Chapter Twenty-Six
T hey encountered no resistance in the next twenty feet. No sign or sound of people, though there continued to be gas lanterns hanging every so often from hooks in the ceiling of the cave. They came to a fork. One was lit with more lanterns, but there must be a bend or turn in the cave because they couldn’t see more than thirty feet. The other was dark.
Sharp didn’t want anyone coming up their asses, so he sent Smoke on reconnaissance down the dark road while the rest of them continued down the easy path.
They hit the bend, and Clark, who’d taken point, eased around it with the skill of a ghost. Three seconds passed before he returned and gave the all-clear signal.
Sharp went around the corner, Grace right behind, but the gas lights ran out and they switched to night-vision goggles.
This part of the cave appeared unoccupied, as there were only cast-off bits and pieces of wood, metal, and wire strewn about.
Those guys with the grenade launchers came from somewhere.
Up ahead, Clark signaled for everyone to stop. Contact. Someone was moving around, but Sharp couldn’t make anything out. Maybe the cave turned another corner.
After a few more seconds, Clark signaled the all-clear, and they moved forward again, but he set the pace even slower than before.
Light teased the edges of his vision, and Sharp realized the cave opened out into a huge room, hundreds of feet in diameter, with more gas lights in use. The room appeared empty until you looked across the space and saw crates stacked, some being used as tabletops, others with their lids off and their contents on display.
As they crept toward what looked more and more like a work area, Sharp figured out what one of the oddly shaped items in plain view on one of the crates was.
A microscope.
Sharp hesitated for a moment. A microscope, but no light source. Wouldn’t a generator be needed?
Gas lanterns were in use and no sign of a generator.
He turned to Grace. “Does this setup seem weird to you?”
“As opposed to working in a lab free of dust and contaminants, with good ventilation and a sterile work area?” She grunted and apologized. “Sorry. Yes, it’s weird and wrong and I’d like to kick the ass of the idiot who decided he could play weekend microbiologist and create the next deadly plague on earth.”
That wasn’t what he’d meant.
“Would you work in here? Would it even be possible to do the work required to weaponize anthrax in here?” There were conditions and situations where certain pieces of equipment just didn’t function well. Underwater, high winds, long distances.
“Yes, I would, if I didn’t care about safety. You don’t need clean when you’re trying to manipulate a bacteria or virus. In fact, an environment where random factors might be introduced to the bacteria might even help the process. Anthrax isn’t any more difficult to work with than any other bacteria, it’s just more deadly than most.”
“No generator,” he said.
“If I wasn’t actively working on something, I’d shut it off to save fuel.”
“He could be out scouting his next target or firing on his next target. We don’t know his timeline.”
Clark searched the other side of the crates for unfriendlies and gave the all-clear.
Sharp nodded to Grace, and she darted around him to investigate the equipment. He nodded at Clark, who moved forward, following the rock wall of the cave. There was too much air movement for there to be only one entrance and exit.
Hernandez, Runnel, and March took up watch positions, facing the way they’d come in, their rifles tucked into their shoulders, ready to fire.
Sharp surveyed the room at the same time as keeping watch on Grace. Her movements were quick and excited, like a predator on the trail of prey. Something snapped , a rubber-bandy sound. She’d put on gloves.
The microscope was given a quick investigation, but she moved on in seconds. The lid of one crate came off and she peered inside. The lid was placed back. Another was opened.
Silence.
Sharp glanced at her. She stared into the box with a horrified expression on her face.
“Grace?”
“It’s full of grenades,” she whispered.
It took him all of two seconds to reach her. The grenades looked completely normal...for individual devices with the power to tear a person’s legs off. If the whole crate detonated, every person within thirty feet would be ripped to shreds.
He reached in with one hand to pick one up for inspection, but Grace stopped him with a softly worded, “No. I’m wearing the gloves.” She pointed at the surfaces in clear view. “There’s a fine layer of dust.”
He withdrew his hand, and she plucked one of the grenades out and showed it to him, turning it this way and that so he could see all sides of it.
“It looks undisturbed.” He nodded at her to put it back. “Can you tell if he’s in the middle of something or what he’s doing with all this stuff?”
“No. Aside from the microscope, there’s nothing else here to indicate he’s actively using this site as a lab.”
“Nothing?”
“Nope.”
Men moving munitions. Crates of more munitions and a microscope left where it could draw attention.
“Fuck me,” he said as he flashed the get the hell out of Dodge signal. He grabbed Grace by the arm and pulled her into a fast trot toward the way they had come in.
An explosion threw them all on their asses in the dirt.
Sharp’s head rang like a church bell on Sunday. He staggered to his feet and bumped into Grace, who’d gotten as far as her knees.
Where were Clark, Runnel, and March?
A rock hit his shoulder. From above. One glance told him the ceiling of the cave was in the process of collapsing.
A muffled yell, and a yank on his arm, brought his attention around to Grace, on her feet now, as she dragged him toward his men, two of whom lay still on the dirt. Where had Runnel gone?
Sharp stumbled after her and grabbed Clark, who’d taken point. He was out cold, but it looked like he was still breathing. Sharp got him up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and walked quickly through the cave as it rained rocks toward the far wall, where he’d felt fresh air flowing.
He was about to put Clark down and go back for March, but when he turned, he saw Grace not five feet behind him, dragging March by the heels. He could walk a little farther.
He followed the slight flow of air several more feet and found a narrow opening in the wall.
Thick smoke wafted past him, surrounding his head and making him cough. Smoke?
Adrenaline hit his system like a freight train and he ducked into the opening and walked several feet until the narrow crevice widened into something two men could in walk side by side. He put Clark down and went back for Grace and March.
He found them just as she was dragging the fallen soldier into the slim opening. Sharp didn’t say anything, but as soon as he touched her shoulder on his way past her, she let go of March’s feet and headed away from the main cave chamber.
Smoke now filled the air three feet above the ground and continued to rise. A fireman’s carry wasn’t going to work. Sharp grabbed March’s feet and dragged him much faster than Grace had been doing. If he lived, he was going to have a hell of a headache.
Sharp had to stop a couple of times to cough. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Finally, he made it back to Clark and Grace, who was doing a quick triage of the unconscious soldier.
Runnel, he had to find Runnel.
A rumble of rock from the main cave roared through the air like a tsunami wave. Followed by a rapid succession of explosions, one after the other. Smoke, dust, and crushing darkness blinded him.
***
S ilence.
Sharp lay still. His breathing shuddered and he couldn’t seem to take in a full breath. What was sitting on his chest?
He tried to lift his right hand to brush the offending object away, but found he couldn’t move it. At all.
He sucked in a breath to try again, but all he got was a lungful of dirt and a coughing fit that didn’t subside. He struggled to find real oxygen, to sit up and sweep the dirt off his face, but he couldn’t do either and his struggles increased.
Choking .
He couldn’t move and he was choking to death.
A wet cloth touched his face and someone yelled in his ear, “Sharp, try to relax.” The cloth came back for a second run on his face, and he finally took a breath that wasn’t filled with dirt.
“We’re digging you out,” the voice said. Grace. It was Grace’s voice. “But it might take a while.”
“What?” he croaked out through his irritated throat.
“The cave collapsed,” she said. “Some of this part of it too. It nearly buried you alive.”
“March, Clark?” he asked hoarsely. “Runnel?”
“March is alive. Unconscious, but alive. Clark...didn’t survive the falling rock. I think we lost Runnel in the initial blast.”
Fuck . Two more of his men, his friends, gone . Anger surged through his bloodstream, giving him a jolt of energy and strength, but he still couldn’t move. The weight on his chest and extremities got heavier and heavier until he found breathing nearly impossible.
Focus, man. Focus .
“What about Smoke? Any sign?” he asked.
“Here,” said the man himself, appearing on the other side of him. “Took me some time to find my way to you.”
“Is there—” Sharp stopped to suck in a couple of breaths “—a way out?”
“Yes.” Smoke didn’t continue for a couple of seconds. “But not close. Not easy.”
“Any escape...is good. Call for...extraction?”
“No signal,” Smoke said.
“Stop talking,” Grace ordered, reaching across his body to remove a hefty piece of rock. “Conserve your strength while we get you out.”
“Were the explosions...accidental?” Sharp asked. She was probably going to get mad at him for not following his instructions, but he needed information.
“Don’t think so,” Smoke said. “Found wire and grenades.”
“I don’t like grenades,” Grace muttered.
Grief made him nauseous. “Don’t like them much either,” Sharp whispered.
Grace and Smoke worked silently to remove the rocks and debris from trapping his body. Someone had turned on an LED flashlight, but he still couldn’t see much in the dim light. Dust hung in the air like fog.
When had he lost his night-vision goggles? Probably in the rockfall.
He stared at Grace as she worked and noted she was covered in the fine dust, though a few places on her head, face and neck glistened as she moved around. Blood? Nothing that slowed her down, given her steady movements. If she had died...nope, not going there. He sneezed, which started another coughing fit. This damn dust was going to be the death of him.
Dust.
Spores?
“Doc,” he said softly. “Could we be breathing in spores?”
She paused in her rock removal, more of a stutter, a hesitation, before continuing on. “I doubt it.”
She didn’t sound convinced. “Explain that to me.”
“There wasn’t any evidence this place was ever used as a lab, not even a crude one. I think the microscope was window dressing. If he had spores to kill us, he’d have booby-trapped his stuff with it. He wouldn’t leave it lying around for just anyone to get sick.” She paused for a half second longer this time. “He blew us up instead.”
Sharp tested the words on the tip of his tongue. “This was a trap.” It sounded right, and every one of them had fallen for it, from the general on down.
“I think so.”
“Agreed,” Smoke rumbled. He rolled a larger rock, the size of a carry-on suitcase off Sharp’s right leg and suddenly he could move it. The claustrophobia gripping him let go a little and he flexed, trying to wake up his circulation.
Grace and Smoke worked a little faster.
A moan echoed close by and Grace disappeared. “March?” she asked.
He couldn’t see her or March, but he could hear the stress in her voice. “How bad is he?”
“Broken arm and concussion. I’m not sure he’ll be able to walk on his own.”
Smoke moved another large rock from over his torso, and Sharp found he could breathe easier.
“We’ll figure something out.”
She snorted in obvious disbelief.
“That’s what puts the special in Special Forces,” he told her.
There was no reply for a couple of seconds, then Grace said very clearly, “Fuck. Off.”
If she could get angry, she really was okay. “How far away is this exit of yours, Smoke?”
“Not sure. Maybe a quarter mile?”
“Any evidence of more traps?”
“No.”
“We weren’t meant to survive,” Grace said softly. “I’m not sure how we did.”