Cautiously, he entered. “Hello?”
There was no answer.
He turned. “I’m warning you, Miss Calloway, my superiors know exactly where I am. If this is any kind of an ambush, the entire weight of the United States government will come down on you like a ton of bricks.”
She looked around. “Yeah, I can see ’em.”
He hesitated.
She smiled, an effort. “Go on, city boy. I’ll show you what you came for.”
They walked back into the shaft for a hundred yards. There was an oasis of light ahead, coming from some kind of hole above. Except for a couple of rusting tools and a pool of drip water under the vertical shaft, the mine was empty.
“Where’s Hood?”
She gestured with her head. “There.” A satchel dangled from one of the old mining timbers, wrapped tight in oilskins to keep out water and animals.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“You ever wonder what we are, Mr. Hale?”
“What do you mean?”
“The meaning of life, and all that.”
He grunted. “The meaning is to win instead of lose. We learned that in the war.”
“The Tibetans believe it’s divine thinking that created us. That when you kill something-kill anything- that thinks, you’re killing something divine. Don’t you wish the Nazis believed that before they started the last six years of insanity?”
“What’s your point? Hood’s dead?”
“If Benjamin was really just a thought, a divine thought, he’s still a thought, I figure. I mean, if I write down his thoughts, write down what little I understand about what he found, then he’s still here. There. In that satchel. That’s all we remember, and if you can makes sense of it you’re smarter than me. But it’s all inside there: Shambhala.”
“Then he did find it.”
“He sure as hell found something.”
“But he didn’t come back?”
She pointed at the satchel. “I just told you he did.”
The slightest glint of greed crossed his eyes. Then, his face more masklike, he took down the satchel and put its strap over his shoulder. “By the fact that Hood was on a government-sanctioned mission, this satchel is the rightful property of the U.S. government.”
“An heir might dispute that.”
“So sue me.”
“Not me.”
“That kid of yours?”
“I have to get back to Sadie.”
“Your child should be downriver, enrolled in a proper school. She’s going to grow up like an animal out here.”
“I think I’ll take your advice.” Beth pointed to the mine entrance. “Lead on, Agent Hale.”
“This is it? We’re done?”
“Yeah. We’re done.”
He looked down the long, dark length of the mine and shook his head. “Ladies first.”
It was an ambush all right, Hale thought, but not hers. Regrettable, but if Hood was dead it wasn’t smart to leave Calloway alive either. Too much loose antigovernment crap about confiscatory federal agents. And she could still sell stories to the Commies. So as she started walking for the mine entrance, silhouetted against the circle of light, his hand felt for the little pistol to plug her. Loose end. First this pilot, then the little girl. He’d had to do much worse in the war.
But at a spot she’d picked, where just enough light came from the entrance to give her aim without being blinded, she suddenly stopped, unslung her knapsack, and knelt on one knee. “I need a drink of water,” she said, reaching inside.
He watched her like a predator.
Her hand closed around the. 45.
The bitch was trying something. He yanked out his pistol.
As he did so, she shot him through her knapsack, the bark of the report opening a neat little hole in the fabric. An instant later his own gun went off.
The reports boomed and echoed in the mine as one.
They both hit each other’s stomachs.
Slow wounds, a terrible way to die.
Beth’s caliber was heavier and Hale was kicked backward, grunting in surprise that the woman had beaten him. He fell on his back, his pistol flying wide before he could think to hold on to it. Damn.
She simply sat back, stunned that it had finally happened, and clenched her muscles against the pain. She hadn’t expected it would hurt so much. It was hard to breathe. She imagined she could feel the bullet in there, eating, and a wash of nausea almost made her faint.
Steady, Beth. Not until you’ve taken care of Sadie.
Because it hasn’t ended yet.
Wincing, she stood up, her gun out of the pack now and steady. Hale was lying on his back, his arms and legs making swimming motions as he tried to move. He was looking at her in fear.
She walked past him and scooped up his gun, pocketing it, and then quickly patted him down for another. He groaned as she pressed his sides. Then she stepped back.
“You don’t deserve a finishing shot.”
“Don’t leave me,” he begged.
She walked back to her pack. “You weren’t going to let me live, were you, Hale? Because if there was anything really valuable in that satchel, anything really top secret, you couldn’t risk having me run around with it in my head. You didn’t even ask if I was a patriot, or if I’d help. Because you didn’t want help. You wanted possession.” She started to work, pulling sticks of dynamite out of her pack.
His mouth bubbled. “Hood?”
“The funny thing is that you got what you came for. Ben is in that bag, and all the strange and wondrous things you hoped for are in there, too. I’ve no doubt you’d find someone smart enough to figure them out. Maybe some of those Nazi scientists you boys have been capturing. So now we’re both dying, and that’s the best outcome of all. Because you know what, Mr. Hale? You don’t really want to find Shambhala. You don’t want to find what Ben found.”
“Hood?” It was a gasp.
She unreeled fuse toward the mine entrance. “Good-bye, Duncan.”
The explosion sent an arc of rock flying out toward Eldorado. As the fragments bounced and ricocheted off the talus slope below, there was a roar of collapse and a cloud of smoke and dust rolled out of the mine. Beth waited for the air to clear and then checked to make sure the cave was completely plugged. Yep. A solid wall of rock entombed Hale. Then she ripped off the bottom half of her shirt, bandaged herself as best she could, using the pain to keep her focus, and painfully climbed to the top of the cliff where the mine’s vertical airshaft was. She’d prepared this cover long before. Wincing as she felt her gut leak into itself, she dragged the logs and brush over the hole and kicked on some dirt. Erosion and growth would seal the shaft for decades to come.
Agent Duncan Hale would bleed to death in the dark.
Then a stagger down to the cabin, forced smiles to a confused Sadie, and quick delivery to a frightened Margaret. The effort had just about killed her, but not quite.
Too bad, because what was coming up the road next would kill her. She’d die all right, but in the most horrible way possible, and not before she told them everything she knew.
One side would bring the other like flies to rot, she’d long figured.
So she lay on the bed, unarmed, dizzy, and resigned, curious about this other man to come. She prepared by
