by Marc Cameron
Cutter didn’t say it out loud, but by his calculations, they were three hundred meters inside the mountain and six hundred meters deep from the peak. It didn’t seem like a factoid a person with claustrophobia would want to know.
“Must have been a large pocket of ore here,” he said, scanning the chamber.
The oblong room was roughly twenty by thirty feet, with an arched ceiling just higher than Cutter could jump. It was empty but for the dynamite box, the coffee can, and the old bones.
Closer inspection revealed that the gurgling sound came from the center of the room where water seeped into a down shaft, or winze, that had been backfilled with tailings.
“Must be another tunnel running beneath us,” Cutter said. “Otherwise, this place would have…” His voice trailed off as he studied water marks, high on the walls. “That’s what killed the mule,” he said. “At some point, this entire chamber flooded.”
Maycomb stared at the gravel sump in the center of the floor. “So somebody filled in our escape tunnel. Now we’re basically screwed.”
“No,” Cutter said. The beam of his headlight bounced off the rock as he sloshed toward the far end of the room, away from the ladder. “The shaft we want should be back here.”
He stopped cold when he reached it.
Maycomb came up beside him. “And… we’re still screwed.”
Like the one they’d come down on, a heavy timber ladder descended into the shaft – only this one was filled to the brim with crystalline water.
“Let’s see your phone again,” Cutter said, holding out his hand like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel. He’d never been one to panic, but this had him worried.
Maycomb dug the phone out of her jacket and passed it to him.
“According to Horning’s map,” Cutter said, “in order to reach the larger stope – and the way out of this mountain – we have to drop down this winze about thirty feet, travel laterally through another tunnel for a hundred and change, and then climb thirty feet up another shaft.” He ran a hand over the rock face at the back of the chamber. “The place we need to be is on the other side of this wall.”
“Over a hundred feet,” Maycomb said, chewing on her hangnail again. “Every inch of it under water. Might as well be on the moon.”
Cutter stooped and pointed his spare headlamp into the flooded pit. The light faded to an eerie green shadow toward the bottom. The base of the wooden ladder was just visible in the deep. He dipped his fingers below the surface.
“Fifty degrees or so,” he said. “About the same as the air. Chilly, but doable.”
Maycomb looked up at him in horror. Her hair, absent the elastic ties since he’d borrowed them for the tracking stick, stuck out in all directions from under the helmet.
“Doable? Are you shitting me? Even if you could dive down twenty feet, then swim through what is basically a rock pipe full of cold water for a hundred-plus feet, what’s to say the shaft out of the big room isn’t backfilled like this one? The way you want to go might not exist.” She spun away from him and began to pace, alternately folding her arms and then dropping them so she could chew on her nails. “That does it. Even the condemned get a last cigarette—”
Cutter put a hand on her arm.
“Let’s have a biscuit,” he said.
“You’re out of your mind!” Maycomb snapped, eyes wide. She stepped backward, putting distance between them. “I don’t want one of your biscuits.”
“Suit yourself,” Cutter said, willing himself to stay calm. “That water’s awfully cold. Easy to get hypothermia if we’re not careful.”
“I’m not going in that.”
Cutter took a bite of biscuit, washing it down with a slug from his waterbottle. “Completely understand,” he said. “I’ll go get help. We’ll dig you out from the other direction.”
“I’m not staying here by myself!”
“Lori,” Cutter said. He was trying hard not to sound condescending. “We have only two choices here. It is safer for you to stay here, but I’m not making you do anything.”
He took a biscuit out of the ziplock bag. “In any case, I need to use the baggie as a waterproof housing for my light.” He put that biscuit in a second ziplock with two more and handed them to Maycomb. “Not sure how long it’ll be before we get you out, so you hang on to these.”
“Seriously, Cutter,” Maycomb said. “We’re talking about you going into a water slide that might be plugged on the other end. There won’t be any place to come up for air. If the way out is blocked, then you have to make the same trip again – without a breath.”
He peeled off his jacket. It would only slow him down.
“I happen to be a pretty good swimmer.”
“Well.” Lori wagged her head. “I’m a pretty good drowner.”
“I thought you were waiting here.”
“Alone?” Lori hugged herself. “Not a chance.”
“I’ll come back and get you,” Cutter said.
She sniffed. “And what if you die?”
“Then you would have died too,” Cutter said. “Make your way back to the entrance and start digging. Someone will likely get you out.”
Maycomb looked stricken, like she might throw up.
“Likely? What does that even mean? Likely…”
“Better to be honest, don’t you think?”
“No!” Maycomb snapped. “Not at all. I’d like you to paint the rosiest picture possible if you please.”
“Good to know…”
Cutter winced, lowering himself into the crystalline water. Fifty-degree air was not bad. Fifty-degree water was bone-numbing. He’d considered taking off his boots but decided against it. He’d need them on the other side – if he got there.
“Cold?” Maycomb asked.
“Not at all,” Cutter lied. Already exhausted and chilled to the core from his earlier swim from the wharf, his teeth began to chatter immediately. “Warm and toasty, like the water off Manasota Key, if I’m painting rosy pictures.”
He flicked on the headlamp inside the sealed ziplock bag. All the air had been pressed out, leaving the baggie flat but for the small light. Submerged up to his neck now, he lowered the light into the water, illuminating the eerie scene below. The underwater housing appeared to be working, for now. Pressure and time and good old Mr. Murphy tended to break things during the most crucial moments.
One hand on the ladder, his chin quivering an inch above the chilly water, he gave her a rare smile.
“Seriously,” he said, “everything is going to be just fine. I do this kind of thing every day.”
Chapter 50
All the guys at the mine called Harold Grimsson the Wannabe Viking. Any real Viking would have been drinking from the old man’s skull by lunchtime on the day they met him. The shootout had knocked him off his game – and his game was mostly a bunch of yelling and screaming to begin with, when Childers drilled right down on it.
Now Grimsson had them standing around the portal to the Cross Cut mine, while he tried to pull his head out of his ass and decide what to do. Dollarhyde was working the drone, looking for the girl. So far he hadn’t seen shit, which was making Grimsson apoplectic.
“We should blow it!” Grimsson said. “Tell me you see her down there. Rig a charge, Childers.”
Childers looked to Dollarhyde, who gave an almost-imperceptible shake of his head. Belay that order.
That’s how it went, every time things went even a little sideways.
The old man’s booming voice and huge black beard gave him the appearance of a berserker. He often appeared to go crazy, but always within unspoken boundaries, which wasn’t berserk at all when Childers thought about it. It was more like one of those side-eyed tantrums bratty kids throw where they constantly look at their mommy to make sure they don’t go too far.
Most of his edicts came on the back of tyrannical rages riding a torrent of slobber and threats. But everyone who worked for him knew him for the kind of guy who bellowed unti
l his eyes bugged, but then looked hard at the reactions of those around him before moving forward with any plan. He liked to stand around instead, hoping someone with a better idea would argue with him. That way, if their plan worked, he could take the credit because he was in charge. If it failed, he could rub their face in the fact that he should never have followed their advice to begin with.
It would have been funny if it weren’t so tragic.
With nothing else to pound on during his rant, Grimsson slapped his own thigh, peered at the drone display in Dollarhyde’s hands. “We’ll blow it to hell and her with it…”
Dollarhyde did as he was expected and countered with a plan of his own.
“We could blow it, sir,” Dollarhyde said. “But this is a large stope and we don’t have a line of sight. That means the drone will only go back so far.”
Grimsson wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “But she was down there?”
Dollarhyde kept his eyes on the display. “Little doubt about that. Bottled water, a stove. Someone’s set up a home.”
“So we blow it!”
“We have two fixed ropes,” Dollarhyde said. “One with the ascenders topside, the other with no ascenders at all. That could suggest she’s down there, or that she came up on her own. For all we know, she’s out there now, behind some tree, just waiting to slip back to town and spill her guts to the FBI.”
“Send the drone in deeper!”
“That’s a no go, sir,” Dollarhyde said. “It just returns to where it last had line of sight. I’d guess there’s twenty to thirty percent of the stope that’s beyond our reach.”
“I never expected you to go squeamish on me,” Grimsson said.
Dollarhyde looked up slowly from the drone controller, staring daggers at the boss. “Mr. Grimsson, I will happily drop a rock on that child, or shoot her, or gut her, or, as you are so fond of saying, cut off her head with an axe. But to do that, we need to find her.”
Childers took his eyes off their back trail long enough to watch Grimsson and see how he’d handle this. As suspected, the old man waved it off. Dollarhyde always seemed to know just how far he could push. That dude was about as wily as—
“Childers!” Grimsson snapped. “Get on one of those ropes and see if she’s down there.”
Childers looked at Dollarhyde for approval.
Grimsson gave him a little nudge on the shoulder. “Don’t look at him! Get your ass down there and kill her.”
Childers considered tossing the old man over the edge, and would have if he’d nudged him again. Some shit you didn’t put up with, even from your boss.
Grimsson handed him the rope with the ascenders attached.
“I’ve got a rappelling brake in my pack,” Dollarhyde said, apparently on board with the plan.
“There’s a chance she has a gun.” Childers’s eyes narrowed, daring the other men to press him. “I’m not scared, but I’m not about to get my ass shot off.”
Dollarhyde handed Grimsson the drone controller and then stooped to dig through his pack. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Even if she does have a gun, I doubt she can shoot it.”
Childers took the rappelling brake without speaking. Grimsson hunched over the controller now, convinced he could make the drone perform better than Dollarhyde. “Find me something that says she’s still down there. Then we’ll bury her.”
And me too, Childers thought. He ignored Grimsson altogether and said, “Mr. Dollarhyde, I’d suggest you come down with me on the second rope. Two sets of eyes will be better than one.”
“You’ll be fine,” Dollarhyde said.
Grimsson flicked a hand toward the ledge, his eyes glued to the controller screen. “One of you get your ass on that rope.”
Childers leaned in close to Dollarhyde, taking advantage of the moment the old man’s attention was on the drone.
“I’m not going down there by myself.”
Before Dollarhyde could counter, Childers pulled the bone rattle half out of his jacket pocket, enough to reveal the carvings and bent sheep horn. “I got this from Schimmel,” he whispered. “According to that archeologist you dumped, this is worth at least a half million.”
Dollarhyde’s face lit up at that. “I’ll hold on to it for you.”
“Not a chance,” Childers said. “You come down there with me. That way I know I have an insurance policy. A way out. We’ll get rid of the girl and Grimsson and then sell this.”
Dollarhyde gave a contemplative nod. Which was lucky for him, since Childers had already decided to shoot him in the face if he balked at the plan.
“What are you two women nervous about?” the old man snapped.
“Childers is right, sir,” Dollarhyde said. “Two set of eyes will be better.” He gave a wry smile. “But I’ll take the explosives with me, just to keep everyone honest.”
* * *
Dollarhyde didn’t mind the dark or the height, but it made him feel weak that Childers had the advantage of experience when it came to rappelling. Still, he was a fast learner and he zipped down the rope. The headlights made them sitting ducks, which was more than enough incentive. His feet crunched against the gravel floor seconds behind the former Marine.
Dollarhyde drew his pistol the moment he unlatched his carabiner. He glanced sideways, drawing a withering squint from Childers.
“Get that outta my eyes!” the younger man hissed. “You’re killing my vision.”
Not one to apologize, Dollarhyde turned his head in a slow arc, playing the powerful light around the cathedral-like stope. He was smart enough to know that there was a hierarchy in situations like this, where title meant little to nothing. The one with the experience called the shots. Still, he pretended he was in charge of Childers – just like Grimsson did to him.
Childers aimed his headlamp at a small mountain of supplies – canned tuna salad, crackers, potato chips, and a couple of jugs of water. A couple of Pop-Tart wrappers littered the ground beside a half-burned candle on a flat stone.
“I think she’s back there,” Childers whispered. He motioned with his pistol toward a dark spot where the cavern narrowed and the ceiling dropped.
“Take a look behind those pillars,” Dollarhyde said.
Childers put a finger to his lips and then stepped to where he was cheek to cheek with Dollarhyde. “Switch off your light.”
“Off?”
Childers’s voice was menacing, viper-like. “You want to find her or not?”
Dollarhyde groaned, playing along.
There were few places darker than a mine. Certainly not caves.
Caves formed over time, a partnership with the earth. They were growing, living rock. Dollarhyde had always thought of mines as dead, the husk left over after a mountain was gutted of everything important, full of a darkness far beyond the mere absence of light.
Childers’s shoulder brushed his as soon as their lights went off. Gravel rustled as he crouched to the ground. A faint clatter said Childers had picked up a rock. Dollarhyde could see absolutely nothing, but the sounds and movements beside him made him picture Childers drawing back like a baseball pitcher and then hurling the rock toward the stone pillars at the back of the stope. The crack of rock against rock was extra loud in the blackness. Childers repeated the process, two more times, each time turning slightly to throw toward a different pillar. Dollarhyde took a half step back to be certain he didn’t catch one in the head from close range.
The third rock hit one of the pillars on the right, cracking like a gunshot. Between the clatter of stones and the splash as it hit the wet floor, Dollarhyde heard a sound that brought a smile to his lips.
A sudden rush of breath. Donita Willets, choking back a scream.
Chapter 51
Lori Maycomb stood over the flooded tunnel, gripping the sealed plastic bag tightly in a trembling hand. Cold, crystalline water swirled at her feet. Gray walls closed in around her. Her breath came in ragged gasps.
He’d abandoned her. Or, ha
d she abandoned him? As terrified as she was to be left in the dark mine shaft, it had to be worse for Cutter. The pit in her gut told her to dive in and help him – but that was just crazy. She just couldn’t do it. It was too deep, too cold, too dark. She’d surely die if she stayed put, but there were few things worse than drowning alone, deep in the bowels of a mountain – except for letting yet another person down at the end of her short and miserable life…
* * *
Darkness followed Cutter. In front, behind, above, and below, everywhere outside the blue-green bubble formed by his headlamp and makeshift ziplock housing, was a blurry wall of impenetrable black.
Legs above his head, he flutter-kicked downward, working to stay in the center of the shaft to avoid clouding the water with silt.
His arm movements made the light move wildly at first, throwing shadows against the jagged rock, disorienting and causing him to lose time zigzagging down the shaft to keep from bashing his head. He’d run into the pool wall once at speed, racing with Ethan when they were teenagers. The impact had nearly knocked him out. Pain used up precious oxygen. Here, with no place to surface, such a mishap would prove deadly.
Cutter saw the portal for the drift seconds after he started his dive. It was arched, about six feet high, like the other tunnels and shafts in the mine. He pulled himself down and around with his free hand, fighting the natural buoyancy that kept pressing him into the ceiling of the tunnel. His foot grazed the rocks. He turned to plane downward, bashed a shoulder into a jagged edge. The impact traveled up his arm as an electric shock, causing him to drop the baggie with the headlamp. He flailed for it, missed, and watched it sink behind him while momentum carried him forward. He extended both arms, putting on the brakes, which caused him to rise immediately. Rolling sideways, ensuring that his shoulder struck the ceiling before his head, he pushed off with one hand while swimming toward the light with the other.
He scooped up the light with one hand, careening upward like a submarine on emergency blow.
