Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Durwood was taking fire. And returning it.

Yves Pomeroy flinched almost continuously. Piper squatted at Durwood's bootheel and squeezed off more suppressing fire. The walls around them vibrated.

Don't think about the fault line, Quaid told himself. Don't think about the fault line...

The ascent seemed endless, but finally they reached the third shaft. Quaid rushed right to the precipice before skidding to a stop.

"Whoa now," he said, wobbling, peering down into the black void.

Molly joined him, brushing shoulders. Her breaths were short and hard. Blond roots had begun showing in the hair she'd dyed black forever ago while infiltrating the Blind Mice.

"We're here," she said.

"Lucky us." Quaid poised his finger over the unmarked button. "How many floors up for the Great Safe?"

"No!" Molly yanked his finger away, pressing it into her thigh. "You don't go up—you go down. It's at the bottom of the shaft."

A crease appeared down the middle of Quaid's forehead. He breezed a hand back through his wavy hair, having chucked Jesse's wig long ago.

"How do you go, you climb?" he asked, gesturing to the cable, which would've been a good seven or eight foot jump.

Sue-Ann worried her paws at the edge of the shaft. Durwood called her back a step.

The air here was cold, dank.

Molly said, "You have to go all the way. It's water down there."

"Meaning..."

"Meaning you swim."

Durwood telescoped his neck forward to look. "How'd you find that out?"

Molly explained what Henri Rivard had told them.

Quaid had more follow-ups than Wolf Blitzer at a presidential debate. Just where had they found Henri? And why should they trust anything out of his mouth? Before he could ask, their pursuers' footsteps—which Durwood had managed to silence temporarily—got loud.

"Hold that thought," said the ex-marine.

He fished three grenades out of his shoulder bag, which was caked stiff with dust. Threading the pins between the knuckles of one hand, he pull all three in a single jerk, then hurled them around a switchback.

The blasts came in hard succession, like massively amplified pinball plings. The footsteps stopped.

For now.

Quaid said, "If Henri Rivard told you to take a running leap off a cliff—which isn't far off from what's come to pass here—would you?"

Molly slid a hand up her hip.

Pomeroy offered, "Henri is a man extraordinaire, a man of his word!"

Durwood scowled. "Man buddies up to Saddam Hussein, I say his word don't mean much."

"Ah, but the sanction were ludicrous! Iraqi citizens were paying the true toll, only Henri recognized this."

"Mm-hm. Real humanitarian. How much y'all pay per barrel of crude? Ten percent fair market?"

Before they could delve deeper into Henri and Rivard LLC's past morality, the cable in the center of the shaft stiffened and a whirring sounded. Then the clatter of many feet on steel.

"Reinforcements," Durwood said. "Coming at us from above and below."

Molly spread her feet shoulder-width apart at the shaft's edge. "I'm jumping. If you guys are too scared, fine. I'll go myself."

Her knees flexed, and Quaid saw that she meant it. What kinda food did they serve in that oubliette? He'd expected to find her terrorized, despondent. Instead she'd become Bruce Willis.

"Nobody's scared, McGill," he said, "but look, Henri Rivard could've been feeding you a line of bull. Or left out some important stuff—like whatever's down there is laced with acid or full of man-eating fish."

But Molly was having none of it. "The kernel sourcecode has to be there. There must be hope for the world." She found his eyes in the darkness and finished, "I believe."

She jumped. The shaft's dearth of light swallowed her with stunning speed—her green eyes and upturned nose were there one second, gone the next. Quaid held his breath, expecting to hear a splash.

Where was the splash?

He lowered to one knee, dirtying his slacks, and listening. Where was the splash? Had Henri lied? Was the shaft a bottomless pit? Or solid ground below—and Quaid had just missed the dull thud of her landing?

A rattling clang started above, the car descending.

Reinforcements.

At last, impossibly far down, Quaid heard:

Plop.

He felt a mix of relief and dread—dread because he knew what he had to do now. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. A breath to last.

I believe, she'd said.

Quaid hated when people turned his own catch-phrases around on him.

He jumped, too.