Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

his belly through a slurry of mud and rock, headfirst into the darkness. He came to a stop next to Maycomb’s feet and scrambled back up the scree to assist her.

He reached into his pocket for an extra magazine for the Glock. “You okay?” he asked.

Maycomb nodded. Firing her last two rounds when she saw the fresh mag. Meant for a larger model, this one carried fifteen rounds hanging out the bottom of the magazine well.

“They’re still coming,” she said. “What now?”

“I have one more magazine of fifteen after that,” he said. “So keep shooting, but be judicious. I’ll try and make a call on the sat phone to get the cavalry here.”

Maycomb answered, chambering a round and sending it downrange immediately.

Cutter extended the satellite phone’s antenna and held it as far out as he dared to try to get a clear view of the sky. A flurry of bullets slapped the ground around his hand.

“Shit!” he said, jerking the phone inside and trading it for the Colt Python.

Another bullet smacked the overhang, sending shards of rock into the tunnel. Whoever was on that gun was a better-than-average shot. Probably Tough Guy, Cutter thought, chiding himself for not taking off the rifleman’s foot when he had the chance.

Maycomb had the only semblance of cover in the form of a basketball-size lump of rock. Cutter rolled sideways, trying to find an angle or something to hide behind so he could look downhill long enough to take a productive shot.

“Let’s have you move back behind me,” he said. “Better that I do the shooting.”

She gave him an emphatic nod and then fired three quick shots. “Cutter!” she yelled. “They’re moving!”

“Moving?”

He and Maycomb were both half deaf from all the gunfire in the enclosed space.

“Two of them,” she said. “One right, one left.” She shimmied backward away from her rock, yielding the space to him.

He crawled into position in time to catch a glimpse of Slick and Black Beard working their way uphill on either side of the mine. He fired toward Slick, but it was wasted ammunition. He didn’t have the angle.

Cutter pushed away from the entrance a couple feet and took one of the Streamlights from his pocket. A rock fell from the jagged roof, making him wish for the helmet, but there was no time for that. He rolled onto his back, surveying the area around the entrance, then playing the beam past Maycomb into the blackness. The tunnel would have been head high for the miners when they’d built it – a little shy of six feet. Cutter would need to remember to stoop. His light bounced off a narrow stream that ran down the center of the tunnel. Old boards and rusted tools lay here and there along the arched gray walls. Water dripped steadily from the uneven rock ceiling, plopping into the trickle. The sweet odor of decaying wood came from the rough-cut timber frame just inside the opening forming a shallow puddle in the mud and shale. Sodden and sagging, the wood looked more like the trigger to spring a trap than any kind of architectural support. The upright timber beside Cutter’s leg was badly splintered, listing heavily as if it were carrying the weight of the entire mountain.

Gruff voices drifted down from outside. It was impossible to tell from where exactly, but a skitter of dirt and gravel falling from above the entrance told Cutter all he needed to know.

Cutter pointed the beam of his Streamlight down the tunnel again, found what he wanted, and then tapped Maycomb on the thigh.

“We need to move!”

Fist-size stones bounced inside the entrance, clattering against the rock and splashing into the puddle and punctuating Cutter’s urgency.

Scrambling to his feet, he grabbed Maycomb by the hand and ran, splashing and sliding through the ankle-deep water and silt to put as much distance between them and the tunnel entrance as he could. Fifteen steps in he reached what he was looking for, a shallow depression cut a scant three feet into the rock. He pulled Maycomb tight against him so they both faced the wall.

“Cover your head,” he managed to say, before a sullen woomf shook the mountain. A black wall of dust and stone blew into the tunnel on a gale-force wind, the pressure wave slamming against Cutter’s lungs. Jagged chunks of rock rained from the ceiling. One of them slammed against Cutter’s forearm, raised to protect his head. The sudden shock of the blow caused him to drop his flashlight into the muck at his feet, throwing the tunnel into complete darkness.

Chapter 45

“You hear that?” Lola Teariki said, standing at the tideline of sun-bleached driftwood and rotting kelp above the old dock.

Rockie Van Dyke’s hand dropped to her Glock.

“Gunfire?”

Both women had thought they may have heard a rifle shot on the way in, but the roar of the outboard motor covered everything quieter than a howitzer.

“Could be,” Lola said. “Sounded deeper, though. A rumble.”

“Probably my idiot sister-in-law starting a rockslide,” Van Dyke scoffed.

“Due respect, Detective,” Lola said, casting around the ground for tracks. “But you should give your damned blood feud a rest for a quick minute. I’m trying to concentrate here.”

“Okay,” Van Dyke nodded at the mud, not quite sorry, but professional enough to get back on task. “So what do you see?”

“Not a damned thing,” Lola admitted. “And that’s the problem. Cutter always says that everything that moves across the ground leaves some kind of sign.”

She and Van Dyke had tied off next to the Smoker Craft and then walked directly toward the tree line in hopes of finding a trail – cutting sign, Cutter called it. Surprisingly, she’d found no fresh tracks at all, even in the willow-choked line of mud that ran parallel to the forest. They had to have crossed somewhere, so she walked north, scanning the beach.

“Cutter,” she mumbled into the wind. “What have you—”

She stopped when she looked back toward the water and saw a skiff bobbing beyond a line of