Three

one thing: he had to help him.

  He felt badly that he had squabbled with him. Roke was his friend. He wouldn’t have gotten even half this far without him. He slid carefully out of the narrow fissure that led into the pool and pulled himself along the side of the pool with only his nose and fingers showing above the surface. Suddenly, he realized things had taken a very dangerous turn up there on the cavern floor.

  “I didn’t know you had a gun, Deeter,” said one of the men.

  “So you’re going to commit murder,” said Roke.

  “Who’s going to know?” said Deeter. “You going to rat on me, Rokey boy? Not likely.” A shot went off. It echoed and echoed around the cavern and was followed by a grim silence. “Just so you know it’s loaded, big guy.”

  “Do you really want to do this?” This was one of his henchmen talking. “Murder’s a big rap.”

  “Shut up, Al.”

  Joel began to realize that Deeter was standing very near the pool. He didn’t hesitate. Gripping the edge of the pool’s rocky lip, he lifted himself slowly and quietly out of the pool behind Deeter. Now he lunged his legs out of the water onto the pavement and latched onto Deeter’s jacket.

  “Look out!” shouted Al.

  But the warning came too late. Joel had pulled Deeter into the pool and was holding him under water.

  His two buddies looked on flabbergasted, and in that instant Roke grabbed them by the hair and slammed their heads together. The pistol fell from Deeter’s hand and wobbled its way to the pool’s bottom leaving a thin trail of bubbles. Joel held him under long enough to make sure he got plenty of water in his lungs and, then, let him go. Flailing back to the surface, Deeter choked and screamed in panic: “Help me, help me! I can’t swim!”

  Still holding the other two by their long hair, Roke looked down at him and shook his head. “Kind of late to remember that,” he said. “Let him flounder, Joel.”

  Then, he let Deeter’s two henchmen go. “We can’t keep an eye on all three of them,” he said. “Deeter’s the one we want.” As the two took off, he aimed a tremendous kick at one guy’s butt. He gasped, staggered, sprawled, got up and limped off after his buddy.

  Joel was now out of the pool. Dripping wet though he was, Roke came up to him and wrapped his huge arms around him. “Want a belt?” he asked him. “They left theirs behind.” They shared a big laugh. “Hey, kid, we’re the luckiest guys there ever were. I thought we were both sure-fire dead. I was afraid they’d drowned you.”

  “He was going to shoot you,” said Joel. He was starting to weep---from fright and exhaustion. “Roke, you’re the best friend I ever had—after Bryan. I’m sorry I got mad at you.”

  “Me, too,” said Roke. “Forgive me, boy. We’ll start over, okay? You must be freezing. Come on. We’ll do the hypothermia hop.” He began to perform a high-speed jumping-jacks routine. “Come on, Joel, get on it.” Soon they were both doing it, but laughing so hard they could hardly do it at all.

  “Hey,” said Roke suddenly. “Where’s that turd brain?”

  “You mean Deeter? He’s right there!”

  Deeter had pulled himself out of the pool and was noisily vomiting the water out of his stomach and lungs. Roke walked up and stood over him. “You’re lucky you’re still alive, dumbo.”

  “I know,” he said meekly. He was strangely docile, a reminder to Joel of accounts he’d read of enemy soldiers captured in battle. They were ferocious as warriors, but, when they were prisoners, they sometimes became as tame as rabbits.

  “You’re going to help us find this kid’s twin brother. His name’s Bryan,” said Roke.

  “Yeah, I know him,” said Deeter. He kept coughing every time he spoke.

  “So where is he?” Roke was shouting at him.

  Deeter shrugged. “Could be anywhere.”

  “Like right around here?” asked Joel.

  “I don’t know this cavern,” said Roke. “I was never in it before.”

  Joel was dumbstruck. “So how did you---”

  “Guessed my way into it. I’m a caver, remember?”

  “Nobody knows it,” said Deeter. He was barely audible.

  “You mean---?”

  Deeter nodded.

  “So we’ve broken into one of the new caves,” said Roke.

  “This was what Bryan was hoping to find,” said Joel.

  Roke gave Deeter a piercing stare. “What’s in here, Deeter? What’s so special? It looks like an ordinary cave to me.”

  Another shrug.

  “There’s a secret in here somewhere, isn’t there?” said Joel. “Bryan was after it. He said he was.”

  “I don’t know nothin’,” Deeter rasped.

  “I think he needs a reminder,” said Roke. “Something to refresh his memory.”

  He yanked Deeter up by his jacket, headed back to the pool, held him head down just above the water and dunked him up and down in it. “Is it all coming back to you now?” asked the big man.

  “Okay, Roke. That’s enough,” said Joel.

  Roke dumped him down on the cave floor. “I’ll kick him till he talks,” he said.

  “Don’t,” said Joel. “I think he’s going to tell us. “

  “Only you,” said Deeter to Joel in a whisper,

  “Don’t get too close to him,” warned Roke.

  But Joel could only think: this guy knows something he needed to know about Bryan. He leaned in close to his face as Deeter pointed to the far wall of the cavern.

  “The tunnel,” he gasped. He had a coughing fit and, then, tried to get out another word, but they couldn’t make it out.

  “The what?” asked Roke.

  “Say it again, man,” said Joel. They weren’t going to hear it. Deeter had passed out.

  “Come on, Joel. We can’t worry about him. He brought this on himself. Let’s check out the tunnel.”

  He and Joel headed at a trot toward the cavern wall to examine what looked like a possible tunnel-like opening in it. It was another squeezed-down crawlway, but this one seemed reasonably dry. They pushed along it until suddenly it ended and came out on a long, narrow ledge. In front of them was a totally overwhelming space—an enormous, rock-lined amphitheater---hundreds of yards across Joel described it for Roke.

  “Must be a giant sinkhole,” said Roke. “Sure’s the biggest one I ever heard about. This must be what he was trying to tell us about.”

  “Is this the big old secret they’re been trying to hide?” said Joel. “There must be more to it than this.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is we’re blocked,” said the big man. “We’re not going to find Bryan in here. About face, Joel.” He turned to head back down the passage they had just crawled through. “That jerk was pulling our chains.”

  “Wait, Roke,” whispered Joel. “Wait.”

  “What’s up, kid?”

  “Look at this,” he said. His heart was hammering in his chest as he pointed to something unmistakable at the end of the ledge: a couple of rappel ropes looped around two anchor bolts punched into the ledge. The two strands spilled over the edge and speared downward.

  Roke strode over to the ropes and tugged on them. “Could be his,” he said. “Still taut. Might be attached to him.” He looked at Joel and shook his head. “He may be down there, boy, but he aint pulling back.” He found it hard to say. “This doesn’t look too good.”

  Joel just kneeled there fingering the ropes. He was sobbing and sobbing.

  Finally, Roke said: “You got to look at it this way. His kind of caver had to know, had to look around every corner, had to see the next cavern. This sinkhole may go down hundreds of feet. Well, he just had to see the bottom of it.” He looked over the edge again.

  “For a caver this really was a pretty good find. A secret worth discovering.”

  “You think that’s all it was?” said Joel.

  “Yeah, I d
o,” said Roke. “Plain old caver’s curiosity.”

  “It doesn’t seem like enough reason to throw it all away,” said Joel. He stared grimly into the depths of the amphitheater. “To risk dying.”

  “Well, it’s obvious nobody made him do it. He chose this, kid.” He glanced at Joel, not wanting to seem too callous but not wanting to get sentimental either. “It’s what cavers do.”

  “What do you think went wrong?”

  “Maybe his lines were too short. They didn’t reach down far enough---so he fell. Or maybe he just banged his head. A lot of things.”

  “I won’t let him go, Roke.” His voice was starting to break. “He might still be—”

  “Damned unlikely,” said the big guy.

  “It’s possible, though, isn’t it?” He glared at Roke. “Well, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” he said slowly. “I mean like it’s a thousand to one chance, Joel. Maybe ten thousand to one.”

  Joel sucked in a long breath. “I’m going down to get him,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t do it.”

  “I want you to rig me up to go down.”

  Roke loomed above him, a formidable mass of humanity.

  “I could make you not go down,” he said. “Force you to come back with me until you came to your senses. And I’d be doing you a big favor if I did.”

  But he had already decided to give in. “Okay, boy, we’ll do it. But you have to do it my way. It takes a whole lot of practice to get good at rappelling down—and, then, we’ve got to get you back up. That’s even harder. So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll tie you to a rope and let you down by hand, and we’ll just hope.”

  “Thanks, Roke.”

  “Long as you know you might not