Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [118]
Bullets tore past his head, shredding the thin aluminum bow. Half a breath. No more. Harry dove again.
Once more he used the rock for purchase, this time driving against the hull with his shoulder. Still nothing happened. He tried again. Then again. Once more, then he had to have air. This time he felt something give. Lungs exploding, he hit it again. The skiff broke free and jumped forward. He went after it, kept it moving. Then he had to come up.
He felt himself break the surface. Suck in fresh air. At almost the same instant, the firing stopped and the light swung away. And the place where they were went black.
“Elena…” Harry’s voice rasped through the dark.
“Elena!” His second call, harder, more urgent. He imagined her hit by the gunfire and lying on the bottom, her lungs filled with water.
“I have hold of the boat…. I’m all right—” Her voice was close by and she was gasping, trying to get air.
“What about Danny—?”
“We’re moving!” Elena’s cry was sudden and frightened.
Harry felt the water become abruptly colder, the skiff start to move away from him. Somehow they’d entered an underground stream and were being swept along with it.
He went after the skiff in the dark, half swimming, half pushing off the rock walls. In a moment he caught up, grabbing hold as the boat picked up speed, the water taking them ever faster. Trapped, brutally pounded between the skiff and the passage’s granite sides, he fought the rush of water past him, worked his way along the gunwales, hand over hand, toward the stern.
“Elena!” Harry shouted over the roar of the water and the banging of the skiff against the rocks.
No reply.
“Elena!—Where are you?—Elena!”
88
THOMAS KIND STRUGGLED WILDLY. SALVAtore was much stronger than he looked. The scarf taken from his wife’s hair was twisted in his hands. Looped in a garrote around the blond man’s neck. Pulling harder, the Italian pushed his knee into the small of Thomas Kind’s back.
“Bastardo,” he hissed. “Bastardo.”
This was something Kind hadn’t counted on, hadn’t even considered from a man as insubstantial and spiritless as Salvatore Belsito. But he would not die because of it. Abruptly he let his body go limp and slumped forward, taking the Italian by surprise. Both men hit the deck at the same time. In a single motion, Thomas Kind pulled free, rolled to the side, and came up behind him. The razor flashed in his hand, and he grabbed the Italian by the hair, dragging his head back, fully exposing the length of his throat.
“That place—that cave where they were—” Thomas Kind took a breath and felt his pulse slow, come back to normal. “Where does it go?”
Deliberately the Italian’s eyes crept up to fix on the blond man standing over him. Oddly, he was not afraid. “Nowhere…”
Abruptly the razor slid across the base of Salvator’s nose. He cried out at the sudden gush of red that poured down over his lip and into his mouth.
“Where does it go?”
The Italian choked, tried to spit out his own blood.
“Like others in… here…. To an underground stream… and… then… back… to the lake.”
“Where?—North of here, South. Where?”
Slowly a smile crossed Salvatore Belsito’s face, a great, grand smile that was, in truth, his soul.
“I will not… tell you…”
89
HARRY HELD ELENA BETWEEN HIMSELF AND the skiff as it drove stern first against them, pushing them down through a thundering wash of narrow sluice that was dropping at an ever-increasing angle. The pitch black. The force of the water. His hands were raw and bleeding from trying to slow their speed against the unseen granite walls. He could feel Elena pressing against him, fighting to keep her head above water. As he was. If Danny was still inside the skiff—his gurney shoved against the stern—there was no way to tell.
Then suddenly there was nothing under them. Just air. He heard Elena scream. And he felt the skiff crush against him. Then they hit. Deep water. Blacker than before.