He lay for what seemed like hours, panting like a horse ridden almost to death. It had been a near thing, he knew. His head throbbed unmercifully and white and blue spots sailed across the darkness before his eyes. He tried to focus his mind, but couldn’t. His breath wheezed like a bellows, his chest heaved and it was all he could to just to breathe. But he had done it! He exulted. Done what? some cynical part of his mind retorted. You’re still trapped in the well like a fly in a bottle. The heavy stone sealing the opening to the well was a five-hundred-pound cork. At that moment, his desperate little stratagem to get the two of them out seemed hopelessly pathetic.

“Hey, Nick? Are you all right?” Kelly called, her voice faint and echoing in the darkness. It caught him by surprise and jolted him upright. He had to get her up, he thought. And then, somehow, he would kill Bandar. By the living Allah he would.

“I’m fine. Now’s your chance to show boot camp what it missed,” he called down, his voice barely a hoarse whisper.

“You mean you made it?” Her voice was incredulous.

“Did you ever doubt it?” he called back.

“Not for a minute!” came an exuberant girlish voice from the darkness below.

The Scorpion wedged himself into the niche, his back against one side, his feet against the other. His battered fingers explored the rock, trying to get a feel of the space he occupied. He was seated in a den about three feet across scooped out of the rock. There was barely enough space to sit up without cracking his head and it couldn’t have been more than a foot and a half deep. Getting the two of them in there would be like shoe-horning a size ten foot into a size four shoe, but it would have to do. The cramped space worked to his advantage in one regard; it made it easier to brace himself tightly. And he’d need every edge possible if he was to get her up.

He called down for her to catch the rope and used it to bring up the wooden stave. She would have to carry the lamp up. They couldn’t risk dropping it. At last he was ready to bring her up.

Tightly braced, he placed one end of the braided rope so that it was pressed by the bottom of his foot against the opposite side of the niche. Then he ran the rope from his right hand across his back to his left hand. He dropped the rope from his left hand.

“Got it!” she called up.

His thirst was terrible. His mouth had a foul taste. He licked the sweat off his forearm. His tongue felt swollen, and as raspy as a cat’s. He had to swallow his own spittle to try to talk.