Dodge shouldered his own rifle and led the way back to the stairwell. He was so intent on making the descent back to the waterworks that it took a few seconds for him to make sense of what he saw illuminated in the beam of his flashlight.
More than a dozen men, all wearing turbans that partially obscured their faces and armed with Lee-Enfield rifles, were rushing up from the depths.
Hurricane stepped forward and leveled his pistols at the advancing mob. The guns thundered and two attackers fell, but the rest dropped prone on the steps and began returning fire.
Dodge immediately saw that they were in an untenable position. Despite Hurricane’s deadly prowess, they were badly outnumbered. Even if all four of their captured rifles were brought into the battle, they would almost certainly suffer casualties, and that was an outcome he refused to accept. Dodge had already lost enough friends for one lifetime.
He shouted over his shoulder for the others to fall back, then grabbed Hurricane’s tree-trunk thick biceps and tried to drag his friend back to the landing and the relative safety of the storerooms. He could feel the recoil of the pistols traveling through the big man’s muscles, but after a moment Hurley relented and backed up the steps, firing out the last of his ammo as he went.
Dodge flashed his light down the stairs. With the lull in fire, the attackers were starting to move forward again, but Dodge already had a plan for dealing with that. He tossed the light to Hurricane. “Shine it at the ceiling!”
The big man did so without question. Dodge jammed the rifle stock in the pit of his shoulder, put his cheek to the rear sight, and drew a bead on his chosen target. Then, he squeezed the trigger.
The rifle bucked in his grip but the bullet flew true, striking the corner where the roof above the staircase met the carved rock wall. There was a puff of dust as the round obliterated the tiny stone wedge that held one of the ceiling blocks in place.
Too late, the advancing attackers realized what Dodge had done. A massive block, as big as a delivery truck, dropped down onto the stairs, crushing two of the men like cockroaches under a boot heel. The entire cavern seemed to reverberate with the impact, and from his vantage about thirty feet above, Dodge was buffeted by the shock wave.
As a cloud of dust and grit blew over them, Hurricane clapped Dodge on the shoulder. “Well done!”
The praise was premature, however. After only a momentary pause, the floor beneath them started shaking again. With a noise like an endless peal of thunder, the fallen block began to move, and as it slid down the stairs, the ever-intensifying tremor shook loose the wedges holding the other blocks in place, starting a cataclysmic chain reaction.
The ceiling fell like God’s dominoes. Every concussive blast shook the staircase, triggering more of the rigged deadfalls. The tumult rippled through the corridor leading to the storerooms. Enormous fissures appeared in the walls, floor and ceiling. Dodge feared the whole mountain might come crashing down, entombing them forever.
Guess I should have thought this through a little better.
He saw the others, partially obscured in the swirl of dust, reeling as the ground moved beneath their feet. “Get to the doorways! It’s safer there!”
He took his own advice, crawling to the nearest opening, and hoped that that wall would provide a little additional stability in the event that the ceiling here started to collapse as well. The walls continued to groan, but after a few more seconds, Dodge realized that the noise of stones crashing beyond the landing had ceased.
The air was thick with dust, and for a several minutes, Dodge didn’t dare move. He kept his face covered to avoid breathing the dust until the air cleared enough for him make out the shapes of his companions. “Is everyone all right?”
Hurricane’s voice cut through the gloom. “I’m still here. Miss Nora?”
“I’m okay,” Nora chirped. “Rahman is with me.”
Dodge ventured into the corridor and found the brunette and the expediter huddled in another of the doorways. They were covered in dust, but appeared otherwise unharmed. Anya emerged from another of the vacant storerooms, likewise no worse for wear.
Hurricane strode to the landing, but did not venture outside. He gave a heavy sigh. “Dodge, m’boy, you might want to take a look at this.”
Dodge hastened to join him, shining his light through the exit. He immediately understood why the big man had sounded so despondent. The landing was completely blocked; they were trapped.
Then, Nora’s voice reached out to him from the other end of the corridor. “Dodge! I think you need to see this.”
As soon as the ceiling had started to fall, Hiro Nakamura had given the order for his men to retreat. In the time it had taken for his interpreter to translate his command into Farsi, four of the revolutionary fighters had already been crushed out of existence. Nakamura did not linger to see if how many of the others heeded his advice. He spun on his heel and raced back down the steps.
When the clamor of the collapse was little more than a dull roar echoing down the tunnels, he stopped to assess the losses his small force had suffered. His concerns were strictly strategic in nature; the fate of the local rabble mattered to him only because he needed foot soldiers to accomplish his mission.
The alliance had been hastily struck. Nakamura’s status in the Aum River Society afforded him contacts with a number of criminal organizations in Europe and the Americas, and those connections led to other contacts, which had ultimately enabled him to enlist the help of a small but ambitious group of revolutionaries who hoped to overthrow the government of Reza Shah Pahlavi, a man they viewed as an usurper, even after a decade and a half on the throne. Nakamura cared little for their political ambitions, but he had vowed the full support of Imperial Japan in helping them pursue their aims. It was an easy promise to make; if Nakamura’s mission succeeded, making good on that promise would pose little hardship to the Empire of the Pacific.
He, along with his interpreter — Nakamura had to communicate with the man in English — and twenty revolutionaries had reached Qasirkhan only a few hours ahead of Dalton’s party. More promises had been made to get the help of the villagers, and Nakamura and his men had gone into the tunnels to lay the trap.
The kempeitai agent didn’t know what had gone wrong, but at least Dalton and the others would pose no further problem. Even if they had survived the collapse of the tunnel, they were now entombed, with thousands of tons of rock between them and the only exit.
Twelve of the revolutionaries made it out of the tunnel. All were battered and bruised, and two had suffered wounds that rendered them unable to walk or fight.
Nakamura pondered what to do next. An outright victory seemed unlikely, but winning the coming battle was not essential to accomplishing his mission.
“Well there’s a silver lining for you,” Hurley declared.
Dodge stared in disbelief at the rear wall of the storeroom where Dariush had brought them into the ambush. The traitorous villager was gone, evidently having crept away in the confusion, but no one bothered to mention his absence. Everyone’s attention was fixed on the wall, or rather on the section of it that had crumbled away.
The tremor had sent a spider web pattern of cracks through what they now realized was a thin layer of plaster, covering a wall that was not carved into the mountain as they had first assumed, but rather composed of bricks. The architects of the underground labyrinth had sealed up whatever lay beyond the wall, and disguised it to look like part of the mountain. A section had had fallen away, and Dodge’s flashlight revealed a much larger space beyond.