David Dun - At The Edge

A hand.

Pulling himself up to the next ledge, he found a headless body dressed in a filthy, blood-soaked blue blazer.

Forcing his mind back to the men who were after him, he lowered himself down and listened. His heart beat like a drum. Trying desperately to quiet his breathing, he attempted meditation, but he was unskilled and the fear crowded his mind. He was in a terrible spot. If two of them came down this passage, he might get the first and catch a bullet from the second.

He didn't know if he had the stomach to ambush some faceless, nameless guy whose intent was unknown. Until someone shot at you, there was no way to know for sure that they were out to kill you. There was no black and white here, no obvious villain. Then again, the guard had a gun, and those guys in the mine had guns and were talking about using them. Above him someone had hidden a corpse.

In that moment he knew that everything in his existence boiled down to one thing-his son needed a father. He never should have risked Nate's future by coming here. Maria was right.

Then he saw a light. He held his breath instinctively.

Think, think. Breathe. Get control of yourself.

His breaths began coming again, shallow but regular.

Still the light bounced around the walls. It was taking forever.

"Nothing yet," he heard the words, low in tone, like a whisper. The guy had to have a radio. Sweat broke out on his forehead, stinging his eyes, as if he'd run for miles.

He gripped the iron bar and saw that his hand wasn't quite steady.

The light was bright now, completely lighting the walls.

The first thing he saw was a silencer on a semiautomatic weapon. This was no goody-two-shoes rescue group.

He aimed one end of the iron bar at the side of the man's head. It struck his hard hat with an ugly whack. Then Dan dropped his 240 pounds right on top of the man even as the man collapsed. They hit the ground in a tangle. Dan had one hand on the gun, the other on the man's throat, overpowering him. Glancing around, he saw no more lights. They were apparently alone for the moment. The man struggled feebly, barely conscious.

Dan choked down on the man and could feel the man's body shaking in some kind of nervous spasm. Perhaps by instinct Dan rolled the half-conscious man so that both of them were sitting with his adversary's back in the direction of the large chamber. The man's arms windmilled and there was a loud smack, like a fist hitting mud, and the man's body jerked violently. Instantly Dan knew they had shot their own by accident. Yanking the man's gun from his hand, he snapped off both his light and the man's, then retreated into the mine. After three steps he realized the man would be carrying more clips of ammunition.

Knowing he was taking a terrible risk, he stepped back to the body, grabbed the man's radio, his air tank, and two clips from leather pouches on his belt. The man groaned and Dan could feel the body armor. In all probability he wouldn't die unless the bad air killed him. Again he retreated around the corner. Everything was quiet for several minutes. Then he heard the man gasping. "Help," he said. "Help."

Dan cracked his mask. The air was bad but didn't seem sufficiently bad to cause suffocation. He held down the broadcast button on the radio.

"Come and get your man. You cretins shot him."

"Yeah? Well, you can prove that in court. Right now you need to give up that gun."

"Help me," the man screamed.

"I have no gun. You're the ones with the guns and that fellow didn't look like Roger the ranger out trying to help a lost soul."

"Come out and we'll talk. We can work this out."

''Body armor and automatic weapons with silencers? That doesn't seem to me like a real talking-type group."

"Go get the dumb son of a bitch," he heard the boss say.

"What if he shoots?"

"He's an officer of the court. He won't shoot you in cold blood." A hint of sarcasm in the tone.

They know who I am.

"I'm dying," the man groaned.

"Don't shoot. Red Cross coming through here." He saw a light coming up the passage.

"I'm dying," the man said again.

Dan was staring around the corner with his gun pointed at the ground and his light off. The rescuer approached the downed man and put his own mask over the man's face. He could hear the deep sucking breaths.

"Put your gun down when you carry him out."

"What?"

"You heard me. Put down that gun when you carry him out of here."

"You bastard. You never said-"

''You try walking out of here with that gun and I'll shoot you in the back."

"Keep the gun," the boss said. Dan squeezed off three shots right next to the rescuer.

"Shit, you idiot," the man screamed in panic. "You're gonna kill somebody. Bullets ricochet in here."

"Throw the gun or wave bye-bye to your fat ass."

He threw the gun.

"Smart man."

"I hope you got life insurance," the leader said. "That kid of yours will need it."

"You shouldn't be telling me you're going to kill me. Makes me harder to catch."

"Well, fuck you."

Dan took the second gun and began feeling his way back down the tunnel toward his pursuers. He wanted out of this hole, and he figured an outright attack this soon would surprise them. Feeling with his hand enabled him to distinguish large boulders and the wall. It was hard not to stumble. When he came around a bend with a straight view to the main chamber, he saw four headlamps. Now was his chance. He could nail at least one or two of them as if they were pigeons to ground-sluice. He wanted to see Nate again, and killing these men was the surest way to do it.

His body was shaking, hands slick with sweat. He wanted to kill them. He wanted to walk out over their dead bodies. Somehow his finger would not pull the trigger.

Then it was too late. They turned off their lights.

He ran perhaps twenty paces, kicked a rock, and then deliberately hit the ground. At the sound there was a spray of gunfire lighting the darkness. Bullets popped everywhere. Instantly he was slithering fast, without thinking, oblivious to the pain of the hard rock on his knees, elbows, and belly. The shooting stopped. Ammunition would be a problem he knew. They weren't expecting a war.

He could feel the fear like a hot flame in his body fueling his adrenaline. He could see nothing. There was a debris pile, he knew. Reaching for it, he had a premonition. Or maybe he was thinking like the enemy. The leader would have crawled right in front of the debris pile-right where Dan would come through-and would wait. He moved to the side, flat against the wall. Clearly, the questions were: Who would first turn on a light? Or would somebody start shooting at noises?

In the mine, noises were hard to place; echoes confused the ear. Perhaps if he made a noise, he could seduce a light. Scraping the barrel of the gun lightly along the rock might do it. He reached as far from his body as he could, then yanked the gun back. A spray of bullets smacked the wall and fire erupted from a barrel not ten feet away. If the shooter hadn't hesitated at the sound, Dan would have lost his arm. He fired into the blackness at the spot he had seen the fire.

The weapon Dan had taken was a fully automatic handheld machine gun. If you pulled the trigger, it shot until the clip emptied. That was all he needed to know until he ran out of ammunition. Then he needed to know how to replace a clip and how to get the first bullet from the new clip into the chamber. He began fumbling around in the dark with the clip when he realized that the second gun was hanging from his shoulder.

There was an awful groaning coming from the far side of the debris pile.

"You've got a man down. Maybe you better help him."

There was silence.

"Please help me," the man wailed. It wasn't the leader. He rambled and begged, and said he wanted to see his family. Then he began wailing.