Jodi turned and walked quickly towards the pathway that led towards the River Styx. A moment later, still with an eye on the tour group continuing on, so did I. Then we both ran lightly down the path until we were out of sight of River Hall.
“Whew!”
“Shh!” Jodi put a finger to her lips. “We’re not nearly out of it yet. Sound carries and they can chase us down fast. Keep moving!”
Move we did, heading farther and farther down. But when we got near Cascade Hall we encountered two things: water, which we expected . . . and voices, which we hadn’t.
“Clint? What’s going on?”
Belatedly, I remembered one of the National Speleological Society articles I’d come across. “Damn, damn, damn. Must be the NSS team that’s helping remove all the old stuff left by the tours over the years. Didn’t know they were down here now.” I was, like Jodi, whispering to keep from being overheard.
“Well, now what, genius?”
“We go forward, what else?”
Go forward we did. Lights ahead of us showed where the team was working; somewhere quite a ways out in the hall. “Maybe we can make it. We have to angle over that way, through the water. Try not to splash.”
Jodi put her foot in, winced as the cold hit her clothes and the wetsuit. “Fun, this isn’t. The things I do for love.”
“Well, and for the sake of all mankind too.”
“To heck with mankind!”
“Shh!”
The water got steadily deeper, until we were both hopping on the bottom with our toes to keep our heads above water. So far, though, no one seemed to have noticed anything. I would’ve crossed my fingers, but I needed everything I had to keep my balance and keep moving forward. The cold prickled on my hands and neck, but at least the wetsuit had now adjusted and was keeping me from really getting chilled.
Halfway there. In the reflected glow of the lights I could make out the entrance to the tunnel that led to the Flint Ridge cave system. We just might make it!
Just as I thought that, my foot found nothing at all under it and I plunged completely underwater, bouncing back up after having hit a pothole that dropped to eight feet. But that had been enough; my ungraceful entry had made a splash even a deaf man would have had a hard time ignoring.
“What?”
“Who’s there?”
“What the hell was that?”
Flashlight beams were probing the darkness and sweeping over us.
“Go, Jodi, move it!” I snapped. “No more point in sneakin’.”
“Hey, you! Stop! You can’t go in there!”
Some of the NSS team were heading in our direction. I found myself standing a bit higher now—a low ridge of rock was under my feet. Good enough. I reached into the top of my pack, unzipped it. “Y’all just go back to what you were doin’. What we’re doin’ is our business.”
“Look, Jack, you can’t come down here! Now both of you get back—holy shit!”
His lapse into bad language was probably excusable, as I’d just hauled out an old .45, still nice and dry from inside the sealed pack and the Ziploc I’d put it in. “I said, y’all really do want to just go right back to what y’all were doin’ and y’all sure don’t want to follow me.”
“Clint?!” hissed Jodi from behind me. “Are you completely meshuggeh?”
“C’mon, man, what’s the matter with you? There’s nothing worth getting out a gun for here!”
I aimed and fired. The thunder of the Colt was like the voice of the Lord telling Moses to get down off the mountain, and a fountain of white water exploded between the two in the lead; one of them jumped back and went under for a moment, while the other just froze. “Maybe y’all are right on that, but ask yourselves if there’s anything worth getting shot for here.”
“Christ, David, let the fucking lunatic go wherever the hell he wants!” said an older man from further back. “The cops can catch ’em when they come out.”
The NSS people backed off. I grinned, bowed, and followed Jodi into the Flint Ridge connection.