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They had just reached the entrance to the tack room when the pounding on the stable door began. Instinctively Sam and Remi spun, looking back. “How long, do you think?” she asked, then followed Sam into the closet. They knelt beside the trapdoor.
He said, “Thirty seconds before they start shooting, another thirty for them to smarten up and find something to slip into the jamb and pop up the latch. Two minutes, no more.”
“That plan you mentioned—”
“Sketch.”
“Whatever. Let’s hear it.”
He took ten seconds to explain. Remi said, “We could just make a run for it.”
“One big problem: If they’re faster than I give them credit for we’ll be caught on the cliff. They’ll pick us off like pigeons. My way we’ll at least have some cover and maybe even turn them back.”
“Good point. Okay.”
“I’ll handle the heavy stuff; you gather the supplies. If we do it right it should be enough to slow them down—maybe even turn them back.”
“Ever the optimist.”
Sam ducked back into the tack room, grabbed the desk chair, and carried it back into the closet. He closed the door and jammed the chair beneath the knob. Remi already had the trapdoor open and was climbing down. Sam followed and shut it behind him.
Guided by their flashlights, they set to work, Sam jogging back to the intersection, where he began manhandling ore carts away from their place along the wall and onto the tracks, while Remi ran down the tunnel toward the cliff entrance.
Distantly there came the chatter of automatic weapons fire.
“Good guess!” Remi called from the darkness.
“I was kind of hoping to be wrong—by three or four hours,” he replied, shoving a second cart into place. A minute later he had the third one seated on the tracks. Remi ran out of the darkness carrying a handful of oil lanterns. She hurled two or three into each cart, making sure they landed with enough force to start leaking oil into the bottoms of the carts.
The gunfire from above ceased. “They’re using their brains now,” Sam said.
Together they sprinted back down the tunnel, snatching lanterns as they went until they had a dozen more, then returned and tossed them into the ore carts.
“Kindling,” Remi said, and they took off again. They grabbed anything that would burn, from wooden toolboxes to boots and coveralls to coils of dry-rotted rope, then returned to the carts and divided the haul into three piles, which they dumped into the three carts.
“You feel that?” Remi asked.
Sam looked up and for the first time noticed a cool breeze blowing in from the cliff entrance. “That’s good luck for us.”
Using his Swiss Army knife he cut a trio of wicks from the coveralls, then knotted each one at the bottom and together they soaked the knotted ends in the oil at the bottom of the lead cart.
Remi asked, “Do we wait or—” From the direction of the tack room hatch there came the sound of pounding. “Forget I asked,” she finished.
Using his lighter Sam lit each of the three wicks as Remi held them. Once certain they were fully caught, she handed two to Sam, who tossed them into the first two carts. Remi tossed hers into the closest cart and they backed away.
Nothing happened.
“Come on . . . ,” Remi muttered.
“I was afraid of that. Oil might be too sludgy.”
Down the tunnel there came the sound of splintering wood, followed by a door banging open.
Sam stared at the carts, his jaw pulsing with anger. “Damn it!”
With a whoosh, one of the carts burst into flames and oily black smoke began gushing from the top. The second and third cart ignited and within seconds a thick cloud of smoke roiled near the ceiling. Pushed by the breeze, it began surging through the intersection and into the side tunnels.
Sam and Remi, coughing, eyes watering from the peripheral exposure, backed away from the carts. “If that doesn’t slow them down nothing will,” Sam said.