The Hunt Club

36

From the time Hunt hit the gas on the downhill, it took the Cooper seventy-eight seconds to get to the driveway turnoff up to Manion Cellars. After the right turn, Hunt doused his headlights, took his Vipers from Juhle, and pulled them down over his eyes into place. Getting his bearings with the night-vision lenses, he drove slowly and hoped quietly up toward the gate that crossed the driveway.

He whispered into his walkie-talkie. "Craig? You got her?"

"No. But there's an old barn down to my right, where there might have been a light when I first got here. But it's gone now."

"Where are you?"

"Pretty far up, still. I didn't want her to hear our chatter. I'm by the road that runs around the back of the hill, where the caves are."

Juhle said to make sure whether he was above or below the barn, and Craig said he was still above.

Hunt turned in his seat. "Where's this barn?" he asked Juhle. "You know it?"

"Yeah. If you go up in front of the new caves, it's in a little hollow on the right. Lots of junk laying on the ground all around it."

Back into his walkie-talkie. "Craig. Where's Tam?"

"Up above with the binoculars. How about you?"

"Me and Dev are just at the gate."

"You guys ought to split up."

"That's the call. I'm going to send Dev around up the trail you're on." Hunt had seen this clearly enough from the base camp. The unpaved road wound around behind the base of the promontory and continued up until it disappeared behind the château. "You start coming down slow. He'll be coming up. Meet up in back of the barn and wait there. If she comes out, don't let her see you, and don't stop her. Let her do whatever she's doing."

"What about you?"

"I'm going past the caves in the front."

"So she's in the barn?"

"I guess that's the working theory. Now we've got to shut down the chatter."

"Okay," Craig whispered. "I'm out."

Hunt clicked off his walkie-talkie and dropped it on the floor beneath his feet. Shading the light with his hand, he flicked on and off his small, industrial-strength flashlight, and put it in his jacket pocket. Both men in the car reached for their door handles, but Hunt grabbed Juhle by the sleeve, stopping him. "Dead quiet, Dev. Easy open, no close. Let it happen. And if this goes south, take off immediately. You were never here."

Hunt crossed around his car and, crouching, followed Juhle for the first fifty feet or so, until he came to the trail on his left that led up to the new caves from the tasting room below. As soon as he left the pavement of the road, he became aware of the gravel crunching under his feet, each footfall magnified in the stillness of the night.

He had to slow to a near crawl, each step now an eternity. Clearing the first rise, he came out into the relative openness of the entrance to the cave area. The staff had closed the huge doors of the caves for the night, but Hunt double-checked each one and found them all to be solid and immovable. When he cleared the entrance to the fourth cave, he recrossed the path to get a better angle on the hollow that enclosed the barn.

Juhle was right. The foreground was littered with tools and equipment. Without the night-vision goggles, Hunt stood no chance at all of getting to the barn, much less inside it, without making a racket. Even with them, though, he would be picking over the ground by inches.

In the eerie green glow, he took a step and then another, trying to keep one eye on the obstacles ahead and the other on the barn, for any sign of light from within. Between each step, he would stop and wait, listening. He heard no sound.

It was a large, two-story, three-sided structure, built into the westernmost wall of the promontory. He'd made it through the no-man's-land out front, and now directly in front of him, the door to the barn hung halfway open. If she were behind it, waiting for him…

He could not let himself think about that.

He listened. He listened.

He drew his gun.

Stepping through the opening into the barn, he ducked and whirled around. Something moved in the periphery of his vision, and he jerked back to see a large green-glowing rat scurrying into a pile of straw and out of sight. Taking a shaken breath, he turned again, all the way around now. Six stalls lined the side wall, a partially open tack room stood in the corner off the back door.

And then he saw it.

In the promontory wall, another door to apparently another cave. Of course, he thought. How had it never occurred to him before? If there were new caves, then it stood to reason there must have been old caves.

Or at least one old cave, now abandoned, unvisited, locked up.

He crossed to the door, which was in fact not locked up like the others, but stood a few inches ajar. A faint cold breeze emanated from within, and Hunt pulled the massive door-it was at least four inches thick-a few more inches toward him.

He stepped inside.

Even with the night-vision goggles, it was difficult to see-the glasses didn't shed any light of their own, only magnified the ambient light that was present, and here in the cave there wasn't much to magnify. He put his hand to the wall and took another tentative, silent step, and another. After about thirty steps, the cave bent to the left slightly, then sharply back to the right. He had to negotiate several old wine barrels that lay on their sides against the walls of the cave. Hunt continued pushing himself forward until he could go no farther.

The night goggles were useless this far in. There was no light left to magnify. Hunt lifted the goggles and turned on his flashlight, surprised to encounter another door completely blocking his way, seemingly built into the stone walls of the cave. Behind him, in the vast echoing darkness, an unmistakable creak resounded in the confines of the cave. He barely had time to begin to turn when the creak was followed by a muted and terrifying percussion.

It could have been nothing other than what it was-the door to the cave slamming shut.

Though it wasn't loud, it was the first sound Andrea Parisi had heard since the solid door had closed behind her however many days ago. She was lying on her back on the stone just inside the door-in fact her side was pressed up against the door. She was nearly paralyzed by hunger and thirst, and at first, she imagined that she'd dreamed the sound in her present altered state. Most of what was left of her mind had come to believe that she was not really there anymore. None of this was real, and even if it was, it could not go on for much longer. Perhaps she was already dead.

But there had been a definite sound. Close enough for her to hear it.

She tried to turn herself to the side, to face the door and call out, but her muscles wouldn't obey her to let her move at all, and her throat was so dry, it couldn't be coaxed into sound.

But if there had been a sound, that meant that someone might be out there. She might still be saved, still have a life before her.

She had to try again.

She tried to concentrate, fought to draw air into her dry and empty chest.

This time the sound, when it came from her, had no form. No words. An inchoate moan that dissipated almost as it sounded in her chill grave and left her exhausted, her throat burning.

And yet she gathered the last bit of reserve she could muster and threw it out again into the darkness that had become her world and her hell.

And there it was again! Without question, another sound through the door, and someone knocking on it. And her name!

Andrea.

From the bottom of a deep well, someone was calling her name.

Hunt had no time to give in to the terror that threatened to consume him. After all, he told himself, Craig, Juhle, and Tamara were close by, just outside on the property. But they all were waiting for his instructions and would be unlikely to move in after he had specifically instructed them to let Carol alone and let her lead them to Andrea.

Which she had done.

Even Juhle, he realized, would be reluctant to move at this point. Juhle did not know that Andrea was locked behind the second door in this cave-only Hunt knew that-and without knowing about Andrea, Juhle had no more cause to arrest Carol Manion than he'd had earlier in the day. To say nothing of the fact that Juhle had moved himself completely out of bounds by coming onto her property. He was, in fact, trespassing. If anyone connected him to any of the more unorthodox if not to say illegal elements of Hunt's plan, it would cost him not just this case, but his precious job.

Hunt had made his way back to the door at the cave's opening inside the barn to verify that the noise was what it had sounded like. Yes, that door to the outside was closed now. Locked, solid, immovable.

But then he'd returned to where he'd been, and through that second door had heard Andrea's strangled cry. Pounding at the unyielding door, he called out to answer her, but the sound seemed to be swallowed up by its own echo.

And after the one response, nothing.

He shone his flashlight again over the wood of the door. The faintness of the sound from the inside could only mean that the door was extremely thick. It was also framed with heavy beams, which in turn were set into seamless concrete, built into the cave walls.

Hunt sank to the floor and pounded over and over at the door, but the sound didn't carry at all. It was as if the door itself were made of solid rock. "Andrea!" he called again. "Andrea, can you hear me?"

Deafening silence.

"We're getting you out of here," he whispered.

The words themselves seemed to galvanize him. Getting to his feet, he held a hand up over his head, feeling for movement in the air. When he'd been standing out in the barn at the cave's entrance, he'd felt a distinct breeze coming from within the cavern. This could only mean that air was getting into the cave from the outside, from another way in.

Again he tried the door to the very inner chamber where Andrea was locked in, and again he couldn't budge it. Shining his light around the edges, he realized that the seal was at least nearly, or perhaps perfectly, hermetic. No air, or very little air-certainly not enough to cause a breeze-was coming through. This was not bad news. It meant that the moving air he'd felt at the mouth of the cave originated somewhere within his own chamber and not behind that door.

Hunt began walking back toward the front of the cave, shining his light on the walls and the roof, making sure he covered every inch of surface. With the door in the barn closed, there was no breeze blowing in the cave now, either. He tried to remember if he'd felt the source of the breeze as he'd made his way in while the front door had still been open, but he'd been concentrating on what might have been in front of him, on where he placed his feet, on who might have been waiting there in ambush.

The source of the breeze had never entered his consciousness.

Where the cave turned sharply left going back toward the entrance, he noticed a fissure high in the rock as it began to curve to form the roof. No more than eighteen inches at its widest point, and perhaps five feet from tapered end to tapered end, it disappeared into blackness. Standing directly under it, Hunt reached his hand up and strained to get some sense of fresh air coming in through it.

But he felt nothing.

From where Hunt stood below it, even standing across the cave by the opposite wall, he couldn't make out how far back the hole went. It might go all the way to the outside, it might gradually narrow to nothing, it might stop after three feet. There was no way to tell. And at first it wasn't clear why it would matter, anyway. Even if it did mark a possible opening to the outside, he estimated that the fissure itself was at least four feet above his extended reach.

It was impossible.

He kept on looking along the cave's walls, past the barrels, making it all the way to the front door again. That door, too, had been cleanly carved into the limestone. The narrow fissure, ten feet off the ground back where the cave hooked left, was the only possibility. There was no sign of any other outlet. He let himself down to the floor, his back against the door to the barn. Turning off his flashlight, he collected himself in the blackness and tried to concentrate.

And thought of the barrels.

Midway back again, and laying his flashlight on the ground, he dislodged one of the heavy empty barrels from its wooden rack and rolled it back to the spot underneath the fissure.

It wasn't going to be enough.

Hoisting himself up to stand on the barrel, he still could not reach the bottom edge of the crack in the limestone. He was short of it by a foot or more.

Getting down off the barrel, he retrieved his light, and shone it again into the opening, trying to get a better idea of how far it extended. He still couldn't see back into it more than a few feet. Changing his focus, he scanned the beam over the lower edge of the hole. Jagged, sharp-edged, and clearly defined, the ledge appeared to be a natural fault in the solid rock, but he knew that if he tried to jump and grab a handhold and it gave under his weight, or simply crumbled, he would be looking at, best case, a bad fall. Perhaps a broken bone or worse.

But there was no other choice.

He used his night goggles to prop the flashlight on the ground in such a way that its beam centered on the fissure's opening. Boosting himself back up onto the barrel, he studied the place where he'd have to grab, tried to visualize the next exertions-flush against the wall, pulling himself up enough to get his shoulders in, elbowing his way inside, swinging his feet up, hoping there was room to hold him. And that the fissure didn't end in another wall of rock, somewhere back in the heart of the promontory.

Thinking about it wasn't going to help.

He jumped.

Utter blackness.

Hunt should have brought his night goggles. Or his flashlight, although he had needed its beam to illuminate the fissure's mouth. He should have used his gun instead of the precious goggles to prop the light up; his useless gun now snug in its holster against his lower back.

He could do nothing but continue to crawl forward on his belly, inch by inch, feeling in front of him for the outcroppings in the narrow space that had twice already closed down enough over him to cut into his head; the liquid he felt now dripping down his forehead and into his blinded eyes tasted like blood. His hands, he knew, were shredded and bleeding, too.

Ahead of him the passage narrowed and narrowed some more. When he'd begun, there'd been enough clearance to pull himself along on his elbows, to kick with his knees as he'd learned in basic training. Now, though, after an interminable climb, he felt the walls closing in on both top and bottom-against his chest, nearly flush against his back, his gun catching with almost every movement. He couldn't even begin to turn over, wasn't sure if he could back up now if he wanted to. Pushing himself forward, arms outstretched, scrabbling with his feet, he found himself, finally, nearly wedged into the solid rock.

If it got any tighter, he couldn't go any farther in either direction. He'd already been crawling for many, many minutes, had covered at least a couple of hundred feet. If he got stuck, he would die here, buried in the mountain.

His arm now at full extension, he reached again in front of him, feeling for the stone above and below. His shoulders ground into the rock on both sides of this, his third and worst constriction.

But if he could force himself through it, it seemed to widen again on the other side. Top to bottom, side to side.

His bloody fingers grabbed at the stone. They tried to pull him forward, and the rock crumbled under his hands. Seeking some leverage from behind, he dug in his feet, forced a shoulder forward, gained all of an inch, no more. Finally, with an inhuman cry that he never heard, he pushed with everything he had and cleared the wedge.

Somewhere ahead of him, he caught the first faint scent of fresh air. He pulled himself forward toward it. Ahead the quality of the darkness seemed different. Focusing on that, he pulled again and felt the eroded earth give slightly around him. He saw a pinpoint of light and recognized it for what it was.

A star.