Quickly Tom scurried back down the ramp. He grabbed Randi and pulled her with him as he ran toward the mine excavations in the rocks nearby.
Randi threw a glance toward her pebble message. Please, God, she thought, let them see it. Let them find us…
She and Tom were loping along a narrow path winding along the steep hillside, hidden from view from below. Abruptly Tom stopped. Randi gasped in shock. Mere inches before them gaped a tremendous hole. She stared down into it. The bottom was lost in the pitch blackness far below. It was an open mine shaft, a glory-hole, blasted straight down into the mountain rock. The trail ran around it along a narrow ledge to an abandoned mine tunnel and stopped a few feet farther on.
Dragging Randi behind him, Tom inched his way past the gaping shaft to the mine entrance. Half obstructed by debris and chunks of rock, the opening was just big enough for them to squeeze inside.
The tunnel beyond was a dead end. Barely ten feet in, an old cave-in sealed it off completely. Broken, rotted timbers lay wedged among the rocks. The remaining stretch was barely five feet to the ceiling; the floor was covered with rocks, and the support beams at the entrance were cracked and sagged askew.
Tom's eyes flew over the cramped refuge. At once he began to pile more rocks and stones on the debris already lying in the entrance, sealing the opening almost completely. Tensely he crouched inside. Waiting…
The men had left the vehicles at the old shacks and had begun to search the surrounding hillsides.
Hays and a Ranger were climbing up to the big ore ramp. They reached the top and Hays squinted at the sun, still low on the horizon but already hot. He walked along the ramp. He turned back to look for his companion.
The stones scattered by his boots as he walked on had spelled out TOM.
He did not know.
“There's nothing up here,” the Ranger called to him. “I don't think they'll have come this way.”
“There's an old mine entrance up there,” Hays responded. “Let's check it out before we go back down. As long as we're here.”
The Ranger shrugged. He joined Hays, and the two men started toward the adit.
They came to the deep glory-hole. Hays stared down into the black abyss. “Jeez!” he mumbled.
“Yeah,” the Ranger said. “There're quite a few of these old shafts around here.” He nodded at the hole. “That there hole's more than eighty feet deep. Straight down.”
Hays carefully edged his way around the open shaft. The Ranger stayed behind. The ledge in front of the mine entrance was only wide enough for one.
Hays shook his head at the blocked mine entrance. “Looks pretty much caved in,” he called. He tugged at the rocks.
“Watch your step, Sergeant,” the Ranger cautioned. “One wrong move and you're gone. Permanent!”
Tom and Randi huddled against the tunnel wall behind the rock barricade. Tense and wary, Tom watched the light from outside as it stabbed through the cracks between the rocks, going from light to dark as the figure of Hays moved in front of the opening. One of the rocks tumbled away and pitched into the shaft outside. The sound of it hitting bottom did not reach him.
Randi raptly watched the figure in front of the mine entrance. Hope rose in her. The rescuers were just outside. They had been found.
It was over.
A few more rocks and they would be safe. She struggled to hold back the tears, her throat constricted. She could see the man outside trying to peer through the barrier into the gloom of the mine tunnel beyond. She was just about to call out to him when her eyes fell upon her husband.
And her cry died in her throat.
Tom was crouched on the tunnel floor facing the entrance. Tense and coiled to leap upon his hated enemy the instant he was exposed, he looked desperate and dangerous.
In bitter defeat Randi knew. She could not call out. She could in no way attract the attention of the men who would save them. The instant they were discovered Tom would throw himself at the man. And both he and his target would plunge to their death in the deep, open mine shaft just outside.
Another rock fell from the blocked opening, rolling out onto the tunnel floor.
Tom stiffened.
In another instant he would leap.
Urgently Randi touched him. He whirled on her. Quickly she clamped a hand over her own mouth. She reached out and placed her other hand over Tom's mouth. Her eyes, gazing at him over her hand, pleaded with him. Slowly she shook her head — and pulled him away from the opening.
Bewildered, Tom stared at her. He trembled with agitation and fear. His face, pale with desperation, loomed before her. She hardly dared breathe.
The voice of Sergeant Hays reached them. It sounded as if it were only inches away. Tom grew rigid under her hand.
“Must be quite a lot of holes like this one around,” the Sergeant said to the Ranger. “How the hell are we ever going to find them if they're holed up in this kind of mess?”
Tom shook loose. He pushed Randi's hand from his mouth. In despair she knew she could hold him back no longer.
Another rock tumbled away.
Suddenly a distant voice rang out.
“Sergeant Hays!” Randi recognized Paul's voice. “Down here! On the double!”
Outside, Hays straightened up. “Okay, sir!” he shouted. “Coming!” He moved away from the opening.
Tom sat immobile, listening to the men withdraw. In silence he waited.
Randi felt desolate. It had been so close. But she'd had to stop Tom. Or he would surely have been killed. She suddenly realized what the men had talked about. If trapped, Tom would act in a way that might result in his own destruction. She shivered.
Quickly, carefully, Tom began to remove the rest of the rocks that obstructed the opening. He crept out. Randi started to follow. He pushed her back inside.
He moved to the edge of the ledge and looked down at the mining compound.
Paul had gathered all his men around him. He watched as Hays and the Ranger came running from the hillside. He was standing at a Ranger pick-up which had just driven up. He leaned into it and brought out a couple of flashlights.
“I want every one of these mine tunnels searched,” he said to the men. He handed out the torches. “Use these. There are more in the pick-up. He looked at the men, his face earnest. “And remember. If you do find them, go easy. Don't rough him up, whatever happens.” He paused for greater weight. “You could kill him.”
He looked up as a jeep came driving into the area. It was Ranger Gordon. He dismounted and joined the group. He picked up a flashlight with the others and walked toward the old mine tunnels.
Hays joined him. “What happened to you?” he asked. “Coffee break?”
Gordon grinned. He nodded toward his vehicle. “Damned jeep overheated,” he said. “Had to use my canteen water to cool it down. Took some time.” He motioned toward the hills and the mine adits. “They holed up in there?”
Hays nodded. “Seems like it. We'll soon know.”
On the ledge above, Tom crawled away. In his nostrils lingered the acrid stench of the fumes drifting up from the monsters below. He had come to hate it. He made his way back to the mine entrance and pulled Randi from it.
Together they inched around the glory-hole and skirted the big ore ramp.
Climbing down the rocky slope, they retraced their steps, doubling back the way they had come…
2
For the first time in his life Colonel Gerhardt Scharff felt he'd painted himself into a corner, with no Lehrlinge—no apprentices — to put the blame on. Always before, whether serving the Third Reich or the D.D.R., if threatened with a mission failure he'd been able to come up with a scapegoat who — with a lesser or heavier amount of fabrication — was made to suffer the unpleasant consequences. This time he was unable to do so. This time the scapegoat had to be fat enough to satisfy both his own superiors and the KGB. And that tagged him, Gerhardt Scharff himself.