He just had time to think: Too late—
He never heard the shot because the sound was small and his hearing was still gone. But the pain he expected—the rip of buckshot through his body—never came. In another second, he banged to the rock and swept up his Uzi . . .
The girl was falling. Her shotgun slipped from her fingers. In the dark of the tunnel beyond, Tom saw another quick flash as someone shot at the jittery kid, but the boy was already peeling away in a brassy twinkle. His heart boomed, something he felt but could not hear over a loud, burring hum. A crazy thought bounced around in his skull: many more shots in close quarters and he was going to go deaf. He waited, quivering, his breath tearing in and out of his throat, as the light grew brighter, and then he saw enough to understand who was there.
“I’m over here,” he said, not bothering to whisper now. He aimed his Uzi at the ceiling.
Luke rounded the corner. His skin was pale. His lips moved. You okay?
“Yeah. Thanks for not listening.” Tom heard a faint hissing as sound started leaking through the hum.
Luke’s worried face broke into a lopsided grin. “I would’ve stayed put, except I spotted the kids and saw they were headed right for you.” His eyebrows lifted as he saw the jury-rigged network of time fuses. “Whoa. That’s cool.”
“Yeah.” It hit him that all his work might be for nothing. When the jittery kid got back with his friends, all they had to do was cut the fuses. He thought about the two spare bricks of C4 in his pack. “Come on, we got to block off this room and then get out.”
He had Luke slap a brick on one side of the entrance as he fixed the other to the highest point of the arch. Jamming a blasting cap on a time fuse into each, he used his knife to cut the det cord in half. “All right, go. Get to your charges and start the delays. If I don’t show in thirty seconds, don’t come back this time.”
Luke’s eyes raked his face, probably to see if he was serious. “I mean it,” Tom said.
Luke’s head jerked a quick nod. “But please come, Tom. Please.”
Oh, believe me, I plan on it. As Luke pelted off, Tom darted back into the room, pulled two M60 igniters from his pack, then dug out a lighter and flicked it to life. He touched off the spiderweb. Just hope the explosion at the door doesn’t blow this stuff early. If it did, he would never get clear in time.
Dashing to the entrance, he looked down the tunnel. Luke was already out of sight. Maybe a minute had passed since the shotgun blast. Tucking his lighter into a hip pocket, he pulled out an igniter, removed the shipping plug, then threaded in the loose end of the time fuse as far as it would go. Tightening the cap, he removed the safety pin. Wash, rinse, repeat with the second fuse.
Do it right the first time. The M60s could be rearmed in a pinch, but he really didn’t want to do that. Grabbing the pull ring, he pushed, rotated, pulled. Heard the sharp pop as the igniter fired.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. He knelt by the other igniter, grabbed, pushed, rotated, pulled the ring.
Pop.
He ran.
78
The boom was enormous, a roar that crashed and broke and reverberated against and over the rocks. The Glock bucked as the round ripped into Leopard’s gut. He flopped in a sudden, spastic, loose-limbed jerk like a marionette whose puppeteer had just been goosed. In the yellow light, his blood spray was dark orange. Blowback splattered her hands and drizzled over her face. Leopard began to crumple, already so much dead weight. Bucking him off, she rolled and hung there on hands and knees, the Glock still fisted in one hand. She knew she was panting, but she couldn’t hear herself well; the sound was muffled and far away.
How long since she’d squeezed off that shot? Five seconds, ten at most. Was there someone else down here? She couldn’t tell. That shotgun had sounded very far away, but if she could hear them, they might have heard the Glock and come running. She had no time; she and Daniel had to get out—
Movement. Left. She jerked, the Glock coming up . . . “Daniel.” She knew she’d spoken because she felt the air leave her mouth. The stench of burned gunpowder and Leopard’s blasted guts filled her nose. Blinking away blood, she scuttled to where Daniel had levered himself to a sit, his back against the rock. He stared at her with wide eyes, and she realized how she must look: blood glistening on her face and hands, slopping over her chest. “Daniel, it’s Alex.”
His lips moved. She thought he mouthed her name. No time for this. Laying the Glock aside, she grabbed his shoulders and shook until his head flopped. Put her face right into his. “Daniel, Daniel! Can you stand? Come on, talk to me!”
“Alex.” She heard that. His eyes pulled together, zeroing in on her face. His eyebrows crawled to a frown. “Alex. What . . . what . . .”
Time, time, time! “Daniel, come on, get up, stand, stand up!” She took fistfuls of parka. “We’ve got to go! Can you walk? Can you fight?”
“F-fight?” he said, as if she were speaking Swahili. “I—”
Something shot out of the dark off her right shoulder. She gasped, startled, and then she saw the fluttering outlines of a bat flash in and out of the light before darting into the main tunnel. Shot must’ve spooked it. More bats hurtled through the drift. The roof of this tunnel was arched but not high, only ten feet at most. Ducking, she felt the air whisk over her hair as the animals pinwheeled past.
She would have to get them both out. If Daniel could walk, that would be good, but she’d drag him if she had to. Kneeling, she rolled Leopard, her eyes noting the fist-sized hole the bullet had chunked in line with his spine. His blood was leaking over the rocky floor in a purple pool. Working fast, she stripped off Leopard’s leg sheath and knife, then slapped the pockets of his cargo pants. Her fingers found the familiar outlines of two spare magazines for the Glock in the pocket on his right thigh and then another full mag for the Uzi. All right. She slotted the mags into her own pockets, and then she was buckling the sheath around her right calf. We don’t have any choice but to go back the way we came. She gave the straps a yank and cinched them tight, but her mind was already jumping ahead, planning their next moves. Got to find the stairs . . . maybe I’ll smell more Changed when we’re closer, and that’ll point us in the right direction.
She heard Daniel moving, the grind and squeal of stone, and she froze—
Because his scent was suddenly bitter and rank, and there was no mistake. Her mind slewed and skipped, and then she saw herself, on the rocks, a splash of crimson coating her throat from where he would bite and tear. She could feel the sharp bite of phantom stone against her back, and taste how very salty and yet sweet her blood was in his mouth and—