“Five hundred and fifty feet?” That was just about the height of the Washington Monument. “How deep does this mine go?”

“Just a little over two thousand feet, not that the little bastards can get that far down. Mine’s been flooded below a thousand feet for years. I wouldn’t be surprised if the water’s crept up even higher. In mines as old as this, you can have water on the level above or in the next chamber over and not know it, so long as the rock holds. People who go exploring in abandoned mines around these parts drown all the time.”

“So what, exactly, are you thinking about blowing up? The entrance? That room?”

“Not exactly. We want to take out the room underneath. It’s not as big, but it’s just as unstable. There’s only sixty feet of rock between the two of them.”

Meaning anyone planting bombs would have to drop down even deeper. “Sixty feet’s still a lot of rock,” Tom observed.

Weller snorted. “In a mine like this, sixty feet is nothing, and like I said, the rock is rotten, like bad ice, all cracked and broken-up with stress fractures.” Weller cupped air with his left hand. “So you got this great big room, and sitting right beneath it”—he slotted his right hand beneath the left—“you got this other smaller chamber. Both of them are under a tremendous amount of stress. So you make the bombs, you blow out the pillars in the room beneath this larger room—”

“And you knock out the legs.” He now understood where this was going: blow out the supports and everything would come crashing down.

“Exactly. You do it right,” Weller said, “we bury those sons of bitches.”

“It’s a nice theory,” Tom said, “but there are a lot of variables, and you still need a high explosive, time fuses, igniters, blasting caps—not to mention a way in and out of the mine.”

Mellie stirred. “We’ve got that covered, Tom.”

“Really?” He squinted from her to Weller. “If you guys are so covered, why haven’t you blown the mine already?”

“Don’t think we haven’t considered it.” Leaning forward, Weller straight-armed his saddle’s pommel, the aw-shucks cowpoke coming on strong. “But it’s like this. You can give a little kid a broken-down pistol and bullets. If he’s smart and given enough time, he might eventually put it together so it works. But the chances are also excellent that little tyke’s gonna peek down the barrel and pull the damn trigger just to see what happens. Understand what I’m saying? We got components; we have all the fixings. But none of us is an expert. Takes a long time to learn how to build a bomb without blowing your head off. That’s time we don’t have.”

We got components. Of course they would. There had to be lots of weapons lying around nowadays. Easy pickings if you knew what you were looking for—and Mellie had said that they were covered. That meant they’d been amassing matériel and planning this for some time. He was their lucky accident, a piece of fortuitous serendipity. If he hadn’t fallen into their laps, what then?

“But what’s the point?” he asked. “What will killing them accomplish? You said yourself, they don’t all stay there at one time; they move in and out.”

“Yeah, but it’s efficient; more bang for the buck. Sure, we won’t kill all the little bastards. They’re like rats. There’ve got to be hundreds out in these woods. But that mine is familiar territory and a meeting place. We chop off the head of this snake, and we accomplish two things.” Weller held up one gloved finger. “First off, we disorganize the little shits and kill a bunch of them in the process. A lot may scatter and that’s good. Second and more important, this helps clear one path to Rule. Not entirely, of course. Rule’s got a pretty strong defensive perimeter set up.”

“So how does destroying the mine clear a path?”

The old man cracked a nasty grin. “Because the Chuckies are part of the perimeter. Think about it. When you bait game, you can be pretty sure whatever you’re drawing in will stick even closer. There’s no incentive for that game to wander off. Now, who in their right mind is going to want to take on both the Chuckies and Rule’s guns? See what I’m saying? It’s like Rule’s built up this guerilla force, this buffer, which leaves them free to concentrate their firepower in other areas.” Weller let go of a disgusted grunt, but Tom thought he heard admiration there, too. “You got to admit, Peter and Chris had one hell of a brilliant idea there.”

Brilliant—and pretty sick, too. Talk about lions at the gate. “Even if this works, we won’t just march into Rule. You said this kid, Chris, is pretty tough, right?”

“Oh yeah, he’s a sick son of a bitch; real smart, real sneaky. There’s almost no one there knows him well. You ask people, they’ll tell you how wonderful he is. He’s got them all brainwashed, but they haven’t seen the stuff I have. That prison house is where he really cuts loose, no pun intended. You should’ve seen the last girl when he was done with her. I’m just glad the poor little thing didn’t make it. Turned my stomach, and I saw a thing or two in ’Nam. I did Tet; us Rangers was at Da Lat and Phu Cuong and . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, and I’ve been at Ma’sum Ghar and Korengal and Paktika. So what?” As much respect as he had for vets like Jed, he was getting a little tired of Weller always playing the Vietnam card. “This isn’t a contest about which of us has seen worse. But you, of all people, ought to know that killing our way in—”

“Is the only way,” Weller said. His skin had gone chalk-white with rage. “Or haven’t you got the stomach for it, soldier?”

“You know, that soldier jazz is getting really old really fast,” he snapped. “Don’t bait me. All I’m saying is that you got out of Rule.”

Weller stiffened. “I see where you’re going, but getting out wasn’t that easy. I had to arrange a . . . a search, then figure a bogus excuse for splitting off from the men who can’t be trusted, and cover my tracks.”

“But you’re not doing this out of the goodness of your heart. This is about some beef you’ve got with Rule.”

“What do you care what my reasons are? I’m offering you a way in.”

“But only if I do what you want,” Tom countered. “Regardless of whatever grudge you’ve got going, there has to be a way of getting to Alex that doesn’t involve murdering innocent people.”

“Chuckies ain’t people.”

Tom shook his head. “I’m not talking about them. You’re condemning an entire village, Weller. Not all the people there are guilty.”

“They’re complicit in their silence,” Mellie put in. “The survivors who have bowed to Rule’s conditions, who have decided upon survival at any cost, are as much to blame as the monsters on that Council. You think about girls and boys passed around. You think about Alex and some perverted, twisted man old enough to be her grandfather taking her into his bed.”

Her words set his teeth. “All I’m saying is that you need to think very, very hard about what you’re asking. There’s got to be another way.”

“There isn’t and we’re wasting time,” Weller snapped. He gave his reins an angry twist. The blood bay let out a startled snort, then pranced and stamped as Weller brought the animal around. “From where I’m sitting, it’s pretty damned simple, Tom: you’re either in or you’re out. You’re for us or against us. So, what’s it gonna be?”

And if I’m out? He doubted that Mellie and Weller would simply let him refuse and go on his merry way. Refusing might even be a death sentence. Weller hadn’t revealed everything, and Tom trusted neither him nor Mellie. By his own admission, Weller was a traitor. Once you’d betrayed a friend, it was like a part of your soul crossed this invisible point of no return.

Yet the math was clear. Alex was in trouble and he needed a way into Rule. These people were his best shot. Once he found Alex, they would both go somewhere far away, where no one could touch them—or hurt her—ever again.

“Tell me what to do,” he said.

65

“Good news?” Peter croaked. Those two words cost him. Breathing hurt. Every swallow threatened to close his throat. Peter lifted his bruised hand to inspect the damage, finger-walking the margins of a flap of moist flesh and torn muscle beneath his left ear the size of a Post-it note. Pretty bad. A little deeper and Davey would’ve ripped his carotid in two, but the kid’s impatience saved his life. Peter still felt the ghosts of the kid’s thumbs, which had jammed, dug down, and struggled to break his windpipe before Davey had given up and lashed out with his teeth. As soon as he felt the pressure let up and Davey’s teeth batten down, Peter rammed the heel of his right hand into the kid’s jaw. He would’ve finished the kid if the guards hadn’t intervened.

No doubt about it, though: Davey was getting stronger and smarter. Either that or he was getting weaker. Probably both.

“Oh, yes.” Finn clipped his walkie-talkie back onto his hip and then reached into a deep pocket and withdrew a canteen. “I tell you, boy-o, natural selection is a wonderful thing.”

“Yeah?” The canteen was mesmerizing, a candle flame to a moth. Peter watched, transfixed, as the old man unscrewed the cap.

“Mmm-hmm.” Finn drank in big, languid swallows. The knuckle of Finn’s Adam’s apple rolled and bobbed and hitched. A trickle escaped to dribble onto the old man’s chin, and Peter’s tongue wormed to the corner of his own mouth in an effort to catch the drip. All he got was dirt and dried salt. His mouth tasted like an old toilet, and his breath reeked of rotted fruit. That wasn’t good. He knew the stink of starvation.

Today was Tuesday: almost two and a half weeks since the ambush and now seven days in this cage. The last time he’d tasted water was two days ago. Since then, he’d had nothing to drink that wasn’t his own piss. This morning, the half cup he’d squeezed out was dark as caramel, but he choked it down anyway. Last time he could pull that stunt, though. His pee was too concentrated now. Drinking any more would make his kidneys shut down just that much faster—which might be a relief, come to think of it. Slip off into a nice, quiet, lethal coma.