The two men looked down where a pool of light spilled on a dead man. The guy training a gun on Vic, a bald man with tats on his face, snarled at her, rage in his eyes, as he pulled the trigger. There was a click and a curse. She and Marco still hadnt moved, were both rooted in fear and surprise. And then the other gun went off. And Marco moved for the very last time. One side of his skull erupted, his body sagging downward. There was another click, but Vic was moving now. Moving and screaming, staying in a crouch with her arms over her head, unable to breathe or think straight as she dove for the back door, another gunshot ringing out behind her.
30 Into the Starry Night
Small gulps of that sky passed through Palmers sand-specked lips and filled his desperate lungs. He lay on his back, gasping, the sand collecting against his side and filling his windward ear and his hair as he breathed in the loud, laborious, grateful way a newborn does.
His friend Hap lay lifeless beside him, partly submerged in the sand. Somewhere, a cayote howled at this sudden scent, and the wind skittered across the dunes with the sound of a thousand snakes flicking their tongues.
Palmer scraped the sand off his tongue using his teeth. He spat out the grit and with it precious fluid. He turned to Hap, whose shoulder and knee were out of the dune. A boot as well, but not in the right place. Haps canteen strap could be seen on his shoulder. Exhausted but mad with thirst, Palmer slid his hand into the sand and floated Hap up the rest of the way. His visor beeped with a battery alarm. His suit was nearly dead.
He reached for the canteen, saw that it was tangled, and pulled out his bloodstained dive knife. He cut the strap. A quarter full. He was too weak to ration and took great gulps. The water burned his parched lips. His stomach churned, was startled to have something to do. Palmer twisted the cap on and sat with his back to the wind, studying his dead friend.
It wasnt the canteen strap thatd been tangled, he saw. It was Haps body. Palmer covered his mouth. The grumbling in his stomach grew worse, and he feared he might lose what little fluid he had just taken in. Haps leg was twisted beneath him. Where the thigh meets the pelvis was torn the wrong way. An arm was shattered, white bone pointing up at the stars. Palmer tried to make sense of this. He had seen bodies snared in the sand before, had seen them trapped in silent and peaceful repose. This was not that. This was a life that had met a violent end. His brain whirled as the clues fell together. His homing beacon was in a mesh pouch on Haps thigh. Palmer had found his friend a hundred meters down, right beneath the dip in that great bowl Brocks men had dug, right where their dive had begun. Hap had made it back after all.
Maybe the walls of that strange shaft had crushed him. Maybe Hap had gotten back too late, right as theyd given up on them both, and when they released the held-back sand, the walls had pushed in violently around him. But no, there would be damage everywhere. It would be even. Hap had been hit on that side, there. A fall. A great fall.
It was the visor that told the story. Haps visor was gone. The visor would have a recording of his dive. Of Danvar. Of the location of every building, maybe even the streets below, every block of that buried legend.
Sand blew across Haps body and ramped up against his side. His
mouth was packed with grit, his nostrils clogged, his lifeless eyes dusted. Palmer saw now that there was never any coin in this for either of them. This had been the plan all along. Get a layout of the land, see where to dig, where to put their efforts, and keep the location of all those vast spoils to themselves. He saw in Haps open and horrified eyes what had happened, imagined him pulled up by the ropes, maybe saying that his friend was still down there, that there was a pocket of air in the building, that they needed to go back. Or maybe Hap telling them that it was no use, that his friend was dead.
Palmer scooped a handful of loose sand and placed it over Haps eyes, duning them shut. It was no wonder they were never told what they were looking for when they took this job. If Palmer and Hap had known they were diving for Danvar, they wouldve wondered why they werent blindfolded for the hike north. Hell, they wouldve known right then and there that this was a one-way trip. Of course. Otherwise, they wouldve begged to have been blindfolded. They had marched north from Springston as dead men.
You saved my fucking life, Palmer told his dead friend. You betrayed me, and you saved my fucking life.
And who knows, maybe Hap wouldve come back for him. Who was to say what decision hed made, what was going through that mind of his, what he had told Brock and the others. Yes, he wouldve come back for him. Palmer was sure of it.
He was also sure that his life was now in danger. Not just because he was in the middle of the desert and starving, but because he knew what Brock didnt want anyone else knowing. Palmer reached up and touched the visor on his forehead, needed to make sure it was still there, that his dive was still there, that it had happened.