Free Nightwing by Martin Cruz Smith Page A

moving hand over hand along the rope, both men bearing a red canister of poison on their backs. No vinyl overalls this trip because of the climbing, only goggles and gas masks to endure ammonia rising from the bat dung. Without a mask, a man could survive a maximum ammonia concentration of 100 parts per million for an hour; near the mouth of the cave they’d registered the concentration at 4,000.
    “Deeper, we’re not there yet,” Hayden Paine said.
    Dr. Joseph Paine was getting too old for this kind of work. Gray hair sprouted like owl feathers from under his sailor’s cap and the oppressive weight of the canister bowed his knees. As a point of pride, though, he refused to restrict himself to lab work in the capital. Besides, he could control his son.
    Ochay probably wouldn’t have come without the old man along. All the Mexicans from the station knew the son was a crazy glory seeker who chose the largest roosts in the most inaccessible mountains. Of the ten original members of the team, only Ochay and Hayden Paine had escaped bites or falls or ammonia exposure. The whole expedition would have been scrapped if the old man hadn’t arrived.
    In the lead, Paine dug in the crampons of his boots. The ridge of slick limestone was twenty inches across; a glistening stalactite, half-born from the wall, completely blocked the way.
    Behind Paine, his father pulled his mask away to talk.
    “That’s it for today. We can tie the canisters here and come back tomorrow.”
    Paine ignored the advice. With his left hand he swung his axe hard around the protrusion into the wall on the other side. He tugged the axe handle. It seemed solid enough. Clutching it, he swayed around the stalactite and stretched himself to where the ridge continued. As he hammered a fresh piton, the echoes of his blows resounded along the recess of the cavern. A few bats squealed in complaint.
    Two million bats occupied the cave. White Ghost bats. Carnivorous Spear-Nosed bats. Nectar-sucking bats. Minute insectivorous bats of a dozen varieties. Meat-eating Vampyrum Spectrums with three-foot wingspreads. Fishing bats. And the colony all the others roosted far away from, the true Vampires, Desmodus.
    “Pass the tanks,” Paine ordered.
    Joe Paine and Ochay hooked the canisters to the rope. From the far side, Paine watched the tanks jiggle around the stalactite and with anxious tenderness he pulled the poison onto the ridge.
    “Come on.”
    “I can’t make it,” Ochay answered.
    “The vampires are farther on.”
    “I can’t—”
    A shriek cut them off. There was a scuffle on the cave roof where the Vampyrum Spectrums hung. Ochay’s hand lantern followed the fall of a pink Spectrum infant to the floor.
    The floor was a world of its own, a steaming brown soup of digested nectar, meat, insects, and blood. Twenty percent protein, it supported pools of bacteria. Over a million mites, scavenger beetles, toads, and mountain crabs to a square yard. Giant cockroaches and venomous snakes. For them all, guano was a steady rain of food, or food for their food. The fall of an unlucky bat was a bonanza for them, and seconds of agony for the bat.
    “Let’s go.” Paine yanked the rope.
    Joe Paine slid around the stalactite first and then Ochay. The latter was shaking.
    “You’re taking too many chances.” Joe Paine clung to the wall. “Ochay—”
    “If I can do it, so can he.”
    “But we’re running out of air. I suggest—”
    “But you’re not the leader of this team. I am.”
    Paine pushed on. As they went deeper into the cave, the ridge narrowed to twelve inches, to ten, to six. Paine had to drive in a piton every second step, while his father and Ochay struggled behind with the canisters.
    “He’s scared,” his father whispered to Paine. “You should understand that. He’s scared of you. I think I’m scared of you now, too.”
    “I can do it without you.”
    “Could you?”
    In overhead grottoes, shapes twisted, ears attuned to human voices.