"Go, Hunter! Good boy!"

"This way!"

And the branches started crashing again, and the whisk and rattle of the leaves was so near it made the breath catch in my throat. I looked in the direction of the noise. There they were. I caught my first glimpse of them. Hulking shapes moving between the tree trunks. They would be here in a minute, maybe less.

With a grunt of effort, I slid myself farther into the sinkhole. The water and mud now oozed up over my shirt, over my neck. I felt the cold, damp, gritty mud lapping against my cheek, leaking into my mouth. I felt the gun in my waistband press into my belly as my waist went over the edge and the narrow hole closed in around me. I felt my legs kicking, searching for a place to rest, dangling in nothingness. I whispered the fastest prayer I know, probably the oldest prayer known to man: Help me!

Then, my fingers clawing at the wet earth, I slid in the rest of the way.

I gripped the edge of the earth as my body hung down, as I swung my legs against the wall and my feet scrabbled against its slippery surface. Another burst of howling from the dog made me look up. The daylight had telescoped to a narrow gray circle over my head. When I looked down I saw that gray light fade away to nothing.

Finally, I felt something: a little ledge in the rock. I wedged my toes on top of it. But the second I tried to shift my hands from the wet ground above and find a grip on the wall, I slipped. The next moment, I was plunging downward into darkness.

It was a short fall. I landed hard, banging against the wall as I touched down, sc.r.a.ping my knee, tearing my pants. I stumbled, grabbing the wound, grimacing against the pain, trying to keep hold of the slick stone.

I steadied myself. I looked up. The sinkhole was now nothing but a patch of blue sky about as big around as a basketball. The wild howls of the dog and the deep shouts of the guards filtered down through it, fading into echoes.

I looked down. There was just enough light from above to make out where I was standing. I was on a broad ledge of rock with the water from the stream spilling down to it, running over it. My eyes followed that flow to a wall of rock, only just visible, a few feet in front of me. A dead end . . . No, wait: the water ran to the base of that wall and then into a gap at the bottom of it. The gap was long and maybe two feet high. If I laid myself down on the ledge, I should be able to slip into it, slide myself into the s.p.a.ce beneath the wall. It wasn't a very nice thought. It'd be a tight fit with no way out. If they caught me in there, there'd be no escape. But what else could I do? I could hear the footsteps of the guards now, crunching over dead leaves, splashing through water. They had come into the clearing. They were right above my head.

I lowered myself onto the cold gray stone. I felt the thin stream of water running into me, bubbling against me, soaking my shirt. With a grunt, I began to shove myself into the gap beneath the wall.

And oh yes, it was tight in therea"way tight. I felt as if I were being buried alive, as if the weight of the whole Earth were settling onto my back, pressing down on me. I felt the pistol jammed hard against my belly. There was no room to bring my hand to it, no way I could use it or pull it free. I couldn't even turn my head, couldn't look back to see the sinkhole anymore or the little circle of sky. I could make out only the faintest gray shading in the darkness, the last trace of the light.

Still, I edged in farther underneath the stone. It was like climbing into my own coffin.

It took the guards about ten more seconds to find the sinkhole. Then the sound of their voices changed. They got louder, deeper, more echoic. The dog, Hunter, stopped his howling and let out a series of wild, throaty, triumphant barks. They were right above me. They were looking into the cave.

"Must've gone in here!"

"Well, that's it. He's cornered now!"

"Hey!" the first guard shouted down to me. "West! Come out of there, you're finished."

"Give up, kid. Don't make this worse than it has to be."

How much worse can it get? I thought. I lay there, like a corpse in a coffin, but alive, claustrophobic, trying to keep my breathing steady, trying to keep the panic sparking in my stomach from catching fire and flaming through me.

Another mana"another man with a thick accenta" cursed. "I can't believe it!"

"We're gonna have to go in after him."

"I can't believe it," the man with the accent said again.

"All right, I'll go. Hold on to the dog. Stupid punk," he muttereda"that was referring to me, I guess.

I thought I saw something. I thought the nature of the faint gray light changed. It grew slightly brighter for a moment, then faded again. A flashlight, I thought. One of them was shining a flashlight into the sinkhole.

I heard another curse. The guy must've had his head right down into the sinkhole now. I could even hear him sigha"and even his sigh echoed.

"All right, hold the flashlight right like that so I can see my way," he said. "I'll go down and have a look around."

Instinctively, I shoved myself even farther underneath the rocka"and to my immense relief I felt cool, damp air on the fingertips of my right hand. I pushed my hand up and wiggled my fingers. There was nothing above them. There was a way out from underneath the wall. The gap went straight through. There was another opening, up where my hand was, above my head. If I could edge up a little, I might be able to fit through it. It was worth a try anyway, better than getting caught in here.

Above and behind me, the dog let out a series of frantic barks. I could hear the sc.r.a.ping and grunting and cursinga"a lot of cursinga"as the one guard started his climb down into the sinkhole after me. With the flashlight to guide him, he'd be down in a second. Then all he'd have to do was follow the path of the water like I did. He'd lie down on the rock and see me under there. Then, if I refused to come out, he'd just poke in the muzzle of his AK-47 and blow me to kingdom come.

So I had to movea"now. Crawling on my belly, I inched my way under the wall, toward the opening. I was moving away from the sinkhole light and the flashlight light too. The darkness closed over me like a steel trap until I couldn't see a thinga"not a thinga"it was absolute, pitch black. I squirmed up farther along the narrow pa.s.sage. My arm was free of the wall. Then my head popped out into that dank air. Then I got my shoulder out. Clawed my way over the stone, pulling my legs after me into the open.

Then I was free. I let out a gasping breath of relief. I turned over.

And I fell off the edge of rock.

The next moment I was rolling down and down and down. Bouncing hard off the stone, feeling it sc.r.a.pe pieces of flesh away from my face and arms. I couldn't see. I was completely blind. There was nothing but motion and rock and pain, and I had no idea whether I was about to plunge off another edge and just drop straight down . . .

But no. No, I hit bottom. I felt the jar of the impact go through my entire body so that my bones ached. The breath was knocked out of me in a loud grunt. I lay stunned in a darkness so complete that when I lifted my hand in front of me, I literally could not see my fingers an inch in front of my eyes.

I lay still, aching, gasping for breath, staring up at nothingness.

Then the nothingness was broken. The pale, pale out-glow of a flashlight's beam appeared overhead for a single moment, then was gone. It was the guard. Obviously, he was lying down, poking his flashlight into the gap in the wall, looking for me.

I held my breath, watching as the dim glow appeared again, then faded.

Then the guard shouted, "He's not here!"

He couldn't see the opening I'd fallen through. It was out of his sightline.

The shout came back to him from above. "What do you mean he's not there! Listen to this dog. He's going crazy!"

As if in agreement, Hunter the dog sent up a fresh chorus of ferocious barking.

"I'm telling you," shouted the guard above me, "there's nothing down here. There's nowhere for him to hide! Idiot dog must be after a squirrel or something."

He sighed again. Cursed again. The next time he spoke, his voice sounded farther away. "Throw me a rope, man. This place is giving me the creeps. Probably bats down here and everything."

I heard him grunt again and go through another long series of curses as he retreated, as he climbed back up the wall, back through the sinkhole into the upper world. I heard his voice again as he reached the top.

"Let's get out of here."

I heard his footsteps receding. The dog's wild and argumentative barks grew dimmer as the men dragged him away from the sinkhole.

Finally, silence. I couldn't hear any of them anymore.

Still, I didn't move. I lay a long time in the absolute darkness, absolutely still. Trying to think. Trying to make sense out of what was happening to me. Looking for an answer.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Sensei Mike

What happened next? I asked myself. After the karate demonstration in school, I mean. After Beth came to the cafeteria and wrote her number on my hand. What happened after that? There was nothing. Nothing special, I mean. Nothing I could remember, anyway.

It was just a day. Just an ordinary day.

The truth is, after that talk with Beth, I guess I got a little blissed out, a littlea"how can I put it?a"goofy. I remember going from cla.s.s to cla.s.s, doing my work and everything. But I don't remember too many of the details. I guess it was mostly me sitting in my seat, sort of looking at my hand, sort of turning my hand this way and that, admiring the phone number written on it. Goofy, like I said.

After school, I went home for a while and did some homework. Then, just like every other Wednesday, I took my mom's cara"the Ford Explorera"and drove out to the Eastfield Mall for my karate lesson with Sensei Mike.

The karate school isn't much to look at. It's just a small storefront in the mall. There's a sign over the window that says Karate Studio in black letters. That's the only name it has.

It's a simple set-up inside too. There's a small anteroom where you come in and take off your shoesa"there are no shoes allowed in the dojo itself. There's a small office next to the anteroom with a desk and a computer and a phone and all that. And there's the dojoa"an open carpeted s.p.a.ce for practicinga"with a punching bag hanging in one corner, a big American flag hanging on one wall, and a wall of mirrors opposite that. Also, wherever there's s.p.a.ce, there's a lot of cool swords and axes and other weapons hanging on pegs.

Sensei Mike owned the place and ran it. There were three or four other teachers who worked there, but Sensei Mike was the best. He was the coolest too. In fact, Sensei Mike was probably the coolest person I knew. He wasa"I don't knowa"maybe thirty-five years old or something. He stood about six feet tall, slim but with broad shoulders. He had a lot of neatly combed black hair that always seemed to stay in place even when he was sparring or working out. His face was long and lean, with a lot of lines chiseled into it. He had a mustache, a real big soup-strainer that hung down over the sides of his mouth. Under the mustache, you could see there was always a sort of smile playing at the corners of his lips. The smile was in his brown eyes too. He always seemed to be laughing about something to himself.

Sensei Mike had been in the Army for a long time. He'd been in the War against Terror, fighting against the Islamic extremists both in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

"I'd still be over there," he liked to tell us, "but I had to come back and knock some sense into all you chuckleheads."

Actually, the truth was more complicated than that. I knew this because I looked Mike up on the Internet once and found some news stories about him. The truth was: Mike came home because he was wounded in action and had to have a piece of t.i.tanium put in his leg. The news stories said he'd been working with a task force that was helping to build a school in Afghanistan. The task force came under attack by more than a hundred Taliban fighters. Mike had to battle his way to a big .50-caliber machine gun that was mounted on an armored truck. He was wounded and surrounded by the enemy on three sides, but he used the big gun to hold them off, and the task force was saved. The president gave him a medal for it and everythinga"I mean, the actual president, as in the President of the United States. It was a pretty cool story. I couldn't get Mike to talk about it, though. I tried to once. I asked him about it, but he just shrugged and said, "There's not a soldier out there who wouldn't do what I did and better. I just happened to be the first chuckle-head to get to the gun."

Mike was the teacher on duty that Wednesday. After some warm-up exercises and some katas, he set me to sparring with Lou Wilson. Now, the main thing you have to understand about Lou is that Lou is big. Very big. Not very tall or anything, just about my height, but broad and thick and heavy and strong. If I had to compare him to something, it'd probably be a cement mixer. When you're sparring with Lou and he comes at you, it's like standing in the middle of the road while a cement mixer comes barreling your way.

That said, I'd always had good luck sparring with Lou. I generally got the better of the fight. Lou is a really nice guy, really friendly and all, but, just being honest here, you'd have to say he's not all that strong in the brains department. Doesn't have a lot of smarts, not in school and not when it comes to fighting. He comes at you like a cement mixer all righta"and you dance out of his way and pepper him with punches and kicks. And then he comes at you like a cement mixer again and you do the same thing again. And that's pretty much the way our sparring usually goes.

Only not today.

Now, we always try to do things safely in the dojo, and sparring's no different. We wear soft gloves and a helmet and shin pads and, of course, a hard cup for protection. Sure, you can get bruised ribs or a fat lip on a bad day, but in general, no one's going to hurt you too much.

The one exception to that rule would be if you were toa"oh, let's just say for examplea"get run over by a cement mixer. Which I was. Or at least it felt as if I were.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened. When we started out, it was the usual scenario. There I was in my sparring gear, and there was Lou in his. Sensei Mike stood between us, wearing his black gi and his black belt with four red stripesa"a very high ranking. He had Lou and me face each other in the front position. We bowed karate-style to show that we respected each other and that we were working together to learn karate and not trying to do any real damage.

Then Sensei Mike said, "On guard." We both leapt back and put up our fists in fighting position.

Sensei Mike lifted his hand between us. Then he dropped it and said, "Go!"

And, as always, here came Lou the Cement Mixer. Rumble, rumble, rumble. And I did my usual dancing out of the way, peppering him with a couple of good jabs to the side of his helmet and one sharp roundhouse kick into his stomach above his belt. And then here came Lou again, rumble, rumble, rumble. And again, I danced out of the way and hit and kicked him.

Now, mind you, the blows didn't bother Lou any. If you wanted to bother Lou, I really think you'd have to sneak up behind him and hit him with a brick. That might annoy him a little, anyway. As it was, I got to show off my karate stylea"and Lou just came a-rumbling at me again.

And I remember thinking to myself: Boy, if Beth could see me now, she would be really impressed.

Then, right after that, I remember thinking, I wonder why I'm looking up at the ceiling with stars twinkling in front of my eyes and birds twittering in my ears?

As nearly as I can reconstruct it, what happened was this: Once again, Lou came at me, rumble, rumble, rumble. Once again, I was getting ready to dance out of the way. But instead of dancing out of the way, I started thinking about Beth and how impressed she would be if she could see me dancing out of the way. Lou, finding to his delight that instead of being somewhere else I was standing in front of him thinking about being somewhere else, decided that this might be a good opportunity to throw a roundhouse right to the side of my head. Which he did. Whereupon I went down on my backside, and cue the twinkling stars and twittering birds.

Of course, I jumped back up to my feet right awaya" just as soon as I realized I had left them. I didn't want Sensei Mike to think I couldn't take a puncha"even if it was a punch from a cement mixer. I started dancing around again immediately with my fists up in front of me, trying to pretend that a chorus of boings and dings wasn't still going off inside my head.

Luckily, about two seconds after that, Sensei Mike stopped the fight. He laughed and slapped me and Lou both on our shoulders.

"All right, chuckleheads, good job. Salute the flag and go get dressed."

Lou and I punched our gloves togethera"a way of shaking hands.

"Nice punch," I said. "You really tagged me with that one."

Under his helmet, I could see Lou beam with pride. Then we both turned and gave a karate-style bow to the American flag.

There's a changing room at the back of the dojo, just big enough for one person. I waited for Lou to finish, then I went in and stripped my gi off and climbed back into my street clothes. There's no shower or anything in there, so I don't usually wash up until I get home and my mother gets a whiff of me.

When I was dressed, I walked across the dojo, carrying my karate bag. At the edge of the anteroom, I turned and gave one last bow of respect to the dojo. Then I walked out.

Lou had left already. Mike was sitting in the office behind his computer, typing up some notes.

"Thanks, Sensei," I called in to him.

"Hey, chucklehead," he said without looking up. "Get in here."

I walked in and stood in front of the desk. Sensei Mike finished whatever he was typing. Then he sat back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and looked up at me.

"How's your gray matter?" he said. "That was a pretty good one Lou got in on you."

"Yeah, it was a good shot, I gotta admit," I said. I didn't sound happy about it, and, in fact, I wasn't. But the truth is the truth. It was a pretty good shot.

"You want to be careful with that head of yours," Sensei Mike said. He hid his smile by bringing one hand around and smoothing his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. "Brains are more important than fists, you know. It's no good learning karate if you get knocked stupid in the process."

I tried to laugh it off. Sometimes you win in sparring and sometimes you lose, and you have to get used to that. Buta"again, the truth is the trutha"I don't much like losing. I don't suppose anyone does. "I just forgot to duck, that's all," I said.

"Sure," said Sensei Mike, still smoothing his 'stache.

"I guess you just got distracted by all your math homework."

I didn't know what he meant. "Math homework?"

"Yeah," said Mike. He swiveled back and forth in his chair, smoothing his mustache, hiding his smile. "You must have a lot of math homework, seeing as you ran out of room in your notebook and had to start writing the numbers on your hand. I guess it was thinking about the numbers on your hand that distracted you."

I looked stupidly down at my hand for a second. Then I got it, and I felt the color rising up into my face.

Sensei Mike laughed. "Don't sweat it, chucklehead. I'm just giving you a hard time."