Minotaur

28

Sticking your head down an escape tunnel that has just been used by a paranoid ex-GRU agent is never a good idea.

Chapel did it anyway. He peered down into utter darkness. Judging by the movement of the air around his face he could only guess the tunnel went down for some distance. He could hear nothing—not the sound of Favorov climbing down the rungs, not even breathing.

The worst idea Chapel could think of was climbing down after his quarry. No. Scratch that. He could think of one equally terrible idea—going back out into the hallway and facing nearly a dozen armed guards. Either way he was very, very likely to get shot. He hadn’t forgotten he was seriously wounded, either. Adrenaline and determination had carried him so far but he was going to need to collapse, soon, and probably sleep for days.

He had no choice, though. Favorov had betrayed his adopted country, the country Chapel had sworn to defend.

The tunnel opening was narrow enough he would need to squeeze through, scraping his shoulders in the process. The remaining AK-47 he carried was too unwieldy to take with him, so he just threw it away. He shoved his various pistols into his pockets as best he could, then shoved his legs into the opening and started to wriggle in.

He could hear people in the hallway. A lot of them. They would storm the master bedroom in short order. He doubted any of them knew about the tunnel. As he slipped down onto the top rungs of the ladder he pulled the cabinet door closed behind him, leaving himself in pitch darkness. He would just have to climb down by feel.

“Angel,” he whispered. “Angel, can you hear me?”

There was no response. Her signal was blocked by the walls of the mansion, just as Favorov’s heat signature had been blocked when he seemed to disappear. He was on his own.

He climbed down for what seemed far too long, until he was sure he was below the level of the house and even the cellar where Favorov had kept his rifles. He heard nothing from above or below. Hand over hand, foot over foot, he kept going down, wondering the whole time if Favorov had been smart enough to leave booby traps behind to dissuade any pursuit. Hopefully the Russian hadn’t had time to arm anything particularly nasty.

As he climbed in the darkness his eyes were useless and his other senses had to fill in. He could hear nothing but the sound of his own feet on the rungs, feel little except how close the tunnel walls were on every side of him. He could feel the wall behind him scraping against his back and he knew the tunnel had been carved out of the bedrock under the house.

Visions of an entire subterranean labyrinth down there, of some kind of medieval dungeon packed with horrors and the skeletons of Favorov’s previous enemies came to him, almost making Chapel smile. Most likely he would reach the bottom and find nothing but a panic room, or a fallout shelter—and Favorov waiting for him, of course, armed to the teeth.

Except that didn’t make sense. Why would Favorov retreat to a spider hole with no way out? The man was far too smart for that.

Then Chapel reached the bottom—his foot striking solid ground beneath him, the wall behind him opening out into a larger space. He dropped down from the ladder and twisted around, already reaching for a pistol, senses tuned to any stimulation at all. Still, he heard nothing. But one thing did reach him—he smelled the ocean.

“No,” he whispered, because he knew, finally, where the tunnel led.