almost dragged, from the house and returned to the shed.
'Wait a minute,' he complained as Shaved Head locked his cuff back onto the copper pipe. 'Wait one fucking minute. I just saved that man's life. No questions asked. Listen, I need to get out of here. My friends are going to die if I don't. Tell Bass I won't ever say anything to anyone about having been here. I promise.' The bikers were already headed out. 'Stop! This isn't fair! I saved your friend's life!' He was railing at the inside of the closed door. 'Goddamn it.'
Matt kicked the wall and made yet another fruitless attempt to pull the pipe free. No chance. He was as good as dead. If they let him live, it would only be to care for the cavity he had created in Rake's back.
'You bastards!' he yelled. 'Ungrateful bastards!'
He slumped down onto his bed of oily rags, pulled the blanket over him, and closed his eyes. Nikki and the others had virtually no chance now, either. For a time he thought about slow suffocation. Breathing gets more difficult, you feel sleepy, you lay down and close your eyes, you don't wake up. There were certainly worse ways to die, probably including whatever the bikers had in store for him.
Time passed. He might have actually dozed off when the door flew open again. Bass stood there as he had initially, all but blocking out the scene behind him. But this time there was a difference. This time his left hand was behind his back and his massive right paw, dangling loosely at his side, had a gun nestled in it.
'Shit. Bass, don't do this,' Matt begged in a half whisper. 'I won't tell anyone about you. I promise.'
'You better mean that,' Bass growled. 'It's a good thing fer you yer such a crummy liar.'
He bent down and skimmed Matt's pistol across the floor to where he lay. Matt hadn't fully absorbed the significance of the gesture when the key to the handcuffs followed along with a pair of dry jeans and a work shirt. Without another word, Bass turned and left the shack.
Standing in his stead, taking up considerably less space, was Frank Slocumb.
CHAPTER 35
'Ain't it jes the balls, Lewis? Har this boy survives a friggin' mine cave-in, goes o'er a thirty-foot unnerground waterfall, an' then ends up gittin' hisself captured by Bass Vernon an' his lunatic gang.'
'Y'are somethin',' Lewis Slocumb said to Matt.
Lewis, his jury-rigged chest tube pinned to his shirt, sat crammed between his brother Frank and Matt in the cab of their battered 1940-something red Ford pickup. In the back, amidst boxes and tarps, was younger brother Lyle. Kyle had been left to guard their farm.
'Frank,' Matt said, still giddy from his close call with the bikers, 'except maybe for when you popped out of your mother's womb, I swear no one has ever been happier to see you than I was back there.'
'Who sez Mammy 'uz happy?' Lewis chimed in. 'She 'bout slit her throat when she first saw him.'
'An' she 'bout slit yourn when she saw yew.'
Matt joined in their laughter. It was just past ten on a heavily overcast morning. The truck had been jouncing up a steep, rutted dirt road for nearly half an hour, circling the mountain that contained both the Belinda mine and the toxic storage dump.
'Ya done took yerself quat a trip, Matthew,' Frank said. 'Five mile allagether, mebbe six from whar ya started ta whar Vernon's people foun' ya. You are some lucky man.'
'I thought I was dead going over the falls, then I really thought I was dead when Bass came in with that friggin' gun in his hand.'
'Thet's his way. Bass is crazy as a bedbug. Mean, too, dependin' on whut drugs he bin takin'. Ah don' know if'n Ah ever seed him let someone go after they done been ta his camp. You, Lewis?'
' 'Ceptin' us,' Lewis said.
'He knowed we mak the best damn hooch inna valley. We got no intrest in the stuff they grow in thet hellhole. But they got more guns an' ammo than the U.S. Army, an' we're always intrested in thangs thet go bang.' Again he and Lewis laughed heartily. 'O'er the years they come ta trust us — leastways, much as Bass is capble a trustin' anyone. Ya musta done somethin' purdy special fer him ta b'lieve us thet ya kin be trusted, an' let yer ass go.'
'I saved Rake's life,' Matt said simply.
'Ain't no one's gonna give ya no medal fer thet,' Lewis said.
Matt checked his watch. There had to be enough air in the cave to get Nikki and the others this far. He prayed that Nikki or Ellen hadn't given up on him and tried to get out via the river. It was doubtful the gods would let two survive that trip in a single morning.
'How much longer?' he asked.
'Almos' there,' Frank said. 'They's no way ta git direct from Vernon's place ta the tunnel we plan on usin'.'
'And Vernon explained what I needed? I mean, you brought some explosives?'
Frank smiled.
'Ah think ya kin say thet,' Lewis replied.
'Wha d'ya think Ah been drivin' so slow,' Frank added.
Matt gulped and looked back through the window at Lyle, who was stretched out calmly among the bundles, smoking a cigarette.
'I owe you guys big-time,' Matt said.
They drove the last quarter mile off-road, weaving through the trees and rolling over roots. At the spot Frank pulled over, there was no hint of a tunnel along the rocky base of the broad, wooded hill.
'Where are we going from here?' Matt asked as they unloaded two large rucksacks from the truck, as well as two smaller nylon bags and a long, khaki canvas bag with a U.S. Army insignia stenciled on it.
'Jes 'cause ya cain't see somethin' don't mean it ain't there,' Frank said, passing Matt one of the large backpacks and two thick coils of rope. 'They's a bunch a entrances inta this here moun'in. Trick is ta know which one of 'em end suddenly in big, deep holes.'
Only Lewis wasn't loaded down as the four of them made their way across twenty yards of shrub- and leaf- covered ground to the hill. Matt felt his excitement beginning to surge at the prospect of seeing Nikki alive.
Hang on, baby. Just a little longer.
This entrance to the tunnel, completely obscured behind an outcropping of rock, was no more than four feet from top to bottom — a jagged crack large enough to admit a person on hands and knees, but certainly not one with a pack. They piled their gear by the entry, and Matt and Frank made their way inside, each pulling one end of rope. Matt was not the least surprised to realize that his pulse remained relatively slow and stable, despite the tight passageway.
Step right up and get it, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Rutledge's Famous Cure for Claustrophobia.
Guided by powerful flashlights, they made their way thirty feet along the narrow tunnel before arriving at a vestibule high enough to stand and wide enough for all of them and their gear. Frank tied the ropes together, forming one end of a long loop, with enough cord extending from the knot to lash onto a strap. Lewis was doing the same outside. One piece at a time, they hauled their gear in, while the empty cord was returned to Lewis and Lyle for reloading.
Hurry! Matt wanted desperately to yell out. Hurry!
The trip into the mountain by this route seemed longer and narrower than the one from the cleft, but there were no drop-offs and no water until they passed over the river on some planks near the very end of their journey.
Ten-forty.
The landscape of what used to be the entrance to the toxic dump had been completely transformed. Much of the overhead wall had collapsed, making a new cave outside the old one. The ceiling of the new cave, perhaps twenty feet above them, could be reached by climbing up a wall of rock that was just ten degrees or so short of vertical. The floor was littered with rubble but passable, and some of the right-hand wall had collapsed, leaving a strangely smooth gouge that looked as if it had been produced with a giant ice-cream scoop.
'Oooeee,' Frank said, inspecting the massive front wall. 'Them boys 'uz playin' fer keeps.'
