35
“I smell pot.”
“What, Cath? What’d you say?”
Indy had been dozing. The sound of Catherine’s voice brought him back to the claustrophobic present.
The two of them were still imprisoned deep below Sawtooth Ridge, in one of the storerooms in Devil’s Anvil. They had been there for more than 20 hours now. The air was stuffy. Both Catherine and Indy were severely dehydrated.
“Pot, Indy. Marijuana. It’s faint, but I can definitely smell it.”
“Well the marijuana room was just down the way,” replied Indy. “There are probably a few molecules coming in underneath the door.”
“I don’t think so, Indy. This is more than a few molecules. This is pretty strong. I wonder if there’s a passage that connects this room and the marijuana room. Maybe we should move some of this money around and see.”
“I can smell it too, now that you mention it,” replied Indy. “Why don’t we see if we can hunt down the source. It’s better than sitting here, waiting to die.”
Catherine nodded, then caught herself. She flicked the BIC lighter on to look around. “Let’s start with the far wall,” she said. “We can move the money to the center of the room, to see what’s back there.”
The room was larger than it appeared initially, and the mountain of bills was impressive, but they set to work. The physical exertion relaxed Indy a bit, and Catherine was relieved to hear that he was grunting and mumbling to himself in Punjabi again, making the occasional joke. The smell of marijuana became stronger as they worked, and it wasn’t coming from the doorway. Both thought that it must be coming from a shaft or tunnel entering the room from somewhere else, and worked together to move the masses of money back and forth, checking the walls and floor areas to test their hypothesis. Occasionally Catherine flicked on the lighter to give them bearings on the room.
“Yo, Indy, do I look as black as you? You’re covered in coal dust,” she giggled at one point, holding the lighter up to his face. His skin was darker than usual, streaked with sweat, and smeared where he’d rubbed his hands across his face.
“Yes, Cath, you’re as black as midnight. But this ain’t a makeup contest. Now let’s keep moving this stuff around. I’m feeling an air current here, and it’s got to be coming from somewhere.”
They labored on for another 15 minutes before they found it. A small black opening, at floor level, measuring perhaps 30 inches high by 30 inches wide, in the very back corner of the chamber. They had moved a mountain of bills to find it.
“There’s your passageway,” said Catherine. “I think it probably goes to the marijuana room, given that smell.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right. And if we’re lucky, that dumbo Dennis may not have realized that we opened all the locks. He may not have relocked the other rooms. If the tunnel goes there, you might be able to get out that way.”
“Me?” gasped Catherine. “You want ME to crawl through that little hole to God knows where? Me?” She was holding the cigarette lighter at the entrance to the small ventilation hole, attempting to gauge its dimensions.
“Think about it, Cath. You’re smaller, you’re more athletic. You don’t have an ounce of fat on you. You’re not paralyzed with claustrophobia. You have a better chance at it than I do,” replied Indy.
Catherine began to panic. “Indy, I don’t know if I can do it. Not even a dog could crawl through there. You drag me on this God-forsaken mission, and we’ve been trapped down here, no light, no air, for God knows how long. Now you want me to crawl through a little hole at the bottom of a room at the bottom of an abandoned coal mine to go to some damn room full of weed. Indy, I–I don’t know—”
“Catherine, I’ve had years of counseling to get over that incident with the Indian gangs up the valley. I’m having trouble enough in this room, so don’t even get me started on what a tunnel like that would do to me. I can’t do it. But one of us has to. You’re the only other choice.”
“Indy, I don’t know—” she repeated, but he interrupted again.
“You can do it, Cath. Go back to basic training. Focus on the task at hand. Force everything else from your mind. I don’t think I could fit through that hole anyhow. I know you can.”
“Jesus, why did I ever become a cop?” she asked herself. “OK, but you need to be able to pull me back if I get in trouble. You’ve got rope. Tie it around my ankle. If I get jammed and call out, you have to pull me back. Promise?”
“Yes, Cath, I promise. And when we get out of this mess I’ll make sure you get the promotion you deserve. This is above and beyond the call of duty.”
Catherine sighed. “No it’s not. Any member of the Force would do what you and I are doing. This is what the job is all about, I guess. Now tie the rope.”
Indy reached for the 20-foot rope that Dennis had either not seen or not bothered to take when he forced them into the storage room. He secured the rope around Catherine’s left ankle. She bent down and held the lighter at the entrance to the small tunnel again. Then she knelt down further, and stuck her head into the tunnel to peer ahead. Her heart was racing, and the walls of the tunnel were so close that she barely fit. She had to control her breathing.
“Dammit Indy, I hate this shit.”
She plunged into the tunnel and began wriggling down its length. Five feet. Ten. Fifteen. At 20 feet the rope ran out.
“Indy, I don’t see anything yet,” she shouted back down the tunnel.
Indy thought of the configuration of the rooms. “Keep going, Cath. You’ve got to be getting close. But we’re out of rope.”
Catherine panicked. “Indy, I can’t do this. Pull me back. Please.”
“Cath, just try a few more feet. Please.”
Catherine gulped. The walls were closing in. She couldn’t breathe. Sweat was pouring off her. Then, just when she thought she really couldn’t take it any longer, the tunnel widened. It entered the marijuana room at about two feet above floor level.
“Indy, I’m there. I’m in the marijuana room.” She crawled out of the tunnel and walked gingerly toward the door. It opened when she pushed it. “And the door’s unlocked. I’m out.”
Tomorrow would be the day, thought Kumar. A day too awful to contemplate. A day that would end the lives of the two lads sitting with him, watching television. They were in a private suite of rooms adjacent to the Long Beach PWS manufacturing facilities. The two had spent the last three weeks of their lives moving from this suite to the simulator and back again. Kumar had driven them around some, and showed them the hot spots in Los Angeles — Hollywood, Disneyland, and various movie studios. Neither one had shown much interest in these things, other than stating that America was indeed the home of Satan. When not in the simulator or taking lessons from Kumar himself, they spent their time in prayer, and reading the Koran. They prayed five times daily, and the direction of Mecca was depicted by arrows on the floors in both the simulation room and the suite.
He had ordered pizza for them, on the assumption that teenagers on opposite sides of the globe were, in reality, not all that different. Wisely, he had chosen the vegetarian variety, supplemented by ample amounts of Pepsi. Before long Kumar, who had never married and had no children of his own, found himself becoming protective of Javeed and Massoud, physically and psychologically scarred as they were.