Douglas Preston - Riptide

St. John's voice stopped, and the group remained silent. Hatch looked at Neidelman: a slight tremor had taken hold of his jaw, and his eyes were narrow.

"So you see," St. John began again. "It appears the key to the Water Pit is that there is no key. It must have been Macallan's ultimate revenge against the pirate who kidnapped him: to bury his treasure in such a way that it could never be retrieved. Not by Ockham. Not by anyone."

"The point is," Streeter's voice broke in, "it's not safe for anyone to remain in the Pit until we've deciphered the rest of the code and analyzed this further. It sounds like Macallan has some kind of trap in store for anyone who—"

"Nonsense," interrupted Neidelman. "The danger he's talking about is the booby trap that killed Simon Rutter two hundred years ago and flooded the Pit."

There was another long silence. Hatch looked at Bonterre, then at Neidelman. The Captain's face remained stony, his lips compressed and set.

"Captain?" Streeter's voice came again. "St. John doesn't quite read it that way—"

"This is moot," the Captain snapped. "We're almost done here, just another couple of sensors to set and calibrate, and then we'll come up."

"I think St. John has a point," Hatch said. "We should cut this short, at least until we figure out what Macallan was talking about."

"I agree," said Bonterre.

Neidelman's glance flitted between them. "Absolutely not," he said brusquely. He closed his satchel, then looked upward. "Mr. Wopner?"

The programmer was not on the ladder, and there was no response on the intercom. "He must be down the passage, calibrating the sensors we placed inside the vault," Bonterre said.

"Then let's call him back. Christ, he probably switched off his transmitter." The Captain began to ascend the ladder, brushing past them as he climbed. The ladder trembled slightly under his weight.

Just a moment, Hatch thought. That isn't right. The ladder array had never trembled before.

Then it came again: a slight shudder, barely perceptible beneath his fingertips and under his instep. He looked questioningly at Bonterre, and in her glance he could see that she felt it, too.

"Dr. Magnusen, report!" Neidelman spoke sharply. "What's going on?"

"All normal, Captain."

"Rankin?" Neidelman asked into his radio.

"The scopes show a seismic event, but it's threshold, way below the danger level. Is there a problem?"

"We're feeling a—" the Captain began. Suddenly, a violent shudder twisted the ladder, shaking Hatch's hold. One of his feet skidded from the rung and he grabbed desperately to maintain his purchase. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bonterre clinging tightly to the array. There was another jolt, then another. Above him, Hatch could hear a distant crumbling sound, like earth collapsing, and a low, barely audible rumble.

"What the hell's happening?" the Captain shouted.

"Sir!" came Magnusen's voice. "We're picking up ground displacement somewhere in your vicinity."

"Okay, you win. Let's find Wopner and get the hell out."

They scrambled up the ladder to the hundred-foot platform, the entrance to the vaulted tunnel opening above them, a yawning mouth of rotting wood and earth. Neidelman peered inside, lancing his beam into the dampness. "Wopner? Get a move on. We're aborting the mission."

As Hatch listened, only silence and a faint, chill wind emanated from the tunnel.

Neidelman continued looking into the tunnel for a moment. Then he glanced first at Bonterre, then at Hatch, his eyes narrowing.

Suddenly, as if galvanized by the same thought, all three unfastened their karabiners and scrambled toward the mouth of the shaft, stepping inside and running down the tunnel. Hatch didn't remember the low passage being this dark, somehow, or this claustrophobic. The very air felt different.

Then the tunnel opened into a small stone chamber. The two piezoelectric sensors lay on opposite walls of the chamber. Beside one was Wopner's palmtop computer, its RF antenna bent at a crazy angle. Tendrils of mist drifted in the chamber, lanced by their headlamps.

"Wopner?" Neidelman called, swinging his light around. "Where the hell did he go?"

Hatch stepped past Neidelman and saw something that sent a chill through his vitals. One of the massive groined stones of the ceiling had swung down against the chamber wall. Hatch could see a gap in the ceiling, like a missing tooth, from which damp brown earth dribbled. At floor level, where the base of the fallen ceiling stone pressed against the wall, he could make out something black and white. Moving closer, Hatch realized that it was the canvas-and-rubber toe of Wopner's sneaker, peeping out between the slabs. In a moment he was beside it, shining his light between the two faces of stone.

"Oh, my God," Neidelman said behind him.

Hatch could see Wopner, pressed tightly between the two granite faces, one arm pinned to his side, the other canted upward at a crazy angle. His helmeted head was turned to the side, gazing out at Hatch. His eyes were wide and full of tears.

Wopner's mouth worked silently as Hatch stared. Please . . .

"Kerry, try to stay calm," Hatch said, running his beam of light up and down the narrow crack while fumbling with his intercom. My God, it's amazing he's still alive. "Streeter!" he called into the intercom. "We have a man trapped between two slabs of rock. Get some hydraulic jacks down here. I want oxygen, blood, and saline."

He turned back to Wopner. "Kerry, we're going to jack these slabs apart and get you out very, very soon. Right now, I need to know where you hurt."

Again the mouth worked. "I don't know." The response came as a high-pitched exhalation. "I feel ... all broken up inside." The voice was oddly slurred, and Hatch realized that the programmer was barely able to move his jaw to speak. Hatch stepped away from the wall face and tore open his medical kit, pulling out a hypo and sucking up two ccs of morphine. He wormed his hand between the rough slabs of stone and sank the needle into Wopner's shoulder. There was no flinching, no reaction, nothing.

"How is he?" Neidelman said, hovering behind him, the air clouding from his breath.

"Get back, for Chrissakes!" Hatch said. "He needs air." Now he found himself panting, drawing more and more air into his own lungs, feeling increasingly short of breath.

"Be careful!" Bonterre said from behind him. "There may be more than one trap."

A trap? It had not occurred to Hatch that this was a trap. But then, how else could that huge ceiling stone swing down so neatly . . . He tried to reach Wopner's hand to take his pulse, but it was bent too far out of reach.

"Jacks, oxygen, and plasma on their way," came Streeter's voice over the intercom.

"Good. Have a collapsible stretcher lowered to the hundred-foot platform, with inflatable splints and a cervical collar—"

"Water . . ." Wopner breathed.

Bonterre stepped up and handed Hatch a canteen. He reached into the crack, angling a thin stream of water from the canteen down the side of Wopner's helmet. As the tongue fluttered out to catch the water, Hatch could see that it was blue-black, droplets of blood glistening along its length. Jesus, where the hell are those jacks . . .

"Help me, please!" Wopner rattled, and coughed quietly. A few flecks of blood appeared on his chin.

Punctured lung, thought Hatch. "Hold on, Kerry, just a couple of minutes," he said as soothingly as he could, and then turned away and stabbed savagely at his intercom. "Streeter," he hissed, "the jacks, goddamnit, where are the jacks?" He felt a wave of dizziness, and gulped more air.

"Air quality is moving into the red zone," Neidelman said quietly.

"Lowering now," said Streeter amid a burst of static.