touch. His head stopped moving and his gaze fixed on her.
'Sid, what do you do? Who double-crossed you?'
'Are you… really a doctor?'
'I am.'
'My legs… don't think I can feel my legs.'
Matt checked both of the man's legs, then looked up at Nikki and shook his head grimly.
'We'll go over you and do what we can,' she said.
'Wh… what happened?'
'There was an explosion. We're in a cave where they store chemicals. The entrances are sealed off. Whoever did this meant to kill us, but the ceiling hasn't collapsed. So here we are. We have only this one flashlight, so we're going to have to keep turning it on and off. Do you understand?'
'There are… plenty of flashlights… Big ones.'
'What?' Nikki and Matt exclaimed in unison.
'Cabinet on other side of… river. Gloves, lights, gas masks, first-aid kit, tools.'
Sid began coughing spasmodically. Nikki lifted him and propped him against her knee, taking pains not to move the area around his lower thoracic vertebrae where it seemed his spinal cord was compressed or severed.
'Who are you?' Nikki asked.
'I'm… a guard here. Tommy… Where's Tommy?'
Nikki glanced over at the motionless lower body protruding from beneath a ton of rock. Sid followed her gaze.
'Oh, shit! Oh, no! Double-crossing bastards. Sonofabitch. He had a little kid.'
'People from the mine double-crossed you?' Matt asked eagerly.
'No,' Sid said vehemently. 'It was Grimes… Fucking Grimes, and some guys.'
'What did they pay you to do?'
'Just look the other… way while they worked inside this place. I thought they were just going… to bury it all because of those guys who showed up here last week… No one said nothin' about people being in here when it blew… especially not us… They shot us up with something to knock us out and left us to… Doc, my legs. You got to help me.'
Nearby, the girl and Colin Morrissey had begun moaning loudly.
'Whatever they used on you all must be wearing off,' Nikki said. 'Matt, we ought to check that cabinet.'
'Don't leave me,' Sid cried. 'I can't move my legs.'
'We'll be back.'
Nikki set him back down and took Matt's arm as they made their way around the mass of barrels, many of which had spilled their oily contents onto the stone floor. Surprisingly, a number of them, mostly those at the bottom of the pyramid, remained secure.
'Why do you suppose Grimes knocked them out with an injection and not a bullet in the head?' Nikki asked.
'I suspect he was hedging his bets against the remote possibility that anyone ever dug in here and found us. There would be no evidence we were all murdered. A tour group, maybe, or else some environmentalists unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hell, mines and explosions are like Thanksgiving and turkey — especially this mine.'
The river, about ten feet wide, flowed from their left to right with a modest current, its surface a foot or so below the floor of the cave. Two flat bridges with rustic wooden railings had been built across it, but one of those had been destroyed by several enormous chunks of rock. The river was already having difficulty negotiating the obstruction, and some water behind the new dam had begun splashing over the stone bank onto the cavern floor. The second bridge looked passable.
'If this place begins to fill with water,' Matt said, 'which do you think will happen first? We suffocate, or we drown?'
'We're going to find a way out of here, Dr. Rutledge,' she replied firmly. 'Any more negative thinking on your part will be dealt with most severely.'
'Well, let me ask you this way: Do you think we should be focusing our energies and oxygen on getting out of here or on stabilizing everyone who's injured?'
'Could you just ignore them?'
'Probably not.'
'Then why did you ask?'
'I was hoping you'd talk me into it.'
The cabinet, made of hard, gray, molded plastic was where Sid had described. Fixed to the rock wall, it was seven feet high, at least that wide, and a foot and a half deep. It contained four powerful battery-run lanterns, three gas masks, surgical masks, tools of all kinds, rope, duct tape, what appeared to be an exposure suit, and a large, fairly well-stocked first-aid kit.
'We're in business,' Matt said, pulling a surgical mask over his face and handing one to Nikki. 'You ready to play doctor?'
'Let's.'
They tested the lanterns, all of which worked, and carried them to the others along with the first-aid kit. On the way they got a better sense of the condition of the cavern. The two entrances, perhaps a hundred feet apart, were completely sealed by massive amounts of rubble. Most of the drums of toxic waste, though no longer piled in a neat pyramid, were still in the center of the cave. The ceiling, twenty-five feet up, was holding, leaving them with a good amount of air, albeit air heavily tainted with fumes.
'No telling what this stuff is doing to our lungs,' Matt said.
'Probably not the greatest of our worries right now. Where do you want to start?'
'Colin Morrissey's throat trauma looks like potential trouble to me, but I suggest we make sure there aren't any people we don't know about lying around, and take another look for Hal, Vinny, and Fred at the same time. Then we can move everyone to one area, triage, and do what we can.'
The dust and silt were settling, but each of their steps sent plumes of it floating back into the air. The cries of pain had increased, and with them the sense of urgency. Matt and Nikki set the equipment down next to the young girl, who was beginning some purposeless movements. Then, each carrying a lantern, they began picking their way around the cave, scanning the rocks for bodies.
'Over there!' Matt exclaimed after they had covered just a few yards.
Fred Carabetta lay semiconscious on his belly, face turned to one side, pinned under a mound of rock that extended from his mid-back to beyond his feet. There was blood trickling out of his left ear, and what they could see of his face looked like a battered prizefighter's.
'Help… me… Help… me,' he was moaning over and over.
'Fred, it's Matt. Can you hear me?'
'Hear… you… Help… me.'
'Should we try and get him out now or check around for others?' Nikki asked.
'We need more hands.'
'Matt, we can only do what we can do.'
'Then let's try to free him up. Fred, we're going to get these rocks off of you.'
The pile holding Carabetta down was considerably smaller and easier to move than the one that had covered the paralyzed guard. Still, by the time they had removed enough to free him, both were perspiring heavily and working at sucking in air.
Carabetta cried out in pain as they rolled him over. The two of them winced at what they saw. His black sweat pants and shirt were sodden with blood, most of it oozing steadily from a wound to the right of his groin.
'With all these rocks, there isn't even enough space to kneel down here,' Matt said. 'Let's try to haul him over near the others and work on him there.'
'I'll do my best.'
'Fred, we're going to pull you over to where we have enough room to help you out.'
