'Some things you gotta take on faith.'
One voice was straight ahead. Dan was sure that he stood between the speaker and the exit. Quickly he turned and duckwalked back to the entrance of the main shaft, put his boots back on, and hurried down the corridor. After making the first turn, he switched on his headlamp and began running. Then he stopped, turned off his light, and fired a single shot.
'I got the bastard,' he spoke into his radio.
'Who was that?' He heard an obviously bewildered voice.
'Maybe it's Meat. That you, Meat?'
There was silence.
'If that's Meat, then who operated the winch? And why ain't he talkin' to us?'
'I don't know, but it sounded to me like one of our guys got the snoop. Maybe Meat's radio went dead. I'm getting out of here. Screw this. Without air we'll turn puke yellow and shake to death.'
'I'm coming too.'
Dan found a boulder and waited. So at least they were convinced their leader was dead or unconscious. Soon he saw headlamps bouncing off the wall. The men were moving erratically, no doubt peering around corners and trying to stay behind cover. Retreating, he found a straight stretch with no place to hide, backed up until he came to a large rock outcropping at a bend. There he waited.
He knew that their hands shook like his, their throats were tight-it was in their voices-barely holding it together until they could rip off those masks and breathe in the goodness of open air. He waited for them, breathing shallowly, not moving a muscle. It was obvious from the light on the rocks that they were getting close. When he guessed they were twenty feet away, he peered around the corner, saw them as vague shadows behind their six- inch lights. He aimed. In the eerie light, with unsteady knees and the quiver in his hands, he hoped the bullets would go over them. 'Freeze,' he shouted.
Instantly they turned off their lights. He squeezed off a single shot. Bullets poured back through the tunnel, hitting the rock wall twenty feet beyond him. They were utterly panicked, just emptying their guns at where they had seen the muzzle blast. When he heard the click of a man pulling a clip, he flipped on his light, catching them both like deer in the headlights.
'Drop your guns or I will blow you away.'
They did as he said. ''You're using up a lot of air. You got no place to go. Either we all go up or we all die. Come on forward. Do exactly as I say, or I'll kill you so I can get out of here alive.'
Dan collected both guns, slinging one over his shoulder. Before they made their way back to the heavy stink of the pond, he took their lights and threw away their shoes. They teetered when they walked.
'What the hell is in here?'
'We don't know.'
He tossed one gun in the pool and kept the other, replacing the clip. Now he had two guns and almost two full clips of ammunition. Quickly he removed a sample screw-topped capsule from his pack, took a sample from the pond, and put it in his pocket. One of the radios crackled to life.
'Where's McCall?'
'Answer,' Dan whispered.
'Dead.'
'Who's left?'
'Me and Willy.'
'And one more,' Dan whispered again with his gun prodding at the man's back.
'And Wilson.'
'Jeez. How'd he take down Jansen and McCall?'
'It wasn't hard once he got a gun. You can't see anything down here. You got these damn suits on. Get us up; we're running low on air.'
The cable started to rise and Dan stepped in the loop. In turn, each of the two men followed suit and they all rose toward the faint glimmer of light above.
There was a slight shimmy in the cable that Dan didn't recall. Probably they had damaged the assembly when jerking on the timber. Something wasn't as tight on his mask and he could smell petroleum vapor or something similar. As he rose, he strained to see what waited at the top, but it was useless. There could be an army with guns ready and there was nothing he could do except die fast in a hail of lead.
He wondered if the men below him knew he wouldn't bother killing them just because somebody was trying to kill him. No purpose in it.
When he got within twenty feet of the top, he could see the winch operator. Although he had an automatic in his hand, he didn't look very spooked. This guy hadn't heard the muted pops, the screaming men, nor felt the terror of hundreds of rounds smacking rock in the dark. Just sat up here thanking God it wasn't him.
As Dan reached the top, he realized that there was nobody topside to do the thinking. The operator was no candidate for higher education. Meat was perhaps a suitable moniker. Dan stepped off the cable, reached out, and took Meat's gun as if he were taking it from a child. Tossing it down the hole, he saluted the man who still hadn't been able to discern his face behind the mask.
'Hey,' Meat said. 'What're you doing?'
'Hey,' Dan said. 'You have a real good day, Meat. Afraid I gotta take your shoes, though.'
'Who are you?' Meat said as the other two stepped off.
'I'm Superman. Hurry with the shoes.'
'You bastard,' Meat said as the other two stood by.
Dan stepped back twenty feet or so. 'You gentlemen will want to stay right here, because if I should see you again when I go around that corner, I'll turn you into bratwurst. You got that?'
Dan watched Meat, cursing and swearing, untie his shoes. Interestingly, the man sat on the ground, almost as if he were a child having a tantrum.
'How does a guy get a name like Meat?'
'It's on account of his last name,' Ed said.
'And what might that be?' Dan asked.
'It's Ball.'
'That would explain it,' Dan muttered to himself as he began running, desperately hoping that no one stood between him and the mine entrance.
24
The search warrant had turned up nothing.
Dan had taken to clicking his ballpoint pen with tedious regularity. The rumors were mind-boggling-namely, that when the police arrived there were no bodies and no blood to be found in the mine, even the footprints had been swept away. Given the number of men down there, it must have been a massive undertaking to remove all evidence of then-passage.
Sheriff McNiel walked in looking weary. 'I'll be blunt, Dan. They say you must be hallucinating. There was a guard sitting right in front of that mine shaft.'
'Yeah, reading a paperback novel. He never saw me go in, and he wasn't there when I came out.'
'All we found was a massive cave-in that looks fresh, about two hundred feet in.'
'A cave-in?'
'Yeah. Tons of rock. You'd have to dig a whole new tunnel just to get in there. And I'm telling you the county can't afford that. My deputies said it looked like somebody might have swept the place. There were no Hazmat suit hangers at the entrance and of course no Hazmat suits. We found no pool of anything, no fumes, no vertical shaft, and no winch.'
'If it's plugged at two hundred feet, you won't find anything. And let me guess, to dig it out would cost millions?'
'More money than the county has.'
