“What do you think?” he said, sliding back out.
“I say we take a look,” Sarie responded, uncoiling a rope next to a box of surgical gloves.
He frowned and looked around them. Beyond the gloves and a few basic surgical masks, they had no biohazard equipment. And beyond the rope, they had no climbing equipment. Not exactly ideal. Then again, these weren’t exactly normal circumstances.
“You sure you got me?”
There was nowhere to anchor the rope, leaving no choice but to have Howell and the soldiers dig in like a tug-of-war team on one end. The result was less than confidence inspiring.
“You’ll be the first to know, mate.”
“Great,” Smith muttered, weighting the rope enough to test their grip as he slid into the hole. It gave a good foot, and he soon found himself in the same position as the soldier who had fallen, unwilling to completely abandon terra firma.
“Off you go, then,” Howell said, repositioning his boots in the soil for maximum traction.
Smith closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind of the fifty feet of air beneath him and the effect of the parasite whose lair they were bumbling into.
Finally, he took a deep breath and let go, wrapping his legs around the rope and gripping the knots Howell had tied into it with white-knuckle intensity. He heard the worried shouts of the Africans as they skidded toward the hole and winced as the rope dropped another couple of feet.
“Faster would be better than slower,” Howell called, the strain audible in his voice.
Smith descended quickly but found little comfort in the sensation of solid ground once it was beneath his feet. He checked again to make sure his pants were tucked tightly into his boots and his sleeves into the surgical gloves. “I’m off, Sarie. Go ahead and come down.”
She slid down awkwardly, struggling to find the knots with her feet and grunting audibly. When she got within reach, Smith grabbed her legs and eased her to the ground.
“You made it look easier than it was,” she commented, flexing her right hand painfully.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fantastic, thank you for asking. Have you noticed how lovely it is down here?”
He hadn’t, but now that she mentioned it, he noticed the temperature had dropped a good thirty degrees and there was a slight stirring of air. Every cloud had a silver lining. Sometimes you just had to look really, really hard.
She helped him off with his pack, accidentally dropped it, and then began fumbling around with the top flap.
“Scared?” he said, gently pushing her hand away and unfastening the plastic clips himself.
“A little. The truth is, I don’t much care for confined spaces. And most of the parasites I work with don’t…” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “You?”
“Scared? Yes. Afraid of confined places? No. I love them. In particular a nice hazmat suit.”
She smiled, her teeth flashing in the bright sunlight coming from above. “I can see how maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.”
A shadow passed across her and Smith looked up to see Howell peering down at them.
“You all right down there?”
“Can’t complain. It’s air-conditioned.”
The Brit shook his head. “I reckon I’d rather be up here in the sun.”
Smith knew that Peter Howell wouldn’t think twice about facing down twenty armed men with nothing but a ballpoint pen and a damp tea bag, but he’d never been a fan of microscopic creepy crawlies. Not a fair fight in his mind.
“I’m going to see if I can find somewhere to hang a net,” Sarie said. “I’d love to get a bat spec—”
The unmistakable crack of a gunshot floated down to them, followed by the just-as-unmistakable thud and grunt of a man stopping a bullet. A moment later their rope dropped down on top of them.
“Peter!” Smith shouted, but Howell had disappeared and the only response was multiple bursts of machine- gun fire from at least three separate weapons.
“Peter!” Sarie called. “What’s happening? Are you all right?”
Another wet thud sounded above and everything went briefly dark. Realizing what was happening, Smith grabbed Sarie and yanked her out of the way before she could be crushed by the soldier falling through the cave entrance.
Smith dropped to his knees next to the man and checked for a pulse.
“Is he…,” Sarie started.
“The bullet hit him in the chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.”
Smith gave the man’s rifle to Sarie and checked his pockets for anything else they could use. Nothing but a few Ugandan shillings and a hot-pink rabbit’s foot that was apparently defective.
“We can’t get out the way we came in. It’s too loose and too overhanging,” Smith said, grabbing her arm and leading her down the slope into the darkness. “Sarie? Are you listening?”
Her breath was coming in short gasps and she seemed unwilling to take her eyes off the spotlit corpse lying only a few yards away. Smith positioned himself to block her view and put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“Just give me a second, okay?”
Her breathing began to slow and she closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened again, some of the fear had dissipated. “What about Peter?”
“There’s nothing we can do for him right now. We have to concentrate on ourselves. On getting out of here.”
“How exactly are we going to do that? I’ve never been pinned down in a cave by people with guns before. How about you?”
“Actually, I have.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope. Do you feel the breeze?”
She nodded.
“Let’s go find out where it’s coming from.”
The broken rocks made travel slower than he would have liked, but at least the ground was flat and not sloping endlessly toward the center of the earth. They stopped every few minutes to listen for anyone following, but everything had gone silent except for the occasional crack of stone dislodging from the roof.
The passage narrowed and finally dead-ended into a wall with a three-foot-wide hole in it. Sarie shined her flashlight inside but it just glinted off a crystal-encrusted wall where the tube jogged right.
“You’re going to tell me we have to go in there, aren’t you?”
Smith held out a hand to test the air blowing from the passage. “If you’ve got any better ideas, I’m listening.”
She just stood there, chewing her lip miserably.
“Ladies first,” he prompted.
“You want me to go in front? You can’t be serious.”
“No offense, Sarie, but if you freak out, I’d rather have you in front of me than behind me. Just take it slow and watch for drops-offs. I’ll be right with you the whole way.”
She stood there for a lot longer than he would have liked, staring into the darkness while he listened for any sign that they were being followed. Peter would hold off the attackers as long as he could, but with no way to know how many there were or what kind of firepower they were packing, it was impossible to estimate how much time they had.
Finally, she picked up the rifle they’d taken off the dead soldier and slithered inside.
Time ceased to exist in the tiny passage, and Smith had to keep checking the glowing hands of his watch to confirm that minutes and not hours had passed. Sarie stopped a few times for brief hyperventilation breaks but then soldiered on, never uttering so much as a single complaint.
They went on like that for another fifteen minutes before she stopped — a little more abruptly than she had before. “Jon? I think we might have a problem.”
