She looked only at Curt. For her, Laymon hardly existed, a mere ripple on the surface of her consciousness.

  "You can go," Curt said. "It's all right." Patience blotted out the confusion he must have been feeling, and Anna was proud. He was what her mother would have called a natural husbandman. He took care of things: cars, cats, people, and did it in such a way it went unnoticed and unsung.

  Sondra stared through him, a pained expression lending a spark of animation to her dirty face. All of them were so streaked with mud they resembled commandos in a B movie. Half a minute ticked by. By the spill of light from the lamp, Anna studied Laymon. The audience otherwise occupied, he'd dropped out of character. Behind eyes dark with shadow, she could sense an exceedingly busy mind. Curt and Sondra had to be disposed of.

  His hand stole toward his pack. Anna pulled her feet under her to spring. Walled in stone, the only exit a one-hundred-foot drop, people would die regardless of the action taken. Shouting would only precipitate a massacre. Crouched on legs weak with fatigue, she hoped she had one good pounce left.

  Curt broke the silence. "Do you want me to go with you?" he asked Sondra.

  "I'm embarrassed." Same lifeless tone. Considering the content of the words, it was chilling. An emotional declaration made without emotion.

  "Tell you what," Curt said. "I'll go with you. Then you go behind a rock or whatever, and I'll hold on to one end of Anna's hanky, and you hold the other, I'll be there but I won't be there, if you see what I mean."

  Sondra thought it over, then nodded.

  "Bottle or bag?" Curt asked in the offhand manner of a kindergarten teacher asking, "Number one or number two?"

  "Bag," Sondra mumbled.

  Good. They'd be a while. It would give Anna a few precious moments to figure out what in the hell she was going to do.

  Murmuring banal encouragements, Curt followed Sondra, stoop-walking out the passage Anna'd crawled in. When they'd gone, their words an indistinguishable mutter, Laymon turned on his lamp and pulled his pack between his knees. As he reached in, Anna decided not to leap. Whether the decision was spawned by cowardice or good judgment, she would never know. She knew only that her little weight and exhausted efforts against his considerable bulk would end badly. Before she had time to consider whether the sacrifice could have saved Curt, Laymon drew his hand from the pack. He held not the anticipated handgun but a long, narrow package wrapped in brown waxy paper, and a coil of coarse gray wire.

  Dynamite.

  Anna found herself remembering the pistol with something akin to affection.