'You can't kid an old pro, buddy. There's barely enough left to reach the backup team. You keep going and you forfeit your round-trip ticket to the surface.'
Pitt tied the safety line around a stalactite. Then he clamped Riley's hand on it.
'Just follow the yellow brick road, and mind your head.
'A comedian you ain't. What do I tell the admiral? He'll castrate me when he learns I left you here.'
'Tell him,' Pitt said with a tight grin, 'I had to catch a train.'
Corporal Richard Willapa felt right at home stalking the damp woods of New York. A direct descendant of the Chinook Indians of the Pacific Northwest, he had spent much of his youth tracking game in the rain forests of Washington State, honing the skills that enabled him to approach within twenty feet of a wild deer before the animal sensed his presence and darted away.
His experience came in handy as he read the signs of recent human passage. The footprints had been made by a short man, he judged, wearing a size seven combat boot similar to his own. Moisture from the mist had not yet redampened the impressions, an indication to Willapa's trained eye that they were no more than half an hour old.
The tracks came from the direction of a thicket and stopped at a tree, then they returned. Willapa noted with amusement the thin wisp of vapor that rose from the tree trunk. Someone had walked from the thicket, relieved himself and walked back again.
He looked around at his flanks, but none of his squad was visible. His sergeant had sent him out to scout ahead and the rest had not caught up yet.
Willapa stealthily climbed into the crotch of a tree and peered into the thicket. From his vantage point in height he could see the outline of a head and shoulders hunched over a fallen log.
'All right,' he shouted, 'I know you're in there. Come out with your hands up.'
Willapa's answer was a hail of bullets that flayed the bark off the tree below him.
'Christ almighty!' he muttered in astonishment. No one had told him he might be shot at.
He aimed his weapon, pulled the trigger and sprayed the thicket.
The firing on the hill intensified and echoed through the valley. Lieutenant Sanchez snatched up a field radio. 'Sergeant Ryan, do you read?'
Ryan answered almost immediately. 'Ryan here, go ahead, sir.'
'What in hell is going on up there?'
'We stumbled on a hornet's nest,' Ryan replied jerkily. 'It's like the Battle of the Bulge. I've already taken three casualties.'
Sanchez was stunned by the appalling news. 'Who's firing on you?'
'They ain't no farmers with pitchforks. We're up against an elite outfit.'
'Explain.'
'We're being hit with assault rifles by guys who damn well know how to use them.'
'We're in for it now,' Shaw shouted, ducking his head as a continuous burst of fire raked the leaves above. 'They're coming at us from the rear.'
'No amateurs, those Yanks,' Macklin yelled back. 'They're biding their time and whittling us down.'
'The longer they wait, the better.' Shaw crawled over to the pit where Caldweiler and three others were still frantically digging, oblivious to the battle going on around them. 'Any chance of breaking through?'
'You'll be the first to know when we do,' the Welshman grunted. The sweat was pouring down his face as he hauled up a bucket containing a large boulder. 'We're near seventy feet down. I can't tell you any more than that.'
Shaw ducked suddenly as a bullet ricocheted off the rock in Caldweiler's hands and took away the left heel of his boot.
'You better lay low till I call you,' Caldweiler said calmly, as though remarking about the weather.
Shaw got the message. He dropped down into the shelter of a shallow depression beside Burton-Angus, who looked to be enjoying himself returning the fire that blasted out of the surrounding woods.
'Hit anything?' asked Shaw.
'Sneaky bastards never show themselves,' said Burton Angus 'They learned their lessons in Vietnam.'
He rose to his knees and fired a long leisurely burst into a dense undergrowth. His answer was a rain of bullets that hammered into the ground around him. He abruptly jerked upright and fell back without a sound.
Shaw crouched over him. Blood was beginning to seep from three evenly spaced holes across his chest. He looked up at Shaw, the brown eyes beginning to dull, the face already turning pale.
'Bloomin' queer,' he rasped. 'Getting shot on American soil. Who would have believed it.' The eyes went unseeing and he was gone.
Sergeant Bentley slipped through the brush and looked down, his expression granite. 'Too many good men are dying today,' he said slowly. Then his face hardened and he cautiously peered over the top of the embankment. The fire that killed Burton Angus he judged, came from an elevation. He spotted a perceptible movement high in the leaves. He set his rifle on semiautomatic fire, took careful aim and ripped off six shots.
He watched with grim satisfaction as a body slipped slowly out of a tree and crumpled to the moist ground.
Corporal Richard Willapa would never again stalk the deer of his native rain forest.
Soon after the shooting had broken out, Admiral San decker put in an emergency radio call for doctors and ambulances from the local hospitals. The response was almost immediate. Sirens were soon heard approaching in the distance as the first of the walking wounded began filtering down from the hillside.
Heidi limped from man to man applying temporary first aid, offering words of comfort while fighting back the tears. The worst thing was their incredible youth. None of them looked as if they had seen their twentieth birthdays. Their faces were pale with shock. They had never expected to bleed or even die on their home ground, fighting an enemy they had yet to even see.
She happened to look up as Riley came out of the escape portal, led by two members of the diving team, his face masked in blood. A sickening fear rose within her when she saw no sign of Pitt.
Dear God, she thought wildly, he's dead.
Sandecker and Giordino noticed them at the same time and rushed over.
'Where's Pitt?' Sandecker asked, fearful of the answer.
'Still in there somewhere,' Riley mumbled. 'He refused to turn back. I tried, Admiral. Honest to God, I tried to talk him out of going on, but he wouldn't listen.'
'I would have expected no less of him,' Sandecker said lifelessly.
'Pitt is not the kind of man to die.' Giordino's expression was set, his tone resolute.
'He had a message for you, Admiral.'
'What message?'
'He said to tell you he had a train to catch.'
'Maybe he made it into the main quarry,' Giordino said, suddenly hopeful.
'Not a chance,' said Riley, putting a dampener on any optimism. 'His air must be gone by now. He's surely drowned.
Death in the stygian blackness of a cavern deep inside the earth is something nobody cares to think about. The idea is too foreign, too horrible to dwell on. Lost and trapped divers have been known to have literally shredded their fingertips to the bone, trying to claw their way through a mile of rock. Others simply gave up, believing they had re-entered the womb.
The last thing on Pitt's mind was dying. The mere thought was enough to instill panic. He concentrated on conserving his air and fighting against disorientation, the ever-present specter of cave divers.
The needle on his air pressure gauge quivered on the final mark before EMPTY. How much time did he have? One minute, two, perhaps three before he inhaled on a dry tank?
His fin accidentally kicked up a blinding cloud of silt that effectively smothered the beam of his light. He hung motionless, barely making out the direction of his air bubbles past the face mask. He followed them upward until he emerged into clear water again, and then began fly-walking across the ceiling of the cavern, pulling himself along with his fingertips. It was a strange sensation, almost as if gravity didn't exist.
A fork in the passage loomed out of the darkness. He could not afford the luxury of a time-consuming decision. He rolled over and kicked into the one on the left. Suddenly the light ray fell on a torn and rotting wet suit
