Page 25 of What Remains (John Worthy #3)

Back at their cave hideout now. Stomping on the brake so suddenly that he thought this was precisely why he kept insisting to Roni to sit in the back of an airplane: Seriously, the only thing holding your head to your neck are a bunch of muscles and ligaments.

Read any report of a crash and you see a lot of headless passengers.

And Roni, Roni, Roni, where was she? He didn’t see either her or Driver, though he spotted Meeks, rifle slung on his back, climbing down from a rocky perch.

Unbuckling, he muscled open the driver’s side door and pushed out of the Humvee as Flowers and then Mac, radio in hand, rushed up. “That was an excellent ploy,” Mac said in his best near-Cambridge accent. “Bought us some time for countermeasures.”

“Countermeasures?” he said at the same instant that Flowers, face streaked with sweat and muddy rivulets of red dust, pounded him on the back.

“Man, that was beautiful,” Flowers shouted.

“Boof!” Miming a mushroom cloud with his hands, Flowers let go of another laugh that sounded just the near side of slightly manic.

“Talk about going up in smoke!” Reaching past John, Flowers clapped a hand to Kazim’s right shoulder and gave the kid a shake. “You did good, kid, you did real good!”

Hmmm. He’d once seen a barn cat stalking a mouse.

As the cat slithered along in slow-motion, its pupils had dilated until only a suggestion of iris remained.

That cat had nothing on Flowers. Remembering Driver’s jitteriness of that morning, John thought that Flowers must’ve popped a couple of the same uppers.

Which, given that the man had driven all night and, assuming they got away, was now going to put in another six hours was understandable, though maybe not very helpful.

If Flowers got any higher, they’d have to tie a string around his foot to keep him from drifting away.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “They’ve got an RPG launcher and they’re going to regroup pretty fast.” And be madder than a nest of hornets. He’d bought them maybe fifteen minutes, tops. “How we doing here?”

“Now that we’ve got one more Humvee, better,” Meeks said. “Otherwise, we’d be tying boys to the hood.”

“How many did Shahida bring back? And where’s Driver, where’s Roni?

“On their way,” Mac said at the same moment that Flowers said, “Those new kids are in bad shape, man. Soon as you shot that first flare, with that big bang? They bolted back inside.”

“How many?”

“Ten, as we imagined,” Mac said. “Although one of which we seem to have lost.”

“What? How do you lose a kid?”

“Hey,” Meeks said, offended, “they’re small, they’re fast and there are a lot of honking tunnels in there.”

“Shahida and Driver are back with Roni now, trying to coax the boy to come out. But,” Mac said, sounding just the tiniest bit smug, “this may not be such an emergency soon. Help should arrive in a very few moments.”

“How do you figure?” But he didn’t stop to wait for an answer. “Kazim, stay here. Be right back.”

“Coming with you, man. You’ll never find your way on your own.

” Snapping on a flashlight, Flowers used the beam to point the way.

There was no one in the chamber John had used that morning.

That room was also a blind alley with no access to any other part of the complex except into Roni’s room with its three apertures.

“Like a quiz show,” John said. “Is it behind door number one, number two, or number three?”

“I got an excellent sense of direction,” Flowers said as they stepped into another large chamber with two more openings, one at ten and the other at three.

“Ah, and here I thought you were half-bat.” As Flowers went for the entrance at three, John asked, “You know for certain they’re down that way?”

“Have to be. One on the left is a dead end.”

As he followed Flowers, John felt more than saw the space opening overhead. Craning his head back, he couldn’t see more than ten feet or so. “How far to the top?”

“About a hundred feet.” Aiming his light, Flowers speared the darkness. “Way it curves? We’re in the main trunk of the old aqueduct now. See that hole up there?”

The aperture in the rocky ceiling was almost perfectly round and reminded John of an empty light socket. “That one of those maintenance wells?”

“Yup. Come on.” Flowers jerked his head. “Let’s pick up the pace.”

They jogged for the next ten or so seconds in silence, their echoing footfalls clopping against the rock and on loose bits of stone which squealed a protest. Then, as John’s knees began to ache, he said, “Is it my imagination or are we—” His right boot hit a patch of scree and he did a pratfall, coming down on his rear end so hard he felt the impact blaze a hot trail up his spine.

“You okay?” Bracing himself, Flowers hauled him back on his feet. “You hurt?”

“Just my dignity,” he lied. He was pretty sure he’d have one hell of a bruise come morning. “Are we going downhill?”

“Yeah. Sorry, man, I should’ve warned you. Anyway, there’s a fork up ahead and the tunnel levels out for a bit.”

“Only a bit?”

“What can I say? You going to be okay to walk?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He shooed Flowers on ahead and after a few steps, the pain was only a dull ache.

“Weird that we’re headed downhill,” he said.

The incline was steep enough that he was leaning back and braking with each step.

Slip now, and he’d probably skid a good ten, twenty feet. “Instead of straight, I mean.”

“Oh, I think whoever carved this out did it for a good reason.”

“How you figure?”

“Stop a second and listen, you’ll understand.”

He did and in the stillness heard that same faint rushing noise as before. Except… He craned his head back to stare at the ceiling. “No. Above us?”

“Yup. Limestone’s porous. That’s why so many caves are limestone, right?

Actually, this whole place reminds me of my dad,” Flowers said as they started walking again.

“He worked construction, and people would get leaks in the damned places. Like there’s water coming out of a light fixture on one end of a house and the leak’s from a pipe all the way at the other end.

He said water follows the path of least resistance. Same principle here.”

Two minutes later, they were at the fork. John said, “I could say something smart-alecky like when you reach a fork in the road, take it, but I won’t.”

“Except you just did.” Holding up a hand, Flowers cocked his head. “Hush.”

“You don’t know where they are?”

“I get a little turned around sometimes.”

“You’re telling me this now?”

“Hey,” Flowers rapped, “it’s been kind of stressful day, all right?”

“Easy,” he said. But uppers was what he thought. People got pretty irritable on the way back down. “You got an extra light, I can go right, and you go left.”

“We shouldn’t separate. We don’t know the exact layout and I do not want to explain to anyone how I lost your ass,” Flowers said, though he dug out another flashlight. “Just give me two seconds, okay?”

“Sure.” Slotting the flashlight into a pocket, he waited.

Now that they weren’t moving, he was starting to shiver.

Colder down here. Probably from the millions of gallons coursing just alongside these caverns.

His ears picked up a faint but crisp spat.

And then, a few seconds on to his right, another spat as a fat droplet broke against a stone . Terrific. “May I make an observation?”

“What?”

“Look, we know that people who get lost tend to walk in circles, right?”

“Yeah.” Flowers jerked his head in a nod. “So? We’re not walking in circles.”

“Hear me out. Let’s put ourselves in this kid’s place? If you were a panicky kid and you come to this fork…”

He watched Flowers play his flashlight over the two tunnels. “One’s straighter than the other. The right one’s kinda kinked. So, you’re saying he probably went into the tunnel where he could just bullet through without having to slow down or turn.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Well, we’re at the fork in the road,” Flowers said. “So, take it.”

“Sure.” He waved an arm. “Lead on, McDuff.”

“Naw, you got it backwards, Doc. Everyone says that. But the quote is ‘ Lay on, MacDuff.’ ”

“Oh.” He was impressed. “What’s that mean?”

“It’s what Macbeth says right before their big duel at the end. What Macbeth’s saying is, okay, MacDuff, you wanna fight, let’s fight. So, they do,” Flowers said and stepped into the lefthand tunnel. “And then Macduff turns Macbeth into shish kabob.”

After about thirty feet, the tunnel’s sides narrowed to a straw just wide enough for them to go single file. The roof also lowered. The only saving grace was the path wasn’t quite as steep on the downhill.

But, man, between this and then the uphill before the fork, climbing back is going to be a nightmare.

Bent nearly double, gaze screwed to the slippery surface beneath his feet, John duckwalked along as quickly as he could through puddles.

The air tasted of wet metal and as he scurried through the passage, drops of water splatted onto his head and back.

How far back could they possibly be? On the heels of that thought, another: Maybe we took the wrong ? —

“Unh!” The breath left his lungs in a rush as he slammed into Flowers and then they both clattered onto the stone floor.

Flowers lost his grip on his flashlight which pinwheeled through the air for a short distance before banging against one side of the tunnel and coming down with a small splish in a puddle.

“Sorry!” The water was almost icy. Rolling onto his hands and knees, he struggled to his feet. “You okay? Why did you stop?”

“I’m fine, just take it easy, man.” Worming forward, Flowers retrieved his light then stayed in a crouch. “I thought I heard something.”