“The millstone,” Tess yelled. “It’s a trapdoor.”
Reilly charged through the tunnel like he’d been shot out of a cannon, firing as he moved. He heard Zahed’s right hand hammering away at something, each strike echoing back at him, his heart pounding inside him at triple-speed. He saw the eruption of blood from his opponent’s left hand and heard him grunt heavily from the hit, and was just a few feet away from reaching him when the huge stone disc suddenly rolled out of the wall. The ground under his feet shook as the millstone slammed into the opposite side of the tunnel just as he got to it, his fingers instinctively reaching out to stop it before pulling back at the futility of his move.
The tunnel was blocked. Completely, utterly blocked.
Reilly tried to push the millstone back, but it wouldn’t budge. It was designed to roll into position on an incline, and was too heavy for him to move back on his own. Reilly cursed aloud and ran his fingers all over it in desperation. It had a small opening at its center, about three inches square. He peered through it, a sinking feeling choking his throat. He couldn’t see anything on the other side. It was shrouded in darkness.
Then he heard him. Groaning, cursing, agonizing over his injury. Which was nice to hear. The Iranian seemed to be in serious pain.
After a few drawn-out seconds, the wounded man’s voice rang out from behind the trapdoor. “You comfy in there, Reilly?”
Reilly brought the barrel of his weapon up to the hole and replied, “How’s the hand, jerk-off? I hope I didn’t put too big a dent in your love life,” before stuffing the gun through the opening and firing off four rounds. Their reports bounced through the tunnels and died out, then he heard the Iranian again.
“Stop wasting your bullets and start looking for a way out of there.” His voice was loud, but not loud enough to mask the agony the man was clearly suffering. “It’s not going to be easy. I think it might be impossible. But try. Do it for me. Make the impossible happen. And if you do, know this. This isn’t over. Somewhere, somehow, I’ll find you. Wherever you are. I’ll come find you, and Tess … and then we’ll end this properly, all right?”
Reilly shoved his gun through the hole again and emptied his clip feverishly, yelling out in frustration, hoping one of the rounds would find flesh and bone. And when the echoes of the detonations died down, all that was left was the furious mutterings and the distant footfalls of the Iranian, which receded until there was nothing left but a drowning silence.
Chapter 46
What about moles? They don’t have moles down here, do they?” “Moles?
“You know,” Tess rambled on. She was finding it hard to keep quiet in the oppressive darkness. “Moles. Or any other kind of nasty critters with big teeth and claws.” She fell silent for a moment, then added, “What about bats? You think they have bats in here? We’re not that far from Transylvania. Maybe they have vampire bats out here. What do you think?”
“Tess, listen to me,” Reilly said calmly. “If you lose it, I’m going to have to shoot you. You do realize that?”
Tess laughed. It was a hearty laugh, borne more out of fear and nervousness than out of her thinking his words were particularly funny. The reality of their situation—being stuck down there, in a condemned underground labyrinth, several levels below the surface—was getting to her. She usually prided herself on not being the kind of person to panic. She’d lived through a few harrowing situations, and she’d done all right and gotten through them. Adrenaline usually kicked in and fueled her drive for survival.
This was different.
This was looking like a slow, agonizing, and frustrating end. Like being marooned in space without the relatively quick release of a limited supply of oxygen.
It was enough to drive one mad.
She’d lost track of how long they’d been down there.
Hours, certainly. How many, though, she couldn’t say.
They’d tried moving the millstone back, but it was impossible. It had been designed to be rolled back from the inside, but they lacked the timber levers to do so. They’d then looked everywhere for another way out, following the cobweb of electrical cabling in all kinds of directions. They’d used the flashlight sparingly, but it had eventally died out. They’d then resorted to the faint light from the screen of Reilly’s BlackBerry, but that had died out too.
Tess knew these subterranean citadels were huge. Estimates for the number of people that could shelter in the larger ones that had been uncovered varied wildly, ranging from a few thousand to as many as twenty thousand. Which was a lot of space to cover. A lot of tunnels. And a lot of dead ends.
She knew they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“What if we’re trapped here forever?”
Reilly held her tight, his arm coiled around her. “We won’t be.”
“Yeah, but what if?” she pressed, tucking into him even closer. “Seriously? What happens to us? Do we starve to death? Do we die of thirst first? Do we lose it and go nuts? Tell me. You must have had some training in this stuff.”
“Not really,” Reilly told her. “It’s not exactly the kind of thing they expect you to go through in the New York field office.”
The darkness was absolute now, so dark it was actually blinding. There wasn’t even the faintest glimmer of light. Tess couldn’t see anything of Reilly, not even the ghost of a reflection coming from his eyes. She could only hear him breathing, feel his chest rise and fall and his fingers tighten around her. Her mind wandered to the not-so-distant past, to an earlier time, curled up with Reilly in the dark, not that far away from where they now were.
“You remember that first night?” she asked him. “In the tent, before we got to the lake?”
She sensed his face broaden into a smile. “Yup.”
“That was nice.”
“It was pretty amazing.”
“More than amazing.” She thought about it, reliving it. It stirred up a comforting warmth inside her. “I’ve always wanted to relive that first kiss,” she told him. “Nothing ever compares to it, does it?”
“Let’s test that theory.” He cupped her face in his hands and drew her near and kissed her long and hard, a desperate, hungry kiss that said more than any word could ever express.
“I could be wrong,” she finally said, dreamily. “Or maybe there’s something about this Turkish air. What do you think?”
“This air? In here? Not exactly doing it for me, but hey, don’t let me spoil your party.”
Darker thoughts pushed their way through. “I don’t want to die here, Sean.”
“You’re not going to die here,” he told her. “We’re going to make it out.”
“Promise?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
She smiled—then it all came back. What she’d been through the last few days, how they’d gotten here. A gaggle of disparate thoughts, swooping in and out of her mind.
“The guy,” she remembered, “the bomber. He told me something. A couple of things he said I ought to look up. He said it was important.”
“What?”
“He asked me if I’d ever heard of Operation Ajax.”
Tess couldn’t see Reilly’s features in the darkness, but she didn’t need to. His pause, and his breathing, told her all she needed to know. He knew what it was.
“What was the other thing?” Reilly asked her, his voice still subdued.
“He said I needed to find out what happened on the morning of July 3, 1988.”
Reilly paused again, inhaling and exhaling deeply this time.
“What?” Tess asked.
After a moment, Reilly said, “I’d say our guy is telling us he’s Iranian. And that he’s got some serious anger management issues.”