Sam and Dimitris returned to the bottom.
“Let’s move out of here,” Sam said. They walked past the pool of water to the opening leading to the lower chamber.
“Zoe will send someone,” Dimitris said.
Sam had no doubt. Though Zoe might not sound the alarm for a few hours, since they weren’t expected back right away, someone was bound to have seen the helicopter crash. “We don’t want to waste battery power. Until then, I’d suggest we find a safe place to sit in the dark while we wait.” He moved next to Remi, who sat on a flat rock jutting out, while Nikos and Dimitris sat on the cave floor opposite them.
They each switched off their headlamps, the dark turning absolute. Sam reached over, grasping Remi’s fingers in his. She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. Perhaps because of the absence of light, the sounds around them seemed to magnify, and he listened to the calm breathing of Remi next to him.
After a minute, maybe two, she suddenly sat up. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” he asked.
“Rhythmic.”
“The air’s moving,” he said. “It’s like putting your ear to a giant seashell. Which is good for us. We won’t suffocate.”
Remi let go, then stood, moving away. “Quiet . . .”
“I hear it, too,” Dimitris said.
“Hear what?” Nikos asked.
“The sea,” Remi and Dimitris said together.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Sam switched on his light, finding Remi pointing to his feet. “It’s coming from under there.”
He crouched, his headlamp shining into a foot-high crevice beneath the ledge that seemed to go back quite a distance. Closing his eyes, he listened. Whether it was actually the sound of the sea or simply the sound of air moving through the narrow passage, he wasn’t sure. “I’ll go see where it leads.”
“I’m going with you,” Remi said.
“So are we,” Dimitris said.
“I’m being outvoted by all of you now?”
Remi crossed her arms. “Really, Sam?”
“Guess that means I am outvoted.”
Sam went first, belly-crawling through the tunnel, the space so low in some spots he smacked his helmet whenever he tried to raise his head enough to see in front of them. The progress was slow. He stopped, looking behind him, squinting against the glare of Remi’s headlamp.
She reached up and switched it off.
“Everyone okay?” he asked.
“A-OK,” she said.
“Fine,” Dimitris called out.
A moment later, they heard the clunk of plastic hitting the top of the tunnel from much farther back, then Nikos muttering loudly in Greek.
Remi shifted behind Sam. “Any chance you need that translated?”
“I think I got the gist.” He turned back, eyeing the long stretch of tunnel in front of them, wondering if it was ever going to end. “Onward.”
After several minutes of elbow-scraping, head-banging progress, they emerged into a slightly taller, dome-shaped chamber, almost two feet high at the center and at least ten feet in diameter.