Badger Games (32 page)

“And Zivkovic? Did you meet him, too? In Belgrade?”

“No. Ostropaki was the contact,” Paulie said. “Why?”

“Just trying to put everything into focus. Well, I better get going. Maybe you better go down and get Helen. Don't get wet. If I'm not back right away and I can't get through to you, I'll have gone on to see what's up with Joe. What's the problem with these phones out here?”

“Mountains,” Paulie said. “You know how it is. And atmospherics. You can call halfway around the world, but not from one side of the mountain to the other, sometimes. What did you mean, ‘Don't get wet?'”

“Women in their baths,” Jammie said. “Naiads can be dangerous.” She set off for the house before he could respond.

B
oz didn't know what he'd expected, but this wasn't it. The drift wasn't anything like the living quarters that Kibosh had made for himself in the mouth of the mine. This didn't have a wooden floor, dirty as Kibosh's was. This was a jumble of rocks that you had to negotiate. The floor, if you could call it that, was muddy and sticky in places. His shoes were already a mess, wet and inadequate in support. Generally, he could walk upright, but at times that wasn't possible. In places where there had been a partial cave-in, he had to go on hands and knees.

But the worst thing was the feeling that it was all closing in on him. The ceiling dripped water, little rills of sand came cascading down, there were creaks of aging, rotted timbers. He had begun to hear distant rumbles, even feel the earth shift, then settle and
compact. At first he was sure it was his imagination, but finally he had to stop. He listened, open-mouthed.

He had never experienced claustrophobia. Not the real, breath-crushing claustrophobia. Most of the time he was able to keep a grip, hold it at bay. But he could not suppress a hideous feeling of imminent entrapment. This place was falling down. This mountain was settling, constricting like an anaconda. Like a living, contracting nightmare.

Why would it fall down now, just as he had entered? It didn't make sense. These timbers had been here for generations, some of them, the tunnels and shafts had survived. But now they were collapsing! Could it be the movement of himself and Kibosh?

“What the fuck is going on?” he demanded of the little man who led him, hopping like a spry elf through the tumbled rocks and over broken posts and lintels.

Kibosh didn't know how to respond. He was pleased by Boz's fear, but he dared not show it. At an early point, when they had traversed scarcely two hundred feet, Boz had asked him how far they had come!

“Why, we ain't hardly started,” he'd told him. But the dark look on the man's face should have been a warning. Boz had grabbed him by the collarbone and threatened to cut his throat. “You little son of a bitch,” Boz snarled, “I'll kill you right here and no one'll ever find your bones.” Then he'd hauled out a bottle of the brandy that he'd stuffed in his coat pocket and taken a heavy draught. That had seemed to stabilize him.

They stumbled on. Kibosh's route markers—the chalk marks at junctions with other tunnels, the arrows scratched in posts—were all but invisible to Boz. Kibosh pointed them out to him, but it was clear that Boz, on his own, would miss most of them. Kibosh began to think that it might be possible, at some point, to run ahead, to hide, and lose this insane oaf inside the mountain. But at one point,
when he had begun to edge farther and farther ahead, a bullet spattered past him, on the rocky edge of the drift. He looked back, hearing the heavy, shocking boom, to see Boz brandishing the automatic pistol, eyes blazing in the glare of the flashlight.

“For God's sake, don't do that!” Kibosh exclaimed. And almost immediately, there was a blinding cascade of sand and grit, dislodged by the shock of the weapon firing.

Boz shouted, “Then don't get so far ahead! I swear, the next one is in your back!”

Boz began to lose track of time. He declared a rest. They had entered a largish chamber. Men had hollowed out this cavern, clawing at rocks to release ore from which gold could be sifted. Their flashlights played on the walls and ceiling.

“This is hell,” Boz declared. “We're going down, ain't we? We're going down all the time, to the center of the earth.”

“Some of the time,” Kibosh said. “But what difference does it make? There's as much above us as there is ahead. I think.”

“You think? Why, you lousy old bastard, don't you know? Are you lost? You're lost, ain't you?”

He looked around, close to panic. He wanted to go back. But when he paced back to the entrance to the chamber, he saw another drift, not far to one side. He paused. Could that be the way they had entered the chamber? He wheeled around and came back to where Kibosh was sipping at a jar of water.

“Are we lost?” Boz demanded, his eyes wild.

“No, we ain't lost,” Kibosh said, as calmly as he could muster. He felt superior now. “But I'm the only one knows the way on.” He let that sink in. A few things had become clear to him as they had slogged through these dusty, infernal passages. Once they got out, Boz would have no further use for him. If he could contrive to get them lost—a little lost—the man might collapse before he did. The passage of time seemed greater to Boz than to
Kibosh. It was a phenomenon even of outdoor trails, when you were stuck behind someone who knew where the end of the trail was, how much farther it was to camp, to the water—that could drive a man bats. It was infinitely more the case when one was stumbling inside the guts of a mountain.

At this point, Kibosh reckoned, they were more than halfway. Boz had no notion of what remained. They had not descended nearly enough, to a grade more in keeping with the exit at the river. But he knew Boz would be spooked by this. Kibosh figured he could take the wrong way on one of the cross tunnels and still find his way out. But maybe not. After all, he'd only been clear through once, and back. And at what point might Boz simply panic and kill him?

“I gotta warn ye,” Kibosh said, “a man alone in here could wander for the rest of his short life.”

Boz backhanded him across the mouth. Kibosh tumbled away and struck his head against a rock. “You filthy little prick,” Boz rasped, leaping on him. “Don't even think about it. I won't shoot you. I'll beat you death with my bare hands! I'll strangle you and gouge your fuckin' eyes out with my thumbs! Now get your ass up and get us out of here!”

Kibosh was dazed. He got to his feet and hoisted his pack. He didn't say a word, but trudged on. One thing he didn't want, he realized, was to spend his last hours inside this hole with this wretched maniac. It was too sordid a way to die.

As he'd expected, Boz was terrified by the descents. “We're going into the pit of hell,” Boz said. “If I ever get out of here, I'll never so much as drive into a tunnel I can see the end of.”

It was noticeably warmer. Boz said they were nearing hell. Kibosh thought he'd made a joke and almost laughed, but realized that the man had that nightmare lodged in his head. It was an actual fear. At one of their rests, he said, “Ye musta had a religious upbringin'.”

Boz nodded. “Them damn Baptists in Georgia harped on it all the time. Same in Texas. Hell! That's all they talked about. Lake of fire.” He shuddered. “I seen the pictures in the churches, in Serbia. Awful. One thing about them Muslims, though, none a that shit in a mosque. But we dynamited those fuckers, anyway. We made hell for 'em.” He laughed, grimly.

Onward they went. At one point, Kibosh thought he was lost. Then he realized that they'd taken the wrong passage. He could no longer see any of his marks. A tunnel, back a ways, had been blocked. He said they had to go back to it. This scared Boz. He had lost all track of time. But he doggedly backtracked with Kibosh, and when they came to the blocked passage, he dug in with his hands to help clear away the debris. It wasn't as bad as it had appeared. Kibosh had feared that the route was blocked by a massive collapse, but it was only a minor fall of rock and sand.

They were now, he realized when they got through, no more than a hundred yards from the exit. Just thinking of it scared him. They could have wandered forever—well, not forever, obviously—within a stone's throw from freedom.

Kibosh decided to halt. The air was fresher, but he didn't think that Boz, sweating and drunk, dazed by exertion and fear, was aware of it. Kibosh couldn't go on, not knowing what would happen once they saw the exit. He knew that it was still night. As they sat, drinking water and brandy, he said, “Boz, I got to know. What's gonna happen?”

“What do you mean?” Boz said. “At the End?”

“Yeah, at the end,” Kibosh said.

Boz leaned his head back against the wall. Little grains of sand sifted down, sticking to his sweaty skin, but he didn't care anymore. He closed his eyes and after a moment, he said, “At the End, the Devil comes.”

“Ah,” Kibosh said, understanding now. “And who's he? I mean, what's he like?”

“He's a beast … he's awful,” Boz said, his eyes still closed, letting his mind wander. “He's wet, hairy … big red eyes, like coals burning, teeth like daggers. He's huge and powerful, with long claws. He chooses the ones he knows. He takes them away.”

“But what does he do with them?” Kibosh asked. He was momentarily distracted by this vision.

“He devours them, but they ain't eaten. No, he tears them into little pieces, but they ain't torn up. His hands are like ice, but they burn. It's awful, like you're chewed up, ripped apart, but you're still there.”

Hands? Kibosh thought. “Is he a man? Does he have feet?” he asked.

“No, he ain't a man, but he's like a man. He's like … like a wolverine, or a badger. Ferocious.”

“A badger?” Kibosh wondered if this was a joke. He wouldn't have thought Boz was capable of joking at this point.

“Like a monster badger-bear. Only he don't go on all fours, he don't have a hide, but his skin is like hairy leather. He walks sort of in a crouch. And his feet, they're like a turtle's,” Boz said. “Or maybe a huge lizard. Claws. He's got a huge prick, giant hairy balls. He smells like shit, like he was dead.”

Kibosh felt a hysterical mirth rising in him. This was too crazy, a Sunday school fantasy. Well, not any Sunday school he could remember. But a joke. From the tone of despair in Boz's voice, though, he could tell that on some level he believed this.

Kibosh coughed and cleared his throat. It was time to get serious. “Actually, I was meanin', what happens when we come to the exit.”

“The exit?” Boz said, uncomprehending. And then he must
have caught something in Kibosh's tone. “You mean we're there?” The relief was plain on Boz's dirty face, in the dim light of the flash. “How far is it?”

“'Tain't far, but we got a couple a jinks,” Kibosh said. “What are ye gonna do?”

“Do? Why, damn it, man, I'm gonna run! I'm gonna run across the field under that sky and I don't believe I'll stop running.”

“I mean … what about me?” Kibosh said. “I want ye to know … it's like I never seen ye. As far as I'm concerned, ye can go anywhere ye want and nobody'll ever hear a bad word about ye from ol' Kibosh.”

To his surprise, Boz smiled and reached out and hugged him. “Don't you worry, old man. You got me through. That's all I care about. I'd never harm you. Shit, man, we just slogged through the outskirts of hell together! We're buds.” He was genuinely grateful. He opened his last bottle of County Fair. He took a deep swig, coughed, and handed it to Kibosh. “Don't you fret,” he said, “I'd never put the kibosh on
you.
” He laughed.

Kibosh drank and handed the bottle back. “Well, it has been a little bit a hell, ha'n't it?” He grinned uncertainly at the young man. “The outskirts, ye said. I like that. The suburbs, ye might say.”

Boz drank again and screwed the lid back on tight and put the bottle in his pocket. He got to his feet with new vigor. “The city limits, maybe … and back, buddy. And I couldn't've done it without you. Now come on, let's get the fuck out of here.”

H
e was running up the hill through the forest, the branches slashing at his face and his breath coming in flashes of cold steam burning his chest and his throat, and below him the pursuers were shouting to one another, their voices high and excited, as they heard his gasping and his clumsy breaking of fallen limbs and crashing through the underbrush. And all the while a mechanical heart was buzzing in his breast pocket, calling to him. No time for that. He couldn't stop. If he was caught he'd be killed, murdered. Forced to kneel with his hands bound behind his back and wait, cringing, for the blow.

Then he awoke. Like that, it was over. Edna was prodding him. She said, “The phone! The phone!”

“I'm awake,” he said, as calmly as if she hadn't been nearly punching him in the shoulder. He reached out and picked up the phone. “Tucker,” he said.

“Vern? This is Max. I know it's late, but I thought you'd want to know right away. I think we've found Ostropaki.”

“Alive? You're kidding. Where?”

“Would you believe Brooklyn?”

Tucker felt a coldness he hadn't experienced in some time, not since Vietnam. “When you say ‘we,'” he said, “exactly who do you mean?”

“Me and Aaron.”

“Does Aaron know you're calling me?”

“He thinks I'm calling Barnes, the night controller. Which,” Max said, “I'll be calling next.”

Tucker's brain processed all the permutations of this information very quickly. If Ostropaki was in Brooklyn and had not contacted him, or the DEA … and Max Kravfurt was calling Tucker first, before he contacted his controller … then Max had been following some sort of lead and at the end of it was Ostropaki, whom Max hadn't expected to see but whom he knew that Tucker would be interested in.