Into the darkness, red laser dot searching, flashlight held well clear of his body and searching, no targets. Crouching low into a stone corridor thick with smoke overhead, ceiling lights murky and dim, he switched the flashlight off and tried to fit the layout to the bat map. Tear gas burned his cheeks and the skin of his throat outside the mask; he shouldn't have shaved this morning. Right hand turn, second door on the left it should be, he heard the deep rumble of an engine, felt it through the stone under his feet, diesel.
Generator. That was the other reason for Dad's attack on the guest-house — cut the power feed, force the tunnels onto backup. Made it easier for Gary to find his target.
Find his second target. First was the door the bats didn't like. They didn't think people-thoughts, but they'd lived in the attic of the Haskell House for long enough to know the feel of magic. The last week, since Dad lost that flint, they hadn't wanted to go near one particular door in here. It hurt their bones. Gary slid along the stone wall, counting doors on the right-hand wall.
Three. He pulled a lump of almost-clay out of his satchel and smeared it around the lock, plugged a mechanical timer and detonator into it, flipped a lever, and slid back to the tunnel he'd come in. Counted under his breath. Pressed hands to ears. The blast squeezed him, mild, not much stronger than his gunshots.
It isn't the amount of force, it's how you apply it.
The door swung open at his touch, lock and latch vanished. Small room, really just a closet, almost empty. His flashlight picked up the gleam of aluminum in the gloom inside. He verified the marks on the case, hefted it, felt the same kind of nastiness from it he'd sensed when casing the museum up at the university. Something the makers should damn well have "killed" before they buried it.
Why in hell did Ben mess with this thing? Forget it. Blow the generator, get the fuck out of here.
Gray metal door, not even locked, air louvers high and low, another clue. Gary flipped it open and fired into darkness. Nobody home. Only a big diesel generator set now leaking antifreeze from a couple of holes in the radiator, with a big oil tank. Just as they'd hoped, it held a thousand gallons, maybe two. Lots of lovely fuel, it would burn for days, putting off enough smoke and fire that the cops couldn't miss it.
Gary set his satchel under the tank, checked his watch, waited a measured minute and then another just for luck. Ben had wired a sensitive inertial switch into the detonator circuits and a man would really like it to be settled into its new home before arming it. Then Gary gritted his teeth and cut a wire loop, the click of the latching relay was masked by the diesel growl, and he wondered if the charge had really armed.
But he wasn't about to check. Anyone who touched that satchel now would end up as a thin red film plastered all over the walls and ceiling.
Back out into the corridor, he fired two shots in each direction and reloaded before he stepped out, but nobody was there. So far, Aunt Alice was a hell of a prophetess. Back to the exit, grab that nasty aluminum case, back into darkness, out into light, arm the second satchel where it would blast that concealing blade of rock away and mark the cliff face with bright yellow paint. You could see it from five miles off if the fog ever cleared, a bull's-eye "Check here!" for the cops and the Coast Guard. Both satchels had twenty minute timers. They wouldn't destroy the tunnels, nowhere near as drastic as what Ben wanted, but they damn sure could make them public and unusable.
Down the cliff, stone providing buckets for his feet, no trouble, into the water, swim fins on, untie the rubber float, stuff the case and that damned flint inside, back to the Maria. Piece of cake. Ben's dinghy was already bobbing at the stern.
Red smears on the transom. Blood. No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Or maybe Jane had decided enough was enough. She had an itchy trigger finger, just ask that door of hers, and wasn't the most stable girl he'd ever met.
"Never sleep with a girl who has more problems than you do." Ben's voice, along with warnings against drawing to an inside straight and restaurants that advertised "home cooking."
Gary forced muscle into his kicks, sped the last few yards, heaved himself up the net he'd draped on the port side and over the gunwale, splashing seawater, panting for breath. Jane spun away from where she'd been kneeling on the deck, grabbing the H&K and swinging its muzzle around until she saw who it was that had burst dripping into her world. Then she set the gun down again.
"He's hurt."
Ben lay, half-sitting against the port gunwale, body armor and shirt tossed in a puddle of blood and seawater. Jane had already taped a pressure bandage against a wound high on his left side, another lower on his back. Probably entry and exit wounds, no bullet left inside. His skin looked gray, lips blue, jaw clenched, eyes pinched shut. Not good. Other scars stood out on his chest and arms, livid purple or stark shiny white, where he'd been shot and cut before.
Gary ripped off his diving
