Floating City by Eric Van Lustbader

at the contact point. There was no one there. Bay got down on her knees, felt beneath a broken-down series of berths.
    “There is nothing here.” For the first time, Nicholas detected a note of alarm in her voice. Up until this moment she had been almost unnaturally calm in the face of harrowing circumstances. She looked up at him. Was that a trace of fear in her dark eyes? “Abramanov should have been here. I don’t know what has happened.”
    “Maybe all the activity on the highway deterred him.”
    But she shook her head. “He would have entered the tunnels from miles away. The soldiers wouldn’t have mattered.”
    “Then either I’ve been double-crossed or we’ve both been.” He pulled her up by her elbow. “It’s time to get some answers.”
    At that moment, they heard a sound.
    “Someone’s coming!” Bay whispered. She extinguished her flash. “Quick, this way!”
    They slithered backward into a pile of loose dirt, rubble, and bones. The stench was as indescribable as it was unpleasant. Nicholas, lying close beside Bay, was aware of the extreme tension gathering in her frame. It was then that a dull metallic gleam caught his attention, and shifting slightly, he saw the knife in her left hand. It was a Marine ka-bar, a large-bladed, wicked weapon, capable of cleaving through both sinew and bone.
    She was staring fixedly, and following her gaze, he saw what she saw: the figure moving stealthily down the tunnel. Even in the darkness, even with it hunched over, he could tell that it was a soldier. So she had been wrong: they weren’t afraid to come down here.
    A flash of her rage, like being spat at, bloomed in his mind. He felt her intent in the split second before she moved. He could have stopped her, but to what purpose? He was coming to know her, and he knew she would only fight him and, in doing so, give their position away. He let her go, then launched himself after her because his tanjian eye had picked up something that she could not as yet see.
    She was like a cat, silent and small, and the Vietnamese soldier was not aware of her until the blade of the ka-bar was buried in his bowels. She ripped the knife upward with tremendous strength, and her victim screamed, the blood spurting out of him like a river.
    He pitched sideways, against the wall of the tunnel, and that was when Bay saw the ugly muzzle of the submachine gun leveled point-blank at her. Her only weapon was still hilt-deep in flesh, and her eyes opened wide in astonishment and fear.
    Then Nicholas was barreling into the second soldier. A string of explosions rocketed down the tunnels as the submachine gun went off. Nicholas drove his fist into the soldier’s solar plexus, momentarily paralyzing him. The heel of his hand smashed into the man’s larynx, crushing it. The soldier went down and stayed down. A soft gurgle of blood and saliva came from him. Then silence.
    “What the hell is going on?” Nicholas snarled. “You told me—”
    “I know what I said.” Bay flicked on her flashlight. She began to hurry down the tunnel. “Something’s gone terribly wrong. This place has turned into a death trap. We’ve got to get out of here now.”
    Every few feet she reached up with her bloody ka-bar and tapped the ceiling of the tunnel. The fourth time, she stopped, pushed aside a pair of false wooden beams. A trapdoor dropped open and she levered herself up through the hole. Nicholas followed, looked around. Bay was already several yards down the tunnel.
    He heard her curse softly in Vietnamese.
    Coming up beside her, he saw that a fairly new cave-in had blocked the way. They went back up the tunnel. Several hundred yards from where they had emerged, she discovered another trapdoor and up they went onto the next level.
    The air was thin here, more musty than down below, leading Nicholas to believe that even Bay and her contacts hadn’t explored this section of the labyrinth.
    They made no sound as they went. Consequently, the noise from