Lowe took Marshall's hand away. "Damn it, you're still not listening!"

"I am listening, Jake, and I believe you're right," Marshall was calm and thoughtful. "We were never prepared for anything like this, none of us. Maybe the risk is too great. We can't chance blowing the whole thing, not this far into it." Another lightning flash and Marshall's eyes found Lowe's. "Okay, Jake. Let's make the call. Tell them what we think. Have the vice president withdraw the order. Put it on hold."

"That's good," Lowe said with immense relief. "Damn, damn good."

• 10:37 P.M.

"No! No!" José suddenly pulled back in the narrow chimney and refused to go farther.

"What the hell's wrong?" Hap looked sharply to Miguel.

They were probably four hundred feet underground in an awkwardly twisting limestone channel that dropped sharply downward into a claustrophobic darkness that, even with the illumination of their flashlights, had become increasingly disquieting. Moreover, this was a second chimney down, one far beneath the first one they had descended through, and all of them, the boys included, were becoming more and more on edge.

"Tell him it's okay, we understand," Hap was pale, his shoulder throbbing, already into a second pain pill. "Tell him we all feel the same way. But we have to keep going."

Miguel started to speak to José in Spanish. He'd barely started when the youngster shook his head again. "No!" he spat. "No más!" No more!

Nearly forty minutes earlier they had reached the section of tunnel where the boys thought Miguel's friends might be, if they were there at all, Amado and Hector getting to it first and the others soon afterward. They'd hardly gone a hundred yards when they heard the rush of men coming toward them in the dark. Miguel started to turn them back when Hector took him by the arm.

"No, this way," he said quickly and led them dangerously forward toward the oncoming men to another break in the rock, a fissure that even with lights would be almost impossible to find unless one knew the tunnel very well. It was steep and narrow and led farther down in an abrupt, twisting sweep deeper into the earth. They had climbed down it for a full thirty seconds when they heard the rescuers pass by its hidden opening and stopped. And it was there they remained, all but trapped as still more forces joined the others above. Finally Amado had looked to his uncle.

"These are more than just 'friends' who are lost."

"Yes," Miguel glanced at Hap and then back to his nephew. "One of them is an official of the United States government."

"And these men, these police forces hunting him, want to do him harm."

"They think they are helping him but they are not. When they find him they will bring him to people who will harm him, but they don't know that."

"Who is this man?" Hector asked.

Hap had trusted them so far and right now he needed all the help and trust he could get. "The president," he said definitively.

"Of the United States?" Amado blurted in broken English.

"Yes."

The boys laughed as if it were a joke and then they saw the expressions on the faces of the men.

"It is true?" Amado asked.

"Yes, it's true," Hap said. "We have to get him out and away from here without anyone knowing."

Miguel translated the last into Spanish then added, "The man who is with him is good, the president's friend. It is up to us to find them and get them away from the police and to safety. Do you understand?"

"Sí," each boy said. "Sí."

It was then Hap glanced at his watch and looked to Miguel. "Before, the boys said they thought they knew about how far the president might have come since the landslide. That was two and half hours ago. They know the tunnel. Where do they think he and Marten might be now, assuming they're still alive and moving at about the same speed?"

Miguel looked at the boys and translated.

The boys looked at each other, had a brief discussion, then Amado looked to his uncle. "Cerca," he said. "Cerca."

"Near," Miguel translated. "Near."

It was then they heard the movement and voices of the men in the tunnel above. They had come back and were much closer, their voices echoing clearly down to where they were. Miguel was afraid they would be discovered, and Hector moved them farther down, inching them along through a chimney that turned and twisted like the coils of a snake. Less than five minutes later José had stopped them with his sudden "No!" Refusing to go any farther.

"What is it?" Miguel asked him in Spanish.

"Los muertos"-the dead-he said, as if only seconds before he had realized where he was and where this chimney led, and it rocked him to his soul. "Los muertos," he repeated, clearly terrified. "Los muertos."

Hap looked to Miguel. "What is he talking about?"

A brief exchange in Spanish followed. Miguel to José, who remained silent, then to Amado, whom he finally got the truth out of.

"Down there," Miguel gestured farther down the chimney, "is another tunnel. It has a single track. Traveling along it he has seen a 'streetcar' filled with the dead."

"What?" Hap was incredulous.

"More than once."

"What is he talking about?"

Miguel and Amado had an exchange in Spanish. Then Miguel translated.

"A few months ago José and Hector were exploring and found another tunnel, the one he is talking about that is below us now. It's much smaller and newer and sprayed with a cement coating. A single steel track runs down the center of it. There was a hole at the top of the tunnel. It is how they saw into the shaft and where they were looking when the streetcar-kind-of machine came along. Dead bodies were stacked on it like firewood. They got scared and climbed out and told no one what they saw. Two months later they dared each other to come back. They climbed down and waited and then saw it again. This time bodies were being taken in the other direction. José became certain that if he ever went down there again he would become one of them. He believes it is Hell."

For a moment Hap stared unbelieving, trying to digest it. Then he asked a simple question. "Is there a way, besides this chimney, to get from that tunnel up there," he pointed to where they had been, "down to the tunnel where the bodies were?"

Once again Miguel turned to the boys and translated. For a moment no one said anything; finally Hector spoke, scratching two lines in the stone with a piece of rock as he did. Miguel translated what he said.

"The shaft below runs level. The shaft above starts high then slopes lower. Where we are it is maybe sixty feet between them. Much further down it is less than twenty and there are cutouts all along it, he thinks for air, so yes it is possible to get from one to the other."

Hap listened carefully to Miguel's translation. As he did he heard more noise from above. Suddenly the hair stood up on his neck.

"There are a lot people still up there," he said with urgency. "Dead or alive, if the president was in that tunnel they would have found him by now and we would have either heard their reaction or they simply would have gone."

Suddenly Miguel realized what he was saying. "You think my cousins are in the lower shaft!"

"Maybe, and maybe close by. Let José stay here if he wants, the rest of us are going down to find out."