41
THEY SPRINTED DOWN the metal catwalk paralleling the live particle beam. “You know where we’re going?” Alida cried, her feet pounding along behind him.
“Just follow me.”
Shouts, suddenly loud, echoed down the tunnel behind them. Damn, Gideon thought. He’d hoped it would take them longer to get through the door.
“Stop or we shoot!” came the barked command.
They continued on. The accelerator was throbbing with high energy, and if the pipe got punctured by even a single round…“They’re bluffing,” Gideon said, “they won’t shoot.”
Thwang! The shot ricocheted off the ceiling above their heads, followed quickly by others: Thwang! Thwang!
“Sure, they won’t shoot,” Alida muttered, ducking as she ran.
Gideon could hear feet pounding on the catwalk behind them.
Thwang! Another round glanced off the wall, spraying them with chips.
Gideon stopped, spun around, fired back at them with the stage gun. Their pursuers hit the deck.
They ran on another twenty yards until Gideon found what he was looking for: an ancient metal door set into the cement wall. It was padlocked with an old brass lock.
“Shit!” muttered Alida.
Gideon turned and fired again with the fake gun, sending the guards sprawling to the ground a second time. Then he took out the real .45, pressed the barrel against the lock, and fired. The lock exploded. Gideon threw his weight against the metal door. It groaned but didn’t open.
Alida tensed. “On three.”
They slammed into the door simultaneously, forcing it open with a loud crack, just as more shots clanged off the door. They fell inside, slammed the metal door shut—and suddenly faced pitch blackness.
Alida flicked on her lighter, dimly illuminating a crude, branching tunnel. He grabbed her hand and took one of the tunnels at random, pulling her along at a run. The lighter went out with the movement.
He heard voices, a fresh groan of rusted steel. The metal door was being opened.
Still gripping Alida’s hand, Gideon jogged ahead in the darkness, blind. They must have gone a few hundred yards when his feet tangled up with something on the ground and they fell together. He lay there in the dark, breathing hard, fumbling around until he found her hand again. He could hear voices behind them, echoing down the tunnel, distorted. They were not far. Did they have flashlights?
A lancing beam of yellow answered his question—but the sweep of the beam overhead briefly illuminated another branching tunnel in the nearby wall. As soon as the light passed, Gideon pulled Alida to her feet, and they ducked into the alcove.
Alida briefly flicked on her lighter. It went about twenty feet to a dead end—but at the far end of the cul-de-sac, an old rusted ladder climbed the stone wall. Gideon groped his way forward until he found the ladder, and they began to ascend. The voices behind them were getting louder; excited, aggressive.
Up they climbed, in the darkness. Below, Gideon saw a light flash into the alcove, but they had already climbed high enough to be invisible. They kept going, moving as silently as possible, until they reached the top of the ladder. Another flick of Alida’s lighter revealed a horizontal tunnel, crowded with ancient, rusting equipment, apparently left over from the original Manhattan Project.
Gideon climbed out and helped Alida up, wondering how much of the stuff was still hot.
“Which way?” Alida whispered.
“No idea.” Gideon started down the dark tunnel, moving in what he hoped was an easterly direction, toward White Rock Canyon. There were scraping sounds and voices in the shaft behind them: someone else was now climbing the ladder.
He stumbled over something on the ground. “Let me have the lighter.”
She palmed it to him. He flicked it on and saw rail tracks laid onto the floor of the tunnel. An old handcar, or pump trolley, sat on a nearby siding.
A volley of shots sent them diving to the ground. Flashlight beams lanced up and around them.
“Get on the handcar,” Gideon whispered. “Quickly.”
In a second Alida had leapt onto the cart. Gideon gave it a shove, running it onto the main track and up to speed, then jumped on himself. The pump handle moved up and down with a creaking of metal, rusty and covered with dust but still in working order. Gideon worked the handle to keep it going as more rounds ricocheted through the cavern. The car went squealing along the metal track, gaining speed as it entered a downhill grade.
“Oh, shit,” said Alida.
Gideon stopped pumping—but it made no difference. Faster and faster went the pump, its twin handles flying up and down on their own. The shots and cries began to recede.
“This was a really bad idea,” said Alida, crouching and gripping the wooden sides of the handcar.
The car was now barreling downhill, in utter blackness, heading for only God knew where.