Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

“The entrance should be around here somewhere.” He motioned to the zone around the shelter. The Captain ordered his men to scour the area and the trapdoor was found within a minute.

“How good is your intelligence?” Van Diemen peered into the hole despite the attempts of those around to drag him back.

“As good as can be expected from within the Iron Triangle,” the spook said. “We have details . . . but there are gaps.”

“So you are not sure if there is a degree of control?”

“We believe there to be.”

“You believe it can be controlled?”

The spook’s jaw tightened. “That’s your area, not mine.”

Van Diemen turned to the surfer. “Captain, you plan to have your men secure these tunnels?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“But what if the source of our mission is down there?”

The captain looked blank for a moment. “I’m not aware of the source of our mission, sir.”

Van Diemen glanced at the spook. “Need to know basis,” the spy replied.

“Then I suggest I go in with you,” Van Diemen said to the captain.

You have to admire the professor’s balls. Half the grunts in ‘Nam wouldn’t have willingly ventured into that hole with the Tunnel Rats.

They tried to talk him out of it with lots of gruesome descriptions of booby-traps and hidden snipers, but he was having none of it.

“If he’s going in there, we should too,” I whispered to Justin.

“Are you mad?”

“Will is right,” Alain said. “Whatever they’re looking for, must be down there.”

“Well, why don’t we just wait here until they bring it out?” Justin said as if we were both stupid.

“Under a blanket or in a box?” I replied. “Nice photo. Make the cover of Life , that will.”

Two of the Tunnel Rats dropped down the hole before Van Diemen shouldered his way forward to go third. I steeled myself and jumped in immediately afterwards. It felt ludicrously dangerous, but I told myself that was what we were about.

A horizontal tunnel barely big enough for a dog ran out about six feet below ground level. I almost turned back then, but with another Tunnel Rat behind me I had no choice but to proceed. It was oppressively hot, the air thin and filled with the choking smell of soil and vegetation. Vermin scurried in the dark ahead of us.

Claustrophobia mounted quickly, fired by the knowledge that some booby trap could bring the whole thing down upon me. The tunnel roof pressed down against my back. My elbows were constricted against the walls on either side so that I had to drag myself along like an animal. With each foot I crawled, it felt like my throat constricted another half inch.

And then Van Diemen was pulling himself out and up. I followed so frantically I almost knocked the old man over. We were in an underground room big enough to stand, with a makeshift table, a stubby candle, still alight, and more guns.

“I don’t get it,” one of the Rats said uneasily. “They wouldn’t leave their weapons lying around like this.”

“Unless the whole place is a trap,” the other Rat mused. He shrugged, did eeny-meeny between the two tunnels that ran off from the room, then ducked into the one he had selected, knife clenched between his teeth.

“What are we looking for, Professor?” I ventured.

He smiled, quite warmly I thought, but knew what I was attempting. “Secrets.” He waved one long, delicate finger in my face. “And mysteries.”

The tunnel system was a maze, switching back and forth and cross-cutting, with room after room that looked exactly like the last one. We could have crawled for miles for all I knew. And the ever-present threat never lessened, so that by the end my chest burned and my muscles ached from the constant alertness. I felt queasy from the feeling that each movement could be my last. I thought about explosions in that confined area, the heat, the ripping shrapnel. I thought about the soil coming down hard, into my mouth, my throat. I thought about a gun emerging from a shadow to blast into my temple. Poison gas. Burning chemicals. I thought about everything. But I didn’t believe the Professor considered any of them. He was calm and focused on the matter at hand, as though these things held no fear for him at all.

I don’t quite know how it happened, but at some point the Professor and I got separated from the Tunnel Rats and the other snappers. We’d been warned against this happening and I thought we’d been taking special care. Maybe not; or maybe the Professor, who was ahead of me, wanted it that way.

We found ourselves in one of those rooms carved out of the earth. In the light of the Professor’s torch it appeared empty, but I caught a glimpse of a doorway to other rooms beyond.

“We should wait.” The pounding of the blood in my brain made me dizzy. “Let the experts clear the place out before we go stumbling around.”

“They will not find anything.” His voice was distracted.

“How can you be so sure?”

“It is my job to be certain.”

“The Government must be paying you a lot of money to take these kinds of risks.”

“I am not here for money.”

“Love, then.” I laughed, trying to ease my tension.

He moved ahead, the light dancing around. I caught sight of something white in the room beyond.

“Are you interested in politics . . . ?” He paused, waiting for me to fill in my name.

“Will Kennet. Politics is for old guys who’ve forgotten how to have fun.”

“There are many your age – and younger – who would disagree, Mr Kennet. Across America, in Australia, Europe, protests against this war are growing. The season is changing. Polarities are coming into opposition.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” We’d reach the doorway into the rooms beyond. There was that white shape again. And another. But he was moving the torch around too quickly for me to get a handle on it.

“The young and the old. The West and the East. Authority and the forces of rebellion.”

He stopped in the doorway. The light fell on the white shapes fully, and I could see it was stone: blocks that appeared to have been exposed in the digging of the tunnels, twin columns, with a doorway between them.

“Order and chaos.” He pointed the torch into my face, blinding me. “Which side are you on, Mr Kennet?”

I knocked his hand down, annoyed by his disrespect. “My own side. I told you, I’m not interested in any of that.” I’d half started to like him, but now I could see something I’d come across before, in the politicians, and the generals, and all the ones fighting to maintain their place in the world. Not something that was bad, particularly, but a hardness. A recognition that if you wanted to keep the world the way you felt comfortable with, you’d have to go one step further than the next guy. I’d decided it came from fear. Some people just didn’t like change.

“There is only one side or the other.” He was moving again; the light painted a path to the door between the stone columns. “If you have not decided yet, you will be forced to do so soon. That is knowledge for you, Mr Kennet, given freely, earned by age. Take a short cut to wisdom and choose your path now.”

I was more interested in the stone. I could see it carried on into a corridor beyond.

“What is this place?”

He carefully examined some carvings thrown up by the play of light and shade. They appeared to be illustrations of some kind, and writing; it didn’t look like any Vietnamese script I recognised. “Great age,” he mused to himself.

“Is this what you were sent to find?”

“I did not know what I was going to find. The reports were vague. But it appeared to be related to my particular sphere of expertise.”