Abandon - Crouch Blake (электронная книга TXT) 📗

A band of yellow nomenclature ran across the equator of the steel sphere:

GRENADE. HAND. FRAG. DELAY. M67.

COMP. B

She looked up at her father, their eyes going wide at the same time. She turned the grenade slowly in her hand, examining the safety pin, the lever.

“What’s going on in there, Isaiah?” Jerrod shouted through the tunnel. “We happy?”

Abigail leaned forward, whispered, “You ever handled one of these?” He shook his head. “You know how it works?”

Lawrence touched the safety pin. “I know you pull this out, and as long as your hand is holding the lever down, I think it won’t explode.”

“You think? What’s your knowledge based on?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Tell me.”

“Rambo.”

“Isaiah!” Jerrod shouted. “You’re killing me, man!”

Abigail said, “Well, he’s gonna be coming through that hole momentarily. You wanna try to fight him with the knife you just took?”

“He’d kill me.”

“Then we have to throw this grenade.”

They walked over to the tunnel opening.

Jerrod’s headlamp illuminated the rock midway through from the other side.

“Isaiah!” he shouted. “I’m coming in, all right?”

“No, Jerrod,” Abigail said. “We’re on our way out.”

Lawrence motioned for her to yank the pin.

“You find the gold?”

“We didn’t find it.”

Abigail slipped her finger through the ring and pulled out the safety pin. “How long do we have?” she whispered. “Once I throw it? Is it five seconds, or three?”

“I don’t know.” Her hand had begun to shake, knuckles white from the death grip she had on the M67’s striker lever, lines of sweat trickling down her forehead and into her eyes. She blinked away the sting.

“If it’s five seconds, Jerrod might have time to throw it back in here at us,” she said.

“Isaiah? The fuck’s going on? Everything cool?”

Isaiah moaned again.

“When I let go of this,” Abigail said, “we dive into that corner and cover our heads.”

“Make a good throw. We don’t want it rolling back in here.”

“Isaiah! You okay?” Abigail realized she’d been holding her breath. “I’m coming in!”

Abigail cocked her arm back and let the M67 fly. They lunged into the corner, Abigail’s face crushed into the rocky floor. Lawrence sprawled on top of her. She shut her eyes, listening to the grenade ricochet off the rock as it bounced through the tunnel.

She heard Jerrod say “Shit.”

Two seconds of silence, then the ground shook and shards of the ceiling fell down.

Abigail said, “Lawrence? You okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

“My ears are ringing.” She sat up, turned on her headlamp. The chamber had filled with a haze of dust and smoke. They got to their feet, moved over to the tunnel.

“I don’t hear him,” Lawrence whispered. “Think he had time to throw it over the edge?”

They heard something behind them, and both turned, their headlamps spotlighting Isaiah, who was trying to sit up.

“We have to go,” she said. “We’ll shoot him with Jerrod’s gun.” Abigail followed Lawrence back through the tunnel into thickening smoke. As she came out under the overhang, she could see that her throw had been perfect. Her headlamp shone on the rock, blasted black from the detonation, steel fragments everywhere—under her feet, embedded in the stone.

But no Jerrod and no blood.

“Where is he?” Abigail whispered, the words hardly out of her mouth when Jerrod appeared around the corner from the narrow ledge, walking toward them unscathed, a red dot moving back and forth between their chests, Lawrence and Abigail backpedaling toward the far edge of the overhang, snow blowing in, squeezing out the residual smoke.

“Isaiah!” Jerrod hollered at the opening in the rock. “Is he alive?”

Before Abigail could answer, Isaiah’s voice boomed back.

“You got ’em?”

“Yeah.”

“Motherfucker clocked me with a rock.” Isaiah climbed out of the tunnel.

“I almost ate shrapnel,” Jerrod said. “Missing anything? You didn’t hear your M sixty-seven go off?”

“I was out cold.”

“Yeah, I’m standing here hollering through the tunnel, and you aren’t answering, and just when I’m starting to think maybe something’s not right, this grenade comes banging through. Dropped right where you stand.”

“No shit.”

“I didn’t know if it had been cooked off, so I didn’t have time to throw it over the cliff.”

“What’d you do?”

“Hauled ass around the corner and prayed to God that skinny ledge wouldn’t break up underneath me.”

Isaiah turned his attention to Lawrence and Abigail. He smiled, severe pain in his eyes. “Damn, Larry, cute bitch, you bad motherfuckers you. Almost took out a couple of marines. That would have been some shit. Ah, damn.”

“You all right?” Jerrod asked.

Isaiah bent over, shook his head as if to gauge the pain. “I think he fucked me up serious. Put your light here.” Jerrod inspected the side of his partner’s head. “How’s it look?”

“Nasty bruise. How’s it feel?”

“Like a monster migraine.”

“You’ve probably got a concussion.”

“Where’s my Glock?” Jerrod lifted the nylon strap over his head and Isaiah grabbed his machine pistol by its long magazine, staggered toward them, wincing with each step.

“Abby,” Lawrence said, “do exactly what I say, right when I say, no matter how crazy it sounds.”

Lawrence took hold of his daughter’s hand, the backs of their boots only inches from the edge and Isaiah less than five feet away.

“Jump.”

FORTY

 A

bigail raced feetfirst down a forty-degree slope. She’d lost her father’s hand on impact, but she could hear him yelling at her from above. “Get on your stomach, Abby! Dig in! Stop yourself!” Fifty feet below, she saw where the slope ended and dropped over a cliff. Now she rolled onto her stomach, snow rushing under her parka in a spray of freezing powder. She kicked in her boots. “Your elbows!” Lawrence shouted. Abigail dug in her elbows, slowed to a halt, gasping, shivering. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the cliff edge less than five feet beyond the soles of her boots, felt a queasiness in her stomach, her depth perception skewed by vertigo, right leg badly quaking—the only appendage keeping her on the mountain.

Upslope, Lawrence’s headlamp shone down on her. “Climb back to me!” he yelled. “Make sure you’ve got purchase with each step.” Her face ached with cold. She wiped away the powder and started to climb toward her father, taking her time, kicking steps in the smooth old ice under the new-fallen snow. As the adrenaline rush waned, her tailbone began to throb. Lawrence reached down, grabbed her hand, pulled her up onto a boulder.

“You in one piece?” he asked. His pack lay open in the snow and he was cinching the last strap of a crampon onto his boot.

“My tailbone kills. It’s cracked, or worse.”

“I busted up my right ankle.”

“That was insane, Lawrence.”

“We were dead otherwise. I knew it was only a thirty-foot fall. I just crossed my fingers and hoped the slope was steep enough and had enough snow to cushion our landing.”

Abigail peered up into the darkness, spotted two points of light somewhere above, obscured by the blizzard. “Turn off your headlamp,” she whispered. “I see their lights.”

Voices tumbled down from the overhang, vague but audible: “Snow’s coming down too hard and my beam’s weak. How many clips you got left?”

“Two. Let’s just spray the fuckers.”

Lawrence whispered, “We gotta move right now. Follow me.” It was only five steps upslope to the base of the cliff. They reached it, flattened themselves against the wall of rock, and waited. From above came the sound of slides racking.