They continued onward along the main tunnel. It was much cooler here, sending a chill along Jack’s spine. He hoped it was from the coolness. There was something primal about venturing deep into the bowels of the earth, an instinctual aversion to having all those thousands of tons of solid rock between oneself and the open air. A nagging anxiety that poked up from somewhere deep in the psychic basement and sought to override logic and cool-nerved competency.
Jack was mission-oriented, though, and the fear of failing to carry out his duty was far greater than any emotional dreads or apprehension could ever be. The confidence born of hard training and self-mastery asserted itself, narrowing his mental focus to the job at hand. He had to admit, though, that being a miner must be a hell of a way to make a living.
The trio kept on moving forward. There was blackness ahead, beyond the reach of their electric torches and hard hat lights; and blackness behind, the point of light that was the exit having long since been swallowed up by darkness. The three of them were encapsulated in a glare of artificial brightness from their electric lights that glided through the tunnel like a glowworm inching along a sunless pipeline.
Jack reminded himself that the more distant the exit, the closer they were to their objective. Twice more they came to junctions where side passages branched out from the main tunnel. Armstrong marked the rock wall with a green glowing arrow each time. The comm check at the first such junction found Frith’s reply breaking up into a garbled word jumble of meaninglessness. The next comm check reduced Frith’s transmission to a crackling burst of static. They were out of communication with the outside world.
Walls remained upright, the ceiling unrolled seamlessly, and the tunnel floor continued rock-solid. Bailey had no need of the pry bar to probe doubtful patches of footing; there were none.
There was a change in the air now, a taint of rottenness that rode the current of cool air coming from deep within. It evoked another primal response, raising the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck. He knew that smell: it was the scent of death.
Bailey halted, causing the duo in his wake to also fall still. He said, “Whew! Get that?” Armstrong’s nostrils crinkled with distaste. “And how!”
Jack said, “It won’t be long now.”
They started forward. The darkness must have heightened their other senses because it was some time before they could make out a fuzzy patch of grayness far ahead. The reek of rot and decay had grown with every step and was quite strong now.
It was the herald of the vertical shaft and the mound that lay at its bottom. The trio hurried forward toward the light, drawn to it.
Bailey started coughing, deep hacking coughs that he managed to suppress with difficulty as they neared the end of their quest. Armstrong fastened the hook at the end of her flashlight to her belt, freeing her hands so she could tie a handkerchief over her nose and mouth.
Jack envied her the handkerchief; he wished he had one so he could follow her example. He breathed through his mouth as much as possible, panting as though he were on the final lap of a marathon.
Daylight loomed ahead, not much of it, but what little there was seemed neon- bright after the blackness of darkness through which they had come. The glare was minimized because the mound at the bottom of the pit reached almost to the top of the tunnel’s rounded archway where it met the vertical shaft. The dirt and rocks at the top of the heap could be glimpsed through the narrow space left unfilled.
Bailey stopped short so suddenly that if Armstrong’s reflexes had been any slower she would have bumped into him. The pry bar slipped from his hand, striking a hollow rattling sound against the tunnel’s rock floor.
Rage battled revulsion with rage winning, allowing Bailey to overcome a fit of gagging in order to choke out an obscenity. Armstrong reeled as if from a physical blow.
Jack knew what was coming, had known for a long time, having first guessed the truth up on the hilltop in what now seemed an eternity ago. He was taken aback by the extent of the devastation, though. The slaughter.
The mound was nothing more nor less than a mass grave, a heap of bodies piled high. Many bodies, male and female. The mound would have been higher except that some of the bodies had rolled into the tunnel. No doubt the same thing had happened at the other three tunnel mouths at the junction of the shaft. The overflow had lowered the pile’s height.
The corpses had been thrown into the shaft and a mass of loose dirt and rocks and rubble thrown on top of them to cover them up. Enough dirt and debris had been shoveled into the pit to mask the atrocity when seen from the surface but not nearly enough to hide the pathetic remains when seen from below.
Armstrong said, “My God! How many of them?”
Jack said, “Twenty? More? Most of the Zealots, if not all. They’re not missing anymore.” He took a certain pride that his voice was able to maintain a steady, even tone. Something fell with a thud on top of the mound. It had fallen a long way and hit the dirt pile with a loud, thwacking slap. It sat there emanating a sizzling sound like bacon frying on a griddle.
It was a bundle of dynamite, sticks of dynamite held together by several loops of tape. The sizzle came from the length of fuse cord that curled out of one end of the bundle. A short length that grew shorter with every eye blink.
Jack grabbed Armstrong by the shoulders, picked her up bodily, and turned her around, giving her a shove that propelled her a half-dozen paces deeper into the tunnel. He shouted, “Run!”
Bailey was already in motion, spinning and leaping forward away from the shaft.
Armstrong ran, Jack close at her heels. She broke into a sprint, arms and legs pumping, rising on the balls of her feet, accelerating with a burst of speed.
Jack and Bailey were right behind her, running neck and neck. The tunnel was wide enough to accommodate both of them.
There was a chaos of pounding footfalls and their resounding echoes, a blur of hard hat lights and flashlight beams flickering over rock walls as the trio fled, racing to put some distance between themselves and the bomb in the pit.
The dynamite exploded.
11. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1 P.M. AND 2 P.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Out of the bomb blast and into a firefight. Jack Bauer, already brutalized by the effects of the explosion, now found himself in a raging gun battle with a ruthless strike force.
It was a blessing in a way. It meant that he was alive and now faced a foe he could come to grips with.
The wraithlike nature of the opposition, up to now as hard to get hold of as a fistful of smoke, had resolved itself into flesh-and-blood attackers who were trying to kill him and what remained of the CTU team. Flesh could be made to bleed, and Jack ached for a reckoning with the enemy. He ached, period. But he knew it could have been worse. To ache is to be alive, and to live offers the prospect of a righteous revenge.
It had been a lucky break that the bundle of dynamite had landed on top of the pile instead of rolling down its side to fall into the tunnel. That had been the second lucky break, actually. The first had been that the bundle survived the long fall without detonating the blasting caps and triggering off the sticks of TNT on impact. Dynamite is relatively stable; it’s the blasting caps that are fluky, fickle, and chancy. It was blind fate that had caused the bundle to hit the mound in such a way as to avoid touching off the caps. The soft dirt at the top of the heap must have cushioned the fall to prevent premature detonation.
The fuse had been short but long enough to give the trio precious time for a good running start. Time? Time had seemed to stand still during that nightmare interval of mad flight away from the shaft.
More luck: the shaft and the pile of bodies at its bottom had absorbed most of the force of the explosion. What got through was devastating enough.
The blast came like the Trump of Doom at the End of Days, rocking all creation with a shock wave that mingled light, heat, and noise in a rush of pure force. Jack was lifted up and catapulted bodily by a senses-
