Will Adams - The Exodus Quest

'Help!' cried Lily. 'Help!' A spout of rainwater fell on her open mouth, catching in her throat, making her choke and splutter, flailing around in the water, letting go of Gaille, who promptly slipped beneath the surface.

'Gaille!' yelled Knox. 'Gaille!'

Lily splashed over to the wall, clawed onto it with both hands. 'I'm sorry,' she wept. 'I'm sorry.'

Knox had no time to think. No time at all. He gripped his torch tight, yelled out in fear, and leapt feet-first into the shaft.

Khaled stared down into the darkness as Nasser and Faisal ran up to join him at the cliff's edge.

'What happened?' asked Faisal. 'Where's Abdullah?'

'He fell,' said Khaled. He turned to his two men. Faisal looked white-faced. Abdullah had been his friend. Nasser, by contrast, looked relatively composed, considering their situation, at least. 'He took the rope down with him,' he told Nasser. 'We need it. Go fetch it.'

'But I-'

'Do you want to get out of this or not?'

'Of course.'

'Then do as you're told,' spat Khaled. 'Fetch me that rope.'

'Yes, sir.'

V

Knox burst through the surface of the water, plunged on through, drawing his feet up as he went, striking the floor of the shaft hard, banging and scraping his feet, ankles and backside, his head slapping the wall, rough surfaces scouring his calf and arm, wind punched from his lungs, sucking in water. He kicked instinctively for the surface, coughed and spluttered it out, breathed gratefully in, oriented himself, pointed around his torch. 'Gaille?' he asked.

Lily shook her head wretchedly, all her energy needed to cling to the wall.

Knox swam around, feeling out for her. It wasn't easy with the rainwater cascading down. He kicked beneath the surface. The shaft wasn't large, yet he couldn't find her. Another breath, another dive, his hands outstretched, fingers brushing something soft. He grabbed at it but it eluded him. He went after it and then he had it, a shirt, an arm, his hand closed around a wrist, kicking for the surface, lungs burning for air, pulling Gaille after him, an arm around her as she reflexively coughed out water, gasped air.

He found a handhold on the wall on which to anchor himself, carrying Gaille slumped unconscious upon his shoulder. He shone his torch around this drowning prison, Lily fighting hysteria beside him, and the question formed unanswerable in his mind: Now what?

Nasser was wheezing hard by the time he brought the rope back up to Khaled and Faisal at the top of the cliff.

'Abdullah?' asked Faisal.

'No,' said Nasser.

Faisal looked sickened. 'It's over,' he said. 'We're finished.'

'What are you talking about?'

'What do you think I'm talking about? Abdullah's dead. How are we going to explain this?'

'We say we got worried after that policeman visited with his story about mysterious foreigner voices,' scowled Khaled. 'We say we decided to go out searching for them ourselves. Abdullah slipped and fell. A tragedy, but not our fault. It's that policeman's fault for feeding us false information.'

'No one will believe that.'

'You listen to me, you snivelling little coward,' shouted Khaled. 'We see this through. We see this through together. You understand?'

'Yes.'

'Yes, what?'

'Yes, sir.'

'That's better.' Khaled glared back and forth between Faisal and Nasser, then looped the rope around the rock once more, thinking about how to make best use of his limited resources. No way could he trust Faisal up here alone; he'd run like the coward he was the first chance he got. 'Nasser, you stay here. Guard our backs. Faisal, you come down with me.'

'But I-'

Khaled pressed the muzzle of his Walther against Faisal's cheek. 'You do exactly as you're damned well ordered,' he yelled. 'Am I clear?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Others are coming,' gasped Lily, clinging to the wall. 'Please tell me others are coming.'

'Yes,' Knox assured her. 'Others are coming.'

'Then where are they?'

'They'll be here as quick as they can,' he promised. 'There's one hell of a storm going on.'

'You're Knox, aren't you? Daniel Knox?' She nodded at Gaille. 'She said you'd come for us. She said you'd save us.' But then she looked around, realized he was in no position to save anyone, had to fight back the tears.

'It's okay,' he assured her. 'It's going to be okay. You've done really well.' He shone his torch around again, to change the atmosphere as much as anything, picking out the wooden planks and empty water bottles floating in the water, the sheer walls, the rim a good fifteen feet above their heads. He felt his pockets. He still had the scissors from the car. But even if he could gouge holds in the limestone, the shaft would have been far too high for him to climb out on his own, let alone with Gaille and Lily to worry about.

He adjusted Gaille in his arms. Her head lolled back, revealing an ugly gash in her scalp leaking watery blood. 'What happened?' he asked.

'Those planks were across the top,' sobbed Lily. 'They must have come crashing down. I was underwater, trying to dig through the wall.'

'Dig through the wall?'

Lily nodded vigorously, her hope rekindling. 'We found some talatat down there. We got one out, hoping we could give the water somewhere to drain off to. But then everything came crashing down. Stafford was… he was…'

Knox nodded. He needed to check this out. 'Can you hold Gaille a minute?' he asked.

'I can't,' wailed Lily. 'I'm sorry. I can't. I just can't.'

'Please. Just for a little while. You've got to try.'

She looked unhappy, but nodded all the same. He passed Gaille over, took out the scissors, gouged a deep groove in the wet limestone wall, slotted one end of a wooden plank in it, then lowered the other end like a drawbridge against the wall opposite until it had jammed at an angle. He swam across the shaft, hauled himself up onto the higher end, jumped up and down on it until it had wedged so tight that it was bowing in the middle. Lily was beginning to cry out with the strain. He took Gaille back from her, pulled her up onto the plank, laid her out on her back, then helped Lily up too, gave her his torch to hold. 'I need to go and check out that talatat wall,' he told her. 'I won't be long.'

He packed his lungs with air, dived for the foot of the shaft, felt blindly along the rocky debris until he found the hole where the brick had been. He attacked the softened plaster with the scissors, hacking it free. His lungs began to protest. He kicked for the surface, filled his lungs once more, returned back down, aware how little time he had should Khaled and his men come in after him.

Khaled descended the rope first. He'd planned to wait on the ledge for Faisal, but curiosity got the better of him. He shone his torch inside the entrance chamber to check for an ambush, then advanced warily along the passage, perversely excited by the situation.

Noises ahead. He froze, crouched, aimed his Walther. But it was only water splashing into the shaft. With luck, it would have saved him a job. He continued his advance, catching another noise now, almost in harmony with the first, a woman sobbing. He tiptoed to the rim of the shaft, peered down.

Gaille was stretched out on a wooden plank just a little above the rising water level, her head in Lily's lap. No sign of Stafford, nor of their mysterious pursuer. But then the water boiled and he appeared, gasping for air.

Khaled put his Walther quietly away. Handguns weren't designed for jobs like this. Besides, he'd always been curious about what a grenade could do in a live situation. He plucked one from his belt, pulled the pin with his teeth, then lobbed it into the shaft.