Page 133 of The 9th Man

“Hypothetically speaking, what happens if we give up? You let us walk away and Rowland leaves us alone?”

“I’m afraid that road’s closed.”

Which made him wonder, considering what had happened in Belgium. “Then you’re wasting our time. I like our odds. You keep sending your men after us and we’ll keep chewing them up.”

He removed the headset and tossed it aside.

“He’s worried,” Jillian said.

“That makes two of us.”

For all they knew, Talley wasn’t lying about reinforcements. He could even wait them out and let hunger, thirst, and exposure do the work. But that wasn’t his way. Reinforcements or not, Talley would press the attack.

“Let’s keep moving. It’s not far.”

They reached the rock wall and Luke went up first, testing the ladder rungs as he climbed. After forty feet the shaft opened onto a platform. An unfinished rock floor stretched out as an expanse of dips and bumps that extended to the far wall. Sixty feet above, through crisscrossing beams and walkways, he saw a massive horizontal slit through which moonlight poured.

The conveyor scaffolding.

Jillian reached the ledge and he helped her to her feet.

She gazed upward.

This high on the cliff face the wind whipped treacherously. Gust-driven snow gushed through the conveyor scaffolding and filled the air with ice crystals that sparkled in their headlamp beams.

“Which way?” she asked.

“Up. This floor won’t give us enough cover. Talley’s men will flank us in no time. But from those catwalks we might be able to pick away at them.”

“Providing they don’t collapse under us.”

“Yeah, there’s that. It’s your call.”

“High ground is smarter,” she said. “If we fall, we fall.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Nearby they found a steel ladder bolted to a vertical beam that led to the lowermost catwalk. Jillian went up first and reached the top, then she tightrope-walked across a crossbeam and leaped on the catwalk.

“It’s solid,” she called out.

He climbed up to her. At the far end of the catwalk another ladder rose to the second level.

“Shouldn’t they have reached those ladders by now?” she asked.

“Probably. But we can’t worry about that. Let’s find our spot and get sighted in. After you.”

They made their way to the end of the catwalk. Jillian started her ascent to the second level. A roar came from the outside. The second helo? Back in the air? Above them, a shadow passed before the conveyor scaffolding then came to a stop at the midpoint of the wall.

Apparently so.

“Drop down,” he said.

Automatic weapons fire rained down. The outer wall started disintegrating. Had to be .50-caliber. Each bullet the size of a human thumb and coming in at a rate of ten rounds per second. The wood wall, having borne too many Wyoming winters to count, wilted under the rapid fire. Swaths of wood disappeared, either chewed into sawdust or plummeting down the cliff face. This was why Talley’s men hadn’t followed them up the shaft. He’d warned them what was coming.

“These walkways won’t hold for long,” he said. “We gotta get down.”

“You first. I’m on your heels.”