The Hunt Club

Hunt began walking back toward the front of the cave, shining his light on the walls and the roof, making sure he covered every inch of surface. With the door in the barn closed, there was no breeze blowing in the cave now, either. He tried to remember if he'd felt the source of the breeze as he'd made his way in while the front door had still been open, but he'd been concentrating on what might have been in front of him, on where he placed his feet, on who might have been waiting there in ambush.

The source of the breeze had never entered his consciousness.

Where the cave turned sharply left going back toward the entrance, he noticed a fissure high in the rock as it began to curve to form the roof. No more than eighteen inches at its widest point, and perhaps five feet from tapered end to tapered end, it disappeared into blackness. Standing directly under it, Hunt reached his hand up and strained to get some sense of fresh air coming in through it.

But he felt nothing.

From where Hunt stood below it, even standing across the cave by the opposite wall, he couldn't make out how far back the hole went. It might go all the way to the outside, it might gradually narrow to nothing, it might stop after three feet. There was no way to tell. And at first it wasn't clear why it would matter, anyway. Even if it did mark a possible opening to the outside, he estimated that the fissure itself was at least four feet above his extended reach.

It was impossible.

He kept on looking along the cave's walls, past the barrels, making it all the way to the front door again. That door, too, had been cleanly carved into the limestone. The narrow fissure, ten feet off the ground back where the cave hooked left, was the only possibility. There was no sign of any other outlet. He let himself down to the floor, his back against the door to the barn. Turning off his flashlight, he collected himself in the blackness and tried to concentrate.

And thought of the barrels.

Midway back again, and laying his flashlight on the ground, he dislodged one of the heavy empty barrels from its wooden rack and rolled it back to the spot underneath the fissure.

It wasn't going to be enough.

Hoisting himself up to stand on the barrel, he still could not reach the bottom edge of the crack in the limestone. He was short of it by a foot or more.

Getting down off the barrel, he retrieved his light, and shone it again into the opening, trying to get a better idea of how far it extended. He still couldn't see back into it more than a few feet. Changing his focus, he sca

But there was no other choice.

He used his night goggles to prop the flashlight on the ground in such a way that its beam centered on the fissure's opening. Boosting himself back up onto the barrel, he studied the place where he'd have to grab, tried to visualize the next exertions-flush against the wall, pulling himself up enough to get his shoulders in, elbowing his way inside, swinging his feet up, hoping there was room to hold him. And that the fissure didn't end in another wall of rock, somewhere back in the heart of the promontory.

Thinking about it wasn't going to help.

He jumped.

Utter blackness.

Hunt should have brought his night goggles. Or his flashlight, although he had needed its beam to illuminate the fissure's mouth. He should have used his gun instead of the precious goggles to prop the light up; his useless gun now snug in its holster against his lower back.

He could do nothing but continue to crawl forward on his belly, inch by inch, feeling in front of him for the outcroppings in the narrow space that had twice already closed down enough over him to cut into his head; the liquid he felt now dripping down his forehead and into his blinded eyes tasted like blood. His hands, he knew, were shredded and bleeding, too.

Ahead of him the passage narrowed and narrowed some more. When he'd begun, there'd been enough clearance to pull himself along on his elbows, to kick with his knees as he'd learned in basic training. Now, though, after an interminable climb, he felt the walls closing in on both top and bottom-against his chest, nearly flush against his back, his gun catching with almost every movement. He couldn't even begin to turn over, wasn't sure if he could back up now if he wanted to. Pushing himself forward, arms outstretched, scrabbling with his feet, he found himself, finally, nearly wedged into the solid rock.

If it got any tighter, he couldn't go any farther in either direction. He'd already been crawling for many, many minutes, had covered at least a couple of hundred feet. If he got stuck, he would die here, buried in the mountain.

His arm now at full extension, he reached again in front of him, feeling for the stone above and below. His shoulders ground into the rock on both sides of this, his third and worst constriction.

But if he could force himself through it, it seemed to widen again on the other side. Top to bottom, side to side.

His bloody fingers grabbed at the stone. They tried to pull him forward, and the rock crumbled under his hands. Seeking some leverage from behind, he dug in his feet, forced a shoulder forward, gained all of an inch, no more. Finally, with an inhuman cry that he never heard, he pushed with everything he had and cleared the wedge.

Somewhere ahead of him, he caught the first faint scent of fresh air. He pulled himself forward toward it. Ahead the quality of the darkness seemed different. Focusing on that, he pulled again and felt the eroded earth give slightly around him. He saw a pinpoint of light and recognized it for what it was.

A star.

37

Hunt rolled out onto a very steep hillside dotted with low shrub and coarse spring grass. The rest of it seemed to be a kind of slippery schist of broken-up limestone and dry dirt. A bright half-moon had risen on the horizon. About a hundred feet below him in its light, Hunt could see an unpaved road that ran in the cut, where the promontory's steeper slope met the tended vineyard beneath it. There was no question in his mind that this was the road that Juhle had taken when they'd split up, and that several hundred feet farther along by the barn was where he had been pla

He wiped the blood off his face, off his hands onto his pants and shirtsleeves. He started downhill, keeping low, using the cover of the shrubbery whenever he could, just in case. For all he knew, and had to assume, Mrs. Manion was armed and obviously at least competent enough as a strategist to have been nearly able to eliminate him from tonight's equation.

Because of Amy's phone calls to her, she would certainly have known that she was dealing with more than one adversary, and she might already have disabled one or all of his troops. It would not do to be careless now.

So he forced himself to move slowly and with great care. Even so, every five or six steps brought a small landslide of the unpacked dirt and rock that comprised the face of the slope. Twice, Hunt slid as he stepped and loosened what felt and sounded like an avalance of earth under him. Moving next from shrub to shrub to avoid further slides, he made it down finally to the road, where he turned to his left. He unholstered his gun, racked a round, then keeping low, broke into what he hoped was a silent enough jog.