Shortly before five o’clock, with the sun dropping toward the western horizon, he was picking his way through a particularly dense cluster of trees when he stopped to catch his breath.
Initially, the sound was just a faint hiss. Sam held his breath and strained to pin down the location. It seemed to be all around him.
“Fargo!” Rivera hollered.
“Here!” Sam called back.
“You have thirty more minutes.”
Sam picked his way ten feet farther down the slope. He paused. The hissing had faded slightly. He stepped ten feet to the left, listened again. Louder now. He repeated his test, box-stepping up and down the hillside, until he found himself standing before a bulge in the slope. He poked the bulge with his stick; the tip disappeared.
His heart thumped in his chest.
He dropped to his knees and shoved his head into the opening.
The hissing doubl
ed in volume.
“Waves,” he whispered.
He pulled back, dug into his pocket, found his penlight. He clicked it but nothing happened. “Come on . . .” He unscrewed the bottom and dumped the batteries on the ground and used his shirt to dry each one in turn. He reassembled the flashlight and clicked the button. He was rewarded with a bright beam.
He stuck his head back into the opening and shined the light around. A three-foot-wide, smooth-walled shaft descended diagonally into the slope. At the edge of Sam’s flashlight beam the tunnel curved right into darkness.
“Fargo!”
Sam pulled his head out. “Here!”
“Twenty-five minutes left.”
He had a decision to make. With no idea where this tunnel led and without proper gear, he could easily find himself beyond earshot of Rivera or, worse still, he would hear Rivera’s check-in call but be unable to answer it within the allotted ten seconds. He had no doubt that either of these circumstances would lead to Remi being shot again.
“He’s going to kill us anyway,” Sam said to himself. “Roll the dice.”
Feet first, Sam wriggled into the opening and started downward.
HE HADN’T GOTTEN ten feet when Rivera shouted: “Fargo!”
Sam scrambled back up the chute and stuck his head into the light. “Here!” He checked his watch: nineteen minutes.
He backed into the chute and let himself slide, braking with his toes and palms until he reached the bend, where he had to curl his body to navigate the angle. The chute steepened, continued for ten feet, then suddenly widened out. Sam felt his legs dangling free. He clawed at the walls, trying to arrest his slide, but gravity took over. He slipped from the chute and started falling.
CHAPTER 49
HIS PLUNGE LASTED LESS THAN A SECOND.
He landed feetfirst in a pile of something soft, rolled backward in a reverse somersault, and came to rest on his knees. His flashlight lay a few feet away. He crawled over, grabbed it, and cast the beam about.
The pile into which he’d fallen was almost pure white. His first thought was sand, but then he smelled it: the distinctive tang of salt. The rush of the waves echoed around him, bouncing off the walls, fading and multiplying as though he were caught inside a fun-house auditorium.
Sam checked his watch: sixteen minutes.
He looked up. The chute from which he’d fallen was ten feet above his head. He turned around, panned his flashlight. The wall nearest to him sparkled as though encrusted in tiny mirrors. He stepped up to it.
“Salt,” he murmured.
Beneath the faceted white veneer he could make out a darker streak. It was green—translucent green. The stripe rose up the wall, widened into a foot-thick band, then turned again, forking into dozens more veins. The branching continued until it was a giant latticework beneath the white salt veneer.