detected. The system operators — the man wearing black coveralls, the woman in white — were intent on monitoring their computers and did not see the reflection of their assailants in their screens until it was too late. Giordino came in from the side and slugged the man with a right hook to the jaw. Pitt opted for striking the back of the woman's neck just below her skull. Both went out with no more than slight moans.
Keeping unseen below the windows, Pitt pulled a roll of duct tape from his knapsack and tossed it to Giordino. 'Bind them up while I remove their coveralls.'
In less than three minutes the unconscious ventilation systems operators were bound and gagged in their underwear and rolled under counters out of sight from anyone passing by below. Pitt slipped on the black coveralls, which were a loose fit, while Giordino burst the seams of the white coveralls that came off the woman. They found matching hard hats on a shelf and put them on. Pitt casually carried his knapsack over one shoulder, while Giordino looked official with a clipboard and pencil. One after the other, they dropped down the ladder to the tunnel floor.
When they got their bearings and stared around their surroundings, Pitt and Giordino stood spellbound in awe, as they stared at the immense spectacle, their eyes narrowing under the glare of an unending array of lights.
This was no ordinary railroad tunnel. It was no railroad tunnel at all.
29
The horseshoe-shaped tunnel was far more immense than either he or Giordino had imagined. Pitt felt as though he was standing in a Jules Verne fantasy. He estimated the bore at fifty feet in diameter; far wider than any tunnel ever constructed. The diameter of the Chunnel that ran between France and England was twenty-four feet and the Seikan Tunnel that connected Honshu with Hokkaido was thirty-two.
The whirr of the ventilator fans was replaced with a buzzing sound that echoed up and down the tunnel. Above them, mounted on a series of steel beams, a huge conveyor belt traveled continuously toward the eastern end of the tunnel. Instead of rocks twelve to eighteen inches in size, the muck had been crushed almost to sand.
'There's the source of your brown crud,' said Pitt. 'They grind down the rock until it has the consistency of silt so it can be pumped through a pipe into the Caribbean.'
A railroad track and a parallel concrete roadway ran beneath the conveyor belt. Pitt knelt and studied the rails and ties. 'Electric-powered, like the subways of New York.'
'Mind the third rail,' warned Giordino. 'No telling how much voltage is running through it.'
'They must have generator substations every few miles to provide power.'
'You going to put a penny on the track?' Giordino asked in jest.
Pitt stood and stared into the distance. 'No way these tracks could handle high-speed two-hundred-and- forty-mile-an-hour trains carrying cargo containers. The rails are not of superior quality and the metal ties are laid too far apart. On top of all that, standard railroad gauge between rails is four feet eight and a half inches. These measure about three feet, which makes it a narrow-gauge railroad.'
'Laid as equipment support and supply transport for a tunnel-boring machine.'
Pitt's eyebrows rose. 'Where did you come up with that?'
'I read about TBMs in a book somewhere.'
'You move to the head of the class. This tunnel
'Maybe they intend to replace the tracks later,' Giordino speculated.
'Why wait until the entire tunnel is dug? Tracklaying men and equipment should follow in the wake of the boring machine to save time.' Pitt slowly shook his head pensively. 'A tunnel this size wasn't built for train traffic. It must serve another purpose.'
They turned as a large double-decker bus painted lavender silently passed, its driver waving. They turned away and acted as if they were discussing something on Giordino's clipboard as workers sitting inside, wearing different-colored jumpsuits and hard hats, passed by. All were wearing sunglasses. Pitt and Giordino also noted the Odyssey name and horse logo on the side of the bus. The driver slowed, not sure if they wanted a ride, but Pitt waved him on.
'Electric-powered,' said Giordino.
'Eliminates carbon monoxide exhaust pollution.'
Giordino walked over to a pair of empty battery-powered golf carts that looked like miniature sports cars. 'Nice of them to provide us with transportation.' He climbed behind the wheel. 'Which way?'
Pitt thought a moment. 'Let's follow the excavated muck on the conveyor belt. This may well be our only chance to confirm if that's the source of the brown crud.'
The cavernous tunnel seemed to trail off forever. The road traffic looked to be restricted to transporting mine workers, while the narrow-gauged railroad carried only muck and cargo. The golf cart's panel held a speedometer, and Pitt clocked the speed of the conveyor belt. It was traveling at the rapid clip of twelve miles an hour.
Pitt turned his attention to the upper works of the tunnel. After the boring machine had passed, the miners had installed rock bolt support systems to strengthen the rock's natural tendency to reinforce itself. Then a thick lining of shotcrete or gunite was sprayed on the tunnel pneumatically at high velocity. Conveying the concrete for long distances would have been accomplished by booster pumps spaced from the entrance source to the recently excavated area behind the boring machine. This would have been followed by an injection of fluid grout under pressure to seal off leaks from groundwater. Besides ensuring water tightness from without, the shotcrete and grout would also improve the flow of fluid through the tunnel, a phenomenon that Pitt began to believe was a distinct possibility.
The overhead lights illuminated the tunnel so brilliantly it almost hurt the eyes. Both men could now understand why the workers in the bus had worn sunglasses against the glare. Almost as if they timed their actions, Pitt and Giordino put on their own sunglasses.
An electric locomotive pulling several flatbed cars and carrying open crates of rock bolts passed, headed in the opposite direction toward the ongoing excavation. The train crew all waved at the two men in the golf cart, who responded by waving back.
'Everyone is real down-home friendly in these parts,' remarked Giordino.
'Did you notice the men wear black jumpsuits and the women either white or green?'
'Specter must have lived a former life as an interior decorator.'
'More like some sort of caste identification system,' said Pitt.
'I'd cut off an ear before I wore lavender,' muttered Giordino, suddenly becoming aware that he was covered in white. 'I think I'm out of uniform.'
'Stuff something in your chest.'
Giordino said nothing, but his bitter stare at Pitt said it all.
A sober look crossed Pitt's face. 'I wonder if those miners have any idea of the toxic mineral content of the muck they're pouring into the sea.'
'They will,' added Giordino, 'when their hair starts falling out and their internal organs dissolve.'
They continued on, conscious of an unnatural atmosphere deep below the earth and sea. They passed several smaller crosscut tunnels leading off to their left that aroused their curiosity. Another parallel tunnel appeared to be linked by the crosscuts every thousand yards. Pitt assumed it was a service tunnel for electrical conduits.
'There's the explanation for the earth tremors on the surface,' said Pitt. 'They didn't use a big tunnel-boring machine for these small tunnels. They were excavated by drilling and blasting.'
'Shall we turn in?'
'Later,' replied Pitt. 'Let's push ahead and follow the muck on the conveyor belt.'
Giordino was stunned at the power of the golf cart. He got it up to fifty miles an hour and he soon began overhauling other vehicles on the concrete road.
