Strangelets (2 page)

But all he could see was the dark barrel of the gun, the Russian’s jaws working a piece of gum as he aimed …

The gunman’s eyes suddenly widened. As he reared back, the gun fired. Declan ducked, terrified, hands instinctively protecting his head. Tiny shards of brick rained down on his skull.

A miss. Declan had a chance.

“Jay-sus, please,” he pleaded frantically. “I swear on my mother’s life …”

But the bloke didn’t seem to have heard him. He was backing away, both hands raised as if warding something off. He looked terrified, his face curiously illuminated …

Declan frowned. Crazy bastard was acting as if a monster had appeared behind him; he swiveled around to make sure one hadn’t. He blinked. There was an enormous hole in the wall below where the bullet had struck: a swirling, glowing whirlpool. In a brick wall.

Panic was suddenly replaced by something else … Wonder?
Relief? It reminded him of those stories they told in church, of true miracles … Reverently, Declan reached toward the colors with both hands—

Something yanked hard from the other side, dragging him into the vortex.

Anat Erez pulled her
hair back in a tight knot and covered it with a black cap. She checked over her shoulder, scanning the line of olive trees silhouetted at the top of the hill. It was hard to suppress the feeling that she’d been followed. Then again, a certain sensible paranoia was healthy.

A single light flickered in the window of the house in front of her. It was little more than a hut: single-story cinderblock construction, no porch. A far cry from the three-bedroom house she’d spent the last eighteen years sharing with her family in Tel Aviv.
But it was just a way station
, Anat reminded herself. She’d only be inside for a few minutes anyway.

A cloudless night would have been better, but there wasn’t enough time to wait. Another few weeks and Egypt would likely have completed their subterranean barrier. Plus she was due to report back for military service in two days, and escape from the base was virtually impossible. No, this was her last chance to get away. Anat drew a deep breath and approached the door.

She knocked twice, waited a beat, then rapped again. After a long pause, it creaked open soundlessly. A tiny, wizened woman blinked up at her. Her hair and face were wrapped in a traditional hijab, her body shrouded in the flowing black robe favored by the Bedouin. The top of her head barely
reached Anat’s chest. Without a word she turned and vanished into the depths of the house.

Anat followed, trying to exude confidence even though she was terrified. They passed through a darkened kitchen, the air heavy with the tang of lamb and spices. Anat’s stomach growled. She’d been too nervous to eat much at dinner; instead she’d spent the meal covertly gazing at each member of her family, committing their faces to memory. She’d already accepted the fact that she’d probably never see them again.

That was the past
, she reminded herself. Now, after months of planning, she was here. Anat gulped hard and followed the woman into the next room. The small space was lit by a candle set in a wall niche. Even in the flickering half-light, Anat could see that the rug was rich and plush in comparison to the starkness of its surroundings. The old woman kicked at it with her heel, exposing the edge of a trapdoor. She jerked her arm at the floor.

Anat bent over and rolled away the rug. The trapdoor was bigger than she’d expected, roughly four by four feet. A large metal latch was set into the wood on one end. At another harsh gesture from the woman, Anat bent double and hauled it open, grunting with the effort.

A flight of cracked concrete stairs descended into the darkness. Anat set her foot down, gauging her weight against the top step as she drew a flashlight out of her backpack’s side pouch. The woman tugged at her arm, frowning.

“What’s the problem?” Anat asked in halting Arabic. She cursed herself for not mastering the language; it would have been a good idea for all sorts of reasons.

The woman’s hands flew as she spoke, agitation on her face.

Anat didn’t recognize the dialect but gathered that there was some question about payment. “I already paid the fee,”
she stammered, hoping she was using the correct term. “By smuggling, last month.”

The woman shook her head firmly.

Anat’s lips pursed together. She’d been afraid something like this might happen. She’d arranged to cover the cost of her passage into Egypt by smuggling cartons of cigarettes across the border. Not guns, or any sort of weapons—she’d insisted on that. Khalid, the smuggler she’d dealt with, had scoffed at her but Anat refused to budge. There was no way she was bringing anything into Gaza that would then be used against Israel.

She’d paid for tonight’s journey by making three separate trips between Gaza and Tel Aviv. Israelis were rarely harassed in transit. But their documents were noted, and tonight Anat didn’t want to leave a trail for anyone to follow. Hence the necessity of a departure underground. The tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip had served as a conduit for everything from food and medicine to rockets and mortars over the years. Anat repressed a twinge at the thought that she was entering a passage built by Hamas militants intent on the destruction of her people. If she’d finished her military training, there was a good chance she would have faced some of the very artillery that had been shipped through here.

No matter. That part of her life was over. This tunnel would lead her to Egypt, and to Hazim. At the thought, she reflexively twisted the gold band on her right index finger. Not a proper wedding ring, not yet. But soon, she’d have another ring to add to it.

As Anat’s eyes refocused on the woman before her, she felt a twinge of annoyance. She’d expected Khalid to escort her through the tunnel. Typical of him to change the plan without consulting her. Was this old crone a relation? His mother,
maybe?
No matter
, she reminded herself. It was a tunnel, after all, one way in and one way out; she hardly needed a smuggler to show her the way. Anat had come this far. Nothing was going to stop her now—especially not a dwarfish woman who looked like she could barely stand unassisted. At the thought, her stomach settled somewhat.

“I already paid,” Anat said firmly in Hebrew. “And now I’m going.”

Yanking free her arm, she clambered down the stairs. There was a muttered grumble behind her, then the trapdoor slammed shut—smothering her in pitch blackness. Anat’s throat caught. She fumbled for the flashlight, emitting a gasp of relief when it flared to life.

The beam illuminated the remainder of the stairwell. At the bottom, a narrow dirt passage vanished into shadowy abyss. It smelled dank and oppressive, like that Byzantine crypt she’d visited on a field trip to Jerusalem, in happier times …

Anat swallowed again. She’d never liked close, dark spaces and was acutely aware of the press of earth overhead. There were frequent news reports about tunnels like these collapsing. Old Israeli cynics called them “wormholes,” claiming they offered a theoretical passage to some alternate universe (Egypt certainly qualified). Get stuck in one and you’d vanish in time, like a rat Palestinian smuggler or a bit of stardust.

At the bottom of the stairs Anat waved the beam over rough-hewn walls. At least this tunnel appeared well constructed, despite its size. She had to tilt her head to keep from brushing the ceiling. This was one of the few times that her height worked against her. If she jutted out her elbows, they’d scrape the walls on either side of her. She swallowed down the claustrophobia and pressed onward.

To distract herself, Anat tried to picture the underground barrier that the Egyptian army was building somewhere close by. The bomb-proof steel wall extended along the border for more than ten kilometers and plunged eighteen meters below the surface. Once it was completed, this type of escape would no longer be possible. Anat tried to take comfort from that. She couldn’t have afforded to wait, right?

Anat had no idea how far this tunnel went, or where exactly it would emerge. She’d heard that some were nearly 800 meters long. That was all right. Even stooped and stumbling, she could walk that in less than twenty minutes. Steeling herself, she picked up the pace. A street map of Rafah, Egypt was tucked in her backpack. But she didn’t need it; she’d memorized the fastest route from the tunnel exit to the small hotel where she was meeting Hazim.

That is, if the tunnel ended where she thought it might. Khalid had been a little vague about the exact spot, or what she could expect to find there.

Something shimmered up ahead, just past the beam of her flashlight. Anat’s heart leapt into her throat. The air was suddenly thick with a pungent smell that reminded her of burning plastic. Khalid had also promised that she wouldn’t encounter anyone else. The last thing she needed was to run into real smugglers.

Trembling slightly, Anat raised the flashlight beam. She frowned. The tunnel ahead had vanished, the dirt floor dropping into darkness. Had a section of the floor collapsed, maybe?

“
Kus emek
,” she muttered.

Her eyes widened as more of the floor slid into the void. Its advance picked up speed under her flashlight, like a fishing line being reeled in. Anat took a step back, then another.
Seized by panic, she turned and sprinted back toward the trap door, the flashlight jerking crazily over the rough dirt. Her breath came in tight gasps. Her chest burned. The straps of her backpack slipped from her shoulders, but there was no time to retrieve it. She’d move faster without it anyway.

She’d nearly reached the stairs when she had the disconcerting sensation of being sucked backward. Anat fought to grab hold of something, clawing at the dirt with her nails. But she was drawn inexorably toward the encroaching void.
I should have known better than to trust a smuggler
, she thought. With that, the force swallowed her whole.

Sophie opened her eyes
and frowned. Weird. She was still in a hospital bed. Of course, in most near-death experience stories, people woke up just like this. She hadn’t expected to be one of them, though. She really thought she’d
died
. But then, she’d always joked that spending eternity in a hospital was her idea of hell. Wouldn’t it be ironic if she turned out to be right?

Her wry smile faded to a frown as she took in her surroundings. If she was still alive, they must have moved her. This wasn’t the hospice room where she’d spent the last few weeks of her life. The fake ficus tree in the corner was gone. The cheap TV had been swapped out for a swanky flat screen. And instead of being hooked up to numerous beeping machines—via needles and sticky pads and probes—she was attached to nothing. At least, nowhere she could feel. Even weirder, she still wore her own pajamas—anywhere but
a hospice would have insisted on an official gown.
Why had they moved her?

The window curtains were drawn; it must be nighttime, even though the overhead lights weren’t muted the way they usually were. Which also explained why her family was gone.

Still, it was kind of strange for them to head home when she was at death’s door, after barely leaving her alone for weeks. Maybe something in her condition had changed. But she couldn’t have improved that much, right? Unless they’d suddenly developed a cure for her rare brand of terminal lymphoma that afternoon …

She scoffed. The doctors had made it pretty clear that nothing short of a miracle would buy her even a few more months. And Sophie wasn’t a big believer in miracles.

She felt alive enough, though: groggy and thirsty and irritated. Sophie sighed.

She was ready to be gone. She’d felt
relief
as that void had swallowed her whole. But she must have been dreaming, right?

Great. The last thing she wanted was to face more interminable weeks with her family hovering around maintaining a deathwatch.

Well, since she was apparently stuck here, she might as well try to get some real sleep. And for that, she’d need painkillers; after months of morphine, it was tough to sleep without it. But the stand that usually held the drip with its “magic button” was gone; the machine let her dose herself as needed and turned off automatically when she tried to take too much. She knew that from experience, having tried a couple of times to mess with it. She’d always found that fail-safe measure annoying; why not just let her make the decision? That way she could have spared her family weeks of
their
lives.

Well, a nurse should be able to get the drip set up in a couple of minutes, max. Sighing, Sophie fumbled around for the call button with her right hand. No sign of it. She tried with her left; sometimes the newer, more incompetent RNs moved it to the wrong side during sponge baths. Not there either. Crap. There was no way she was going to be able to sleep with fluorescent lights glaring down on her, it was like trying to nod off on the surface of the sun.