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  The barrage ended and Nathan yelled, “You missed. I’m still here.”

  Raven came back with, “How are your ears?”

  “What?” Nathan yelled.

  “I said, how are your—” Raven stopped midsentence and huffed a laugh. “Why don’t we compromise and split the gold. We don’t need to involve Macanas. It’s mine anyway.”

  “Feels like blood money to me. Sorry, not interested.”

  “A shame.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He pressed his hand against his thigh wound and left several bloody prints on the wall. Contrasted to the dusty surface, the dark stains couldn’t be missed. Next, he reached into the side pocket of his backpack and wanted to kiss Harv when he felt the package of light sticks that Staff Sergeant Lyle had given them. For a sickening moment, he’d thought Harv might have them. He tore the wrappers free from four sticks and pocketed three of them. He bent the first stick, felt the internal snap, and shook it violently.

  Its chemistry was instant.

  He hurled the light stick toward the entrance and ran deeper into the mine.

  CHAPTER 33

  The ambient glow reflecting off the walls and ceiling gave Nathan’s goggles all the light they needed. He stole a look over his shoulder and fired a blind shot. The shadow cast by the ore car was perfect. It kept the lower half of the mine dark while providing reflected light up high.

  He’d run thirty steps when Raven’s M-4 erupted again. Nathan hit the deck as several bullets whizzed over his head. Their whistling frequencies changed as they ricocheted down the passage. He thought he heard solid thumping farther down the tunnel but wasn’t sure. In an instant, the level of illumination plummeted. Raven must’ve shot the light stick. Its glowing liquid was now splattered over a large area, diluting its effectiveness. Leaving the Sig’s laser dark, Nathan rolled onto his back and fired three angled shots at the ceiling beyond the overturned car.

  With three rounds left in the Sig, he reached into his thigh pocket for his last full magazine. He carried a box of fifty more subsonic rounds in his backpack, but they needed to be loaded into magazines. He was about to resume running when Raven’s muffled voice penetrated the passage.

  “You’re bleeding. It’s not too late to call this off.”

  “That’s not gonna happen, but I promise to visit you in prison. I’ll bring flowers for your cell mate.”

  Anticipating another barrage, Nathan fell onto his stomach and wished he didn’t know as much about ballistics as he did. Raven’s next burst was long and sustained. He covered his ears again as chips of rock pelted him from multiple directions. Somewhere up ahead, a puddle of water erupted, splashing his head with grimy water. He cried out before the barrage ended, timing it perfectly. The tail end of his shriek of agony overlapped the waning reverberation.

  “Die slowly!” Raven called.

  Nathan added a grunt and a soft yelp, then went silent. Except for the bits of pulverized rock, he hadn’t been hit. He ran his hand along his soaked pant leg and wiped more blood on the wall at hip level. Seeing it wasn’t convincing, he rolled up his left sleeve, pulled his knife and drew its blade along the upper part of his arm above the elbow. The cut immediately began to drip blood. Keeping his elbow bent, he let the blood drip onto the rail. In the absolute silence each drop produced a barely audible tap sound. He then smeared the blood around a little. The rail wasn’t wide—less than half an inch—but the dark stain looked authentic. He began a low crawl deeper into the abyss, trailing more blood from his arm and thigh as he progressed.

  Despite the trail of blood he left—both manufactured and real—Nathan wasn’t feeling any detrimental effects from blood loss. Of course, that could change, and quickly.

  Still moving ahead, he called out loudly, trying to put pain in his voice. “Hey, Franco, you still want to talk?”

  “Not just this minute. Let’s see how I feel in say . . . twenty minutes. Sound about right?”

  Nathan fired toward the entrance again but didn’t use the same pattern of quick shots. He sent one bullet, followed by two delayed shots a few seconds apart—the futile efforts of a desperately wounded man.

  The muzzle flashes betrayed his location, but since he wanted Raven to know he’d moved deeper into the mine, they worked to his advantage. Raven would see only the first flash; he’d get out of the way for the subsequent shots. Using his hand like a metal detector, Nathan swept the tunnel’s floor for puddles of water as he crawled. He didn’t want to dilute the blood trail he’d created, and he definitely didn’t want to be soaking wet. The temperature already felt cold, and farther in, it would get even cooler. He knew there was more water up ahead because he heard drops landing in puddles. Not only was this place pitch-black, it was utterly silent as well. He kept spreading blood as he crawled until he reached the limit of his NV goggles. The only light his NV detected occurred when he looked toward Raven’s end of the passage. The other direction was a black hole—completely void of light.

  Darkness played tricks on the mind. He could’ve sworn he saw his hand sweeping back and forth but knew it was impossible. Even the best NV devices can’t work in total blackness.

  He reached up and activated the infrared flashlight for a split second and hoped Raven wasn’t looking down the tunnel at that exact moment.

  What Nathan saw during the brief flare was nothing short of glorious.

  No more than fifteen yards ahead, the tunnel terminated in a T intersection. The rock wall facing him was peppered with fresh pockmarks from all the bullet impacts.

  If he could reach that junction, he’d be able to get out of Raven’s direct line of fire. He’d still be vulnerable to fragmentation wounds, but he’d take those odds any day over his current predicament. Thus far he’d been incredibly lucky to escape serious injury. His former student had unleashed at least one hundred twenty rounds of .223 and several larger-caliber rounds, probably .308. The sooner he crawled around one of those corners, the better.

  Completely blind, Nathan continued creeping along the tunnel floor between the rails. Every few yards or so, he stopped and held perfectly still, listening for any sounds other than dripping water. He also glanced back toward the entrance, where the destroyed light stick would silhouette Raven against the soda-straw effect of light. So far, Raven hadn’t come in. It was possible Raven had advanced to the overturned ore car, but Nathan didn’t think so. He hoped the ringing in his ears had receded enough to allow him to detect any such sounds. Still, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Raven was conducting his own low crawl toward the overturned car.

  As he reached the T junction, Nathan felt something strange on the floor. With a little more blind exploration he knew what it was—a small turntable for the ore car to change direction. He chose the right side of the passage and crawled around the corner. After gaining his feet, he felt his way along the wall for several steps and removed a light stick.

  He bent the stick with too much anticipation and accidentally dropped it. It immediately produced a tiny amount of light which allowed him to recover it without feeling around. He shook it, and his world turned bright green. Raven would see this for sure. He threw the stick farther down the crosscut, returned to the junction, and peered around the corner. The overturned ore car lay at least thirty yards distant, the entrance another fifteen yards beyond that. Nathan knew Raven could’ve already advanced to the car and tool alcove, but if he came any farther up the tunnel, he’d risk exposure. Just to be sure, Nathan activated another light stick and hurled it down the main tunnel. If Raven tried to sneak past the ore car, Nathan would see him now. Neutralizing the light source wouldn’t be easy either. He supposed Raven could try to shoot the stick, but he had little chance of hitting it without taking a precision shot with the sniper rifle, and he probably maintained a three-hundred-yard zero like Nathan had taught him. No, to neutralize the stick’s glow, Ra
ven would have to block its light or toss it back toward the mine entrance. Either way, the change in illumination would alert Nathan to Raven’s position.

  Next, Nathan activated the fourth stick and hurled it into the opposite passage of the crosscut. His goggles now had plenty of light to work with, which created a double-edged sword. When Raven approached the junction, the same would be true for his goggles as well.

  Satisfied, Nathan turned and kept moving deeper into the right-hand crosscut. He pressed his bloody pant leg against the wall, went a few more steps, and squeezed his self-inflicted arm wound. Enduring the pain, he dripped blood on the tunnel’s floor in several places. He hurried over to the first stick he’d thrown and placed a couple of rocks in front of it so it didn’t offer as much light toward the junction. Turning, he quickly returned to the main-tunnel junction as quietly as he could and again saw no sign of Raven.

  Now that his nerves had settled a bit, he took a moment to evaluate his surroundings. Looking back and forth at the two branches of the crosscut tunnel, he saw they didn’t intersect the main passage at a 90-degree angle. The right-hand side made a sharper angle, closer to 70 degrees. The left-hand side of the crosscut, however, angled slightly away from the mountainside, plunging deeper into the mountain. The left-hand side, with its obtuse angle, would be slightly more susceptible to ricochets from Raven’s gunfire.

  Nathan decided to stay in the right-hand branch of the crosscut for the moment. The rock was different here—lighter in color and shinier. Nathan thought it was some kind of quartz but wasn’t sure. It looked as though the miners were concentrating on removing the light-colored plane of rock along the axis of this crosscut. Nathan believed he was looking at a vein of gold ore and the miners had blasted it free for as far as the light sticks on either side of the crosscut could illuminate. More jagged and crude than the entry tunnel, both branches of this crosscut passage obviously chased the vein. Reinforcing his conclusion, overhead light bulbs appeared more frequently in the crosscut. The miners probably used a portable generator to power them. He wondered how much gold in his backpack had come out of this mine. Nathan shook his head. This was a depressing environment. He couldn’t imagine toiling in it all day.

  He spread more blood along the wall and wondered how much time he had. What had Raven said earlier? Twenty minutes? Nathan didn’t believe Raven would wait that long, but he might let Nathan stew for a spell. Without adequate lighting, most people would be extremely uncomfortable in a place like this, and Nathan included himself in that group. He didn’t merely dislike enclosed places, he detested them. He’d felt a brief pang of panic when he’d crawled into the overturned ore car, and thinking about it now didn’t help a bit.

  He refocused his attention by looking across the main tunnel into the left-hand passage where he’d tossed the second light stick. On the far side of its sphere of light, he saw something dark. He checked the main tunnel before darting across, careful not to step on the three-foot-diameter turntable. He sensed Raven’s presence lurking at the mine’s entrance, but thankfully, no additional bullets arrived. Maybe Raven was conserving ammo for his final assault. Moving as quietly as possible, he eased past the light stick. Fifteen yards distant, another ore car materialized. Its size and shape differed slightly from the one he’d overturned, but it looked as though it would hold roughly the same volume. Just beyond the car on the right side, a secondary crosscut loomed. The black outline of its opening looked waiting like a frozen sentry. Looking for drop-offs or other types of ankle-breaking holes, Nathan stepped inside and activated the IR illuminator.

  “Oh, man,” he whispered. At first he had a hard time processing what he saw. The ceiling of this narrow tunnel seemed to disappear abruptly. Taking a second look, he realized it actually extended upward at an angle to the limit of his IR. This intersecting crosscut must have been blasted to follow a vein of gold ore. And clearly the vein had led upward at an unexpectedly steep angle—hence the rising tunnel floor and the extremely high ceiling above.

  How the heck had the miners done it? They must’ve used some sort of scaffolding or blasted it from the top down. It boggled the mind, but it also gave him a new idea.

  He turned off the IR, hurried back to the T junction, and saw no sign of Raven. It was puzzling that Raven hadn’t come in here yet. In a situation like this, the defender usually had the upper hand, but Raven’s M-4 gave him a huge firepower advantage. Nathan’s suppressed 9-millimeter was a peashooter in comparison—a peashooter that needed its magazines reloaded.

  He took a knee and removed his backpack. The ghillie suit was damp from being partially dragged through the puddles. Nathan had kept his body fairly dry, but the shaggy garment hung down when tied to the pack. Leaving his IR dark, he felt through his supplies, wishing he had a small mirror for looking around corners. He located the box of ammo and fed rounds into the partially expended mags. He swapped the Sig’s current mag for a full one and topped off the one he’d removed. Since the Sig had a live round in its chamber, he didn’t need to cycle the slide. To be on the safe side, he lowered the hammer using the decocking lever on the thumb side of the slide. The Sig was double action, so all he had to do was pull the trigger.

  Raven’s voice broke the silence. “Hey, you still alive in there?”

  From the distant echo, Nathan knew Raven remained outside the mine’s entrance and felt some relief. At least Raven was still around and not retrieving explosives.

  He slipped across the junction over to the 70-degree crosscut on the right-hand side.

  Because the light sticks he’d tossed into both sides of the crosscut were at least forty feet from the T junction, Raven wouldn’t see much more than a dim glow in here. Like Nathan, Raven had two NV devices: his goggles and the scope on his sniper rifle. Nathan supposed Raven could be lying in a prone position, scoping the tunnel for movement, but he dismissed the thought. The overturned ore car prevented a low line of sight. He seriously doubted Raven would risk aiming down the tunnel from a standing position for any length of time, if at all.

  “Hey,” Raven called again. “Are you there?”

  Nathan projected strain in his voice, as if the effort of speaking drained his strength. “What happened to my . . . twenty minutes?”

  “Doesn’t sound like you have twenty minutes. Why keep fighting?”

  “You’re an asshole,” Nathan said weakly. “Maybe I’ll hide the gold.”

  “What?”

  “I said, maybe I’ll just hide the gold.”

  “Where’s the sport in that?”

  “At least you won’t have it.”

  “I can assure you I’ll find it. Why throw your life away like this? It’s not worth it.”

  “I was about to—” Nathan issued a wet cough, purposely trying to keep it muffled. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “This is your last chance.”

  Nathan fired a single round down the tunnel.

  “Is that your final answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll do it the hard way.”

  Nathan used his pack like a shield and lay flat behind it. Raven fired a short burst of four or five rounds. Well, at least he’s consistent. The bullets slammed into the wall of the T junction and more shrapnel whizzed over his head. Thankfully the thunderous roar was tolerable at this distance. Nathan took the short burst to be an indicator that Raven didn’t have unlimited ammo. Nathan remained motionless for several more seconds before reaching into his pack for water. His mouth was super dry.

  He chugged the water, making sure to leave plenty of bloody prints on the bottle, then set the bloody bottle down and rummaged around inside his pack until he found what he needed. He put the two M84 stun grenades into his pants pockets, but he didn’t like how they felt, so he moved them to his thigh pockets. If he had to do more crawling, they’d still dig into his legs but not as badly. So be it—he
’d deal with it. He decided to keep the two M67 frag grenades in his pack. Using high explosives inside a mine didn’t seem like a good idea.

  As he prepared to move, a better plan suddenly came to him. Better, yes, but it involved even more risk. He closed his eyes as his mind worked overtime, visualizing what he needed to do. It was a great idea if he had time to set it up.

  Nathan picked up the bloody water bottle and darted across the T junction over to the left-hand crosscut. Listening for any sounds, he walked a few steps, took a knee, and went to work.

  CHAPTER 34

  Franco didn’t relish going in after the guy, but he had little choice. When he’d first ordered his men to shoot, he’d seen the guy’s night-vision goggles. They were hard to miss. Franco had initially assumed he was Viper, but the guy had a strong norteamericano accent. He’d also been too tall to be Viper. Now Franco had more immediate concerns—such as avoiding a bullet.

  Whoever this intruder was, he was dressed in the same way that Antonia had described Viper: a special forces soldier. Antonia hadn’t said anything about Estefan having a friend with him. He’d need to have a little chat with her about that. Whoever this mystery man was, he knew his way around a handgun. He’d dispatched two of his best men with relative ease. More remarkably, he’d seemed to appear from nowhere. Could he have hustled up the canyon after hearing the helicopter? It seemed unlikely but no other explanation fit. Franco didn’t doubt it could be done, but there weren’t too many people with the stamina to pull it off and still be functioning at the top. He included himself in that elite group.