The Eyes of Darkness

unknown organization, in this secret and incomparably cozy place, he thrived.
    He closed his eyes and thought about Christina Evans.
     
     
     
     

29
     
    in tina's dream, danny was at the par end of a long tunnel. He was in chains, sitting in the center of a small, well-lighted cavern, but the passageway that led to him was shadowy and reeked of danger. Danny called to her again and again, begging her to save him before the roof of his underground prison caved in and buried him alive. She started down the tunnel toward him, determined to get him out of there—and something reached for her from a narrow cleft in the wall. She was peripherally aware of a soft, firelike glow from beyond the cleft, and of a mysterious figure silhouetted against that reddish backdrop. She turned, and she was looking into the grinning face of Death, as if he were peering out at her from the bowels of Hell. The crimson eyes. The shriveled flesh. The lacework of maggots on his cheek. She cried out, but then she saw that Death could not quite reach her. The hole in the wall was not wide enough for him to step through, into her passageway; he could only thrust one arm at her, and his long, bony fingers were an inch or two short of her. Danny began calling again, and she continued down the dusky tunnel toward him. A dozen times she passed chinks in the wall, and Death glared out at her from every one of those apertures, screamed and cursed and raged at her, but none of the holes was large enough to allow him through. She reached Danny, and when she touched him, the chains fell magically away from his arms and legs. She said, "I was scared." And Danny said, "I made the holes in the walls smaller. I made sure he couldn't reach you, couldn't hurt you."
    At eight-thirty Friday morning Tina came awake, smiling and excited. She shook Elliot until she woke him.
    Blinking sleepily, he sat up. "What's wrong?"
    "Danny just sent me another dream."
    Taking in her broad smile, he said, "Obviously, it wasn't the nightmare."
    "Not at all. Danny wants us to come to him. He wants us just to walk into the place where they're keeping him and take him out."
    "We'd be killed before we could reach him. We can't just charge in like the cavalry. We've got to use the media and the courts to free him."
    "I don't think so."
    'The two of us can't fight the entire organization that's behind Kennebeck plus the staff of some secret military research center."
    "Danny's going to make it safe for us," she said confidently. "He's going to use this power of his to help us get in there."
    "That isn't possible."
    "You said you believed."
    "I do," Elliot said, yawning and stretching elaborately. "I do believe. But . . . how can he help us? How can he guarantee our safety?"
    "I don't know. But that's what he was telling me in the dream. I'm sure of it."
    She recounted the dream in detail, and Elliot admitted that her interpretation wasn't strained.
    "But even if Danny could somehow get us in," he said, "we don't know where they're keeping him. This secret installation could be anywhere. And maybe it doesn't even exist. And if it does exist, they might not be holding him there anyway."
    "It exists, and that's where he is," she said, trying to sound more certain than she actually was.
    She was within reach of Danny. She felt almost as if she had him in her arms again, and she didn't want anyone to tell her that he might be a hair's breadth beyond her grasp.
    "Okay," Elliot said, wiping at the corners of his sleep-matted eyes. "Let's say this secret installation exists. That doesn't help us a whole hell of a lot. It could be anywhere in those mountains."
    "No," she said. "It has to be within a few miles of where Jaborski intended to go with the scouts."
    "Okay. That's probably true. But that covers a hell of a lot of rugged terrain. We couldn't begin to conduct a thorough search of it."
    Tina's confidence couldn't be shaken. "Danny will pinpoint it for us."
    "Danny's going to tell us where he is?"
    "He's going to try, I think. I sensed that in the dream."
    "How's he going to do it?"
    "I don't know. But I have this feeling that if we just find some way . . . some means of focusing his energy, channeling it . . ."
    "Such as?"
    She stared at the tangled bedclothes as if she were searching for inspiration in the creases of the linens. Her expression would have been appropriate to the face of a gypsy fortune-teller peering with a clairvoyant frown at tea leaves.
    "Maps!" she said