Blacklist Aftermath

22

“Why’s he going in there?” cried Briggs.

Fisher’s gaze swept to the left, to another pair of tunnel entrances about a hundred meters off, in the distance. “Must come out on the other side! Shortcut back to town.”

“Sam, what’s going on?” asked Grim.

“We’ve got a tail. And our guy’s on the move, heading into a tunnel. Might lose contact with you. Stand by.”

“Charlie, you got a map of these tunnels?” Briggs asked.

“No way. From what I read they’re constantly digging new ones while the others cave in. Be safe in there!”

The gunfire had brought the mining company bosses out of their trailers, and Fisher tossed a look back at those men before he and Briggs passed into the cold darkness, their boots crunching loudly across the thick gravel bed.

They tugged down their trifocals and activated their night vision. Fisher’s loadout for this operation included an assortment of less-than-lethal weapons, most notably a tactical crossbow he’d been fielding, along with a quiver of sticky shocker darts. The darts were, in effect, cordless Tasers that delivered enough current to stun an opponent. He chose to bring them now because it’d be less than polite to kill Kasperov’s bodyguards — especially when they were trying to persuade the man to come home with them.

For his part Anatoly had no intention of being shocked and had lengthened his lead. He was already out of sight, having run straight down the first shaft for about ten meters, then he’d made a sharp left turn and was gone. He’d knocked over one miner who was coming outside and stolen the helmet of another because he needed the man’s light to navigate his way through the otherwise dark maze.

The tunnel was barely two meters high, about three wide, sans any reinforcements near the entrance. The miners’ battery-powered carts and shuttles had worn deep grooves in the floor, and Fisher dropped into one of those ruts, leading Briggs down the first shaft toward the connecting tunnel.

With the shadows peeled back by their night vision, and their breaths trailing thick over their shoulders, Fisher picked up the pace, with Briggs repeatedly checking their six o’clock for that tail.

A muted roll of explosions from somewhere on the other side of the mountain sent a wavering bass note up through their legs, followed by clouds of dust swirling down from the ceiling. The musky scent near the entrance had given way to something colder, dryer, like the air inside that old meat locker in Vilcha.

With a start, Fisher slowed as a golf-cart-like shuttle came humming around a corner, straight toward them. The miner at the wheel was already waving his fist and hollering in Spanish about no one being in the tunnels, but Fisher and Briggs hit the wall and raced past him. The shaft grew a bit more narrow, the support beams brushing their shoulders before the tunnel emptied into a much wider chamber at least ten meters across where blasting had left ragged scars across the rock.

They had the span of two seconds to take in the view before a wink of muzzle fire lit near the far exit, followed a millisecond later by the pistol’s report, the cracks echoing so loudly that Fisher’s ears stung as he hit the ground.

Grim’s voice crackled in his subdermal, the words garbled, no comm operation down here, as he suspected. Not much to tell her, though. We’re pinned down, about to die. As usual.

Fisher propped up on his elbows and steadied the crossbow, but by the time he’d lined up the shot, Anatoly had already vanished down the next shaft.

This time Briggs was on his feet first and Fisher pulled up the rear, dropping in behind the young man, fighting to keep up. They swept through the chamber and descended into the next passageway at a sudden and nerve-racking thirty-degree angle, their boots threatening to give way. This was not part of the main shaft but some kind of a detour burrow that had been constructed around a tunnel to their right that had caved in.

For a second Fisher thought he heard rocks tumbling behind them. He swung around, then glanced up to the top of the tunnel. Shadows shifted on the ceiling.

“Sam, come on!” shouted Briggs. “I see him!”

Fisher turned back and charged in behind Briggs as the floor finally grew more level. Once more, concussive booms shook through the tunnel, these much more fierce, and Fisher realized that the tunnels had been evacuated for blasting, which would explain why they’d encountered so few miners. Despite the heavy wooden girders spanning the ceiling above, Fisher felt the walls shaking and closing in. Briggs began to slow and called back. “Not liking this, Sam.”

“Me, neither, but there he is!”

Anatoly appeared in a section of tunnel running perfectly straight for more than ten meters, his helmet light flickering like lightning.

He stopped short and turned back, with Briggs diving onto his chest and Fisher lunging ahead as the gunfire ricocheted off the walls and ceiling.

“Hold your fire!” Fisher screamed at the man in Russian. “We’re with you!”

The bodyguard wasn’t falling for a gambit that simple. He answered with another round that echoed away.

Fisher managed to roll and come up with the crossbow, cutting loose with a bolt that arced straight down the tunnel and collided with the wall not a second after Anatoly rolled away. Briggs was there first, scooping up the bolt and tossing it back to Fisher even as they rounded the next corner.

Barely three breaths later, they came into an oval-shaped antechamber broadening toward a brightly lit cavern, the largest subterranean area they’d encountered thus far, the ceiling soaring some six meters, the place at least twice as wide. Electrical cables snaked along the walls to power the bright lights festooned across the ceiling, and below, along the far wall, lay piles of rock and gravel that rose above their heads, blown free in the days prior and waiting for the miners’ picks, axes, and shovels.

Another explosion rattled the overhead lights, and Fisher was reminded of a saying the miners had from the intel docs: “Al labor me voy, no sé si volveré,” which translated to “Off to work I go, I don’t know if I’ll make it back.” He certainly shared that sentiment.

Briggs led him through the chamber, keeping tight to the piles of rock—

But before they could reach the next exit with its steel-reinforced crossbeams and girders, the crack of Anatoly’s pistol resounded from ahead… followed immediately by some lower-pitched rifle fire from behind.

“What the hell?” cried Briggs, ducking behind two boulders that had split like arrowheads. Fisher peered out from behind the rock, magnified the view, and saw two mining company security guards dropping to cover on the opposite side of the chamber.

He shared that news with Briggs, then gave another hand signal, indicating they should head around the piles of rock and advance on the exit from the left flank.

Footfalls behind sent Fisher whirling around.

Both guards had broken from cover and were hightailing it straight for them.

Fisher had the crossbow up and his first bolt in the air before he could take another breath.

Even as that bolt struck the lead guard squarely in the chest, Fisher was already reloading the weapon.

As guard number one wailed in agony, dropped to his knees, then tried to reach up and pry free the shocker from his body, Fisher cut loose the second bolt, dodging from the incoming fire as the sticky shocker thumped on number two’s chest, a bit lower but still a good hit almost center mass.

Their cursing in Spanish and wailing sounded strangely medieval and cued Briggs to take off, with Fisher tight on his heels, repressing a grin over his counterattack. Even suppressed weapons made a significant and audible clicking, especially as you moved into the larger calibers, but the crossbow’s string was whisper quiet. Old guys rule and old-school wins again.

By the time they reached the exit, they could hear shouting, muddled at first, then growing louder behind them. They raced into the next shaft and aimed for a faint glow bobbing on the dusty air like a channel marker.

“This bastard can run,” said Briggs.

“They’ve been up here longer than us. They’re used to the altitude,” said Fisher, stealing his next breath.

Two more shots rang out, but they originated ahead and weren’t directed at Fisher and Briggs. Had Anatoly just engaged more security men? Fisher hoped so. That’d slow him down.

The tunnel began jogging lazily to the left, and then, off to their right, they spotted another mining shuttle.

They slowed, and Briggs cursed as they took in Anatoly’s handiwork:

One man was slumped over the wheel, the other lay beside his shovel with a gunshot wound in his neck. He clutched the wound and reached out toward them, then began pointing at an open cardboard box beside their cart. The box was labeled DINAMITA EXPLOSIVO with triangular warning symbols. Several bundles remained, but the man was trying to indicate something else that dawned on Fisher.

He opened his mouth to curse.

But he never finished.

The explosion ahead thundered so loudly and the concussion came so powerfully that Fisher and Briggs were blown flat onto their backs, the ground quaking, sharp-edged debris blasting through the tunnel.

There might’ve been a roar of flames, he wasn’t sure, but a heat wave passed over him, followed by clouds of choking black smoke that had him tucking his face into his parka.

“Keep down,” he told Briggs, who was right beside him, writhing and offering up more strings of epithets.

Fisher’s ears rang as the hailstorm of rock rained down on them, his pulse quickening over thoughts that at any second the entire tunnel would collapse.

Still covering his mouth and nose, he forced his head up and hazarded a look through his trifocals. Bad idea. His worst fears were coming true.

The side wall about five meters away began to collapse, splintering apart as though a demon were kicking his way through from the other side. The ceiling buckled and finally succumbed to all the force, the tunnel filling up with massive pieces of shale haloed in gravel and swelling dust.

“Get up!” he cried to Briggs. “We’ll be cut off!”

Briggs rose beside Fisher, coughing, and they pushed through the billowing dust, their goggles penetrating the veils until they reached the pile of rubble.

While Fisher expected the worst, he mounted the first pile of rubble, picking his way carefully across it as the timbers above creaked and more dust swirled down, making him feel as though he were shifting through an hourglass.

With a shudder of hope, he found an opening barely wide enough to squeeze through. He handed his crossbow and quiver to Briggs, pulled himself about two meters through it, then reached back and accepted the weapons. Briggs pulled himself through, and Fisher helped him down. Small miracle. They’d bridged the tunnel collapse.

Yet they both coughed even more now, and the air seemed much thinner.

“I’m getting a headache,” said Briggs.

“Let’s go,” Fisher urged him, feeling his own head rage with drummers and cymbal crashers.

Briggs took a few steps forward, then thrust out his hand for balance, barely finding the wall before he fell. “Dizzy, too.”

Intel on the mine said that symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning included headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion — all from an odorless, colorless gas, a silent and elusive killer, the chemical version of one Sam Fisher.

“We need to get out of here,” he cried. “Come on, run!”

They started forward, but not five steps later the ground quaked again.

Gasping, Fisher turned his gaze up to the ceiling, where a crack had opened and began splintering into more cracks, the webs threatening to pry apart the crossbars and buckle the supporting girders to their left and right.

The first explosion must’ve weakened the tunnel in this section. Fisher was no engineer, no seasoned miner, but he determined that if they didn’t reach the far end of the tunnel in the next few breaths, their deaths, wakes, funerals, and burials would occur with drive-thru expediency. At least Grim would save a few bucks on the flowers.

Briggs picked up the pace as shards of rock began plummeting behind them. The ceiling began to give way in a timpani roll of thunder that Fisher imagined would consume them whole.

Helmet lights were flashing at the far end, and Fisher picked up the pace, struggling up beside Briggs, who was beginning to falter.

“Almost there,” he urged the man, his voice strangely thin and unrecognizable.

With a terrific boom the rest of the ceiling collapsed, spitting forward a huge dust cloud that knocked both of them down onto their hands and knees.

The ground shook again, and Fisher tucked his face back into his parka for a few breaths.

When he glanced over at Briggs, the man was lying flat on his belly and unconscious. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. His cheeks caved in.

There were few feelings in the world that Fisher despised more than helplessness. Being in control gave him a sense of peace and security, a sense of place and purpose.

But damn it, they couldn’t fight if they couldn’t breathe. He fell forward, smiting a fist on the ground.

No, this couldn’t be it. Not here, not now, not like this.

He thought he would vomit, but the darkness came first.

“What are you afraid of?”

Fisher wasn’t sure who was asking the question, but the voice sounded strangely like his own.

“I’m afraid that everything I’ve done with my life will mean nothing. I’m afraid of losing my daughter again. I’m afraid of being a terrible father.”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

“What about death?”

“No. I’m only afraid for my friends… for Sarah.”

The sun was in his eyes, and he was no longer pinned against a mantle of stars. The world spun chaotically for a moment, and his head throbbed.

He gasped and bolted upright, his senses failing him at first. Then… the nausea returned.

Opening his eyes to slits, he stared at the woman floating over him, her face out of focus then slowly, inevitably, growing distinct. Wild black hair. Chapped lips.

The Snow Maiden.