communicated with HQ and by now Major Hammerson will be bursting the eardrums of the entire armed forces to get more military bodies down here. Stay close to me and don’t worry.”
Monica appeared looking very pleased with herself. “Everyone this way, I’ve found something,” She led them quickly down the cave and to a gigantic hole in the rock floor.
Monica immediately set to pegging in around a large belay rock. Silex was immediately at her side and hissing into her ear. “What are you doing, we’re not going down there. Are you crazy? That’ll just take us deeper. We need to be going up, you know, where the sun shines. Not down.”
“Dr. Silex, you hear that?” Monica had held up her hand to quieten the scientist and the entire team stopped what they were doing and listened. Nothing could be heard except for their own breathing.
Alex was the first to speak. “Water, running water.”
“It’s a cave stream, quite a large one by the sound of it. I’m not making any promises because it could just disappear through another boulder choke that we can’t get through. However, it could also flow out at the coast.”
Alex stood at the edge looking down thoughtfully. Silex stared at him and smirked, probably thinking Alex was racked with indecision, while he was in fact using his senses to get an impression of what waited for them down in the dark depths. He didn’t want to let Monica rappel down first, and his men could just as easily have achieved it, but she was the specialist and better equipped to give them an idea of the descent’s safety and risk factors.
“OK, Ms. Jennings, but I want you to borrow Mike’s comm unit so we can stay in touch. Mike will be coming down right behind you. Hand the unit back to Mike and then do a near-perimeter survey and report in. Got it?”
Monica nodded and started to rig up her rappelling harness using low-stretch kernmantel rope with a friction brake to control her speed. She didn’t have the time or the rope to set more safety cords, or cow tails as they were called, but did use a sit-stand rig to ensure the rope wouldn’t rub against any jagged rocks.
She looked briefly at Matt. “Once again into the wide black yonder.” Matt gave her a thumbs up and looked as cheery as possible in the situation as Monica stepped back into the abyss.
The shaft was complex with many ledges, lumps and spikes. She descended slowly, watching both the wall and the rope and keeping a lookout below for the yet unseen floor. There was no echo, just the faint musical sound of the water as it tumbled over a hidden stream bed below. At about fifty feet down she hit the floor of a second large chamber. It was flat-based, worn very smooth like a giant tabletop. She still couldn’t see the stream, but it was louder now. It was also much warmer and the humidity had encouraged traces of moss to grow on the walls.
She unzipped her suit a few inches and spoke into her comm unit. “Captain Hunter, you’re good to go. Careful on the way down as there are some protrusions, but I’ll be at the base guiding Mike down.”
Alex held up his hand to Mike who was already rigged up and waiting for the word to drop. Before he descended Alex walked over, checked his rigging and spoke to him. “How’re the wounds?”
“I’m OK. They’re starting to bleed a little again, but when I get down to the bottom I’ll give ’em a little more coagulant gel.”
“Good enough. Can’t have you bleeding away any more energy, can we?” Alex nodded and slapped him on the shoulder. Mike stepped back into the shaft. He descended quickly, Monica’s light giving him more depth perspective than she had.
One after the other they descended, leaving only Alex at the top. He hadn’t bothered to rig up and instead unfastened the rope from the belay boulder and let it drop down into the hole. He heard Aimee’s panicked voice from below.
“What just happened? Did it break?” As the rope coiled on the ground at their feet Aimee shone her torch back up the shaft. Monica gently grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the way.
“Aimee, he knows what he’s doing. He just saved me from having to climb back up there. We need that rope and can’t afford to leave anything behind we might need later.”
Alex climbed down the wall like a spider; there were enough protrusions to afford him plenty of hand and toe holds and his caving suit was specially toughened on the fingers and toes for just such a climb. He was confident that Monica could have ascended without trouble, but it would have cost them at least another ten minutes and at this point Alex was keen to save every second they had and use it for escape.
Monica shone her torch in a slow arc around them. Caves were amazing places. There were magnificent formations all around and above them; straw-like calcite stalactites and huge piles of what looked like frozen pink froth lumped around like melted candy. As a general rule, the larger the cave, the older it was. By that standard, these caves were truly prehistoric. It was like being in some giant child’s garden made from coloured stone. Rocks that looked like icicles, trees, statues, or the delicate designs of lacy flowers in shades of white or cream, or blues and reds from the dissolved minerals trickling from miles of stone overhead. At any other time Monica would have been lost in delight at this caving wonderland — for now, survival was the priority.
The cave ended abruptly at the bank of a wide and slow-moving river. It looked shallow, but cave pools and streams could be deceptive due to the clarity of the water — a stream where you could easily pick out every tiny pebble on its bottom could actually be over six feet deep. The upside was that there were rarely hidden jagged objects under the surface — the smoothing effect of thousands of years of polishing by the moving liquid.
“What now, build a boat from rocks?” sneered Silex. It was an obnoxiously posed question, but they were presented with a problem — they had no raft and there was no river bank or beach to walk along. They couldn’t cross to the far side of the river as it ended in a sheer rock wall — in fact, the cave they were in ended at the river.
Monica was standing on the bank looking downstream. She turned to Silex, not caring that she was staring into his face and blinding him with the bright beam of her helmet light. “Well, we need to follow that river and we don’t have diving equipment or a raft with us, so you’re right, we do build a boat — but not from rocks, Dr. Silex, from people. There is a caving style for travelling down streams to ensure everyone stays together in the dark. It’s called the Disney method — everyone sits one behind the other holding on to the person in front by their feet. We rope everyone’s waists together and create a set of human train carriages. We’ll also need an anchor — someone who is tied to the group but set about twenty feet back to act as an emergency brake. Usually they’re the biggest member of the team.” Monica turned to wink at Tank.
Tank smiled and said, “Shucks, I didn’t even have to volunteer.”
“We also need a driver; that’ll be me.”
Alex quickly overruled the caver. “Good idea, Ms. Jennings, but I’ll sit out in front this time. The team is going to be too heavy for you to steer and I’m better able to sustain impacts. However, I’d like you to be right behind me, guiding me and telling me what to expect.”
They all turned to look at the river. None of the team particularly looked forward to getting into the black water and floating into the impenetrable darkness that loomed ahead. However, everyone realised that going back would be even worse.
Takeda took a reading downriver with a portable echo distance display unit and spoke back to the group. “Straight run for about two miles then it either bends, dips or stops. No narrowing I can detect.”
“OK, people. We travel the straight distance and stop for rest when we get to the bend. Let’s keep moving.”
Monica wound the soft rope around Alex’s waist and then left a vacant loop for herself to climb into. She looped in Matt, Mike and then Aimee. Takeda went next, then Silex and twenty feet back, Tank as the anchor man. Tank had already removed a small collapsible grappling hook from his pack and tucked it and its rope tether into his front suit pouch. They were ready.
If it wasn’t for Alex leading the way, they may have all hesitated a few minutes while working up their courage. As it was, before they had time to think he was wading into the water, and all being tied together, they had to follow.
Rocks moved; then more. A low groan emanated from under the rubble. A large flat piece of stone flipped over like a door opening and a black-clad figure sat up.
Borshov slowly pulled the knife from the orbital socket of his eye and felt something warm and jellied fall to his cheek.
In the darkness he felt the ragged hole and cursed in old Russian. He resheathed the sticky blade and pulled a small light from a pocket as he rose to his feet.
