Riptide

Chapter 54

Hatch lay in the bottom of the small stone well, half conscious, as if waking out of a dream. Above, he could hear rattling as Streeter drew the collapsible ladder up the shaft. The dim beam of a flashlight briefly illuminated the groined ceiling, forty feet overhead, of the chamber where Wopner had died. Then there was the sound of Streeter's heavy boots walking back down the narrow tunnel toward the ladder array, dying along with the light until silence and blackness fell upon him together.

For several minutes, he lay on the cold, damp stone. Perhaps it was a dream, after all, one of those ugly claustrophobic nightmares one woke from with infinite relief. Then he sat up, hitting his head on the low overhang of ceiling. It was now pitch black, without even the faintest glimmer of light.

He lay down again. Streeter had left him without a word. The team leader hadn't even bothered to bind his arms. Perhaps it was to make his death look less suspicious. But deep down, Hatch knew that Streeter had no need to tie him up. There was no way he could climb thirty feet up the slippery sides of the well back to the vaulted room. Two hours, maybe three, and the treasure would be out of the pit and safely stowed aboard the Griffin. Then Neidelman would simply collapse the already weakened cofferdam. Water would rush back to flood the Pit, the tunnels and chambers . . . The well. . .

Suddenly, Hatch felt his muscles spasm as he struggled to keep panic from washing his reason away. The effort exhausted him and he lay gasping, trying to slow his pounding heart. The air in the hole was poor, and getting poorer.

He rolled away from the overhanging ceiling toward the base of the well, where he could sit up and rest his back against the cold stone. He stared upward again, straining for the least hint of light. But there was only blackness. He considered standing, but the very thought was exhausting and he lay down again. As he did so, his right hand slipped into a narrow cavity beneath a heavy stone slab, closing over something cold, wet, and rigid.

And then the full horror of where he was flooded through him, startling him to full consciousness. He released Johnny's bone with an involuntary sob.

The air was cold, with a suffocating clamminess that cut through his soggy clothes and felt raw and thick in his throat. He remembered that heavier gases, like carbon dioxide, sank. Perhaps the air would be a little better if he stood up.

He forced himself to his feet, hands against the side of the well for balance. Gradually, the buzzing in his head began to fade. He tried to tell himself that nothing was hopeless. He would systematically explore the cavity with his hands, every square inch. Johnny's bones had ended up in this chamber, victim of Macallan's fiendish engine of death. That meant the shore tunnel had to be nearby. If he could figure out how Macallan's trap worked, maybe he could find a way to escape.

Pressing his face against the slimy stone wall, he reached his hands as high above his head as he could. This was where he would start, working his way down the stones systematically, quadrant by quadrant, until he had examined every reachable square inch of the chamber. Lightly, like a blind man's, his fingers explored every crevasse, every protuberance, probing, tapping, listening for a hollow sound.

The first quadrant yielded nothing but smooth stones, well mortised. Lowering his hands, he went on to the next section. Five minutes went by, then ten, and then he was on his hands and knees, feeling around the floor of the chamber.

He had scanned every reachable spot in the well—except the narrow crack along the floor into which his brother's bones had been pressed—and there was nothing, not a thing, that indicated an avenue of escape.

Breathing choppily, snorting the stale air into his nostrils, Hatch reached gingerly beneath the heavy stone. His hands encountered the rotting baseball cap on his brother's skull. He jerked back, heart thudding in his chest.

He stood again, face upward, striving for a breath of sweeter air. Johnny would expect him to do his goddamnedest to survive.

He yelled out for help; first tentatively, then more loudly. He tried to forget how empty the island was; tried to forget Neidelman, preparing to open the casket; tried to forget everything except his cries for help.

As he yelled, pausing now and again for breath, some last hidden chink of armor loosened within him. The bad air, the blackness, the peculiar smell of the Pit, the proximity of Johnny, all conspired to tear away the one remaining veil from that terrible day, thirty-one years before. Suddenly, the buried memories burned their way back, and he was once again on his hands and knees, match sputtering in his hand, as a strange dragging sound took Johnny away from him forever.

And there, in the thick dark, Hatch's yells turned to screams.