Deceptive Treasures: Slye Temp Book 5 (5 page)

Bo whispered, “Two steps forward then down again,” just as she made a step, expecting to continue down. She’d forgotten to count steps or she’d have known where she was. The hand holding her arm changed direction and her body moved with his, but he took the next step faster than she’d anticipated.

Her boot heel caught the edge when she overshot the distance to the first step and she fell into him.

Panic slid through her veins like ice water
. She was going to knock him down this stairwell and kill both of them.

But the mountain just caught her around the waist and hauled her up against him like a sack of rice, lifting her off the floor and all the while still moving
.

Footsteps thumped high up behind them
.

In flailing her arms, she banged her wrist against the wall and sucked in a breath at the sharp pain.

He said, “Put your arms around me and keep them there.”

Pain bit at her wrist, but she did as he said and tried not to think about hurtling blindly through a dark hole at the mercy of whatever he did
. His hand held her head up against him, protecting it as he took another turn.

But that was comfort she’d have never expected
. Her breathing slowed so that her chest stopped hurting with each gulped breath.

The sound of soldiers barreling down the stairs not far behind multiplied
. Would they continue as one unit or divide up and find a way to cut off Jin’s group?

Bo the Mountain’s voice rushed out. “Which way?”

He must be close enough to the next landing to see that the tunnel went right or left.

“Right.”  She didn’t think he could hear her, but he leaped down two steps
. She held her breath in midair, then he landed and kept going.

Were they opening up their lead over the soldiers?

Shouts of the men following them grew louder.

No, we are losing ground
.

Her running mountain cursed, made a hard right and took off faster.

She was slowing him down. “Put me down. I can keep up.”

He didn’t answer, which meant he either hadn’t heard her or ignored her
.

Probably the latter
.

She could hear Har’s raspy breathing
. He had a nasally
sound when he was winded, which didn’t take much since he never exercised and had respiratory issues. Pang’s heavy breathing had the rough rumble of a smoker ... or a predator.

She whispered, “Next left then right down stairs again.”

Bo turned left then a fast right, swinging her body wide. Her leg bounced off the wall. She clamped her teeth to keep from making a sound.

Bo’s men weren’t trying to hide the noise of their boots beating against the concrete steps now. There was no reason to with the soldiers closing in.

They kept moving like that, dropping fifty feet, turning and weaving then descending again until they’d reached the last level before the deep underground rail lines another seventy-five feet down.

At this point, the tunnel extending to the left and right had been finished with an arched metal surface running from one side of the floor to the other, wide enough for four people across
. Intermittent security lights were mounted along each side of the tunnel offering enough illumination for her to see.

Jin demanded, “Put me down
now
. It’s flat from here.”

He lowered her to the ground and she turned to her left
. “This way.”

She took off at a quick pace with the thud of six sets of footsteps close behind
.

Sirens howled
.

A spark of light glowed at the far end of the tunnel
. Too bright, too low and too unsteady to be a ceiling fixture.

Soldiers coming toward them
.

Three hundred feet away.

They blocked the route to the tunnel that lead under the Taedong River.

There was one more way to go, but she had hoped to avoid it
.

Bo rushed up next to her, cursed and held up his hand, ordering everyone, “Turn around.”

“No!” She kept running forward, calling over her shoulder, “There will be soldiers at the other end, too. They don’t see us yet.”

“They
will
in another hundred feet.”

She slowed, waving him forward
. “We can make it. There
is
a way out and it’s close.” 

Indecision hung in the air for all of one second before he ordered, “
Go!
”

She raced ahead, watching the bouncing lights that grew as the soldiers came toward her
. She almost missed the turn to her right and skidded to a stop, swinging back to point at the tunnel. “Go there.”

The cowboy waved his men, Pang and Har into the new passage.

The soldiers were closing in faster than Jin expected. Someone shouted to halt then bullets pinged, but she was snatched into the tunnel and shoved ahead. “Go and lead the way.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll slow them down.”

Lose her mountain
? Her heart fell like a brick.

She had no way to help him stop the soldiers, but neither did she want to leave this man alone to face that wall of guns coming at him.

“Get my men out of here
now
, Jin!” he roared and she sprinted away, but she couldn’t see a thing again in this dark hole.

Unlike the last primitive tunnel that had been straight, this one was a curving route with a flat dirt floor. Chewed up rocks formed the walls where workers had hacked out one section at a time by hand.

With each thud of her shoes, the ground beneath her feet gradually descended.

That was encouraging
.

It should mean that she was in the correct tunnel. If so, this one led to the tunnel that had killed one hundred workers when it collapsed in 1971.

She listened for footfalls ahead of her and hoped the tunnel didn’t begin to turn sooner than she’d been told or she’d hit a wall and knock herself out at this speed.

In the next ten steps, she did hit a wall, but it was made of muscle
.

He grabbed her by the arms. “Whoa
. Where’s Bo?”

Gunfire reverberated far away, answering his question
. He muttered something about a FUBAR mission then released her.

She stepped back. “He told me to come and lead the way.”

“You’re doing a bang-up job so far,” he growled at her in an Australian accent.

She flinched at the insinuation that they were under fire because of her
.

“Where’s Bo?” one of the men further inside called back.

The annoyed one next to her answered, “Buying us time, mate. Sending the guide up to you.”

Then the Aussie flicked on a tiny LED flashlight that he handed to her
. “Take this, keep it pointed at the ground and get up front.”

She grabbed the light
. What kind of team left one man to face all those soldiers alone? “What about your friend?”

An explosion boomed in the same area the gunfire had rattled and the smell of chemicals blew in on a burst
of  hot air.

The deadly operative snarled, “Move it
. Now!”

She ground her teeth at being yelled at when she was helping these men and wormed her way to the front, ignoring Pang’s muttered, “Bitch,” as she passed him
.

When she reached the head of the line, she took off at a fast jog, holding the light on the ground at her right
. If she’d been thinking clearly, she’d have counted steps from the mouth of this tunnel so she’d know when to expect another turn. She only knew these tunnels from secret hand-drawn maps she’d studied over and over, memorizing the number of steps from one turn to the next.  

Friends who knew what evil she was up against and risked much to help her leave
.

Someone from the rear ordered the line to shift right, which wasn’t far to move since the tunnel was barely wide enough for two of the men
.

“Pick it up, Jin, they’ll be right behind us as soon as they clear the bodies out of the way,” her mountain ordered.

Her silly heart did a double flip of happiness at hearing his voice.

She must need rest
. She should not be reacting to this man.  

The tunnel gradually curved left and continued dropping in elevation.

Shouts echoed behind them. Too close. The soldiers were catching up.

“What’s the plan, Jin?” her mountain asked in a calm voice that she might believe if they weren’t all running for their lives.

She called up a mental picture of the map she’d studied. “We are close.”

“To what?”

The ground leveled off. Gunfire reverberated through the tunnel and bullets pinged off the rock walls.

She fought panic that rose in her chest trying to choke her
.
Where was that
…

“Here it is,” she said just loud enough to give warning as they reached a fork in the tunnel
. She took the right fork and rushed ahead, counting every step this time. The path they were on would eventually reach another turn to the secret tunnel, an alternate path that offered them a chance at evading the soldiers.

Another tunnel dug prior to the one that collapsed over forty years ago, killing so many
.

The tunnel she had in mind had failed as well, but not because the structure had collapsed
.

One must choose a small chance at living over sure death.

Chapter Seven

Tanner pulled up and stopped when Jin took a fork to the right. He wasn’t going in until he could be sure all his men made it to the new tunnel.

Nick brought up the rear
.

Bullets struck rock walls, ricocheting just short of the group
. The Norks were shooting down the tunnel blind, hoping to hit one of them. A trophy they could bring back to their leader.

Nick was breathing hard
. “We can drop a grenade, but we won’t be able to go back that way.

“We can’t anyhow, but a grenade might bring the walls down around us. These tunnels look like they were carved when men lived in caves.” 

“True.”  Nick took Jin’s fork and Tanner fell in behind him.

Dingo’s voice came through Tanner’s comm set
. “Jin says there’s a bend in the tunnel eighty to ninety meters in. She says the soldiers should take the other fork if we aren’t in view.”

“Why?”

“The other tunnel has an outlet and this one’s a dead end.”

Then why the hell not take the other one
?
Not a question he could get answered now. Maybe she thought once the soldiers passed by, his group could slip out and backtrack. But there would be more soldiers coming behind this bunch.

The ones on his heels right now would reach him in another twenty seconds
.

Tanner was agile for his size, but eighty meters in twenty seconds in boots was cutting it too close to risk
. Tanner gave an affirmative to follow Jin’s directions and Nick kicked it into gear ahead of him.

Nick barked at Har to pick it up and get moving.

Pulling out a flash bang, Tanner backtracked toward the soldiers whose grunting and pounding boots thundered louder all the time.

He gave his men another ten seconds of lead then opened fire back toward the last turn he’d made.

Shouts and the racket of chaos answered him.

The minute it sounded as though they’d regrouped, ready to move forward, Tanner released the pins on the flash grenade and tossed it at the oncoming bodies.

He covered his ears, opened his mouth to equalize the pressure and rushed away as light exploded behind him. When he reached the turn Jin had taken with his men, Tanner shot his weapon down the path that led the wrong way. If she believed the soldiers would take that path, he wanted to give them the impression he was still running ahead of them.

The last thing he did was to pop a smoke grenade and throw it down that same tunnel to look like he’d kept running in that direction and had thrown it behind him.

That was the best he could do to decoy the soldiers in another direction.

He pumped his arms, running flat out as hard as he could
. A tiny glow lit the corner of the bend. He growled, “Kill the light,” and hoped his throat mic picked it up.

Thirty feet
. Light blinked out.

Twenty feet
. Gunshots rang out and soldiers shouted behind him, but where? Were they still in the last tunnel or had they caught up and seen him?

Ten feet.

He shortened his step to slow his speed and dove around the corner, bouncing off the rock wall.

Pain jabbed his shoulder and he was still flying forward.

Nick and Dingo each caught an arm, using their bodies to block his forward momentum. He clenched his teeth to keep from dragging in gulps of breath and stood up on his own, freeing Nick and Dingo to handle their weapons with both hands while all three backed deeper into the tunnel.

Loud jabbering in Korean was going on far enough away it sounded like it was in the last tunnel.

Tanner waved everyone deeper behind him.

Nick stood with Tanner as Dingo and Blade backed their physicists up quietly
. Even Har wasn’t wheezing. No telling how much Albuterol Blade had given him to quiet that nasally chuffing.

Tanner glanced around as he continued backing up and found Jin two arm lengths away, her fingers fisted and body tensed for attack
. The only part that gave away her fear was the wide flare of her eyes.

He kept moving softly on his feet, weapon up and ready, holding his breath that this would work.

But where the hell were they going if this was a dead end?

Sweat streamed into his eyes
. He blinked away the sting and felt every thump of his heart like a fist to the chest. He was the last one to step around a corner that hid his group.

Now, they waited. Moving any further risked making a sound at the wrong time.

Several sets of heavy footsteps clomped toward them.

Light flickered on the other side of the corner, then it stopped bouncing and everything went silent
.

Fifteen of the longest seconds of Tanner’s life passed before the light diminished and the voices retreated
.

He peeked around the corner, waiting another minute for good measure, then whispered, “Clear.”

Tanner let out the breath that had backed up in his lungs and sucked in a couple more deep ones, then he swung around to Jin. He kept his voice ghost soft and hid just how pissed he was at being stuck in a dead end route. “What’s the straightest way out of here?”

“I will show you and—”

“No. You will tell me before we go anywhere else in this place.”

She squared that little chin of hers, letting him know she was not intimidated even though she couldn’t possibly see him without her penlight
. Like that surprised him for a woman who had survived in this country to her age?

Speaking quickly, she explained, “This tunnel was a second attempt that does not go under the river.”

Nick muttered, “Fuck.” 

Tanner agreed.

Jin tossed a glare in Nick’s direction for a second then kept selling Tanner on her plan. “We have maybe twelve minutes until they reach the next turn in that tunnel where they will probably meet up with another unit of soldiers alerted by now. If we go quickly, we can make it to a point that they cannot pass.”

Blade asked, “How can we get through if they can’t?”

“I know the secret passage, but I can show you faster than I can explain. The longer we stay here, the less chance we have of getting out ahead of them.”

Dingo piped up to point out, “I don’t like it either, but we’ve come this far with the woman ...”  His voice trailed off as in
how much worse can it get
?

Tanner knew better than to test the fates by asking that.

Nick muttered, “What the fuck? It’s that or do our own version of
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
at their last stand.”

Jin’s face struck a totally confused expression.

Tanner considered his options, which weren’t plural. He took a step toward Jin and grasped her arm so he wouldn’t surprise her when he spoke close to her ear.

She tensed and backed away
.

His gut clenched. Did she think he’d harm her
? He might be pissed off at the situation, but he’d never injure a woman unless she attacked him or one of his men. “You and I’ll take the lead.” 

He said for his men, “We’re all in at this point. Let’s see this other way.”

She visibly relaxed and nodded, allowing him to move his fingers to her hand and walk her past the two physicists.

He lifted her hand to his belt next
. “Hold on.”

“I thought you wanted me to lead.”

“Even a blind squirrel could stay on this path.” 

He’d gone another seventy-five meters and a ten-foot drop in elevation when his boots splashed water
.

A wet tunnel
? And this one was close to the river.

When the water came halfway up his shins, he paused
. “Tell me we’re not stuck in a flooded tunnel.”

“I would be lying.”

Guess he asked for that one. “Does it get any deeper?”

“Yes.” 

A wet tunnel could mean this passage had weak areas above, below or on one side.

He growled, “Are you
sure
you know where you’re going?” 

“Yes.”

“Did you know this was a flooded tunnel?”

“Yes
. No surveillance here.”

“Better chance of a cave-in, too.”

She murmured, “You are not what your people call a glass-half-full person, are you?”

Nick’s voice in Tanner’s ear interrupted his conversation
. “We got company.”

So much for twelve minutes.
It might have been eight. Tanner let go of Jin’s arm. “We’ll have to make a stand here and fight our way out.”

Jin grabbed his sleeve, tugging
. “No!”

“You have no vote in this.”

“Follow me thirty meters.”

He heard exasperation, or panic, but he gave her his attention
. “What happens then?”

“If you want to fight, it will be a better spot.”

“Keep moving.” 

The temperature down in these tunnels felt closer to forty and the cold water about the same. As long as they kept their internal body temperature elevated by moving, he might
not end up with someone dying from hypothermia. The water reached waist deep on him. That meant it was hitting the two physicists at their chests.

What about Jin?

A quick glance to his right confirmed that she was bouncing on the balls of her feet as she moved, pushing through the water.

In the next thirty meters, the tunnel split again
. “Which of those tunnels goes to a higher elevation?”

“The one on the left, but we must take the one on the right.

Of course.

She slowed as the water turned her movements even more sluggish. At the fork, she said, “Come on.”

Tanner grabbed her arm. “Keep going and let you lead us deeper so all they have to do is shoot us like ducks in a barrel.”

“Have a little faith.”

“Based on what?”

“I am here, too. I am not suicidal
. Can you fight hundreds of soldiers? Do you have that much ammunition?”  She made a small sound that he couldn’t decipher and hushed out, “Then stay where you are and die.” 

She jerked away and kept moving
.

Nick was bringing up the rear. His voice came through Tanner’s comm set
. “They’re getting close enough for me to hear them talking.”  

“Roger,” Tanner said, then ordered his team deeper into the tunnel on the right and followed Jin
. He led his group into a dark void that continued losing elevation.

When he looked up, he lost all sight of Jin.

He should be able to see the outline of her black hood with his NVG.  

He lunged forward, ready to go underwater and search for her, but her head popped up into view and her oval face brightened at seeing him. Water sluiced off her. She gasped a breath and said, “Stepped in a hole looking for the cable.” 

As if no more explanation was needed, she waved him forward to where she bobbed.

He didn’t want to assign a name to the sick drop his stomach had taken at thinking she’d fallen into a hole where she’d drown
.

She had one arm stretched above her head, clinging to the wall.

Tanner cupped her free arm that she’d been moving back and forth in the water to stay afloat.

She said, “Everyone must grab this cable.” 

His gaze tracked her other arm up to where her fingers gripped a cable bolted to the wall. The cable drooped from there to the next bolt twenty feet away where the tunnel shifted to the left.

She urged, “Quickly
. We do not have much time to get out of sight.”

Tanner explained to his men who brought Pang and Har up to speed
. Pang looked appalled once he understood what the plan was, but that was the same expression he’d worn pretty much all night.

He did spare a moment to sneer at Jin
.

What the hell
? Shouldn’t those two men show her some appreciation for helping them escape? Didn’t Pang and Jin work together doing research?

She was an Amerasian woman, sure, but that didn’t explain his negative attitude
toward someone who was risking her life to find a way for him and Har to escape.

Pang was getting under Tanner’s skin
.

Could Har tell the State Department what they needed to know about the North Korean nuclear plans if, oops, Pang drowned
?

Nick reported from the rear on the Norks closing the gap behind them
. “I estimate maybe a minute until the threat reaches us.”

“Get everyone up here now,” Tanner whispered to the team.