“No.” O'Rourke turned away from the cistern and leaned against a wall. “The tunnel . . . “ He clenched his teeth.

Kate understood. “You said that during the war . . . Vietnam . . . you were a tunnel rat. It's where“

O'Rourke wiped the sweat from his face. “I was checking out a tunnel complex that the platoon had found near a village.” His voice quavered, then steadied. “Tunnels branching from tunnels. Bazella and his boys had dropped in concussion and fragmentation grenades, but there were so many turns, so many ups and downs . . . Anyway, it'd been an NVA headquarters . . . infirmary, barracks, the whole bit. But the NVAthe North Vietnamese regularshad cleared out. Except for one rotting corpse wedged in the tunnel a few meters from its exit point on the riverbank. I figured I could squeeze by . . .” O'Rourke stopped and stared at nothing.

“The body was boobytrapped,” whispered Kate. Her fingers held the memory of the scars on his back and upper legs.

O'Rourke nodded. “They'd hollowed out the guy's stomach and rigged him with C4 and a simple trip wire to the detonator. When I touched his leg, he blew mine off.” He tried to laugh but the sound was sad and hollow.

Kate moved closer and set her face against his neck.

“It's not fullblown claustrophobia,” he whispered. “I mean, you've seen me on planes and trains. As long as I can see a way out . . .” He broke off. “I'm sorry.”

“No,” whispered Kate. “It's good. I think it's better that you wait here. It makes more sense. If I get in trouble. someone has to be out here to go for help. “

This time O'Rourke did laugh. “Go for help to whom? Where? We're all there is, Kate.”

She managed a smile. “I know, but I keep waiting for the cavalry to come over the hill.”

“Give me a minute,” said O'Rourke. He took several deep breaths, swung his arms around a few times, and leaned out over the dry cistern. It was only eight or nine feet to the bottom and there were gaps and footholds in the loose stone. “Hold the light steady . . . good, there . . . that's where Father Danielescu said the entrance was.”

Kate saw only stone and desiccated creepers.

“Hold it steady until I find a way into the old sewer line,” said O'Rourke. “Then hand down the light and join me.” He swung out over the wall and felt his way to the bottom. Once a stone tumbled to the littered floor of the cistern, but O'Rourke stepped down easily. Kate held the light on the wall while he felt the stones, removed a penknife, and pried at one until it came loose. The others came out more easily.

“Light,” he said, standing and holding his hands high.

Kate dropped the flashlight to him. He held the beam on footholds while she descended. They crouched and peered into the hole.

“Ugghh,” said Kate, clenching her fists. Rats' eyes had gleamed back and now she could hear the screeching of the things as they fled the light. The flashlight beam gleamed on their oily black backs. The sewer lineif that is what it waswas only three feet across, and it narrowed only a few yards in where the rats' eyes had burned back at them.

“How can we go into that?” whispered Kate.

O'Rourke leaned close. “The good news is that I bet there's not a single North Vietnamese in there. I'll go first.” He found a sturdy stick on the floor of the cistern and held it in his right hand, the flashlight in his left. His body blocked the light when he forced his shoulders through the entrance.

Kate closed her eyes and thought of Joshua.

“It's wide enough,” came O'Rourke's taut whisper. “Father Danielescu said that it went all the way through, and I think he's right. Come on, I'll hold the light.”

Kate tried to estimate the distance they would have to crawl. A footballfield's length? Twothirds that distance? It was endless. The ancient tunnel could collapse and no one would ever know they were there. The rats would eat their eyes. This was insane.

“Coming,” she whispered and crawled into the hole.

Except for the terror of the fire and the death of Tom and Julie, the hundred yards of tunnel was the most terrible and horrifying experience of Kate's life. She could hear O'Rourke's panting, could see the tremor of incipient panic in his body silhouetted against the flashlight glow ahead, but the rest was sharp rock and mud and the scurry of rats and darkness made all the worse by the heightening sense of claustrophobia as the narrow passage grew narrower, each tight section tighter. Occasionally O'Rourke would stop and she would grasp his leg or, if the tunnel was wide enough there, force a hand forward to hold his hand, but they spoke little and their panting took on a more desperate rhythm the deeper they crawled into the darkness.

“What about bad air?” she whispered after they forced a particularly narrow point where the old rocklined sewer had collapsed. They had squeezed between mud and roots, and Kate could not imagine making it backward through that bottleneck. The thought took her breath away and left her panting in short, sharp gasps.

“Rats live here,” gasped O'Rourke. Kate could hear them scurrying ahead of him and down side passages that were no wider across than her thighs. “If they can breathe, I guess we can.”

“Was your priest friend sure that this was passable?”

O'Rourke paused in his crawling. “Well, I didn't actually speak to that young priest . . . “

“But you know that he did make it all the way into the compound?” demanded Kate. Her chest felt constricted, as if someone were pulling a metal band tight there.

“Yes!” said O'Rourke and began crawling forward again, muttering something Kate did not catch.

“What was that?”

“I said that the priest crawled in here when he was a boy,” said O'Rourke, pushing fallen rocks out of the way. The flashlight created a corona around his beard and hair.

“When he was a boy!” Kate grabbed O'Rourke's boot. “How small a boy, goddamn it?”

The priest paused to gasp for breath again. “I don't know. Not too small, I think. I hope.” He began moving forward again, his shoulders scraping rock on both sides.

A few minutes later Kate was pushing a root out of her way, wondering at the strange, bifurcated shape of the thing, when she rested on her elbows and said, “O'Rourke . . . Mike . . . shine the light back here, would you?”

She was holding a human forearm, the space between the radius and ulna packed solid with dirt. She dropped it quickly, wiggling to one side to crawl past it.

“This is good,” whispered O'Rourke. “We must be in the cemetery within the compound. Right behind the church.”

Kate nodded and brushed her hair out of her eyes. She had handled cadavers as a medical student, had helped with autopsies as a doctor, and held no undue fear of the dead. She just preferred to know ahead of time when she was going to handle a corpse.

It was at this moment that the flashlight went out. Kate froze and felt O'Rourke's body freeze into immobility for several seconds. “Shit,” he whispered and banged the flashlight with the heel of his hand. Not even a glimmer. Kate grasped O'Rourke's right ankle while he fiddled with the batteries and tapped the flashlight again. Nothing. She could feel the tension coursing in him like an electric current; his skin became clammy and his muscles grew as rigid as marble. It was as if both legs were now prostheses.

“O'Rourke,” she whispered. “Mike?”

Silence. She felt him shift positions, lying on his back now, and from the slight rustlings and shifts in his body, she could imagine his hands lifted, his fingers tapping against the rough roof of the tunnel as if it were a coffin. His breathing was shallow and far too rapid.

“Mike?” she whispered again, reaching higher to touch his arm. She could feel the vibration building deep within him, like the first tremors of tectonic plates slipping after years of mounting pressure.