Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

“He’s already close. Follow my orders, Officer.”

Pendergast spoke with such command that Weeks jumped. “Yes, sir!” He crouched, aimed, and pulled both triggers.

The blast was deafening in the enclosed space. Pendergast’s light exposed a pall of glittering gypsum dust and, beyond, a great hole in the diaphanous stone. For a moment, nothing further happened. And then the curtain broke apart with a great crack, dropping to the floor and sending glittering crystal shards skidding everywhere. Beyond was another passageway, and beside it the narrow dark mouth of a pit. Pendergast rushed to the edge and shone his light within. Weeks came up behind and peered cautiously over his shoulder.

There, at the bottom, he saw a filthy girl with purple hair, staring up with a muddy, blood-smeared, terrified face.

Pendergast turned to look at him. “You’re the dog-handler. You must have a spare leash in your pack.”

“Yes—”

He found himself, in one swift movement, relieved of his pack. Pendergast reached inside and pulled out the spare, a length of chain with a leather strap. Then he fixed the chain end around the base of a limestone column and threw the other end into the pit.

From below came the clank of the chain, the sobbing of the girl.

Weeks peered over again. “It doesn’t reach,” he said.

Pendergast ignored this. “Cover us. If he comes, shoot to kill.”

“Now, wait just a minute—”

But Pendergast had already disappeared over the edge. Weeks hovered at the top, one eye on the passageway and the other on the pit. The FBI agent clambered down the chain with remarkable agility, and when he reached the end he hung from it, free arm down, offering the girl his hand. She reached for it, swiped, missed.

“Stand aside, Miss Swanson,” Pendergast said to the girl. “Weeks, nudge some of those boulders into the pit. Try not to brain one of us. And keep a careful eye on that tunnel.”

With his foot, Weeks pushed half a dozen large rocks over the lip of the pit. Then he watched as the girl, who understood immediately, stacked them against the wall and clambered to the top. Now Pendergast was able to grab her hand. He hoisted her upward, planted his free arm beneath her shoulders, brought the hand back to the chain, and slowly climbed up the stone face. Pendergast looked scrawny enough, but the strength it took to climb up that chain while carrying another person was remarkable.

They emerged from the pit and the girl immediately fell to her knees, clinging to Pendergast, sobbing violently.

Pendergast knelt beside her. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he gently wiped the blood and dirt from the girl’s face. Then he examined her wrists and hands. “Do they hurt?” he asked.

“Not now. I’m so glad you came. I thought . . . I thought—” The rest of the sentence was lost in a sob.

He took her hands. “Corrie? I know what you thought. You’ve been very brave. But it’s not over yet and I need your help.” He spoke gently but rapidly, in a low, urgent whisper.

She fell silent, nodded.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded, then broke into a sob once again. “He was playing with me,” she cried. “He was going to keep playing with me, until . . . until I died. ”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “I know it’s difficult. But you’re going to need to be strong until we get out of here.”

She swallowed, eyes down.

Pendergast stood and briefly examined his map. “There might be a quicker way out. We’re going to have to risk it. Follow me.”

Then he turned to Weeks. “I’ll go first. Then Miss Swanson. You cover us from the back. And I mean cover, Officer: he could come from anywhere, above, below, beside, behind. He will be silent. And he will be fast. ”

Weeks licked dry lips. “How can you be so sure the killer will be coming after us?”

Pendergast returned his gaze, pale eyes luminous in the darkness. “Because he won’t give up willingly his only friend.”

Seventy-Four

H azen moved fast, pausing only briefly to reconnoiter at the twists and intersections of the cavern, not bothering to conceal the noisy sounds of his passage. He gripped his twelve-gauge with white knuckles, fingers resting against the dual triggers.

This bastard was as good as dead.

He passed another little arrangement, then another, tiny crystals and dead cave animals placed on a rock ledge. A psychopath. The cave was where he’d practiced his craziness before going topside to do it to real people.

The son of a bitch was going to pay. No Miranda rights, no call to a lawyer, just two loads of double-ought buck in the chest and then a third to the brainpan.

There was such a confusing welter of footprints that Hazen wasn’t sure what trail he was following anymore, or even if it was fresh. But he knew the killer couldn’t be far away, and he didn’t care how long it took or where he had to go to find him. The corridors couldn’t go on forever. He’d find him.

The rage prickled his scalp and made his face feel hot and flushed despite the clammy air of the cave. Tad . . . It was like he had lost a son.

His grief was checked, at least for now, by a tidal wave of anger. He felt tears streaming down his cheeks but didn’t feel the emotion behind them. All he felt was hatred. He was crying with hatred.

The tunnel suddenly ended in a rocky cave-in. There was a black hole above from which the boulders had fallen. His infrared beam revealed a little trail, winding up through the debris and disappearing into what looked like an upper gallery.

Hazen charged his way up the debris slope, head down, shotgun pointed ahead. He came out into a soaring vertical space. Overhead, feathery crystals hung on long ropes of limestone, swaying slightly in an underground current of air. Passageways wandered off in all directions. He scanned the ground, fighting to get his breathing and his emotions under control; found what looked like a fresh track; and began following it again, threading his way through a maze of tunnels.

After a few minutes he realized something was wrong. The tunnel had curved back on itself somehow, and returned him to where he’d started. He set off down another tunnel, only to find that the same thing happened. His frustration grew until the red wash of his goggles seemed to dim from sheer rage.

After returning to the chamber yet a third time, he stopped, raised his shotgun, and fired. The blast rocked the room, and feathery crystals tinkled gently down on all sides like giant broken snowflakes.

“Mother fucker! ” he screamed. “I’m here, come show your face, freak!”

He fired a second time, and a third, screaming obscenities into the darkness.

The only answers that came back were the echoes of the blasts, rolling insanely through the honeycomb of chambers, again and again.

The magazine was empty. Breathing raggedly, Hazen reloaded. This wasn’t helping, hollering and shooting like this. Just find him. Find him. Find him.

He plunged down yet another passageway. This one looked different: a long, glossy tunnel of limestone, little pools of water dotted with cave pearls. At least he had escaped the merry-go-round of endless returning passageways. He could no longer remember where he had been or where he was going. He simply plunged on.

And then, off to one side, he saw a dark, hulking figure.

It was the merest glimpse, just a shadow flitting across his goggles; but it was enough. He spun, dropped to one knee, and fired—long practice at the range paying off—and the figure dropped, tumbling to the ground with a crash.

Hazen followed immediately with a second shot. Then he scuttled forward, ready to pump out the final round.