Nevada Barr - Blind Descent

Laymon was talking, low, logical, intense. It was by Curt that the heat had been generated.

"She broke it all right, and maybe her collarbone as well. I left her with plenty of water and batteries. Anna will be better served by a quick rescue than by you getting yourself hurt and adding to the rescue effort."

George Laymon was one hell of an actor. Many people the Screen Actor's Guild would never hear of were brilliant practitioners of the art. Without lights and cameras, it was called lying. Laymon's lie was superb. He captured all the elements: drama, pathos, credibility, and tied it up neatly with an appeal to the listeners' better selves.

Anna had pushed on alone. An irresponsible act. Anna had injured herself and so, by her stupidity, would prove costly and dangerous to those who must bail her out.

Somebody to blame. Most people love to believe the worst of others. The rest worry, deep down, that it might be true.

Laymon had found her, made her comfortable, traveled out at a grueling pace to procure her safety. A hero. But only enough heroics to enhance credibility: he'd not added any spectacular flourishes to spark jealousy in other men or distrust in women.

And the final implication that whosoever disagreed with him was no better than, and would suffer the same fate as, the foolish and willful Anna.

"I don't like the idea of leaving her," Curt said. Anna was touched by his obstinacy. Given a performance the caliber of Laymon's, she'd have been the first in the audience on her feet yelling "Bravo!"

"I don't like it much either," Laymon said with just the right touch of sadness. "But it won't be for long. Oscar and the others went on down the North Rift in case that was the direction you two had taken. We're meeting this side of Glacier Bay in a couple of hours. We'll get Mrs. McCarty out of here. Oscar can go out with her and set the carry-out team in motion. You and I will come back to where Anna's resting. She shouldn't be alone for more than five hours. Six at the outside. She's prepared for it. I told her to meditate on her sins. This whole escapade is out of line. If I have any say about it, she will be billed for her rescue. The taxpayer shouldn't have to carry the burden for criminal negligence."

That last bit, reluctant sympathy tinged with righteous indignation, was stellar. Anna wondered if he intended to use his ill-gotten gains to finance a career in state politics. New Mexico wouldn't have a chance. In other circumstances, she would have voted for him herself and bragged to her friends of having met him once.

"Who all is with Oscar?" Curt asked. A barely discernible insecurity tinged the words. Anna heard it and had no doubt that Laymon did. It was the first step in capitulation. Anna was relieved. A falling-out now would end with two bullets and two more dead bodies. Without any warning, Curt's musculature and youthful reflexes would not save him.

"A can of worms," Laymon said regretfully. The big head nodded in a halo of light. "Anna told me her suspicions regarding Oscar. Frankly, I'm not sold. But we'll look into Oscar's activities. Send a team into Tinker's to find this mysterious secret. That's all I can do. And that's for later. Right now we need to concentrate on getting Mrs. McCarty home safe and getting a crew in to bring Anna out. God, what a day. I hope I don't have another like it anytime real soon."

Throughout this performance Sondra was unresponsive. Occasionally her light moved from face to face as the players entered the game, but always a beat or two late. Over the years Anna had been exposed to a number of mental aberrations fomented by stress and exposure. Burial alive was beyond her experience. Sondra's body was tight, muscles squeezing on bone, yet her movements were languid, as if she were in viscous liquid. She spoke now, and her voice projected the same lackluster retardation. It took Anna a second to realize what was missing: vibrato. Her voice was absolutely flat, like that of the most skilled medieval chanters. "I have to go to the bathroom." The words were as dead as a computer-generated warning. She looked only at Curt. For her, Laymon hardly existed, a mere ripple on the surface of her consciousness.

"You can go," Curt said. "It's all right." Patience blotted out the confusion he must have been feeling, and Anna was proud. He was what her mother would have called a natural husbandman. He took care of things: cars, cats, people, and did it in such a way it went unnoticed and unsung.

Sondra stared through him, a pained expression lending a spark of animation to her dirty face. All of them were so streaked with mud they resembled commandos in a B movie. Half a minute ticked by. By the spill of light from the lamp, Anna studied Laymon. The audience otherwise occupied, he'd dropped out of character. Behind eyes dark with shadow, she could sense an exceedingly busy mind. Curt and Sondra had to be disposed of.

His hand stole toward his pack. Anna pulled her feet under her to spring. Walled in stone, the only exit a one-hundred-foot drop, people would die regardless of the action taken. Shouting would only precipitate a massacre. Crouched on legs weak with fatigue, she hoped she had one good pounce left.

Curt broke the silence. "Do you want me to go with you?" he asked Sondra.

"I'm embarrassed." Same lifeless tone. Considering the content of the words, it was chilling. An emotional declaration made without emotion.

"Tell you what," Curt said. "I'll go with you. Then you go behind a rock or whatever, and I'll hold on to one end of Anna's hanky, and you hold the other, I'll be there but I won't be there, if you see what I mean."

Sondra thought it over, then nodded.

"Bottle or bag?" Curt asked in the offhand manner of a kindergarten teacher asking, "Number one or number two?"

"Bag," Sondra mumbled.

Good. They'd be a while. It would give Anna a few precious moments to figure out what in the hell she was going to do.

Murmuring banal encouragements, Curt followed Sondra, stoop-walking out the passage Anna'd crawled in. When they'd gone, their words an indistinguishable mutter, Laymon turned on his lamp and pulled his pack between his knees. As he reached in, Anna decided not to leap. Whether the decision was spawned by cowardice or good judgment, she would never know. She knew only that her little weight and exhausted efforts against his considerable bulk would end badly. Before she had time to consider whether the sacrifice could have saved Curt, Laymon drew his hand from the pack. He held not the anticipated handgun but a long, narrow package wrapped in brown waxy paper, and a coil of coarse gray wire.

Dynamite.

Anna found herself remembering the pistol with something akin to affection.

Meticulously, Laymon checked the sticks of explosives and the fuse wire, stowed them back in the pack, and began removing climbing gear. There was no need to shoot anyone. Laymon was the de facto head of the group. Curt and Sondra would do as they were told. Curt, Anna guessed, was not entirely comfortable with the way things were shaping up. Discomfort and suspicions would not be enough to start a mutiny. Not where there was a crazy woman to be looked after.

Laymon would descend first, then the weak link, Sondra, then Curt, taking up the guard position. They would cross the Lounge. Laymon would climb the ninety feet to the narrow aperture that led to Razor Blade Run and on to Lake Rapunzel. In less time than it would take to tell it, he could cut the line, leaving Curt and Sondra marooned in a pit deeper and darker than Edgar Allan Poe ever imagined.

Safe from pursuit and unseemly interference, Laymon would continue on to Katie's Pigtail. In the slide area he would lay the dynamite and a good, long fuse. He'd be well clear when it closed off this wing of Lechuguilla permanently. Evidence and witnesses buried. The rockfall written off to natural causes. Laymon hailed as an insightful manager for closing an unstable part of the cavern before anyone else got hurt.