Christopher did a dance of searching around. “He was here a moment ago. That one, he is like a ghost.”
True . . . and with a dog’s curiosity.
He had forgotten to tell Kane to stay.
Tucker pursed his lips and let out a soft double whistle.
Kane responded with a double bark.
They followed the sound back into the Cathedral, only to discover Kane standing at the top ledge along the left wall. He stared square at Tucker—then jumped down into the foxhole and vanished out of sight. The shepherd’s message was plain.
Come see what I found!
What now?
Tucker led Christopher up to the ledge. He shone his lamp’s beam into the foxhole to find Kane seated before a barrel-shaped wooden door in the cavern wall.
“Seems there is more to this maze,” Christopher said.
Tucker jumped down. He tested the four-foot-wide plank door. The wood was once stout, the iron joinery solid. No longer. He leaned against the other side of the foxhole and kicked out with his legs. The ancient door shattered under his heels. A passageway extended from it.
“Let’s see where it leads.”
He took Kane with him this time, but he had noted Christopher beginning to limp badly on the ankle he’d twisted before, so he left him to rest.
The crawl this time was mercifully short. The passageway ended at a crudely circular room, crowded with stacked boxes, but at least he could stand.
He noted four tunnels led out from here.
Tucker sighed.
The Boers apparently were ants in another life.
Tucker called back to Christopher. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, come after me.”
He took a brief moment to examine the crates. Burned into their sides was the coat of arms for the Boer Orange Free State. Same as De Klerk’s unit. He pulled the lid off the top crate and looked inside. He found rifle shells, canned goods, tins of kerosene, candles, hammers, nails. He examined three more crates and found similar contents.
Though he had found nothing significant, a question nagged at him: Why hadn’t the British seized this bounty when they cleared this place out?
Without an answer, he began his search of the four tunnels, starting from the left and working his way right.
The first passage led to a mess hall: a long, narrow gallery containing trestle tables constructed from what appeared to be the remains of wagons, all of them topped with abandoned plates and pewter cups.
The second tunnel ended at a bunkroom: a gallery-style cavern, with moldy lines of bedrolls flanking the walls and dark lanterns hanging above.
Again, there was no indication that the British had been here. Nothing was ransacked; nothing looked disturbed. Tucker felt as though he were touring an abandoned theater.
Down the third passageway, he found the unit’s hospital: a ward lined by thirty or so makeshift cots and stacked with crates of medical supplies.
He was about to leave, when something struck him as off.
“No blankets, no mattresses, no pillows,” he murmured.
The cots had been stripped.
And why so many of them?
According to Bukolov, the Boers had arrived here with only a hundred men. This medical ward held cots for nearly a third of that number. Had that many soldiers been wounded?
With more mysteries raised than solved, Tucker moved to the fourth and final passageway. This one ended at a huge cavern, but it was barren: no crates, no equipment. Nothing. But something struck him as odd about its far wall.
Following his beam of light, Tucker crossed there and discovered a large wall of rubble. He noted blackened scorch marks to either side. Roosa must have blasted this entrance, collapsing and sealing it behind him. At least this discovery answered a question that had been nagging him: How had Roosa gotten the horses into this cave system? Of course, that raised in turn yet another question: What became of the horses?
Kane barked twice behind him.
The shepherd drew him to a tunnel opening off to the right. This one was blocked by a careful stack of boulders. Each stone wedged tightly together. Even the gaps had been stuffed with clumps of burlap.
“What the hell?” he murmured.
Using his hands and his knife, he pried at the wall of boulders until one slipped free. It crashed to the floor, almost hitting his toes. He began to lower his face to the opening, to shine his light through the gap, but yanked his head back, slapped in the face by a fierce stench.
He took a few involuntary steps backward, covering his nose and mouth with a hand. He recognized the stink immediately, flashing back to too many battlefields, to too much death.
Flesh and fire.
He took a full minute to steel himself, then he returned to the sealed door. He now detected a whiff of kerosene through the stench, the incendiary source for whatever horrors lay beyond this blockade.
He remembered the entry read by Bukolov from De Klerk’s diary.
Die Horro . . .
Holding his breath, he shoved his head through the gap and swiveled the beam of his lamp. He pointed it down first, expecting to see floor. Instead, darkness swallowed his light. He was staring into the mouth of a shaft, a black pit.
Tucker pulled back out and sat down beside Kane.
He knew what he had to do, but he railed against it.
He had no doubt what lay at the bottom of the pit.
But he had no answer as to why and who?
Those answers lay below—along with perhaps the secret behind De Klerk’s diary. He closed his eyes, struggling to rally. He’d come too far with too much blood shed. He could not balk now.
But I want to . . . dear God, do I want to.
8:41 P.M.
“Tucker, what did you find?” Christopher asked, looking worried, perhaps noting his sickened demeanor as he returned.
“I’m not sure. But I need you to go back to the supplies, grab a coil of climbing rope, and come back here.”
Christopher returned two minutes later.
“Follow me,” Tucker said and led Christopher and Kane back to the large cavern and over to the doorway that closed off the pit.
“That stink . . .” Christopher said after peering through the hole. He had helped Tucker widen it by pulling out a few more rocks. “You’re not going down there, are you?”
“I’m happy for you to take my place.”
For once, Christopher didn’t argue.
Working together, they anchored the rope around a nearby stalagmite and tossed the free end through the hole.
After ordering Kane to stay put, Tucker boosted himself through the opening and twisted around. With his gloved hands on the rope, he leaned back and braced his feet against the wall of the shaft. He took a calming breath. He tried to quiet the voice in his head that was shouting at him to go no farther.