No more shooting. No more chimpanzee screams.

Which might mean anything. Pierce could be dead—or all the chimps could be dead. The tunnel was silent on the matter.

Then Sam cocked his head—he could hear something, but it was—

—behind them.

He saw Dani react to it at the same time, and together they turned back to face the locked door. The new sound was coming from the other side of it.

Dani’s eyebrows drew closer together, in confusion.

“What is that?” she said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

SEPTEMBER 2018

One of the flatbed cart’s wheels had a raised bump on it, or maybe a depression. Whatever it was, it made a thudding sound once per revolution, like a drumbeat marking time.

Dryden listened to the cadence of it, watching the ceiling of the tunnel go by.

The tunnel lay beyond the room with the open cages and the dead chimps. It looked exactly like the other tunnel, the one he had dreamed about for twenty-nine years. Poured concrete walls, metal grid ceiling supported by crossbeams, small inset lights high on one side.

As in the first tunnel, the lights were off. They gleamed and winked in the harsh flashlight beams of Pierce’s men.

The group had fallen into a rough formation, moving along the tunnel: five were up ahead of the cart, three behind it. Of those three, one was pushing the cart by its handle, and two were watching the prisoners.

The watchers were doing an effective job of it, though not quite a perfect one. The tunnel’s three-foot width didn’t allow three adults to walk abreast, which meant the watchers had to be a step behind the pusher. That made it awkward to point their gun-mounted flashlights down onto the cart. What they did instead was aim them at the side walls of the tunnel, so the light bounced back and cast a scattered glow on everything—the cart, the people ahead of it, the prisoners. Not a bad solution. It kept things visible, if not glaringly bright.

More important was what the watchers were doing with their eyes—which was a little of everything. They were glancing down at Dryden and Danica every few seconds, but mostly they were keeping their gazes ahead, roaming over the group and the space far in front of it. It looked like the careful attention habit of personal bodyguards—watching for threats from all corners. No doubt these people were Pierce’s bodyguards, among other things. They were sharp and efficient and professional.