Bone Key (2 page)

Ainsley turned to the man beside him with a questioning gaze. The man pointed. “Take it down there,” he said, handing over a second lantern he’d got going. “Be careful with the steps.”

Ainsley glanced at the man, then took the smoking lantern to the portal that yawned in the corner of the room. He passed the two men who’d pried the gate up without looking at them, mindful of their panting as he held the lantern high to illumine a dank set of steps leading down to a sizable storage area chiseled out of the coral rock. Whoever had managed the feat had accomplished something, Ainsley thought with a glance at the heavy grate. And whatever you put down there would surely be safe.

“I didn’t know you could have a basement in Key West,” one of the men behind him said, still breathing heavily from exertion.

“There’s a couple,” the other said.

“Better get a move on,” the man who’d wanted them blindfolded said. He pointed at the heaving doors. “This storm’s turning into a bitch.”

Ainsley moved quickly back to the truck and organized his men into a fire brigade. They’d stack all the crates at the portal to the subterranean room, he had decided, and then set up another line down the narrow stairwell.

The process worked well in fact. Unencumbered by the rain, they had the trucks emptied in half the time it had taken to load up on the docks. Outside, the storm had worsened steadily, however, the wind battering the big double doors until the cross brace that held them closed snapped like a matchstick. The doors flew inward, slamming against the stone sidewalls, the wind driving horizontal sheets of rain halfway into the room. It took all seven of them to shove the doors closed and wedge a section of the shattered cross brace back into place.

Ainsley managed a look outside, but it told him nothing. The sky was dark by now, the visibility down to nothing in the driving storm. The
Titanic
could have been bearing down upon them from a dozen yards away, for all he knew. He wondered if he would ever make it home.

With the doors shored up, they turned their attention back to the movement of the crates into the subterranean vault. Ainsley hurried down the narrow stairwell and took up the post at the end of the line, leaving two of his men on the stairs and the last to hand the crates down.

He was a man who had spent most of his life on the open water, and while he’d spent his own share of time in the cramped holds of a score or more of ships and boats, he had never overcome his aversion to close quarters. He’d never heard the word “claustrophobia,” but if the symptoms had been described to him, he would likely have admitted an understanding. Furthermore, as the foreman of this hastily assembled crew, he could have been the one to stay up top and pass the boxes down, but he knew that all the others felt as he did about such dungeon places, and he would not put that on anyone else. He’d swallowed his own fears, therefore, and carried the lantern down.

“Come on now,” he called up the narrow stairwell and saw the first crate come through the opening.

It was a dank, low-ceilinged space, barely enough room for him to stand his six feet straight, but wide and long enough to hold what they’d brought here, he thought. He held the lantern high and saw at the far end of the room what looked like another set of steps chiseled into the rock…leading up to
what?
he wondered, but then the first crate was ready for him to stack and there was no more time to see.

He hadn’t counted the crates exactly, but having moved them all twice, he had a fair notion of the numbers. He stacked the crates five high—just above head height—against the near wall and built out from there, six crates abreast. He was past the point where the stairs descended quickly and, leaving room to maneuver at the foot, worked himself steadily backward toward the other flight of steps, grabbing and stacking, grabbing and stacking. Sooner or later, he thought, feeling the sweat trickling down his weary back, he’d satisfy his curiosity.

“That’s all,” he heard then, from Ben, his mate at the bottom of the stairs, and he paused to survey the work they’d done. He glanced over his shoulder toward the other flight of steps and saw that his stacking had hidden the far end of the cavelike room in shadow. He’d need his lantern if he wanted to see anything back there, and he wondered if he had the time to waste. Working below several feet of rock had shielded the sound of the storm, but he knew from the popping in his ears that its force could only have grown.

He reached a hand to massage his back and began to make his way toward Ben, thinking that he could live without knowing where that staircase led, when he heard a pair of explosions from above. At first, he thought it might have been the cross brace snapping again, or something crashing on the roof, but he knew at once it was nothing so benign.

Ben gave him a startled glance and began to hurtle up the steps even before Ainsley could warn him. Another explosion sounded, and another and another, and Ainsley felt himself covered by something wet at the same time he heard Ben cry out and tumble backward down the staircase.

Ainsley staggered back, gasping, wiping at the gore that drenched his face and chest. Ben lay at the foot of the stairs, his head twisted oddly, his eyes sightless. Richard lay slumped halfway up the steps where he’d been working, and Marcus’ body had tumbled to a step just above. He could hear the storm pounding up there now, and could hear the big double doors crashing free once more.

Ainsley felt his legs weaken, his breathing gone wild. He heard scuffing noises at the head of the steps and stared in disbelief as the body of one of the senator’s drivers tumbled through the portal, followed quickly by the second. Five men dead in moments, he thought, his mind a mad whirl. He heard an odd clinking sound, then saw what might have been brass pebbles dancing down the steps. Shell casings, he realized, and heard the click of a revolver’s cylinder settling back into place.

“Let’s don’t make this difficult,” Ainsley heard a familiar voice call, then saw the thick black oxfords of the man who’d had them blindfolded descend onto the first of the rough-hewn steps. There was a crashing noise from somewhere, and a fine, salt-laden spray rolled down the narrow staircase along with it.

The roof, Ainsley thought. With the doors blown open and the storm roaring inside after them, all that wind had to go somewhere. A roof, built to ward off forces from above, was not nearly so strong when a giant force was shoving from below.

“Come on now, boy,” the man called down. He descended to the second step and bent to peer into the misted cellar, his revolver raised. “We’ll make this quick and clean.”

Ainsley, still holding his lantern, realized he was a framed target in the little cove he’d left for himself at the foot of the steps. He tried to backpedal into the darkness, but the man had seen him and was already swinging his weapon about. There was an explosion that seemed deafening in the confined space and the sound of splintering glass at Ainsley’s side. Instinctively, he flung the lantern up the stairwell.

The glass chimney shattered against the coral, and flaming kerosene splashed upward. Ainsley saw one leg of the man’s trousers burst into flame and heard a cry as the man retreated up the steps.

It was altogether dark in the cellar now, a dim glow marking the portal where the heavy grate had been, a glowing square cloud in a stony sky. Ainsley heard curses and scuffing noises from above. Had it been gasoline, he thought, the bursting lantern might have done the job. But kerosene was not much better than crude oil for burning, and the man’s clothing had been soaked through as well.

No, Ainsley thought, he’d likely done little more than prolong the inevitable. His right hand went to the knife he kept sheathed at his belt—a seafaring man would sooner go out without britches than leave his knife behind—thinking that he might have a chance if he could only manage to lure the man down here with him in the dark.

Scarcely had the thought come to him than he heard a tremendous crashing from above and felt a fine rain of rock fragments shower onto his head and shoulders. When he glanced up, he saw that a vague crosshatching now obscured the portal at the top of the stairs. A shadow flashed across the grid, and there came the sound of a bolt slamming home.

An involuntary shudder ran through Ainsley, as he realized. The man who’d shot at him would not be coming down those steps again, not anytime soon. He stared up glumly at the heavy grate that now blocked the portal and understood that he had become a prisoner, that this room where he now stood might well have been intended for such a purpose.

“You’ll die the hard way, then,” came the voice from above, over the roar of the wind and the sound of roofing planks being wrenched away. Rain pelted down through the bars above him now, and a stream of water was splashing down the steps.

“The senator wouldn’t do this,” Ainsley shouted back, not sure if it was a threat or a prayer.

He heard a barking sound that might have been meant as a laugh. “Your senator’s a dead man,” the voice called down from above. “Come on up where I can see you, now. I’ll end it for you quick.”

The stream running down the stairs had become a set of rapids, Ainsley realized, his feet already sloshing in water on the cellar floor. He glanced around the darkness, fighting the panic that rose inside him like fire. The rock-carved room was as watertight as a cistern, and there was a hurricane up there, pouring its all down that steel-grated chute. Maybe it’d be best, a part of him said. Go up the steps with his head hung down like a packing house cow and get it over with.

But he dismissed the possibility as quickly as it came. He’d go down fighting, no matter what. He glanced up at the grating and thought he saw a shadow hovering there. The openings in the grid seemed big enough to get his hand through. If the bastard were pressed close enough to the grating, he thought, his hand tight on the handle of his knife, there just might be a chance.

“What happened to the senator?” Ainsley called.

“That’s none of your concern,” the man said. There was a crashing as if waves were breaking above his head and a mighty gush of water down the steps.

Dear Lord, Ainsley thought. If this place was close to the water’s edge and the tide rose sufficiently with the press of the winds, the cellar could be full of ocean in minutes.

The voice above him came again. “Come on, boy, we’re wasting time.”

Ainsley had stacked a second crate atop the first now, and had climbed onto it with his knees. If he stood, he could easily reach that shadowed portion of the grate.

“Just come on up to the light, boy,” the man called, as a flashlight beam snapped on.

The backwash was enough to outline the man’s silhouette now, and Ainsley knew it would be this moment or never. He rose straight from his heels, as if he meant to take flight, his arm extended rigidly, his hand around the knife handle like iron.

He felt the point of his knife glance off the heavy gratework and the flesh of his knuckles shear away, but nothing could have made him lose his grip. In the next second he heard a gasp and felt his fist burying itself in soft flesh.

There was a bright flash and a blinding explosion, and then another, but Ainsley held fast to his blade, his arm driven up through the gate past the elbow. He heard the man gasp and felt his bulk rising from the grating where he’d lurked. Ainsley twisted and pulled down hard and felt a gush of warmth bathe his arm and shoulder.

There was a groan from above him then, and the clatter of metal on metal as the revolver tumbled free. The man’s weight was crushing, suddenly, and Ainsley felt the crates going sideways, his feet flying from under him, his grasp loosening on the knife as he fell. He went down on his back, hard enough to have brained himself, but there was a foot of water covering the rough-hewn floor now, enough to cushion his fall.

Still the blow stunned him. He lay momentarily paralyzed, his breath knocked away. A beam of light shot up toward the grating from the foot of the steps, he realized, and he managed to move his head enough to see that the flashlight had tumbled down to rest on Ben’s unmoving chest. The man who’d meant to kill him lay facedown on the grate, blood dripping from a place below his belt.

But he wasn’t dead, Ainsley saw. The man’s gaze was glassy, but focused upon him, and while his body was still, his hand was moving slowly across the grating like a giant white spider, inching toward the fallen revolver.

Do something, Ainsley willed himself. Run. Douse that light. Go for the gun yourself. But all he could manage was a feeble splashing of his arms in the rising water and a
huunnh, huunnh, hunnh
bleating from his airless lungs.

The man’s hand had found the revolver’s grip now, and Ainsley watched in fascination as his arm snaked down through the grate. He was raising the barrel slowly into position—the sonofabitch was dying at the same time he was going to kill him, Ainsley thought—when there came an awful screaming from above. Nails wrenching free of wood, thick shards of wood shattering, and a stab of pain at Ainsley’s ears that suggested all the air around them had been sucked away in an instant.

Tornado, he thought. A whirlwind spawned in the midst of the storm that had lifted up the roof of the building and all the air beneath it. Then there was a mighty crash from above that made the dropping of the steel grate seem like the blow of a feather in comparison. Great chunks of the cellar ceiling rained down, one crashing down on Ben’s lifeless body, knocking the flashlight askew, another boulder narrowly missing Ainsley’s skull.

He rolled over in the water and thrashed madly toward the shelter of the crates, fully expecting a gunshot to drop him at any instant. But there was nothing.

He was past the place where the steps came down to the room now, one of Ben’s outflung hands stretching barely a yard away, the flashlight half-in, half-out of the water nearby. Ainsley’s breath had come back in ragged gasps, his heart pounding so loudly he couldn’t hear the storm. He struggled to calm himself, listened for a few more moments, but heard nothing but the unearthly rumble of the storm and the cascading of water down the steps.