"You make it sound like we're walking on the inside of a bomb."
"We are."
120
• 10:12 P.M.
The monks' chant echoed powerfully across the amphitheater. The moon had disappeared, replaced by steady rain and a show of lightning against the mountains that was accentuated every now and then by enormous claps of thunder. But the storm and its elements were incidental to what Demi saw before her, that held her frozen where she was.
A great live ox stood tethered by chains in the center of the Aldebaran circle. The chanting monks had formed a ring just outside it and were slowly moving counterclockwise around it as one by one the children came from the dark beyond the still fiercely burning bonfires to reverently place bouquets of flowers at the animal's feet. When the children were done, their elders came. More than a hundred of them, one by one in prayerful silence, to lay still more bouquets before the ox.
What astonished and held Demi's unwavering attention was that the animal stood in the center of a roaring fire. Yet it was seemingly at peace, unafraid, and either unfeeling of the intense heat and flame or unaware of what was happening to it.
"It is neither a trick nor magic," a voice behind her said gently. Demi whirled to see Luciana behind her. "The beast is on a spiritual journey. It feels no pain, only joy." Luciana smiled assuredly. "Go on, walk closer, go near. Photograph it. That's why you have come, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Then do it. Record it for all time. Especially its eyes. Record the peace, the joy all creatures feel when they take the journey. Do it and you will see."
Luciana swept an arm toward the spectacle, and Demi went. Gathering her cameras, she stepped through the ring of monks and moved toward the burning beast. As she did, an elderly woman moved in to lay spring flowers at the animal's feet and to say a brief prayer in the same language the monks were chanting.
Demi used the digital camera first, the one that would instantly transmit the images to her Web site in Paris. She took a wide shot first, then zoomed closer for another. Finally she moved in full on the beast's head. She felt the tremendous intensity of the fire, saw the heat waves through the lens. Again she heard Luciana's words:
Record it for all time. Especially its eyes. Record the peace, the joy all creatures feel when they take the journey. Do it and you will see.
Luciana was right. What Demi saw in the eyes of the ox, what the camera recorded, was a look of exceeding peace and, if indeed animals did experience it, joy.
Suddenly the flames roared up and the ox disappeared from her view. She stepped back quickly. An instant later the animal's enormous body collapsed into the fire, sending a massive shower of sparks skyward into the night. At that moment the chanting stopped and everything went silent. All around her people had bowed their heads.
The beast's great journey had begun.
121
• 10:24 P.M.
Marten and President Harris were half running, half walking, purposely staying on the monorail's wooden ties, trying desperately to leave no footprints, no sign they had been there, nothing to follow. That the president had a good thirty years on Marten made little difference. Both men were sweating and exhausted, running on little more than fumes. Their mental and physical state made all the worse by the certainty that it was only a matter of time, minutes, even seconds, before their pursuers found one or more of the vents that would lead them down to the shaft where they were now.
The best they could do was trust they would reach the end of the tunnel before that happened, and when they did they'd have enough time to find a way out through whatever entryway Foxx had used to bring his victims to the holding tanks. Yet hopeful as that idea was, it brought up something else. What if that area, whatever it was, was still active? What if there were guards? Or others of Foxx's crew? It was a thought that chilled but at this point could make no difference. They had only one way to go and that was straight ahead.
• 10:27 P.M.
National Security Adviser Marshall was tucked in the back of the Chinook making notes on his laptop when the helicopter's door slid open and Jake Lowe came in soaking wet from the rain. Up front the helicopter crew dozed in the cockpit. Halfway down, the medical team played cards. All the while Bill Strait's ongoing communication with the search teams working underground crackled incessantly over the speaker system.
Lowe walked directly to Marshall, "I need to talk to you," he said. "Alone."
Thirty seconds later they stepped out of the Chinook's warmth and light and into the dark and rain. Lowe slid the door closed behind them. Marshall flipped up the hood of his parka.
"Treason," Lowe said fearfully, and jabbed a finger in the direction of the mountains lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. "He gets out of those tunnels alive. He talks and people start to believe him. The same thing Hap said not long after all this started—what happens when he shows up? And where the hell is Hap anyway?" Lowe kept on. "Was he really shot? Is he dead? Or is he out there somewhere knowing what the hell's going on and doing something about it?"
Marshall studied him. What he saw was a mentally fatigued, increasingly upset Lowe finally beginning to lose it.
"Let's walk," Marshall said, and started off in the rain, heading them across a rocky flat and away from the Chinook's light spill. "Jake, you're tired," he said after a time. Paranoid was the word he wanted to use but didn't.
"We're all tired," Lowe shot back. "What the hell's the difference? The thing is we have to call Warsaw off. Right now. Before it gets to where it can't be called off. We do that and he comes out of those tunnels talking, accusing us, warning the French and Germans about it. Then nothing happens. It makes him a loony, gone over the edge, the way we've played it all along. But if the killings take place, we're all waiting for the hangman. And it won't be just for treason either. There are other things they can come after us with, especially when they find out about Foxx and what he was doing. The kind of things that came out of the Nuremberg trials. War crimes: performing medical experiments without the subjects' consent. Conspiracy to commit war crimes. Crimes against humanity."
They walked farther into the storm. "I thought we talked about that, Jake," Marshall's tone was even, wholly without emotion. "Calling it off. We can't do it. Too many things are already in motion."
The rain came down harder. Lightning danced across the nearby peaks. Lowe was unwavering.
"You don't understand any of what I'm saying, do you? He's still the goddam president. He comes out of those tunnels alive and talking and the assassinations take place? For chrissakes listen to me! The vice president has to withdraw his order. Now, tonight! We don't, we lose everything!"
They were a hundred yards from the Chinook. The same distance to their left was the glow of the command post.
"You really think he's coming out alive and we can't handle it?"
"That's right, I think he's coming out alive and we can't handle it. We're not prepared to handle it. This is a situation no one ever considered."
Just then a huge lightning flash lit up the countryside for miles around. For an instant everything was as bright as midday. They could see the rugged terrain, the Chinook, the hastily put-up tent housing the command post, the steep canyons that fell sharply away from the path they were on. Then the dark came again and with it a deafening clap of thunder.
Marshall took Lowe by the arm. "Watch your step. This is a narrow trail, you don't want to go over the side."
Lowe took Marshall's hand away. "Damn it, you're still not listening!"
"I am listening, Jake, and I believe you're right," Marshall was calm and thoughtful. "We were never prepared for anything like this, none of us. Maybe the risk is too great. We can't chance blowing the whole thing, not this far into it." Another lightning flash and Marshall's eyes found Lowe's. "Okay, Jake. Let's make the call. Tell them what we think. Have the vice president withdraw the order. Put it on hold."
"That's good," Lowe said with immense relief
. "Damn, damn good."
122
• 10:37 P.M.
"No! No!" José suddenly pulled back in the narrow chimney and refused to go farther.
"What the hell's wrong?" Hap looked sharply to Miguel.
They were probably four hundred feet underground in an awkwardly twisting limestone channel that dropped sharply downward into a claustrophobic darkness that, even with the illumination of their flashlights, had become increasingly disquieting. Moreover, this was a second chimney down, one far beneath the first one they had descended through, and all of them, the boys included, were becoming more and more on edge.
"Tell him it's okay, we understand," Hap was pale, his shoulder throbbing, already into a second pain pill. "Tell him we all feel the same way. But we have to keep going."
Miguel started to speak to José in Spanish. He'd barely started when the youngster shook his head again. "No!" he spat. "No más!" No more!
Nearly forty minutes earlier they had reached the section of tunnel where the boys thought Miguel's friends might be, if they were there at all, Amado and Hector getting to it first and the others soon afterward. They'd hardly gone a hundred yards when they heard the rush of men coming toward them in the dark. Miguel started to turn them back when Hector took him by the arm.
"No, this way," he said quickly and led them dangerously forward toward the oncoming men to another break in the rock, a fissure that even with lights would be almost impossible to find unless one knew the tunnel very well. It was steep and narrow and led farther down in an abrupt, twisting sweep deeper into the earth. They had climbed down it for a full thirty seconds when they heard the rescuers pass by its hidden opening and stopped. And it was there they remained, all but trapped as still more forces joined the others above. Finally Amado had looked to his uncle.
"These are more than just 'friends' who are lost."
"Yes," Miguel glanced at Hap and then back to his nephew. "One of them is an official of the United States government."
"And these men, these police forces hunting him, want to do him harm."
"They think they are helping him but they are not. When they find him they will bring him to people who will harm him, but they don't know that."
"Who is this man?" Hector asked.
Hap had trusted them so far and right now he needed all the help and trust he could get. "The president," he said definitively.
"Of the United States?" Amado blurted in broken English.
"Yes."
The boys laughed as if it were a joke and then they saw the expressions on the faces of the men.
"It is true?" Amado asked.
"Yes, it's true," Hap said. "We have to get him out and away from here without anyone knowing."
Miguel translated the last into Spanish then added, "The man who is with him is good, the president's friend. It is up to us to find them and get them away from the police and to safety. Do you understand?"
"Sí," each boy said. "Sí."
It was then Hap glanced at his watch and looked to Miguel. "Before, the boys said they thought they knew about how far the president might have come since the landslide. That was two and half hours ago. They know the tunnel. Where do they think he and Marten might be now, assuming they're still alive and moving at about the same speed?"
Miguel looked at the boys and translated.
The boys looked at each other, had a brief discussion, then Amado looked to his uncle. "Cerca," he said. "Cerca."
"Near," Miguel translated. "Near."
It was then they heard the movement and voices of the men in the tunnel above. They had come back and were much closer, their voices echoing clearly down to where they were. Miguel was afraid they would be discovered, and Hector moved them farther down, inching them along through a chimney that turned and twisted like the coils of a snake. Less than five minutes later José had stopped them with his sudden "No!" Refusing to go any farther.
"What is it?" Miguel asked him in Spanish.
"Los muertos"—the dead—he said, as if only seconds before he had realized where he was and where this chimney led, and it rocked him to his soul. "Los muertos," he repeated, clearly terrified. "Los muertos."
Hap looked to Miguel. "What is he talking about?"
A brief exchange in Spanish followed. Miguel to José, who remained silent, then to Amado, whom he finally got the truth out of.
"Down there," Miguel gestured farther down the chimney, "is another tunnel. It has a single track. Traveling along it he has seen a 'streetcar' filled with the dead."
"What?" Hap was incredulous.
"More than once."
"What is he talking about?"
Miguel and Amado had an exchange in Spanish. Then Miguel translated.
"A few months ago José and Hector were exploring and found another tunnel, the one he is talking about that is below us now. It's much smaller and newer and sprayed with a cement coating. A single steel track runs down the center of it. There was a hole at the top of the tunnel. It is how they saw into the shaft and where they were looking when the streetcar-kind-of machine came along. Dead bodies were stacked on it like firewood. They got scared and climbed out and told no one what they saw. Two months later they dared each other to come back. They climbed down and waited and then saw it again. This time bodies were being taken in the other direction. José became certain that if he ever went down there again he would become one of them. He believes it is Hell."
For a moment Hap stared unbelieving, trying to digest it. Then he asked a simple question. "Is there a way, besides this chimney, to get from that tunnel up there," he pointed to where they had been, "down to the tunnel where the bodies were?"
Once again Miguel turned to the boys and translated. For a moment no one said anything; finally Hector spoke, scratching two lines in the stone with a piece of rock as he did. Miguel translated what he said.
"The shaft below runs level. The shaft above starts high then slopes lower. Where we are it is maybe sixty feet between them. Much further down it is less than twenty and there are cutouts all along it, he thinks for air, so yes it is possible to get from one to the other."
Hap listened carefully to Miguel's translation. As he did he heard more noise from above. Suddenly the hair stood up on his neck.
"There are a lot people still up there," he said with urgency. "Dead or alive, if the president was in that tunnel they would have found him by now and we would have either heard their reaction or they simply would have gone."
Suddenly Miguel realized what he was saying. "You think my cousins are in the lower shaft!"
"Maybe, and maybe close by. Let José stay here if he wants, the rest of us are going down to find out."
123
• 10:44 P.M.
We've got direct overhead satellite coverage now, sir." A young Secret Service tech specialist was looking over his computer screen at Bill Strait. "Very clear thermal picture of our movements aboveground, sir. So far there is nothing else."
"Bill," Strait looked up as Jim Marshall suddenly came into the command post, pulling the hood back from his parka. He was soaked through and pale as death.
"What is it?" Strait said.
"Jake and I were out on a trail in the dark. We were talking. He was still upset. He lost his footing and slipped. I tried to grab him but it was too late. I heard him land. He fell a long way. My God, he's got to be dead!"
"Oh good Lord!"
"Bill, you've got to get some people down there fast. Alive or dead we have to get him out. We can't have people asking what he was doing up here. The accident will have to have happened somewhere else, probably the location where we're supposed to have the president. He was out walking alone after a meeting and slipped and fell."
"I understand, sir. I'll take care of it."
"I want to inform the vice president right away. I'll want a secure phone," he glanced around at the closeness of the others, "and privacy."
"Yes, sir. Of course, sir."
; 124
• 10:49 P.M.
The monorail track followed a long bend in the tunnel. Marten turned to look back as they started around it. It was their last straight view of the tunnel behind. If their pursuers had found the shaft, so far there was no sign of them.
"How much farther can this thing go?" he said as he caught up to the president.
"It doesn't," President Harris was staring straight ahead. Fifty yards in front of them the tunnel ended abruptly at a massive steel door.
"Now what?" Marten said.
"Don't know."
They covered the distance to the door quickly and in silence. The monorail track passed through it at ground level, a cutout precisely machined to accommodate it. The door itself was fitted to geared, machined rails on either side, making it obvious that the door opened by rising straight up.
"It's got to weigh five tons," the president said. "There's no way we're going to open it by hand."
"There," Marten said and indicated a small red light mounted in the door itself just above eye level. "It's an infrared sensor, like the remote on a TV. Suddenly he pulled Foxx's BlackBerry-like device from his jacket, then stepped in front of the sensor and pressed what appeared to be the POWER key. A light came on. He looked at the panel. Among its array of buttons was one marked SEND. He pointed it at the sensor and pressed it. Nothing happened.
• 10:54 P.M.
"There's got to be an entry code of some kind," Marten said, working one combination of the number/letter keys and then another. Finally he tried devising patterns using a grouping of nine keys with raised symbol-like figures that were mounted on the gadget's lower half. Still nothing happened.