“I know,” George said, “but we can’t find Thomas. Have you seen him?”

“Not since I left you boys packing up the dugout,” Boomer said.

“What about you, Mole?” Frederick asked. “Where did Thomas say he was going after he came back to the dugout?”

“Thomas didn’t come back to the dugout.”

“Yes, he did,” Charlie said. “After he and I left you, Thomas said he forgot something in the dugout and headed back into the tunnels.”

Mole shook his head. “I’m telling you, the last time I saw Dover was when he left with you, Mouse. If he’d come back, I would have seen or…” Mole’s voice trailed off.

“What is it?” George asked.

“When I was packing up the last crate, I thought I heard a voice, but when I looked, no one was there.”

“Maybe he found what he was looking for and left,” Frederick said.

Boomer shook his head. “I was waiting for Mole at the entrance. No one but Mole came out, and one of us has been here ever since.”

“Then where is he?” Frederick asked.

George inched closer to the lip of the shaft, where Max continued to pace and whine. He peered down into the darkness.

“You don’t think he went back down into the galleries, do you?” Charlie asked.

“There’s nowhere else he could be,” George said.

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Frederick looked at the men. “Why would he go back down there this close to zero hour?”

But George did not wait for an explanation. Picking up Max with one arm, he grabbed hold of the ladder and began climbing down the shaft, ignoring Mole’s order for him to wait.

He skipped several rungs in his descent. When he reached the bottom of the shaft, he found Thomas’s kit bag and boots abandoned beneath the last rung. He put Max down and lit one of the extinguished lanterns embedded in the clay walls. It cast a weak light down the narrow corridor. “Find Thomas, Max!”

The terrier sniffed twice and then took off down the gallery toward the Maedelstede Farm mine.

The voices of the others, echoing off the shaft walls, grew closer, but George couldn’t wait for them. Heart pounding, he chased after Max and calculated how much time was left before the mines were detonated.

Two hours.

Two hours to find Thomas, climb back up the shaft, get out of the tunnels, and get back to the safety of the support trenches before the mines exploded, taking anyone on or under no-man’s-land with them.

Plenty of time, he thought, but he still kicked up his pace.

As Frederick and Charlie chased the shrinking light of George’s lantern, Charlie tried not to jostle Poppy too much in her cage or think about the last words Boomer had shouted to them as they’d descended the shaft ladder in pursuit of their friend.

The mines are firing at 3:10 whether you’re out of there or not.

A string of mumbled vulgarities and the heavy footfalls of Mole trailed them through the gallery.