Terror Stash (22 page)

“Posted to a forgotten corner of the world. Didn’t you say you’d been here six years now?”

Hot words bubbled to her lips, but Steve spoke, instead. “How do you know she ever really existed?”

Her surprise wiped out the hot retort. She hadn’t realized Steve was following the low-volume conversation or that he’d understand it if he did. He’d complained more than once that their conversations were hard to follow.

“She exists,” Montana said shortly and stopped there. There was no way she was going to reveal what she did know.

“She does exist,” Caden agreed, lifting his voice enough for Steve to hear properly. “That’s why Montana took up wind surfing. That’s why she’s been hanging around the beaches, getting to know the locals. She’s spent the last few years trying to track down her hero, because she thinks Nicollo lives somewhere around here.”

“How did you
know
that?” she demanded, forcing herself to keep walking, to not spin around to confront him.

“I put it together,” Caden said complacently. “The one thing that I still can’t figure is how you ended up posted here in the first place.”

“You get to nominate your preferences,” she said tiredly. Why try to refute someone who seemed to be able to reach into your brain and pluck thoughts out whole?

“I guessed. But I’d have thought, given your gung-ho need to serve your country that you’d have nominated the hotspots of the world where all the action is — anywhere in the Middle East, China. Even Russia, six years ago, would have been boiling over.”

“They were my first choices,” she admitted.

“But you put Perth, Western Australia down at the bottom,” Caden concluded.

“Why?” Steve asked. “Why put it down at all?”

She hung her head. She was beyond embarrassment now and it was dark. They couldn’t see her flaming cheeks. “I thought, if I only put the hot spots, they might wonder about my motives. They might figure it out. I’d heard the rumor that Nicollo was living somewhere down here so I thought I’d put it down just to throw anyone off the scent. I didn’t in a million years think they’d send me here.”

Steve had the decency to try to hold back his laughter, but it came out as a snuffle anyway.

Then she felt Caden’s big hand on her shoulder, heavy and warm. A gentle squeeze, then it was removed. “Didn’t you ever stop to wonder if that’s a world you really want to live in if you couldn’t risk revealing something like that?”

“It’s not just my world,” she said. “It’s everywhere.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Steve agreed with a sigh. He stopped, then pointed ahead. There was very little moonlight, but the ground ahead was irradiated with starlight that didn’t make it through the canopy to where they stood. A rocky outcrop, shaped like the sloping hump of a whale surfacing, pushed out of the ground. Coarse grasses surrounded it, then the trees took over again.

“There’s a cave in that?” Montana found herself whispering.

“Around the back. Are either of you claustrophobic?”

“
Now
you ask?” Montana hissed back.

“Would you have refused to come if I’d asked earlier?”

“No.”

He shrugged in response.

Caden cleared his throat, sounding awkward. “I’m claustrophobic
.”

Montana stared at him, speechless.

Steve sighed.

“I’m okay if I’m with people I trust,” Caden added. “But I don’t like it much.”

“You’re not about to wait out here, though, right?” Steve said.

“You think I didn’t think of this back at the house?” Caden said, irritated. “You asked. I told you. Now, let’s get on with it.”

“Okay. But it’s tight. And now I’ve warned you.”

It’s not a popular entrance
. Montana recalled his words and her own heart picked up speed. Just what was ahead of them?

* * * * *

It was bad right away and got worse from there.

On the other side of the whale’s hump, there was a horizontal split in the rock right where it met the dirt, like a giant had swung an axe and cracked it open. In the starlight there was no way to see deeper into the crack, to see how deep it went.

Montana took a gusty breath. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Steve didn’t whisper, but his words were barely audible.

Caden whistled soundlessly. “Am I going to be able to get through there?” His voice was racked right down, too. “My shoulders?”

“You’ll fit. We may have to help you through a bit, but you’ll get through. You just have to trust me on this one, because your brain is going to insist you’re stuck.”

“Just trust you, huh?” He swiped at his forehead, the nylon of his suit whispering. “Let’s get on with it, then.” His voice was steady enough.

“Right. I’ll go first,” Steve said, crouching down beside the fissure. “For the entrance and the plane, I want you in between us, Caden, but after that, you drop back to last.”

He dropped to his butt and pushed his boots into the crack. They disappeared and he wriggled forward until he was up to his waist. He kept wriggling and slowly slid from view, but they could hear his movements, the chatter of rocks and, strangely, his breath, quite loud. It was as if Steve had been swallowed whole by the mounding rock.

“Oh, shit,” Caden murmured, next to her.

She reached up and rested her hand on his shoulder and he covered it with his. She could feel the dampness of his palm. “It’ll be okay,” she told him. “Deep breath. Go on. You know why.”

He nodded and she could feel his shoulders lift as he breathed. He was staring at the crack and she saw him swallow.

“I’ll be right next to you,” she said.

“Ah, screw this,” he muttered. “It’s just a lump of rock.” He crouched, sat and shoved his feet into the hole in one reflex movement, committing himself fast. He wormed his way inside and was gone.

Montana licked her lips. Her turn. She was alone out here. Being inside with Caden and Steve, no matter what lay ahead, was the better option. She sat and pistoned her legs into the hole and pushed her way in. The crack
was
narrow, but the sides didn’t brush past her. There was a sickening feeling of being swallowed up—
what had Caden thought of that sensation
?—then the crack opened up a bit. Hands were on her ankles, swinging her around until she found herself lying on a long, sloping plane of cool rock. Caden lay right next to her and Steve next to him.

Steve tapped the light on his helmet, making shadows dance around them. She reached for her belt and pulled her helmet up to her chest. Caden reached over to flick the switch that would turn on the lamp. She awkwardly nodded her thanks and put the helmet on.

It was difficult to maneuver in the tight space. The roof was another plane of rock. They were the meat in the sandwich. She glanced at Caden when she had the helmet on and her light showed his black eyes staring back at her. Sweat was rolling from his temples, but he looked calm enough. The roof was barely six inches from his chest.

Steve bent his fingers in a ‘come on’ gesture and eased himself across the plane of rock, moving surprisingly fast. Speed would generate body heat, Montana realized.

They followed him, spidering their way across the plane. The roof dipped and rose above them. At one point it came down within an inch of Caden’s chest and stayed at that level for about six feet. He worked his way past that with his jaw clamped hard and the sweat pouring freely. When it was Montana’s turn, she eased under the projection and her own heart turned into a runaway steam train. She could feel it thudding in her ears and mind.

She couldn’t rid herself of the conviction that the roof was slowly closing down on her. In a minute she’d be out of both room and time and the slab of rock would pin her and slowly crush her to death.

She realized that her teeth were chattering.

Caden’s hand clamped on her wrist and pulled her the rest of the way through the slot. His eyes were locked on hers, silently willing her to hold it together.

The roof soared up and cool air touched her face. The slope of the plane they laid upon dropped sharply to become a cliff but with another wall immediately behind it. Steve was nowhere to be seen.

She pulled herself up into a sitting position, her muscles crying their relief.
We have to go back through that to get out
. The thought made her sick.

Caden pulled her to where he was sitting and pointed down the sharp edge of the cliff next to his hip. She leaned over. Steve was making his way down the deep shaft, his back and hands against one wall, his feet pushed against the other. As she looked, he lowered one of his feet, then lowered his upper body a few feet, clamped his hands against the wall, brought his upper leg down to join the first.

Despite the clumsy stop-and-carry pattern, he was moving down the chute fast. But neither her light nor his showed what was at the bottom.

Caden waved his hand towards the chute.
You first
.

Steve had told him to move to the end of the line after the plane. She clambered past Caden and lowered herself into the chute. Emulating Steve, she clamped herself between the rock walls and lowered herself down. It seemed to work quite well and it gave her the confidence to move faster.

Caden began his descent, two feet higher and to her left, where the cleft was a little wider for his longer legs.

Her legs and arms were trembling by the time she reached the bottom of the cleft. Her muscles had never had such a workout before. Steve helped her stand up in the shale-filled crevasse and pointed past her shoulder. She turned to look.

There was no floor to speak of, just two walls coming together and the rock-filled cavity at the bottom. Twenty feet ahead and about three feet up from the ‘floor’ was another gaping fissure.

She wanted to groan a protest, but couldn’t. All her ideas about caves had always included a horizontal, sandy floor and a soaring cavern above. Nothing here was flat, nothing sandy. It really was the guts of the earth, blasted and worn away by nature into fantastic underground spaces that had no concern about providing passage for mere mortals.

People did this for fun?

Caden stepped carefully onto the rock pile next to them and jerked his chin towards the fissure, then lifted a brow.
There, next
?

Steve worked his way past them and moved toward the black crack. As he got closer, his light showed that it was another crazily tilted passage. He hauled himself up into it and moved carefully along its length. The left-hand wall leaned over the right, forcing him to lean so far over to his right that he propped himself up on his arm as he moved along, ducking projections as he went.

Montana wriggled her way into the passage and found it easier to move sideways like a crab, until her back slammed into one of the projections and knocked her to her knees. She followed Steve’s example after that, keeping her eyes peeled.

The passage didn’t curve or turn corners, but it did jag sharply up and down, sideways and more. Montana kept telling herself that Steve knew where he was going, and hung on to that thought grimly.

Every few minutes she would turn her head to check on Caden, to find him stoically working his way along. Reassured, she would move on.

After what felt like hours of creeping along the passage, she came upon Steve sitting on the right-hand wall, his eyes closed, his head cocked as if he were listening very hard. He opened his eyes as she approached and put his finger to his lips. Very carefully, he took off his helmet, turned off the light and lowered the helmet slowly to the rock, setting it down like it was crystal. He indicated that she should do the same.

As Caden reached her, she tapped his helmet and indicated he should, too.

She switched off her light and placed her helmet on the ground.

When Caden turned off his lamp they were enclosed by inky blackness and Montana sucked in her breath in reaction. At first it seemed like a thick, total absence of light, a living thing. Then she realized that there was a diffused source of light to their right. Light meant people.

Steve tugged on her ear. She bent her head toward the light, listening, and heard it instantly. The chink and irregular rattle of rock on rock.

And voices.

Steve tugged on her arm and crawled slowly forward. She followed him, being careful to avoid dislodging any rocks. She tried to watch where she was putting her feet but the light wasn’t strong enough to let her see clearly, although it was growing stronger.

Finally, Steve halted and when he turned to her, she could see his face clearly. He beckoned her forward and eased her shoulders around the rock ahead of him.

She found herself looking into a cave that
did
look like the ones she’d imagined until now. Steve pointed upwards and she looked up at the roof. Stalactites. Millions of them. Strung between them like giant floss was a long stretch of electrical cable, punctuated about every twenty feet with a glowing light bulb. The globes weren’t that powerful, but the light they shed bounced off the glowing stalactites and suffused the cave with enough light to see from one end to the other.

Steve pulled her back and indicated that Caden should look.

Caden looked out and pulled back again, then sat on the rock and rested his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell heavily. A sigh of relief.

Montana peered around the corner again. The voices were closer now, but no one was in the cave. She remembered what Steve had said about sound carrying. She realized that whoever was speaking had still not reached this cave yet. She kept still, watching the direction the voices seemed to be coming from, although it was hard to tell from where exactly they were issuing.

Then she saw movement from the corner of her eye and sharpened her gaze. Three men were emerging from the passage where the electrical cord ran. She realized that the light had been strung all along the way from wherever they were coming from to wherever they were going to.

The men were a lot further away than she had expected, making the cave bigger than she’d thought. Their footing was relatively smooth, indicating that the path had been cleared or worn by many feet.