Riptide

them, a yawning mouth of rotting wood and earth. Neidelman peered inside, lancing his beam into the dampness. 'Wopner? Get a move on. We're aborting the mission.'

As Hatch listened, only silence and a faint, chill wind emanated from the tunnel.

Neidelman continued looking into the tunnel for a moment. Then he glanced first at Bonterre, then at Hatch, his eyes narrowing.

Suddenly, as if galvanized by the same thought, all three unfastened their karabiners and scrambled toward the mouth of the shaft, stepping inside and running down the tunnel. Hatch didn't remember the low passage being this dark, somehow, or this claustrophobic. The very air felt different.

Then the tunnel opened into a small stone chamber. The two piezoelectric sensors lay on opposite walls of the chamber. Beside one was Wopner's palmtop computer, its RF antenna bent at a crazy angle. Tendrils of mist drifted in the chamber, lanced by their headlamps.

'Wopner?' Neidelman called, swinging his light around. 'Where the hell did he go?'

Hatch stepped past Neidelman and saw something that sent a chill through his vitals. One of the massive groined stones of the ceiling had swung down against the chamber wall. Hatch could see a gap in the ceiling, like a missing tooth, from which damp brown earth dribbled. At floor level, where the base of the fallen ceiling stone pressed against the wall, he could make out something black and white. Moving closer, Hatch realized that it was the canvas-and-rubber toe of Wopner's sneaker, peeping out between the slabs. In a moment he was beside it, shining his light between the two faces of stone.

'Oh, my God,' Neidelman said behind him.

Hatch could see Wopner, pressed tightly between the two granite faces, one arm pinned to his side, the other canted upward at a crazy angle. His helmeted head was turned to the side, gazing out at Hatch. His eyes were wide and full of tears.

Wopner's mouth worked silently as Hatch stared. Please . . .

'Kerry, try to stay calm,' Hatch said, running his beam of light up and down the narrow crack while fumbling with his intercom. My God, it's amazing he's still alive. 'Streeter!' he called into the intercom. 'We have a man trapped between two slabs of rock. Get some hydraulic jacks down here. I want oxygen, blood, and saline.'

He turned back to Wopner. 'Kerry, we're going to jack these slabs apart and get you out very, very soon. Right now, I need to know where you hurt.'

Again the mouth worked. 'I don't know.' The response came as a high-pitched exhalation. 'I feel ... all broken up inside.' The voice was oddly slurred, and Hatch realized that the programmer was barely able to move his jaw to speak. Hatch stepped away from the wall face and tore open his medical kit, pulling out a hypo and sucking up two ccs of morphine. He wormed his hand between the rough slabs of stone and sank the needle into Wopner's shoulder. There was no flinching, no reaction, nothing.

'How is he?' Neidelman said, hovering behind him, the air clouding from his breath.

'Get back, for Chrissakes!' Hatch said. 'He needs air.' Now he found himself panting, drawing more and more air into his own lungs, feeling increasingly short of breath.

'Be careful!' Bonterre said from behind him. 'There may be more than one trap.'

A trap? It had not occurred to Hatch that this was a trap. But then, how else could that huge ceiling stone swing down so neatly . . . He tried to reach Wopner's hand to take his pulse, but it was bent too far out of reach.

'Jacks, oxygen, and plasma on their way,' came Streeter's voice over the intercom.

'Good. Have a collapsible stretcher lowered to the hundred-foot platform, with inflatable splints and a cervical collar—'

'Water . . .' Wopner breathed.

Bonterre stepped up and handed Hatch a canteen. He reached into the crack, angling a thin stream of water from the canteen down the side of Wopner's helmet. As the tongue fluttered out to catch the water, Hatch could see that it was blue-black, droplets of blood glistening along its length. Jesus, where the hell are those jacks . . .

'Help me, please!' Wopner rattled, and coughed quietly. A few flecks of blood appeared on his chin.

Punctured lung, thought Hatch. 'Hold on, Kerry, just a couple of minutes,' he said as soothingly as he could, and then turned away and stabbed savagely at his intercom. 'Streeter,' he hissed, 'the jacks, goddamnit, where are the jacks?' He felt a wave of dizziness, and gulped more air.

'Air quality is moving into the red zone,' Neidelman said quietly.

'Lowering now,' said Streeter amid a burst of static.

Hatch turned to Neidelman and saw he had already gone to retrieve them. 'Can you feel your arms and legs?' he asked Wopner.

'I don't know.' There was a pause while the programmer gasped for breath. 'I can feel one leg. It feels like the bone has come out.'

Hatch angled his light down, but was unable to see anything but a twist of trouser in the narrow space, the denim sodden to a dark crimson color. 'Kerry, I'm looking at your left hand. Try to move your fingers.'

The hand, strangely bluish and plump-looking, remained motionless for a long moment. Then the index and middle fingers twitched slightly. Relief coursed through Hatch. CNS function is still there. If we can get this rock off him in the next few minutes, we've got a chance. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

There was another tremor underfoot and a rain of dirt, and Wopner squealed: a high-pitched, inhuman sound.

'Mon dieu, what was that?' Bonterre said, quickly glancing up at the ceiling.