collapse. From this point on, they moved with the careful deliberation of demolition experts defusing a bomb.
Red and Ken lugged the seismograph, heads down under their burden. Mercer twisted his head in a steady rhythm so his lamp flashed on the floor, ceiling and walls. Their boots crunched on the debris-strewn tunnel.
At the face, Mercer went straight to the damp spot, satisfying himself that the camera hadn’t lied. The stain seemed safely contained by his chalk outline.
“Let’s get it planted and get out,” he said, straightening. He pointed to where he wanted the unit set.
He and Red began the laborious process of calibrating the seismograph and jacking it into the same data cable carrying the camera images to the surface. Ken Porter spent the time scouring the rock for additional water spots that Mercer might have missed.
“Son of a bitch!” he shouted suddenly, scrambling away from the working face.
Mercer looked up. “What is it?”
“UXB.”
Mercer’s body went cold. UXB was an old term for unexploded bomb. Ken had found an explosive charge that hadn’t gone off with the others. He pointed to one of the two-inch holes Donny Randall’s team had drilled into the stone. At this angle Mercer couldn’t see into it, so he couldn’t tell that it was nearly ten feet deep. Ken had been right in front of it and had flashed his lamp down its length and saw the blue wrapper of the Tovex explosive.
“Back away nice and easy,” Mercer cautioned in an even voice. Tovex was one of the most stable demolition charges on the market, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
Ken took several steps back, his face ashen, his eyes glued to the black hole in the dark stone. He angled away from the mouth of the hole to get out of the potential blast radius and was twelve feet away when the charge blew.
Because the drill hole hadn’t been repacked to contain the blast, the explosion came out like the exhaust of a rocket engine, a seething plasma of gas and flame that shot down the tunnel in an expanding plume. Ken had just gotten himself clear yet was still thrown a dozen feet by the concussion.
Mercer and Red too were tossed back by the blast, neither able to hear the warning shouts of the other because their hearing had been nullified by the overwhelming detonation. Mercer was the first to get to his feet, swaying against the ringing in his ears. He began to rush to where Ken lay like a limp doll and pulled up short. What he saw in the wavering light of his helmet lamp defied description.
Like a spreading pool of spilled ink, the area around the smoking hole darkened as he watched. Water under tremendous pressure was filling microvoids in the rock, oozing out almost like sweat from pores. At first the surface appeared merely damp and then began to glisten. In seconds, drops of water formed and began to trickle from the stone.
The primitive part of his brain told him to forget the others and flee, but he fought the temptation. Keeping one eye on the impending flood he reached for Ken Porter, shouldering the unconscious miner in a fireman’s carry. Red Harding was up, staring at the water now spurting from the solid rock.
“Let’s go!” Mercer screamed at the top of his lungs. His voice was deadened even in his own head.
Red finally saw Mercer lurching toward him, shook himself of the shock and started loping down the tunnel. Behind them the water tore at the stone from behind, exploiting the tiniest cracks until it found the weakest spot. Like a liquid laser, a shaft of water shot from the drill hole, a two-inch diameter spear that hit the seismograph machine. For a moment the water exploded around the armored case in a roiling froth, but its power was too great to be deterred by such a puny obstacle. The heavy case began to slide across the floor, slowly at first, then accelerating. Red had a fifty-foot head start on the tumbling crate and it nearly bowled him over as the water jet propelled it like a projectile down the tunnel.
The noise began to swell as the hole widened and more water gushed through. It was more powerful than any fire hose. Mercer knew if it somehow touched him the least that would happen was it would knock him flat. More likely, he realized as he ran, it would tear away whatever limb it encountered.
They raced on, pursued by the relentless flood. The water level rose and waves pulsed down the drive so that two hundred feet from the working face they kicked up spray with every pace. After five hundred feet the water was up to their knees. Red looked at Mercer, reading in his eyes the determination to fight on despite the lengthening odds.
Far behind them billions of tons of water tore at the rock, seeking release from its subterranean reservoir. The hole widened, allowing the flood to come through with such force that the stream remained airborne for fifty feet before the water column hit the tunnel floor. It swept past the utility tractor like a raging river, boiling around the four-ton vehicle until it too was dragged along in the torrent.
With Ken slung over his shoulder, Mercer could barely keep up with Red, and yet the loyal Texan didn’t leave him behind. They ran in step, fighting side by side as water climbed up to their waists. The speed of the water pulled them along and threatened to tear their legs out from under them. Both knew that to fall was to die.
After what seemed like an hour but was only eight minutes, Mercer saw the lights of the substation. He could even hear the water as it cascaded into the deep sump, a thunderous sound that shook the earth. He began to hope. If they could reach the skip, maybe they could be pulled out before whatever rock still damming the underground lake failed completely.
It wouldn’t happen.
There was just too much water, too much pressure. Rather than collapse in sections, the entire span of the tunnel, from floor to ceiling, failed at the same time. The wall of water hurtling down the tunnel filled every square inch of space, a solid barrier moving at forty miles an hour.
Because water cannot be compressed, the collapse formed a pressure bulge that shot through the flood. Mercer and Red were caught totally unaware.
Like a tsunami, the wave rushed over them in a near-solid sheet that left both men tumbling in its backwash. Mercer lost his grip on Ken Porter when he smashed against the wall, the precious last gulp of air he’d taken exploding from his lungs at the blow.
He managed to right himself in the tumult and came up gasping. The black water settled to its earlier level and he staggered to his feet, knowing the massive surge had been a preview. Red surfaced a short distance away. His breathing was labored and he couldn’t focus his eyes. This time Mercer couldn’t deny his instincts. Searching for Ken meant he’d lose Harding for sure.
He grabbed the smaller man by the back of his overalls to keep his head clear and charged down the tunnel like a rampaging animal. The flood had taken one man and he wouldn’t let it take another. He’d lost his helmet and its precious lamp in the swell so he focused on the distant constellation of lights ringing the substation. A fierce wind howled past his shoulders, driven to hurricane force by the wall of water bearing down on him.
Had the floor of the skip elevator not been an open mesh that allowed the water to vanish into the sump, the tunnel would have already flooded to the ceiling. However, this reprieve was double-edged. If Mercer and Red were caught in the cage when the main wave hit, their bodies would be diced against the heavy-gauge wire like cheese through a grater.
He staggered the last steps into the substation and allowed the torrent to sweep him off his feet so that he and Red were carried into the elevator and pinned to the floor. From there, Mercer clawed his way to his knees, his throat aching from swallowing so much water, his eyes stinging from the salt. He slapped his palm against the UP button and fell back so he was facing the tunnel. The car began to lift, water sieving through the floor. Mercer barely noticed. Far down the drive, he saw the lights strung along the walls begin to wink out as they vanished behind the rampaging flood. Two hundred feet. One hundred. Fifty.
The elevator had risen only three-quarters of the way above the tunnel.
The tidal wave exploded into the wider substation, filling every corner as it sought freedom. As if sensing an outlet, the wall surged toward the elevator shaft. The carriage had just climbed clear when the water hit the back of the vertical passageway and geysered through the floor. Mercer and Red were lifted bodily, slammed against the mesh roof and pinned there for many long seconds until the elevator lifted them clear of the water’s grip. Both dropped to the floor, lying in pitiable heaps, bruised and dripping and unable to believe they were alive.
Below them water thundered into the sump in a solid curtain that ran clear and green. A subterranean Niagara Falls.
“You okay?” Mercer asked through labored gasps.
Red needed a moment to answer. “Cracked my head, busted some ribs and I think my wrist is too. Yeah, I’m fine. Ken?”
