The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

“Maybe we can wedge ourselves up?” Joe said. “Use our hands and feet and sort of force ourselves upward.”

Kurt stretched his arms out. He could just barely touch both walls. “We’ll never generate enough force to go up like that.”

He looked around. In addition to the three bodies, the well seemed to be a repository of junk and trash. Tin cans, plastic bottles, even a thin bald tire sat piled and strewn about. Small bones were everywhere. Kurt guessed they were from animals that had fallen in or someone’s dinner tossed down here when they were finished with the edible parts.

Kurt looked at the tire, then at the walls, then at the dead men.

“I have an idea,” he said.

He searched the thug he’d shoved over the edge, pulling a knife, a Luger-style pistol and a set of compact binoculars from the man’s kit.

He found a canteen on his belt. It was three-quarters empty. He took a swig, no more than a mouthful really, and handed it to Joe.

“To your health.”

Joe drank the other mouthful as Kurt pushed the junk aside and dug the old tire out of the sand.

“Tidying up?” Joe asked.

“Very funny.”

He dropped down beside the other dead men, holding his breath and sending the flies swarming. He untied the rope that bound them together. “We’re gonna need this.”

“Don’t suppose they have a grappling hook on them?”

“No,” Kurt said. “But we don’t need one.”

He piled the bodies up in the center of the well, stacking them one on top of the other.

“Sit down,” Kurt said.

“On the dead guys?”

“I put the fresh guy on top,” Kurt said.

Joe hesitated.

“They’re dead,” Kurt said. “What do they care?”

Finally Joe sat down. Kurt lifted the narrow tire and set it vertically against Joe’s back like he was hanging a wreath. Next he sat down with his back to the tire and to Joe.

“Put your feet on the wall and push.”

As Joe complied, Kurt felt the rubber tire pressing into his back. He put his own feet against the wall on his side and pushed. He felt the tire between them compress slightly. He felt plenty of pressure on his back and feet, pressure that would allow them to wedge themselves up the shaft of the well, and he still had six to eight inches of flex in his knees.

“Flex those abs, and let’s see if we can do this,” he said.

As Joe flexed and pressed harder, Kurt did the same. He felt the pressure in his back, both upper and lower, where the tire was being pressed into him. With a minimum of effort, they rose up off the pile of dead men.

“This might actually work,” Joe said.

“You, then me,” Kurt told him. “One foot at a time.”

The first time Joe moved his foot they almost fell, tipping to one side. They steadied themselves, and Kurt pressed hard with his left foot and forced them upward about nine inches. He quickly moved his right foot to a new position.

Joe’s next move was steadier, and soon they were inching their way up, making steady if unspectacular progress.

“I forgot to tell you,” Joe said, grunting with the effort but apparently unable to keep himself from talking, “before we got bounced in that drafting room I saw a chart with currents and such. It covered the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and half of the Indian Ocean.”