Absurd and unlikely, but it was all he had.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
He unraveled the fishing line, praying that it wasn’t broken. Quickly, he tied one end to a twisted root that emerged from among the rocks on one side of the path, and stretched it out across the track, some eight inches above the ground. He wrapped it around a large rock, which he balanced on top of another stone. Pulled tight across the path, it was invisible, but at most it would cause somebody to trip. He needed something more.
He took the pistol from his pocket and removed a cartridge from the magazine. The projectile, produced by some Nazi arms factory almost a hundred years earlier, had rust marks on one side and didn’tlook to be in the best condition. He buried it tip down, so that only the flat end was uncovered.
He was sweating profusely. He looked up and saw flashlights drawing near. The path was too narrow for the SUV, but its occupants were approaching, cautiously but relentlessly.
Time was slipping away. He took the badge from his coat and, very carefully, inserted it just a few fractions of an inch into the hole for the firing pin so that it sat upright. His hope was that, when someone came along the path and tripped on the fishing line, they would dislodge the rock, which would fall onto the badge pin, detonating the propellant.
There were a thousand things that could go wrong, obviously. He’d learned this trick from some Kurdish rebels in northern Syria years ago, but they had performed it with a Soviet anti-tank mine, not a miserable 9-mm bullet from almost a century ago.
Even so, it might give his enemies a fright and make them think twice about coming after him.
He checked the trap one last time, then set off toward the rocky cliff edge, just as he saw the flashlights shine directly on that section of the track.
It was no longer raining, but the booming sound of the sea crashing against the cliffs was deafening. This was accompanied by a searing, scraping sound, which he realized was the rocks being dragged back and forth like marbles across the foreshore.
He swallowed, awed by the force of nature. The idea of climbing down the cliffs seemed even less attractive.
But he had no choice. The flashlights had almost reached the spot where he had rigged up his trap.
Please work. Please, I beg you ...
Nothing happened.
Either his pursuers had seen the trip wire, or the stone hadn’t fallen on the cartridge. Or perhaps the ancient bullet simply hadn’t worked. Just when he had convinced himself that his booby trap had failed, he heard a detonation, followed almost immediately by a shout of surprise.
A hail of shots was immediately unleashed. From his hiding place, Roberto could see the flash of guns as they unleashed their projectiles into the darkness.
“Hold your fire!” roared a voice in the distance. “Stop shooting! You’re wasting ammo, you fools!”
“I’ve twisted an ankle!” came the voice of a woman who sounded as if she were in pain. “He’s left trip wires across the path!”
“Can you walk?”
“I don’t know,” she groaned. “I don’t think so. I’m sorry, Luis.”
The wind, which was blowing in Roberto’s direction, carried a sigh of frustration to his ears.
“Don’t worry. Go back to the truck and wait for us there.”
“On my own?” She sounded scared.
“Of course! What are you afraid of? We’re the only ones here!” Luis Docampo sounded furious. “Go on, get moving!”
A long, heated discussion ensued, the details of which Roberto couldn’t make out. But he’d given them something to think about, and he also had one pursuer less. The balance was still unequal, but he had tipped the scales. They’d be sure to advance more carefully now.
The path came out at a promontory at the cliff’s edge. To one side, spattered with seagull shit, was an old information sign in various languages showing a cross-section of the Devil’s Hole. But Roberto’s attention was on the large opening surrounded by a precarious wooden guardrail that barely came up to his waist. He cautiously approached the edge of the shaft and looked down.
It was a black abyss, the bottom invisible. From below came a deep sound—half roar, half lament—every time the waves penetrated the narrow passage at sea level and crashed inside in a thunderous explosion. From the shaft came a series of deafening bangs followed by strange silences each time the sea retreated, before the cycle began again, as it had for thousands of years in the carving out of that extraordinary rock formation.
He took a step back. The place—which must have been awe-inspiring in daylight on a calm day—was terrifying in pitch darkness in the middle of a storm.
He saw now that his plan to climb down the cliff was doomed to failure. Picking his way blindly over slippery stones without knowing where he was going was a self-imposed death sentence. If one of those frenzied waves hit him, he’d be squashed like a bug on a windshield.
There was nowhere to go.
