Deceptive Treasures: Slye Temp Book 5 Page 4

  He stuck his face up to the slot for a moment then stood away from the wall. “What does that room open into?”

  “Another tunnel. This area has not been active in many years according to my ... sources.” It grated to share so much in front of Pang, but as long as he did not know who her sources were, those friends were safe.

  The cowboy ordered, “Stand back.”

  Only an arrogant man would not listen to her when she was the one with the information. But she understood inflated male egos. Had suffered years of them.

  Stepping back, she crossed her arms and waited. The panel was one-and-a-half meters tall by one meter wide and bolted into the concrete wall.

  He rammed his shoulder and the steel gave a little bit. That had to hurt.

  One of his men asked, “You want to blow it, Bo?”

  He shook his head. “No, let’s save the explosives until we have to use them.”

  Two more shoves and he jarred the panel.

  Jin grudgingly admitted he was stronger than she’d thought and that was saying something for someone she considered the size of a mountain.

  He peeked into the opening then stepped back, lifted his boot and rammed it into the bottom of the panel that was knee-high off the ground. The right corner shot forward then he kicked the left corner. By the time he finished attacking the panel, it hung from the only bolt still in place at the top right corner.

  But that allowed enough room to force his big body through so he could shove the shelf out of the way.

  Once inside, he called back, “Clear.”

  She took that as the signal to move and stepped through the opening he made by holding the metal back. He took her arm as she entered the storage room, guiding her to the side as if he thought she’d fall on the debris piled on the floor. She sneezed at the dust and suffered a deep breath of mildew.

  The room wasn’t spacious to begin with and six men filled it quickly even if two were Pang and Har.

  She reached for the door and got yanked back.

  “Hold it, Jin.”

  Swinging around, she stabbed his chest with a sharp forefinger. “Do not grab me again, cowboy.”

  One of his men stifled a chuckle.

  “No one moves until I say so.” In the tiny bit of light from her penlight, she could see Bo stare at her with that single night vision eyepiece. His uncovered eye gave her a fierce glare. Then he put his hand on the finger she poked against his chest and moved it away, but without harming her. That one eye held her gaze the whole time, warning her she was stepping dangerously close to an invisible line that marked the limit of his patience.

  She kept her voice calm in spite of her own limited patience. “I know what is on the other side of that door. I know where we have to go to find a stairway. I know what to avoid. You should do as I say.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” He set her aside and took the lead at the door, opening it to look out. He called quietly over his shoulder, “Which direction are the steps and where do they lead?”

  When she didn’t answer, he turned around. “Jin.”

  “So now you need me? Again?”

  Someone snorted and she was sure it was the taller of the two men who had watched outside the warehouse.

  Bo glowered at her.

  She answered only because her silence would slow them down. “The steps are to the right, a short distance away. They lead down to the rail line.”

  “The subway here is a hundred meters below ground.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why go that far down?”

  She didn’t like being that far underground in tunnels either, but she had very few options at this point and this was the most direct passage. “You must reach the DMZ. To do that, you must go south from here, and to do that, you must travel beneath the Taedong River.”

  One of the cowboy’s men who had an Australian accent said, “Hang on a tick. The tunnel being dug for the Pongwha Station collapsed years ago. Blokes never finished it.”

  She turned to him. “That is what the DPRK would have the world believe, but the tunnel was completed.”

  The glow from her penlight caught Pang’s wide eyes. She couldn’t tell if he was shocked or impressed, but she didn’t care.

  An explosion roared from the direction of the warehouse they’d left. Noise echoed through the tunnel.

  Jin flinched. “What happened?”

  The cowboy said, “They found the first mine I left. Everyone move out and no talking.” He snatched the flashlight from her hand and flipped the light off.

  “How can I—”

  Long fingers grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the door into the next tunnel.

  He wanted her to run blind through here?

  But shining her light would give up their position if they ran into soldiers. Plus, this man had followed her to this point on an inkling of trust. She would not argue. When she tripped over her feet, he caught her arm and kept her upright, never slowing a step.

  A few minutes later, the roar of a second blast reached them. Bo didn’t even flinch.

  He had set a second mine?

  She could feel the men moving behind her and hear an occasional stumble by Har or Pang.

  These Americans did not stumble.

  Especially the mountain dragging her along.

  When they reached the end of the short tunnel, he whispered, “We’re at the steps.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it. He was letting her know they would head downstairs next, not that he wanted her to speak.

  Her fingers ached. She unclenched them, keeping her hands loose in case she fell, but the chance of that happening was slim since he had a firm hold on her.

  “Step down,” murmured near her ear.

  She took that first step, terrified of missing a step and falling fifty feet to the next landing. Her heart practiced kickboxing against her chest.

  Do not think about falling.

  She could do this. She’d faced only one fear in her life that she hadn’t overcome, but that one would not be an issue down here.

  The cowboy’s hold on her gave her confidence to move quickly down the stairs. She maintained an even spacing from one step to the next.

  What if he slipped?

  She would break her neck right along with him.

  But he never hit a bump.

  Voices rumbled above them, back through the tunnel they’d taken from storage room. Whatever explosive devices the soldiers hit at the warehouse had not blocked the pursuit. They would toss bodies to the side and keep moving until they caught Pang and Har.

  And her.

  She’d seen soldiers at her apartment. Her superiors would unleash everyone they had to stop her from escaping.

  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.
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  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.