The Genesis Plague - Michael Byrnes [118]
Fifteen minutes had elapsed since they’d left the entry point forty metres back. The ground began to gradually pitch downward as the passage narrowed and began curving in a wide arc.
As they went deeper, the cool air got thinner.
The passage straightened again, just before the ceiling seemed to disappear. When Shuster aimed his light upward, he felt like he was staring up from the bottom of a crevasse - as though a colossal axe had cleaved the inside of the mountain. Instead of opening into sunlight, however, the sheer walls tapered gradually inward until fusing once more about ten metres up.
Shuster halted the procession once more to listen for activity.
This time, he thought he heard something. And it wasn’t the Kurd’s stuffy chest. The lofty ceiling was amplifying a sound that seemed to be carrying up from inside the mountain.
‘What the hell is that?’ Ramirez whispered.
‘Don’t know,’ Shuster said. The persistent churning sounds were difficult to place, but didn’t seem to indicate a human source. ‘Maybe an underground water source. Like an aquifer or an underground river.’ He pressed forward.
‘Wait,’ Ramirez protested.
Shuster stopped and turned back to the private. ‘What?’
‘That doesn’t sound like water to me. I don’t like it.’
‘Only one way to find out,’ Shuster said, motioning ahead. But Ramirez wasn’t moving.
‘I say we tell Crawford to go fuck himself. Let him send his robot down there.’
‘Hey!’ Holt interrupted. ‘I saw something moving up there.’
Shuster spun and took aim with his M-16. He swung the light side to side, up and down. Ahead, the passage was still.
‘Oh that’s it,’ Ramirez said, repeatedly looking back the way they’d come. ‘I’m getting the fuck out of here.’
‘No you’re not,’ Shuster said. Shaking and fidgeting like a caffeine junky, Ramirez clearly had an extreme case of jitters. ‘Pull yourself together, will you?’
Hazo shimmied past Holt, saying, ‘Excuse me, please.’
Confused, Ramirez backed up to the wall to let the Kurd through. ‘Where are you going?’
Hazo didn’t answer. When he tried to squeeze past Shuster, the corporal grabbed him by the arm, saying, ‘Hold up, Hazo.’ He glanced back at Ramirez. ‘I’m not about to send our interpreter to do your job. Ramirez, be a man for God’s sake.’ He patted Hazo on the shoulder and motioned for him to return to the back of the line. ‘We’re got a plan. Let’s stick to it. Stop wasting time.’
Shuster raised his M-16 and moved forward.
‘You’re a pussy, Ramirez,’ Holt said, giving the dissenter a prodding push.
‘Fuck you. You would’ve been right behind me and you know it.’
67
‘Thanks for getting here so fast,’ Jason yelled to Candyman over the sound of the Blackhawk’s whirling blades. Once in the helicopter, he buckled his harness, tightened the chin strap on his flight helmet and adjusted the mic boom on his headset. Next to him, Meat fussed with slackening the shoulder straps to accommodate his bulk.
‘No problem,’ Candyman said. ‘It was easy to find you. That’s a mighty big fire you boys lit up. Could practically see it the second I got up in the air. Didn’t even have to bother with the GPS.’ He motioned to the ravaged outline of the safe house, engulfed in orange fire. A column of thick black smoke boiled straight up from the conflagration into the windless sky before melding into the night.
‘Man, you guys don’t mess around,’ said the slight copilot with an air of admiration.
Jason wasn’t about to explain why they’d set the house ablaze. The act was not something to be glorified.
But Meat felt the kid deserved to hang on to the outlaw image, saying, ‘We like to be thorough.’ He managed a thin smile.
‘I’ll say,’ the copilot said. ‘Who was in there anyway? Some of those Al-Qaeda fuckers?’
Jason gave Meat a stern glance. Meat said nothing.
‘Even for a rookie you’re an idiot,’ Candyman chastised the copilot. ‘Why don’t you go jerk off to Full Metal Jacket for the two-hundredth time and leave these guys alone?’ He worked the controls and lifted the Blackhawk smoothly into the