Good. They'd be a while. It would give Anna a few precious moments to figure out what in the hell she was going to do.

Murmuring banal encouragements, Curt followed Sondra, stoop-walking out the passage Anna'd crawled in. When they'd gone, their words an indistinguishable mutter, Laymon turned on his lamp and pulled his pack between his knees. As he reached in, Anna decided not to leap. Whether the decision was spawned by cowardice or good judgment, she would never know. She knew only that her little weight and exhausted efforts against his considerable bulk would end badly. Before she had time to consider whether the sacrifice could have saved Curt, Laymon drew his hand from the pack. He held not the anticipated handgun but a long, narrow package wrapped in brown waxy paper, and a coil of coarse gray wire.

Dynamite.

Anna found herself remembering the pistol with something akin to affection.

Meticulously, Laymon checked the sticks of explosives and the fuse wire, stowed them back in the pack, and began removing climbing gear. There was no need to shoot anyone. Laymon was the de facto head of the group. Curt and Sondra would do as they were told. Curt, Anna guessed, was not entirely comfortable with the way things were shaping up. Discomfort and suspicions would not be enough to start a mutiny. Not where there was a crazy woman to be looked after.

Laymon would descend first, then the weak link, Sondra, then Curt, taking up the guard position. They would cross the Lounge. Laymon would climb the ninety feet to the narrow aperture that led to Razor Blade Run and on to Lake Rapunzel. In less time than it would take to tell it, he could cut the line, leaving Curt and Sondra marooned in a pit deeper and darker than Edgar Allan Poe ever imagined.

Safe from pursuit and unseemly interference, Laymon would continue on to Katie's Pigtail. In the slide area he would lay the dynamite and a good, long fuse. He'd be well clear when it closed off this wing of Lechuguilla permanently. Evidence and witnesses buried. The rockfall written off to natural causes. Laymon hailed as an insightful manager for closing an unstable part of the cavern before anyone else got hurt.

Sondra McCarty? She'd disappeared some time ago, something to do with a bad marriage. Anna and Curt? Laymon wouldn't need to explain. What had they to do with him? Given sufficient warning, the Blacktail would close up shop before Holden had a chance to investigate. Holden would tell of their entering Lechuguilla and why. A dig through the slide in the Pigtail would be considered, then rejected as too dangerous and costly. If anybody had to take a fall, Oscar Iverson would be chosen. Laymon, with Anna's invaluable assistance, had set him up.

As if he felt the menace behind him, Laymon stood suddenly and crossed to the far side of the room. Anna watched as he put the pack with the gun between his feet and sat on a ledge. The time for pouncing had been frittered away in indecision. Anna had deliberated too long. A minute ticked by to the unsuspecting murmur of Curt's voice down the passageway. Muttering harmless nothings to assure Sondra he was still there.

The mother of invention brought an idea. Though it promised little in the way of success, Anna embraced the opportunity to take action. Laymon guarded his pack with care. Curt's was closer but, gone missing, would cause alarm. Anna was counting on the fact that distraught women are never believed, even by the most well-meaning men. Unless they'd seen Sondra drop it themselves, they would assume she'd left her pack behind, lost it in one of the hiding places Lechuguilla offered in such abundance. Squelching a desire to rush, Anna weaseled quietly back the way she had come. Sondra's pack lay out in the room, only partially shielded from view by a formation. Laymon had his light on, but unless he trained it in that direction, she could maneuver the pack into her trough unnoticed.

As she dragged it, the pack made a faint grinding sound. Light streaked toward the back of the room. A snatch, and the pack was clutched under Anna's chest. The light poked, preyed, faltered, then returned to Laymon's feet.

Scuttling backward with her prize, like an alligator with a Pekinese, Anna vanished into the trough. The water, she drank. The webbed belt, she wriggled into, graceless as a supine woman donning a wet girdle. Safety and rack were tethered to the webbed climbing belt. She was sliding the pack over her shoulder when she heard Curt and Sondra coming back from the ladies' room. Burrito bundle in hand, Sondra emerged first. Trusting the noise of their return to mask that of her crawl, Anna moved through the trough on elbows and knees. The pilfered water sloshed in her stomach, then was manifested as salt sweat in her eyes.

"Time to move out, kiddos," Laymon said. "The sooner we get to Glacier Bay, the sooner we can get back to your Miss Anna."

Belly flat against the rock, Miss Anna dropped onto an eighteen inch ledge used as a jumping-off point for the descent. Two yards ahead she could see the rope, red and inviting, where it crossed the step and vanished into the pit.

"Suit up," Laymon said jovially. To others it might have seemed he strove to maintain morale. To Anna's ear the good cheer was that of a man who very soon would have the solution to all of his problems.

Gear grated, nylon rustled, carabiners clinked; then came a thin wail. "I can't find my stuff!" Sondra'd discovered the theft.

"Oh for Chrissake," Anna heard Laymon groan just above her. He rose to his feet and stalked back into the chamber. Anna dared one quick peek. He'd taken his pack with him.

Blessing the timely diversion, she scrabbled along the step and grabbed the rope. Ignoring her safety, she laced the rope through the rack. No mean feat without light.

"You two keep looking," Laymon said. He was returning to his former position. "I'll head down. If you don't come up with it, I'll send my gear back up and we'll sort of piggy-back from here on."

Anna's rigging was probably imperfect, possibly deadly, but it would have to do. With an unvoiced prayer to an unknown god that looked remarkably like her older sister, she swung over the edge. The rope was snug through the rack. Nothing snapped loose or flew open. Almost falling for the first few seconds, she descended rapidly. Without light she had no way of knowing where the bottom was.

When she found it, she wished she'd had the good sense to go more slowly. Her tailbone smacked into rock, sending a paralyzing jolt up her spine and down both legs. What a bad joke, to be lying crippled when Laymon dropped on her. Luck held. Everything worked. It hurt, but it worked. Daring one flick of her lamp, she sighted the ascension rope on the far side of the pit. Between the looming crusted tables, a red snakey tongue licked dead-white stone.

Hidden by darkness, she crawled in the direction she'd aimed herself. The crack of her helmet against the wall let her know she'd arrived.

"Did you hear something?" Curt, sounding hollow as he looked down into the dry well that was the Cocktail Lounge. Lamps appeared, weak and watery searchlights, scouring the pit. Anna lined herself up behind one of the flat-topped formations that gave the place its name. If they saw her the game was up. Shooting fish in a barrel.

Every cloud, and all that: Anna found a silver lining. In the light from the search and under cover of sound from conversation, she opened Sondra's pack and fished out her ascenders. Ascenders were complicated, made to go over boots, not rubber socks. Until they were properly attached to the rope, the angular devices of metal dragged on the ground, clattering at every step. Gloves in her teeth, Anna worked so fast her fingers fumbled one into the other, but she was rigged by the time she heard Laymon say, "Must've been Hodags," and the lights were snatched back from the deep.