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sister in the States, but she could get no service this far underground.
    “We should wade over to the next cave, to where we climbed down here,” he suggested. “See if there’s any way out. After all of these aftershocks, maybe something knocked loose, reopened what the thieves blasted closed.”
    He didn’t sound hopeful, but Lena nodded, wanting to do something—if nothing else, to keep moving. She hiked her pack higher on her shoulder and slipped off the lip of rock into the dark lake. The icy water immediately filled her boots and soaked her pants to midthigh. Gritting her teeth, she took a few steps and continued on.
    “Careful,” she warned. “It’s pretty slippery.”
    The priest followed her, gasping loudly as he waded in. “Slippery? Should’ve warned me about how cold it is.”
    She couldn’t help but grin, appreciating his attempt to lighten the mood. Together they crossed the large cavern and headed toward the tunnel that ran to the neighboring smaller cave. She prayed there was some escape in that direction.
    As they neared the tunnel mouth, a low rumble rose around her, rippling the surface of the lake.
    “Another aftershock,” Roland said, stopping with her.
    They waited together, holding their breaths, expecting the worst, but like the half-dozen previous quakes, this one quickly subsided. Still, she splashed more quickly to the tunnel’s mouth and shone her light down its throat.
    “It’s half flooded in there,” she said.
    “Better than fully flooded.”
    “That’s true.”
    She ducked beneath the low roof and headed along the tunnel. She breathed hard, doing her best to hold her claustrophobia at bay. She was not normally prone to anxiety in tight places, but with the weight of the mountain overhead and the need to bend over and bring her nose close to the flow of dark water, she could hear her heart pounding in her ears.
    Luckily, the tunnel climbed at a slight angle, and by the time she reached its end, the water was only ankle-deep. Still, she was already soaked and had a hard time keeping her teeth from chattering, a reaction only partly due to the cold.
    Roland fared no better, shivering as he faced a tumble of broken rock along the base of the far wall. He craned upward, pointing his beam toward the ceiling. She joined her light to his. Together they scanned the roof for any sign of the old entrance, but it had been thoroughly blasted away. Only a few streams of water trickled down from up there, draining through the boulders from the storm-swept mountaintop.
    Roland clenched a fist and mumbled under his breath. His words were in Croatian, and though she couldn’t understand him, they sounded more like a curse than any prayer to God.
    “It’ll be okay,” she offered uselessly. “We’ll wait out the storm. Surely someone will come looking for us. If we hear anything, we can scream and shout. Once they know we’re down here, they can dig us free.”
    Roland studied the water, which had already climbed to midcalf. He didn’t state the obvious, which she appreciated. If the flooding didn’t kill them, the cold and exposure surely would.
    He nodded. “So then we wait and—”
    A low groan cut him off, rising from the shadows to the left. She swung in that direction. From behind a thick folded curtain of flowstone, a dark figure fell into view. Roland pushed Lena behind him, likely fearing this was one of the thieves.
    The man, on his hands and knees, rolled to the side of a hip and raised a hand against the blinding glare of their two helmet lamps.
    “ Père Novak . . . Docteur Crandall . . .” he croaked out, a French accent thick on his tongue. “ C’est vous?”
    Lena centered her beam, discovering a familiar face, one half covered in blood. Though she had glimpsed the man only briefly, she recognized the leader of the French infantry unit.
    So did Roland.
    The priest rushed forward. “Commandant Gerard!”
    The soldier looked relieved and dragged a rifle from