Die Trying by Lee Child

and wailed in terror. The air in his lungs crushed his chest against

the floor and his back against the roof.

He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut. He pushed forward with

his feet and regained the inch he’d moved back. He stretched with his

arms. Felt up ahead again. His shoulders were jammed so tight he

couldn’t move his hands through much of an angle. He spread his

fingers and scrabbled them left and right, up and down. Solid rock

ahead. No way to go forward. No way to move backward.

He was going to die trapped inside the mountain. He knew it. The rats

knew it. They were sniffing up behind him. Coming closer. He felt

them at his feet. He kicked out and sent them squealing away. But

they came back. He felt their weight on his legs. They were swarming

over him. They burrowed up around his shoulders. Slid under his

armpits. He felt cold oily fur on his face as they forced their way

past. The flick of their tails as they ran ahead.

To where? He let them run over his arm, to estimate their direction.

They were moving ahead of him, into the blind darkness. He felt with

his hands. Felt them flowing left. Their passage was stirring the

air. The air was cool. He felt it move, a faint breeze, on the sweat

on the left side of his face. He jammed himself hard against the right

hand wall and moved his left arm sideways, ahead of him. Felt for the

left hand wall. It wasn’t there. He was stuck at a junction in the

tunnels. A new seam ran at a right angle away from the end of the seam

he was in. A tight, narrow right angle. Ninety degrees. He forced

himself backward as far as his thumbs would push him. He scraped his

face on the end wall and jammed his side into the rock. Folded himself

arms first around the corner and dragged his legs behind him.

The new seam was no better. It was no wider. The roof was no higher.

He hauled himself along, gasping and sweating and shaking. He

propelled himself with his toes, an inch at a time. The rats forced

their way past him. The rock tore at his sides and his back. But

there was still a slight breeze on his face. The tunnel was heading

somewhere. He was gasping and panting. He crawled on. Then the new

seam widened. Still very low. A flat, low crack in the rock. He

crawled on through it, exhausted. Fifty yards. A hundred. Then he

felt the roof soar away above him. He pushed on with his toes and

suddenly he felt the air change and he was lying halfway into the

motor-pool cavern. He realized his eyes were wide open and the white

Econoline was right there in front of him in the dark.

He rolled onto his back and lay gasping on the grit. Gasping and

shaking. Staggered to his feet and looked back. The seam was

invisible. Hidden in the shadow. He made it as far as the white truck

and collapsed against its side. The luminous figures on his watch

showed he’d been in the tunnels nearly three hours. Most of the time

jammed there sweating in panic. A three-hour screaming nightmare come

to life. His pants and his jacket were shredded. Every muscle in his

body was on fire. His face and hands and elbows and knees were

bleeding. But it was the fear that had done it to him. The fear of

not getting through. He could still feel the rock pressing down on his

back and pressing up on his chest. He could feel it clamping inward on

his ribs. He got up again and limped to the doors. Pushed them open

and stood in the moonlight, arms out, eyes crazy, mouth open, breathing

in lungfuls of the sweet night air.

He was halfway across the bowl before he started thinking straight. So

he ran back and ducked into the motor pool once more. Found what he

wanted. He found it on one of the jeep’s tow hook assemblies. Some