Death is Forever (33 page)

“I was afraid it wasn’t going to work again,” she admitted in a shaky voice.

“That might happen, honey. Too damn much water.” He hesitated. “We should go back.”

“We have plenty of matches and candles, if it comes to that.”

For a long moment Cole looked at Erin. Her face was drawn into taut lines of unease. She was a woman who loved light, who had made it the core of her professional life. Being in the cave’s total absence of light, even for a few seconds, had shaken her.

“You don’t like it down here, do you?” he asked.

“I liked finding that diamond. The rest of it I can put up with for a while longer.”

His grin flashed in the sidelight from her lamp. “Fifteen more minutes. If we don’t find anything by then, we’ll head back. It’s too damn dangerous for you.”

“But not for you?”

“I know the risks. You don’t.”

“So how risky is it?”

“If we live, I’ll dream about this and wake up sweating,” he said bluntly. “We’re damn fools for being down here.”

“Abe survived.”

“God watches over fools and drunks.”

“So we’re half safe,” she retorted.

Cole laughed. “Close your eyes, honey.”

“Why?” she asked even as she closed them.

“So my light won’t blind you.”

She felt the smooth warmth of his lips, the rough brush of beard stubble, and the heat of his tongue as the kiss deepened suddenly, fiercely. He stripped away the weight of the rucksack, pulled her off her feet, held her hard and close.

Almost as soon as it began, the kiss ended, leaving her shivering with more than the chill of limestone and water.

He peeled off his khaki shirt and gently stuffed her into it, ignoring her protests at the third layer of clothing.

“I’ll just rip it to pieces in the next narrow passage,” he said calmly, handing her the rucksack.

“You’ll freeze without your shirt.”

“I’ve easily twice your mass. I retain heat much better than you do. Ask any biologist.”

Before she could argue any more, he turned and began making his way along another passage. This one was tall and so narrow that walking sideways was the only way to go. This channel, too, showed signs of having been filled with water at some time in the past. It also had arrows gouged in its sides at every point where new openings occurred.

The sound of running water came from everywhere around. Erin felt like she was pushing a bubble of light and air through a maze of waterfalls and cascades. She wondered how far down they’d come into the limestone mass but didn’t ask.

She really didn’t want to know the exact size of the massive weight of stone pressing down overhead.

She put the thought out of her mind and concentrated on orienting herself in the three-dimensional maze. Each time she thought she’d figured it out, she found she hadn’t. It was impossible to visualize their progress as they twisted and turned, crawling up and down and sideways to the sound of running water.

If it hadn’t been for the arrows, she’d have been utterly lost. She wondered if it was the same for Cole.

She didn’t ask.

As Cole pushed around a corner, he felt the pressure of limestone walls fall away. He walked three steps and turned slowly in a complete circle, discovering everything within reach of his helmet light. Erin came and stood beside him, adding her own light to his.

From all around came the sound of water rushing and falling and cascading through unseen solution channels in the limestone. The ceiling was beyond the reach of their light. So was every wall but the one behind them. Air moved faintly, stirred by countless currents of water pouring into the space that had been dissolved by a thousand, thousand seasons of rain.

Cole looked at his watch. “Four minutes. No more.”

Erin was too captivated to argue. The unmistakable sensation of space around her was both welcome and eerie. The opening was alive with the thousand voices of water, water whispering, murmuring, rushing, pouring, pounding, tumbling, seeping, dripping, sliding. There was water everywhere she looked, a world alive with silver drops and dense blackness.

A huge, shallow pool expanded into the dark as far as her helmet light could reach. Hidden currents caused streaks of light to twist over the water’s surface like a ghostly silver aurora.

For the first time since she’d entered the limestone maze, she longed for her camera. Except for her first brush with the long arctic night, she’d encountered nothing quite so alien yet so beautiful as the underground lake.

The roving cone of her light fell on mounds of water-rounded chunks of limestone. The rubble piles poked up through the sheet of water that stretched away into the darkness.

She grabbed Cole’s forearm and pointed. “Look!”

His helmet light cut a swath through the darkness until he saw more mounds rising from the dark lake. He walked to the edge of the lake. It quivered at his feet as though alive, responding to unseen currents of air and water. The water in the lake was absolutely clear, having rid itself of surface grit on the long trip down through the limestone reef.

If the lake hadn’t caught the light with each disturbance of air or water, it would have been invisible.

Slowly Cole turned, scanning the wall behind him, memorizing the location of the passage. Abe hadn’t numbered the tunnel. As far as Cole could see, none of the other cracks and holes had numbers.

“I don’t see any arrows,” Erin said.

“Don’t go out of sight of the tunnel mouth. You’re my safety line.”

Cole walked to the edge of the trembling water, then began wading along the shoreline, searching for some sign that Abe had been there before him.

“Here. Underneath the water,” Cole said after a minute. He looked up. His helmet lamp easily reached to the tunnel mouth. “Come over here.”

He had to repeat the words again, because the throaty roar of water filled Erin’s ears. She waded toward him until she saw the arrow mark gouged out of the limestone floor.

“Does that mean it was dry when Abe was here?”

“Probably,” Cole said. “He wasn’t much on water. Hated it, as a matter of fact. Couldn’t swim.”

“It must have been awful for him to explore the cave.”

“Not in the dry. The water that’s coming down now is new.”

Her breath came in and stayed until she forced herself to breathe out. She thought of the torrential rains of the wet and ten square miles of surface limestone covered one inch deep, and all those drops gathering together into rivulets and tiny streams, streams that flowed into crevices that also joined together, creating runoff channels that ate down and down into stone, dissolving tunnels and shafts and small rooms, water lured by gravity further and further down.

And each solution channel was the narrow end of a funnel whose mouth could be half a mile square, or a mile, or more. Tons upon tons of water sliding down and down and down. When runoff filled up all the holes, there would be nothing left but darkness and water and stone.

Don’t stay too long. You’ll drink black water and drown.

With an effort Erin pulled her thoughts away from the massive weight of stone and water balanced over her head. Deliberately she waded after Cole, keeping her head down and watching the silver patterns of water glittering around her feet. Overhead, long ribbons of water gushed out of darkness into the artificial light, creating random showers.

“There are potholes among the rubble mounds,” Cole said. “Channels, too. At one time this whole chamber had powerful currents of water moving through it.”

“During the last wet?”

He didn’t answer.

Grimly she concentrated on the water that was now halfway up her ankles. There was a definite sluggish current leading into the darkness they hadn’t yet explored.

While Cole knelt in the water and probed a small pothole, she looked for something to distract her from the ominous weight of darkness and the increasing thunder of water. The cone of her light probed in the water for a pothole. A circular shadow caught her attention.

At first she thought it was simply another water-rounded stone. Then she realized that it was too perfectly circular, and there were others like it, all circular, all perfect. She waded farther, then made a startled sound as she stumbled into a pothole whose depth was masked by the clarity of the water. She put her hands out to break her fall.

Her fingers closed over a candy tin.

The pothole was full of them.

“Erin?” he asked, looking up from a handful of rubble he had gathered. “Are you all right?”

She tried to answer but couldn’t speak. She grabbed a tin in each hand and held them up to meet the cone of light sweeping toward her as Cole turned. Water showered down her arms, reflecting light in countless glittering points of white and green and yellow.

Then he realized that it wasn’t water cascading from the rusted tins. She was standing knee deep in God’s own jewel box, and diamonds were pouring from her hands.

The ladder closest to the surface was buried in a cascade of water that was twice as heavy as it had been when they’d first descended its slippery rungs less than an hour ago.

“I’ll tie the rucksack to my ankle and drag it up after me,” Cole said loudly.

“Don’t be silly.” Erin shifted her shoulders beneath the rucksack’s nylon webbing straps. “The ladder will be tough enough to keep your balance on without having the rucksack pull a foot out from under you. And I’ve carried packs heavier than this one. It can’t weigh more than twenty pounds.”

He gave her a worried look. She was shaking from the cold and from the knowledge that the lowest crawl space they had negotiated was more than half full of water and rising quickly. If they’d spent another half hour in the jewel box, they wouldn’t have gotten out until the water level dropped again.

If ever.

“I’ll go first,” he said. “If your lamp goes out again, I’ll be able to light the way for you. But don’t wait long. You could drown climbing up that narrow shaft. If you get hung up, shrug your shoulders. If that doesn’t work, breathe out and shrug again. If that doesn’t work, back up, leave the rucksack at the bottom, and I’ll bring it up. Understand me?”

She nodded, sending her light bobbing.

Turning his face to the side so that he could breathe beneath the pouring water, Cole went up the first rungs of the ladder. The runoff this close to the surface was cloudy and felt almost warm by comparison to the water down below. Ignoring the scrape of stone over bare skin, he went up the ladder on a single breath and lifted himself out onto the limestone floor. He jackknifed around and looked back into the hole.

“Up!” he called.

Taking a deep breath, Erin turned her head aside and fought her way up the ladder as water pounded over her, trying to drive her back down into the cave. Her cold hands locked around metal rungs, holding her against the water. The ladder shivered and rattled from the force of the runoff. She climbed two more rungs, driving herself upward into the narrowest part of the shaft.

When she tried to go up one more rung, she couldn’t. She reached behind her back, shoving candy tins away from whatever had caught the rucksack.

Beneath her fist, a rusted tin crumpled. Diamonds poured down into the bottom of the rucksack. She lunged upward, only to be snagged again. She tried to struggle out of the straps. She couldn’t.

Water beat down on her, not enough air to breathe.

Fear raced through her. Around her the shaft was filling with water. Her body and the pack were acting like a cork, keeping most of the runoff from draining.

If she didn’t move, she’d drown.

She bucked against the sack, using the strength of her legs to drive her body back against the hard stone. More tins gave way, their rusted seams no match for her frightened struggles, but it wasn’t enough to free her.

Shrug.

Cole’s advice came back to Erin as clearly as if he was standing next to her. She drew her shoulders forward and arched her body, trying to slip past the obstruction. When that didn’t work she forced herself to relax and let all the air out of her lungs. Another tin shifted, but it wasn’t enough to free her.

She rolled to one side. It didn’t help. She rolled the other way. The contents of the pack shifted, giving a few inches. Aching for air yet afraid to breathe, she rolled farther.

Suddenly she was free. She went up rungs in a tumbling rush.

Cole’s hands clamped beneath her arms as he pulled her upper body over the lip. She lay half in, half out of the hole, gasping for air.

“Are you all right?” he asked urgently.

She nodded. No light moved at the gesture. Her lamp had gone out again. He tried to light it, couldn’t, and took off his own.

“Here,” he said, switching helmets with her, adjusting straps quickly. “It’s just a short way to the entrance.”

The passage was too small for Erin to squeeze past Cole. He jackknifed again, turned around, and crawled until he could duck-walk, using the light cast from her helmet to pick his way through the narrow cleft. His shadow loomed hugely ahead of him as it slid over and around the rough limestone, flickering with every motion he made.

That sliding, uncertain shadow saved his life.

Jason Street’s blow landed on the back of Cole’s skull with stunning, rather than crushing, force. Cole had just enough awareness to fall bonelessly, sprawling with his left hand underneath his body, concealing the wrist sheath he wore.

“Cole?” Erin called, scrambling forward as she saw him fall. “What’s wrong?”

“No worries, Miss Windsor,” Street said. “You’re safe now. Did you find Abe’s mine?”

The sudden white arc of an electric lantern blinded Erin just as a man’s hand closed around her arm.

“Let go of me! Cole’s hurt!”

“Don’t worry about that bastard. He was hired to kill you.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Am I? Read this, luv. It’s from your father.”

Erin glanced at the bright yellow plastic being held out to her. She was shaking so much from cold and fear she could barely breathe. “I won’t look at anything until I help Cole.”

Street smiled reassuringly despite his urgent need to know about Abe’s mine. If the mine hadn’t been found, he would need Erin’s cooperation to find it. She’d proved that she was better at unraveling Abe’s secrets than anyone else.

“Check on Blackburn if you have to,” Street said, letting go of her, “but you’ll feel like a bloody fool after you read your father’s letter.”

Without looking at the man who was no more than a dark presence looming behind blinding light, Erin hurried forward and knelt at Cole’s side. A quick check told her that he was breathing regularly. Blood was welling slowly from a bruise at the base of his skull.

Relief raced through her, making her almost weak. She stroked his forehead lightly, pushing wet hair away from his face. A motion just behind her made her look around. She saw the metal gleam of a pistol.

The muzzle was trained on Cole.

“Well, Miss Windsor. How is he?”

“Out cold. Who the hell are you?”

“Jason Street. Didn’t your father mention me to you?”

“No.”

“Read this, luv. I’m on your side.”

Erin stood and looked at the packet Street was holding out. From the corner of her eye she noticed that the pistol muzzle stayed pointed at Cole rather than following her movements. She shrugged out of the rucksack and sat down on it, ignoring the crunch and grind of ruined candy tins.

Reluctantly she looked at the packet Street was holding out to her. She really didn’t want to face whatever was inside. She didn’t want to know that once more she’d been just another pawn in another international game played out in bed as well as in smoke-filled rooms. At least this time no one was cutting her up with a knife.

Yet.

Silently she held out her hand. Street smiled encouragement and dropped the packet on her palm.

“That’s it, luv. Read it. You’re safe now.”

She undid the string and folded back the bright yellow plastic to reveal a thin pouch. Inside there was an envelope with the Central Intelligence Agency logo on it and her name scrawled across the front in her father’s bold, masculine handwriting. She wiped her muddy hands on her shorts and opened the sealed envelope.

It took several tries before her numb fingers managed to pull out the folded sheet of heavy ivory paper. The stationery was familiar, for it had come from her father’s desk in Washington. The letter was handwritten and brief:

The letter was signed as her father always did in his letters to her, with an aggressive, oversized D for “Dad.”

Erin closed her eyes and felt cold all the way to the center of her bones. When she opened her eyes and looked at Street, he was watching her, but the muzzle of the gun was still aimed at Cole.

Cole hadn’t moved. He still lay on his stomach with one arm folded underneath his chest. His face was turned away from her.

She turned to Jason Street. “How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy. The chokies Blackburn works for had you covered like a bloody blanket. If the black boy following you hadn’t been broadcasting in the clear, I’d still be looking. As it was, I just homed in on the RDF.”

“Chokies?”

“Chinamen,” Street said impatiently, then reined himself in. “The Chen family. Blackburn has been in partnership with Chen Wing for years.”

“Are you the one who gave that information to my father?”

“Is that what the letter said?” Street countered.

“How did you get the letter?”

“I work for the Australian government, although you won’t find me on any civil service payroll form,” Street said. “Sort of like your father in that. He and I do the same kind of work. That’s why I’m here.”

“Mistakes are made in your kind of work, Mr. Street. I believe my father made one. Cole Blackburn isn’t my assassin.”

“Like bloody hell,” Street said. “Just because Blackburn has been in your pants doesn’t mean he won’t kill you. Chen Lai is his number-one woman. He’s been making jig-a-jig with Lai since you were in pigtails. He’s just using you until you give him the clues to Abe’s mine. Then you’ll be deader than tinned fish and the mine will belong to the Chen family. But I’m here to see that doesn’t happen. Now, did you find that bloody mine?”

“I’m—I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean?” Street demanded.

She stood up quickly, bringing the rucksack with her.

Street’s eyes flashed reflected light as he followed her movements, but the muzzle of his gun remained trained on the man who lay less than two feet away.

She forced herself to go closer to Street.

“I’m no geologist,” she said as she jerked at the buckles and ties on the rucksack, opening it up. “Here. Decide for yourself.”

With that she stepped past Street and turned the rucksack on end. A sparkling, colorful cascade of rough stones poured through the hard white light of the electric lantern.

“Sweet Jesus and all the saints in heaven,”
Street said hoarsely, staggered by the sight. For an instant the gun muzzle moved aside from Cole.

It was all Cole needed. He came off the ground in a lunge that ended only when he rammed the knife blade up underneath Street’s rib cage and into his heart. Death was instant and nearly bloodless.

Cole caught the Aussie’s pistol before it fell from limp fingers. He jerked the knife free and stepped back. Street slumped face first across the dancing, rolling diamonds. Automatically Cole wiped the blade on his shorts before he sheathed it. He put on the pistol’s safety before he reached for the electric lantern.

Swallowing against the bile rising in her throat, Erin said raggedly, “Is he dead?”

“Pick up the diamonds.”

The words were thick, almost slurred. Cole grunted as he dragged Street aside and left him facedown in dense shadow. Moving with uncharacteristic hesitation, as though he didn’t completely trust his own body, Cole went back to Erin. He held out the pistol butt first.

“Can you use this?” he asked.

“Dad made sure I could shoot anything I could get my hands on,” she said numbly, taking the gun.

“Smart man.”

His words sounded like they came from a distance. Vaguely she realized that she was on the edge of going with shock and cold, hunger and exhaustion. She was at the end of her strength, and all she had to trust was someone who had just killed Jason Street in front of her eyes.

Street, who had been sent by her father to protect her from Cole Blackburn.

“So you believed him after all,” Cole said harshly. “You’re a fool, Erin Shane Windsor. I’ve killed men, but I’m not a hired assassin.”

At first she didn’t understand. Then she saw that the pistol in her hands was pointed directly at Cole…and she had taken the safety off. She let out a broken breath and lowered the gun.

“You’re right,” she said bleakly. “If you’d been hired to kill me after the mine was found, I’d be facedown in a black lake right now.”

His eyes glittered with pain and fury. “Such carefully measured trust—from the head, not the heart.”

“That’s the way
you
trust,” she shot back. “It’s the way my father trusts. It’s the way the whole world trusts. I’m a slow learner, but I do learn eventually. And I’m damned tired of being fucked by men on their way to more important things.”

Cole turned his back on her. “If you want the bloody diamonds, pick them up and come to the entrance. I’ll see if there are any more nasty surprises waiting outside.”

Without a word Erin put on the safety and shoved the pistol into the rucksack. Then she knelt and began scooping handfuls of diamonds from the clammy limestone floor. The stones made secret, almost musical sounds as they clicked over one another and the cold steel of the pistol.

She ignored the diamonds that had rolled into the darkness where Street’s body lay. There wasn’t enough money in all ofAbe’s mines to make her pick up those diamonds. Street was welcome to them. He’d certainly paid enough for them.

Before she was finished, Cole came back. He was carrying the shotgun. “Leave the rest. We’re getting out of here before anyone else comes.”

“I don’t think I can walk very far,” she said with eerie calm.

“Neither can I. Street was flying the station helicopter.” When Cole turned away he stumbled slightly, caught himself, and kept walking. “Move it, Erin. I loaded everything that matters into the chopper.”

“Where are we going?”

“Windsor station. Now that Street’s dead, it should be safe. In any case, it’s the last place anyone will expect to find us.”

Drawing together the shreds of her strength, she picked up the rucksack and followed Cole out of the cave.