Bukolov chuckled. “I have grown quite fond of that dog.”
7:55 P.M.
Preparing to explore, Tucker and Christopher donned headlamps. The cavern’s only other illumination came from an LED lantern next to Bukolov. The doctor still sat among the supplies, guarding Anya. He had a pistol in one hand and De Klerk’s diary in another, doing his best to get his bearings, to discern some clue about the whereabouts of the specimens of LUCA.
“There are many references in his damned diary,” Bukolov had said a few moments ago. “To bunkrooms, officers’ messes, medical wards, including a place grimly noted as the Die Bloedige Katedraal, or ‘The Bloody Cathedral.’ It seemed the Boer even brought their horses in here and wagons.”
Tucker looked up at the falling chute of water.
Not through there they didn’t.
“But I keep coming to one entry over and over again. It’s simply noted as Die Horro, or ‘The Horror.’ It seemed important to De Klerk. But it would be easier to trace his steps through this subterranean world if I had some map of the place.”
And that’s what Tucker and Christopher intended to do, with Kane’s help. Tucker figured this recon mission was a better use of the shepherd’s skills than merely guarding Anya. She was already trussed up and under the baleful eye of Bukolov. Besides, where could she go?
So Christopher and Tucker headed over to the two passageways that looked like the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun.
Tucker took the one on the right with Kane. Christopher vanished into the other. After only sixty steps, Tucker’s tunnel dumped into another cavern, this one massive, with a vaulted ceiling festooned with stalactites. The floor was likewise covered in a maze of towering stalagmites. Some of the two met to form columns like in a—
“Cathedral,” Tucker mumbled.
Was this the place Bukolov had mentioned?
Die Bloedige Katedraal.
As he stepped farther out, he saw the walls to either side had been carved into tiers. They definitely looked man-made, likely the handiwork of the Boers.
A scuffle of boots sounded behind him. Christopher stumbled into view thirty feet away, his light shining blindingly into Tucker’s face. His tunnel had also deposited him into the Cathedral.
“Whoa, whoa!” Christopher said, sweeping his headlamp across the cavern. “How big do you think this place is?”
“Side to side, fifty yards. Maybe twice again as deep.” Tucker pointed to the tiered ledges on his side. “I want to check those out. Those aren’t natural. See the chisel marks and ax strikes in the sandstone?”
Tucker crossed over and hopped up onto the first ledge, then the second, finally the third, like climbing tall steps. Kane followed him up. They were now ten feet off the ground. He found more Boer handiwork on top. The highest ledge had been excavated along its length to form a crude foxhole, enough room for a soldier to duck down out of sight from the floor below.
Shining his lamp into the foxhole, he saw the bottom littered with spent shell casings. Kane jumped down to explore, sniffing at the casings, shuffling through them.
Christopher had mirrored his climb on the far side of the cavern and discovered the same. They both walked along the top tier on their respective sides, heading down along the cavern, paralleling each other.
“I’m starting to see how the Boers did it,” Tucker called out. “From these foxholes, they could strafe anyone passing through the cavern below. A perfect killing floor.”
“Horrible to imagine,” Christopher said.
Tucker now understood the bloody part of the room’s nickname.
“Let’s keep going.”
They clambered back to the floor, met in the middle, and headed farther down the belly of the monstrous cavern.
Tucker noted the telltale pockmarks gouging a nearby stalagmite, evidence of gunfire. This killing floor had seen some use.
But if so, where were the bodies from that slaughter? Had the British buried them after clearing this place out—even the Boers’ remains? Was there a mass grave somewhere in these hills?
As they continued through the Cathedral, the walls began narrowing and the roof descending, until the space was only thirty feet across. Near the end of the cave, they hit a waist-high wall of burlap sandbags that stretched from wall to wall. They high-stepped over it, while Kane hurdled it. In another ten feet, with the walls ever narrowing, they ran into another line of sandbags, then after that another. Beyond the last one, the Cathedral’s walls and ceiling narrowed to a four-foot-wide funnel that became a tunnel.
“Defense in depth,” Tucker whispered.
“Pardon me?”
He pointed to the dark tunnel. “Your enemy comes through there. The defenders hide behind the closest row of sandbags. If the enemy breaches that wall, the defenders fall back to the next barrier.”
“And the next after that . . .”
“All the way across. If the enemy makes it through that gauntlet, they still have to face the killing floor behind us. No wonder the Boer lasted so long here, where only a few could withstand many.”
Tucker stepped over the last sandbag and wondered if his team would soon face similar bad odds.
“Stay here with Kane,” Tucker said. “I’ll be right back.”
Dropping to his hands and his knees, he crawled along the shaft ahead, which almost immediately began cutting sharply left and right. As he crawled, Tucker imagined a Boer sniper lying prone at each corner, picking off an advancing British soldier before retreating to the next corner, then repeating the process again.
After eight or ten bends Tucker reached a straight passageway. At the end of it, slivers of pale light glowed. Dowsing his headlamp, he crawled the last of the way and reached a pile of rock that blocked the path forward. He fingered the silvery light that pierced through the rubble and pulled a fist-sized rock from its edge. A few more fell with it, forming a watermelon-sized hole.
Cool night air flowed back to him.
He poked his head out and searched around outside, gaining his bearings.
He realized he had reached the other canyon—the other tusk of the boar—the one Christopher and Anya had explored earlier.
Interesting.
If nothing else, he’d found another exit.
After pulling his head back inside, he carefully returned the fallen rocks back into place, sealing the hole, making sure it remained camouflaged from the outside.
He didn’t want any uninvited houseguests coming in the back door.
8:13 P.M.
Tucker returned to the sandbag barrier, where he found Christopher waiting, but he noted a missing member of their team. “Where’s Kane?”