The Deep Zone

Anus without light.

She dumped the contents of Cahner’s pack on the floor and found the Envirotainer. He was dead and could never threaten her again, but his corpse, impaled on the stalagmite, was only fifteen feet away. She could not see it unless she looked in that direction, but that barely lessened the horror of its presence and she wanted to get away from that place as fast as she possibly could. From Cahner’s gear she took only the flask of rum. She picked up the butane lighter from the cave floor and thought about bringing his rebreather and Gecko Gear as backups, but her strength was failing and even those fifteen extra pounds would be too much.

Hallie organized the objects in her pack, shrugged into the harness, and started back up. She had to walk by Cahner’s corpse on the way out, but she did not look at him. She was ten steps past when she remembered the map. It had not been in his pack, which, when she thought about it, was not surprising, given how often he would have had to check it.

She had traveled the route three times already and she felt fairly sure that it was inscribed in her memory. But she knew that “fairly sure” was not good enough here. With weakening batteries and failing strength, she had no room for errors on this climb out. So, though the thought revolted her, there was no choice. She walked to Cahner’s body, took a deep breath, and searched the left hip pocket of his suit, then the right. It was too soon for rigor to have set in, and through the fabric his flesh felt like cold dough. Both pockets were empty. She would have to go through his front pockets then, and if neither of them held the map, she would be forced to reach into the blood-drenched chest pockets.

Bending over the corpse, she could not keep from recalling the last frames of so many horror movies in which the supposedly dead monster suddenly exploded to life and leapt upon a lulled victim. But she pulled herself back to reality and worked her hand to the bottom of Cahner’s left front pocket. There was no way to avoid making contact with his dead thigh as she searched. The map was not there. She moved to his right side, bent over, and said a silent prayer. Please let it be here.

It was. Carefully, so as not to tear the map, she eased it out of his pocket. When it came free, she put it into one of her own chest pockets and walked quickly away.

The wonderful thing about mountain climbing was that the second half of every expedition was all downhill. The terrible thing about caving was that it worked the other way around. After two hours she had slowed to a crawl. But she kept going in a daze, one hand in front of the other, one foot after the other, wading chest-deep ponds, clambering up rock faces, squirming through squeeze tunnels, going on hands and knees and pushing her pack in front where the cave ceiling dropped to within two feet of the floor. She came out of one long, low-ceilinged passage like that, staggered to her feet, and then sat back down as her legs gave way. She rolled onto her side and passed out.

She awoke after she knew not how long. Shucking the pack, she sat up and looked around.

I don’t remember this place.

She took out the map and studied it in the light’s weak glow. She examined the cave around her, at least as far as her light beams would reach, but nothing resembled what the map showed. She made short forays in four directions, looking for features that she could match to the map or to mental images. She found none. After half an hour of searching, she went back and sat beside her pack.

She had lost the route. She had the map, but without the route, it was useless.

How long had she been plodding along, lost without even knowing it? How long since she had checked her location against the map? She could not remember. Hallie was so tired that she felt no panic, not even much fear. Just a dull astonishment and disappointment that she could have done something so stupid. And deadly. Fatal for her, of course, but not her alone. So many others. That was not going to be an easy thing to die with.

But dying would have to wait. She was too tired to die. First, she would have to sleep some more.

FORTY

KATHAN WAS STANDING AT THE WEST EDGE OF THE CENOTE, his camoflouage suit all but invisible in the brush. They still had not seen narcos, federales, or savage Indians, but several times they had heard the sounds of firefights, long, ripping bursts of weapons on full auto, the heavier whoomf whoomf of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Once the fighting noise had come very close, no more than a half mile, but eventually it had faded and they’d relaxed as much as they ever did on missions like this.

Stiff and sore from sitting so long in the hide, and needing to urinate, he had made his way to the cenote. Finished, he was watching his reflection in the water. He saw a man dressed in camo, rugged face, body like a tree trunk, eyes invisible behind the dark glasses, shaved head rough now with stubble, cigarette dangling from full lips. The Marlboro was about down to the filter, so he shook a fresh one from the pack and lit it with the stub of the old one. He tossed the butt into the water, where it hissed and went out, floating on the surface. He was smoking more now, and Stikes had been saying it could tip off people a long way away. But Kathan had not smoked at all until that day and it had about driven him crazy. He rubbed his cheeks, feeling the scruff of beard that had grown in while he and Stikes had been holed up here, waiting for whatever came out of the cave.

The waiting was starting to get to him, and that made him think of more unpleasant things to do to whoever the cave disgorged. They had eventually agreed that the best disposal would be to shoot, gut, and sink everybody except the blonde, for whom Kathan had elaborate plans. But now Kathan was not so sure he wanted to do any of them the great favor of a quick and easy death. One of his assets—given his line of work—was an ability to enjoy making other people hurt badly. In Kathan, it went beyond simply extracting information, which all special ops people had to do from time to time. It sprang from a fondness for the activity, which he anticipated the way other men might anticipate a round of golf or a good steak dinner.

So maybe we’ll do a little knife work first, he thought, looking down at his reflection, the tip of his cigarette a red glowing dot in the water. He had never been big on gross dissection, stuff like cutting off body parts or removing eyes—in living people, anyway. It was messy and put subjects into shock. That way, they became useless, because they could feel less pain and could not communicate well. He much preferred refined techniques that he had developed himself. He knew, for instance, that the ulnar nerve on the inside of the elbow could be stimulated with something no more menacing than a hatpin. But the return on investment was immense. Penetrated, the ulnar nerve created indescribable agony without doing serious damage to the body. Another good one was the optic nerve; one ran from behind each eyeball to the brain. Those you could reach with a piece of stiff wire, going up through the nose and behind the eye socket.

He would not do those things to the woman, of course, at least not before he had taken his time exploring her in other ways, with other instruments. After that, well, it would depend on what kind of mood he was in.

He smoked the second cigarette down, tossed it into the cenote, heard the hiss as it died. Then he looked up. His mouth dropped open. He whirled and disappeared into the forest.

Stikes had been napping on top of his sleeping bag when Kathan came rushing back.

“Move your ass. We’re on.”

Stikes stood, rubbing his eyes. “What’d you see?”

“Lights.”

“Lights?”

“Yeah. Light beams bouncing around inside the entrance to the cave. Somebody’s coming up.”

“About time,” Stikes said. “Full rig?”

“Full rig. We don’t know who’s coming out of there. Might be the big guy. Can’t take chances with that one.”

“The one who was Delta?”

“They said he was beyond Delta. Plus, this place is still crawling with federales and narcos. If we get compromised out in the open like that, we’ll need everything we have. Come on, gear up.”

They both donned full mission gear: utility belts with Beretta 9mm semiautomatic pistols and four extra twenty-round clips, tactical knives, backup switchblades, one frag grenade and one white phosphorus grenade each, Kevlar helmets with integral commo systems. They put on full-torso body armor, secured it with Velcro straps, and