The engineer shrugged. “Go ahead, but you won’t enjoy the results.”
Pitt lifted the acoustic-foam helmet from his ears. After half a minute he became disoriented and reached out to the wall of the tube to keep from losing his balance. Next came a mushrooming sensation of nausea. The engineer reached over and replaced the helmet on Pitt’s head. Then he circled an arm around Pitt’s waist to hold him upright.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
Pitt took a long breath as the vertigo and nausea quickly passed. “I had to experience the agony. Now I have a mild idea of what those poor souls suffered before they died.”
The engineer led him back to the elevator. “Not a pleasant ordeal. The deeper we excavate, the worse it becomes. The one time I walked in here without protecting my ears, my head ached for a week.”
As the elevator rose from the lava tube, Pitt fully recovered except for a ringing in his ears. He knew it all now. He knew the source of the acoustic plague. He knew how it worked to destroy. He knew how to stop it—and was buoyed by the knowledge.
“I understand now. The air chambers in the lava resonate and radiate the high-intensity sound pulses down through rock and into the sea, producing an incredible burst of energy.”
“There’s your answer.” The engineer removed his helmet and ran a hand through a head of thinning gray hair. “The resonance added to the sound intensity creates incredible energy, more than enough to kill.”
“Why did you risk your job and maybe your life showing me this?”
The engineer’s eyes burned, and he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jumpsuit. “I do not like working for people I cannot trust. Men like Arthur Dorsett create trouble and tragedy-if you two should ever meet, you can smell it on him. This whole operation stinks, as do all his other mining operations. These poor Chinese laborers are driven until they drop. They’re fed well but paid nothing and forced to slave in the pit eighteen hours a day. Twenty have died in the past twelve months from accidents, because they were too exhausted to react and move out of the way of the equipment. Why the need to dig diamonds twenty-four hours a day when there is a worldwide surplus of the damned stones? De Beers may head a repugnant monopoly, but you have to give them credit. They hold production down so prices remain high. No, Dorsett has a rotten scheme to harm the market. I’d give a year’s pay to know what’s going on in his diabolic mind. Someone like you, who understands the horror we’re causing here, can now work to stop Dorsett before he kills another hundred innocent souls.”
“What’s stopping you from blowing the whistle?” asked Pitt.
“Easier said than done. Every one of the scientists and engineers who direct the digging signed ironclad contracts. No performance, no pay. Dorsett’s attorneys would throw up a smoke screen so thick you couldn’t cut it with a laser if we sued. Just as bad, if the Mounties learned of the carnage among the Chinese laborers, and the cover-up, Dorsett would claim ignorance and make damned certain we’d all stand trial for conspiracy. As it is, we’re scheduled to leave the island in four weeks. Our orders are to shut down the mine the week before. Only then are we to be paid off and sent on our way.”
“Why not get on a boat and leave now?”
“The thought crossed our minds until the chief superintendent tried exactly that,” said the engineer slowly. “According to letters we received from his wife, he never arrived home and was never seen again.”
“Dorsett runs a tight ship.”
“As tight as any Central American drug operation.”
“Why shut down the mine when it still produces?”
“I have no idea. Dorsett set the dates. He obviously has a plan he doesn’t intend to share with the hired help.”
“How does Dorsett know none of you will talk once you’re on the mainland?”
“It’s no secret that if one of us talks, we all go to jail.”
“And the Chinese laborers?”
He stared at Pitt over the respirator clamped around the lower part of his face, his eyes expressionless. “I have a suspicion they’ll be left inside the mine.”
“Buried?”
“Knowing Dorsett, he wouldn’t bat an eye when he gave the order to his security flunkies.”
“Have you ever met the man?” asked Pitt.
“Once was enough. His daughter, The Emasculator, is as bad as he is.”
“Boudicca.” Pitt smiled thinly. “She’s called The Emasculator?”
“Strong as an ox, that one,” said the engineer. “I’ve seen her lift a good-sized man off the ground with one arm.”
Before Pitt could ask any more questions, the elevator reached the surface level and stopped in the main lift building. The engineer stepped outside, glancing at a Ford van that drove past. Pitt followed him around the corner of the mess hall and behind the garbage containers.
The engineer nodded at Pitt’s jumpsuit. “Your gear belongs to a geologist who’s down with the flu. I’ll have to return it before he discovers it missing and wonders why.”
“Great,” Pitt muttered. “I probably contacted his flu germs from the respirator.”
“Your Indian friends have returned to their boats.” The engineer gestured at the food-storage loading dock. The tractor and trailers were gone. “The van that just passed by the elevator building is a personnel shuttle. It should return in a couple of minutes. Hail the driver and tell him to take you through the tunnel.”
Pitt stared at the old engineer dubiously. “You don’t think he’ll question why I didn’t leave with the other Haida?”
The old engineer took a notebook and a pencil from a pocket of his jumpsuit and scribbled a few words. He tore off the sheet of paper, folded it and passed it to Pitt. “Give him this. It will guarantee your safe passage. I have to return to work before Dapper John’s muscle boys begin to ask questions.”
Pitt shook his hand. “I’m grateful for your help. You took a terrible risk by revealing Dorsett Consolidated secrets to a perfect stranger.”
“If I can prevent future deaths of innocent people, any risk on my part will have been well worth it.”
“Good luck,” said Pitt.
“The same to you.” The engineer began to walk away, thought of something and turned back. “One more thing, out of curiosity. I saw the Dorsett gunship take off after a floatplane the other day. It never returned.”
“I know,” said Pitt. “It ran into a hill and burned.”
“You know?”
“I was on the floatplane.”
The engineer looked at him queerly. “And Malcolm Stokes?”
Pitt quickly realized that this was the undercover man Stokes had mentioned. “A metal splinter in one lung. But he’ll live to enjoy his pension.”
“I’m glad. Malcolm is a good man. He has a fine family.”
“A wife and five children,” said Pitt. “He told me after we crashed.”
“Then you got clear only to jump back in the fire.”
“Not very bright of me, was it?”
The engineer smiled. “No, I guess it wasn’t.” Then he turned and headed back into the elevator building, where he disappeared from Pitt’s view.
Five minutes later, the van appeared and Pitt waved it to a stop. The driver, in the uniform of a security guard, stared at Pitt suspiciously. “Where did you come from?” he asked.
Pitt handed him the folded note and shrugged wordlessly.
The driver read the note, wadded it up, tossed it on the floor and nodded. “Okay, take a seat. I’ll run you as far as the search house at the other end of the tunnel.”
As the driver closed the door and shifted the van into drive, Pitt took a seat behind him and casually leaned down and picked up the crumpled note. It read:
This Haida fisherman was in the john when his friends unknowingly left him behind. Please see that he gets to the dock before the fishing fleet departs.
