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Eagan thought a moment, then passed his pen and notebook across the table. "Okay, let's have the number."
Pitt wrote it in the sheriff's notebook and handed it back. "It's long distance. You can call collect if you wish."
"You can pay the hotel," Eagan said, with a tight smile.
"You'll be talking to Admiral James Sandecker," said Pitt. "The number is his private line. Give him my name and explain the situation."
Eagan moved to a phone on a nearby desk, asked for an outside line, and dialed the number. After a brief pause, Eagan said, "Admiral Sandecker, this is Sheriff Jim Eagan of San Miguel County, Colorado.
I have a problem here concerning a man who claims to work for you. His name is Dirk Pitt." Then Eagan quickly outlined the situation, stating that Pitt would probably be placed under arrest and charged with second-degree criminal trespass, theft, and vandalism. From that point on, the conversation went downhill, as his face took on a dazed expression that lasted nearly ten minutes. As if talking to God, he repeated, "Yes, sir," several times. Finally, he hung up and stared at Pitt. "Your boss is a testy bastard."
Pitt laughed. "He strikes most people that way."
"You have a most impressive history."
"Did he offer to pay for damages?"
Eagan grinned. "He insisted it come out of your salary."
Curious, Pat asked, "What else did the admiral have to say?"
"He said, among other things," Eagan spoke slowly, "that if Mr. Pitt claimed the South won the Civil War, I was to believe him."
Pitt and Marquez, with Eagan and one of his deputies trailing behind, stepped through the shattered wall of the wine cellar and began jogging through the old mine tunnel. They soon passed the old stationary ore car and continued into the yawning tube.
There was no way for Pitt to judge distance in the darkened bore. His best guess was that he had left Ambrose and the captured assassin approximately three-quarters of a mile from the hotel. He held a flashlight borrowed from a deputy and switched it off every few hundred feet, peering into the darkness ahead for a sign from the dive light he'd left with Ambrose.
After covering what he believed was the correct distance, Pitt stopped and aimed the beam of the flashlight as far up the tunnel as it would penetrate. Then he flicked it off. Only pitch blackness stretched ahead.
"We're there," Pitt said to Marquez.
"That's impossible," said the miner. "Dr. Ambrose would have heard our voices echoing off the rock and seen our lights. He would have shouted or signaled us."
"Something isn't right." Pitt threw the flashlight's beam at an opening in one wall of the tunnel. "There's the portal to the bore I hid in when the bikers approached."
Eagan came up beside him. "Why are we stopping?"
"Crazy as it sounds," Pitt answered, "they've vanished."
The sheriff shone his light in Pitt's face, searching for something in his eyes. "You sure they weren't a figment of your imagination?"
"I swear to God!" Marquez muttered. "We left two dead bodies, an unconscious killer, and Dr.
Ambrose with a gun to cover him."
Pitt ignored the sheriff and dropped to his knees. He swept his light around the tunnel very slowly in a 180-degree arc, his eyes examining every inch of the ground and the ore car tracks.
Marquez started to say, "What are you--?" but Pitt threw up one hand, motioning him to silence.
In Pitt's mind, if Ambrose and the killer were gone, they had to have left some tiny indication of their presence. His original intent had been to look for the shell casings ejected from the P-10 automatic he'd used to shoot the killers. But there was no hint of a gleam from the brass casings. The back of his neck began to tingle. This was the right spot, he was certain of it. Then he sensed rather than saw an almost infinitesimal strand of black wire no more than eighteen inches away, so thin it didn't cast a shadow under his light. He trailed the beam along the wire, over the rail tracks, and up the wall to a black canvas bundle attached to one of the overhead timbers.
"Tell me, Sheriff," Pitt said in a strangely quiet voice, "have you had bomb-disposal training?"
"I teach a course in it to law enforcement," Eagan replied, eyebrows raised. "I was a demolitions expert in the Army. Why ask?"
"I do believe we were set up to enter the next world in pieces." He pointed to the wire leading from the tracks and up the timber. "Unless I miss my guess, that's an explosive booby trap."
Eagan moved until his face was inches away from the black strand. He followed it up to the canvas bundle and studied the bundle carefully. Then he turned to Pitt with a new level of respect in his eyes. "I do believe you are right, Mr. Pitt. Somebody doesn't like you."
