“Move!” he bellowed. As each of his men raced past him, he counted them.  Bright-red tracer rounds began to whiz through the thick waterfall of dirt and dust as the defenders’ heavy machine guns came into action. Rip gasped as he looked over his shoulder, and then backed up with his people. James understood why. Their escape route up the chimney was closed. Fortunately, their foe was now blocked as well, but the Marines, James and Aria were now trapped inside the cave’s rear chamber.

Rip barely avoided being covered by the ceiling’s continued collapse in heavy loads of dirt. Shouting “Goddammit!” he led the way into the deep part of the cave. Here, it was as dark as it gets, and the only noise in the vast, dust-shrouded space was coughing and the sounds of faint gunfire.

Rip turned on his flashlight, and several other flashlight beams began to dance around through the dust. “Let’s get a head count.”

One of the Marines murmured, “Anybody got fifty pounds of C-4?” A rhetorical question. Fifty pounds would blow the top of G’tichavank sky high.

Rip’s flashlight lit up the group. Heavy dust still swirled still around them, along with the familiar scent of fresh earth. Other flashlights went on. Rip spoke into his headset, “Getaway, this is Bandit, over.”

It was no good. The signal was lost. Not that it mattered, James knew. The helicopter had drawn considerable fire, and surely had had to pull back until it could return for the extraction.

Guns spoke up. “All present and accounted for, sir. We have two casualties, but they’re mobile. But we’re low on ammo, sir.”

Rip nodded, but said, “We don’t have anybody to shoot at in here.” Then he looked around. “Where does that direction lead to?”