Hit List Read Free Page B

brainpower was consumed by other, more pressing questions: Have they seen me? Do they know I’m here? Who are they?
    And most of all: How am I going to get out?
    “Benjamin,” she panted. “Can you hear me?”
    Nothing but static. And suddenly she realized why – any group who could afford twelve snipers and a rifle for each would probably have radio-jamming equipment. She wouldn’t be able
to contact Benjamin until she was far away from the mine.
    The cavern was just up ahead. She couldn’t see it – the lights were still off, and the snipers behind might see her if she switched on her headlamp. But she could hear the echoes of
her footsteps changing, getting quieter, going further before they bounced back. Sometimes at home Ash practised echolocation, moving around her house in the dark, clicking her fingers every few
seconds, listening to the echoes to determine how far away the walls were. This was how bats saw the insides of their caves, how dolphins observed nearby predators, and how submarines detected
incoming torpedoes.
    When she felt the metal walkway under her feet, she turned left and clattered down the steps. She wanted to cut directly across the cavern floor to the south tunnel, instead of having to go the
long way around along the scaffolding.
    She could hear the snipers in the tunnel, but they didn’t sound like they were running any more. Just walking quickly, and muttering to one another. They must not have seen me, Ash
thought. Yet.
    Sprinting across the blackness of the cavern floor was nerve-racking. Ash couldn’t help wondering if she’d misjudged her path, if she was about to trip over the pile of helmets or
pitch head first into the pit where the box had been buried. But she didn’t dare slow down. Any moment now the snipers might hear her, put on their night-vision goggles, and then a bullet
would be erupting through her forehead.
    BANG! Ash squealed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. That wasn’t a gunshot. What could—
    With a gargantuan crash, a stone block the size of a minivan slammed into the ground in front of her, spraying chips of rock that cut her face and palms. It had fallen from the ceiling of the
cavern.
    Cave-in! Ash whirled around and started to run back towards the north tunnel. She’d rather be shot than buried alive or crushed to pulp.
    Then she heard the fizzing of climbing ropes, and looked up.
    The cavern wasn’t collapsing. Someone had blown a hole through the ceiling, and now they were abseiling down. She could see the beam of a headlamp swaying high above.
    She couldn’t go back to the north tunnel – she’d be shot. She couldn’t keep running to the south tunnel – the fallen stone was in the way, and even if she went
around it she’d never get there before the snipers or the abseilers arrived on the cavern floor. So she dashed into the space under the walkway, where she dropped to the ground and tried to
look like a pile of rocks.
    The first abseiler hit the ground as the snipers reached the walkway. He was shouting something. Ash couldn’t hear the words, but she was a pretty good lip-reader: “Someone shut that
goddamn alarm off!”
    Seconds later, the klaxon choked mid-wail. The silence was so immediate that it took Ash’s ears a moment to adjust.
    “Thanks,” the abseiler said. He was big – not tall, but broad-shouldered and thick-necked. There was something weird about his face, something alien. But it seemed less strange
when Ash realized what it was: he had no eyebrows. They’d been shaved or burned off.
    A second man landed beside him. Then a woman. They each unhooked the carabiners from their climbing harnesses, leaving them hanging a metre from the ground.
    “What set it off?” the woman asked.
    “Don’t know, Sarge,” the browless man said, drawing a pistol. “But I don’t think it was us.”
    Three abseilers, Ash thought, plus five, no, six snipers. Nine against one. No fair.
    “Hurry,” the sergeant said.