Corsair (Oregon Files 6)

Eric and Mark had separated from the women at yet another juncture. They approached the dead end of a particularly straight and easy section of tunnel deep under the river’s original water level. Eric paused to take a sip from his canteen before they retreated to the rendezvous. The end of the tunnel sloped up in a perfectly flat ramp that met the ceiling. Something about it intrigued him, and he climbed up the incline until his face was inches from where it joined the roof.

Rather than solid rock, he saw a jagged line, a crack barely a millimeter wide, that ran the full width of the tunnel. He fumbled in his pocket for the disposable lighter, and called over his shoulder, “Kill your light.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it already.”

He thumbed the lighter and held the flame close to the crack. There wasn’t much of a flicker, but it was enough to convince him that there was an open space on the other side of the ramp and a slight breeze was getting through. He turned on his light again, examining every square inch of the incline. It was a neatly fitted piece of work. The cracks along the walls were almost invisible.

“This is man-made,” he announced. “I think it’s like a giant teeter-totter. Give me a hand.”

They stood, stooped, as far up the ramp as they could go, with their backs braced against the ceiling.

“On three,” Eric said. “One . . . two . . . three.”

They pushed with everything they had. At first, nothing happened, and the sounds of their straining bodies filled the tunnel. Then, imperceptibly, the floor under them gave way slightly, pushed down by their combined strength. When they relaxed, it snapped back into position.

“Again. Harder.”

Their second attempt pushed the big stone lever down about an inch, enough for Eric to see there was a large chamber beyond. He jammed the lighter into the crack just before they let go, but the weight of stone was too great and the plastic case was crushed.

“Good idea, though. I think the four of us should be able to do it. There’s enough room to stand side by side.”

They found Linda and Alana a few minutes later, sitting with their backs against a wall sharing a protein bar.

“Not to keep repeating myself,” Linda said around a monstrous bite, “but we hit another dead end.”

“Eric and I think we found something.”

Moments later, Eric explained how the rock incline was a pivoting device, balanced in the middle, halfway up the ten-foot-high slope. The four got into position at the top of the ramp, standing side by side, their upper shoulders pressed to the ceiling.

“And go,” Linda ordered.

Their combined strength made stone grate against stone, and the incline began to flatten out. What had been a tiny crack yawned into the entrance of another chamber, one they could see was partially lined with mud bricks. Harder they pushed, groaning at the effort. The lever dipped on its fulcrum, so the ramp became perfectly flat.

“You know once we’re through, there’s no going back,” Linda grunted, fresh perspiration flushing her pixie face.

“I know,” Mark replied. “Push.”

The rock platform began to slope down into the bricked chamber beyond the tunnel, and they were able to shuffle back so they stood at its very lip, muscles quivering. They were only a couple feet above the sand-covered floor.

Linda judged they had enough clearance. “Ready? Go!”

The four leapt off the stone slab, tumbling into the dirt. Behind them the rock-slab lever crashed back to the ground with an echoing boom. There was a space under it like the nook beneath a flight of stairs. They could see the actual fulcrum was a thick length of log resting on notched-stone blocks. In the crease where the rock met the floor was another small wooden contraption whose purpose was unknown.

No sooner had the echoes died away than there came a new sound, a deep rumbling hiss from someplace above them. Eric flashed his light to the ceiling twenty feet over their heads just as sand began to pour out of dozens of manhole-sized openings.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mark said.

The wooden device was the trigger for a booby trap that activated when the pivot returned to its original position.

They cast their lights around the room. It was about ten feet square. Three of the walls were natural rock, part of the limestone cavern—one had the alcove for the lever device. The fourth wall was mud bricks laid with mortar between the joints. They ignored the rock and concentrated their attention on the brick. There were no holes or openings of any type, no handles or other kind of mechanism for getting out of the room.

In the five minutes they spent searching the wall, two feet of sand had built up on the floor in uneven piles that shifted and spread, with more dropping down from above. Linda pulled her knife from its sheath and pried at the mortar near one brick. It crumbled under the blade, and she was able to loosen the brick enough to work it out of the wall. Behind it was an identical layer. And, for all she knew, there were a half dozen more.

“We’ll have to try to move the lever from underneath,” Linda said. She accidentally backed into the stream of fine sand cascading from the ceiling and had to shake her head like a dog to dislodge the grit.

There were three holes directly in front of the alcove, and already it was half full of sand.