Lonetree’s voice rose up from beneath him. “We’ll wait about five minutes for our eyes to acclimate. When we put the lights back on, avoid looking straight into the light so you can keep as much of your night vision as possible.”
Jack gave a thumbs up. He immediately felt foolish. He couldn’t even see his hand himself. “Right, five minutes.” Jack closed his eyes and mentally tried to put himself somewhere else. Somewhere above ground. Some place with sunshine and open spaces.
Lonetree’s voice dragged him back into the cave, rising up from the tunnel like the rumble of an earthquake.
“My brother died about two years ago. I was on assignment in Afghanistan, Navy SEAL. Doing pretty much what we’re doing now, crawling through tunnels looking for bad guys. Only better armed.”
The tone in Lonetree’s voice made Jack crane forward as if he were a kid at a campfire and the storyteller had just started a tale. He sensed this was what he had come to hear.
“Anyway, I find out he’s dead in a radio check with the surface. There aren’t many details, only that he’s dead, car crash they think. The radio operator tells me he’s sorry. His brother died in Iraq and he feels for me. Which was good, since I figure someone should feel something. I can’t. I’m just frozen solid. Can’t move. Can’t breathe.
“See, the night before, down in the caves, I had a crazy dream about my brother. I was used to strange dreams. It’s part of the drill when you’ve been in a lot of combat, especially when you run the kind of missions I have. But it’s even worse when you’re hunting underground, alone in the dark, hours of silence for your mind to turn in on itself.”
Jack noted the use of the word ‘hunting’. It wasn’t lost on him that Lonetree’s prey had been human. Terrorists or not, the thought still made Jack uncomfortable.
“This dream was different though,” Lonetree continued. “I remembered every detail, every word that was said. He was in the cave with me. There was no light, but I could see him without a problem, as if we were standing in the middle of a field at high noon. The strange thing was that it didn’t shock me. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that my kid brother would appear out of nowhere a thousand feet below a mountain range in Afghanistan. I remember so clearly not wondering how he had done it. I just accepted it. The same way you accept it when you fly in a dream, you know?”
“What did he say?” Jack asked.
“He told me things, many things. I’d heard it all before. From my old man when I was a kid. Most of it sounded insane. But I didn’t mind. It was a dream. What did I care if he talked a little nuts? My kid brother had crazy in his bones. Part of the family tradition, I guess.” Lonetree paused, just long enough to steady his voice back into its low, rolling rumble. “I wouldn’t have given the whole thing a second thought except for one little detail.”
The hairs on Jack’s neck tingled. He realized he was gripping the rock walls next to him as trying to hold on to the real world.
“You see, in this dream, this clear, lucid dream a day before I talked to the surface, my brother came me in that cave to tell me he had been killed.” Lonetree paused. Jack strained his ears to pick up any sound coming from the passage beneath him. After a full minute of silence passed in the dark passageway, Lonetree’s voice rose up once again. It was full of emotion, not pain, but seething hatred. “He told me how it’d been done. He told me every sick detail of how they tortured him. Most important of all, he told me who was responsible.”
Jack couldn’t see the man’s face in the darkness, but the emotion in Lonetree’s voice was so intense that his imagination created what his eyes could not see; a mask of pain and anger and an almost animal savagery, lips twisted into a terrible sneer as they spit out the words.
Jack’s own words came out as a whisper. “Why did they kill him?”
An explosion of light erupted around him, making him wince and shield his eyes. It was Lonetree’s helmet lamp. The light jumped up and down as the big man struggled to move the position of his body. Soon he had reversed the location of his feet. Instead of sliding down the tunnel feet first, Lonetree was positioned to crawl forward on his hands and knees. He shoved the backpack ahead of him and started to edge forward.
Jack knew that the answer to his question lay at the end of the tunnel. That recognition brought out a mix of emotions; excitement to find out what was causing all the bizarre events of the last few days; yet trepidation that the answers were more than he was prepared to deal with. Still, for the first time that day, Jack had no thought of turning back. No second-guessing what he was doing there. Whatever secret lay buried in this cave was somehow connected to Huckley and the hallucinations. He could feel it. And finding out about Huckley and whoever his accomplices were put him one step closer to protecting Sarah from harm.
Curiosity and determination to protect his daughter overwhelmed all other emotions. He needed to know what was at the end of the strange journey he was on. What kind of secret was so important that it had been buried at the bottom of a cave? And by whom? These were questions he was no longer willing to leave unanswered.
He twisted his body until he was face down on his stomach, the smell of the mineral rich mud so strong that it stung his nostrils. As he scrambled forward, he calculated that Lauren and the girls were probably just reaching Baltimore. He thanked God he and Lauren had agreed she would take the girls down to her friend’s house. At least they were safe, away from all this madness. Safe where no one could find them. With everything going on at least he could take comfort in that.
With a grunt, he pushed off with his elbows and heaved himself toward the retreating light ahead of him.
FORTY-SIX
Sarah was mad. Becky was hogging all the cool band aids, the ones with the Sesame Street characters on them, leaving her the very uncool regular band-aids to play with. And whining wasn’t changing her sister’s mind one bit. The whole thing just served as a reminder that big sisters were horrible sometimes, a fact she pointed out to Becky in a pouting voice. In response, Becky called her a baby and gave her hair a hard tug. Tears welling up in her eyes, Sarah got up to go tell Nurse Haddie. And, as if things weren’t bad enough, as she walked over to the nurse’s station she realized she needed to go to the bathroom.
She poked her head around the corner and saw Nurse Haddie talking on the phone. Her mom always told them never to go to the bathroom alone in the hospital. What if you fall in? she always asked. The comment predictably broke the girls up into a round of giggles and promises to flush each other down the toilet at the first chance. But they always followed the rule. As funny as it sounded, the idea of getting stuck in the toilet was kind of scary.
But Nurse Haddie had her back to Sarah. She was twirling her hair around her finger and laughing into the phone. Her voice sounded funny, like her mom did sometimes when her dad called on the phone. All giggly and soft. Adults were weird, Sarah decided. After a full minute of waiting, her bladder won out over her pride and she went back to ask her big sister to go with her.
“I told you you’re a baby,” Becky teased. “Can’t even go to the bathroom by yourself.”
That was enough. She scrunched up her nose and stuck out her tongue. Since that didn’t have the effect she wanted, she bent down and picked up the pink rubber ball they’d brought from home. She raised it in the air as if she was going to hurl a pink fastball at her sister’s forehead. It worked. Becky let out a shriek and covered her face with her hands.
Sarah lowered her hand, turned and walked away. After a few steps, she turned around and, with a roll of her eyes, said, “Becky, you’re such a baby.” She kept walking, a huge smile spread across her face.