White Jade (The PROJECT) (10 page)

Chapter
F
if
teen

Colonel Wu
smoked and
th
ought
about the failed attempt to secure the Connor woman.
Now he had f
ive dead agents
to explain
.
There was a knock on his door.

"
Yes.
"

"
Choy, Sir.
"

Wu stubbed out his cigarette and opened the door. One look told him he was not going to like what he heard. He gestured and Choy entered the room. Wu closed the door.

"
Report, Sergeant.
"

"
Sir. We ran into trouble. The woman, Connor, was at the house when we arrived but there was a man with her. He was armed and we got into a firefight. Li and Chung are dead. I chased the woman and her companion into an abandoned mine. The entrance collapsed and they were buried inside.
They must be dead. I searched the house and the book was not there. I did
get
the name of the man who was there and confirmed the identity of the woman.
"

Choy handed Selena
'
s license and the slip from the car to Wu. He had decided to omit the reason the mine collapsed and his thought the book was buried with the Americans. Better to let Wu think it was still out there somewhere.

"
What did you do with Li and Chung?
"

"
Sir, there
'
s more. I p
ut
the
m in
the trunk of the car.
On the way here
I was stopped by a policeman. It was some sort of safety check. He was going to let me go when he saw blood leaking from the trunk. He reached for his gun and I shot him. That was about a half hour ago.
"

"
You shot an American police officer.
"
Wu
'
s voice was flat.

"
Yes, sir. I had no choice.
"

"
Where is the car?
"

"
In the garage below.
"

"
Give me your pistol.
"

Choy handed over the gun.

"
Choy, you have disappointed me. I expected more discretion from you. You are certain the book was not in the house?
Did the woman have
it with her when she fled?
"

"
The book was not in the house,
s
ir. If the woman had it with her, I did not see it.
"

It was true, he hadn
'
t actually seen a book in the woman
'
s hand.

"
You are leaving
tonight
for home, Sergeant. I will arrange passage on one of our freighters. Go to your room and wait there. You will be escorted to your ship.
As soon as
you arrive in
Beijing
, report to me.
"

He gave Choy a hard look.

"
Dismissed.
"

"
Sir!
"
Choy snapped to attention, turned and left the room
. The door closed
behind him.

Wu picked up his phone and began making arrangements to clean up the mess Choy had created. He was angry. The book was not found. If it was in that mine, how would he retrieve it? Wu would wait to inform the General.
Yang was not a man who tolerated failure. He'd
sleep on it
and decide what to do tomorrow
.

Chapter
Six
teen

Carter
saw a dark object
thrown
into the tunnel and
heard it clink against the rock floor and
knew
what it was
.
He
jumped into the cart right on top of Selena, knocking her to the rusty floor, pressing her body under
him
.

The
explosion
blotted out thought
. Shrapnel ricocheted off the sides of the cart. The entrance
to the mine
collapsed with a thunderous roar, shutting off the light.

Rumblings and falls deep within the mine faded away.

Total blackness.

Carter lay rigid, waiting for the ringing in his ears to stop.

She coughed.
"
You mind getting off me?
"

He
was pressing her down under him,
the .45
still
in
his
hand.
He
holstered it, climbed out of the cart in the dark.

"
I can
'
t see a damn thing.
"
Selena coughed again.

"
I can fix that.
"

Nick
reached into
his
jacket pocket
for
the mini flash
he
always carr
ied
.
He clicked it on.

Something crawled across the back of
his
hand.

A large, black spider.

He
slapped it away, almost losing the flash. Something crunched under
his
foot.

He
helped Selena out of the cart
and tried
not to think about spiders. She was covered with dirt
and had
scrapes on her face. Her silk designer blouse was ripped and stained with red dirt and rust
, exposing most of her breast
.

The entrance to the mine was blocked by tons of rock reaching to the ceiling.
Thin streams of d
irt trickled from the roof of the tunnel.

"
We
'
re not getting out that way
,
"
he said.

"
The whole side of the hill must have come down.
"

He took out his phone. No signal.

"
Is there another entrance?
"
He
flicked the thin beam of the flash around
the tunnel
.
Something moved at the edge of the light.

"
I think
so, but
I don
'
t know where it is. I saw a map of the mine once. There are three levels, with branches off the main tunnel and shafts hundreds of feet deep. Some parts are flooded, but I don
'
t know where. A lot of tunnels were closed off when the mine began shutting down.
"

"
We don
'
t have much choice. You up for exploring?
"

"
You lead,
"
she said.

The
flash wasn
'
t much.
They
followed the narrow beam along
the
rusted tracks, deeper into the mine, picking
their
way
around
rocks that had fallen from the roof.
Nick
lost sense of whether the tunnel was going straight or curving about. The air was stifling and hot and smelled of ancient water and older rock. The adrenaline rush was gone
. H
e
was tired and sore.

Thick wooden posts support
ed
cracked beams h
olding
up the roof
of the tunnel
. They looked weak and unstable. Webs hung from the corners where the beams and posts came together. Everywhere, spiders retreated from the light. There were pools of water on the floor and wet, dark stains on the walls, drips of water from the ceiling.
The air was hot and still.
Nick
felt the tunnel walls closing in.
He told himself it would be all right. All right. One thing at a time. He was sweating.

The tunnel split, one branch going right, the other straight ahead.

"
Which way should we go?
"

"
Your guess is as good as mine. I never thought I
'
d need to know,
"
said Selena.

"
You think right, or straight ahead?
"

"
If the tunnel hasn
'
t turned, the river
must be
somewhere to the right. I think the miners followed a vein toward the river. If they did, maybe it came out somewhere on the bank.
"

"
Let
'
s go right. If it did come out, it shouldn
'
t be far.
"

They
entered the right hand shaft. The tunnel supports were rotting and puddles of water lay everywhere. Something scurried away ahead.

"
What was that?
"

"
I don
'
t know. I didn
'
t see anything.
"

"
What
'
s that squeaking sound?
"

The passage curved
and they
came around the corner. Fifty feet ahead the tunnel ended in a fall of rock and a churning nest of swarming and squeaking rats. Hundreds of red eyes gleamed in the narrow light.

Carter
froze. Selena gripped
his
arm, hard. The rats squirmed and wriggled, darting towards
them
and back again into the mass.

Neither said a word as they
backed away.
He
felt
Selena shudder
.
Back in the main shaft
they
passed a boarded passage on the left, then another on the right.
They
began to see more closed off entrances. A rat ran by
his
foot.

They
came to the remains of a stable
cut into the side of the tunnel, stalls still standing
. A
rope halter h
ung
on a rusty nail.

"
Why would they have a stable down here?
"

It was the first thing
Nick had
said since the rats.

"
For the mules. Mules hauled the carts.
"

Fifty feet past the stable the tunnel branched off in three directions. The tracks ended here in a decaying wooden triangle. The rusty head of a miner
'
s pick lay in the dirt.
Nick
picked it up and put it in
his
jacket pocket.

"
I don
'
t like this,
"
Selena said.

"
Me neither.
"
He
shone the flashlight at the shaft on the right, then the others. There wasn
'
t much difference between them
. T
hey all looked like highways to hell.
He
wet
a
finger and felt for a breath of air.

Nothing. Just a wet finger.

The flashlight beam was turning yellow.
If
they
ran out of light
they
might never leave.
He
didn
'
t like the idea of being in the dark with rats and spiders, but the batteries were fading.

"
I
'
m going to turn off the light.
"

The blackness closed in.
Nick
remembered a cave in Afghanistan where
he
was almost buried alive, remembered
his
drunken father locking
him
in a dark closet
, remembered a cellar in Colombia filled with the sewer odors of pain and death.
He
pushed the thoughts away, wished
he
had a drink or a cigarette or both.

Selena
clenched
his
hand.
In the black silence
he
heard sounds. Too many sounds. Water dripped somewhere. There was a soft
, constant
noise of dribbles of earth falling from the roof. The tunnels creaked and
he
heard wood groaning. Something scuttled close by.

Talking was strange. The relentless dark sucked words away like velvet as soon as
they were spoken
.

"
I don
'
t think we should go further in. Those tunnels go deeper, and they
'
re lower. We
'
d have to crawl. The tracks end here and that
'
s not good. If these passages went through, the miners would have run the tracks all the way to get the ore.
"

"
Nick, I
'
m scared. What if we can
'
t get out?
"

"
We can
'
t think like that.
"

"
Yes, but what if we can
'
t?
"

"
We
'
ll get out.
"

"
Maybe one of the side entrances we passed back there can take us out.
"

"
Yeah, but which one?
"

"
If we open them up, something could give us a clue. Those boards they used, they don
'
t look strong. We can break them down to get in.
"

"
That
'
s good thinking.
"
He
smelled her fear, a faint, sour, coppery smell. Or maybe it was
him
.

He
turned on the light. It was weaker.

Back up the tunnel
they
came to a side shaft and Selena held the light while
Nick
pulled boards away.
He tossed a rock through the opening
waiting for the sound.
T
here was a pause, then a splash, a long way below.

"
You heard that?
"

"
Yes.
"

"
I
'
m not up for a swim. Let
'
s keep going.
"

The next two were the same, vertical death traps dropping hundreds of feet into the flooded lower levels of the mine.
They
came to the next entrance.
Carter
played the light around it.

"
There
'
s something written there,
"
Selena said.

Chinese characters were scribed into the rock over the entrance.

"
Can you read it?
"

"
Yes. It says,
'
Dreams
'
.
"

"
Dreams?
"

"
That
'
s what it says.
"

"
Why would someone write
'
dreams
'
on a mine shaft wall?
"

"
How would I know?
"

He
kicked in the boards.
They
stepped through into a low tunnel and followed it bent over
. T
he light dimmed. After what seemed a long time the passage opened into a large chamber. The air was better, the ceiling high enough to stand upright.